Scream of Stone

78

7 Eleint, the Yearof Lightning Storms (1374 DR) Pristal Towers, Innarlith

Pristoleph smoothed his already smooth tunic with hands that didn’t shake so much as vibrate. He pressed his teeth together, then relaxed his jaw. He folded his arms in front of his chest, then let them hang limp at his side. He sat, briefly, on one of the antique Mulhorandi folding chairs then stood. He paced for a few steps then stopped at the opposite end of the parlor from the door. Then he crossed to the fireplace and leaned with one elbow on the mantle. His nervous proximity made the fire flare white so he stepped away, sensitive to the comfort of the guests that he’d been told had arrived.

The ransar still hadn’t settled on where or how he should stand when the door opened and Ran Ai Yu stepped in. Pristoleph smiled at the Shou woman, as had become his habit, and she smiled back then held the door open and bowed.

“Ransar,” she said, her accent tickling Pristoleph’s ears in a way that delighted him only until Phyrea stepped into the room, “may I present your wife, the Mistress Phyrea, and the Master Builder of Innarlith, Ivar Devorast.”

Phyrea nodded to the Shou woman and smiled at Pristoleph. She stepped into the room with a foreshortened, almost timid gate. The way she looked made his skin grow warm, but the way she looked at him cooled him until he almost shivered. The smile they shared stayed warm throughout, though, and he could feel a certain understanding pass between them.

“I’ve told you before,” Ivar Devorast said, breaking that connection and pulling Pristoleph’s attention to him with the crystalline confidence of his voice, “how I feel about that title.”

“A jest, then,” Pristoleph said, extending his hand to the one man he could truly call a friend. “Call yourself ‘foreman,’ ‘chief ditch-digger,’ or ‘Lord of the Watercourse’ for all I care.”

Devorast put his hand in his and their grasp was warm, firm, and direct.

Turning to Ran Ai Yu, Devorast said, “Seeing you again pleases me as much as it surprises me, Miss Ran. I hope you’ll be staying in Innarlith long enough for me to visit Jie Zud.”

“You are welcome aboard her any time you wish, Master Devorast,” she said, bowing once more, and her eyes darted to Pristoleph. “Circumstances shall keep me here for, I believe, some time to come.”

“Ran Ai Yu has agreed to act as my seneschal,” Pristoleph explained. He tried to keep from grinning like a schoolboy, especially when Phyrea’s eyes widened and she studied him with some confusion. “She will be staying on here, at Pristal Towers.”

“It would please me greatly,” the seneschal said, “if Jie Zud were to be the first ship to pass from the Lake of Steam to the Nagaflow without use of magecraft.”

“Then I shall do my best to see that day finally arrive, Seneschal,” Devorast said with a bow of his own.

“That’s it, then,” Pristoleph said. “You’ll rebuild it? You’ll finish it?”

“You’ll pay for it?” asked Devorast.

With a laugh Pristoleph replied, “I’ve never withdrawn that offer. And for that, I will expect a work befitting my queen.”

Devorast glanced at Phyrea and said, “It will be.”

The air took on a density that made all four of them look at anything but the others in the room.

Finally, Pristoleph could stand it no more and said, “She was never mine, Ivar.” He looked at Phyrea, who nodded to him, then wiped a tear from her cheek with the back of her hand. “She was no more mine than she will be yours.”

Devorast nodded and he and Phyrea shared a glance.

“And she will have to share you,” Pristoleph said with a smile that expressed both joy and sadness, “with a hole in the ground.”

“And you?” Devorast said.

“Me?” the ransar answered, letting his gaze fall over the beautiful and mysterious woman from Shou Lung. “My only mistress will be Innarlith herself.”

Ran Ai Yu smiled at him in a way that said she didn’t believe him any more than he believed himself.