Page 45 of Turncloak

“What did you see?” King Quintan’s words were crisp and cutting as a blade through wood.

Harrow’s answer sprung from him like a geyser. “With the caveat that, as ever, I do not have a sense of timescale…I saw a bloody uprising. The Palace stormed, scarlet cloaks flapping through the great halls, corpses strewn left and right like rag dolls. Screaming—so much screaming. The throne room had been barricaded, but it would not hold for much longer.”

King Quintan did not visibly react. In fact, for several moments, Harrow was unsure whether the regent had listened. Then, quietly, dangerously, he uttered, “The scarlet cloaks, you say. Bloodmoons.”

“Yes, Your Grace.”

Levan had not been in the prophecy—no clearly identifiable face had been. The foretelling was a riot of smeared color and clamorous yells.

“Very well.” King Quintan rose to his feet, his portly stomach juddering the long table. “We’ve tolerated their existence in this great city long enough. Left their eradication to Dematus, to the silvers. But they have failed, and now the scarlet cloaks are coming for the throne. This I cannot allow.”

“What do you suggest?” asked Kesven Flane, a hungry look in his eyes. His own shoulders were ridged with ropes of embedded ascenite beads, giving his silhouette an uncanny severity.

The king turned to the Highcloak of War. “Time to make them bleed.”

Part Three

Deceptions

23

• • • •

Two Witnesses

“I heard the screams and went running,” Riv Minarin finished, folding her arms over her black Mage Practer cloak and casting a defiant stare in Auria’s direction. The second eyewitness from the Broad Row murder seemed far less nervous than the first.

After the rather public altercation with Saffron, Auria had thankfully found the lost witnesses tossing back flamebrandy shots in a tavern next to the portari gate. She was now interviewing them individually in a small interrogation room at Order headquarters.

She sat opposite the witness, sipping at a flask of cønnafyr she’d brought from her mothers’ house. “You were in a pleasurehouse. How did you know the screams were nefarious?”

“They weren’t screams of pleasure, or even of kinky pain. It sounded like someone was being brutally tortured.”

“So both you and your sexual partner ran upstairs.”

“Yes, that’s right. We had the same instincts.”

“And when you got to the top of the stairs, did you turn right or left?”

Riv paused to consider this, closing her eyes as though painting the pleasurehouse’s layout on the back of her lids. “Neither. Straight ahead.”

Auria scrawled shorthand notes down on a fourth sheet of parchment. “What did the crime scene look like when you arrived?”

“It’s all such a blur. The room was strewn with rose petals and fur blankets, and there was an upturned bowl of half-eaten strawberries on the floor. The body was on the bed, contorted with pain but clearly dead. The window was open, and I saw a flash of white cloak as the suspect leapt out.”

Auria’s detective’s instincts snagged on two parts of this statement, but she tucked the suspicions away until the right moment. “What did you do next?”

“I ran over to the window while my companion rushed to the body. The white-cloaked mage who dropped into the alley was short, tanned, bald, and barefoot. He sprinted away in the direction of Parlin Place.”

A neat testimony, answering several questions before Auria needed to ask them. “And did you attempt to cast any spells to prevent the suspect’s escape?”

“No, my magic isn’t very strong—I was lucky to scrape the Mage Practer certificate.”

Auria’s heart rate picked up as a theory formed in her mind. “And how did you feel at that point? Were you fearful? Confused? Shocked?”

Sloppy, Auria chastised herself. Don’t put words in their mouth. Let them find their own.

“I was surprised how calm I felt in the moment. I suppose you never know how you’re going to respond to something like that until you’re in it.”