Page 90 of City of Stone and Silence

Wherever you’ve found yourself, you’ve taken over, haven’t you? His voice in my mind. It’s our nature.

He doesn’t know anything about me, what I’ve been through. But he’s not wrong, is he? Maybe he’s right about your nature, too.

Sudden weight on my shoulders, arms twining around me. For a panicked moment, I nearly activate my armor.

“You’re thinking about Tori,” Meroe says.

I nod, mutely.

“We’ll get to her in time,” she says. “This is going to work.”

I nod again. Meroe hugs me tighter. Her wet skin shifts against mine, her breasts pressed against my back. I feel hot and cold at once.

I squirm around inside the circle of her arms, grab her at the waist, pull her close and kiss her. She gives an excited squeak and topples over with a splash, ending up on her back in the shallows, her wet hair a dark, gleaming halo around her. I crawl forward on hands and knees and bend down to kiss her more thoroughly. Time passes, imperceptibly.

Meroe pulls away for a moment, breathing hard, as I find her breast with one hand and the other slides up her smooth brown thigh.

“Here?” she says, raising an eyebrow.

“Who’s going to notice?” I mutter, kissing her again. “The angels?”

There’s still plenty of daylight left by the time we reach the Cresos ziggurat. I keep looking at Meroe—back in her dress, skin scrubbed to glowing, hair still damp—and shaking my head. Strange princess, indeed.

The third great ziggurat looks much like the others. Two vast cloths are draped on either side of the main ramp, painted with an Imperial clan symbol—Cresos, I assume, though I don’t recognize it. There are two guards with spears at the base, one iceling and one southerner. They don’t look particularly happy to see us. Fortunately, as we approach, I spot Shiara descending the ramp from above, and at her call the pair step aside.

“Isoka!” Whatever damage the exile from the ship did to Shiara’s composure or her wardrobe has long since been repaired. She’s in a long, elegant kizen, her face painted in the very image of the proper young Imperial lady. She manages to make good time down the ramp, even so. “We’ve been expecting you.”

“I take it Jack made it here all right, then,” I say.

She nods. “Though you may want to consider sending a more … conventional messenger next time.”

Meroe snorts a laugh, and I grin. “I trust Jack to get through.”

“I know. It’s just…” She sighs. “Things are … more formal, here.”

I look at the surrounding jungle. “It seems like an odd place for formality.”

“Or maybe a good reason to cling to it,” Meroe says. “Something familiar.”

“Will Catoria see me?” I ask.

“She’s agreed to give you an official audience,” Shiara says. She sounds uncertain, which is unusual for her. “I’m … not sure how productive it will be.”

“We’ll find out.” I feel energized. We’re getting there. One step after another.

I picture the interior of the Cresos ziggurat as much like ours or the Minders’, but instead of taking the corridors to the large room at ground level, Shiara directs us upward. Here, a warren of smaller chambers branches off the main hall. More guards wait at the intersections, wearing hanging shoulder tabards displaying the Cresos clan symbol. An Imperial warrior—a boy my age, really, but trying hard not to show it—is waiting for us, wearing blocky, old-fashioned armor and a red-painted helmet.

“The clan mistress will see you,” he growls. His speech is beyond merely accented, phrased so archaically I can barely understand him. He turns on his heel and stalks away, without waiting to see if we follow.

“A hundred years,” I say quietly, glancing at Meroe and Shiara. “Did people really use to talk like that all the time?”

“In the noble houses, at least,” Shiara says.

The stone walls of the ziggurat are nothing like the wood-paneled corridors of an Imperial mansion, but the Cresos have done their limited best to decorate them as though they were. Precious objects stand on small pedestals at intervals, things they must have guarded since they were first exiled: a small porcelain statue of the Blessed, an even older-looking helmet and a sword sheathed in chipping leather, a comb picked out in mother-of-pearl. In between, someone has tried to re-create traditional Imperial wall paintings—the sort of thing I’ve only seen in stage sets—without very good results. No artists among the clan Cresos exiles, I see.

Two more warriors, an older man and a girl Tori’s age, in patched and fading armor, wait outside the entrance to Catoria’s audience chamber. A silk curtain is draped across the doorway, and our escort falls to his knees and edges through it, bowing deeply. I hear a murmured conversation inside, and he backs out, climbs to his feet with a clatter of armor, and gestures us forward.

“You will show proper respect,” he says. “Especially you, Southerner. Lady Catoria is the sovereign of the Harbor.”