Page 73 of Turncloak

“Ah, but then I wouldn’t be able to plant these.” She held up a pair of tiny enchanted conch shells, bought from the Cherrymarket that morning. “Listening devices. I’ll leave one by Naszi’s bedside. Marriosan has been reassigned from the Bloodmoons, but Nissa hasn’t. Whatever briefings she receives while still laid up in the hospital wing, we’ll hear.”

A calculated pretext; a play within a play.

Saffron also wanted to break into the Order because she’d just been handed a second chance at reclaiming her father’s letter. Nissa had helped her before, with the intel on Zares, with the tracing spell. She might be willing to help with this too, especially if she saw how badly Saffron was hurting, how much danger her former lover was in, how much solace this lost correspondence might bring her.

Levan studied the conch shells. “And if you’re caught?”

The temptation was strong, then, to say, lend me your mother’s weaverwick and we won’t have to worry about that. But the time still wasn’t right; he did not yet trust her enough to conduct a single conversation without his presence, let alone grant her a wand powerful enough to unmake his world.

She shrugged. “I’ll weather that storm if it breaks.”

“How?”

“You remember my little trick with the mattermantic illusions? I’ve spent the day filling my well. If worse comes to worst, I have enough power to escape.”

A hooked brow. “And how, exactly, did you refill your well?”

Pleasured myself while picturing you pinned to a table with a shard of deminite.

“Hot chocolate.”

As though to torment her, he stretched his arms over his head, joints crunching and clicking in the usual manner of a thirty-something. The movement lifted his black tunic high enough to expose a tight strip of stomach. Saffron tried and failed to avert her gaze, wondering, not for the first time, why all the danger and subterfuge made her so hellsdamned aroused. She would have immense difficulty not immediately straddling Nissa upon arrival.

“Are you nervous?” Levan asked, oblivious to her plight. “It’s the first time you’ve returned to the Order since your unceremonious dismissal.”

“Only about getting caught.”

Another half truth. She was most afraid that Nissa would refuse to help.

Not in terms of handling Saffron’s case going forward—the dragonesque Wielder would want to ensure her former lover’s safety—but in terms of searching for Joran Killoran’s letter. Without Nissa, Saffron would be out of avenues, both to hear her father’s parting words and to potentially uncover the location of an heirloom weaverwick.

Without that letter, she’d have to find a weaverwick another way, though she certainly wouldn’t be returning to Mersina or the Vari Merkt anytime soon. Unfortunately, the Silvercloaks were good at shutting down black markets on home soil, but other nations might be fruitful. Certainly not Bellandry, a country of devout Augurests who loathed Timeweavers more than was strictly necessary. And likely not the Eastern Republics—they curved around the outside of Bellandry like a crone’s bonnet, and the religion’s influence had long since seeped across their borders.

Nyrøth held more promise, if From Sacred to Sacrosanct held any muster, but Vallish citizens did not have the right to travel there, and the Steel King tended to execute trespassers on sight. The icy ruler was something of an enigma, his motivations known to very few on the continent, his correspondence scant and—

Wait.

His correspondence.

Several things coalesced in Saffron’s mind at once.

The first time she’d set foot in this very office, terrified of Lyrian Celadon and the branding poker in his crooked hands, she’d noticed a handwritten letter on the squat mahogany desk—signed by the Steel King of Nyrøth.

At the time she had written it off as a forgery, but what if the Bloodmoons really were in contact with the tundral north? Relations between Vallin and Nyrøth had been hostile ever since the Dreadreign, since the dragons fled the continent for the Hældrekys Peaks.

So why would Lyrian Celadon, of all people, have an open line of communication?

As Levan lectured her on necessary precautions, Saff surreptitiously scanned the office for any sign of that old correspondence. Levan had cleared the desk of eyeballs and envelopes when he’d taken over, and she had no idea where he might have stashed his late father’s letters. Her pulse quickened, mind reeling, a sense of significance taking shape.

The Steel King had something the Bloodmoons wanted: access to the dragons who’d turned their backs on the Rezarans centuries ago. The former kingpin had been so besotted with the beasts that he’d frequently cast illusions of them in his office, and the hallways of the mansion were adorned with murals of dragonback battles.

She thought of a passage of From Sacred to Sacrosanct:

The winged beasts are rumored to reside in the Hældrekys Peaks to the east of the tundral nation. None but the holder of the Steel Throne is privy to the terms of this agreement.

A cold, prickly sensation spread from the base of her neck to the hollow between her shoulder blades. It was a common tavern theory that the winged beasts were biding their time in the far north, plotting with the Steel Throne to take the southerly lands by force, but such worries had been popular for several centuries with little in the way of evidence.

Yes, the Steel Throne had a brutal and fast-growing military.