Scream of Stone

12

18 Mirtul, the Year of the Gauntlet (1369 DR) The Palace of Many Spires, Innarlith

"Do you have a garden of your own?” Ransar Salatis asked.

T’juyu seethed, but didn’t allow herself to show it. Instead, she shook her head in the human custom and finished her quick but thorough examination of the rooftop garden. Within the space of a dozen of the human’s ploddingly slow heartbeats she had traced in her mind’s eye the path to nearly as many escape points. The garden was shockingly unsecured, especially for being what appeared to be the ransar’s most favored place in the sprawling palace.

“A pity,” the man rasped. His throat must have been as dry as an Anauroch summer. T’juyu didn’t pity him so much as tolerate him. “Gardens are our way of writing our prayers to the Daughter of the High Forest on the world beneath her.”

T’juyu might have bristled at that, had she paid the forest demigoddess more than a passing respect. She let her eyes dart around the garden and was not just unimpressed, but offended by the way the trees and flowering plants had been imprisoned in pots and boxes, trimmed and tamed into ghastly, unnatural mockeries of their natural forms.

“I didn’t come here to speak of idle pursuits,” she said, the sound of her own voice coming to her ears in the coarse, guttural tones of the primitive creatures she’d surrounded herself with.

“It is not an idle pursuit,” the ransar replied, looking at her with his brows close together, and his jaw set in a firm scowl. Had she really been the creature he thought her to be, she might have been afraid of him just then. He was the most powerful man in the city-state after all, and it would have seemed that she was entirely in his poweralone with him in his garden, in his palace, at night. “This garden is a statement of faith.”

“My apologies, Ransar,” she said, playing along.

“Sit,” he said, gesturing to a moss-covered marble bench.

T’juyu nodded and sat, ignoring how the moss slipped under her. It hadn’t grown on its own accord but had been placed there. Salatis sat next to her with a sigh. His breath smelled of rotten vegetables and dustan old man’s stink.

“Praise be to the Dancer in the Glades,” Salatis said, his eyes closed, his right hand covering a pendant that hung on a gold chain around his neck.

“The Lady of the Woods blesses us,” T’juyu replied.

He looked at her with surprise that quickly turned into an almost comical, boyish delight. He smiled and his hand came away from the pendant: a golden acorn about the size of his thumb. The ransar sighed and looked up into the sky, once more devoid of stars, and heavy with the threat of rain.

“I bring you a disappointing report,” T’juyu said.

“Disappointing for you,” he asked, trying to be clever but only irritating her, “or disappointing for me?”

“For both of us,” she replied quickly, so that his cleverness wouldn’t have time to take hold. “I failed.”

He sighed again, and T’juyu grimaced at the smell of his breath. She wanted to stand but made herself stay seated next to him. He sat on her left, so she drew the throwing knife from her right boot with her right hand, holding it in her palm, against the side of the bench. Salatis didn’t look down but continued to stare into the empty blackness of the night sky. If he was disappointed enough in her failure to try to kill her, she would defend herself.

“There’s more,” she said.

“Did you fail entirely?” he asked. “It was to be both of themthe wife too.”

“They both live,” she said.

“Are you disappointed in yourself?” he asked.

T’juyu shook her head. She hadn’t really ever had a stake in the death of that one senator and his wife. She had come to Innarlith for reasons of her own, but that commission, from the ransar no less, brought her closer in to the humans’ city and their barbaric leaders. Still, it rankled her that the woman had awakened before she died. It bothered her that the senator had come in when he did. And she was still confused by the fire…

“I will take that as a yes,” he said, apparently not having seen her shake her head.

It was T’juyu’s turn to sigh.

“There will be other opportunities,” he said.

“You are tired,” T’juyu said, looking at the side of his face, at the deep lines around his eyes and mouth, the white in the stubble of his beard. “I am sorry.”

She knew that last didn’t sound as sincere as it should have, but the ransar didn’t seem to mind.

“It’s a strange thing, disappointment,” he said as though speaking to the night itself and not just to her. “It comes to you in the most unexpected guises and at the most inopportune times. It is unpredictable. Unpredictable…”

T’juyu looked away from him. He was babbling and there was something about his demeanor that disturbed her greatly. She had very little direct experience with humans, but she had seen their works often enough: strange vehicles dragged by servile animals, vessels afloat on the seas and rivers, and cities that sprawled over acre after acre of land cleared by a dizzying variety of tools. Surely no species could have achieved all those things with such unstable and preoccupied minds. Salatis must have been unusual in that regard.

“I bring other news,” she said.

“News other than your failure?”

“I will not expect to be paid,” she said, growing angrier.

He shook his head and waved her off.

“He is building an army,” she said.

The ransar sighed and looked at her, his eyes drooping and red.

“An army?” he asked. “I knew it. I had… heard that.”

“It is a sizable force,” T’juyu said.

“Big enough, do you think, to threaten me?” he asked. “Big enough to overthrow me?”

“I don’t know for certain, but it… it is a sizable force, and they are preparing for something.”

“The defense of the southern approaches?” he said, and it took her a heartbeat or two to decide he was joking. He smiled a weary smile and said, “I knew that. I suspected that.”

“What will you do?”

“I will fight him,” he said, though she’d never heard a less enthusiastic proclamation. “I still command the black firedrakes. I still command the city, the loyalty of the senate…?”

That last had the unmistakable sound of a question. T’juyu realized he didn’t know who to trust, or what he truly controlled, if anything.

“You’re tired,” she whispered, replacing the throwing knife in her boot with only the smallest degree of stealth, because only the smallest degree was necessary.

The ransar shook his head.

“Shall I try again?” she asked.

He shrugged and though she waited far longer than she wanted to, he didn’t say anything else. Finally, she stood, gave him a shallow bow that he ignored, and walked away. For all she knew, Salatis spent the rest of the night sitting on that bench, staring at nothing, a tired old man too beaten to realize just how beaten he was.

T’juyu left the palace with the distinct impression that she had chosen the wrong side.