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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Domi had not realized the Collegium boasted its own private market. Valens never freed him during the noontime hours the market was open. The older worldholder always made him toil half the market hours away practicing breathing and the other half preparing lunch in the aedificans's kitchen.
The Garden Group, as the other kids dubbed themselves, always ate lunch together in the market before splitting up for two hours of afternoon classes with their various lineage instructors. Favilla invited Domi to join them for the meal; he got the impression the older girl had decided to take him under her wing, and he was grateful.
He'd never been the new kid before. It was a strange experience. Back home, he was the one to shepherd new Pullati kids, like orphans who'd just lost their parents or urchins whose families had fallen into dire poverty. He took pride in introducing them to the Pullati community and helping them learn to survive in their new lives.
It seemed Favilla enjoyed the same. But the Lightbearer's idea of survival skills and his own were very different.
"You'll find," the seventeen-year-old girl said, "that you won't want to go out into the public forum market if you can avoid it."
He blinked. "What? Why?"
He assumed people with money would want to spend it, and the huge forum market was a fantastic place to do that. People could buy just about anything under the Trellis there if they had enough coin, and wealthy young people liked to go to the market to be seen wearing their fancy clothes. The Pullati relied upon it, in fact; the dunces served as vital sources of snatched coin and trinkets.
Favilla sighed as the two of them trailed behind Dium, Cithara, and Aulicus, wandering through marble streets toward the base of the Hospitis Affinitas hill where Valens and other Promethidae adults lived. "People in the forum market can get really obnoxious whenever they spot a sorcerer. Everyone stares, vendors get pushy about selling you their stuff—so they can claim the prestige of Promethidae customers—and there is always a crowd ready to pounce on you to demand magical services. Cithara once used up so much promenia on healings that the Praetor personally summoned her to salutatio to chastise her, since Aix wouldn't do it. It is better to come to our little market. More private. Better wares. Fewer lectures about promenia conservation."
"I don't understand how promenia can get used up," Domi said. He found it far likelier Lightbearers were just selfish and didn't want to share magic with the Pyrrhaei.
Favilla led him under a tall arch into the courtyard at the base of the same hill he climbed every day to Valens's domus. To his surprise, the streets past the arch were now filled with carts, tables, and stalls where merchants sold their wares. "Promenia can do some stuff and stay promenia. We can also convert the particles into other things. But unless you're a worldholder—" She arched her brows at Domi. "—whatever they're turned into can't be transformed back into promenia."
