“Excellent,” said Maris. “Just tell me what you need.”
Tes glanced around at the floating market, with all its levels, its rooms, its secrets. “I don’t suppose you have any tea?”
IV
The palace rose over the Isle, the crimson water lapping at the stone pedestals that held it up. But from the prison deep inside, there was no sound of water, no tinted light. Only the dull echo of footsteps for the second time that day.
They seemed to run ahead, warning the man in the cell below that someone was coming.
Berras was on his feet by the time his visitor arrived. He took in her pale brown eyes and her widow’s peak, the long black hair that fell in a curtain behind her crisp white robes, and for the first time in days, he smiled.
“Ezril.”
The Aven Essen stood beyond the bars, her priestly garments shining like a moon against the dim stone confines. He was used to seeing her in ordinary clothes, her face obscured by her white mask, but she had the kind of voice that conveyed expression, even with her features hidden. Now, her annoyance was on full display.
“Berras Emery,” she said with a long-suffering sigh. “What a mess you made.”
His brow furrowed. “It can be fixed.”
Ezril inclined her head. “Can it?” she mused in her airy way. “I think not. Your plan was rushed. And you, too eager. I warned you of that, didn’t I? Change may seem sudden when it comes, Berras Emery. A tree, split by a bolt of lightning. A flood overrunning the banks. But it’s easy to forget, the storm must gather first.”
He gripped the bars. “Must you always speak in riddles like a priest?”
“I am a priest,” she pointed out, “and they are not riddles, just because you fail to understand them.” She folded her hands inside the sleeves of her robes. “Nature provides an analog to every human problem. An answer to every question.”
“I don’t need answers,” he muttered. “I need you to open the cell, so I can finish what I started.”
“What you started…” she echoed, looking up, not at the prison ceiling, but the palace overhead. “You worked so hard to get within the walls, and here you are. So far, and yet, so close.”
Berras grimaced, but said nothing.
“But you are alone,” she went on. “No persalis, no borrowed magic, no contingent of willing hands.” Her gaze flicked to his bandaged fist. “Just you.”
“If you help me—”
She pressed on, as if he hadn’t spoken. “Oh, you might kill one of them, before you’re caught. But I fear we both know which one you would choose.”
He opened his mouth, but she cut him off. “Do not lie,” she warned. “I know we each have our own reasons, but you promised me when we first met that this wasn’t for revenge.”
“It’s not.”
Ezril clicked her tongue. “The problem with venom, Berras, is that if you’re not careful, it can also poison you.” She shook her head. “No, you had your chance, and failed.” She unfolded her arms, reached out, and trailed her thin fingers over the bars. “Obviously, this requires a more delicate touch.”
Berras lunged at her through the bars, but she was already out of reach. She tutted, lips twitching in a smile. As if it were a game.
“Fine,” he growled. “We’ll do it your way. Sel Fera Noche. Just get me out of here.”
But Ezril had stopped listening. The ring on her hand, carved from pale marble, had begun to glow, warming as it did with a pleasant heat. “I have to go,” she said. “It appears I’m being summoned by the king.”
She turned toward the stairs.
“Ezril,” he called after her. “I will tell them. If you leave me in this cell, I will tell them everything.”
The priest stopped, and sighed. “Well,” she said, “in that case…”
She turned back to the cell, one hand reaching out, not for Berras, but the stone wall at his back. People often forgot that priests had magic. They assumed that because they held the world in balance, their power must be weak. That they could not fell a tree as easily as grow one.
But as Ezril flexed her hand, the stone wall splintered, shearing off a sharpened edge. It sang through the air, changing tune only when it slid across the skin at Berras Emery’s throat. Skin that parted like a piece of summer fruit. His good hand went to the wound, and he opened his mouth to speak, but the stone blade had cut deep enough to silence as well as kill.