Si'Wren stared up at Ibi, eyes disbelieving.
"Aye," said Ibi quietly, with a woeful, tired nod. "I knew of him, and of your love for him. When two such hearts as yours and Habrunt's beat so strongly for one another, even the deaf can hear that noble drum beat. It was said of him that while the elders all fled like cowards to save their own skins, Habrunt remained in spite of his injuries and rose up to his full former stature, and knocked down his first attacker with a staff of hard wood which the sword had failed to cut in twain despite repeated blows. So Habrunt prevailed against the first one with his staff, and then used the man's own sword to cut them down like tares before they finally surrounded him and slew him by their overwhelming numbers.
"Who could have preferred it any other way, least of all Habrunt himself?" Ibi went on. "Many grieve besides you, Si'Wren, for the memory of lost Habrunt. They say Habrunt stood his ground with none to help him, and sought valiantly to defend the aged one who invented writing, and who was slain together with him also. Yet his majesty the Emperor Euphrates, on being informed of this, washed his hands of the entire wretched matter and has chosen to do nothing whatsoever about it."
Si'Wren felt hot tears well up in her eyes, stinging them, and blurring her vision as she dropped her eyes from Ibi's, and stared numbly at the stones of the floor where the tears fell from her cheeks in an accumulated pattern of insignificant spatters.
So, that which she considered the greatest news of all, was no news at all to her Emperor.
She felt at her pouch, without looking, for her ivory marking sticks, and slowly drew them out with trembling fingers.
The great Emperor Euphrates was desirous that Si'Wren should instruct him, on this long journey, on the virtues of the Invisible God, a God who hated idols.
Bitterness filled her heart and soul, as Si'Wren clutched her beautiful ivory marking sticks with unseen fingers and hung her head in grief, staring blurrily down at the splashes of her tears like mythical 'raindrops' upon the dull smooth unevenness of the stones.
This strange Invisible God had suffered a speechless one to 'speak' through clay tablets, to an Emperor whose ears were perpetually deafened by the turbulent but illiterate praises of the crowds.
It was a hard-won 'miracle', her speechless literacy, considering the mortal sufferings she had endured under Ibi's sage tutelage to bring it to pass. For the sake of God, if not her past miseries, she would have a thing or two to inscribe for her Emperor's pleasure, along the way.