Philip Athans - Whisper of Waves

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“You are a petty little tyrant,” she whispered. “You aren’t worthy to look at him, let alone bark orders at him. You shamed me worse than he did.”

The foreman shook his head. He tried to speak, and blood bubbled out of his throat. Phyrea stuck the tip of her sword under his chin and punctured his skin. He stopped shaking his head and lifted his chin as if there was some way he could get away from her sword.

“You stink,” she whispered.

A tear rolled out of his eye and down the side of his face.

She pushed her sword in and his body spasmed when the blade came up into the bottom of his mouth, punctured his tongue, and nailed it to the roof of his mouth. She stopped there, letting him suffer for the count of four heartbeats, then she drove the sword home. It was so sharp she barely had to push at all. Like a hot knife through butter the sword went all the way through the middle of his head and there was only the slightest hint of resistance when it passed out through his skull. She held the sword in his head until his body stopped shaking, then she stood, pulling the blade out.

As she waited, listening to make sure it was safe to leave the tent and go back home, she wiped the blade on the foreman’s blanket.

She silently thanked Vrengarl for telling her where to find the foreman’s tent and for letting her know that Ivar Devorast had returned to Innarlith.

Her own time in the country had come to an end as well.

1 Marpenoth, the Year of the Wave (1364 DR)

SECOND QUARTER, INNARLITH

It had been almost a month since the first transformation, and Marek had barely spent a few hours outside the Land of One Hundred and Thirteen. He’d transformed enough of the black firedrakes to get a few dozen of them started building a permanent structure there, and he and Insithryllax began spending a bit more time in Innarlith, gathering supplies, and the gold necessary to buy materials for the construction. The firedrakes learned fast-faster than Marek had expected-and the Red Wizard was delighted.

As they walked the streets of the Second Quarter, Insithryllax in his human form of course, Marek enjoyed the late summer sunshine and the feeling of a full purse.

“I would like to stay here longer this time,” the disguised black dragon said, “perhaps leave the city and fly. It’s been a long time since I’ve really taken wing and just flown miles and miles for days on end. I used to do that when I was younger over the Endless Wastes east of Thay.”

“I can’t see why you wouldn’t be able to do that,” Marek said, his attention half on the dragon and half on the shoes lined up in the window of a shop they passed, “though the firedrakes still need guidance. You are their master, you know, and if you don’t mind me saying so, I think you should start acting like it.”

Insithryllax looked at him out of the corners of his eyes. Marek knew he should be intimidated, but he wasn’t.

“You’ve spent too much time on these black firedrakes of yours,” the dragon said.

Insithryllax stopped to look into the shop of a weapon-smith. The weapons on display were largely ornamental, generally useless.

“I’ve sold this man a dozen magic blades in the past tenday,” Marek said to the dragon. “He’s sold them all and pesters me for more.”

“So? I thought you were getting regular deliveries from your masters in Bezantur. Sell him more.”

Marek chuckled and began walking again. He spotted a familiar face-a young senator’s wife he’d heard was hiding a love child from a previous dalliance-and nodded politely to her as she passed.

“Supply and demand, my friend,” Marek said.

The dragon shrugged, uninterested in further explanation.

“You may be right, though,” Marek admitted, talking as much to himself then as to the dragon. “The black firedrakes have demanded much of my attention of late, and yes, I was sent here to establish a trade in magic items imported, secretly, from Thay. I was charged with establishing buyers, developing a market, eliminating competitors, and so on, but the firedrakes … The firedrakes were my own. My idea, my creation. I don’t know; I suppose I let the idea of them get the better of me.”

Insithryllax smiled and Marek grimaced.

“Don’t be smug, my friend,” the Red Wizard said. “It’s unbecoming of a great wyrm.”

A woman passing by on the street paused and cocked an eye at them. She’d heard Marek call his companion a “great wyrm” but couldn’t possibly have taken him seriously. She scoffed at them and moved on down the street. The exchange made Insithryllax smile anew.

“And the eels?” the dragon prodded.

Marek sighed and said, “One day, Insithryllax, I could find myself annoyed with you.”

He ignored the baleful gaze from the disguised dragon. Though he would never admit it, he relied on Insithryllax for so much, not the least of which was some grounding in reality, a check of his ambitions. The black dragon could be tempestuous, disrespectful, and impatient, but his wisdom was undeniable.

“Are you without mistakes, my friend?” Marek asked. Seeing the look Insithryllax gave him, Marek said, “Never mind.”

“I didn’t think of you as the type to let someone walk away like that.”

Marek shrugged and said, “It was my fault. The eels were powerful creatures possessed of great fierceness and a wonderful natural weapon with that lovely lightning of theirs, but they were inexperienced. They were used to picking off those bloated grubs or whatever fish swim that lake with them. The Cormyrean and his friends fought back, and with some intelligence, I might add. In the end, I suppose, all that business was more a test for the eels than it was an attempt to eliminate the competition.”

Insithryllax shook his head.

Marek clapped him on the shoulder and said, “The woman went back to Shou Lung, and the Cormyrean was ruined in any case. Why kill him when he can be left to suffer? He revealed the weaknesses of the eels, too. I’m still working on that one.”

“What will you do?” asked the dragon. “Make them intelligent like the firedrakes?”

“Actually, I-”

The dragon silenced him with a warning hand on his wrist. The words to an utterly inappropriate offensive spell came to Marek’s mind. He looked at Insithryllax and followed his eyes to the street corner ahead and to their right.

“What is it?” Marek whispered, looking down at the cobblestones in front of him. He’d seen a man on the corner looking at them. “The man?”

“The beggar,” Insithryllax said under his breath.

The man on the corner, the man who was staring at them, could have been described as a beggar. His blond hair-unusual in Innarlith, where more people were of swarthy Chondathan descent-was a mess, and his clothes were torn and dirty. The fine citizens of the Second Quarter gave the man a wide berth as they passed him, no few of them looking down their noses with open contempt for the beggar.

“He’s been following us,” the dragon said out of the side of his mouth so only Marek could hear. “He’s been keeping ahead of us but stopping from time to time to make sure we’re still behind him.”

“Who is he?”

“You don’t know?”

Marek started to consider which of the defensive spells in his repertoire to cast first.

Insithryllax said, “We’ll turn at the next alley.”

Marek sneaked a glance at the man, who smiled at them as if about to call out a friendly hello. Then the beggar spun and dived for the corner of a building.

“Insith-” was all Marek got out before the force of the explosion took all the air from his lungs.