The Dark Remains - Mark Anthony [118]
However, he never knew of the coins she earned working magic tricks in the street and which she kept hidden in a hole in the wall. On her twentieth birthday she had presented him with a sack of gold which held exactly the price the city laws decreed for the servitude of one woman. Gulthas had exploded in rage, but she had been ready for that, and she had fled Corantha to the north—to freedom and her future.
And what of the old woman’s card, sister? Did she not say that you could never escape your fate?
Lirith could not think of that now. She bought a small packet of sugared lindara petals from a vendor and let them melt on her tongue as she made her way down a lane lined with tall sunleaf trees.
She was searching for the guild house of the goldsmiths, and she had to be getting close. According to a traveling merchant she had spoken to at the hostel, the guild house was located on the Street of Flames. So far Lirith had found a Street of Smoke, a Street of Torches, and a Street of Many Colors. This last had nothing to do with flames, but she had liked the name so had walked down that lane anyway. Banners had hung above every doorway and were strung over the street, each one of a different hue, bedazzling her eyes. It was the street occupied by the city’s cloth dyers.
The others had their tasks as well—and Lirith had been grateful for Durge’s display of good, solid, Embarran logic at the hostel. The death of a god was a completely incomprehensible thing, but treating it as if it were something mundane and usual, something that could be studied and understood, had removed the sense of paralysis that had bound them all. Maybe there was no point to it—maybe they would never truly understand the mystery at work here—but at least now it felt like they were doing something about it.
So while Lirith had been charged with seeking out the guild of the goldsmiths, Durge was to accompany Aryn back to the narrower and more crowded streets of the Fifth Circle in order to speak to the priests of the god Geb. Lirith had thought it interesting that the Rat God’s temple was not in the Second Circle with the other holy houses, but rather in the district inhabited by the downtrodden folk who followed him. Perhaps Durge had been onto something; it was not likely many of the gods cared for Geb. It was his and Aryn’s mission to discover if the priests of Geb knew any reason why another might want their god destroyed. Lirith was to do the same with the goldsmiths.
In turn, Melia and Falken had ascended toward the center of the city to request an audience with the emperor. It was not likely they would be granted entry, given Orsith’s words earlier, but Melia had insisted.
Ephesian cannot refuse us, she had said. Not now that a second god has been murdered. Is this how he wishes to begin the dynasty of his name, with such chaos in the city?
All of them had stared at Melia as she spoke those words. Her cheeks had glowed hotly, and her eyes had seemed too bright, like beads of spun glass.
At last Falken had laid a gentle hand on her shoulder. Melia, it’s the nineteenth Ephesian in the dynasty we’re going to see, not the first.
For a moment the small woman had gone rigid, her eyes staring but seeming not to see. Then she had frowned at Falken.
I know that, she had snapped. Do you think I’m an idiot?
Before anyone could say anything more, she had sailed through the door of their room. Falken had followed after her, but not before casting a worried look back at Lirith. Melia’s spells seemed to be increasing in frequency. But what did they mean? Why was Melia getting so caught up in the web of the past?
And what about you, sister? Why can you not stop