“I hope so, too, Surero,” she said, but he could tell she didn’t believe him. Her eyes changed the subject before her words did. “You didn’t have a beard then.” He blushed and she added, “You look better without it. I should like to see you again without it.”
Surero was thankful for that beard when he felt his cheeks blaze with heat. He had to look away, but could still see her smile at him.
“Believe me, Halina,” he said, “I would relish the opportunity to remove it.”
“Then why don’t you?”
“I don’t want to be recognized.”
Halina let her hands rest on the table and her face grew hard, though he thought she was reluctant to have to look at him like that. “This is a temple, and here you will find peace but not sanctuary. If you are in trouble, and you repent your sins in the name of the Greatmother, we could speak on your behalf to”
“No,” he interrupted again, still blushing. “Please, Sister Halina, no. That’s not it. That’s not it at all.”
“But you disguise yourself?”
“Only to continue working in a place that long ago discharged me,” he said.
“Explain yourself,” she said. “Then, if it’s appropriate for me to help you, I will.”
The alchemist took a deep breath and did his best to explain, in the broadest possible terms, how he and Devorastand he made a point to risk mentioning Ivar Devorast by namehad begun to work in secret not to undermine the efforts of Horemkensi, but to rescue the canaland the workersfrom his incompetence.
“But try as we might,” he finished, “there are some… workers… who will not ignore the orders given them by this dangerous incompetent.”
Halina took a deep breath and held it. Surero couldn’t help but stare at her. She returned the stare with a smile and a long, slow exhale.
“There are more people here than ever, aren’t there?” he asked.
Her face serious and solemn, she replied, “More than ever, yes.”
“And at the canal site, at the quayside,” he whispered, leaning across the table toward her, “more undead.”
She closed her eyes at the sound of that last word but didn’t back away. Surero still leaned forward. He looked at her, at the smoothness of her skin stretched tight against her high, aristocratic cheekbones, at the simplicity of her, the purity of her. He drank her in.
“If only I could tell you how” she said, but stopped herself.
“You can help us,” he whispered. “You can help us all.” She shook her head but said, “Yes.” “Will you?”
She closed her eyes and sat very still for a long time, and Surero let her, but he never took his eyes from her face.
“The sisters have discussed this,” she said finally, her voice so quiet he barely heard her from scant inches away, “but they are reluctant to take sides in a city so continuously damaged from people taking sides. And the new ransar” Again, she stopped herself from completing a thought he could tell was too painful for her, personally, to follow through on. “But I will try.”
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.