The Garden of Stones - By Mark T. Barnes Page 0,11
“I need somebody seasoned to restore order, but not an army to loom over a people already fearful for their lives. Ariskander, I need you here, not risking your life trying to save your friend.”
“As you say,” Ariskander replied softly. “I’ll begin the necessary preparations for restoring order to the city. I can send Knight-Colonel Ekko with the First Lion Guard Company into the Rōmarq in my stead.”
“Very well.” Vashne’s smile seemed forced. He gazed at Indris and Shar. “It has been a trying couple of days for all of us. Why do we not join our guests and celebrate the lives of those we lost at Amber Lake? Perhaps we can find joy somewhere.”
Vashne rose from his seat. With Ziaire on one side and Femensetri on the other, he led the other nobles from the room. Belamandris grinned at Indris on his way out. He whispered something to Kasraman, at which both brothers laughed. Corajidin’s face was florid, his stride stiff-legged as he left. Indris could see the veins protruding from the stretched skin of his brow.
Indris needed to show his good grace and attend the evening’s bacchanal. Lotus wine would flow. Enough food for a small village would go to waste. Words would be spoken, regretted, remembered. Sende, the strict codes defining Avānese behavior, demanded honor be satisfied and blood spilled.
Indris cared little for their posturing. He cared he was alive.
Indris found himself dancing the flamenon with a woman who reminded him of sun-drenched beaches, with her wide sea-tinted eyes and hair the shade of where the breakers met the shore. Her skin was smooth, the color of honey, and she moved her body with the strength, the suppleness, of a warrior-poet. Her hands were calloused, ridged with muscle. When she smiled it was a slow, lazy thing that exposed the tips of white fangs. Her hair was scented with henna, honey, and milk.
Indris had seen her earlier in the revelry; she had been seated, legs akimbo. He had watched her talk and laugh and dance all night. Time and time again they found themselves watching each other over glasses of dark wine.
After the dance they made their way to the gardens. He had not felt such desire in too long. They never spoke. Guilt warred with lust, eventually overcome by the heat of her kiss and the surety of her touch. Her laugh vibrated across the skin of his throat as she tore the buttons from his old worn jacket. She straddled him, used a long curved knife to slice away the laces on her tunic to expose the skin beneath. She kissed the tattoos and the brands on his arms. Hands wandered. Mouths teased, pleased, wordlessly urged…Her breath tasted of mandarins.
He did not know who used whom. When he woke, she was gone.
CHAPTER TWO
“Nothing fills the air with the smoke of funeral pyres so much as loyalty.”—soldier’s saying
Day 312 of the 495th Year of the Shrīanese Federation
The air tasted of cooked meat, oiled leather, polished steel, and perspiration. Mariam could hear the gentle hiss of the nearby Marble Sea where it lapped in tiny waves against the sand and gravel shore. From among the tents came the murmured buzz of conversation. The drone of snores, the occasional laugh, and soldiers in song. The heartbreaking bamboo breathlessness of a kahi flute. The basso tones of a theorbo or the complex chords of a long-necked sonesette.
Along the straight avenues of her father’s camp, lanterns hung by chains from blackened iron tripods. Banners with the red-and-black stallion of the Great House of Erebus snapped from tall poles. In front of her father’s pavilion, carved wooden poles held aloft stylized horse heads made from enameled bronze and onyx, garnet and obsidian, or red-and-black gold. Moths clustered about the bright points of reddish light, crashing their blunt heads against the tinted glass. The wind shifted, bringing with it the smell of citronella oil, used to ward off the droning throng of mosquitoes from the wetlands.
Mari crested a grass-topped dune. From her vantage point, she could see the dawn haze of Amnon, bright across the Anqorat delta. The western sky was scattered with stars gone late to their beds. The blue-green moon of Eln balanced on the horizon like a verdigris coin, sending streamers of jade light across the undulating surface of the Marble Sea, making specters of the Seethe ruins rising from the water.
Mornings in Amnon were beautiful, even when she had drunk more than was wise the night before. Then