Page 129 of Turncloak

“A good question.” Lulí leaned forward, gleeful now, like a polderdash player about to play the winning card. “With the caveat that this is all likely just folklore, there is a Nyrøthi scholar who has gone to great lengths to verify the accounts. That boy has long since grown, and has always refused to talk about his experiences in that mountain lair. But the scholar’s working theory is that the dragonborn exist as a check to the Timeweavers’ balance. Dragons famously produce the wicks necessary for a weaver’s wand, and yet the wicks themselves are never granted directly to the weavers. Only a dragonborn can harvest a wick.

“It is believed that only those of great honor, those whose goodness runs all the way to the bone, are made dragonborn—that way, when they vouch for a Timeweaver, the dragons have faith in said weaver’s intentions. Checks and balances. Dragonborns and Timeweavers.”

“So where is the boy now?” Victaria asked.

Lulí grinned. “Rumors are that he has the fading disease, but he’s made a wonderful life for himself writing books. His name is Erling Tandall.”

“The author of The Great Adventures of the Lost Dragonborn?” Victaria scoffed. “Sounds like he has a great publicist.”

But Auria was barely listening. Her gaze was trained on Nissa, who was growing stiller with every line of the folktale. Disquiet prickled up Auria’s neck, the backs of her arms, the bone of her sternum.

Nissa rose to her feet, her spine straight as a staff. “Actually, I’m not feeling too well. Night shift always leaves me queasy—or perhaps it was all the ginger pastries. Thank you for the hospitality, and I wish you all a joyous Sancsari.”

Auria had never heard Nissa talk like that before—overly polite, overly controlled, stiff, and eerily pleasant. The gold-eyed Wielder strode out of the vast, bright kitchen to the blossom-colored front door, opening and closing it with a spectral silence so unlike her entry to the stakeout house the night before.

Auria shot her mother a death stare and hastily followed, catching up to Nissa halfway down Goldendawn Avenue. She grabbed her colleague by the arm from behind, but softly, a nudge rather than a yank, not truly expecting Nissa to stop.

But she did stop. She turned slowly on her heel, and when Auria saw the expression on her face, she fought the urge to gasp. It was as though someone had scooped all the life out of her, all the soul, leaving naught but an empty shell behind.

No. Not empty. Something dark and devastating stirred beneath the surface.

“I’m sorry, Nissa,” Auria said, her tone pleading. “I know it makes you feel like a zoo exhibit when people talk about your heritage. It’s not an excuse, but my mother is an eccentric. She—she just loves old folklore, fairytales, mythology. All that stuff. Although I’m not convinced that was even a Nyrøthi folk story. I think she plucked it from—”

“It’s true,” Nissa murmured, golden eyes shadowed, haunted. “My sisters didn’t die in a sandstorm. Without my parents’ knowledge, we snuck away to Háldriel’s Hill one night—we’d heard it was the only place on the continent other than the tundral north where dragons still resided. We were young, and we were foolish, and we were right.” A single tear beaded along Nissa’s waterline before slipping to the pavement. “My sisters died during the ritual, but I lived. I became dragonborn, and it’s the worst thing that’s ever happened to me. To my family. My parents have never truly forgiven me, and I have never forgiven myself.”

“Nissa, I…”

“If you really value our reluctant allyship,” Nissa murmured, as though she’d seen a ghost, “you’ll keep that to yourself.”

And then she turned and walked away.

Nissa Naszi, the dragonborn.

The check to the Timeweavers’ balance.

A person so innately good that the winged beasts had made her one of them.

Auria felt everything she thought she knew about her colleague—and about the world—shatter.

55

• • • •

The Wardholder

Over the next handful of days, Saffron asked questions around Flarence about a potential wardholder.

Is there anyone inexplicably wealthy, despite appearing powerless?

Anyone reclusive, strange, whose story doesn’t quite add up?

Any families who have been here for many, many generations?

But the locals in Flarence were a stubborn, loyal bunch, and very few offered answers, even when Harrow tried to assimilate with his creamy, natural Bellandrian. The population saw right through his fine clothing and his marbled royal accent, his chattering teeth as the icy chill deepened. So Saff met only terse head shakes, suspicious shrugs, and, on one occasion, the intervention of the local Vergard, who insisted they move along from the congregation outside the Augur temple.

By the fourth day, Saffron was ready to scream into her knuckles.

The crew sat around a scuffed wooden table in a small tavern called the Skarver Vau—Crooked Dagger—whose barkeep offered Saffron a bemused, almost distrustful expression when she requested hot cocoa. The Nyrøthi culture of pain over pleasure had bled across the border—as evidenced by the lack of local pleasurehouses, which Harrow was chagrined by—and most citizens seemed to find her blatant indulgence an affront.