Page 83 of Turncloak

“—the office of Captain Vel Karvas.”

“Why?” Nissa asked innocently, again with that facsimile of interest. Her pupils darted left and right as she parsed the situation, then she sighed, as if to say how very obvious. “Ah. Saffron’s letter. Lovely that she can send you off to do her dirty work for her, even though you’re handing us the grounds for arrest we’ve been trying to pin down for years.”

“I don’t plan on leaving behind any evidence, and your description of my soap scent won’t hold up in a court of law.”

“You must love her.” Nissa’s words were flat, disdainful, as though describing a grotesque disease. “She’d already be dead otherwise.”

Levan lifted the dagger an inch higher and pressed a second razor-thin line into Auria’s throat. “Take me to your captain’s office, or Marriosan meets the same fate as her betrothed.”

“No, Nissa.” Tears clotted Auria’s tone. “No. I’m ready. I can go now.”

Thunder broke over Nissa’s face. “You are not ready, and you will not go. Not for the sake of a letter.”

“It’s what the letter represents.”

“Good and right and lawful. I know.” Nissa took a step forward, then lowered her wand a fraction. “I’ll take you to Karvas’s office.”

“No,” Auria groaned.

Nissa acted as though she did not hear her colleague’s protests. “The letter might not even be in there—might not even be on the premises. Aspar was paranoid enough to tuck it away in some distant vault.”

Levan looked from Nissa to Auria, then said to the latter, “You’re coming too.”

“No, I’m not.” Auria’s eyes were panicked now, pleading. “I can’t have anything to do with this. The captain said that if anything happened to that letter, I’d lose my—”

“So Karvas discussed the letter with you,” Levan said. “You know where it is.”

Auria shook her head so wildly that a third narrow mouth of blood opened beneath Levan’s blade.

At the sight of it, Nissa hissed like a wild serpent. “You hurt her anyway.”

“No, she—”

“Sen effigias.”

Levan dodged the statue curse just in time, lowering the knife from Auria’s throat and hurling it at Nissa’s chest. The Wielder dodged swiftly enough that the dagger found the far wall, splintering the wood panels.

“Az-iruani.” As she defaulted to her mother tongue, Nissa’s eyes glowed a tameless gold. The nearest window smashed into smithereens, and a subtle breeze washed through the room. “Dar-amvenaqi. Dar-iqondrat.”

Wind and fire wielded together in a ferocious flamethrower, torching straight at Levan.

Throwing a yelping Auria to the ground, Levan swiveled, but the torch caught the sleeve of his cloak and the silk burst into flame. Fear shooting through him, he shrugged out of the cloak and tossed it to the floor quickly enough that his flesh survived unburnt.

The flames kept coming, even when Auria screamed at Nissa to stop, even when the velvines scarpered out the open window, even when the curtain caught fire, then the portrait of Captain Mathar Wilsat, then the nearest squashy maroon sofa.

Levan—who was still invisible, but Nissa seemed to recognize the imprecise smear of air anyway—tried to be an object perpetually in motion, leaping over couches and vaulting tables, rolling away from the heat blasting in his direction, choking on the smoky air, retrieving his second knife from where it was embedded in the wall, wondering what in the hells he was supposed to do.

Dematus had warned him that leaving behind wounded or dead would make it impossible for her to block an arrest, but the only weapons he possessed were blades. His magic might obey him after the healing episode, but he was afraid to incapacitate the feral Wielder and have it go wrong. He couldn’t risk her death, accidental or otherwise.

As he darted around the room like a bladebull in an arena fight, he spotted a pot of ambertea next to the notes Auria had been scribbling when he arrived—notes titled Whitewing Stakeout: Night Three.

“Don aquiss,” he muttered, pointing his wand at the liquid and amplicating it like any other crop or resource. Once it was a large wave, he thrust it in the direction of the burning drapes and portraits and furniture, dousing it all with a sizzling hiss.

And it worked.

Because he was healing something.

Mending, saving, his intentions wholly honorable.