The Garden of Stones

by Mark T. Barnes

He inspected the patterns of his Stain, confident it was almost back to normal. The flow was hampered somewhat by the spinning vortices where the salt-forged steel had left Entropic Scars, but they would heal soon enough.

  He drew out a sheet of blue paper from his satchel and carefully folded the paper along well-remembered lines until it had become a small paper bird. Indris calculated the formulae for the Second Simulacrum Charm. Numbers ordered themselves in his head. Cause and effect, energy and time, distance and entropy. He held the bird to his lips, to whisper Roshana’s name and the time and the place he wanted to meet her. For a few moments, the paper remained still, then it took on a firefly glow. The wings flapped hesitantly, like a newly hatched butterfly’s. Within heartbeats the wings flapped more rapidly. Before his eyes it transformed into a tiny blue phoenix, which flapped once around the room before it departed by the open balcony door.

  All Indris need do was be in the right place at the right time to see whether Roshana answered the call.

  It was the Hour of the Crow, four hours into the new morning, when Indris, Shar, and Ekko disembarked from a modest carriage outside a tavern in the Barouq. There was still considerable traffic. A sense of anonymity among the throng. Nahdi roamed the streets, sometimes singularly, sometimes in groups. Avān, Seethe, Human, and Tau-se moved in small dangerous flocks from teahouse to wine house to guesthouse. Where Indris and the others saw green-coated kherife, or the red and black of the Erebus soldiery, they took a calm, circuitous route around them. He had learned in his early years as an agent for the Sēq never to panic. People remembered what was out of the ordinary. Often, even a vigilant person could miss what was right in front of them.

  A Silver None the Wiser was a well-known tavern for veteran nahdi. There was little noise coming from the place. As they entered Indris saw a score or more patrons sitting around tables, their faces planes of black and yellow in the lantern light. Indris pulled back the hood of his over-robe. The patrons raised curious eyes in his direction. There was a slight lull in conversation as a few of the battle-hardened champions recognized Indris for who he was. Mugs and glasses were raised in his direction. A few bowed their heads. Indris returned their gestures politely.

  Ekko rested one large hand on the hilt of his khopesh. He had adopted the dress of a Tau-se jombe, a warrior who had left his pride to adventure alone. A long scarf, embroidered with his deeds of heroism, was wound about his head and lower face. His Lion Guard armor had been swapped for a more utilitarian jerkin, kilt, and sandals. A short, powerful bone bow was in a case across his back, along with a quiver of thumb-thick arrows.

  Shar grinned as she placed a warning hand on Ekko’s arm. Her teeth flashed white against her blue lips. “Best keep your blade sheathed, my large friend.”

  “Are they so dangerous, these nahdi?”

  “And then some!” Indris said brightly.

  He gestured for the others to follow as he made his way to a table. Indris caught the barman’s eye and ordered cinnamon tea with honey and lemon, along with some nougat and caramels for himself and his friends. Conversations drifted around them. A group of Seethe mercenaries—tall and elegant with their quills brightly hued, and gemlike eyes bright with reflected light—discussed the rumor the kherife were impounding ships, horses, and wagons. A smaller group of rough-looking Human soldiers from Atrea, in their polished cuirasses with their round shields propped against their chairs and spears canted against the tables, muttered darkly at their misfortune to be stranded in an Avān nation. They sat tall in their voluminous black war-cloaks, advertising rather than hiding who and what they were. In the far corner at a long table, a squad of paladins from Ygran sat in their high-collared doublets, stiff with embroidery and braiding. They sipped dark wine from sturdy tumblers, ignoring the bowl of water any civilized Shrīanese would use to water the alcohol down. They talked little, seemingly at peace with their lot.

  The door of the tavern opened to admit a handful of burly warriors, each with the rolling gait of cavalry. They wore no insignia, though the way they moved could not hide their familiarity with each other. The soldiers did not pause; rather, they went directly to the bar. One of their number, slighter than the others, turned to approach the table where Indris and his friends sat.

  “Couldn’t this wait till morning?” Rosha grumbled as she took her seat. “Do you know what it’s like to be awakened by a paper bird flapping around your face?” She mimed the bird bumping into her forehead, perching in her hair.

  “It is morning,” Indris replied with equanimity. “We’re going to find your father.”

  “Going to what, you say?” Rosha thanked one of her guards as he brought her a cup of coffee. “Nehrun, myself, my Whitehorse, the Lion Guard…we’ve all been looking for days.”

  “Rosha, I’ve good reason to believe I can find out where Ariskander is being held. Finding Far-ad-din won’t be a problem, but bringing him back may be tricky. Once I know for a certainty where Ariskander is, my friends and I’ll go and bring both of them back. Nothing simpler.”

  “Nothing simpler?” Shar queried drily.

  Indris smiled and shrugged.

  “How?” Rosha asked, her tone more the princess of a Great House than the daughter of a missing father.

  “A friend who has good reasons to help.” Indris avoided the question. He paused for a moment, fingers tracing the constellation of crescent-moon moisture stains and boreholes on the table’s surface. How to tell Rosha what he knew about Nehrun? Harder still to tell her how he had come by the information that might well ruin her oldest brother.

  “Indris, if Nehrun and I couldn’t find our father with all the warriors at our disposal, how will this friend of yours help?”

  “I trust Indris in this, Pah-Roshana.” Ekko’s voice resonated. “I will be accompanying the search to find Rahn-Ariskander.”

  “Believe me when I say this friend of mine is also a friend of yours.” Indris leaned forward in his chair. “You also need to know Nehrun’s motivations are somewhat less than pure.”

  “You’re making me nervous, Indris.” Rosha laughed hesitantly. “You’re not asking me to trust an Erebus, are you?”

  Indris looked down at the table as he sipped his drink.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  “Perception is often stronger than reality. It is easier for us to see what we believe than it is for us to believe what we see.”—Rath-en-Teyn, Petal Emperor of the Eleventh Teyn Dynasty, 3,992nd Year of the Petal Empire

  Day 319 of the 495th Year of the Shrīanese Federation

  Belam seemed fully recovered from the wounds he had received at Iron Street Park, yet there was now a cool reserve to him Mari had never seen before. The lighthearted man whom she knew her brother to be was nowhere to be found as they walked together through Samyala’s dappled gardens. Pearl courtesans bestowed kind smiles upon them both, though their scrutiny was reserved for Belam, fine in his hauberk of ruby scales. Belam paid them no mind, his expression serious and focused too intently on Mari for her comfort.

  The two of them were similar, even down to their facial expressions and mannerisms. Even their lives had taken parallel paths. Belam had studied with the Poet Masters at the Grieve, the warrior-poet school founded by the Erebus in the latter years of the Awakened Empire. It was a fine school, though, if one were to be objective, not the best. Mari had been more ambitious than her brother. As the third child, she had more to lose in being sold off in a marriage of alliance. Such was the way of all younger children of the Great Houses and the Hundred Families. As her father would say, “One for the crown, one for the blade, and the rest for the marriage bed.” Nothing, and nobody, was ever wasted. Rather than live by her father’s credo, Mari had driven herself almost beyond endurance to be selected from thousands of potential applicants to study her warrior-poetry at the Lament, the most famous and prestigious of all warrior-poet schools, in Narsis, the capital of Näsarat Prefecture. When she had accepted the offer, Corajidin had been livid. He had
barely spoken to his daughter for the seven years she had trained in Narsis, or for almost a month after she returned to her family in Erebesq.

  “What troubles you?” she asked. Belam still sported bruises from the leqra match yesterday. There was the faint smell of rum on his breath, an uncommon drink in Shrīan. It was a taste he had acquired in his younger years, before their father had burdened him with responsibility. Belam had served with a squadron of privateers on the Ebony Coast, the expanse of shore on the Great Salt that stretched from Manté, Jiom, and farther north into the waters around Kaylish. It was not uncommon for warrior-poets or swordmasters to take commissions with the various branches of the Shrīanese military machine, though Mari had always found something…unsavory about privateers.

  “When are you coming home?” he asked. He rubbed at his thumbnail, an agitated gesture from childhood.

  “How’s Father?”

  Belam drew in a long breath, which he let out in an equally long sigh. “Not well. Thufan and Farouk have taken as much of his burden as they can, but I fear the results of their heavy-handedness. I think our father is resigned to handling repercussions for some time to come.”

  Mari swung her arms to stretch some of the kinks from her muscles. “Isn’t there anything you can do to help guide him? He’s on unsteady ground as Asrahn-Elect as it is. The last thing he needs are riots.”

  “He’s not well, Mari! We need you back home. Things will be awkward, though it wouldn’t be the first time. I doubt it will be the last. Even though you drive Father to distraction, life is generally more pleasant when you’re around.”

  Mari smiled. “That’s sweet, Belam.”

  Belam shook his head, face flushed. “When I saw your body laid out in front of the villa on the Huq am’a Zharsi, I thought you were dead!”

  “Calm down—”

  “Don’t tell me to calm down!” For a man who flirted with death almost every day, Mari’s incident with the Feyassin had unsettled him more than it should have. “You’re my best friend, Mari, and we’ve both paid a heavy price for your defiance.”

  “I tried to stop you from fighting Indris. I called out to you.”

  “I heard. But I wonder, was it me you were trying to save, or him? How could you betray your House so? Especially now our father needs us more than ever. He’s not the man he was, Mari.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous!” She grabbed him by the chin, turned his head to face her. Mari looked into his eyes, then slapped him lightly on the cheek in affectionate rebuke. “We’re both alive, both well, both wasting a beautiful day arguing. Let’s not. Between the two of us, we may be able to protect our father from the worst of himself.”

  As for sleeping with Indris, she did not regret it at all. Mari turned her attention to the skydock. She felt like one of the wind-ships, held in place by lengths of chain when she had the ability, no, was meant, to fly free. Every time she had attempted to take to the air, her family weighed her down with the chains of their expectations.

  “I worry about you, Mari,” Belam offered by way of explanation. “I don’t want to argue, but you’re so reckless. Why did you sleep with him?”

  “I didn’t know who he was at the time. I assume our father knows?”

  “His only consolation, my only consolation, is knowing Indris is dead.”

  She schooled her expression to stillness and kept walking. They moved in silence for some time, unspoken tension rising, until Belam asked the question she was dreading.

  “Why did you give yourself to a Näsarat?” Belam’s voice was very soft, as if he feared the answer more than he struggled with the question.

  “If it had been anybody else, this wouldn’t be an issue. It never has been before. Besides, you said yourself you wanted to marry Roshana,” she reminded him gently. “Though the hypocrisy is entirely your own, how much of your indignation is sourced in Father’s bigotry?”

  “My words are not deeds. I neither married Roshana nor lay with her.” He closed his mouth with an audible snap. She could see the whiteness around his knuckles as he clenched his fists in frustration. “Of the two of us, you went the further.”

  “Yes, I did. I usually do. And you being angry about it won’t change anything.” Of all the living members of the Great House of Erebus, Belam was the only other one she thought might be turned from the course their father had set them on. Kasra, their half brother and heir to the Great House, was in all ways a creature forged by the malignant stain she remembered as their grandsire, Basyrandin. Kasra was more a witch’s student than a warrior, and all the more dangerous because of it. Kasra did not share the closeness of his warrior-poet siblings, and Mari did not seek his good opinion as keenly as she did Belam’s. Rarely had there been secrets of any substance between her and Belam. The secrets she now kept from him were ones that would hurt him, and he would never understand why she felt the need to do what she had done.

  “I can’t forgive you yet, Mari.” Belam’s voice was sad. “What you did…”

  “I know,” she said. He smelled of oiled leather and sun-warmed glass from his armor. From goat’s milk on his skin. Mari gave him a searching look. “But that’s something you need to reconcile with yourself. Don’t take too long, Belam. The past days have shown us nothing is forever.”

  “Do you think he’ll take you back?” Indris asked as he fed Mari a slice of warm bread dipped in a tangy paste of sesame seeds. She leaned back into him, his chest and stomach warm against her back.

  “Belam seems to think so. Father needs me, Indris.”

  Earlier in the day the two of them had strolled the gardens of Samyala, hip to hip as they explored flowered mazes and old stone bridges to find sun-warmed rocks in dappled sunlight and ponds filled with lazy carp who lurked in fern shadows. They had kissed. Walked, talked, touched. Kissed. Then found themselves in Indris’s bedchamber. Now they reclined, limbs entwined on a long couch under the geometric shadows of the fretwork screen on his balcony. Voices seemed distant in the yard below, the gentle hum of merged conversation, footsteps, and the breeze across burlap awnings.

  “Be wary, Mari.” Indris’s voice resonated in his chest, vibrating along her spine. “Your father is in a dangerous position here.”

  She craned her neck to silence him with a kiss. “Make sure you find Ariskander and Far-ad-din and get them back here. I’m sure my father doesn’t have long to live. The more help I can get him, the better chance he has of surviving.”

  “Even if it means he’s sent to Maladûr gaol for his crimes?” Indris folded his arms around her shoulders.

  Mari wriggled free and stood up. The mosaic floor was deliciously cool under her bare feet, the breeze soft against her skin. She felt Indris’s eyes on her as she slipped her tunic over her head and pulled her breeches on. “They know about us. Belam and my father. Probably others. But they think you’re dead.”

  “Sooner or later you’ll need to betray the fact I survived to your father,” Indris said, as if it was the most logical thing in the world. Mari’s head snapped up. “Tell him everything you heard at Samyala. It makes sense, Mari. He’ll find out anyway. He’ll not trust you otherwise, and we need him to trust you, even it means revealing some of what you know.”

  “I’ve already betrayed one man to his death,” she murmured as she padded over on quiet feet to sit in the curve of his arms. “I won’t do it again. Nor do I want to betray Ziaire, Femensetri, or the others.”

  “Here’s hoping it doesn’t come to my death,” he said drily. “But we can’t underestimate either your father or his ambitions, and we need to know more about them. You need to get him to talk to you, so we know how to proceed.”

  “I won’t see my father or brother on a funeral pyre.”

  “Of course. I feel the same way about my uncle and Daniush.” He smiled at her, a slight, lopsided twitch of his lips. An errant beam of light through the screen landed on his face. For the briefest moment, little more than a couple of heartbeats, she saw the swirl of ye
llow-flecked orange that lay beneath the normal light brown of his left eye. The pupil appeared to be more convex than round. She wondered whether he knew he murmured when he dozed, fragments of sibilant sentences that chilled her blood. Indris leaned forward out of the light, his eye once more in shadow, to kiss her.

  She pressed him back. “I know you’ll have to do what you believe is right.”

  “And if we end up on the wrong—”

  She rested her fingertips against his lips. “Trust me, Indris.”

  “It’s myself, with you, I don’t trust.”

  “I know the feeling.”

  Theaters, concert halls, restaurants, few with signs to indicate they were open, lined the streets of the Astujarte. The breeze caught the tattered edges of printed advertisements promising the delights of actors and troubadours, poets and carnivals, all for a reasonable price. Many posters had flown free, or been torn down, to fade and rot in the street.

  Most of the entertainments in Amnon had once been offered by Seethe troupes. Many of which had no doubt sought out gentler audiences than Amnon could offer them now. A few hawkeyed Seethe watched from their high windows and rooftops. The only establishments that remained open were the wine houses and alehouses, in the business of selling malcontent by the bottle to those who needed little encouragement.

  A number of women and men, courtiers and duelists in the gray-blue colors of the Family Neyfūt, one of the Hundred Families sworn to the service of the Great House of Näsarat, eyed her darkly as she passed them by. Their faces were flushed with drink. Five in all, their numbers were bolstered by the same number of Nehrun’s blue-and-gold-clad soldiers. Nehrun glowered at her over the lip of his wine bowl.

  “Good day to you, Pah-Mariam.” Nehrun rose from his street-side table, followed by his entourage.

  “Indeed it is.” Mari forced a smile and kept walking. She was unarmed and unarmored. “Though if you’ll excuse me—”