Page 43 of Sonnets and Serpents
At the very least, she was a step above the last person who’d pulled a blade on him and actually used it.
Slowly, he slid his hands in his pockets, and he nodded at the house they’d left behind. “Tell me your plan isn’t going door-to-door all day interrogating random citizens. Tell me you’re smarter than that.”
Pink colored her cheeks, but she planted her hands on her hips. “Oh, how silly of me—I ought to have directed us to thesingle group of people most likely to have seen a lost Loegrian. Remind me, do they live by the palace? Or perhaps by the hole in the Izili wall?”
Though he tried to restrain it, the corner of his lips twitched.Aptaor not, he couldn’t help but appreciate the way she responded to challenge. Honest and direct and full of fire.
“They might run a few inns,” he drawled. “Maybe an alehouse—birahan. The usual places travelers congregate.”
She opened her mouth again, then snapped it shut, clearly hating that he was right. In the end, she mumbled something about finding abirahan, and Silas’s good humor faded as he resigned himself to a long morning. It turned out to be exactly that as they searched out public gathering space after public gathering space, interrogating innkeepers and bartenders alike about a wandering Loegrian no one had seen. No one, except, Silas was still convinced, the fish circling the sea floor.
To that end, he steered their search closer and closer to the docks.
“What are we doing here?” Eliza asked suspiciously, glaring at the moored ships. “I already got information about the shipwreck.”
“I’m being thorough,” said Silas.
He found the dockmaster, who confirmed the shipwreck, though the man’s greedy eyes kept darting toward Eliza in a way Silas didn’t trust.
“Was the captain recovered?” Silas asked. “Have any of the crew come back to join another ship?”
“No one, no one.” The man didn’t look at him, only at Eliza. “All gone. Very sad.”
He was heartbroken, obviously. Silas resisted the urge to roll his eyes.
The princess, however, looked heartbroken for real. She’d wrapped her arms around her middle, like she needed helpholding everything inside. For as often as the dockmaster was trying to catch her eye, she was avoiding looking at anything, just staring into the depths of a wall.
“We’ll be going then,” Silas said, though his original plan had been to obtain this exact information and confront the princess with it. It was hard to think about confronting her when she’d become smaller than usual, ready to fold up and disappear entirely.
The dockmaster suddenly burst into Loegrian. “Your Princess! Family so sad. I help you home. Big help, I—big help to you! I can.”
Eliza’s arms dropped, as did her jaw. She stared in horror, not at the dockmaster, but at Silas.
“I never told him,” she said.
“Princess—” The dockmaster tried to grab her, even as she shrank back.
Silas stepped in the way, baring fangs. The man had enough sense to halt. Reaching back blindly, Silas caught Eliza’s arm, steering them both from the dock house. He didn’t stop moving until they were a few streets away without pursuit.
“At least we solved one mystery,” he drawled at last. “Your arrest by the kuveti. They must be looking for a princess.”
Eliza pulled away, pacing. “My father must have sent guards after me. Or a ... an offer of reward. Why couldn’t he—justonce, why couldn’t he—”
Her voice muffled as she pressed her hands to her face.
“It would have been before your sister took the throne.” Silas knew firsthand that Aria wanted Eliza to come home by choice, not by force.
Eliza came to an abrupt halt, lowering her fingers to rest against her chin. “Before my sister ... what?”
“She’s queen now. I was told by the dean.”
“I missed the coronation,” Eliza whispered as if dazed.
For the first time, Silas felt a sliver of pity for the princess. She’d done this to herself, of course, but he knew what it was like to be far from home, to receive news late, if at all, to miss things he could never make up.
He’d missed Maggie’s seventeenth birthday, when she came of courting age. Rather than having Silas there to intercept undesirable suitors, she’d been left entirely to their father’s agenda, which was how she’d almost wound up in a disastrous marriage.
Now he’d miss every future milestone too.
