The Garden Of Stones Part 4

"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 Sq 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 Rmarq? 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 Avn, 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 gra.s.s. 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 Rmarq."

"I remember too well our people's fascination with the Rmarq," 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 Rmarq 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 Avn nor the Humans were ignorant to the inventiveness of their former masters or those who had come before them. Avn history spoke of three great empires: the Haiyt Empire of the Time Masters-the Rm as they were known-who romantics said had ruled a 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 Avn, 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 Rmarq.

Yet it was Fiandahariat, one of the reputed homes of the great Avn mystic, Sedefke, that Indris feared had been discovered. In all their years, the Sq 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 Rmarq is only a few kilometers in that direction. Do you really think, with Far-ad-din gone, Corajidin will pa.s.s 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 Rmarq. 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 compa.s.ses 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 gla.s.s, hung from the ceiling by chains. Each of the scrolls was inscribed with writing or ill.u.s.trations. 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 gla.s.s panes of the Seer's Window. There was even an ill.u.s.tration 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 Avn 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 Gla.s.s used to permanently store images of people and things in wafers of serill-the drake-fired gla.s.s of the Seethe. Beside Gulenn was his latest project, a version of the Portrait Gla.s.s that could show moving pictures. Indris had marveled at the c.l.i.tter-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 Sq 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 h.e.l.lo. 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 a.s.sailed 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 c.o.c.kerel 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-Nasarat. 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 Rmarq for Far-ad-din." Ziaire grinned wickedly over the lip of her cup.

Indris frowned. The Rmarq 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 t.u.r.d," 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 Rmarq 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 Sq 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 grat.i.tude 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 n.o.bles, 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 Sq 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 Shran 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 h.e.l.lo, 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 Gla.s.ses. 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 ma.s.s 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 pa.s.sion 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 Sq 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 n.o.body 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. n.o.body 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?"

CHAPTER FIVE.

"Today's necessity may well prove to be tomorrow's catastrophe."-Mattis Sendri, Imrean amba.s.sador from the Iron League, 388th Year of the Shranese Federation Day 313 of the 495th Year of the Shranese Federation "Far-ad-din's absence has become something of a liability. Many of those loyal to him, those who helped keep Amnon running, are leaving. If it continues, Amnon will become little more than a barracks for our army." Asrahn-Vashne stood with his back to the room in the Hai-Ardin. Mari did not need to see his face. She could read the tension in his shoulders, his back. Daniush, Hamejin, and Vahineh, the Asrahn's heirs, stood quietly near their father. From behind her war-mask, Mari caught them staring at Indris, who stood quietly in his faded blacks and browns.

Ariskander and Nehrun stood together. They are like night and day, she thought. It was clear Ariskander had not slept. Some of his hair had worked its way clear of his high ponytail. He had doffed his hooded over-robe, and his blue jacket with its embroidered golden phoenix was rumpled. Beside him, Nehrun looked impeccable. Pretty, rather than handsome. Manicured within an inch of his life, the man fairly gleamed.

The Asrahn seemed absorbed by the subtle colors of the Fire Garden. Red, orange, yellow, and white flowering reeds grew in beds of colored pebbles and white sand. There was no scent to the garden. The beauty came from the humming of the breeze through tall dry gra.s.ses as well as the illusion of the conflagration of the waving flowers.

"It's unfortunate, Vashne, but what else can we do?" Ariskander's voice was hoa.r.s.e with fatigue. "Femensetri has tried scrying the Rmarq, without success. I sent Ekko and half my Lion Guard across the Anqorat in pursuit of Far-ad-din three nights ago. I'm hesitant to suggest you ask Corajidin to help. If his people find Far-ad-din, I've no faith the man will be returned alive."

"What about you, Nehrun?" Vashne asked. "Care to go into the Rmarq again?"

"Excuse me?" Nehrun sounded genuinely shocked. "I've barely had the time to bathe and change from my last foray across the river. I lost twelve men to the Ancestor-cursed Fenling as it is. Ten more may not survive their wounds. Besides, I think you're better served by me being in the city, where the decisions are made."

To Mari he sounded like a petulant fourteen-year-old rather than the petulant forty-year-old she knew him to be. A man who had betrayed his own father for the promise of power.

"Harden up, Nehrun," Vashne said, shaking his head. "You're supposed to be one of our future leaders. The least you could do is act like it."

Nehrun almost vibrated with rage, but he kept his mouth shut under Vashne's hard gaze, as well he should.

The search for Far-ad-din had not gone well. Many search parties had gone out, with fewer than half returning. Eager for news, Vashne had ordered Mari and a squad of Feya.s.sin to wait for Nehrun when he returned from his search of the Rmarq. Nehrun had been p.r.i.c.kly when he had reined in on his giant armored hart, his refined features smeared with sweat, dirt, and blood. His sister, Roshana, looked tired in her mud-streaked armor. Her quiver hung empty from her saddle, and her arms were covered in blood to the elbow. A mud-spattered bandage was bound around one thigh. Mari had given Nehrun enough time to wash and change, then escorted the surly rahn-elect to where his father and the Asrahn waited.

As she had walked the sullen Nehrun through the Hai-Ardin, Mari took the time to appreciate the subtlety of the Seethe minds that had made it. The Seethe saw beauty in everything. Even war was an art to them, a performance in elegance and pa.s.sion, in destruction and bloodl.u.s.t. They had pa.s.sed through an atrium where storm falcons perched on jagged outcroppings of green stone. In the center of the atrium stood six statues of Seethe elders, back to back, their broad wings touching so they resembled an ornate column. Their sharp features were avian-strong sharp noses, high angled cheekbones, pointed chins, and tilted eyes. If she was honest, there was little in the Avn that resembled their makers physically. The Avn looked almost identical to the Humans. No, the Seethe influence was mental. Behavioral.

Like their makers, the Avn were drawn to the thrill of hunting, of killing. In their early years, the Avn tribes had been cannibals. It had been considered a great honor to kill and eat an enemy. To have the revered dead be remembered in the living. Though times and behaviors had changed, the Avn had not strayed far from their violent origins.

The Seethe had made the Avn a warrior people. Their warrior people. The first Avn were made in Torque Spindles from parts of Humans, parts of Seethe, and parts of who knew what else. The Spindles wove the life force and the very flesh itself of different creatures, or other living things, into new life of the Seethe's own devising. The Avn were not the first life made in the Torque Spindles, though they were the finest. The Avn were the ones the Seethe raised above all others as the enforcers of their Petal Empire. At first it had been as armendi-peacekeepers-to ensure the age-old feuds between Humans and the Seethe were settled peacefully. Over time, the Seethe monarchs cared less what the Avn did in their name, or what the Humans thought about it. Finally, while the Seethe chewed on the narcotic petals of their sacred lotus flowers, the Avn turned their sights on conquest.

When the Avn toppled the Petal Empire, they destroyed every Torque Mill they could find in retribution. At once an intellectual and a spiritual people, the Seethe could forget wrongs. Such things became abstract over time, little more than topics for debate. Neither Humans nor the Avn were so inclined. They held grudges. Embraced them, relished and reveled in them until age had made a willing cage of past hatreds. It was why the counselors of the Teshri had not needed to search their souls long before they agreed to take their war to Far-ad-din.

Mari had been paying more attention to the crystalline beauty of the Hai-Ardin than Nehrun's incessant whining. So it had come as an even greater surprise to see a man she did not think to see again: her mystery lover. Her breath had caught, girlish and unexpected, at the sight of him. A deeper thrill had come when she had heard his name spoken: Nasarat fa Amonindris. Dragon-Eyed Indris. She knew part of her should feel shame at the thought she had given herself to a child of the Nasarat, but she could not. She had not seen him since their night together, had not known how to find him. Now, with only five meters between them, it might as well have been an ocean. She wanted to take her war-mask off, to reveal her presence, to evoke a reaction in him. Instead she maintained her composure, watched him from the corner of her eye.

To think, she and he were supposed to have killed each other in the Hamesaad! The thought of fighting a daimahjin both thrilled and terrified her. Yet to fight Dragon-Eyed Indris? Even were he to defeat her, Mari's name would be sung for centuries.

"It has been four days since Far-ad-din disappeared." Vashne's footsteps hissed across the red-and-white sands. His hands were clasped behind his back. "Of the ten search parties we sent, six have not returned."

"Apologies, Vashne. We've done what we can." Nehrun's voice cracked. He cleared his throat to continue with more confidence. "The wetlands are thick with the Fenlings. They're cl.u.s.tered in packs-"

"Tribes," Indris murmured as he examined his thumbnail. "The Fenlings hunt and fight in tribes, led by rival shamans. Not in packs."

"Packs of Fenlings," Nehrun continued belligerently. "It's like no place I've ever seen. We were outnumbered and forced to flee."

"Did you see any sign of Far-ad-din?" Ariskander asked patiently.

"None." Nehrun took a deep breath. "Have the others reported any sign of him?"

You're hoping not, aren't you, Nehrun? Mari thought. You want to ingratiate yourself with my father even further. If you only knew the fate of Corajidin's tools when he has no further use for them. Yet Mari could not bring herself to have any sympathy for Nehrun. The man had made his own bed. Possibly next to his grave.

Vashne gave Nehrun a searching look before he settled the weight of his gaze on Indris. "Explain to me what you were doing in Amnon."