Page 30 of Turncloak

And of course, she was right. Had Vogolan not been trying to trap Saffron, he would never have murdered Papa Marriosan. Had Saffron not led Levan to the Jaded Saint on that very first night, he would never have been presented with the opportunity to compel Tiernan Flane.

Feeling like the smallest person in the world, Saffron bowed her head and walked away—not knowing that just a few streets away, the mage who held her fate in his hands was fighting for his very life.

17

• • • •

The Final Bargain

Dubias Row was home to crooks and criminals, scorch-marked buildings and defaced murals, puddles of orange lamplight and blood-slicked cobbles. It was also home to Çernasti’s tavern—a dingy, disreputable establishment where the bitterale was watered down, the patrons wore shabby cloaks, and the house stew was an embarrassment of red-brown slop. Coiled ropes, black with soot and grime, hung from the ceiling for no discernible reason.

Levan loathed the place, but needs must.

“Why are we here?” asked the mage who was, in another life, almost certainly Levan’s grandfather.

Miret Tomazin had a long, pale beard down to his waist, knotted with turquoise and gold beads. Hailing from the deserts of Eqora, his skin was brown and crinkled, his pale blue scholar’s robes disheveled, his half-moon spectacles perpetually askew.

Levan sipped his ambertea, wincing at the cheap, sour tang of the leaves. “I suppose you already know.”

“Ha. Taqin.” True. Miret downed his liquor in one determined gulp. “We are here to find a necromancer. With not one but two parents lying in the crypt, the fervor with which you seek the maligned art has intensified. Even though you have seen firsthand what it has done to Sando Segal.”

A gaggle of tipsy mages entered the tavern, trailing behind a red-haired musician hauling a lute case.

“Did you know the Risen would be like that?”

“I had my suspicions.”

“And yet you didn’t voice them.”

“Sometimes I fear your dogged pursuit of a necromancer is the only thing holding you upright.”

The precision of this assessment knocked the wind out of Levan for a few beats. “So why are we here? In Çernasti’s.”

“If I had to make an educated guess—”

“Do you make any other kind?”

“I would say that in a fit of unparalleled insanity and desperation, you wonder whether the Disciples of Halant might be on to something.”

Levan couldn’t resist the smile. “Nothing gets past you. Tell me what you know of Halant.”

“Very well—with the strong caveat that almost all of what I’m about to say is, at best, urban legend.”

“The same could be said of your beloved Saints, could it not?”

Miret laughed his mirthful chuckle—one of Levan’s favorite sounds in the world, as luminous as sunlight hitting a crisp blue lake. “Right you are. So, the necromancer Halant. Born and raised in Tarsa, proficient in death magic from the day he received his first wand. Resurrected birds and bees, flowers and great oaks, until their garden in Amuilly’s Vale was a riot of life and color. So far, so wholesome, until he discovered two things. First, that his gift was outlawed. And second, that it offered him an immense social currency.

“He began trading in promises with other children in school. Yes, I’ll bring back your mother if she passes of the bloodblight—if you are loyal to me always, if you do my bidding, if you act as my servant and my confidant. Yes, I’ll save your brother from the blackfever if you bring me a sack of ascens and a cup of sugared ambertea. Et cetera.”

So the fabled necromancer’s work could be bought, bargained for.

“Did he make good on his promises?”

“Indeed. By eleven years old, he was interested in little else. Started killing and then resurrecting mourncrows just to scare the more skittish students. Eventually, the Pühti Vavra came knocking.”

Pühti Vavra. Pure Guard. The Tarsan police force.

“They arrested and charged him after he resurrected a local journalist assassinated by the Pühti Vavra themselves.”