Page 101 of Turncloak

Auria’s cheeks burned, and for some Saintsforsaken reason, she felt the pathetic urge to cry. She found she could not look directly at Nissa.

The Wielder had lied under oath, and then she had done this.

After that, the closing statements were a blur. Turmoil sculled through Auria like vicious oars, and at any given moment, she thought she might call out to the judge, might confess the terrible thing she knew: that her co-defendant was a perjurer. But she never did. When she wasn’t talking, her tongue remained glued to the roof of her mouth, cemented by cowardice or fear or self-preservation.

Finally, the courtroom rose to hear the judge’s verdict.

Nercan nodded and nodded and nodded, then spoke.

“It is clear that several breaches of the Code of Conduct were committed here, and punishment must be issued accordingly. My order is for detectives Marriosan and Naszi to be suspended for one week. With pay. They may use the time to rest and recuperate before returning to work in their usual capacity.”

Auria’s heart lurched with disbelief.

One week of suspension.

With pay.

She felt like cheering, like laughing, like crying.

Captain Karvas, on the other hand, seemed ready to detonate with fury. He thumped a palm on his bench. “Your Honor. This sets a dangerous precedent—what is to stop another Silvercloak from committing an egregious felony and then simply blaming Bloodmoon pressure?”

Judge Nercan steepled his fingers in front of him, a mild expression on his weathered face. “Detective Naszi touched on a core philosophical idea: the difference between what is right and what is lawful.”

“As a judge, surely you ought to believe they are one and the same,” Karvas blustered.

“Most of the time, yes. But if you asked any sound-of-mind individual whether one should allow oneself to be murdered to prevent the theft of a letter written by a dying man for his surviving daughter, said hypothetical individual would surely agree that this would not be reasonable or necessary. Yet Auria Marriosan was willing to do just that.

“There has been wrongdoing, yes. Breaches of the Order’s Code of Conduct, absolutely. Insubordination, the leaking of confidential information under extreme duress. Perhaps these might teeter into criminal charges—these detectives did certainly facilitate burglary. But both Marriosan and Naszi took reasonable measures to prevent the theft of the letter, and Marriosan went far beyond the call of duty in agreeing to sacrifice her life for it. I have no interest in pursuing a criminal investigation. And frankly, Captain, it’s alarming to me that you appear to be more concerned with punishing your own mages than with catching the intruder who forced their hands.”

“But Your Hon—”

“Dismissed.”

45

• • • •

Five Trips

Before leaving for Bellandry, the kingpin made five trips.

A week had passed since he’d read that letter—and rejected Saffron’s advances. Now every time they crossed paths in the corridors of the mansion, they gave each other stiff nods, or Levan would ask something inane about the laundering she was overseeing. The responses were stiff, un-Saffron-like. There was no talk of their upcoming trip north beyond when and where they’d meet, and certainly no talk of the love lost between them.

Which was fine by Levan, because he had business to attend to.

First, he went to cell six, only to find the prisoner still unconscious. Bruises faded, body weakened. A loose collection of muscle and skin and bones. Breathing, but barely. As he always did, he tried to heal the prisoner. As he always did, he failed.

This trip to see the prisoner made Levan crave loxlure more than he had in years, and he had to run sixteen miles to rid himself of the desire. Even then it simmered below the surface, an itch, an impulse, a voice screaming at him without cease. A hunger for oblivion. A thirst that could only be slaked by one thing and one thing alone. An agony so great that only loxlure could numb it. It troubled him that the need was growing louder with time, not quieter.

It took several days to heal the burn on his side. He debated back and forth for hours at a time, half glad for the sharp sting, the way it ameliorated his wavering power, the punishment it served for his many ills. The other half of him knew that an act of healing would go a small distance to repairing his severed command over magic itself, and it was to this argument that he eventually ceded. He couldn’t go on this potentially doomed journey to Bellandry without his compelling to fall back on.

After soothing his own burn, he healed wherever he could: people, plants, objects. Slowly, he felt the connection to his magic strengthen. Often the only thought keeping him from succumbing to loxlure was that it might somehow tarnish this nascent bond.

So that was the first trip.

Second, he went to his mother’s crypt to check on Halant’s progress, which was nonexistent. But the necromancer seemed pleased when Levan told him a scarlet mage had been sent to Nomaden to retrieve Teny Tolvas, without whom well replenishment was impossible. Tolvas should be in Atherin by the end of the month, and Halant agreed to keep attempting resurrection before then.

By now, though, the prospect of a better way had laid down roots in Levan. Why settle for a Risen mother and the legacy of a brutal criminal empire when Saffron could unmake it all? He was called to the idea of a blank slate, a fresh blanket of snow ready for a new set of footprints. The opportunity to make cleaner, kinder marks on the world. This would save the prisoner in cell six, would save the hundreds of others who had fallen in the name of resurrecting a dead queenpin. The greatest act of Healing he could imagine.