Page 82 of Turncloak

“Sen effigias,” Auria hissed, shooting a statue curse at the intruder, but the shape kept moving toward her.

Fear seized her, a sharp, hot shock straight to the veins. The migraine aura warped and eddied the common room around her, streaking the red and gold and blue into an oil painting, and as the intruder stepped through the layers of depth and color, Auria felt as though she’d stepped into a fever dream. A vivid, surreal hallucination.

She took several steps back until her spine pressed against a portrait of the late Captain Mathar Wilsat, who very closely resembled a badger. Willingly shoving her own back against a wall was pure idiocy—she should’ve found cover, ducked behind a couch, but all her physical training deserted her. It had never been her strong suit.

Although in truth, it wouldn’t have been enough to save her.

Within moments, the heat of a body entered the airspace directly in front of her.

The sharp edge of a blade found her exposed throat.

A male voice, deathly quiet, said, “Tell me where to find the office of Captain Vel Karvas.”

Fear hardening into resolve, Auria took a deep, steadying breath, felt the air swell in her lungs, knowing that it might be the last time.

“No.”

The head of Sando Segal was a grotesque thing, severed magically from the neck so that the stump was perfectly smooth and bloodless. His eyes were peeled wide with shock and fury, the dull whites spidered with blood vessels, and his rodent-like mouth hung slightly open. Once-ruddy skin was pale and empty, and a smear of dried blood streaked along his cheekbone like a wound.

Saffron felt nothing.

This was the mage who’d killed her parents. This was the mage who’d caught her snooping through a ledger and almost killed her too. This was a mage who’d already died and Risen, a mage who’d been privy to the worst moments of her life.

And she felt nothing.

Not gratification, not horror or revulsion.

She watched with an outsider’s detachment as the intruder ceased his muttering and crossed to the fireplace, glaring at the instruments on the poker rack. He was shockingly young—a smattering of acne, a brightness to the complexion, the feeble beginnings of a beard.

His chestnut-brown eyes narrowed as he plucked two of the instruments from the rack: the branding stamp and a long poker. He crossed back to the desk, rolled Segal’s head so that the dead man looked up at the ceiling, then jammed the poker through an eye socket with a sickening squelch.

The intruder tucked the branding stamp into a burlap sack, then left the office without a backward glance at the brutalized head of Levan’s right-hand mage.

Levan could not fathom the idea that Auria Marriosan, who had failed torture training, who was not known for her courage, would defy him under threat of death. The refusal was so unexpected that it took him several seconds to understand the word no.

“You know what the scarlet rot are capable of,” he muttered darkly. “What I’m capable of. What happens to people who say no.”

“No,” repeated Auria, a shining dignity to her stare. Bravery layered over grief, desperate sadness layered over a moral code so rigid that neither blackmail nor mortal peril could bend it.

And that was fine. Victims often held their head high and refused a command, even at the cost of their own life, but quickly caved when their loved ones were threatened. Auria had two sisters, two mothers, and a grandmother she cared for deeply. Those were the strings to pull.

Yet before he could pull anything, there was another voice at the open door to the common room.

Female, smoky, murderous.

“If you’re going to sneak around under the guise of an invisibility elixir,” purred Nissa Naszi, “you might want to use a milder soap.”

Shock peeled Auria’s shiny-marble eyes wide. “Nissa, who is this mage?”

“Levan Celadon.” Nissa stood just over the threshold into the common room, barefoot, feral-faced. “The one who tried to kill me on the docks—and the one who, by all accounts, brought me back from the brink.” She smiled coyly in Levan’s vague direction. “I enjoyed all the healing you did back in the hospital wing. Paliran will be so pleased to learn of their redundancy. Do you often atone for your sins prior to committing them?”

Levan stood rooted to the spot. He wanted to hurl a curse at the churlish Wielder, but it might be the first and last thing he did before his connection to magic was once more damaged. He wanted to hurl his knife, but he only had two, and he couldn’t afford to miss—Nissa Naszi was known for her agility.

Taking the calculated risk that she wouldn’t fire a curse of her own, not when he was so close to Auria, he jammed the blade more sharply into Marriosan’s throat. A crisp line of blood drew itself across her pale skin.

Levan gritted his teeth. “I’m looking for—”

“Don’t do it, Nissa,” Auria moaned.