Page 13 of Sonnets and Serpents
She sank to the floor, back against the wall, both hands around the only weapon she possessed. The helmsman’s warnings made sense now, his concern that she didn’t appreciate the dangers of magic in Pravusat.
Silas’s voice taunted her from memory.You’re the one out of place.
If she’d let him arrange a voyage for her, she could have left behind the shouting and the miserable humidity and the fresh memory of blood spilled in the street. She could have left behind the fear that those veiled men would catch her again and drag her all the way to prison.
The way they’d dragged off a shapeshifter.
Did they throw their prisoners in cages with shapeshifters to fight for entertainment? She’d read of gruesome practices like that in fables, and in this country, anything seemed possible.
She was beginning to doubt everything, spiraling like a ship caught in a whirlpool. Abandoning the dagger, she stumbled across the room and snatched up her book of sonnets. The light from the window was faint since the torchbearers had dispersed, but she knew this poetry better than her own name, and the bindings remembered all her favorite pages.
So even in a dim blur, she could see the words, crisp andclean. She could see the individual petals of a dried white flower, pointing her to the first two lines of her favorite sonnet.
Love, my crown, most precious gems within its settings gold;
Patience abiding, unceasing hope, and mine endurance bold.
“Unceasing hope,” she whispered. “Endurance. Bold.”
She would not lose herself to fear or to a lawless country or to whims. She would finish what she’d started, even if everyone else deemed it impossible. She would hope. She would endure.
That was the essence of love.
She’d already searched the docks and markets. She could not go to the royal palace without revealing her identity and making herself a pawn in political games. There was one other noteworthy part of Izili.
On the northern side of the city, the land rose sharply into its highest point atop a set of cliffs. Eliza had noticed a collection of buildings set back from the cliffs but still raised above the city. White with blue accents, towering and yet somehow welcoming. Obviously important.
Henry surely would have noticed them as well. Perhaps he was recovering there. Perhaps it was safer than the run-down streets of the city proper.
Tomorrow, she would search there.
After spending a night in the dorms, the first person Silas sought out on campus was not the dean; it was his favorite professor.
The university had a quieter atmosphere than the city, likely because its arrangement gave the impression of a shelter from the world. All the buildings faced inward, as if they held council the same way the people within them did, and the ground had been cultivated by Stone Casters to grow towering trees, shading the paths. It was a haven—part of Izili in name but separate in every practicality.
In the city proper, faded yellow stone mingled with dark-grain wood to create striking two- and three-story buildings. Every so often, a splash of orange, red, or pink added another contrast to the wild color scheme, though the paint was always splotchy in application, as if the building’s owner only had a few hours for the task but simplyhadto have something set their home apart. The entire city was like an art student on a deadline, throwing haphazard colors on the canvas and telling themselves that, really,anyconstruction counted as art.
If Izili was the splattered canvas of a student, the university was its composed professor, dressed in a sharp alabaster suit, looking down at the work with a concerned frown.
The university’s main building—the Yamakaz—was domed and arched, tiered in four massive levels. It carried no harsh angles at all, everything rounded and softened beneath the touch of magic. Lines of blue lapis accented the white alabaster on each dome, and statues or stone murals marked each curving wall and arch, depicting the mythology of Pravusat, the history of the university’s founding, and significant discoveries made by the university’s greatest minds. If a Stone Casting student showed particular excellence, they were allowed to contribute to the Yamakaz’s decoration when they graduated. Silas was wildly jealous—his magic, for all its benefits, didn’t lend itself to art.
He stepped through the Yamakaz’s arched doors and breathed deeply the scents of ink and incense. He’d told Eliza that Pravusat was home, but that wasn’t entirely accurate.
Thiswas home.
Students milled in every open space, books open before them on tables or the floor. They studied in groups or talked with assignments pushed aside, forgotten. They hurried up and down the spiral staircases, coming to and from lectures on the second floor.
Directly ahead, the main floor held the library, a collectionof endless shelves Silas could lose himself in for days. But the library wasn’t what he’d come for.
He climbed to the third floor where the staff offices were located and followed a curving hallway down a series of doors interspersed with narrow windows. One door gave him pause—not the one he’d come in search of, but one with a string of braidedyaslariflowers draping its handle. Purple, the color of mourning. A small boat of incense burned at the foot of the office. Silas frowned. The plaque on the door readIyal Havva.
Pravish mourning traditions were private and rarely included graveside or memorial offerings. Something truly awful must have happened to the professor. Silas had only been gone a month—a week in Loegria plus the twenty days of sailing to get there and back—yet there’d been a tragedy in his absence. That seemed ominous.
He continued until he came to the door markedIyal Kerem. Out of habit, he tried to walk right in, but the door had been locked.
“Who is it?” called a gruff voice from inside.
“Just a passing adder.” Silas lowered his hand, rubbing his palm self-consciously on his tunic.
