A sound from the hallway brought Lar, Ahan, and Emmis alert; Ildirin slept on, untroubled. Emmis rose and peered around the doorframe.
The front door was still closed; he turned the other way to see Ithinia approaching, a crystal goblet in one hand and her wizard’s dagger in the other.
The wizard spotted Emmis. “Is the ambassador ready?” she demanded.
“Yes, I think so,” Emmis replied, glancing over his shoulder at Lar. The Vondishman was rising from his seat.
“I’d prefer he not be sitting when I do this; I’m not sure how much he’ll weigh, and I don’t want him to break my chair.”
“I’ll tell him,” Emmis said, turning.
“I heard,” Lar said. “Ahan, would you please wake Lord Ildirin?”
Emmis stepped aside and let Ithinia pass by him into the parlor; as he did, he glanced at the front door.
What had happened to Zhol and his honey? If the petrifaction spell was ready, then it must have been almost three hours since the guardsman headed off toward Cut Street Market, and it couldn’t be more than a dozen blocks away!
But right now, he wanted to see the spell. He had never seen anyone turned to stone before. There were statues here and there around the city that were rumored to have been alive once, the work of a magician rather than a sculptor, but Emmis had no idea whether any of those stories were true, and he certainly hadn’t observed any of the transformations.
And he wanted to see what Fendel’s Assassin did. He wanted to be there to help if something went wrong.
So he turned away from the door and followed Ithinia into the parlor.
Lord Ildirin was blinking in his chair, still a bit fuddled; Ahan was standing beside him with his bandaged hand on the hilt of his sword. Emmis would have thought the truncheon would be more appropriate, as Ozya, the guard on Games Street, had explained, but Ahan seemed to think otherwise. Perhaps Lord Ildirin’s special guards followed different rules.
Lar was standing in front of his chair, looking pale — the long wait, the knowledge that the invisible assassin was after him and probably in that very room, the prospect of being petrified even temporarily, obviously had the Vondishman scared. Still, he stood straight and unflinching, facing the wizard. He had left his hat on a small table, though; he was probably worried that the plume would shatter if turned to stone, Emmis thought.
Then he grimaced at his own foolishness. The man had taken the hat off hours ago, not long after they first arrived, because there was no reason to wear it in Ithinia’s parlor. Worries about the plume had nothing to do with it.
Guildmaster Ithinia was standing facing the ambassador; her fine white robe had acquired gray smudges here and there, especially on the lower part of each sleeve, but still looked quite elegant. She stood as tall as Lar, Emmis noticed — tall for a woman.
In her right hand she held a dagger, point down — an old dagger, the blade darkened with age, the edges shaped into odd, subtle curves by countless sharpenings, the leather grip visibly worn and shaped by use to fit Ithinia’s hand. The dagger had been elegant once, if not extravagant, after a fashion Emmis had seen occasionally in family heirlooms at least a century or two old. This knife had clearly been around for a long time, and seen heavy use; Emmis wondered if it was a legacy from some beloved ancestor, or whether its age gave it special potency.
In her left hand was a crystal goblet that held perhaps half a cup of something brownish. The goblet was of good quality, but appeared new and unremarkable; Emmis knew he could find a hundred like it in the Old Merchants’ Quarter.
“Are you ready, Lar Samber’s son?” the Guildmaster asked, in a loud, carrying voice.
Lar swallowed. “I am,” he said.
“Then let us see what Fendel’s Assassin makes of this!” She swung her arms together, the left dropping below, the right rising above, and plunged the dagger into the goblet.
The instant the tip of the blade touched the brown liquid Lar straightened up as if stung. His pale face turned unnaturally gray — not the gray of terror or ill health, but the gray of stone. His hair followed a split second later, and then his clothing, and then Lar was gone, transformed into a lifeless statue.
The transition was soundless, and for a moment the room was silent as Emmis, Ithinia, and Ildirin all stared at the petrified foreigner.
Then Ithinia pulled the dagger out of the goblet. She turned and set the crystal vessel down, very carefully, on a table, then pulled a cloth from her sleeve and wiped her dagger clean. She looked around the room.
“Is he... Is the creature still here?” Emmis asked.
“Yes,” Ithinia said. She held up the dagger, and Emmis could see that the tip was glowing faintly blue, as if catching blue light from some unseen source.
“Why?”
“Did you give it the honey you swore you would?”
“No, not yet.”
“Perhaps it wants its honey, then,” Ithinia said. “Or perhaps it doesn’t think he’s dead.”
“But — but he’s stone!”
“Granite, to be exact.” She eyed the statue thoughtfully. “But he’s not really dead, and I’d guess the killer knows it.”
“Well, it does now,” Lord Ildirin said, annoyed. “You just told it!”
“Oh, it never believes anything a human says about such matters,” Ithinia said, unconcerned. “That’s to prevent anyone from tricking it, from talking their way out of assassination. It has its own standards.”
“But he’s stone!” Emmis protested. “It must just be waiting for the honey I promised it.”
Ithinia shook her head. “Let me try something,” she said. She reached into a pocket of her robe and brought out something Emmis couldn’t see, pinched between thumb and forefinger. She stepped up to the statue that had been the Vondish ambassador.
Emmis wanted to shout at her to get away, lest she break it, but he knew that was absurd. She was a wizard — not just a wizard, a Guildmaster, whatever exactly that meant. She surely knew what she was doing.
And Lar was stone now, anyway — what could hurt him?
Ithinia flung the pinch of whatever it was into the statue’s motionless face and said something, words that not only weren’t Ethsharitic, but didn’t sound as if they should be coming from a human throat at all. She gestured, an odd twisting motion that ended with her fingers spread wide, palm up, then said one final alien word.
Again, silence fell, as everyone stared at the statue.
Then they all heard, very clearly, the sound of claws scraping on stone.
The scratching continued for what seemed to Emmis like an eternity; he stared at the statue’s throat, watching worriedly for a mark on the hard gray stone.
He had thought the creature would consider Lar to be dead, but obviously that hadn’t happened. It hadn’t even thought he was sleeping, but now it did, now that Ithinia had done whatever it was she had done, and in accord with its instructions the monster was trying to wring Lar’s neck.
Just one attempt, Lord Ildirin had said — but how determined an attempt? Would the thing keep trying until it did gouge the stone? What would that do when Lar was restored to life?
Then at last the scratching stopped, and Emmis let out his breath. He hadn’t realized he had been holding it.
“There,” Ithinia said. “It’s done.” She held up her dagger again, and frowned.
The tip was still glowing blue.
“It wants the honey Emmis promised it,” Ildirin said.
“So it appears,” Ithinia agreed. “That’s inconvenient. I don’t think it would be wise to turn Lar back to flesh while the assassin is around. Ordinarily it would only try to kill him once, but ordinarily it would vanish if that first try failed.”
“What if it succeeded?” Emmis asked.
