Scream of Stone

76

17 Eleasias, the Year ofLightning Storms (1374 DR) The Palace of Many Spires, Innarlith

Though Pristoleph disliked the Palace of Many Spires, he understood the significance of conducting the audience to follow in the ransar’s traditional seat. He’d also had the conspirators housed in the dungeons below the palace, so it was convenient for all present to meet there, and it didn’t hurt to show the various foreign dignitaries that he was the palace’sand hence the city’srightful lord.

He’d hand-picked the dungeon guards himself, pulling the chief jailer from the upper ranks of the city watch. The watch commander had lost his entire familya wife and three adult daughterswhen the black firedrakes tore indiscriminately through his Third Quarter neighborhood in search of Pristoleph. Though the man might have at least partially blamed the ransar for that turn of events, when he found that his wife and daughters had been animated and enslaved as zombie workers in a tannery, his outrage brought him to Pristoleph’s side.

It was that man who opened the side door to the audience chamber and scowled at each of the seven conspirators as they were escorted into the room in shackles. Rymiit, Kurtsson, and Asheru were gagged to prevent them from casting spells. Nyla, Sitre, Aikiko, and Meykhati looked thin, pale, and utterly beaten from their short stay in the dungeon. All seven wore the drab, tattered shifts of prisoners, and they reeked of their own filth. They looked at Pristoleph with varying degrees of hatred, anger, fear, and desperation. He ignored them all, save the Thayan.

If Marek Rymiit had been able to move his hands or speak, he would surely have burned the palace down, taking even his co-conspirators into the inferno. The anger that smoldered in the rotund, haggard foreigner came off him in waves not unlike the heat that Pristoleph’s genasi blood produced when he was in a similar state. Pristoleph gave the Thayan a smug curl of his lipsthe only honor he’d offer the Red Wizard that day or ever again. The Thayan’s eyes only smoldered more.

Behind the line of prisoners, sitting in orderly rows and dressed in their very finest, were the remaining senators, all cowed and quiet, all studiously examining the floor tiles or ceiling beams rather than catch the eyes of their former leaders.

“Before we begin, I would like to introduce to the gathered senators our noble visitors from abroad, here to observe Innarlith in the twilight of its lowest point and the dawn of its rebirth,” Pristoleph said from the raised dais. He stood next to an ornamental throne, but never felt right sitting in it. He gestured to the people who sat in the front row, behind the prisoners. “May I present Miss Ran Ai Yu and Master Lau Cheung Fen of Shou Lung” the two celestials, the male Pristoleph had come to know as a hengeyokai, stood and bowed”Warden of the Port Ayesunder Truesilver of Cormyr” who nodded but didn’t stand”and Hrothgar Deepcarver of the Great Rift.”

The dwarf looked surprised at having been introduced and ended up waving, unsure of the protocol. Pristoleph smiled at him and went on.

“We are here today to once and for all have done with the conspirators who nearly destroyed the city-state we call home. They know the charges against them, as do you all. They meet our justice in one of two ways: exile or death.”

The air in the room grew heavy and still. Pristoleph stood scanning the faces of the senators, noting who would look back at him and who wouldn’t.

“With the exception of the mages,” Pristoleph said, “they will be allowed to speak.”

“This is an outrage!” Aikiko shrieked. “You… all of you… you cannot let this stand! You cannot surrender to this genasi scum, this inhuman freak that holds court with a Shou witch and her lycanthropic master, or another Cormyreanas though we haven’t had enough of the infant king’s meddling in our affairsnot to mention a stinking, low-life dwarf crawled up from under a rock to”

She was interrupted by Hrothgar, who bellowed out the heartiest laugh Pristoleph had ever heard, one he couldn’t help but join. Aikiko boiled with self-aggrandizing rage.

“Stop it!” she shrieked. “Stop this at once!”

Pristoleph put up a calming hand and stopped laughing. Hrothgar followed suit, but not before he shot Aikiko a look as full of murder as it was full of mirth.

“And what of you, Aikiko?” Pristoleph said. “Are you not also of Shou blood? Your features betray that.”

Aikiko gasped as though she’d been impaled with a crossbow bolt. “No Shou blood poisons my veins.”

“With permission, Ransar,” Ran Ai Yu said, standing and bowing. Pristoleph nodded back with a smile. “This woman is correct, Ransar. She is Kozakuran, not Shou.”

“I stand corrected, Miss Ran, thank you,” Pristoleph replied.

“This is madness,” Sitre gasped, and it seemed to Pristoleph as though the man had only just then awakened from a deep sleep. “I cannot be held to account with these people. I only served Innarlith. They lied to me. They told me what to do and what to say. Ransar, please, I beg your mercy!”

But Pristoleph knew better, and had none of that to spare. Instead he looked to Meykhati and said, “And you? What do you have to say for yourself?”

Meykhati looked him in the eye, but there was no defiance left in him. “I have distant relations in Cimbar. I will go there.”

“Aikiko?” Pristoleph asked.

“You will address me as Senator Aikiko, pretender,” she spat.

“Kozakura,” Pristoleph asked, otherwise ignoring her, “or death?”

She spat on the floor in front of her.

“Senator Aikiko,” Pristoleph told the jailer, “has chosen to die for her crimes.”

Screaming obscenities in at least three languages, Aikiko was dragged from the room. The sight of it made Sitre crumble to the ground, sobbing. Tears streamed down Asheru’s face as well.

“Save me, Ransar,” Sitre begged. “Send me to Cimbar with Meykhati.”

Pristoleph looked at Meykhati, who shrugged as though he couldn’t care less either way.

“Done,” Pristoleph said, ignoring the groveling thanks of the blubbering criminal.

Meykhati and Sitre were dragged from the chamber.

“Nyla?” Pristoleph said, letting his attention fall on the woman he’d known perhaps longest of all.

“You know full well you’ll have to kill me, Pristoleph,” the woman sneered. Her eye patch had been stripped from her and the scarred ruin of her right eye made Pristoleph wince. “I won’t be your whore again, and I won’t willingly step aside from all I’ve built here.”

“That pains me, Nyla,” Pristoleph said, losing a brief struggle to keep his thoughts inside. “We’re not unalike, you and me.”

“No,” she said, “I suppose not. I was a whore once, and now you are onea whore to the drooling toddler monarch of Cormyr.” She tossed her head back in the direction of Ayesunder Truesilver. “Who is this, now? Your new master? The purple-headed hag not to your tastes?”

“Ambassador Harriman,” Truesilver said, and Pristoleph could see Nyla’s skin crawl at the sound of his deep, calm voice, “has been recalled to Cormyr to answer to the Crown’s justice. The Steel Regent has asked that I attend to our embassy in Innarlith until such time as a suitable replacement can be sent. I assure you, your ransar takes no orders from the King of Cormyr, who, you might be interested to know, stopped drooling a year ago.”

Pristoleph had never heard so uncomfortable a smattering of laughter as followed that, but his own smile was genuine when he turned it on the Cormyrean.

“Be that as it may,” Nyla went on, “I must demand that Mastthat Khazark Rymiit, be allowed to speak in his own defense. Or are you that afraid of him?”

“I’m that afraid of him,” Pristoleph said, holding her one-eyed stare. “Senator Nyla has chosen to be executed.”

Nyla spat on the floor as she was pulled from the room.

“And as for the three of you,” Pristoleph said to the gagged and bound mages. “You will be returned to the realm of Thay with a formal missive from my own hand, detailing the extraordinary actions you’ve taken to undermine the sovereignty of the city-state that took you in and showed you nothing but hospitality and trust that we now know was sorely misplaced. I remand you to whatever justice awaits you there.”

Marek tipped his head in a defiant bow that was so smug Pristoleph had to restrain himself from leaping from the dais and beating the Thayan down. Asheru muttered some kind of protest from behind his gaghe wasn’t Thayan after allbut Pristoleph paid him no heed.

“And Rymiit,” Pristoleph said as the last three conspirators were being dragged from the room in their chains, “if you ever darken a single doorway in my city ever again, I will burn you where you stand.”

Marek shrugged and Pristoleph tilted his head to the guard who pushed the Thayan through the door and on to the hands of the zulkirs.