Page 16 of Turncloak

“There is no change to Naszi’s condition,” Paliran answered, patience carefully measured, precisely performed. “And I have heard nothing from Flane. And my shift finishes in—oh, approximately ninety-eight seconds.”

“Anything from Dallar? Any new leads? Any—”

“Ask him yourself.” Paliran’s tone was soft, yet brusque. The two mages were retreading old ground, and Auria knew she was annoying—she’d always been aware of how grating others found her sanctimonious nature, her constant needling for answers, her meticulous approach to studying, her pious devotion to the law—but in the light of all the grief and uncertainty, she could not quite bring herself to care.

“I have asked him myself,” she muttered. “Many times.” Dallar was overseeing the investigation into Tiernan’s disappearance, and he’d been staunchly tight-lipped, treating Auria like any old civilian rather than a fellow Silvercloak.

“On the official clock, perhaps. But he drinks at the Glory’s Edge most evenings after work. Try approaching him after his sixth pint of bitterale. Once his shoulders have dropped and his pupils start pointing in different directions, he might be more willing to talk.”

Auria nodded gratefully. “Thank you.”

“Of course. I hope you know, Marriosan, that I want to find him as much as you do.”

“No, you don’t.” Auria fought to keep the warmth from her eyes, which were prone to leakage at the best of times. “Nobody does.”

“It’s a rumor, Marriosan. Just a rumor.”

Dallar was indeed slumped over his sixth pint, pale jowls flecked with gray-blond stubble, eyes pink and overly dilated.

The Glory’s Edge was dimly lit, deliberately grungy. A vast mural of Parlin the Great scaling a snow-capped mountain adorned the back wall, callously graffitied to add a comically large vock. The tavern’s booths were made of poorly patched leather, stained tables lit by flickering evercandles. Auria loathed the place, but a lot of senior detectives viewed it as a cultural institution. It was older than the Order of the Silvercloaks, older possibly than time itself, and the maroon carpet older still.

“But you’re treating said rumor like a real lead?” Auria asked, perched at the bar and cradling a mug of ginger tea spiked with flamebrandy. Warmth spilled down her gullet and into all four corners of her chest, but the feeling of hollow cold persisted somewhere far deeper.

Daller shrugged unevenly. “At this juncture, rumors are all we have.”

“Please, just tell me.”

A muscle twitched in Dallar’s jaw. He took another long, slow draw of bitterale. “He was—well, supposedly.” He trailed off, staring into the bottom of his glass.

Auria thought she might go insane if she had to live for one more minute without answers. “Supposedly what?”

“Informing for the Bloodmoons.” Dallar grimaced. “We think he cost us the raid on the docks, leaked our presence back to the scarlets. As for his role in the Havenwood…we’re piecing it together. He was marked missing days before that, but he might have gone into hiding.”

The cold in Auria swelled, overflowed.

Tiernan was a rat?

As soon as she heard the words, it felt completely, terribly plausible. Auria was horrified, disgusted, and yet not shocked, in any real sense.

“Hiding. There’s a possibility…?”

“Until a body is found, there’s always a possibility.”

“What will happen if he does come back?” Auria whispered, overcome with a fear she couldn’t quite name. “Will he—if it’s true? Will he go to Duncarzus?”

Another grimace, stony, jaded. “We’ll weather that storm if it breaks.”

Auria nodded, noting with vague horror that she was crying.

“Don’t let it tarnish the way you think of him, alright?” Dallar laid a fatherly palm on her shoulder, squeezed a little too firmly. His ale-split gaze landed involuntarily on her missing ear. “The scarlet fist is a frightening thing. Stronger mages than Tiernan have cowered beneath it.”

Auria—who was so righteous, so devout to the law, theoretically willing to die for her ideals—swallowed hard. “He’s the reason Nissa is…”

“Yes.” A nod, a sigh, a swig. “Get some rest, Marriosan. You look like mareshit.”

The walk back to the precinct was short, but she took it slow. Her half cup of spiked tea blurred her vision at the edges—she’d never been good at holding her liquor—and she was grateful for it, the smeared membrane between her and the terrible thought that Tiernan might have been a traitor.

She drew in long, cool breaths of the night air, forced herself to look up at the beauty of the starred sky, instead of down at her dragging feet, instead of fixating on all the hideous implications of Tiernan’s treason. She zoomed out of the situation, imagined herself as a frostowl gliding over some distant moor, so far above the suffering of magekind. She pictured herself as a velvine, which she’d always loved, pattering along some high rooftop and—