Page 93 of Turncloak

Saffron stopped by the statue of Aevari, the patron saint of Timeweaving. Aevari held a stone hourglass in one hand and a pocketwatch in the other, eyes closed in reverence, robes twirling up and around their body as though falling through time and space itself. There were signs of hastily repaired vandalism to the statue, some parts of the stone darker and cheaper than the rest, a smear of red paint poorly cleaned from a stone chest.

Standing before her patron saint, Saffron waited for a rush of emotion, for the feeling of a divine palm on her shoulder, for the sensation of clouds parting to reveal a long-lost sun, but there was nothing. She saw only a chiseled lump of rock.

And so, as she had from the pleasurehouse, she fled once more.

Her final destination, as the sun rose lavender over the horizon, was Clay’s Cloakery, its sage green door bolted and padlocked, dust sheets tossed hastily over mannequins. The shopfront hadn’t changed in the weeks since she’d last visited. Feeling dizzy from lack of sleep, lack of food, lack of pleasure, she pulled her wand from her cloak pocket and tapped the padlock.

“Good Glastyl.”

Glastyl was her uncle Mal’s favorite character from The Great Adventures of the Lost Dragonborn—an impish little sprite who followed Aymar around, offering up hostile quips and priceless advice in equal measure, much like Mal himself. He’d been using the name as a password for decades.

Inside the cloakery, the air was cool, a little stale, a little moth-eaten. The countertop at the back held signs of a life abandoned in a hurry. A full cup of ambertea, its surface filmy with dust. A pair of silk shears resting atop a half-cut bolt of fabric, a needle looped with whisperthread, a pincushion with no pins. The sound of nothing at all—nothing but the dawndoves outside, heralding the start of a fair-weather day.

Saffron felt like the only person in the world.

In his letter, her father had written: Though it is never truly goodbye, my darling. I am there in every beat of your heart. I am you, and you are me. You will never be alone.

So why did it feel so agonizingly that she was?

That there was nobody left to love her?

There was a nook Saffron often hid inside as a child, a small crawlspace behind a freestanding mirror, a row of silk crates, and a trio of shapeshifting mannequins. She used to lie there for hours, reading Lost Dragonborn from cover to cover yet again, letting the merry sounds of a working cloakery comfort her like a favorite blanket.

Now, a dozen and a half years later, she gathered up all the cloaks that smelled most like her uncles, arranged them in a tragic nest in the crawlspace, curled up on top of them, and fell promptly asleep.

She had seen a mourncrow perched atop the Saints hall, and so she would dream of her parents. For now, that would have to be enough.

Part Five

Quest

42

• • • •

The Defense Rests

A week after the kingpin broke into the Order of the Silvercloaks to steal Joran Killoran’s letter, an inquest was held to determine how to punish Auria Marriosan and Nissa Naszi.

Though Captain Karvas would have quite happily dumped them at the gates of Duncarzus and blown air kisses as they went inside to rot, there were procedures for such things, and the commissioner had insisted upon following them. In the first instance, there would be an administrative investigation to examine any potential breaches of the Order’s Code of Conduct—and also to discern whether a further criminal investigation ought to be carried out.

Between the break-in and the inquest date, Auria and Nissa were suspended from duty and placed on curfew, which meant they were often trapped in the common room with only each other for company. A punishment in its own right, for two mages who had historically loathed each other and had recently committed a string of serious offenses in order to keep each other safe.

If Nissa was concerned about the upcoming hearing, she didn’t show it. She spent most of her days chain-smoking achullah out of a common room window—ignoring Auria’s complaints about the cold early winter air—and lamenting the lack of opportunity to refill the pleasure in her well.

A handful of mornings after the invasion, Auria and Nissa were sequestered in the common room, empty breakfast trays scattered on low coffee tables—they’d been having their meals delivered to them, so as not to contaminate the other detectives with their unfathomable cowardice and corruption. The sky over Atherin was a blank winter white. Auria was curled up on one of the squashy couches, sipping ginger tea while scribbling away with her favorite quill. She wore an old pale blue scholar’s cloak from her time in law school—it didn’t seem right to wear silver when her very future at the institution was in jeopardy.

While smoking her eighteenth achullah of the day, Nissa watched her colleague scrawl and ruminate. “The sheer quantity of notes you’ve written is unsaintly.”

Auria laid down her quill and poured a fresh cup of ginger tea from the pot. When no steam curled from its surface, Nissa wordlessly heated it up with her wielding.

“Only once I write down every single tiny detail of a case can I pick out parts to expand, to work on proving with evidence.” Auria sipped at the now scalding tea. “I’m throwing everything I have at our defense.”

Auria had eschewed the legal counsel offered to her by the union and demanded to represent herself. Nissa had followed suit, stating that Auria was the most sickeningly diligent and infuriatingly meticulous mage she’d ever come across, and thus there was nobody else she would trust with her case.

“What do you have so far?” Nissa asked.

“First, I need to establish Levan Celadon’s presence. Karvas will argue that we were either acting alone or conspiring with our turncloak of a former colleague. There are logical flaws in both stances, but I’d feel more confident if I could prove the kingpin himself was here.”