Philip Athans - Whisper of Waves

“Yes,” Willem said, though he’d stopped listening at the word “elfish,” which was a twisted bit of usage the woman had obviously invented on the spot.

Meykhati’s wife smiled at him, waiting for more.

“Your taste is impeccable as always,” he obliged and was relieved to see that that was good enough.

“Ah,” Meykhati himself cut in, “the Master Builder of Innarlith.”

Willem watched Inthelph approach, smiling and nodding through all the tired greetings and pointless niceties. Not listening to Inthelph’s vapid comments on the host couple’s Shou robes, Willem let his eyes and his mind wander through the crowded parlor. Though he tried not to, he occasionally made eye contact with one of the other guests.

There was Kurtsson, a well-known wizard from Vaasa. Meykhati had collected the exotic mage the way he collected exotic embroidered silk robes, exotic Shou vases, exotic engineers from Cormyr, and so on. Kurtsson’s toadying manner was well-suited to Meykhati and his wife’s little salon.

In the corner, trying to appreciate a Impilturan etching, was Horemkensi, a charismatic enough man, native to Innarlith, and the eighteenth to hold the senate seat his old money family had purchased long, long ago. Willem wondered if Horemkensi really existed outside the circle of Meykhati and his wife’s pointless salon.

Sitre was there too-and why wouldn’t she be there? Her hair was getting longer and she talked about it-how she cared for it, how long she’d been growing it-incessantly. A harsh and angry woman, Willem had barely spoken to her though he’d seen her time and again at Meykhati and his wife’s depressing salon.

“Isn’t that right, Willem?”

He looked down at the rug and saw the straight line around the border that revealed it as a fake. Meykhati told everyone-over and over again, in fact-that it was hand-carried from Zakhara on the back of an elephant, though it was probably made in a sweatshop in the Third Quarter, or maybe as far away as Arrabar.

“Willem?”

Even the fire in the fireplace looked false. Willem couldn’t feel any heat from it. He held out a hand toward it. Someone touched him on the shoulder.

“Willem …”

“Of course,” he found himself saying.

Inthelph smiled at him, and so did Meykhati and his wife. They expected him to say something more.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ve been …”

“He’s been working very hard,” Inthelph provided for him, to the vacant amusement of Meykhati and his wife.

“It’s hardly work when you enjoy it as much as I do, Master Builder,” Willem said, then intentionally turned away before he could see Inthelph’s standard reaction.

“So, Master Builder,” Meykhati’s wife said as she slid closer to Inthelph with a rustle of Shou silk, “please tell me you convinced her to come.”

Willem smelled her first: something he couldn’t immediately put his finger on. Or was it even a smell? The air changed when she walked in. The atmosphere took on an effervescence, and the feeling scared him as much as it excited him.

He staggered back one step when he saw her. Though young she was the kind of woman who took the wind out of a room only to fill it her own particular aether. Willem knew in an instant that she would be in control of the gathering for the rest of the evening, or at least as long as she wanted to be.

Her physical form was easy enough to encompass in a glance and fine enough to remember forever with that one blink-dark hair, black really, and eyes to match but eyes that caught the light. Big eyes, round, perfect eyes, cheekbones high and symmetrical and a chin that no sculptor could have dared create from clay, and she had a neck so long it alone was worthy of worship. Any beggar on the street would call her a goddess, but it would take a genius to see the goddess in every inch of her. Her breasts, perfect. Her waist, perfect. The line of her back, her hips, and her long legs, perfect.

Her open contempt of the gathering of sycophants and dilettantes, perfect.

“Such a beautiful young woman,” Meykhati’s wife said. If she was trying to mask the crippling jealousy in her voice she failed miserably. “And only seventeen summers.”

That number penetrated Willem’s consciousness only with great difficulty. Young, but already old in so many ways, and he had asked Halina to marry him. Why would that matter just then anyway?

Willem closed his eyes and the room began to spin, or was that just his knees failing him?

“It wasn’t the easiest thing to get her here,” Inthelph said, his voice tired and thick with the effort of being the father of a creature of perfect beauty.

Gods, Willem thought, who had the master builder married to produce a child like that? She looks nothing like him.

“Is that your daughter?” Willem asked.

“Phyrea,” Inthelph answered. “You two finally meet.”

“Finally,” Willem said.

Phyrea, he repeated in his mind. Phyrea.

She looked at the people in the room and didn’t mind that everyone could tell she didn’t like what she saw. Her eyes played over his for the space of a heartbeat and that was all the notice Willem felt he deserved from her.

I’m going to marry Halina, he told himself.

He didn’t believe it.

“I hope you’ll have a chance to speak with her, Willem,” the master builder said.

Willem nodded because all of a sudden he couldn’t speak.

“What a lovely couple they would make,” Meykhati’s wife said.

Willem wondered what she meant by that. But he’d never brought Halina to any of their salons.

“Lovely, yes,” Meykhati agreed and Willem didn’t think for a second that they really meant he and Phyrea.

“Really, my boy,” said the master builder. “You might be a … a steadying influence on her.”

Willem looked around for a place to sit, but it would have been rude to sit when the host, his wife, and the master builder were standing.

“Perhaps I should have introduced you to her before,” Inthelph said. Willem watched with growing horror and seething excitement as Inthelph turned and held out a hand to his exquisite daughter and said, “Phyrea, dear. Come. There’s someone I’ve been wanting you to meet.”

The memory of the rest of that evening compressed into the brief moment during which they exchanged insincere pleasantries. When she left early, he stayed only long enough to offer a smattering of good-byes then he sent word to Halina to meet him at the inn.

18 Tarsakh, the Year of the Helm (1362 DR)

FIRST QUARTER, INNARLITH

Ran Ai Yu, who had a difficult time with languages, struggled with the Common Tongue. For nearly a month she had made her way through the vile-smelling shanty-town that the westerners called Innarlith and had finally come to the shipyards of a man named Djeserka. The consonants were difficult for her to pronounce and they ignored their own families in favor of meaningless single names. Their traditions and their manners were hopelessly alien, but there she was, and she did her best to remain focused and calm.

Before she could be properly announced, she stepped into the strangely appointed building and into the middle of a one-sided argument. The room smelled of sawdust and tar, with the occasional waft of sulfur from that accursed sea. The sound of a man’s voice echoed in the high rafters, bouncing from wall to ear to wall to ear. Even if she had been unable to understand any of the words he spoke, she would have known that the man named Djeserka was angry.

The object of his anger, another white-skinned western man with big eyes and wild, unkempt hair the color of rust, stood simply taking it, but he was no underling, no servant. His manner bespoke power, but not necessarily power granted by title or force, but by an inner calm that assumed its mantle and held it close.