Philip Athans - Scream of Stone

“No,” he interrupted, blushing when he saw the brief flash of anger that passed through her otherwise forgiving blue eyes. “Now I must say I’m sorry.”

He smiled and bowed his head and the hardness was gone from her eyes, replaced once more by a searching gaze.

“Your voice is familiar to me,” she said.

“We have spoken before, though it was long ago,” Surero said. “I have thought about-”

“Have you thought about other people who might like a bowl of soup, mate?” a pungent old woman who stood three people down from him in line called out. She was answered by a general shuffle and air of impatience.

Halina dropped a ladleful of barley soup into his bowl then turned to one of the younger acolytes behind her and asked, “Would you take my place, please? I must excuse myself for a moment.”

The younger woman stepped into her place and took the ladle from her hand without the slightest hesitation. Something in that simple exchange made Surero’s heart skip a beat. He couldn’t even begin to keep the smile from his face. When she turned and looked at him again, Halina was even more puzzled.

“Why are you smiling?” she asked as she stepped from behind the table.

He nodded for her to proceed in front of him, and as she led him to a table in the far corner of open courtyard of Chauntea’s temple in Innarlith, he replied, “I’m sorry, Sister.”

“You apologize a lot,” she told him as they sat. “You don’t have to call me ‘Sister.’ My name is Halina.”

“Surero,” the alchemist replied. He realized that the accent he’d remembered-one he’d heard many times since in his imagination-was, though not gone entirely, softened. He wondered if she had made an effort to lose it, but thought it would be rude to ask.

“And where have we met, Surero?’ she asked.

Surero put a hand to his beard and said, “It was four years ago, I believe. You served me soup then, too.”

“I serve a lot of soup to a lot of people who have felt the sting of being brushed aside, and the ache of hunger that inevitably follows.”

Surero managed to stop smiling when he said, “I hope, Halina, that I can help you now the way you helped me then and help all these people every day.”

“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 Devorast-and he made a point to risk mentioning Ivar Devorast by name-had begun to work in secret not to undermine the efforts of Horemkensi, but to rescue the canal-and the workers-from 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.”

8 Kythorn, 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 nameless-at least, he hadn’t given her his name-black 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 inhaling-but 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.