Page 51 of Turncloak

A few streets over, she ducked into a narrow alleyway, determined to test her new purchase. Blood thumping against her temples, she withdrew the small golden hourglass and the wolf-carved wand, both warm from the heat of her body. She closed her eyes and summoned the razor-sharp intention to—

Footsteps landed all around her like a sudden rain.

Her eyes flew open.

She was surrounded by half a dozen mages in blood-orange cloaks, all of whom had familiar twin daggers tattooed along their cheekbones.

They’d leapt from the rooftops into the alley.

And now they were closing in like a pack of hounds.

“Sen praegelos,” Saffron hissed, trying to freeze time so she might flee, but the wolf-engraved wand sat in her hand instead of her own, and all at once it became perilously clear that the piece of wood was a fraud.

There was no wick at all, let alone a weaver, and the magic never materialized.

Time kept rolling.

Six blades found her body. She was so shocked she felt none of them.

All went black.

26

• • • •

A Dark and Angry Crimson

“We have a problem.”

Segal burst into the kingpin’s office without knocking.

“What is it?” Levan stood sharply from the wing-backed chair behind his father’s squat mahogany desk, where he’d been sorting through some post delivered to him personally: a collection of three severed loyalty brands, cut from the chests of Bloodmoons unknown.

“Sevir was killed in a pleasurehouse on Broad Row.”

Varosol Sevir. One of their most lucrative loxlure peddlers. He’d been instrumental in penetrating student halls of residence, getting them all addicted, then ushering them in the direction of the gamehouses. He was constantly complaining that the higher-ups couldn’t get enough loxlure for him to sell. As soon as a fresh batch found his hands, it was gone, ten times the ascenite in its place.

“When?”

“Ten days ago.”

“Why am I only just finding out about this now?”

“The Silvercloaks weren’t in a hurry to inform us, believe it or not.”

A sharp needle pressed into Levan’s wrist stump, and he curled his fingers into a fist. “Have there been any arrests?”

“No, but they’re sure it was the Whitewings. Word on the street is that they’re growing more organized—that they’ve named a leader, and said leader has ordered them to pick off scarlets one by one. They’re leaving behind the scattered approach and developing some semblance of structure.”

A new leader, in the wake of Avar Martou’s death.

“How lovely. Perhaps they’ll unionize.”

Segal hooked a single wiry eyebrow. “Did you just crack a joke?”

“No.”

Levan thought of the severed brands he’d been posted, wondering what their end goal was. “An attempt to weaken us further, then, but not destroy us entirely. Just like the compound break-in. They could have burned the place to the ground that night, if they so wanted to.”