Page 59 of Turncloak

It was true, wasn’t it? Ludder healing—stitches sewn and flesh knitted back together by hand—would not be fast enough. And for reasons neither of them understood, she was immune to all magic except his.

His magic, which no longer obeyed him.

“Can you portari all the way down to Mersina?” Castian asked hurriedly.

Ordinarily, maybe—it was a damn long way, but Mersina didn’t have border control wards. Yet with his magic in rebellion? He couldn’t risk ending up in Sarosan or Teyet or Ni Lahi, completely depleted of power and with no way to cover the rest of the distance.

“Get her to Aredan. I’ll take the portari gate down there. There’s an inn next to the southeastern gate called the Fallen Foe—ask for Darin. He’ll set you up with a room and a bed.”

Castian’s voice sank an octave. “I don’t know if she’ll make it that far.”

“She will. Both of your lives depend upon it.”

Levan’s hand found the door handle, but before he twisted it, he hissed to Segal, “If I find out you’ve killed the boy in my absence, you’ll never breathe again.” He stooped slightly to pet his overly intelligent fallowwolf. “And mind Rasso, will you? He’s hungry—needs some fresh hearts.”

As the door slammed shut behind Levan, he heard Rasso wail and slam against the wood, claws scrabbling to follow his master—or to find his mistress. But Levan knew how devastated Rasso had been by the death of Lorissa Rezaran, how the wolf had screamed over her fresh corpse, and he did not want to put the beast through the same thing twice.

He sprinted to the marble dragon statue on the third floor, heart threatening to detonate in his chest.

The bedspreads at the Fallen Foe were drenched with blood by the time Levan arrived. Saffron’s face was the approximate hue of freshly fallen snow, and her breaths came irregularly, shallowly. She was still fully clothed, stuck with knives like a pincushion.

Levan remembered something Perant, the Rezaran camp Healer, once told him: “Healing is the only magical art worth a damn. Mages believe they need all the lazy practical shortcuts and fancy enchantments, the pleasure on a whim, the ability to wield fire and rain, to make wine from water, but all those frivolous wants are stripped away when there’s a wound in your belly and you’re bleeding out.”

Castian wrung her hands by the window, looking out to the sea she’d crossed with a dying mage beside her in the boat—not as uncommon as one might think, in Assassin’s Bay. The Wielder looked just as terrible as Saffron, her skin pallid and sweat-slicked. Her eyes were bloodshot, but since her blood ran black, the vessels looked like spiders’ legs across the whites.

“She has minutes,” she said. “Maybe less.”

Levan sank to his knees beside the bed, quickly examining the wounds. The thigh was the most lethal. He wrenched the dagger out of the leg as cleanly and smoothly as he could, loosing a tremendous spurt of burbling blood, then raised his wand.

What if it doesn’t work, what if it doesn’t work, what if what if what if—

“Ans mederan,” he uttered, tone calm despite the pulse roaring in his ears, the depth of his want pulling magic from the very bottom of his well, drawing on a lifetime of pain, of hurt.

And slowly, miraculously, the flesh and muscle and skin knitted itself together.

Relief surging through him, Levan repeated this process five more times, healing abdominal organs and bruised bones and punctured lungs, the magic flowing from him so easily the trust might never have been broken, until there wasn’t a mark left on Saffron Killoran’s body—none except the brand over her heart.

Levan laid his palm over the thick crust, feeling for a heartbeat beneath it.

There, but barely. The flap of a moth’s wing, the slightest tremor on the surface of a lake.

“Saints, she’s lost so much blood. Perhaps too much.” Levan ran his palms over his face, one pale, one gold, both so slick with Saffron’s blood that he left streaks of it down his cheeks. “What in all the infinite hells was she doing in Mersina?”

But he already knew—or at least suspected.

She bought a wand from a Wielder with dagger-tattooed cheeks.

He would bet any amount of ascenite that the wand was a weaverwick.

“Damned if I know.” Castian peered at the pale form on the bed. “Why the Vari Merkt, of all places? She has a perfectly functioning wand. Not the prettiest, by any stretch, nor the most powerful for a mage of her caliber, but there are plenty of wandmakers in Atherin she might have gone to for a replacement.”

“The wand she bought—do you have it?”

Castian shook her head. “She dropped it when she was wounded. I was too focused on saving her to pick it up.”

“I want you to take a boat back to Mersina, and I want you to find that alleyway, and I want you to retrieve that wand. And then I want you to toss it in the deepest part of Assassin’s Bay and never speak of it again.”

Castian gave him a curious, exhausted look, but didn’t question the order. She turned to leave.