Interlude: Daughter of Shrikes
The days after Rose Malin burned passed in a mad rush. All the great and mighty lords of the Accorded Realms gathered, with all their kings and all their kings’ men, and they rushed about like stunted cockatrices with their heads lopped off.
Emma almost found it amusing. No, she did find it amusing, though no one else seemed to enjoy the joke quite so much as her.
Lot of trouble over some bugger priests, she thought as her wandering steps brought her to an upper terrace of the Fulgurkeep. Ancient pillars held up the roof above her, connected to a short wall on one side over which the great fortress dropped steeply down to lower parapets and crashing waves below.
Her gaze went out over the city, where smoke still rose here and there. Priory sympathizers had been rioting, blaming the Houses for the murder of Horace Laudner, Grand Prior of the Arda. Two weeks had passed since the old power monger’s death, and the guard were just starting to get things under control.
Emma sniffed at the scene. Of course, he goes and makes such a fuss and the nobility still gets most of the credit.
And what did he get? Work. Always more work. And he seemed content with it, the masochistic brute.
Well, he’s not so grumpy nowadays. I suppose I have that blood wench to thank for that. Emma’s lip turned up in a self amused smirk as she ran her fingers along the short wall, which rose just above waist height to her.
“It amuses you?”
The voice was cold, angry. Emma would know that self righteous quiver anywhere. She kept the smile and paused, letting her fingers linger on the edge of a pillar.
“It does, in fact.” Emma turned, seeing a young woman only a year or two older than her standing a ways down the hall. Lisette had changed dramatically since she’d quit the priorguard. She wore a yellow cloak over white robes now, the garments of a Synodite adept — the arbiters of the Aureate Church, rather than the shadowy kidnappers and torturers of the Priory.
“People are dying down there,” Lisette said, her brow furrowed over sky blue eyes. “You shouldn’t laugh at them.”