Bone Palace, The - Amanda Downum Page 0,60

of Magic and Consciousness via the Sanguine Humor,’ by Phaedra Severos. Published by the Arcanost in 463.”

Iancu frowned and took the book from her. “How odd. I’ve never heard of this woman.”

“Neither have I,” Savedra said, “but I don’t know all my cousins. Perhaps she died.”

“Death is no reason not to exist,” he said. “Certainly not to Evharis.”

“She might have married in, or out.” Which was still no excuse, as Iancu’s glower told her. “There must be records.”

“Unless those are missing too.”

* * *

And so of course they were.

The library’s great clepsydra dripped past midnight before Iancu finally located an intact record—the book had been taken to the bindery to be restitched, and that may have saved it. Phaedra Severos was the daughter of Ilisavet and Leonidas Severos, born in Medea in 441. Which meant that her family was a distant and apolitical branch of the Severoi and it was no wonder Savedra had never heard of them, and also that Phaedra had probably been a very talented mage to be publishing articles for the Arcanost at twenty-two. In 464 she married a minor Sarken margrave named Ferenz Darvulesti. Beyond that, she didn’t appear to exist.

Could she have been here four months ago, helping Varis steal books? If that were the case, she appeared to have stolen all traces of herself.

CHAPTER 9

Isyllt’s bruised skull healed, and the ringing in her ears faded in the next few days—all the better for Kiril and the Arcanost physicians to harangue her about the poor care she took with herself. She reported to Nikos and saw the stolen goods returned quietly to the Alexios crypt. The prince praised her speed and discretion, and rewarded her from his personal coffers. The silver griffins lay in a warded box beside her bed, winking whenever she lifted the lid—not the most she’d ever been paid for her service, but the first time the money hadn’t come through Kiril and the royal accountants. She spent the first coin on a box of expensive sweets and had them delivered to Khelséa.

The matter was closed, as far as Nikos and Kiril were concerned. Not that either of them were happy not knowing the hows and whys of the theft, or what else the wayward vrykoloi might have done before Isyllt found them, but silence and discretion were too important to risk with further inquiry and exploration. Isyllt didn’t speak of her desire to investigate Forsythia’s death, because she knew she would be refused. Her oath to the Crown allowed her the leeway to do her job as she saw fit, but a direct order from the heir couldn’t be easily ignored.

She had other duties besides those of a Crown Investigator, as well. Her loyalty was first and always to Kiril and the Crown, but she was also an alumna of the Arcanost, and the regents believed in using their students as long and as often as they could. So in between any government work she taught necromancy and entropomancy to small advanced classes, and picked up stray lectures for the beginning courses.

On the eighteenth of Hekate she spent the last two hours of the morning in a frigid lecture room that reeked of brine and squid. Several dozen squid lay on slabs of ice all around her, and one unlucky specimen on the dissecting table in front of her, next to knives and bowls and vials. Glass and steel and pale flesh glistened under her witchlight.

“As I hope you’ve already learned in lyceum, squid use their ink to confuse and escape predators. Scribes, cooks, and alchemists all have different uses for it. In spellcraft, the ink is a valuable component in charms of illusion, distraction, and obfuscation.” Had she been in a happier mood, she might have dragged answers out of the students, amusing herself with their wide eyes and stammering, but her head was still tender and the stink and cold weren’t helping.

“Squid ink can be purchased at any alchemist’s, but you never know when you may need to harvest your own.”

Her voice carried to the top of the narrow amphitheater, over the rough susurrus of a hundred students breathing and coughing and sniffling, and the rasp of pens and charcoal against paper. Teaching wasn’t the worst profession she could imagine; had any other mage but Kiril trained her, it might have been hers. Exorcists and ghost-whisperers were eight for an obol in Erisín, but true entropomancers were rare and much coveted by the Arcanost. It might still become