Page 105 of Turncloak

“You’ve been avoiding me.”

“I’ve been busy,” Harrow replied vaguely.

“That’s never stopped you from fucking me before.” Levan’s hair was pulled back with a piece of tan leather string, and he seemed to be carrying himself gingerly, though there were no obvious injuries. Harrow recognized this posture from the deepest days of Levan’s addiction—the sense that if he brushed up against anything too solid, it would hurt him, and if he hurt, then he would want loxlure too badly to deny himself.

Harrow shrugged. “My libido isn’t what it once was.”

“A spectacular lie. My source at the pleasurehouse on Saintsvale tells me you’ve frequented them daily.”

“Is nothing in this city sacred?”

Levan took a tentative sip of his fucking cordial, grimacing as though it were the hardest bivkar Nyrøth had to offer. “Ever since our trip to Sorvel…you foretold a prophecy, and then, for all intents and purposes, fled.”

The bard plucked up a new tune, and the alcohol in Harrow’s system caused all the twangy notes to thrum together with his own pulse. He was rather too inebriated to remember why he ought to not tell the truth.

“Fine. It was a similar prophecy to the last I shared with you—a bloody uprising, the head of King Quintan on the Palace steps, et cetera.”

“Alright.”

“Only this time, it was real.”

Levan stilled. “You lied before?”

Harrow chuckled and spread his hands wide, in a what-a-rascal-I-am sort of way. “I tell people what they want to hear. It cements my value. And when you’re valuable, they keep you alive. A mere survival tactic.”

At this revelation Levan visibly struggled to control his anger—this was not a mage who liked to be lied to, played. Not after everything that had happened with Alucia and Saffron. But for whatever reason, he was going to great lengths to keep his wrath tempered, which usually meant he needed Harrow for something.

Interesting—and dangerous.

“When you say it was real this time…”

Harrow waved to the barkeep to bring another bottle of wine. “I didn’t see the king’s head rolling, but I did see the Bloodmoons storming the Palace. So many dead, so much blood and fear. And truthfully, it made me afraid of you.”

Levan’s eyes narrowed. “I thought you weren’t loyal to the Crown.”

“That doesn’t mean I want to see House Arollan slaughtered.”

“You’ve always known my goal.” The kingpin’s thigh jostled and jerked beneath the table, nervous energy overspilling.

“I suppose I never thought you’d actually manage it.”

“Yet this prophecy implies that I will?”

The barkeep arrived at the table with a fresh bottle of honeywine, not bothering with the rigmarole of showing Harrow the label or pouring out a sample. All the barkeeps at the Twelve Jackals knew that by the third bottle, they could serve him Ludder piss and he wouldn’t notice.

Levan leaned forward, resting his forearms on the wine-sticky table. His golden hand glowed unnaturally in the low light of the tavern. “I’m going on a trip to Bellandry. Near Flarence, near the Forest of Lost Souls. I’d like you to come with me.”

“How quaint. But I’m needed in the Palace.”

“We have a location for the Fifth Prophecy, and reason to believe that Saffron Killoran is the only one who can reach it.”

The music in the bar seemed to quiet, time itself slowing like treacle.

“The Fifth Prophecy.” Harrow shook his head vehemently. “Impossible.”

“Killoran’s dying father left clear instructions on where to find it. Don’t you want to be privy to its contents?”

The quickened thrum of Harrow’s heartbeat answered for him. “I’m not an Augurest. I don’t hold much stock in the Divine—”