Page 29 of Sonnets and Serpents (Casters and Crowns #2)

The news about the dead Stone Caster churned in Silas’s mind. While waiting to hear from Yvette again, he tried to conduct his experiments, tried to find any evidence of magic being stolen in the city, but he couldn’t focus.

Half of that was Eliza’s fault. Every time she opened her mouth, she spilled a bucket of Henry, as if determined to wash away every other topic with praise of the most charming knight in existence.

Silas tried to tune it out, but her voice pierced his thoughts in a way nothing else could.

So, finally, he dragged her out into the city, backtracking a few streets because he had only a vague idea how to reach his destination, until, at last, they came to a low fence sectioning off a gloomy, oft-avoided part of Izili.

The public graveyard.

With its history of bloodshed, Pravusat had its share of bodies, and most of them were interred in public graveyards.

Pravish culture—so bold in so many areas—held grief as a quiet thing.

Those who lost loved ones kept a stick of incense burning, and they said silent, private prayers.

Graves were not visited, because no one believed a spirit was tied to the resting place of its body, and no one believed a body meant anything after decay.

So the graveyard was silent.

Absently, Silas rubbed the gold bracelet on his wrist. He could sense the magic within it, but he couldn’t read it, couldn’t discern if it carried any faint connection to one of the unadorned markers in the yard.

“I wonder which grave is yours,” he murmured, thinking of a woman he’d never met.

Arrested by the kuveti and dead a few days later, all while they claimed it never happened. If she’d been executed for a crime, the guards would have had no qualms admitting such. They executed plenty of people.

No. They were hiding something.

Who killed you? And why?

Eliza stepped up beside him, a reverence in her careful footfalls. She cast her eyes along the fence, then moved to a stubborn clump of maiden’s weed sprouting around a post and pulled a handful of blossoms. She stacked them on the fence.

Rather than telling her about Pravish mourning traditions, Silas kept silent. They were both from a culture where graves were visited, where flowers and offerings were left and prayers were spoken aloud as messages given to people who could perhaps still hear them.

“I liked her,” Eliza whispered. “She was kind.”

Silas couldn’t help a wry smile. “She took all your money and left you chained to a snake.”

“Not on purpose! Besides, I was an equal partner in that.” Eliza blushed.

Without thinking, Silas reached out. With a jolt, he realized he was about to brush his hand over her cheek, and he gripped the fence instead.

Focus, he ordered himself.

Jerking his head for Eliza to follow, he circled the fence and headed for the council house in charge of the graveyard. Most of the building provided living space for the gravediggers, but there was a front office in charge of making arrangements for new graves.

Silas asked the caretaker if he kept a list of bodies delivered by the kuveti.

“Sure do. Keep track of the services, since it’s government work charged to the palace.” With a grunt, the thin man pulled one log out from under a few others. But rather than handing it to Silas, he drummed his fingers across it.

“What kind of business have you got with this?” he asked, glancing between Silas and Eliza.

Research, was Silas’s first instinct, but a greedy spark in the man’s eye said he was looking for payment, and the university did pay for its research.

Eliza startled him by grabbing his arm, leaning on him as if suddenly overcome. When he glanced down, he saw tears glittering in her eyes.

“M-my aunt,” she said in Pravish, using the tearful quaver to hide her accent. As if she simply couldn’t speak any more, she hid her face in Silas’s sleeve, giving a muffled sob.

Clever little mouse.

It took all his willpower to keep his face blank and give a serious nod.

The caretaker sighed and pushed the ledger forward.

Silas scanned the latest entries quickly. They listed the names of the dead, a few details of their arrest and sentencing, then any trouble or extra expense from the gravediggers interring the body. Without a name to search for, he expected disappointment.

What he found was a pattern.

Silas’s eyes widened, and he pulled his journal from his bag, copying over information.

Eliza stepped back when he grabbed his writing materials, and though she rubbed at her eyes and kept up a sniffly act, the caretaker’s expression grew more and more suspicious.

“This aunt of yours—”

That was as far as he got before Silas closed the ledger, pushed it back, and thanked him for his time. He guided Eliza out the door with an arm around her shoulders, as if consoling her, but as soon as they were out of the council house, she grabbed for his journal.

“What did you find?”

His mind was still racing too much to talk, so he surrendered it, let her read. His eyes wandered the graveyard.

The pattern had been in the notes of arrest. While most of the crimes varied greatly—everything from stealing market wares to murdering a neighbor—there had been one crime listed repeatedly, always with the same phrasing. Causing magical disturbance.

None of the entries had details of a trial or sentencing. And the latest, Remzi Pelin, interred just yesterday, carried a gravedigger’s note of trouble laying the body to rest.

Used linen and boards to wrap the remains, it said. Body, such as it was, had no bones.

No bones in a Stone Caster. Just like Iyal Havva.

Eliza looked up in horror. “What does it mean ‘no bones’? People have bones, I’m certain. Even magic users.”

“Why is she different?” Silas murmured. The other listed names had the same arrest reason but no notes about difficulty burying the bodies.

Eliza ran her finger across the lines. “Causing magical disturbance—is that a tactful way of saying killing people? The Affiliate I saw outside the inn killed people before the kuveti took him.”

Silas spun to focus on her. “What did you say?”

Quickly, she recounted the story of a dark night and an Eagle Affiliate. Silas wished he had a name to put to the story. Even linking Remzi Pelin to the Stone Caster in the market was an assumption—one he felt he was making on solid ground, but an assumption nonetheless. He needed more than that.

If someone was using the kuveti to target certain magic users, Silas wanted to know why. And he wanted to know what it had to do with a dead professor at the university who’d supposedly succumbed to his own experiment.

Careful, he warned himself. No conclusions, just observations.

Iyal Kerem had taught him that, early in his university days. A good researcher kept his eyes open to everything and recorded loose ends without trying to tie them, because if he jumped to conclusions too soon, he’d inevitably miss the thread that actually tied it all together.

What thread was Silas missing?

Eliza had resolved to speak only of Henry, but after the graveyard, her mind was buzzing.

For the next two days, Silas immersed himself in researching Stone Casting and bones, and she immediately made a nuisance of herself, asking questions about magic instead of offering helpful insights. There was so much she didn’t know.

She was definitely distracting him from his purpose. But when she yet again tried and failed to keep her mouth closed, Silas only chuckled.

“In case you haven’t noticed,” he said, “I don’t mind educating people. In fact, I’m trying to do it for a living.”

That made her feel a little better.

She couldn’t understand everything he told her, since he loved to get technical or discuss specific experiments that went far beyond basics, but she gathered snippets. Details about Artifact creation and Casting limitations. Truths about Affiliate powers that dispelled shapeshifter myths.

Magic was more interesting than she’d realized. And much, much more complicated.

So she expected a complex answer when she asked, “Why does Kerem need your venom? What does yours do that his can’t?”

She’d watched Silas be milked again, a process that was still unsettling. But although he clearly despised it, he endured it anyway.

“He doesn’t have any,” Silas said shortly, packing his bag on Kerem’s desk.

The professor had already left, and, honestly, Eliza preferred it that way.

Despite his relaxed demeanor, Kerem had an unsettling gaze—like a predator’s.

She could never quite escape the feeling that he was evaluating her for weakness, and she pitied the students who performed poorly on any of his exams.

“No venom? So he’s not a . . . viper, then? Like you?”

Seeing the gleam in Silas’s eye, she knew she’d stepped into lecture territory, and she inwardly groaned. She spread both arms in a sweeping gesture. “Go on. Tell me all the ways I’m wrong.”

“You’re not wrong; my link is a viper.” But he was smirking as he held the door for her.

Then, on their way down the stairs, he proceeded to tell her all the characteristics that made a snake a viper versus other groups like elapid and colubrid. She heard more about snake fangs than anyone should know.

“Rear fangs?” she muttered. “I’m going to have nightmares.”

Silas was unrepentant. “We have a vine snake native to Loegria that fully chews its prey. You should look for it; it’s fascinating.”

“I absolutely will not look for that snake ever, thank you.”

He snorted. Then, after a pause, he said, “Kerem’s link is a viper. Horned viper, which looks a lot more impressive than my transformed state. I’m just a common adder.”

Eliza frowned. “You said vipers are always venomous.”

“Vipers are. Kerem isn’t.”

He held the door for her again as they exited the Yamakaz, and she waited for the rest, but, for once, he hesitated to elaborate.

Finally, he said, “When Kerem was around our age, he was sold to slavers in Cronith. They kept him as a snake on display. An exotic pet. Whatever they used to control his magic damaged it, so now some of his Affiliate abilities are limited—for example, he can still transform, but he can no longer produce venom.”

Just weeks ago, Eliza never could have imagined pitying a shapeshifter, but thinking about anyone being enslaved made her ill. And she knew well enough how it felt to walk away from a captivity forever changed, even if she was physically unharmed.

“He doesn’t like to talk about it,” Silas said, the request clear.

“I won’t ask,” Eliza promised. But she resolved to think of the professor more kindly.

Yvette finally sent word, and Eliza couldn’t say whether she felt better or worse for it.

There were no Loegrian prisoners being held by the kuveti.

Which meant Henry was still missing, and she didn’t have the first clue what to try next.