Scream of Stone

19

8Kythorn, the Year of the Unstrung Harp (1371 DR) Third Quarter, Innarlith

Phyrea could see the gleaming minarets of the Palace of Many Spires glittering in the bright sunshine long before her coach passed though the south gate into the city proper. Staring at it gave her at least a lame excuse not to make eye contact with the namelessat least, he hadn’t given her his nameblack firedrake Pristoleph had sent to watch over her on her journey from Firesteap Citadel.

The strange man in his black armor held a short spear across his lap. He breathed heavily through his nose-sniffing really more than inhalingbut otherwise made no sound. She thought he smelled of charcoal or brimstone, as though he’d spent long periods of time sitting around a campfire.

The guard didn’t look at her, either, his black eyes shifting from one side of the coach to another, determined to catch a sign of an ambush that never came.

Phyrea’s neck ached from looking out the window. She sat facing the front of the coach and looked out to her left to see the palace. Looking out the window meant not only that she could avoid making eye contact with the black firedrake, but she wouldn’t have to acknowledge the ghost that sat beside him on the rear-facing bench.

Just because we made it this far, the old woman made of purple light said, doesn’t mean we won’t still be set upon by Salatis’s men.

Phyrea didn’t answer aloud. She didn’t want the guard to think she was speaking to him. But she wanted to tell the old woman that the black firedrakes were Salatis’s men, and she’d ridden with one all day, thirty-five miles from the citadel. If he were still taking orders from the dead ransar, she would have been dead a log time ago.

Don’t be so sure, the old woman said.

Phyrea cringed, drawing, only briefly, the black firedrake’s attention. She thought the smell of charcoal grew stronger for a moment, until he had reassured himself that nothing was wrong.

Phyrea sighed, still staring at the Palace of Many Spires, and the feeling of dread that was always with her welled up in her chest. There was something about the idea of living in the palace that

The coach turned right at the first opportunity, carrying them farther from the palace, and into the seedy, impoverished Fourth Quarter.

Where are they taking us? the old woman asked, and Phyrea spared the ghost a glance and as subtle a shrug as she could manage.

Pristal Towers, Phyrea realized, not the Palace of Many Spires.

She sighed, relieved, but not sure why she should be.

It could still be a trap, said the old woman. Salatis didn’t care about you one way or the other, I think, but this Pristoleph will destroy you, of that you can be sure, and we may not be here to pick up the pieces.

Phyrea answered the ghost by” letting her emotions run unchecked for the length of time it took the coach to weave through the crowded, rutted, dirty Fourth Quarter streets and pause at the gate to Pristal Towers. She hoped that the beings of light and hate indeed wouldn’t be there to “pick up the pieces,” or to do anything for or to her, ever again. Phyrea further hoped that the ghosts could sense that from her.

The black firedrake insisted on exiting the coach first, and Phyrea let him. She told herself she would have to make herself accustomed to the guards. She was, after all, the wife of the ransar.

A temporary turn of affairs, at best, the ghost of the old woman commented.

As she slid out of the coach Phyrea spared the ghost a smirk. The old woman made no move to exit the coach, and Phyrea briefly thought maybe the old apparition would finally just ride away. But of course she was not nearly so lucky. When she looked up to greet Pristoleph, who waited for her on the broad steps leading to the entrance to his enormous manor home, the old woman stood only a few steps away from him, returning Phyrea’s smirk with her own tight-pressed line of indigo light.

“Phyrea, my love,” Pristoleph said, meeting her in the middle of the stairway with a burning embrace and a kiss chaste enough to be appropriate for the eyes of the staff that lined the stairs. “Your journey was safe?”

She returned the embrace and kissed him on the cheek, which almost scalded her lips. “I was well looked after.”

Pristoleph glanced over her shoulder and nodded to the black firedrake, who bowed in response then climbed into the coach.

“It has been a long time,” Pristoleph whispered in her ear as she looked oyer her shoulder to watch the coach pull away.

“Does he just ride around in there all the time?” she asked with a smile and a playful wink.

Pristoleph returned the smile and said, “No, but he would if I asked him to.”

He would have if Salatis had asked him to, too, the little boy with the missing arm said from behind her.

She didn’t pay the spirit any mind. Instead, she let Pristoleph lead her up the stairs. She nodded to each of the household staff as they passed, all of whom were gracious enough to smile and pretend they didn’t despise her, but she thought she knew otherwise.

“I thought you would never send for me,” she said to Pristoleph. “For a while there I imagined myself one of those insipid princesses from a child’s tale, locked away in the highest room of the highest tower, living only to hope that the handsome prince would come to rescue me.”

“If you were that princess,” he said, “I would be the prince, and not the man who imprisoned you.”

Her smile faltered ever so slightly at that, though in her heart she felt that was true.

“Still, it’s been so long,” she said.

“Not even four months,” he replied, as though that wasn’t a long time.

“Four months since you became ransar,” she said, “but I’ve been at Firesteap for longer than that.”

“Of course,” he said, patting her hand, “and for that I am sorry, and I promise that I will spend what remains of my life making it up to you.”

“I suppose I should thank you for starting that process by not making me live in the Palace of Many Spires?”

They reached the top of the stairs and he stopped her before they went inside. He held her by the shoulders and looked in her eyes. Her heart warmed in her chest at the way he looked at her.

“I would have thought you’d be angry with me about that,” he said.

She put a hand to his fiery cheek and said, “Not at all. I’ve come to feel that Pristal Towers is my home, and that wasn’t easy for me. The palace would have felt too… temporary.”

“It wouldn’t have been,” he assured her. “It won’t be.”

She smiled, though she didn’t believe that for a second.

I don’t believe it, either, said the old woman. wonder who the Red Wizard will choose next? p›

He’s different, Phyrea replied in her head. Don’t underestimate him.

She felt rather than heard the ghosts laugh, but ignored the feeling.

As they passed into the foyer and a butler handed them each a tallglass of her late father’s wine, she said, “The city doesn’t seem at all changed. It’s as though nothing ever happened.”

“And it wasn’t easy, these last months, making that so,” he said after he took a sip of the wine. She thought she heard the cool liquid hiss against his lips. “I’ve been busy not only restoring the damage done to buildings and streets, but to the hearts and minds of the senate and citizens alike. I think they’re already starting to realize that I will be more… let’s say, stable, than some of the previous ransars.”

It’s not the men themselves, but the position that’s unstable, said the man with the scar on his face, and Phyrea had to agree.

“So you will be the great reformer?” she asked.

He laughed as they strolled to a parlor and said, “Eventually, I hope to be, but for the nonce I’ve been busy putting things back to the way they were before the unfortunate siege.”

A siege he instigated, the old woman reminded her.

“Even the canal has been making startling progress,” he went on, and Phyrea’s flesh crawled at the sound of that word: canal. “It’s a wonder, considering it’s still in the hands of that barely-functional idiot Salatis put in charge of it.”

“Horemkensi?” she asked.

“I hear the workers call him Little Lord H, and have begun to ignore his orders,” Pristoleph replied. “Even the zombie workers the Thayan sold them are starting to disappear. What does it say about a man, I have to wonder, if a zombie, magically compelled to do so by a Red Wizard’s powerful necromancy, won’t even take him seriously?”

Phyrea shook her head and sank into a plush, silk-upholstered sofa. Pristoleph sat next to her, so close she could feel his heat, and he waved the butler away. The servant stepped backward through the double doors, pulling them closed in front of him.

“It has been a long time,” he said, setting his tallglass on the little table next to him. He took her glass from her and set it next to his, and looked at her with undisguised lustfire, even, in his eyes.

Though the word “canal” conjured an image of a man she still knew she loved in a way she could never love her husband, she had missed Pristoleph more than she thought she would, and the heat of him, the smell of him, his commanding presence surrounded by his seemingly limitless wealth, managed to push Ivar Devorast’s face from her thoughts.

“And how may I serve the ransar?” she whispered.

Pristoleph kissed her, burning her mouth with his tongue. As hot as it was, she pressed in harder still.

He pulled only a hair’s breadth away from her and said, “This ransar will serve you.”