Page 107 of Turncloak

“We have a few more members of the party to wait for.”

“Who?” Saffron asked, confused.

“Miret, first of all—he’s studied the Augurs, the Timeweavers, and the lost prophecy in immense depth over the years.”

“Can’t he stay in the safety of the library? Contact us via vocos?”

“Daft old bastard has a habit of leaving his wand lying around in rooms he is not inhabiting. Occupational hazard of a distractible scholar, I suppose.”

Saffron didn’t see the need to refute this. She’d always liked Miret, always enjoyed watching his grandfatherly relationship with Levan. “Who else?”

“Harrow Claver.”

Saffron blinked, sure she’d misheard. “The King’s Prophet?”

“We might need a Foreseer. Your father believes that the Fifth Prophecy pertains to you, and thus that you’ll be able to see it when the time comes. But if that isn’t the case, and it requires a Foreseer to channel it, we don’t want to be stymied.”

“Alright. Anyone else?”

A terse nod. “Relar Zamorin.”

Now Saffron really must be suffering from moderate aural hallucinations. “The apothecary who killed Segal? I assumed he’d already be dead. Why is he coming?”

“Keeping an eye on him—and the Whitewings. I didn’t brand him, so I can’t trust him fully, but I offered his family protection. The whites have him searching the continent for spinebark, and I can’t allow that to happen.”

Saffron’s detective’s instincts stirred. “Spinebark? Saints.”

“If they find it, loxlure will be the least of this city’s worries.”

But the mention of the highly addictive ingredient was not the part Saffron snagged upon. “You didn’t brand him?”

A curious emotion passed over Levan’s face. “No.”

“Have you branded anyone since you took over as kingpin?”

A head shake.

“Why?” Saffron said softly.

He shrugged, yet it was anything but ambivalent. She could see how much he cared about this in every line of his too-straight body, in the aching depths of his clear blue eyes. “I want there to be a better way.”

Miret’s words from a few months ago came back to her. “You made him believe that it was possible to exist in this dark crack of humanity while maintaining some semblance of morality.”

Pride flooded her, warm and bright. “If anyone can find a better way, you can.”

The very corner of Levan’s mouth pulled up. Bashful, almost, still gazing at her. He so rarely looked at her these days. At least not like that. The air between them hummed and crackled, but Saffron thought of how badly she’d misread that hum and crackle on the night she’d shared her father’s letter and forced herself to look away.

A few moments later, the other members of their strange party appeared. First Miret and Relar—both wearing pale blue scholar’s cloaks—then Harrow Claver, looking distinctly unruffled in his bronze Foreseer cloak. Beneath the bronze he wore a plain black tunic and trousers, since his royal attire would attract even more attention than Bloodmoon scarlet.

Once everyone had assembled by the portari gate, Levan shared their plan.

“We cannot take a gate directly into Bellandry, so we’ll have to portari up to Lunes then cross the border on foot.”

“Lunes?” Saffron breathed, gripped with an excruciating clutch of homesickness.

Homesickness not just for the place where she’d grown up, but the people who once inhabited it. The people all of this was for. She hadn’t been back to her beloved home village since her parents’ funeral. Her hand went to the pendant around her neck, but, of course, she had traded away the piece of their old front door, the jeweled bodies of her mother and father.

Levan watched this movement—he knew it was her tic—and for the briefest of moments, emotion flickered behind his eyes. “Will you be alright? Going back there?”