Philip Athans - Whisper of Waves

“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.”

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.