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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By the time Valens arrived in Vola Apertus, save his too-short visit home to Provincia Sicarii, he had been traveling by skychariot for twenty-four hours nonstop.
On his earlier trip from Vola Apertus to Urbs Hostiae, he had stared in horrified astonishment as the Trellis darkened outside his window. For three terrifying minutes, the skychariot lost navigation as the Caeles failed. Valens had helped keep his vessel and others in his region from crashing into one another, but even after the Trellis Brightened anew and Caeles navigation returned, nerves prevented him from sleeping.
On this second trip, now from Urbs Hostiae back to Vola Apertus, the whole world could have crashed down around him, and naught would have woken him. He slept almost the whole way, sheer exhaustion and a mild fever from the clivia wounds making any attempt to avoid slumber futile. Only fear for his alumna kept startling him awake now and then, but each time, sleep sucked him back down into oblivion.
When he awoke, he found an attendant bending over him in his private skychamber to murmur that they had arrived at Vola Apertus's skyhaven. Drool smeared Valens's plush seat. He didn't care.
Wiping his cheek with his forearm, he disembarked with a drowsy stagger.
It was well after Brightening, and people clogged the streets. The majority of the throng were Pyrrhaei tourists. Some bustled about, eager to gaze upon the famed Arx Luminosa palace complex or pick exotic fruits from the tree-lined Via Pomosus. Others hoped to spot a sorcerer in the most densely-populated community of Promethidae in the world. There were reasons Pyrrhaei liked to call the metropolis "Volaticae Astu," or "City of Sorcerers."
Valens yanked the hood of his paenula up to help hide his laurel, grateful as always he was a worldholder and his black prometus did not truly glow, just shimmer a bit like glitter. The subdued color made his laurel easier to obscure than a starholder's vivid red or a lifeholder's vibrant green. Stern glares kept any other curious, hopeful eyes away.
He would have summoned promenia to fly to the palace and escape the obnoxious tourists high above the city, but he had no energy for it today. So he limped down the skyhaven hill and trudged past the alcoves in the base of the cliff where Pyrrhaei went to access the Caeles. There, he paid a cart puller to haul him up the Via Pomosus to the palace complex while he snoozed.
He should have gone to the market for fresh clothes; he had been wearing the same torn outfit for a full day and brought little with him appropriate for a royal audience. But he wanted to complete his business with the Princeps Worldholder and get to work finding his alumna.
He hoped the kid was not dead. Domi couldn't be dead, right? If someone killed the boy, the Compendium would list him as dead, not missing. Yes, Domi must still be alive. Somewhere.
But that might change.
"Faster," Valens urged the cart puller. The man ignored him until he added. "Please, a child's life may depend on it." That got the man moving.
