The Garden of Stones

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 yellow-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—”

“Stay a moment,” he insisted.

Mari kept up her pace, despite the sounds of booted feet gaining on her. One person came closer than was wise. A hand dropped on Mari’s shoulder. In one fluid motion she reached up. Grabbed the hand by the wrist. Rolled her shoulder as she dropped to one knee. Her assailant cried out as she was flipped. Landed flat on her back. The air was forced from her lungs. Mari slipped the long blade from the sash at her attacker’s waist. Stood to face the others, who were even now spreading out to surround her.

“I’ve no quarrel with you, Nehrun,” Mari said quietly. “Don’t force me to make this a pleasant day for the carrion eaters.”

“Oh, I know your reputation. Erebus fe Mariamejeh. The Blood-Dancer. The Soulreaver, the Queen of Swords—”

“What of the more festive variations?” Mari was neither frightened nor intimidated. “Did the Atrean ambassador Karkos not call me the Great Whore, even arrange a play to be written about me after I rejected his advances? The Angoths call me the Deadsinger. The Imreans, the Steel Courtesan. I’ll let you be the judge of which name suits me best.”

“The Great House of Erebus owes me, though it seems reluctant to honor its obligations.” Nehrun gestured for his followers to close in.

“Are you insane, Nehrun?”

“Your father has had his use of me.”

“You’re in a hole of your own making, Nehrun,” Mari warned. “Don’t make it so deep you can’t find your way out.”

“Take her!” Nehrun snapped.

The first soldier she felled would likely have never seen the blow. Her sheathed sword flashed out. Mari felt the tug on her wrist as it cracked against the soldier’s throat. Instinct and training took over. She stepped back, left, back. Kept her enemies in a line. Prepared to dispatch them one by one by one.

She reversed. Leaped forward. Her knee landed in a soldier’s chest. His collarbone snapped as she brought the scabbard of the sword down like a club. Another leap, and this time it was her fist, around the hilt of her sword, that shattered a woman’s nose, split her lip, sent her reeling. A high strike drove one man back, followed by a kick that broke his shin.

Mari glided back. She did not want to kill if she could avoid it. Her teachers at the Lament had always taught her death should be a last resort. To take a life was to take a person’s future, to take everything they had been, as well as everything they could ever be. Words could be taken back. Apologies given, accepted. Death was a gift that gave until the end of time.

“You’re four warriors down, Nehrun.” Mari let them wonder who might be next. Nehrun had made a mistake in reminding his friends of her reputation. Let their fear simmer, apprehension come to the boil. “Nothing has been done which can’t be forgiven. Their wounds will heal.”

“Bitch!” Nehrun snarled from behind his companions. “Your father owes me for what I’ve done for him, and if he can’t pay, you will.”

“You doom your friends, while seeming quite content to stand behind them. My father’s debts to you aren’t mine to pay.”

Only one soldier from the Family Neyfūt remained. He looked askance at Nehrun. The other four Näsarat soldiers remained focused on Mari. She wondered whether they knew what their prince had done, in sacrificing Rahn-Ariskander to the spirits of Nehrun’s ambitions. Mari looked at the soldier who wavered. She shook her head, looked pointedly at the bodies that littered the ground. The Neyfūt soldier sheathed his sword, backed away, palms held outward in peace.

“If this continues, Nehrun, more blood will be spilled. Do you seriously think, even for a moment, you or yours will walk away?” Mari tapped the sheathed sword on her open palm. “I’m the Queen of Swords.”

She hated the name, yet it served its purpose.





“Father?” she said hesitantly.

Corajidin turned to look at his only daughter. Mari stood in a band of light, where it streamed through a tall window. In the reflection of the mirrored corridor, the sun turned her hair to dark-gold fire, shot with white. Mari saw sorrow writ on her father’s face, blended with the furrows of his physical pain.

“Daughter,” he replied, not ungently. “You are well?”

“I am, thank you. I wanted to say I was sorry,” she murmured. “Sorry for disappointing you. I know you’ve only ever wanted what was best for me.”

“And all it took was being beaten to near death by your former comrades to remember it?” She saw he regretted the words as soon as he said them; his expression was crestfallen. “Mariam, I…”

“I don’t expect you to understand why I’ve done what I’ve done. Perhaps you might never forget, but do you think you can forgive?” Her father raised his chin in defiance. There was a hardness in his gaze she knew well, and she cursed herself for a fool. It had always been this way between them, even when she was a child. Mari had ever been her mother’s daughter. “Just as I can’t forget what you asked of me. But I can forgive. In time.”

Farouk appeared at the door and eyed her with silent disdain. His hand, never far from his long-knife, seemed to fondle the hilt with the tenderness of a lover. Corajidin gestured for Farouk to remain where he was. Mari suppressed a smile.

“I’m here because I want to try,” she said. “My career with the Feyassin is over. We should be closer than we’ve been of late, you and I.”

Mari felt her anxiety rise. Despite her smiles she had defied his will. Her opposition in the matter of Vashne’s murder. Her liaison with Indris, which her father, Yasha, and Belam would no doubt worry over like wolves over a carcass. Her father had once said, in the throes of alcohol and rage, her obstinacy would ruin her and the Great House of Erebus. Mari knew she had not been the obedient daughter her father had hoped for. She had brought fame and honor to her family because it benefited her first. Choosing a life of action and independence, she had not had sealed strategic alliances through marriage to her father’s allies. She had a list of scandals to her name in failed love affairs with women and men her father considered beneath her, drunken revels, reckless gambling, and other displays that had made her father wince in shame.

“What do you propose?” Corajidin gestured for her and Farouk to walk with him toward his chambers. His tone was cautious. There was an old adage her father had often used: when the gold seems too bright, one needs to wonder whether it is gold at all.

“What do you want of me?” She looked down at her feet as she walked, the easier to mask the distaste she felt at the pride she bartered. Her father needed to see how much she was willing to sacrifice.

Farouk snorted. “Convenient this comes at a time when you’ve nowhere else to go, Pah-Mariam.” Corajidin frowned at Farouk’s tone. He shot a sidelong glance at the man, who had the good grace to avert his eyes.

“You disagreed with my actions against Vashne.” Her father’s voice sounded rough. His skin was pale, sheened as the belly of a fish. “You support the disbanding of the armies. You’re not even an Imperialist. Mariam, it would be better for you if you weren’t in Amnon at all. There’s nothing here for you.”

“Then let me offer you this.” Mari took one of his damp hands in hers and raised it to her lips. She kissed his signet ring, as any vassal would their liege. “While I was healing at Samyala, I overheard Nazarafine, Femensetri, Siamak, and Kembe of the Tau-se. They look for evidence you were involved in Vashne’s death, as well as Ariskander’s disappearance. They’re prepared to do everything in their power to oppose you.”

He laughed bitterly. “I expect there are a number of people ready to oppose me. Surely you can do better?”

“Nehrun is done with waiting for you to honor your commitment to him—”

“I owe that craven little peacock nothing!” Corajidin snarled. “It was Nehrun who approached me with his scheme to remove his father from power.”

“Regardless, he and a cohort of his men tried to abduct me—”

Her father reached out to touch her, concern on his face. Yet his hand stopped before it reached its destination. “Yet you are here and not in Nehrun’s custody. What else do you have?”

She pursed her lips, hesitant for a moment. If only she had been able to cry at will! Instead, Mari blinked her eyes rapidly, sighed, shifted from one foot to the next. Indris had told her it would come to this. Now the moment was here, she felt her hearts stutter. “I feel so ashamed of what I did with Indris. I know it must’ve hurt you—”

“You have no idea how much your lack of discretion wounded me, Mariam!” Corajidin’s face showed his disappointment and hurt. “I had heard the many stories of your trysts, yet I was willing to forgive your lapses until—”

“What if I told you Indris was not only alive, but that he was planning on finding and bringing back Ariskander? Would that prove my loyalty to you?”

Corajidin stopped dead in his tracks.





Mari watched her father walk away. His voice was low, so she could not hear much of what he said to Farouk, but she caught his command to summon Belam, Thufan, and the others to a meeting in his office in an hour.

She had time. Mari made sure she walked through the most well-trafficked sections of the villa. Greeted those she knew by name, gave a polite, though formal, nod to those she thought would be impressed enough to tell others about her kindness to them. It was important it be known she was out and about at the time her father had his secret meeting with his advisers.

It was not difficult to enter one of the unoccupied rooms in the section of the villa where her family kept their chambers, as well as her father his office. Mari had explored the villa at length when they had first arrived to ensure it was safe enough for her family. It was an old habit. Thufan was an excellent spymaster, yet he was growing old. Sometimes his attention to detail suffered.

The entrance to the old servants’ corridors was where she remembered. Mari slid the panel sideways, then closed it behind her. Through an oppressive, stifling gloom, she prowled through cobwebbed spaces. The air smelled of must and decay. The detritus of years crunched or sloughed beneath her feet. Beams of light shone through fretwork grills, illuminating her way.

Through the still network of passages she went, alert to the sounds around her. Finally, after almost ten minutes of careful progress, she came to an arabesqued bronze grate in the wall.

Not a moment too soon. Through the grate she heard the sound of a door opening, then her father’s voice as he bade those with him to take their seats.