Whisper of Waves wt-1

by Philip Athans

  “You hate me,” he said.

  “No,” Halina replied. “Willem, I could never hate you, and you’ve hardly been monstrous. You have reasons for waiting, and I understand, but … but …”

  “But you’ve waited long enough,” he said.

  “No,” Halina whispered. “Yes.”

  “Then that’s it,” he told her, looking her in the eye and lying, though he so wished he wasn’t. “We’ll be married straight away. I’ll speak with your uncle at his earliest convenience.”

  “Willem,” she cooed, “do you mean it?”

  He meant to answer her but just then he saw his mother, her arms folded in that way she had of telling him he was making a terrible mistake, standing in the doorway to the sitting room.

  “Really,” Thurene said, her voice like freezing rain. “I suppose I should be thankful that this is happening in the middle of the night so at least the neighbors will be spared the unseemly melodrama.”

  Willem could feel Halina stiffen in his arms. He watched her try to gather herself, having no idea what to say to her or to his mother.

  Halina made sure not to look at Thurene but gave Willem a moony-eyed glance then took her weathercloak and ran out the door, down the steps, and into the dark street.

  “Close the door, my dear,” Thurene said, her voice still unthawed. “You’ll catch your death.”

  He closed the door and leaned against it, his eyes falling to the floor as if attached to heavy weights.

  “Really, Willem, the Thayan?”

  Willem didn’t bother to sigh. He was so tired.

  “Please tell me you didn’t mean that,” she pressed.

  “I love her, Mother. I’ve already promised her-”

  “What, my dear?” Thurene almost shouted, then calmed herself. “You’ve promised her what? That you’d ruin your life for her? Throw away your career and your fortune for her? Sacrifice your future for her? Is that what you promised?”

  “You know what I promised,” he said. “It’s a promise I made a long time ago.”

  “And the master builder?”

  “What about him?” Willem asked.

  “Does he know about this promise you’ve made to a foreign girl, the niece of a man you’ve told me yourself is some sort of rabble-rouser?”

  “A foreign girl?” he said with a sigh. “In case you’ve forgotten, Mother, I’m a foreign boy.”

  “Oh, no, my dear,” Thurene shot back. “You’re neither a foreigner nor a boy. You’ve made this city your home. You’ve told me so yourself. You’ll be a powerful man, here, Willem, and you’re no boy, so stop acting like one.”

  Willem let all the air out of his lungs and sagged. His knees almost gave out on him. He put his hands over his face.

  “I’m so tired,” he sighed.

  “Then go upstairs and go to sleep,” his mother said. “In the morning you will go see the master builder and you will ask for his daughter’s hand in marriage. You know he wants the match, and we both know what it will mean for you. Your loyalty has to be to Inthelph, Willem, at least for now. If you have to … see this little girl in the meantime, well, as I said, you’re a man, but don’t marry her, my dear. Don’t do that to yourself. Don’t you dare do that to yourself.”

  Willem thought of the beginnings of a thousand arguments but his mind wouldn’t let him think them through. All he wanted was to sleep.

  “Inthelph has done so much for you, Willem,” his mother went on. “He is a very important senator and the master builder. He not only can arrange a title for you, Willem, but he’s willing to. Willing…. He can hardly wait to get you that title. A title, my dear! Show him you’re willing to sacrifice for him. Not that marrying that lovely girl of his is so much a sacrifice.”

  “Sacrifice?” Willem whispered.

  His mother couldn’t know what he’d already sacrificed for the master builder. She had no idea the extent to which he’d sold his very soul to help Inthelph maintain his position in the city, and in fact neither did Inthelph. Even though the poison had failed to kill tough old Khonsu in the end …

  “Maybe …” Willem said aloud, but finished the thought to himself alone:

  Maybe it is time I do a favor for Inthelph that he actually knows about.

  “No, my dear,” Thurene said. “Not maybe.”

  Willem nodded.

  “Good boy,” his mother replied. “Now off to bed.”

  42

  2 Ches, the Year of the Wyvern (1363 DR)

  SECOND QUARTER, INNARLITH

  Did you poison Khonsu?” Pristoleph asked.

  Marek Rymut often thought that if he didn’t have such a wonderful sense of humor he’d have to just kill everyone in Innarlith, they were so stupid.

  “No,” Marek said, suppressing the laugh with a shallow breath. “I daresay if I had, he would be dead and not locked in that trancelike state. The priests can’t seem to decide if the assassin used too much of the poison or not enough.”

  He sat across a wide, marble-topped desk from a fire genasi. What made that funny, and the Innarlan so stupid, was that no one seemed to know that the up-and-coming senator was the son of a human woman and a fire elemental. They seemed to accept that he had “unusual hair.” He occasionally wore makeup to soften the deep red of his face. He told people he was Chondathan, and the idiots bought it.

  Pristoleph looked deeply into his eyes and Marek finally looked away, though he was confident that the senator would see that he was telling the truth.

  “You told me you have progress to report,” said the genasi, who looked down at his desktop with a distant, cold gaze that made for an attractive contrast with his fiery nature.

  Marek always had the hardest time staying focused in the presence of Pristoleph. Maybe it was the man’s hair-so like fire dancing across his scalp. Or was it the equally hot embers that blazed in his deep, wine-red eyes?

  “Rymut,” the genasi prompted.

  With a smile and a nod, Marek said, “The butchers have finally formed their guild and have agreed to allow in the men who work at the slaughterhouse, including the day laborers and those unfortunate wretches who clean out the stalls. Can you imagine so ghastly an occupation? Really.”

  “And?” the impatient senator growled.

  “And,” Marek went on unfazed, “the drovers are in as well. Should one be so inclined, one might be able to bring the meat supply to a grinding halt. Oh, please do excuse the pun.”

  There was no indication that Pristoleph had even heard the joke.

  “Good, yes?” asked Marek.

  “A start,” Pristoleph replied. The genasi turned to gaze from a window that looked out over the street in a good, but not outstanding section of the posh Second Quarter. “It’s not good enough, though.”

  “No?” Marek chanced.

  “The teamsters,” Pristoleph replied, still looking out the window. “The men who drive the carts, who deliver things, carry things, and move things around.”

  “Ah, yes,” Marek joked. “That would be a teamster.”

  “And the dock hands,” Pristoleph continued, ignoring the Thayan. “The men who load and unload ships.”

  “Work gangs,” Marek explained, surprised he’d have to. Pristoleph often spoke, publicly too, about his rough and tumble upbringing in the uncharted wastelands of the Fourth Quarter. Surely he knew how poor people earned their meager coppers. “The more prosperous ship masters have gangs of these men, and the gangs all hate each other. They come to blows on a semi-regular basis, even killing each other from time to time. You’re more likely to form a guild of senators.”

  “I thought perhaps you could bring your magic to bear,” Pristoleph said, turning his smoldering glare back on Marek.

  “It would be a challenge,” the Red Wizard said, hoping to put off giving him a real answer.

  “Control how goods move into, through, and out of the city,” said Pristoleph, “and you control the city. These dockhands and teamsters are just men, trying to
feed themselves and their families. Should they have an extra silver for a beer or a whore at the end of the month, they’ll set aside their squabbles.”

  “And if they don’t?”

  “If they don’t,” Pristoleph said without a hint of emotion, “find the leader of each gang, then pay the second in line to kill him and throw in with us. He’ll enjoy our protection so no one will be able to do the same to him.

  We’ll call it the Trade Workers Guild.”

  “Catchy,” Marek said.

  The Red Wizard could feel that the conversation was done, but he didn’t want to go.

  “Pristoleph …” he started.

  Marek Rymut was rarely at a loss for words.

  “What about Khonsu?” Pristoleph asked.

  Marek got the feeling that the genasi knew why he was uncomfortable, guessed what he was trying to say, and by moving on to other business, was giving a clear signal that would prevent a more violent refusal.

  The Red Wizard liked to think he could take a hint.

  “When he wakes up,” Marek replied, “he’ll be … over. Whoever it was who tried to kill him may as well have. There’s not a senator in Innarlith who won’t be happy to be rid of him. I think he’d have been killed in his sleep except they all hope he’ll wake up, see what a ruin he’s become, and it’ll torture him.”

  “Don’t be so sure,” Pristoleph said. “Could be he wanted it all to stop.”

  “So he alienates his colleagues,” Marek said, taking up the thought, “betrays his friends, opens himself to his enemies, and lets his own arrogance burn out of control in the hope that someone will kill him?”

  Pristoleph looked down at his desktop again and said, “You have work to do.”

  As he walked out Marek puzzled over what he was sure only he was sensitive enough to detect in the otherwise ruthless and uncompromising genasi: a flash of regret so brief it was over in less time than it would take to blink an eye. While it was there, it was as intense as everything about Pristoleph.

  Pristoleph, Marek thought, letting the strange man’s name roll through his mind. It’s a shame I’m going to have to destroy you someday. Truly, truly a shame.

  43

  26 Tarsakh, the Year of the Wyvern (1363 DR)

  ALONG THE BANKS OF THE NAGAFLOW

  The lone dista’ssara set up his camp near the bank of the river with a slow, relaxed air that Svayyah found hypnotic. The naga had never thought of humans as particularly interesting, but from the first time she’d seen that one in particular, she’d been unable to banish him entirely from her mind.

  He was a male, and watching him brought out Svayyah’s female side. It wasn’t natural, she knew. It wasn’t acceptable, but when she looked at him, she felt like a female.

  Nothing would ever come of that, of course, and the four-limbed freak was a dista’ssara-one of the hands of the embodiment-and so would always be her lesser, but again, the man had a certain quality.

  Svayyah watched him from the water, which was where she always felt more comfortable. The humans called the river the Nagaflow, and Svayyah and her tribemates liked the name. It was a warning to humans and their apelike kin that the water was home to their betters, the naja’ssara, the water nagas.

  He was looking at her, and she hadn’t noticed.

  A chill ran down her serpentine body, like tickles of lightning running all twenty-five feet from the base of her skull to the blunt tip of her tail.

  “Are you all right there?” the man asked, standing and moving closer to the water, as if he was about to swim out to her.

  “We are fine, dista’ssara,” she said, bruising her tongue with his inelegant language. “Keep your distance.”

  He was surprised by that and said, “I didn’t see you there. If you’d prefer, I can set up my camp elsewhere if you’re bathing here.”

  He looked around while Svayyah tried to figure out what he was trying to say.

  “Are you alone here?” he asked. “Are you from the keep?”

  Ah, Svayyah thought, he thinks we’re human.

  She suppressed the natural tendency any of her kind would have to be mortally offended by that implication and shook her head. Her face would have resembled a human’s, especially from a distance. He thought she was some dista’ssara girl out for a swim.

  “Do you practice the Art?’ she asked, though she felt confident she knew the answer.

  “Magic?” he said. “No, I don’t.”

  “Strange,” Svayyah said, surprised. “You carry yourself with a confidence that only a strong connection to the Weave could bring, especially for a dista’ssara.”

  “Sorry to disappoint you,” the man replied. He was cheeky, Svayyah had to give him that. “What does that mean, dista’ssara?”

  “In your insufficient tongue, we believe: ‘hands of the embodiment.’”

  He took a step backward and said, “You’re a naga.”

  “We are Svayyah,” she said. “We are naja’ssara, what you would call a water naga. Does that surprise you?”

  “No,” the man said, running a hand through his orangered hair. “I suppose it shouldn’t anyway.”

  “Do we frighten you?”

  “No,” he answered quickly enough and with sufficient confidence that Svayyah believed him. “Do you want me to go?”

  “If we did, we would have told you to go,” she said.

  “‘We’?” the human asked. “Are there more of you?”

  “We are alone here,” she replied, and the man appeared to understand. “We have seen you here before, when the dista’ssara started to build that tower.”

  The man looked up at the structure, nodded, and said, “Does that offend you?”

  “It surprises us,” she replied. “It is beautiful.”

  “Thank you,” he said.

  “We knew it,” Svayyah said. “You are responsible for that structure, aren’t you …”

  “Ivar Devorast,” the human said.

  “Ivar Devorast,” the naga repeated. “Why are you here? Why would you camp at the riverbank and not live in your own work?”

  “That’s a long story,” he said.

  “Which is a long story?” Svayyah asked. “Why you’re here, or why you don’t sleep in the human tower?”

  “Both, I suppose,” Devorast replied.

  “Well, then,” said Svayyah, “light your fire, sit, and tell your tale, Ivar Devorast.”

  He looked her in the eye for some dozen heartbeats, then an understandably suspicious smile came across his face and he said, “Thank you, Svayyah, I would like that.”

  Svayyah blinked at him, stunned into silence while she watched him set his campfire. He’d answered her as if her command to light his fire and tell her his story had been a request.

  Another tingle played down the scaly length of her snakelike body, and Svayyah writhed in pleasure as the human began to speak.

  44

  16 Mirtul, the Year of the Wyvern (1363 DR)

  SECOND QUARTER, INNARLITH

  They say he just came out of it all at once,” Inthelph whispered, but not so softly that half the room didn’t hear him. “He lay at death’s very door for … how long?”

  “Five months,” Meykhati provided.

  “So long….” Inthelph whispered.

  Willem’s head spun and his hands shook. He couldn’t look at the master builder or at any of the senators that stood around him. He breathed only with some difficulty.

  “At the very least,” said Senator Djeserka, “you have to give the old man his due. I heard he had enough of that poison in him to drop a stone giant.”

  Meykhati nodded and said, “He had a team of clerics working on him practically day and night. Apparently he’d given Waukeen’s temple enough gold over the years that the Merchant’s Friend thought he deserved another year.”

  Willem’s mouth went dry. It felt as if he’d crossed the Calim Desert on foot.

  “If Waukeen was any kind of friend to that particu
lar merchant,” the master builder said, “he would have let him go.”

  “Are you all right, Willem?” Meykhati asked.

  Willem’s eyes went wide when he realized the men were looking at him. If he looked half as bad as he felt …

  “I’m well, thank you, Senator,” Willem answered, faking a smile.

  “My, Inthelph, I think you might be keeping young Willem out in the rain too much,” Meykhati joked, slapping Willem on the back with a fatherly wink.

  “Willem has been working very hard lately,” said the master builder. “He’s decided to take control of his own fate.”

  Willem spun on Inthelph, his face flushed, sweat soaking him. The three senators were taken aback, but Inthelph laughed and the moment passed.

  “He’ll be a senator soon enough,” the master builder said.

  Willem studied his cheerful, sociable demeanor and told himself that Inthelph didn’t know anything, didn’t know it was he who had poisoned Khonsu.

  The senators moved on to other subjects, including the names of their younger, easier-to-manipulate colleagues whom they had managed to move into the committees once run by Khonsu. Though the old man could maintain his seat on the senate-he’d paid for it long ago, after all-he was a lone vote without consensus or allies. He could sit on the senate forever, but for him it would never be anything but a meaningless title ever again.

  Willem swallowed his third glass of brandy and closed his eyes while it burned his throat. His hands were still shaking but not as bad.

  He wanted to say, “I got away with it.” He wanted to tell Inthelph and his smug friends who had set the stage for their triumph over the old man. What would they have done?

  Willem didn’t know, which is precisely why he kept his mouth shut. Instead he looked across the seemingly endless ballroom at Khonsu.

  The old man sat in a chair-a strange contraption with wheels on the sides. A blanket was draped over his frail, sticklike legs. His skin was the color of bleached parchment. What little hair he’d had was gone and his dull eyes were lined with red.

  Behind him stood the old chambermaid. She didn’t look much healthier than her half-dead employer.