Yet as we approached the house, Fayazi’s engraver crossed the lawn, stopped the guard leading me, and whispered to him. After a quick, furtive discussion, the guard redirected me toward the western side.
“That way,” he said, pointing with one thick hand toward the back of the house.
“I thought I was to leave,” I said.
“Go that way,” he said again.
“What’s that way?”
“The lady wishes to speak to you once more,” explained the engraver. “In more pleasant environs.”
I glared at him, but relented, and walked on, the engraver following behind me.
We walked nearly the perimeter of the halls, the trees about us dancing with glimmering mai-lanterns. Eventually we came to a large ballroom of sorts, built into the back of the house, with small round windows all shuttered, though their cracks shone with golden light.
I heard a voice within the ballroom—slightly raised, as if in argument. I slowed my pace, trying to listen.
It was Fayazi Haza’s voice, shrill and angry. She was arguing with someone, but whoever it was spoke so quietly I could not hear them respond. For a good while I could barely comprehend Fayazi; but then I came to one shutter that stood slightly ajar, and I heard her voice leaking through.
I plucked a vial from my satchel—one I had not used, smelling of lavender—and surreptitiously dropped it in the grass.
I stopped walking and turned about, feigning confusion. “I dropped something, sir,” I said to the engraver. “My vial. It was right here in my satchel…”
He huffed for a moment, then searched the dark grass with me. My search brought me closer to the open shutter; and once I was below it, I paused to listen. Though I could hear Fayazi, the person she was speaking with was still so quiet I could not make them out.
“…do any of this if you tell me nothing,” Fayazi was saying. “A third? Third what? What are they to find? What do they seek?…Oh, you keep saying that! I did not ask for any of this, you know. You don’t understand what it was like, being here. If he wished me to lead, he would have given me some line. Yet here I stay, tied up like a mad dog…”
The engraver’s hand flashed out above me, snapping the shutter closed. He glared down at me, then held out my vial. “I found this,” he said coldly. “Kindly buckle your bag tighter.”
I bowed to him, took the vial, then followed him on about the edge of the house. The voices within, I noticed, had gone silent.
He led me to a door in the back of the house, then opened it and waited for me. He stayed behind as I entered into a long, low, elegant chamber, lit by mai-fruit trees in bronze pots standing here and there. A small table sat in the center of the room, bedecked with food, and on one side sat Fayazi Haza, dining and sipping from a silver goblet of wine. She had changed clothes: whereas before her form had been mostly obscured by her robes, she now wore a dress that tied around her neck, revealing her pale arms and shoulders. Her very image seemed to bend the light about her, making her appear gauzy and surreal.
She looked up at me, and gave me a small, sad smile, and said, “How went the walls, Signum?”
I hesitated, liking this none at all. I glanced around. The room seemed empty except for her guards. I wondered who she’d been talking to.
The guard behind me grew close, ushering me forward. I relented and approached. Fayazi seemed to grow lovelier with each step, until the very air felt like it shimmered about her.
“Well?” she asked. “What did you find at the walls?”
I took the shootstraw pipe out of my mouth, looked down at my feet, and tried to keep my head about me. “Didn’t find much, ma’am,” I said. “Sorry to say.”
“Yet I’m told,” she said, “you tarried at our river gates. Did you find something there?”
“I found water, ma’am,” I said, “and rocks, and not much else.”
A fluttering of her eyes. Yet it felt queerly affected now, like a stage actor playing a role not much rehearsed. Something was wrong.
“And you discovered a hole of some kind,” she said. “A hidden one. One some interloper must have dug in the grounds. Is that correct?”
“Seems it was hidden. But I don’t know who made it. Can’t see sense in it yet. I will have to report back first.”
I held her gaze—for what I’d said was true, though it was not the whole truth. Finally she took a dainty bite of flesh from the tines of her fork. “Sit. And eat.”