Scream of Stone

30

22 Hammer, the Year of Rogue Dragons (1373 DR) Pristal Towers, Innarlith

Every moment I’m away from him, Phyrea thought, the less sane I become.

Stop it, the old woman chastised her, the ghost’s tone sharp and imperiousmore so than usual.

It’s true, Phyrea thought in reply.

No, it isn’t, said the man with the scar on his face.

Phyrea looked across the table at Ivar Devorast, and when he met her eyes, she looked back down at her plate of untouched curried eel. The snakelike thing’s eyes seemed to mock her.

While Devorast and Pristoleph discussed the canala seemingly endless chatter of supplies and barges and lumber and stone and sand and waterPhyrea palmed the little two-pronged fork that had been included in the elaborate place setting.

They put it there so you could stab the eel’s eye, gouge it out, and eat it, the little boy with the missing arm said.

A delicacy, said the man with the scar. J remember it. I can remember eating.

My mother always told me it was rude to eat the other eye, said the ghost of the little girl. A lady should never flip an eel over on her plate.

Slowly, careful not to reveal her actions to the two men, Phyrea slid the hem of her skirt up past her knee, and a little farther still.

What are you doing with that fork? the old woman asked.

Phyrea sat very still and very quiet while she pressed the two sharp little tines of the eel-eye fork into the soft flesh of her inner thigh. The pain came in a sudden burst, small, but fresh and insistent. She closed her eyes, luxuriating in the wash of it, and the silence that followed, however brief.

She already had a napkin on her lap, so it was easy for her to dab the little droplets of blood that bubbled to the surface of the wound. The men continued speaking, not noticing her, and so she did it again.

When she dabbed the second wound she let a finger trace the edge of a bandage that she’d wrapped around her thigh. Beneath it were more little cuts, some still oozing a little blood, every one worth a few moments away from the ghosts.

Pristoleph had noticed the wounds, of course. The first time he had been worried, then he reacted with anger, and eventually the sight of the little cuts just made him sad. But he was never disgusted. And he never asked her why.

“Have you spoken with the nagas since you’ve returned?” Pristoleph asked Devorast, and it was the first sentence she’d really heard since Devorast had arrived earlier that evening. She’d gone through the motions, of course, acting the dutiful wife and charming hostess as best she could with apparitions of violet light circling her, telling her to kill her guest and to kill herself.

“I have,” Devorast replied. He glanced at her again but she couldn’t make herself look him in the eye. “The terms of our bargain remain unchanged.”

“Then there is nothing in your way,” Pristoleph said with a self-satisfied finality that made Phyrea’s flesh crawl, especially when Devorast shook his head.

You will have to kill him, the man with the scar in the shape of the letter Z told her. You knowwe’ve told you over and overthat you will have to kill him.

His presence doesn’t ease your mind, child, the old woman told her. He can’t drive us away anymore. You’ve been apart too long. He’s forgotten you.

He’s given you to the genasi, the woman who cried for her dead baby said. He’s left you in the hand of this half-human thing, this ransar who will be killed soon enough, to make way for the next new ransar. These men will leave you, always, one way or another. Even Willem went away, and so what if he’s back? He came back just the moment you’d forgotten about him entirely, just the precise moment he stopped loving you.

“Stop it,” Phyrea whispered.

“Phyrea?” Pristoleph asked. “Did you say something, my love?”

Phyrea cringed and shook her head. She tried to say she was sorry but wasn’t conscious of saying anything.

“If you’re not feeling well… ” Devorast offered, and when she realized he was trying to take his leave of them, that he was trying to go away again, she shook her head.

“I’m fine,” she said, and by enormous force of will made her lips curl up in a smile. “Please. Go on. I’m perfectly fine.”

“But you haven’t eaten,” Pristoleph said.

Phyrea, the man with the scar whispered in her head, are you finally letting yourself see the truth?

“The truth?” she replied aloud.

“Of course,” Pristoleph said at the same time as the ghost.

The truth, the old woman said, is that these men will never love you. All they’ll do is borrow you from each other, trade you back and forth, until there’s nothing left of you.

Nothing left of you to live on, the little girl said.

“You don’t like the eel?” Pristoleph asked. “Have you tried the eyes? They’re a delicacy. Or shall I have the cook prepare another dish for you?”

Phyrea chanced a look up at Devorast, who stared at her in a way she couldn’t comprehend. Either he understood her perfectly, or he didn’t care one bit.

Come with us, the little boy begged.

Let this all end, the old woman demanded.

“No,” Phyrea said, sinking the little fork half an inch into her inner thigh so that a trail of blood ran along her hand, to her wrist, to drip unseen onto the cold marble floor. “I’m fine. I’m just fine.”