The Garden of Stones

chapter TWENTY





“Though they show me where I die, and take my love away from me, they can’t change my destiny, these villains and their treachery…”—from the Ballad of Holt Katelin, 233rd Year of the Shrīanese Federation


Day 322 of the 495th Year of the Shrīanese Federation


The entrance to the Ghyle at the corner of Treadstone Street and Chandler Lane teemed with people. It was the busiest market district in all of Amnon. The hexagonal sandstone paving was hot under Mari’s feet. Striped awnings gave shelter to myriad street vendors, who hawked their wares, cajoling in their singsong patois.

Mari was dressed as a common nahdi. The few people who might have recognized her face would hardly look twice at a common mercenary. She merged with the crowd, was carried along by it. At the end of Treadstone Street was a plaza featuring a massive bronze statue of Mefelin, the man who had invented the printing press. It sheltered dozens of eateries, wine houses, and coffeehouses, as well as the Kellifer, the series of serpentine lanes and alleys where bookstores, paper vendors, printers, and scribes did their work. At one with the ambling throng, Mari stopped from time to time to peruse what vendors had to offer, checking to make sure she was not followed.

Mari sauntered past the green-fronted building at number seventeen. The third level had a balcony enclosed by tall fretwork screens that were closed now, the paint cracked and faded. Two men, faces aged by too many seasons in the sun, played jambara by the ground-floor entrance. The click-clack of the glass marbles on the board was muted against the background din of the crowd. The scarves wrapped around their heads boasted a pin with red, blue, and green feathers, the colors of the Family Charamin. These nahdi were either Thufan’s or Armal’s people. As one of the men leaned forward, the hilt of a short sword could be seen at his hip.

She continued on toward the plaza at the Kellifer. Food vendors’ shops took place of pride. Small tables, their paint peeling, stood between rickety stools or folding camp chairs. Scores of patrons sat at their ease in a space that would seat hundreds, tanned faces raised to enjoy the summer’s day as they enjoyed local delicacies from the Marble Sea.

As she passed by one establishment, a large man, fully a head taller than she, passed close by. Mari sidestepped to avoid him, yet he managed to entangle himself with her anyway. Annoyed, she jammed an elbow into his ribs by way of thanks for his wandering hands. He grunted her name as he doubled over. When he looked up, Mari saw Armal’s face, though much darkened, eyes heavily rimmed with kohl. He was dressed as a simple caravaneer, unarmed save for a long walking stick as thick as three of her fingers.

“What do you think you’re doing, Armal?” she muttered to him as she straightened her clothing. Nobody seemed to be paying them any attention. He grabbed her as he rose to his feet, still winded. “Hands!” she warned.

“I come here every day,” he said, his tone wounded. “I thought you might come, too. I enjoyed our talk yesterday.”

“Eh?” she said, only half listening.

“You need a better disguise—” he began with a smile, then came to a halt when he saw her eyes narrow. “You’ve a way of walking, a very long stride, though light on your feet. More a glide than a walk. Also the way you carry your amenesqa through one belt ring, rather than two, so you can draw quickly from any angle. There are other—”

“Right.” She drew the word out. “Armal, you know it would never…That I don’t—”

“I don’t know what I would’ve done if we’d not talked yesterday. Killed her, maybe?” Killed who? Mari wondered. “I know my father wanted to keep her alive, as leverage. But the danger! Then you, yesterday you told me you knew…” He started back up Treadstone Street, toward number thirteen, Mari in train.

“Why did you tell me about this place?”

“I wanted somewhere for us to meet privately,” he said shyly. “I know your father would never let us be together, so I thought this—”

“We need to be careful, Armal.” Mari silenced him with a gesture. “Nobody can know what we’re doing.”

“There’s no need—”

“This was unwise, Armal. Do you have something to show me or not? Otherwise you’ve endangered us for nothing. My father mistrusts me as it is!”

“Never mind.” He went to rest his arm on her shoulder. She shrugged it off. “There are places in the world your father would never find us. Have you ever been to Mieda, in Ygran? Or Masripur, in Tanis? It’s but a short sea journey to freedom, away from everything here.”

“My father—and your father, for that matter—has a very long reach, Armal. Tell me what’s at number thirteen Treadstone Street. Or did you send me here in the hope I would bed you?”

Armal had the decency to look shocked. “Mari…I mean, Pah-Mariam, I never thought to…I mean, while I’ve…My intentions were—”

“Best kept a secret, locked away somewhere safe and sound,” Mari assured him. “Where they’ll not get you hurt. Were I you, I’d find places to be that are as far away from me as you can get.”

“I don’t want any—”

The crestfallen expression on his face turned to one of genuine hurt. Armal lurched to one side. His eyes widened in pain, then narrowed in anger. He bellowed. Mari dodged to the side as the giant spun and whipped his walking stick in a vicious arc.

Mari’s drew her sword, eyes scanning the crowd.

Armal had turned his back to her, his attention elsewhere. There was a bright-red stain on Armal’s lower back. There was another, slightly higher. The assassin had tried to pierce Armal’s lung to keep him quiet, yet had failed. Through the rent in the big man’s clothes she could see the boiled leather of a light-armored corselet.

Screams echoed down Treadstone Street at the sight of blood and steel.

The crowd tried to scatter. They tripped over themselves. Pushed. Shoved, desperate to find safety.

There were five of them, dressed as common soldiers. Curved steel shone coolly in their tanned hands. Their faces were obscured by hoods, though Armal had pulled the cloth away from one man to expose Farouk’s scarred face, his teeth white in a savage leer.

Farouk’s henchmen pressed forward.

Mari sidestepped Armal. Her body moved before thought. Her sword flicked out. Sliced upward. The blade bit. At hip first, then chest. It ripped out past one of the assassin’s collarbones. The man shrieked. Blood misted the air as he fell.

Four remained. Armal’s stick crashed down. A sickening crack. One man’s head caved in. A backswing. Blood, bone, brains, hair were whipped into the shrieking crowd. Now there were three.

“I’ve waited for this!” Farouk darted forward, his blade already red with blood. It punched under Armal’s arm. Adderquick, it struck again.

Armal dropped his stick. Placed his hands around Farouk’s throat. Squeezed.

Mari came in at a crouch at the last two. Her sword was a horizontal blur. She scythed it across one man’s belly. Felt the man’s death in her fingertips. Her palms. Her wrists. Like a falcon her sword hunted. It curved high. Swooped low. Took the last man’s hand at the wrist. Changed direction. The chisel point ripped through his throat. No time for him to scream.

Mari scanned the crowd. Everything was in sharp contrast. The colors were too vivid. Light and shadow, too bright and too dark. Her breath was loud in her ears. The faintest sound pealed like a bell. The nahdi behind the jambara board looked on, frozen to the spot.

Only Farouk remained. His knife hilt protruded from Armal’s chest, while his hands gripped the big man’s wrists as Armal throttled the life from him. The aide’s eyes bulged in their sockets. The veins protruded on his brow. His skin had purpled. He struck Armal in the head. Once. Twice. Weaker now. Thrice, with little strength. Still Armal squeezed, his teeth bared in a rictus of savage, violent abandon.

There came a dry snap. The life went from Farouk’s eyes, and his head canted at an odd angle. Armal loosened his grip, tumbled to the blood-slick pavement. He tried to rise. Did not have the strength. Blood lined his lips. His face was spattered with gore. Mari thought there was perhaps more blood outside of him than in.

“Mariam?” he mumbled. He reached for her with his bloodied hands. Armal’s face was pallid, contorted with pain. “I couldn’t kill her, you understand? You father wanted us to kill them, but the daughter…”

“Carry your master inside!” she snapped to the two nahdi lurking nearby. They looked around nervously. “Now!” she yelled.

Mari scanned the street. There were a lot of people. Too many people. Faces peered from shopfronts. From behind stalls. There would be talk. Worse, the kherife would be on their way. What the kherife knew, her father would know shortly after. She urged the nahdi to greater haste. Mari had intended on entering the building with somewhat more subtlety, but she must play the cards she had been dealt. Regardless, she would see what was inside the building Armal had wanted her to know about.

The nahdi dragged Armal’s enormous frame across the road, leaving a broad trail of blood. One man scrabbled for his key. Turned the lock. They barged through the door as four other men barreled down the stairs. Two of them took one look at Armal’s body, then kept going out the door. Clearly their loyalty did not extend past the expiration of the man who purchased it.

“If you want to live,” Mari said to the others, “I’d take what money I had and leave Amnon. Those men who attacked your master were the officers of the Rahn-Erebus fa Corajidin. Need I say more?”

They needed no convincing.

Mari bound up the steps two at a time. Both the first and second floors were empty. The third floor had three doors…one guarded by an armed man. Without pause Mari walked forward. Her unsheathed sword was covered in blood.

“You heard?” she asked quietly.

The man nodded nervously.

She took a step to the side to allow him access to the stairs. “Take the offer,” she murmured, “while it lasts. I doubt the Asrahn-Elect will be as understanding. Whatever your duty was, it’s no longer your concern.”

The man hesitated. His knuckles whitened on the hilt of his sword. Mari allowed herself a slow smile, lazy and wide.

He blanched. With obvious caution the nahdi sheathed his blade, then moved past her to the stairs. Mari leaned over the balustrade until she saw him flee the building. At least he had the good sense to close the door behind him.

Light-footed she entered the room he had guarded. It was well lit, plainly furnished. There were two other doors within. One had a bolt, shiny and new, on the outside. Mari dashed to the balcony and peered through the screen. People had crowded around the carnage. A few looked upward at the building she was in. Others pointed. There were no sign of the kherife, though Mari assumed such good fortune would change.

She crossed to the bolted door. “Hello?” she called. “I’m armed, but mean you no harm. The men who imprisoned you are gone. I’m going to unbolt the door, then cross the room. You’re free to leave…in fact, I recommend it, given the kherife are likely on their way.”

Mari did all she said, then waited.

Each moment felt like an eternity until the door opened. A young woman stood there. Her plain face was grimed, dark eyes wary under an unkempt nest of dirty hair. Her tunic was torn, her breeches and silk boots ruined by water stains.

“Sweet Ancestors!” Mari breathed.

“Knight-Major,” Vahineh, daughter of Vashne, said. “I take it I’ve you to thank for my rescue?”

“Not yet you don’t.”





It was the work of moments to rummage through the few belongings the nahdi left behind. There were some worn garments, oft mended, which would be less obvious than Vahineh’s ruined clothes or Mari’s bloodstained ones. The two women hastily changed. What they had on was ill fitting, but it would have to do for now.

“Here.” Mari offered Vahi a short bladed shamshir she had found amid the baggage. The princess thrust it through her sash.

Mari sped down the stairs, leaping half the final flight in one jump, Vahineh a step behind her. Armal’s body lay slumped across the hallway, his vacant eyes wide. Mari stooped to close them, which was all the respect she had time for.

On seeing Armal, Vahineh snarled and ran forward. Mari restrained the princess as she was about to kick Armal’s corpse. Vahineh struggled, wild with rage, yet Mari held her against the wall until she quieted.

“We’ve no time for this! There are those who’d see you share Armal’s fate. Come with me if you want to live.”

With a backward glance at Armal’s fallen form, Mari led the princess toward the rear of the building, slid the bolt to the back door, then dashed into the narrow lane beyond.





There was an expensive hotel in the Red Lilly Garden called the Silk Arena, well known to be frequented by many of the most expensive courtesans in Amnon. Though it was not a bordello, Mari had come to understand most of its hundred or so rooms were rented or owned for the express purpose of pleasure. It was a den of sin, where those of dubious virtue and questionable fidelity could exercise their passions in quiet luxury.

It was as safe a place as Mari could think of to get a message to her newfound allies.

On their way to the Silk Arena, Mari and Vahineh had entered a clothier some distance from the Ghyle and purchased new clothes, plain and of the right size. They had then slipped into a small bathhouse, to the distant sound of the kherife’s shrill horns. Vahineh had doused herself with hot, soapy water to wash away the accumulated grime of captivity. Mari herself only spared the time to wash away any obvious blood, brains, or other souvenirs from her earlier exploits.

Mari used her boot knife to cut away Vahineh’s long hair so it fell to just below her shoulders. They dressed quickly in their new clothes, then walked casually out onto the street.

The Red Lilly Garden was at the end of a winding lane in the Mercantile Quarter of Old Town. It was lined with expensive townhouses, all made from sandstone in identical style with bronze-sheathed domed roofs, columned entryways, and stained-glass windows in black window frames. At the far end, the Silk Arena dominated a cul-de-sac planted with red lotus, larger than any six of the other houses combined. Carriages came, dropped off their passengers, then departed. The doormen, dressed in silk coats that Mari suspected covered expensive kirion-steel shirts, were all smiles. After all, who would enter such a place ignorant of its expense, its rules, or the consequences of breaking them?

At the front desk, Mari wrote a quick note and paid a courier to deliver the message to Samyala as soon as possible. Then the two women took a seat and relaxed as best they could. Vahineh sipped at a cup of tea, while Mari nursed a short glass of honeyed whiskey. They sat in silence for many minutes, Vahineh looking with interest at those who came and went, Mari looking at Vahineh with a sense of doom in her belly like a bad meal.

“There’s something I need to tell you,” Mari said. She rubbed her hands on the legs of her breeches to wipe away the dampness.

Vahineh kept staring at the patrons for so long Mari wondered whether she had been heard. As she was about to speak again, the other woman rested her gaze on Mari. Vahineh’s plain face flashed from moment to moment with fear and fatigue, grief and anger, followed at last by a forced blandness.

“What is it, Knight-Major?”

“I beg your pardon?” Mari narrowed her eyes at the controlled, cold formality in Vahineh’s tone.

“If it needs saying, best it were said quickly.”

I am one of the reasons your father is dead. Mari had never imagined having this conversation. Did not know how to start it. Until not long ago, she had thought Daniush was the only survivor to the Great House of Selassin. To sit here with the late Asrahn’s daughter left her unsettled. Part of her almost wished for somebody to fight, just so she could delay the inevitable.

“I wanted to express my sorrow at your loss, Pah-Vahineh.” She stumbled over the words. Tried to determine which ones to use next. “It was…I mean to say, the…passing of your—”

“You?” Vahineh’s face was still. “Timid? You can say the words, Knight-Major. Was it a tragedy? Was that what you were going to say? What about the word dead? My mother, my father, and my brother. Dead. If I can say it, surely a trained killer such as yourself should have no difficulty in spitting out the word.”

Mari felt as if her throat was going to close up. Her eyes drifted down to the shamshir Vahineh cradled in her lap. The princess’s hands were white knuckled around both sheath and hilt. It would not take much for Vahineh to draw and strike. Mari moved her hands far from her weapons, clutched them behind her chair. If Vahineh wanted to settle a blood debt, Mari would not prevent her.

“You were involved in my father’s death?” Vahineh stared down at the weapon in her hands.

“I was there,” Mari said calmly. What point now in misdirection, excuses, or reasons? “I failed in my duty to defend your father, even though I knew there was going to be an attempt on his life.”

“How do you justify that?”

“I’ll not trivialize it by trying.”

Vahineh glared at Mari, color rising. She wrung her hands on the shamshir so hard, Mari could hear the faint squeak of skin against the leather. Vahineh’s posture changed. Her shoulders seemed to hunch as the muscles tensed.

Vahineh stood as her gaze snapped toward the doors. A perfectly groomed young man of conspicuous beauty and bearing approached them. He was elegantly, almost conservatively, dressed, pearls pale against his earlobes. The young houreh gestured for Vahineh and Mari to join him as he strolled to the front door.

Mari was silent as Vahineh climbed into the waiting carriage. She was shocked to see the Stormbringer there. Femensetri leaned back in her chair, her booted feet propped up on the leather upholstery. The ancient Scholar Marshal nodded once to the princess as she helped her into the carriage. Mari remained outside as the door closed; the princess turned to look at Mari. Neither woman said anything.





“To what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?” Corajidin asked with as much of a smile as he could manage. Her father closed the journal he had been writing in.

“Loyalty,” she replied.

“I am not certain I understand, though I welcome it.” There was a look of sorrow on her father’s face, which surprised Mari. He rested his elbows on the desk, surveyed his daughter with his chin rested on steepled fingers. “Would you like to share a meal with me?”

“Father…Armal is dead.” Was it you? she wanted to ask.

“What?” His confused expression answered her unvoiced question. “Poor Thufan. Did you…?”

“What do you take me for? Armal may have been many things, but he never gave me cause to kill him. Nor would he.”

“Then how?” he asked quietly.

“Farouk and some of his bravos,” Mari replied.

“Is Farouk with you?”

“Armal throttled the life from him,” Mari said with a wintry smile. “Though only after he staved in the skulls of the other amateurs Farouk took with him.”

“How did you happen to be there?”

The dangerous question. Incomplete lies were the answer, with enough truth to make them whole. “Armal was speaking with me yesterday. And again last night. He thought, given my defiance, he had information I’d find interesting.”

“And?”

“It seems neither Thufan nor his son was entirely truthful.” Mari paused as her mind raced. Her father gazed at her, obviously impatient for her to continue. On her way back to the villa, she had wrestled with how much to tell her father, yet she owed Thufan nothing. Her father deserved to know the truth, as painful as it might be to hear. Her next few words might well break her or set her free. “They were holding Vahineh captive.”

Corajidin froze. Color drained from his face. She could see the weight of his thoughts in the slope of his shoulders. In the slackness of his jaw. Yet Erebus fa Corajidin was not a man so easily cowed. His look of sick horror was soon replaced by one of simmering rage. Color returned to his skin, as if the clouds had moved away from the sun. He clenched his hands into elegant fists, knuckles white.

“Can I trust nobody?” he muttered, frowning. Mari was surprised to see the furtive look in her father’s eyes. The way they narrowed. Flicked nervously from left to right, as if taunted by something glimpsed in his periphery. The tips of his fangs showed. Bubbles of spittle popped on his lip. “Where is she now?”

“Armal led me to a house on Treadstone Street, in the Ghyle.” Now she needed to divert without quite lying. Armal was dead, so there was no consequence to betraying him. She had no sympathy for Thufan. If her father knew Vahineh was alive and free, perhaps it would give him pause. “She’s gone.”

Her father slapped his hands on the surface of the table. The small sand-shaker and ink pot rattled in their stand. The bronze statue of Erebus glowered across the desk.

“Could Armal have been lying?”

Mari shrugged. “I thought you should know.”

She kissed her father on the cheek, bade him get some rest. His gray-hued skin was hot, flushed, damp. There were dark-red circles around his eyes, which had a glassy sheen to them. With a calm, almost too slow gait, she exited the room. The door closed behind her with a gentle click.

She had not walked far before she heard her father’s howl of rage.