Whisper of Waves wt-1

by Philip Athans

  “My fellow senators,” Salatis began, “ladies and gentlemen. It is my pleasure to introduce to you a young man who has distinguished himself in the service of the city watch, twice beating down the insidious rabble-rousers who daily press for the rebellion of the peasantry against their betters.”

  The young man next to Willem stepped forward.

  That was it. They had moved on. Meykhati had said just enough to satisfy the letter of the traditional introductions and had named him senator. Willem’s smile went away.

  He didn’t listen to the rest of Salatis’s lengthy and gushing introduction, and barely noticed the other two. Willem knew he should have been studying every detail, memorizing every word, but he couldn’t. There would be time, he told himself, to get to know everyone he needed to know, but even then, would it matter? It wasn’t as though he’d have to build coalitions, chair meetings, champion writs and proclamations.

  All he’d have to do for five years-or as long as he was a member of the senate-was exactly what Meykhati told him to do. In exchange, he’d have a title, a generous stipend of gold and property … everything he’d ever wanted.

  He looked around the massive room, in awe of its beauty and of the power that was like a palpable thing there, an electricity in the air. On the floor of the room, which sloped up away from the dais, were arranged chairs of so many different designs he didn’t try to identify even a fraction of them. It had become a tradition, after one senator complained of the seats the then-master builder had provided for them and finally brought in one of his own, that each senator provide his own chair and desk. It quickly became a competition for who could find the most exotic seat, the most ornate, the oldest, the newest, the most expensive.

  Willem’s mother had already begun shopping for one, and thanks to a gift of gold bars from the master builder, was free to spend more on his chair than he’d spent on that ridiculous sculpture for Phyrea. Try as he might, Willem couldn’t stand the thought of sitting on something that cost so much, but then he was a senator, and in Innarlith at least, that’s what senators did.

  One of the other junior senators nudged him with an elbow and Willem realized the ceremony had come to an end.

  He followed his fellow inductees down the steps of the dais and into a crowd of senators, relatives, and well-wishers. The lot of them streamed out of the senate chambers and into an adjacent room, one almost as big, where a massive feast had been prepared. Musicians began to play from a corner of the room, and servants filtered through the dispersing crowd with food and drinks. All around was gay laughter and light banter.

  “Willem, my dear,” his mother beamed. She appeared to him from the center of the crowd like a dolphin breaking the surface of a raging sea. Her smile was all teeth and pageantry. “Oh, my dear, dear Willem!”

  She took his face in her hands and he smiled because he knew she’d want him to.

  “Senator Willem Korvan,” she said, and there was a tear in her eye.

  “Mother,” he said and could think of nothing else to say.

  Hands clapped him on the back and patted him on the shoulder as he and his mother smiled at each of the passersby and uttered inane, meaningless greetings.

  “The throne was empty,” his mother whispered in his ear when the function had finally settled into pockets of friends, acquaintances, and co-conspirators.

  “The ransar’s throne?” he asked, even though he knew precisely what she was referring to.

  “So auspicious a day,” Thurene said with a pained grimace, “and Ransar Osorkon couldn’t be bothered even to walk across the street!”

  He found himself starting to say something in the ransar’s defense but stopped.

  “When you’re ransar,” his mother said, her voice and face conveying real sincerity, “I never want you to miss one of these. It simply should not be allowed.”

  In his entire life Willem Korvan had never wanted so badly to hit his mother.

  58

  9 Eleasias, the Year of the Wave (1364 DR)

  THE WINERY

  Hrothgar woke up with his hammer in his hand and was on his feet before he realized it was just Devorast.

  “By the braided beard of the Brightaxe, Ivar,” he grumbled. “I just about cracked ya one.”

  Hrothgar took no offense at Devorast’s crooked, doubtful smile. Instead he leaned the heavy sledgehammer against his dank, musty cot and sat. Vrengarl snored away, dead to the world.

  The tent they shared was a tight fit for the three of them: Devorast a little too tall for it, and the two dwarves a little too wide, but while they toiled away on the rich man’s winery, the tent was home. It kept the rain out better than their basement room, at least, though it had only rained twice since they’d been there. There was a decent sense of camaraderie in the camp, so no one messed about with their belongings or kept the camp up late with talking, singing, or other disturbances. It wasn’t the Great Rift, but Hrothgar had seen worse.

  “Where do you go at night?” the dwarf asked.

  Devorast pulled off his tunic and sat on the edge of his own cot. In the dark tent Hrothgar knew the human couldn’t see his face, but the dwarf could see Devorast’s.

  “Ivar?” Hrothgar prompted.

  “The woods,” the human answered, then rubbed his face with his hands.

  “North?” asked the dwarf. “Across the path?”

  “It gives me a chance to think,” he said. “You know how we humans value the fresh air.”

  “Ha,” Hrothgar huffed. “That’s a dangerous pursuit, my friend. There could be predators about. After all, the last few times we went out of the city together it was, what, giant frogs and killer waves? Or was it killer frogs and giant waves? Either way, one more walk in the woods and you could find yourself working your way through a dragon’s bowels, and he’ll use your shin bone for a toothpick.”

  Devorast smiled and lay down on his back, his hands behind his head.

  “I’m only kinda kidding, there,” the dwarf warned.

  “I can take care of myself,” Devorast said. “Besides, this whole area has been cleared, and there are patrols.”

  “Those guards are city-born,” the dwarf complained. “One look at the beasties that haunt these parts and they’ll run back to Innarlith so their mommas can wash the night soil out of their breeches.”

  “Maybe so,” the human allowed.

  Hrothgar sat quietly watching Devorast for a moment. He hadn’t closed his eyes and didn’t appear sleepy.

  “Well, you already woke me up,” Hrothgar said. “Might as well tell me what’s on your mind then maybe we can both get a little shut eye. I’m still catching up on what I lost to the su-”

  Hrothgar couldn’t bring himself to say the word “sunburn.”

  The first ten days at the work site had been among the most painful of his life. Everything Devorast had warned him about had come to pass, including the peeling. Then there was the itching, the burning again, and more peeling. He and Vrengarl sat for so long every night, just tearing layers of flaky yellow-white skin off each other’s backs; Hrothgar was sure he’d lost an inch off his shoulder span. Eventually, though, all that stopped, but what they were left with was no less disturbing.

  “I look like half a drow!” Vrengarl had exclaimed the first time they’d seen themselves in a mirror.

  Their skin had turned a rich brown color they both still found unsettling.

  “Ivar,” Hrothgar urged.

  “It’s nothing, my friend,” Devorast replied. “As I said, I just like the fresh air.”

  “That’s all?”

  Devorast sighed, and Hrothgar could tell he had more to say, so he sat quietly waiting.

  “There are no stars out tonight,” Devorast said after a long moment. “On nights like this, it’s hard to tell where the mountains end and the sky begins.”

  Hrothgar nodded. The Firesteap Mountains rose like a wall of brown, green, gray, and white on the southern horizon, towering over the gentle
hills already planted with the Innarlan senator’s Sembian grape vines. Hrothgar and Vrengarl often spent a lazy moment gazing at the mountains, thinking of home, thinking of all things dwarven.

  “Are you homesick?” the dwarf asked.

  “Like you?” Devorast replied with a friendly smile that made Hrothgar look away.

  “Aye,” he said, “like me. Like me, and Vrengarl, and every other swingin’ hammer out here. There’s no shame in that, you know.”

  “Perhaps not, but for me …”

  Hrothgar waited for another long pause to end but finally had to break it himself. “For you what?”

  “For me,” Devorast replied, though he was obviously reluctant to do so, “there’s no home to be sick for.”

  “I can’t imagine that,” the dwarf said. “If I didn’t have the Great Rift to pine for, I don’t know what I’d do.”

  “Make your own home,” Devorast suggested, and Hrothgar wondered if the human had convinced even himself that that was possible. “You can make a home for yourself if you want to.”

  Hrothgar didn’t want to go down that path. He liked where they were, what they were doing, and though he never would have imagined bringing a human so deeply into his confidence, he liked that it was the three of them out there. He didn’t want to make a home anywhere else just then and didn’t want either Vrengarl or Devorast to do that either.

  “Before we left,” the dwarf said instead, “you were working on something.”

  “Yes, I was.”

  “Tell me about that,” Hrothgar suggested. “You always feel better when you talk about some project or another. What was it, another ship?”

  “No,” Devorast replied, “not another ship. I’m sorry, my friend, but I promised another friend that I wouldn’t speak of it.”

  Hrothgar nodded and said, “It’s all done?”

  “It’s all done.”

  “Then there’s your answer,” Hrothgar said. “Get yourself another project. Draw your drawings and figure your figures. Make something. Invent something. Put something together in your mind, on parchment, or with your own two hands, something that’s yours and no one else’s. That’s your home, Ivar, not a place, a city or a realm, but a … ah, what’s the word? What am I tryin’ to say?”

  “I understand,” said Devorast, “and you’re right. Nothing anyone’s ever said to me has been more right, you wise old dwarf you.”

  “There, see,” said Hrothgar. “I’m good for something. What’ll it be then? Maybe that canal you talked about months back, eh?”

  Hrothgar felt a change in the air in the tent, a heaviness to the silence between them.

  “Ivar?” he asked.

  “Go to sleep, my friend,” Devorast whispered, his eyes closed. “It’s late, and we start on the pasture wall tomorrow.”

  Hrothgar nodded, but Devorast’s human eyes probably wouldn’t even register the gesture if he’d opened them.

  59

  13 Eleasias, the Year of the Wave (1364 DR)

  BERRYWILDE

  Construction on the country estate house began a hundred years ago at the request of Phyrea’s great-great grandmother. In the century that followed, rooms, whole wings, gardens, outbuildings, and so on were added here and there and Inthelph still didn’t consider it finished. Most of the central house was built in the Sembian style, all rich hardwoods and marble with fittings usually of gold. It could have housed a hundred people comfortably, and if the downstairs and kitchen were fully staffed, they could have entertained ten times that many.

  Phyrea was alone there.

  She had dismissed the regular staff-an upstairs maid, two downstairs maids, a cook, two gardeners, a handyman, and the dour old butler-on the third day. They took it well, having been dismissed before. They’d gone back to the city to visit family and friends while her father continued to pay them. When she was ready to go back to the city, they would resume their duties at Berrywilde as if nothing had ever happened.

  Phyrea couldn’t stand the thought of anyone watching her, of anyone walking into a room when she thought she was alone. She wasn’t necessarily doing anything she didn’t want anyone else to see, but the point, for her at least, of the country home was to get away from people.

  Her father had begun to pressure her to marry the simpleton from Cormyr, so it was getting harder for her to enjoy herself in the city. Wenefir hadn’t quite forgiven her for the ransar’s egg, so she couldn’t work either.

  She spent her days on a variety of pursuits. Mostly she explored the house and grounds. Some days-most days even-she didn’t leave the house at all. One room led to another and another and another, and in each was a separate treasure trove of trinkets, furnishings, and everywhere gold and silver. One dead relative after another looked down on her from portraits, most of which were so big the figures were larger than life size. The ceilings in the majority of the rooms soared thirty feet or more over her head.

  In the daytime, light streamed in through enormous windows, and Phyrea made sure that all of the heavy curtains were kept open so that light and air would fill the house.

  She’d spent time at Berrywilde as a little girl but never roamed the halls. She’d always hated it there. Nightmares plagued her then-terrible images of violence and death. They got worse after her mother died. She remembered begging her father not to take her there anymore, and for the longest time he hadn’t.

  Eventually, though, Phyrea grew older and forgot all that little girl nonsense. She still didn’t spend any appreciable time in the country, but the ghosts she imagined there as a girl were pushed aside by the young woman she was becoming and the very real violence she put herself in the way of over and over again on the streets of Innarlith.

  On the thirteenth day of Eleasias, Phyrea sat on a leather sofa in her father’s library, absently sorting through a sheaf of paper on which some long-dead great-uncle had written some notes concerning the history of the estate. The family historian puzzled over the name Berrywilde, as if the estate had been called that before any of her family even built the place. No one seemed to recall where the name came from.

  It was late, the windows that in the daytime would flood the room with brilliant light stood as black rectangles twenty feet tall, reflecting the entire room from the light of the candelabra she’d carried in with her. Phyrea rested her head against the soft arm of the sofa but didn’t close her eyes. She tried to read more of the notes, but the handwriting was dense and that particular great-uncle wrote in a dry and stiff style that was hard to get through even when she wasn’t so tired, and Phyrea was so tired.

  She’d never felt so exhausted. Was it the fresh air? The hours spent in silent solitude? She couldn’t keep her eyes open.

  “… and the last of the bloodline,” someone whispered and she was wide awake.

  Her heart skipped a beat then began to thunder in her chest. The papers slipped from her fingers to spill out onto the bearskin rug. Phyrea sat up straight, curling her bare toes into the soft fur. Her hand went to her chest, and her fingers pinched the fine soft silk of her negligee. Eyes darting from corner to corner, Phyrea fought down the fear and tried to tap the well of anger she used so often in the city. It was that anger that made her a thief and gave her the strength to fight off men twice her size and ten times her strength.

  She spotted a gilded letter opener on her father’s desk and crossed the room in three quick steps to snatch it up.

  Whirling, she looked again into every corner of the room, but there was no one there. She was alone.

  Had she dreamed it?

  Her heart still raced. A noise echoed from the next room, a chair or some other piece of furniture being pushed across the wood floor.

  Phyrea swallowed, skipped to the door, and threw it open. Brandishing the letter opener as if it was a sword, she burst into the next room-a small parlor dominated by two enormous wing chairs on either side of a sava board carved from seven colors of marble-fully prepared to kill the intruder she someh
ow knew she wouldn’t find there.

  Of course there was no one in the room.

  Wind whistled outside.

  Phyrea went back into the library and closed the door behind her. She almost called out, “Is someone there?”

  Her father had a crew building a new winery on the western edge of the estate, but that was three miles away.

  There was no one in the house but her.

  “Here,” the wind whispered.

  But it wasn’t the wind whispering.

  No, it was the wind, but it hadn’t whispered anything.

  It was just the wind.

  Still holding the letter opener, Phyrea sat back down on the sofa. The notes lay at her feet and she looked down.

  He had been killed with a heavy blade, she read from one of the sheets. He was found amidst his own blood. He was cold. He had been dead for some hours. He could have been killed by any number of the guests.

  Phyrea closed her eyes, put her bare foot on the sheet of paper, then pushed it under the sofa so she didn’t have to read it again.

  She sat there with her eyes closed for a while, listening, but the wind didn’t whisper and the furniture didn’t move.

  Her heart didn’t stop pounding until she dragged the point of the letter opener across the inside of her left thigh, breaking the skin.

  She dabbed at the cut with the hem of her shift. She didn’t want to get blood on her father’s sofa.

  60

  20 Eleasias, the Year of the Wave (1364 DR)

  THE WINERY

  The sun was high and hot, but a steady breeze from the north cooled the air and rustled the trees. Phyrea didn’t want to leave the house at first, but finally she couldn’t resist it. In the waning moments of the morning she set out on foot, timid at first then boldly stepping across the rolling foothills with confident, energetic strides.