Page 10 of Silvercloak

“Sen efractan,” she muttered, and it snapped clean off. Magic might not work onher,but she was still able to enchant other people, other objects.

Next, she gathered a bushel of straw from the horses’ stash—with grunts of effort, to maintain the impression her left leg was not cooperating—and bundled it together, holding it to the end of the branch.

“A broomstick!” Auria called gleefully. She had a genuine, almost childlike adoration for magic.

Saff unlooped a thin rope from her belt and secured it around the bundle of hay. Finally, she opened the third levitation elixir and spread it over the length of the branch. Gravity immediately loosened its grip, and Saff mounted as it floated upward, making sure one leg drooped more clumsily than the other. For the smallest of moments, her stomach swooping as the broomstick rose from the cobbled ground, Saffron shared Auria’s delight in the simple art of a well-executed spell.

As they drew level with the purple dome, Auria and Saff grabbed onto the corniced rim of the curved stone wall and hoisted themselvesonto it with a grunt. The broomstick continued skyward before clattering against the high ceiling of the Grand Atrium.

Saffron perched on the ledge, breathing hard. The dome was mostly opaque, but there was a vague swarming and shouting of shadowed shapes in the worship chamber below—which meant at least one cadet had made it that far.

“Sen aforam,” muttered Saff, pressing the tip of her wand right up to the thick, tempered glass.

A burst of horn-shaped magic shot from her wand, piercing a small round hole in the dome. Auria mirrored Saff’s spell, and they both looked through.

The scene fifty feet below was carnage. Nissa was a statue in the doorway, while Gaian had been struck a little farther inside. Both stone faces wore stunned expressions, like they couldn’t believe they’d been hit. Sebran, the trained soldier, was the last cadet standing. Using Gaian as cover, he fired haphazardeffigiasspells into the chamber, striking Bloodmoons and hostages alike.

A quick tally showed that five hostages had been “killed,” as well as four Bloodmoons—though there could be more in the spiral corridor. The three surviving Bloodmoons, using hostages as shields, strode across the room to where Sebran crouched. Sebran drew his blisblade and sliced urgently into his palm, shivering with the surge of pain-pleasure, but it was too little, too late. He was badly outnumbered.

“What a bloodbath,” Auria groaned in dismay.

Forgetting her voice was magically amplified.

It boomed through the wand-hole and echoed around the chamber below. All three Bloodmoons glanced up at the purple dome. One fired aneffigias,striking the pane Auria perched on. The glass smashed inward, and she turned into a solid statue.

And then she fell through the dome.

Fast, hard, and made wholly of stone.

As she hit the mosaic tiles below, she shattered into a hundred pieces.

SAINTS, CURSED SAFFRON, STOMACH TWISTING VIOLENTLY ASshe ducked out of sight.

What did that kind of obliteration mean? Could such damage be repaired? Once Auria was reanimated, would she still be in a hundred pieces? Limbs and organs spread over the mosaic-tiled floor like a spilled coin purse? She wouldn’t be the first candidate to die in a Silvercloak assessment, but it was rare.

Yet one of the first things Saffron had learned in life was that when the worstcouldhappen, it usually did. It was this cynicism that made her a great detective—she was very difficult to catch off-guard—but also prone to gloom and misanthropy.

Somewhere far below, the Bone Queen’s Lament picked up pace, lute strings twanging fervently beneath the musician’s deft fingers. A secondeffigiascurse flew in Saff’s direction, shattering another section of the glass roof. It wouldn’t actually turn her to stone, of course, but she couldn’t let the Academy know that, or her forged Enchanter accreditation would be exposed.

She could cast one of her illusions, if circumstances became truly dire. Her father had taught her the rare art of illusionwork when shewas a child, so she could cast a shimmering glamour to make the othersbelieveshe was hewn from stone. But such spells were difficult to wield and costly to hold for more than a few seconds, draining the magical well faster than almost any other kind of enchantment—which is why so few modern mages used them.

Below, Sebran fired disarmament spells at the Bloodmoons. One landed true, sending a wand careening across the rounded room. The other Bloodmoons turned their attention away from the figure on the roof and closed in on Sebran, their faces thunderous, their scarlet cloaks drifting behind them like shadows.

Twoeffigiascurses struck Sebran at once, and he turned to stone.

Saff was on her own.

How should she play this?

How could she salvage this ruined assessment to come out on top?

She could disarm the Bloodmoons one by one from the roof, but that wouldn’t buy her enough time to free the hostages. She would have to cast to kill—or, in this case, turn to stone. Yet she badly wanted to prove there was a way to execute this assessment without crude slaughter. Even if she could takeoneBloodmoon alive, they’d be a valuable source of information.

She ran through her arsenal of enchantments, landing on one Auria suggested before everything went wrong.Vertigloran,to make a target dizzy and disoriented.

Could she use that? And then cast an illusionary version of herself to trick the Bloodmoons, distract and confuse them while she approached from behind? It would drain all her magic almost immediately and expose her knack for illusions to the Academy, but both would be worth it to emerge from this trial as the sole survivor.

Then the Atherin posting would have to be hers.

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