Page 84 of Sonnets and Serpents
Kerem unpacked supplies from his bag. He cleaned the wound with steady hands. “Without a Fluid Caster’s help, I can’t spreadthe antivenom through your blood quickly, so it will be a slow battle until the cure wins out. You should avoid fever, thanks to quick treatment, but the wound will continue to burn for several hours, and it will take longer to heal.”
“Got it.” If anything, Silas focused even more intently on the box, turning it and tracing his fingers over the carved black symbols. Perhaps he was using it as a distraction from the pain.
Eliza couldn’t do anything about the wound, but she could help distract him. “Is that Cronese?”
“You remember.” Silas glanced up with the faint echo of a smile, which quickly turned to a grimace. He drew in a sharp, pained breath. “I’ll have to translate it with a dictionary. I recognize the symbols, but I don’t know their meaning.Thisis definitely new since my first glimpse.”
He showed her a deep crack in one edge where the box had split, as if someone had taken a hatchet to it.
Kerem finished wrapping Silas’s leg and knotted the bandage, eyeing the Artifact carefully.
“Blood,” he said, pointing to a set of symbols on one side. “And over there, bone.”
“I miss my journal,” Silas bemoaned, handing the Artifact off to his teacher. “Any others?”
Rotating it slowly, Kerem listed the rest. “Flesh. Soul. Bind. Unbind.”
“Shouldn’t the opposites negate?”
“One would assume.” Kerem frowned. “I can’t sense much from it. Perhaps because I’m not a Stone Caster.”
“Or it could be that big split in the side.” Silas adjusted himself on the ground, hissing air through his teeth. He shook his head. “Never as many answers as questions.”
Kerem smirked. “The first rule of discovery. And you stay off that leg. In fifteen minutes, I can do a second application ofantivenom and change the dressing. Then you can walk, with help.”
“I don’t need a second dose.” Silas nodded toward the mouth of the alley, curtained by laundry drifting gently on the overhead lines. “I need you to go after Ceyda. If she keeps running on that leg, she’ll kill herself.”
“I doubt I can find her.” He didn’t seem that enthused about making an effort.
“You can try!” protested Eliza. She struggled and failed to find the right words, so she added in Loegrian, “Don’t you care that she’s your friend’s daughter?”
Silas was gracious enough to translate the question for her.
Kerem met her gaze evenly, his dark eyes shadowed behind his spectacles. “When you live in a country of turmoil, you lose friends. And their daughters. That’s the reality of it.”
“Then change the reality,” she shot back.
He looked away, giving a faint, melancholic smile. “I’ll see what I can do.”
Leaving a few supplies, he packed the rest and stood. Before he left, Silas touched his leg, pausing him.
“Who had access to my venom?” he asked quietly.
“Myself,” said Kerem. “Iyal Mazhar, for the dehydration project. Iyal Afshin, for all research approvals.”
“Not Iyal Havva?”
“Not to my knowledge. Unless someone broke into my office.”
Eliza remembered how easily Silas picked the lock on the door. Based on his frustrated expression, perhaps he was thinking of that too. He sighed.
“Fifteen minutes before you walk,” Kerem said sternly.
Then he disappeared through the laundry lines.
Eliza went back to check on Henry. There was no change, but at least he didn’t seem to be in pain. His face was relaxed in a sound sleep, his lips slightly parted. The layer of dark stubble along his jaw looked strange, since Eliza had never seen him in a state other than attending court. She longed to see his hazel eyes open, longed to hear her name in his voice.
A rat scurried from among the crates, coming to sniff at Henry, and Eliza shooed it fiercely away. If only it were so easy to protect him from other things, like magic.
