The Garden of Stones

chapter FOUR





“Love dies by steps. The footfalls of fear, resentment, anger, and spite kill love, little by little. It withers. It tarnishes. It passes away, poisoned, ill, and wounded beyond all power to heal.”—Nashari fe Dar-ya, houreh and poet of the Sussain of Mediin, 7th Year of the Shadow Empire


Day 312 of the 495th Year of the Shrīanese Federation


It was late afternoon. The streets of the Barouq, a seaside district of Amnon where many scholars, freethinkers, and veterans had chosen to live, were vibrant with color and movement. The smell of roast kid, hot honeyed bread, grilled barramundi, peppers, lemon, and garlic drifted on the slight breeze. Long-haired, tall-eared cats lazed in the sun, indolent in the forums and the fruited courtyards. Alabaster fountains burbled. Cockatoos screeched. Accents from a handful of nations beyond Shrīan’s borders echoed in the winding streets. There were dusky-eyed, brown-skinned Tanisians in their vividly colored jackets and long kilts, their singsong voices rich and quick. Ygranians laughing easily despite the heat, perspiring in their high-collared doublets and turned-down boots. Olive-skinned, short-haired Imreans pontificating in educated tones in austere tunics edged with geometric designs. Even a few morose-looking Angoths, long hair braided, the men’s faces obscured by dropping mustaches and full beards, were scattered among the crowd. They stood, belligerent, militant, suspicious in their iron-studded leather and shirts of polished mail.

Small factions from the Hundred Families eyed each other across sun-drenched streets. Those loyal to the Great House of Näsarat boasted the blue-and-gold phoenix of their masters as they loitered in dappled shade. Erebus loyalists with their red-and-black rampant stallion drank quickly, laughed loudly, and fondled the hilts of their swords and knives.

Indris turned from the fretwork screens of his sheltered balcony. The residence had been a gift from Far-ad-din many years ago, though Indris had lived in it infrequently over the years. It was a meandering labyrinth of rooms, corridors, and stairs overlooking a quiet garden courtyard few people even knew existed. He loved the old building with its high domed ceilings, its floors of polished wood and glazed mosaic tiles. Indris used only half the residence for himself. The rest of the rambling building had been made available as a score of well-appointed suites and a salon for the Torchlight Society of explorers, inventors, and adventurers.

It was good to be among friends. Seated at a long table that had been stripped from a half-sunken Atrean war-galley, Hayden Goode finished cleaning his long-barreled storm-rifle, a rare and precious relic of the Awakened Empire. They were sought after by nahdi and professional adventurers, though disdained by the warrior and upper castes of the Avān for their difficulty to repair. The Human drover-turned-adventurer sat, compact in his deerskins. Age had made his face gaunt, and his cheeks were sunken aside his long nose. His weathered skin had the look of craquelure on tanned leather against his salt-streaked mustache. He took Indris’s storm-pistol from its holster and began to work on it. He was careful, aware of how difficult the weapon would be to replace.

Sassomon-Omen stood motionless on the balcony overlooking the secluded garden. Three large cats rubbed themselves against his legs; the purring creatures were drawn to strong currents of disentropy. The Wraith Knight’s mannequin body was made of fitted pieces of lacquered wood. The master crafters of Mediin had fashioned the replica body in intricate detail, down to each knuckle on its carved hands and the slivers of tinted glass approximating fingernails. Sunlight picked out the bright gold and bronze of pins and screws, gears, balls, and sockets. Green-blue radiance flickered through the fine cracks in Omen’s narrow chest and bronze ribs, the telltale glow of his jade Wraithjar. Only his face remained unworked, a head-shaped block sans hair, with shallow depressions where his eyes would have been.

Though he was happy his friends were there, Indris only half listened to what was being said. His mind was on his encounter with the compelling woman from last night, their mutual seduction and abandonment, his mixed feelings of guilt and relief. It had been more than a year since he had sought the comfort of another. The memories, the sensations, of last night were bittersweet.

A shape overhead occluded the sun. Indris looked through the screen to see the bronze-chased hull of another Seethe skyjammer flying out to sea. Rendered in the shape of a bird like most Seethe vessels, the skyjammer’s hull and broad wings were built of lovingly polished blue-gray wood. In the wings and wedge-shaped tail sat silver and crystal Tempest Wheels. Light flickered and sparked from the rotating platters. There was a faint humming growl as the skyjammer passed by. Disentropy Spools rotated beneath each wing where the silver dumbbells released threads of light like fine silk, which unraveled into the air behind the skyjammer in a pallid cloud.

Indris looked out across the Marble Sea to where the remnants of sunken buildings, ruins of marble and translucent crystal, stood their lonely vigil in shallow waters and atop tall hills now turned islands. There was a sense of longing in watching the sea eagles circle the shattered crystal towers of the ancient city of Nashrandi. Or Tan-li-Arhen of the Rainbow Spires. From the deck of a skyjammer, he had seen the bleached lines of roads and the blurred outlines of buildings beneath the water. It was this pallid discoloration that gave the sea its name.

“Swap you a song for your thoughts?” Shar sidled up next to him on the couch, where the Seethe war-chanter tuned her sonesette. The afternoon light accentuated the sheen along her straight nose and the yellow of her whiteless eyes. Seemed to deepen the shadows of scutes around her eyes and forehead.

“What benefit in staying?” Indris mused. “There’s nothing here anymore.”

Shar looked up from her tuning. She followed his gaze toward the skyjammer. “Do you mean them or us?”

“Either. Both.”

“Leaving places with you is something I’ve become used to.”

“‘And they left their land drowned in their tears, for those far distant shores bereft of fears,’” Omen intoned, his flutelike voice resonant. “I hear them, you know. The whispers of those who linger on the rim of the Well of Souls. Some are frightened. They want to stay but do not know how…”

“I imagine they’ll find their way,” Hayden interjected, scrutinizing the revolving ammunition cylinder of Indris’s storm-pistol. “You know, talk of ghosts and the undead, Nomads as you Avān are inclined to call them, ain’t something all folks is comfortable with.”

“Death has surrounded us for years, friend Hayden,” Omen replied. “I met mine centuries ago yet decided I had not experienced all there was in the world. My people may call me and others like me heretics, yet they cling to life as dearly as I. One day, such a choice will come to you.”

“Oh no!” Hayden laughed. “Burn my body and throw my ashes into a strong wind. I don’t figure on anything using my dead flesh as no puppet!”

“When I die,” Shar said dreamily, “my spirit will return to the winds, where it will fly above the torments of the world. Perhaps your ashes will fly with me for a time?”

For reasons of their own, Omen and Hayden had chosen lives of adventure away from their homes. Shar was different. The Rayn-ma troupe, her extended family, had been all but wiped out in various mercenary battles. Indris and Shar had tried to find word of Rayn-ma survivors for years without success. While Shar had never complained, Indris wondered not for the first time whether he was being fair to his friend.

“Shar, you’re a rich woman now.” Shar’s eyes narrowed to golden slits. “You could try to find your family’s Sky Realm. With your reputation, any of the Sky Realms would—”

“One day perhaps, but not today. If this is about guilt…”

“For such can be the burden of the moral, spiritual man,” Omen offered philosophically. “Riddled with guilt and nettled by regret, Indris has never been comfortable with losing his friends. His instinct is to say yes, when he should say no.”

“So we’re going to leave Amnon, neh?” Shar strummed her sonesette. “Where are we going?”

“I was thinking of Ankha.” He knew better than to argue with her. It was as useful as asking a storm to stop. “Or Faroza. Tanjipé, maybe? Anywhere but here. We came too close this time.”

“No arguments from me.” Hayden put his rifle down and picked up several scrolls that lay curled on the table. “We’ve got offers of paid work from your ghost friends in the Sussain, from nahdi companies in Ygran and Tanis. There’s even an expedition off north, to the Spines.”

“The Dragons? Let’s not. I was thinking of something more relaxed.” Indris wrinkled his nose. “We’ve more than enough money, so why not enjoy ourselves?”

“The Floating Palaces of Masripur,” Shar suggested wickedly. Masripur, a Tanisian city on the northern shores of the Marble Sea, was known for its libertine sensibilities. Almost anything could be bought there if the price was right. It was one of the most popular cities for nahdi. The caste-merchants of Masripur who profited from war were some of the wealthiest people in southeastern Īa.

“What about Ariskander?” Shar asked.

“What about him?” Indris replied. “He’ll be busy enough trying to maintain order in Amnon without me adding to his troubles.”

Shar caught her bottom lip between sharp teeth, white against the blue of her lips. “And Far-ad-din?”

“We’ve done all we can for Far-ad-din. He invited us here to scout the Rōmarq and report what we found. He knows as much as we do about the tomb robbers in the wetlands.”

“Far-ad-din is more than our employer!” She poked him in the ribs with a calloused finger. Indris yelped with the sharp pain. “Serves you right! If that was all he was, we’d have run rather than fight for him at Amber Lake.”

“For the love of…” Indris’s eyes widened in surprise as the others looked in his direction. “What? My father-in-law needed our help. We helped. I owed Far-ad-din at least as much.”

“Because he helped raise you as a child, or because you married his daughter and she—”

Indris felt an old pain at the mention of Anj-el-din. Her fate felt like one of the ancient questions his Sēq Masters posed their students to unearth the secrets of the past. Who was Anj-el-din and where did she go? He fought down the melancholy he knew would settle on him if left alone. “A little of both, I suppose. We fought to give Far-ad-din a chance to survive. If he’d bothered to escape when I advised him to, things would’ve been much simpler.”

“You should at least find somebody else to tell what you found.” Omen reached down to gently remove a cat that had started to scratch at his wooden leg. “Treasure hunters in the Rōmarq? Far-ad-din tried very hard to dissuade the smuggling of relics. Who knows what kinds of unpleasantness have been dragged from the swamp?”

“If you’d have come with us, maybe you’d know?” Indris offered reasonably.

“All that water and mud…” Omen fluted, tones low. “The damp might have settled in my legs. Could have caused rot. Highly inconvenient.”

“Face it, Omen. Like me, you hate the idea of the place.” Hayden tapped his fingers on the table. “I reckon no person whole and right in the head would set foot there. Shar’s right, though. Them treasure hunters could be bad business. From time to time, I listen to your talk about them ancient places. You said yourself no good would come of people playing with what the Time Masters or the Seethe—or even the Avān, at the height of their power—left lying about.”

Indris walked to where Omen stood in the balcony doorway. The garden below was quiet. An elderly man reclined in the sun, his back to an apple blossom tree. His head lolled forward, open palm upward in his lap, the book he had been reading facedown on the lush grass. Purple-and-gold lotus flowers emerged from the banks of a muddy pond fed by the overflow of a small fountain. They seemed too vivid, their colors brilliant in the striated light that speared through alabaster screens on the wall above. Sacred to the Seethe, it was the petals of the lotus flower for which their great Petal Empire had been named. Cats prowled and played with each other or batted large paws at the distraction of carp in the deep pond. They turned triangular faces in his direction, eyes half-closed in pleasure, tails raised in greeting. Everywhere he went…cats. The sensitive animals sensed Indris’s presence in the ripple of his Disentropic Stain. Cats were more attuned to the creative forces of disentropy than most animals. It was as if they could actually sense the warmth of the creative nimbus that flowed across all living things.

“Many believe Far-ad-din was a traitor,” Indris said softly as he stared out over the garden. I’m going to miss this place, he thought. Anj and I made some good memories here…“But Corajidin had him removed for his own purposes. He risked a lot to get his hands on whatever it is he’s searching for in the Rōmarq.”

“I remember too well our people’s fascination with the Rōmarq,” Omen intoned. “It has long been a lure for those seeking out the works of those older, or wiser, than themselves. Yet always it led to suffering. It is not a wholesome place—those brackish waters, its flooded cities, its memories of sunlight and laughter. No, the Rōmarq clings to its secrets, as dearly as people have sought to unearth them.”

“We’ve done what was asked of us and more,” Indris murmured. “Now it’s time to move on.”

Despite their resentment of the Seethe, neither the Avān nor the Humans were ignorant to the inventiveness of their former masters or those who had come before them. Avān history spoke of three great empires: the Haiyt Empire of the Time Masters—the Rōm as they were known—who romantics said had ruled Īa for ten thousand years; the Petal Empire of the Seethe, which had lasted for a more believable four thousand years; and the empire of the Avān, ruled by its frighteningly powerful Awakened Emperors, which had lasted a mere millennium before the Humans tore it down. The one thing all three empires had in common was the Rōmarq.

Yet it was Fiandahariat, one of the reputed homes of the great Avān mystic, Sedefke, that Indris feared had been discovered. In all their years, the Sēq had never found it. Never had the chance to cleanse it of temptation to others. So it remained a potential vault of Haiyt Empire and early Awakened Empire history. Relics. Texts. Weapons. There was no way of knowing what was there, though Indris and Shar had reported to Far-ad-din the hive of activity the ruins had become.

Indris saw the disappointment on Shar’s sharp features, in the way she seemed to throttle the neck of her sonesette. He hoped it was not his throat she was imagining.

“Shar, Amnon has been occupied. Even though Ariskander is benign, others aren’t. Believe me when I say any people who can leave will be safer elsewhere.” Indris forced a smile. He pointed a finger to the southwest. “The Rōmarq is only a few kilometers in that direction. Do you really think, with Far-ad-din gone, Corajidin will pass up a chance to dig up what he can, as quickly as he can? There are others better equipped to deal with what’s going on here. We have to trust that Ariskander and Vashne will do the right thing.”

Shar’s expression became fierce. “So it all comes to nothing? You have to let Ariskander know about the tomb raiders in the Rōmarq. At least let him finish what we started.”

“I reckon Shar’s right, Indris.” Hayden nodded. “Seems we ought to tell more folks what we’ve seen.”

“It is the proper thing to do,” Omen said. “Otherwise, what point in anything we have done?”

“Fine. I’ll tell Ariskander.” Indris surrendered to the moral compasses of his friends, as he so often did. “Can we leave then?”

“You know I’m right,” Shar said. She skipped forward to kiss him on the cheek. “Why not listen to me in the first place? It’ll save you time and trouble in the long run.”

“So you’re fond of reminding me.”





The Torchlight Society brought those of like mind, those who sought knowledge for its beauty, its lessons, and its legacies, together. More than a score of attendees stood in earnest discussion or sat at their ease on well-upholstered chairs in the salon set apart from Indris’s private chambers. The long sails of ceiling fans slowly swept back and forth, cooling the air. Scrolls, sandwiched between sheets of glass, hung from the ceiling by chains. Each of the scrolls was inscribed with writing or illustrations. Some of the inventions were easily identifiable: the Disentropy Spool, a cylinder capped with mushroomlike domes of clockwork gears and cogs; the ghostly net of the Wind Loom, a sail woven from air; the broad, shallow bowl of the Scholar’s Chariot; the Entanglement Bowl that allowed people to speak to each other from across vast distances; the steel frame and glass panes of the Seer’s Window. There was even an illustration of a Havoc Chair, one of Sedefke’s inventions from his militant years. It was rumored Indris’s mother had once owned a copy of The Awakened Soul, Sedefke’s treatise on how he had guided the first Avān monarchs and scholars in their understanding and mastery of Awakening. If his mother had owned the book, Indris had never seen it. It would be worth many times its weight in gold and gems.

Indris turned at the sound of a rough-edged laugh. Femensetri stood beside Gulenn, the graying inventor and artist. Almost two decades ago, Gulenn had invented the Portrait Glass used to permanently store images of people and things in wafers of serill—the drake-fired glass of the Seethe. Beside Gulenn was his latest project, a version of the Portrait Glass that could show moving pictures. Indris had marveled at the *ter-clatter of the exposed mechanism and the spinning barrel of crystal wafers that projected the flickering image of Gulenn’s young son, at play in a garden, on the wall.

The images reminded Indris of happier times in his life when he had thought, wrongly, that he had escaped the clutches of turmoil. Though life had been hard, had been dangerous, he had not cared. To come home to the smile on the face of the woman he loved had helped wash away the regret of the time spent apart. The times when he was knee-deep in the mire, the blood of friends and enemies indistinguishable on his hands. Life had not been perfect, it never was, though it had been good for a long time. Both he and Anj had defied their Sēq Masters when they’d married. Had fallen in love, contrary to instructions. The masters had warned Indris no good would come of it, had said it would end in heartbreak at the very least. As his thoughts turned to his nameless lover from last night, guilt rose anew. He fought it down. Anj had been gone long enough for him to know she would never be coming back.

“We truly live in an age of invention.” Indris blinked, snapped from his reverie. Ziaire stood in the doorway, magnificent in her layers of pearlescent white and ivory silk. She bestowed a dazzling smile upon Shar, who grinned in response. “I trust I’m not intruding?”

“Of course not.” Indris offered the lady a chair. Femensetri caught Indris’s eye, lifted her chin by way of hello. Indris sketched a bow to his former teacher. Both Shar and Ziaire viewed the exchange with wry grins.

“It must have been pleasant for you to see Femensetri after so long.” Ziaire carefully adjusted the folds of her kilt. “She speaks of you often, mostly kindly. I feel as if I know you intimately.”

“Ten years is a long time to hold a grudge.” Indris shrugged. The idea of the famous nemhoureh knowing him intimately was somehow daunting.

“Indris, she’s not the woman you knew. You’re no longer her pupil.”

“Please.” Indris held his hand up. “That chapter of my life is long closed. If I’m very fortunate, I’ll be able to leave Amnon without picking at old wounds. Let’s leave the scars as they are, neh?”

“As you will.” Ziaire leaned back as a servant put down an iron pot, steam streaming from the spout. The pots were followed by glazed clay cups, the glaze rippling with hints of blue and green. They reminded Indris of wavelets on the beach, advancing and retreating. The refreshing smell of apple tea assailed his nostrils.

Without a word, Femensetri seated herself beside Ziaire, the two women as different from each other as the black and white they wore. The Scholar Marshal poured tea for herself. With a faint smile, Shar poured for Indris, Ziaire, and herself. The four of them gave their attention to their drinks. Indris felt the warmth of it in his belly, trickling out to infuse his limbs. With the scented steam of the tea in his nostrils, he was filled with a sense of comfortable well-being.

“What is Nehrun playing at?” Femensetri eyed Indris over the lip of her cup, the mindstone a black-faceted nothing in her brow. “Why, in all the names of the Ancestors, did he throw his support behind Corajidin? Idiot!”

“Why not ask him?” Indris gibed.

“You should know these things,” Femensetri countered. Indris snorted by way of response.

Femensetri pointed her finger at Indris in a semiserious warning. “Quiet, you. Doesn’t the cockerel realize the dangerous waters he’s trying to swim? He needs to use the brains his parents gave him. I’m already ruing the day he becomes the Rahn-Näsarat. Stupid boy has no appreciation of what he’s inheriting. I’ve seen his like for thousands of years. It’ll end in tears, one way or another, unless he smartens up.”

“I noticed he was not too keen on volunteering to search the Rōmarq for Far-ad-din.” Ziaire grinned wickedly over the lip of her cup.

Indris frowned. The Rōmarq wetlands were home to many unclean things. When the floods had come and Seethe cities had been sluiced clean, not everything had been killed that should have been. Legend had it one of the Torque Mills—the factories the Seethe had used to create new life from the strands of old—had fallen into the marshes, twisting, merging, changing anything that came nearby. “There were a lot of Fenlings on the west bank of the Anqorat during the battle. Far-ad-din knew he was defeated—his escape into the marshes was a calculated risk. We didn’t expect anybody to be in a hurry to go after him.”

“Only somebody very desperate would retreat from a battlefield into a tribe of Fenlings,” Ziaire mused. “I’m at a loss to understand why Nehrun would side with Corajidin, though.”

“Because he’s an ambitious little turd,” Femensetri muttered.

“Only tragedy can come of Far-ad-din’s leaving.” Shar rubbed one of the feathers braided into her quills, then cast it away to banish the ill omen in her words. “Much in Amnon will wither without a tender hand to nurture it.”

“No doubt that’s the point.” Femensetri scratched herself. “I’ve tried scrying the Rōmarq to find him, but there are so many disentropic eddies, surges, and sinks out there it’s impossible to see anything. It’s a cursed stew of raw energy.”

“Shar’s right. Sorrow will come from Far-ad-din’s absence, though Ariskander is the only logical choice to govern in the interim.” Ziaire caught Indris’s gaze, her eyes large green pools. “Both Ariskander and the Asrahn need men of your talents.”

“The Asrahn and the Sēq benefited from my service for a long time,” Indris replied. “Yet when I was captured by the enemies of our people—the one time the government or the Order could’ve shown gratitude for my former services, the one time I needed their help—I was abandoned to the slave pits of Sorochel for almost two years. Forgive me if my cup doesn’t brim with cooperation. One good thing to come out of that was meeting Shar. Her friendship and loyalty are two things in this world I never question. The other was to measure out my trust in nobles, bureaucrats, and my former teachers in small amounts.”

“You’ll allow your personal feelings to cloud your duty to your people, after Vashne pardoned you?” Femensetri’s tone was sour. “I trained you better, boy.”

“Tried slavery, have you?” Indris rolled his cup in his hands, intent on the way the dregs of tea swirled against the glaze. Being a knight of the Sēq Order of Scholars had not been an easy life. There had been light, laughter, and pleasure in service. But as the years wore on it became filled with pain, with horror. Revolts to be started and wars to be stopped. Murders in the dark. The deaths of enemies and too many friends. There were mornings in Sorochel when he had been sorry he had lived through the night. He remembered the acid burn of salt-forged shackles, unable to think clearly, to free himself. When he had escaped, the memories of what had come after still plagued him. He raised his head to look at Femensetri. “Until you have, you don’t know what you’re saying. Besides, there are other reasons I don’t want to linger here.”

“Your wife?” Ziaire’s expression was flooded with sympathy. “Did you ever discover what…I’m sorry, Indris. Wasn’t there anything you found admirable in serving your country?”

“I’ve given up on finding improbable solutions to impossible problems made by other people.” Indris shook his head. “The Asrahn and the Teshri brought war to the doorstep of innocent people. Ariskander tried to stop it, and for that I applaud him. But perhaps those who govern Shrīan need to learn to deal with consequences.”

“Indris!” Femensetri grasped his wrist. “Perhaps you’ve the right to—”

“Perhaps?” Indris jerked his arm from Femensetri’s grip and stood.

“Please!” Ziaire implored them both. “This is much bigger than—”

“It’s always bigger than the people who suffer, isn’t it?” He held his hands up as he backed away. “So many people, it all becomes abstract, this accounting of lives. But I remember the faces, the names, of people who suffered. There was always somebody to miss them. Somebody who loved them. All the people I…Ladies, I suddenly find myself remembering something that needs doing. You’re welcome to stay as long as you like, though you’ll excuse me for not seeing you out?”

Indris tried to walk as calmly as he could from the salon so no one would see the cracks appear in the mask he wore over his sorrow.





Indris turned as Femensetri joined him in the high-ceilinged chamber he had once shared with Anj-el-din. Far-ad-din had been generous in giving them the large building, though it had been Anj who had really made it theirs. Or hers, if Indris was honest. He had spent so much time either saying farewell or saying hello, he had felt at times like a stranger. As if where Anj and he lived was more a house than a home.

He stood before a series of Portrait Glasses. There was a layer of dust on them, which he gently wiped away with the corner of his over-robe. Most of the portraits captured frozen moments of Anj: Anj laughing, her teeth a band of white against her dark-blue lips; Anj hiding playfully behind the mass of her quills, fine and soft as silk, as unruly as the storm it always reminded him of; Anj sitting in repose, intent as an eagle as she stared out a window; Anj dancing, her elegance apparent even in the stillness of the portrait. There were few portraits of them together and fewer still of him alone. Those there were showed him in profile or turning away from whoever had tried to capture his image. Anj had once said, in pride or passion or her summer-storm fury, that he was always turning away. Always looking at the next horizon or the next trouble he would risk his life to fix.

Anj was, had been, a Sēq Scholar. It had been easier for her to let go and embrace an ordinary world for love.

“It was early in the morning when I came home,” he began without looking up. “It was raining, and I remember thinking how nice it would be to hold her. I’d been in Sorochel for…Anyway, I wanted to tell her I’d not be leaving her again. I thought I heard her singing on the balcony. I looked everywhere, lit the lamps, yet there was nobody there. Just echoes and dust.”

“Indris, she’s been gone more than two years now.”

“I won’t cry for yesterday, Femensetri.” Indris picked up his favorite portrait of Anj. She had never really liked it, yet Indris had always found the image to be the truest of her. It was of Anj writing in a journal, long legs stretched out in what he swore were stained breeches and her favorite pair of boots with split toes. Her lip was caught between improbably white teeth. A lock of quills wrapped around her finger. She had been the most captivating woman he had ever met. “She’s gone, like too many others, and I know there’s no bringing her back.”

“Then why torture yourself?” The Stormbringer leaned against the wall, her mindstone pulsing darkness like a heartbeat. “You knew—”

“Don’t,” he warned. “Just…don’t.”

“Is this why you think you have to leave Amnon?” Femensetri gestured about the room with her crook. The scythe blade at its top flared with a brilliant, almost too-bright opalescence, herding and folding the shadows into little more than fine lines. “There are no Nomads here to torment you, Indris.”

“Other than the ones I bring with me, you mean?” He cleared his throat before he spoke again. “She was the reason—”

“You turned your back on everybody who depended on you?” Whatever kindnesses she may have been inclined toward were pared away by the angles of her voice.

“Leave it be!” he snapped. “Anj depended on me. Far-ad-din depended on me to make his only daughter happy, to share a future of our choosing. I’ve paid my debts as best I can. And let’s not start on who turned their backs on whom, shall we?”

“You didn’t kill her, Indris.” Femensetri sighed. She pinched her straight nose between her thumb and forefinger, eyes closed. “She is…I mean to say she chose her path, as we all do. Nobody made her—”

“Look for me?” Indris glared at Femensetri from beneath lowered brows. “Is that what you were going to say to me? That I made her come looking for me? That I was the cause of her destruction, because if I’d been here, or doing what you wanted me to do, none of it would have happened?”

“Would it have?” She leaned forward on her crook, opal eyes bright. “When you disappeared she went looking for the man she loved. You are the pebble that caused the ripples of her actions.”

Indris felt as if he had been slapped. “I can’t believe—”

“Believe what you will. You always do.” Femensetri turned and strode toward the open door. She paused when she reached the threshold. Looked over her shoulder at her former pupil. “One day you’ll realize you’re not the only person responsible for their own actions, Indris. You talked before of consequences? Perhaps you need to think on all the good you did, rather than what a person did out of love for you, as tragic as the outcome may have been.”

“Is she really dead, Femensetri?” Feelings of guilt from last night clawed their way to the surface. “She was never found.”

“Yours is but a little sorrow, when all’s said and done.” Femensetri looked at him through narrowed eyes. “Though I love you as much as pity you for the pain you feel, much worse has happened in the world and gone unsung. As for whether she’s dead or not, she’s not here. Does it really matter then what her fate, if it be that the two of you were to part?”