Daziel held his body with a particular stillness, like a cat watching a bauble on a string, trying to decide when to pounce. “The birds have left the city of Talum.”
“What do you mean?” I could hear the agitation in my voice and tried to tamp it down. “For how long?Allthe birds?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “It’s not good.”
“I didn’t think it was.” My tone came out worried instead of pithy. “What’s going on? Is this—are you connected to this?”
“No,” he said, voice troubled. “But I don’t like it.” He focused on me and frowned. “You’re hurt.”
I followed his gaze and realized my hand was scraped and bloody from my fall. Tiny pebbles had embedded themselves in my skin, and a jagged cut crossed my palm. “Ew.”
“Let me see.” He reached out, and I realized he wanted me to put my own hand within his black talons. I hesitated. He was a demon, unreasonable and unpredictable. But he’d calmed the horse, protecting children he had no reason to care about. He was a demon, but he was also a boy who pouted and wanted an unreasonable number of pastries and to see the world. A stranger, but maybe no stranger than the boys I’d met at school.
I placed my hand in his.
He sandwiched my hand between his, firm, intimate. An itch grew around the stinging cut. I tried to pull away, but Daziel was unmovable. Liquid heat replaced the itch, like water from a hot shower. The cut became hotter and hotter until all sensation vanished, and I felt fine again. I pulled my hand out from his, and the cut was gone.
“Neat trick,” I said, unnerved. I’d never seen magic done without letters or speech. “Thanks.”
Daziel tilted his head, and I realized he’d clocked my alarm when his brow furrowed. He rummaged in his satchel and pulled out the white bakery bag, from which he extracted a croissant with almond slivers. He held it out, and there was something hopeful and tentative about the gesture. “Have a pastry?”
The kindness of the offer, of comfort in the form of food, softened me. “Can I have a chocolate one?”
Nodding, he replaced the almond and extended another with two bars of chocolate folded into the buttery dough.
I stuffed half the croissant in my mouth and immediately felt better. Now what? Were a demon visitor and a weird surge of birds excuses for missing my test? Probably not. “Come on,” I said, and we were off, sprinting across the rest of the land bridge and into the wide, open campus of the fabled Lyceum. I led him past manicured lawns and fountains, down paths lined by pillared buildings and olive trees. I ignored the students staring at Daziel as the bells began to toll.
I reached the building where my Theory class took place, pounding up the stairwell, Daziel right behind me. I careened around a corner so fast someone yelled. The ninth bell had tolled out its final long, indomitable note when I burst, panting, into the stadium-style lecture hall. The other students—all forty-nine—turned toward the noise from their seats.
I checked if they were staring at Daziel, but when I looked behind me, the demon was gone.
Four
A different student might haveinterrupted the exam and declared, “I am beset by a demon, and I cannot get rid of him.”
Not me. Daziel was gone, and so I’d consider the problem of him solved for now; if I’d learned anything since arriving at the Lyceum, it was I could only juggle what was immediately in front of me. Right now, I needed to get through this test. My scholarship depended on maintaining high grades, and Theory was my hardest class.
Alongside my cryptography seminar, I was taking six classes—half of them language courses, and then the three classes required for every first-year: Intro to Theurgy and Thaumaturgy Theory, Intro to Household Magics, and Intro to Spellwriting.
Everyone in Ena-Cinnai used spells, but not everyone knew how to tweak them or write new ones. Letterform magic required writing or carving charaktêres into objects, then painting the charaktêres with neshem oil—a strange, shimmering substance made from crystals mined in the caves beneath the city and the mountains of the south—and reciting the words out loud. I’d seen spells for everything from floating heavy materials to changing your shoes’ color. You could buy window shades with a spell pre-carved to make them open when the sun arrived or handwarmers with a spell ready to activate to protect against chilly nights.
The best place to learn to write new spells was the Lyceum, which most students attended for two or three years. Students took their learnings home, or to an apprenticeship, or into more specialized education. In Intro to Spellwriting, we learned the three major spell languages, and in Intro to Theurgy and Thaumaturgy Theory, the theory behind each.
After the exam, I exited warily, half expecting Daziel to appear in the hall. When he didn’t, I let out a sigh of relief and headed to my next classes. I had Keft I, the study of a hieroglyphic language from before the twelve tribes joined together, then Old Cinnaian, the precursor to modern Ena-Cinnaian.
I did my best to stay focused, but a poke in the back of my shoulder distracted me from Professor Isserlis’s lecture. “Hey, Bat Yardena,” someone whispered as Isserlis went on about the construct state of possessive nouns in Old Cinnaian. I turned to see Noam Dimkov holding a pencil. “I heard there was a demon with you this morning.”
Next to him, two girls watched with avaricious expressions. Gossip flowed at the Lyceum as steadily as the Lersach, and anything fresh spread like wildfire.
“And?” I whispered back.
“How come you know a demon?” he asked.
One of the girls leaned forward—Ami or Ani. We only had this class together, and we’d never spoken. “I heard you’re betrothed.”
“Something to share with the class?” Professor Isserlis cut in. Relieved, I faced front.
Unfortunately, Noam decided thiswasworth sharing with the class. “Bat Yardena’s boyfriend is in town. He’s a demon.”
