Phyrea knelt on the muddy riverbank, her simple dress pulled up over her knees to keep it out of the mud. She dipped a hand into the cool water and traced a slow circle with the tip of a finger. Her reflection wavered and broke apart.
“You don’t like what you see?” Ivar Devorast said from behind her.
She looked back at the water, which had already begun to calm. There she saw both herself and Devorast. She smiled and was surprised by the way her face looked. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d looked at her own reflection and seen herself smile, but she didn’t try to remember. It didn’t matter.
“I do,” she said to his reflection. “I like what I see very much.”
He smiled and shrugged and walked downriver a few steps. She watched his reflection in the water as long as she could, then she looked down at her legs. The end of a thin white scar was visible on her thigh and she touched it with her wet hand. The water was cold on her skin and she shivered, though the day was warm and the sun bright.
She knew she would carry those little scars with her forever, but she also knew that there would be no more of them. Phyrea wasn’t conscious of having made that decision, any more than she’d been conscious of making a decision to cut herself in the first place. She just didn’t want to anymore.
Looking out over the slow-moving river, the sun sparkling from its surface, Phyrea felt safer than she ever had in her life, and it wasn’t just the imposing bulk of the Nagaflow Keep that rose behind herthe citadel that had been her home since that terrible night in the stormand it wasn’t because Ivar Devorast was there with her. She felt safe from herself.
So content was she that at first she didn’t see the thing rise from the sun-dappled water. Phyrea blinked to clear the sun from her eyes then gasped and scuttled backward, dragging her dress in the mud. Devorast came to her side with a few fast, heavy strides, and by then Phyrea could see the thing’s facestern and cold, but the face of a human. It rose on a neck that was too long, and Phyrea realized that no shoulders would ever break the water’s surface.
“Svayyah,” Devorast said.
The naga.
Phyrea took a deep breath and put a hand to her chest. Her heart hammered and adrenaline coursed through her veins, but still she smiled.
“Greetings, Senthissa’ssa,” the naga hissed. She blinked at Phyrea, who nodded in response. “We are pleased that you appear well.”
“Thank you, Svayyah,” Devorast said.
Phyrea stood and brushed the mud from her dress. She looked at Devorast and her breath stopped in her throat. Behind him, formed of violet light, stood the form of her father.
“Is this human well?” Svayyah asked, but Phyrea paid her no mind.
Go home, Phyrea, Inthelph said with a gentle smilea smile she’d only rarely seen when he was alive, a smile she wished she’d seen more often. It’s safe.
“Phyrea?” Devorast asked. He touched her elbow, which startled her, and when she blinked her father was gone.
“And he won’t be back,” she whispered.
“Phyrea?” Devorast said.
She looked at him and smiled, and shook her head. “None of them are coming back,” she told him, and he seemed to understand herthough how could he, really?
“This human has lived for a time in more than this world,” Svayyah observed. “Some among the naja’ssara would consider this one blessed indeed.”
Phyrea looked at the naga and said, “Thank you.”
The naga lifted one eyebrow and turned her attention back to Devorast. “It is fortunate that Ssa’Naja has found you. We wish to askwill the canal be rebuilt? Will it be finished?”
“Yes,” Devorast said without the briefest moment’s hesitation. “Yes, it will be.”
The naga sort of bowed to one side in what Phyrea took to be a shrug. “Very well then,” she said. “The agreement between us stands as before.”
“Thank you,” he said, and the naga sank beneath the surface with a smile that made Phyrea shudder.
“It’s time,” Phyrea said. “It’s time to go home.”
“Is it?” he asked. “You’ve received a message from Pristoleph?”
“No,” she said with a smile, turning her face into the warm wind, “but it’s time to go back.”
78
7 Eleint, the Yearof Lightning Storms (1374 DR) Pristal Towers, Innarlith
Pristoleph smoothed his already smooth tunic with hands that didn’t shake so much as vibrate. He pressed his teeth together, then relaxed his jaw. He folded his arms in front of his chest, then let them hang limp at his side. He sat, briefly, on one of the antique Mulhorandi folding chairs then stood. He paced for a few steps then stopped at the opposite end of the parlor from the door. Then he crossed to the fireplace and leaned with one elbow on the mantle. His nervous proximity made the fire flare white so he stepped away, sensitive to the comfort of the guests that he’d been told had arrived.
The ransar still hadn’t settled on where or how he should stand when the door opened and Ran Ai Yu stepped in. Pristoleph smiled at the Shou woman, as had become his habit, and she smiled back then held the door open and bowed.
“Ransar,” she said, her accent tickling Pristoleph’s ears in a way that delighted him only until Phyrea stepped into the room, “may I present your wife, the Mistress Phyrea, and the Master Builder of Innarlith, Ivar Devorast.”
Phyrea nodded to the Shou woman and smiled at Pristoleph. She stepped into the room with a foreshortened, almost timid gate. The way she looked made his skin grow warm, but the way she looked at him cooled him until he almost shivered. The smile they shared stayed warm throughout, though, and he could feel a certain understanding pass between them.
“I’ve told you before,” Ivar Devorast said, breaking that connection and pulling Pristoleph’s attention to him with the crystalline confidence of his voice, “how I feel about that title.”
“A jest, then,” Pristoleph said, extending his hand to the one man he could truly call a friend. “Call yourself ‘foreman,’ ‘chief ditch-digger,’ or ‘Lord of the Watercourse’ for all I care.”
Devorast put his hand in his and their grasp was warm, firm, and direct.
Turning to Ran Ai Yu, Devorast said, “Seeing you again pleases me as much as it surprises me, Miss Ran. I hope you’ll be staying in Innarlith long enough for me to visit Jie Zud.”
“You are welcome aboard her any time you wish, Master Devorast,” she said, bowing once more, and her eyes darted to Pristoleph. “Circumstances shall keep me here for, I believe, some time to come.”
“Ran Ai Yu has agreed to act as my seneschal,” Pristoleph explained. He tried to keep from grinning like a schoolboy, especially when Phyrea’s eyes widened and she studied him with some confusion. “She will be staying on here, at Pristal Towers.”
“It would please me greatly,” the seneschal said, “if Jie Zud were to be the first ship to pass from the Lake of Steam to the Nagaflow without use of magecraft.”
“Then I shall do my best to see that day finally arrive, Seneschal,” Devorast said with a bow of his own.
“That’s it, then,” Pristoleph said. “You’ll rebuild it? You’ll finish it?”
“You’ll pay for it?” asked Devorast.
With a laugh Pristoleph replied, “I’ve never withdrawn that offer. And for that, I will expect a work befitting my queen.”
Devorast glanced at Phyrea and said, “It will be.”
The air took on a density that made all four of them look at anything but the others in the room.
Finally, Pristoleph could stand it no more and said, “She was never mine, Ivar.” He looked at Phyrea, who nodded to him, then wiped a tear from her cheek with the back of her hand. “She was no more mine than she will be yours.”
Devorast nodded and he and Phyrea shared a glance.
“And she will have to share you,” Pristoleph said with a smile that expressed both joy and sadness, “with a hole in the ground.”