An abandoned boy, a grieving prince, and a reclusive sorcerer find themselves caught in a web of peril and mystery...
Domi, a young thief abandoned on the street at birth, just wants to save his dying foster mother. But first, he must survive the m...
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A town within a city, the Silvula Salutis Collegium sat isolated from the rest of Provincia Sicarii's sprawling capital by towering golden walls. Radix once saw a tawny owl the same color as the marble, pale beige with generous swirls of bronze. Through the wall's generous gates stretched a vast courtyard, which would hold thirty or forty Pullati insulas with ease. Instead, useless statues of important-looking people filled it, each carved from milky-white stone. Between them, water burbled within three teal marble fountains rimmed with peachy granite.
The courtyard led to the white basilica's green, peach-trimmed columns and arches, which even a lowly Pyrrhaeus like Radix may enter. Indeed, everyone needed to pass through one of the three entrances and down the basilica's column-lined halls to reach the rest of the Collegium on the other side.
There, Radix had found far fewer—but also grander—buildings than expected, all clustered around and upon a hill. Domuses studded the hill's step-like tiers, each mansion belonging to the few Promethidae adults living and working in the city... and their Pyrrhaei lackeys.
As a Pullatus, no one ever wanted aught to do with Radix. A little spit-shine and a couple of calf-length servant tunicas, though, somehow transformed them into someone worthy of a little attention and conversation. And sweet Eternal Radiance, servants loved to gossip. Never in the Pullatus's life had casing a joint for a lift been so easy.
The vast majority of the five hundred fifty members of the Salutis Silvula curia, Radix soon learned, lived scattered across the other three hundred cities and towns in Provincia Sicarii. Collectively, they served the provincia's three and a half million people. The sorcerers were too rare, and too valuable, for the Praetor to allow them to cluster together in the Collegium. He assigned them to the places across the provincia most in need of their services.
The twenty or so adult Lightbearers who lived here, including Domi's executioner-turned-aedificans, resided in the domus mansions on the hill. The rest of the Collegium's residents consisted of servants—some Pyrrhaei and others Lightless Promethidae who lacked magic—and Lightbearer children. Droves of Lightbearer children. Eighty-two called the Collegium home, or Radix supposed eighty-three now if one included Domi.
And one must include Domi and every other school-age Lightbearer kid because the provincia lacked any other place capable of providing the rigorous education young sorcerers needed. By law, they must receive their training here.
Radix had not realized the Promethidae lived such restricted lives. They had no sympathy for the rich dunces at all.
Radix saw the students going to and fro each day. The young Lightbearers lived at the base of the hill in three dormitories attached to the curia's three academies. Each building was like a domus mansion in its own right.
The conservatory dormitory where Domi lived was a grand building in a neighborhood of grand buildings. Carved of that peachy stone, it was adorned with blue-green marble columns, arches, stairs, and floors. Radix had never encountered anything like it in all their life, and now such finery surrounded them everywhere they gazed.
