Philip Athans - Lies of Light

A sound came from behind the door-the clank of keys on a ring.

“Hello?” Surero called out, his own voice hurting his ears, which had grown so accustomed to the utter silence of the tomb.

“Stand away from the door,” the man’s deep voice rumbled, and Surero imagined it made the heavy, iron-bound oak door quiver as if in fright.

He slid one foot back, then the second foot to meet it, and almost fell. He put a hand against the wall, scraping some skin from his palm, but he held himself up. His eyes burned, and if he’d had enough water in his body, he’d have begun to cry. Instead he just stood there and quivered.

“We’re going to let you go,” the voice said. “Do you understand?”

Surero’s voice caught in his throat. He nodded, but the man wouldn’t be able to see him. He stood and waited, and it seemed as though an awfully long time had passed. The door didn’t open.

“Rymut?” he whispered.

Then his throat closed again, and his knees were going to collapse under him, so he sat. He ended up leaning half against the rough stone, his cheek pressed against the wall, his nose filled with the spice of mold.

He’s taunting me, Surero thought. They aren’t going to let me go. It’s Rymut. He’s playing a trick on me.

“He’s playing a trick on me,” Surero whispered.

Then his teeth closed as tightly as his throat, and his wasted, filthy, clammy body trembled with impotent rage. He boiled inside his six by six cell, and tried to close his ears to the sound of men moving on the other side of the door.

They aren’t there, he told himself. Give up. Give up hope.

Surero hadn’t had a word of news from the outside world for a hundred and twenty-five days. For all he knew, the hated Marek Rymut was dead. But he doubted that. Surely the Thayan scum had only further ingratiated himself into the petty aristocracy of Innarlith. Surero had no doubt that Rymut had taken from more and more people like him. The Thayan had taken his customers, had stolen his formulae, had robbed him of his reputation. Surero, who had lived every moment of his miserable existence in the pursuit of excellence in the alchemical arts, had been reduced to a ragged, homeless, desperate husk of a man, no more substantial a creature than the wretch four months in the ransar’s dungeon had made him. When he’d done the only thing fitting, the only thing a man in his position could do, he had failed. Something had gone wrong. The mixture itself had worked and the explosion was powerful, but Marek Rymut had lived.

And Surero had gone to the dungeon to rot. Forever.

A key turned in the lock. The sound was unmistakable.

Surero looked up at the door, his eyes locked on the very edge so he could perceive any minute crack that might actually open.

Fear washed away his hatred, but the source was the same. Was it Marek Rymut behind that door? Was it the Thayan robber come to kill him once and for all?

“Rymut?’ he asked, his voice squeaking past his constricted vocal chords.

The door swung open to a flash of blinding light and a deafening squeak of hinges that hadn’t been used, much less oiled, in four months. Surero’s eyes locked shut against the brilliant illumination of the single torch, and he could only listen as the man stepped into the room, his steps heavy and confident, shaking the stained flagstones beneath them.

“Stand up,” the voice commanded, closer and clearer with no door between it and Surero.

“Kill me,” Surero croaked, his hands pressed hard against his burning eyes. “Go ahead and kill me, Thayan bastard.”

A hand that seemed the size of a god’s grabbed a fistful of the soiled linen gown that had been his only clothing since the previous Marpenoth, and took a few dozen chest hairs along with it. Surero winced and shook as he was pulled to his feet.

Hot breath that smelled almost as bad as his cell washed over his face, and the man said, “Who in the Nine perspirin’ Hells are you calling a Thayan?”

Surero chanced it. He opened one eye.

“You …” he mumbled. “You’re not … Rymut.”

“I’m the jailer, wretch,” the man said. “I’m the bloke what’s been feeding you these months. How’s about a little gratitude here, eh?”

Surero swallowed, forgetting how much his throat hurt, and replied, “Yes. Sorry. Thanks.”

That made the jailer laugh, and Surero was just relived enough that it wasn’t Rymut who’d come to claim him that he laughed a little too.

“Are you really …?” the prisoner stuttered. “A-are … are y-you going to …?”

“You’re all done, mate,” the jailer said, setting Surero down and letting go his clothes. “The ‘Thayan bastard’ said you’d had enough so the ransar’s springin’ ya. You’re free.”

“Free?” Surero asked. It was not possible-not for the reasons the jailer gave. “I’ve had enough?”

“Well, kid, you didn’t kill him after all.”

“But I tried.”

There was a short silence while Surero just looked at the man. He was hardly less filthy that his prisoner, but bigger, better fed, and capable of smiling.

“Maybe,” said the jailer, “you’ll want to keep that bit to yourself, son.”

9 Alturiak, the Year of the Sword (1365 DR)

SECOND QUARTER, INNARLITH

Everybody who would eventually be somebody was there. Willem Korvan made an effort to talk to each and every one of them, but didn’t bother listening. He watched their mouths move. He nodded and smiled. From time to time he tipped his head a bit to one side as if really concentrating on what they had to say then he would nod again and smile. Nodding and smiling, he might make a meaningless comment on what they were wearing. Then he would smile and nod. Each and every one of them smiled back, and nodded.

What Willem was most concerned with at the time was the smell. Marek Rymut’s fashionable Second Quarter home had all the right furniture and fixtures, everything predictable and acceptable, but the smell could not be ignored.

Oranges? he thought. No. Nothing so simple.

Willem wondered if it could be a combination of things. Oranges after all, maybe, but mixed with … lamp oil?

No.

The mortar they’d used on the city wall project combined with a Fourth Quarter beggar’s sick and the porridge his mother used to make when he was a boy?

Closer.

“The current state of things,” another young senator said to Willem’s blank, smiling face, “guarantees naught but that the wealthy grow only wealthier while the poor become increasingly desperate over time. Really, it’s up to us, isn’t it, Korvan, to set things aright once and for all, just as Master Rymut suggests?”

Willem smiled and nodded, and the young senator appeared pleased. They wandered away from each other and into the same conversations with different people.

“It did seem radical to me at first,” a young woman trolling for a husband said behind too much Shou-inspired makeup. “After all, my family has sold horses for generations and hardly worked as hard as they have in order to see our estates divided among the tradesmen. That idea in particular … but, well, if Master Rymut thinks it’s best….”

Willem nodded but didn’t smile. He caught the woman’s eye and detected just enough desperation in her gaze that he fled her presence as quickly as he could.

Looking for Rymut in the crowded sitting room, Willem began to formulate his excuse for leaving so early. Before he could find his host, though, he was stopped by an apparition.

It had been some time since he’d seen her, but there she stood. She’d just stepped into the room, and all at once the smell was gone, as though the air had refreshed itself in her honor.