workers and their cart.
Too late the men realized they were too close. They must have instinctively gauged the size of the previous explosions and matched that to the distance they stood from the last hole. They turned and started to run. When the last keg exploded, a wave of dirt and loose stones, broken by the force of the explosion, tore into them. They were lost in the earthy brown cloud, their screams barely audible over the deafening thunder of the blast.
The crowd at the viewing stand held its breath, then sighed as one, disappointed that the very cloud that caused the bloody deaths of the innocent men blocked their view of the carnage. They couldn’t see stones driven through flesh and bone to explode out of dying bodies in a shower of blood.
One woman had the audacity to scream. The sound was theatrical and insincere, and Surero wondered how long she’d practiced it. He heard a man laugh, and the gorge rose in his throat. He closed his eyes and turned away, bumping into someone. He was shoved and almost tripped, scolded and berated, as he pushed his way off the viewing stand. Surero didn’t turn to see the dead men that littered the edge of the great trench. He pressed his hands tightly over his ears to block out the sound of the people laughing and talking in excited, loud whispers. He fled not only from the bloodshed and stupidity, but from the dense air of satisfaction that hung over the viewing stand.
4
6 Hammer, the Year of the Gauntlet (1369 DR) Pristal Towers, Innarlith
The woman sat on the floor, her legs splayed under her, a simple silk dressing gown pooled around her. She wept, tears streaming down her face, her muted sobs echoing in Phyrea’s head. The woman, made of violet light, didn’t look at Phyrea, didn’t seem to notice her at all.
Her baby died, the old woman said, her voice coming from nowhere.
“I know,” Phyrea whispered. “I’m so sorry.”
She got no response to that. The woman continued to cry, and Phyrea knew she had been crying for a long time, for years, even decades, and that she would never stop. The world would end to the sound of her despair.
Phyrea took a deep breath and closed her eyes. She thought about taking a sip of the wine she’d poured herself, but she couldn’t will her hand to pick up the tallglass. The sound of the door opening behind her didn’t startle her. She knew who it was.
“Phyrea?” Pristoleph whispered. “Do you sleep, my love?”
Her chest tightened. A wave of sadness always washed over her when he called her that. She felt a tear well up in the corner of her right eye, but it didn’t fall. It hung there as if waiting for something.
There’s no reason to be like her, the old woman whispered in her head.
“Phyrea?” Pristoleph whispered in her ear.
She reached a hand up and touched his face. She hadn’t realized he’d come so close. He sighed when her palm met the too-hot skin of his cheek. She had stopped being surprised by how hot he felt, as though he suffered from a perpetual fever. She’d asked him about it many times and he’d avoided the subject skillfully at first, then bluntly, and finally she stopped asking.
“Were you sleeping?” he asked, his lips brushing her ear.
She shook her head just enough to tell him she wasn’t, but not enough to brush him off. Still he pulled away. The ghost’s sobbing continued unabated, so Phyrea didn’t open her eyes. She didn’t like to see Pristoleph and the ghosts at the same time. She didn’t want them to belong together.
He sat next to her on the silk-upholstered Zakharan divan. His weight made her lean toward him, and she ended up pressed against his shoulder. She sighed, surprising herself with the sound of it, as though she had already resigned herself to the reality of what he’d come to tell her, though she had no idea what that might be. He stiffened, and in response all her fears washed away until she was left feeling limp and exhausted.
“Your father is dead,” Pristoleph told her. “I’m sorry.”
Phyrea took in a deep breath and let it out slowly.
“He was murdered,” Pristoleph went on.
Phyrea opened her eyes and the woman was still there, still crying, but making no sound.
He won’t be coming with us, the man with the Z-shaped scar on his face said from somewhere high above her. You won’t see him again. He was killed for no reason, and in the end he didn’t want to live.
“Shut up,” Phyrea said, her voice squeaking in her tight throat.
“Phyrea, I” Pristoleph started.
“No,” she whispered, silencing him.
Movement to her right caught her attention and she glanced over to see the little girl standing next to the sideboard, her hand poised over a crystal vase in which sat one yellow roseher father’s favorite flower.
“What kind of man has a favorite flower?” she whispered.
Pristoleph didn’t answer.
“What was the point?” she asked, her voice louder. “Politics, probably,” Pristoleph said. “Coin, favors… an old grudge.”
The little girl was angry and she swatted at the vase. It fell from the side table and shattered on the marble floor. Pristoleph jumped, startled, but Phyrea didn’t move. She kept her eyes locked on the little girl.
“What was that?” Pristoleph asked, but Phyrea didn’t answer him.
“He left you, didn’t he?” she whispered to the girl.
The expression of bitter rage faltered on the ghost’s translucent features, but the anger didn’t diminish.
“Phyrea?” Pristoleph asked. She thought he grew hotter then, almost hot enough to burn her. “What did you say? What do you mean?”
“There will have to be a funeral,” she said. “He was the master builder.”
“The ransar will arrange it,” Pristoleph said.
“I don’t want to go.”
“You should.”
She nodded as the little girl faded into thin air. The crying woman’s sobs went with her.
“I will not let his murderer go unpunished,” Pristoleph assured her, but Phyrea didn’t care.
She didn’t even have the energy to shrug him off, let alone tell him not to bother.
5
1 Alturiak, the Year of the Gauntlet (1369 DR) The Cascade of Coins, Innarlith
Still in mourning, Phyrea wore black to her wedding. She hadn’t carefully considered the choice, and Pristoleph had shown no sign that he cared. When he looked at her in the coach on the way to the temple of Waukeen, he had looked at her eyes. The softness, the longing, the love she saw in his gaze had warmed her and chilled her at the same time. She felt safe in his presence. Safer, anyway, than when she was alone with the ghosts.
Rain came down in nearly horizontal sheets, driven by a fierce wind off the Lake of Steam. The horses faltered several times, and Phyrea held on to the arm of the coach’s velvet bench for fear that the conveyance would be sent over on its side by the frequent, violent gusts.
One of the high priests met them just inside the temple doors. Phyrea didn’t know his name, but she recognized his face. Flanked by a quartet of acolytes in robes of shimmering silk, the priest was draped in thread- of-gold, even finer silk, and a variety of fur that Phyrea couldn’t immediately identify. His wide, pale face betrayed a reluctance no bride wants to see on her wedding day.
“My dear Senator,” the priest said, tipping his chin down in the barest suggestion of a bow. “No guests have
