Wenefir smiled, so did Marek, and they both laughed.
“He is a man after my own heart,” said Marek.
“I’m sure he would be both delighted and horrified to hear that.”
Marek closed his mouth. His tongue felt dry all of a sudden.
“So?” Wenefir asked.
“Well,” Marek said, taking a deep breath. “My first impulse is to close the whole thing down, but I’m not sure that’s entirely possible.”
“No?”
“There is an expression, I think from Cormyr—or is it Sembia?” Marek said. “They say, ‘The cat is out of the bag.’”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning that the idea has been expressed that a canal could be dug to connect the Sea of Fallen Stars with the western oceans. More than that the idea has been expressed that this little bit of empty land to the northwest of Innarlith is the best place to do it. And it is the best place, you know. I’ve consulted maps.”
“Have you?”
Marek let a breath hiss out of his nose and said, “I have.”
“So you’ll let him finish it?”
“Bane’s bloody corpse, no,” Marek said. “Not him.”
Wenefir tipped his chin up, smiled a little again, then nodded and said, “Ah. You’ll finish it yourself.”
“After a fashion,” Marek replied. “I will have it finished, but I won’t be using shovels and sweaty backs.”
“No?”
“Well,” the Thayan said with a wink, “if you can’t beat them, profit from them.”
“Another Cormyrean expression?”
“No, no, I’m quite sure that one’s Sembian.”
They shared another laugh.
“There might come a day,” Wenefir said, “that Senator Pristoleph will desire an upward change in station.”
Marek felt his face flush. He forced a smile and said, “I was led to believe—”
“Calm yourself, Master Rymüt,” Wenefir interrupted. “Just something to keep in the back of your mind. For the nonce, let’s say that Senator Pristoleph looks forward to the increase in shipping traffic the canal will provide, and he trusts in your ability to build it, using the many wondrous means at your disposal.”
Marek bent forward a little in a bow as Wenefir stood.
“Middark has come and gone, I should think,” Wenefir said. “I will thank you for your hospitality, and be on my way.”
Marek stood, bowed again, and watched Wenefir leave. When the door closed, he sat again and sighed.
The door opened a few moments later, and Kurtsson stepped into the room.
“Should I be concerned?” the Vaasan asked.
“Of course, dear,” Marek said, then paused to down the rest of Wenefir’s brandy. “A wise man is always concerned.”
“But if Pristoleph is—”
“Pristoleph,” Marek finished for him, “is doing what we always knew he would. And we’ll either survive him or not.”
45
10 Alturiak, the Year of the Shield (1367 DR)
SECOND QUARTER, INNARLITH
You look awful.”
Willem, startled, gasped and stepped backward into a nightstand. The touch of something on his leg startled him again, then he jumped at the thought that if he knocked it over it would make a loud noise. He hissed a curse when he whirled to catch it.
“Graceful,” Phyrea whispered.
Willem winced at both her tone and the pain that seemed to drop onto his head from above. His eyes burned. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes. He could feel her behind him, just standing there. He heard something drop to the floor and turned. The nightstand teetered a little but settled on its legs. From his peripheral vision he saw her cloak in a pool around her feet.
“What are you doing here?” he whispered.
“I—” she started, her voice booming in his ears.
He shushed her and she stopped. His head throbbed.
“You look awful,” she whispered.
“You said that,” he whispered back. “I believe you.”
He turned to face her but rubbed his eyes, trying to get some feeling back into his face along with anything but sandpaper under his eyelids. It wasn’t working.
“Why are we whispering?” she asked, whispering.
“I don’t live alone,” he replied, taking his hands from his eyes and blinking in the dim candlelight of his bedchamber.
Phyrea worked at the laces of her leather bodice and said, “That’s right … your mother.”
He nodded and asked, “What are you doing here?”
She didn’t answer, but continued to unlace her top.
“It’s late, isn’t it?” he asked, still blinking.
“It’s early,” she replied.
“I thought you hated me,” he said.
She dropped the bodice to the floor with her cloak. The sight of her took Willem’s breath away.
“You’ve been drinking,” she whispered.
He opened his mouth and shook his head, which hurt. She unlaced her leather breeches, then seemed to suddenly realize she was still wearing her boots.
“You don’t smell good,” she whispered. “I can smell you from here.”
She took off one boot and placed it next to her cloak.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“You certainly are.”
She took off her other boot.
“Why did you come here?” he asked her.
“Well,” she replied as she slipped out of her breeches, “I’d have thought that would be obvious by now.”
She wore nothing underneath.
“I don’t understand,” he admitted.
She stood there, naked, looking at him with such an expression of utter contempt that Willem had to look away from her.
“I don’t please you?” she asked.
“You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen,” he said. “You’re the most beautiful woman in all of Faerûn.”
“Thank you.”
“You should go,” he said. “You don’t have to—”
“What?” she asked.
He didn’t know what to say.
Phyrea smiled at him the way people smile at other people’s misbehaving children. She stepped out of the clothing at her feet and crossed the room to Willem’s unmade bed. She slipped under the covers, but kicked them away, presumably so he could see her.
“I don’t feel well,” he said.
“Take your clothes off.”
He shook his head, but started to unbutton his shirt. His fingers were numb, and he had trouble.
“Everyone wants us to marry,” he said.
“Who’s everyone?”
“Your father,” he told her, “Marek Rymüt … other people.”
“Well then I guess we had better marry,” she said.
“Each other,” he said.
A look crossed her face—plain as day—that told him in no uncertain terms that the very thought of that was a fate worse than death for her. She couldn’t bear the very idea of it.
“I’m tired,” he said, and took off his shirt.
“You’re drunk.”
He shook his head again and winced at the dull agony.
“Not anymore,” he said.
“There’s no reason for you to feel sorry for yourself, Willem.”
“Isn’t there?”
Her expression changed again. She pitied him. He hated that.
“I’ll kill you,” he said, “if you ever look at me like that again.”
She took a short, shallow breath, and the look of pity disappeared, replaced in an instant with confusion.
“Are you trying to scare me?” she asked.
He slid out of his trousers and said, “No.”
“Then why would you say something like that?” she asked as he walked to the bed.
He sat down and said, “I’m tired of people not thinking much of me.”
“Then you should do something worthwhile.�
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He reached out to touch her face, and she flinched away, so he did too. She smiled in an apologetic way he found confusing.
“May I touch you?” he asked.
“I came here so you could touch me,” she whispered. He touched her face. Her skin was soft—not warm but hot.
“What do you want from me?” he asked.
“Do you need to know that, really?” she asked. He could feel her jaw working under the flesh of her cheek. “How long has it been since you asked my father for my hand in marriage?”
Willem’s face went hot, and he tried to stand, but she held his arm. He didn’t struggle against her weak grip.
“Other people have been straightforward with me,” he said. “I’ve been told what to do, and what to expect in return. But it seems as though every time I do what I’m sure people want me to do, they return that with ever greater contempt.”
“You’re not from here,” she whispered. “Innarlith can be an unambiguous place.”
He leaned in to kiss her, but not all the way.
“That’s not true at all,” he whispered.
She leaned in the rest of the way, and their lips met. The kiss took the pain from his head, the stiffness from his joints. With the briefest flick of her tongue she pulled back.
“Everyone wants gold,” she whispered. He could feel her breath hot on his face with every syllable. “They all have different ways of—”
He kissed her, and their tongues met. He pulled away when he thought for a moment that he might pass out.
“—trying to get it,” she went on, “but that’s all anyone here wants.”
“That’s true everywhere,” he said, moving his hands from her face, down her long neck to her shoulder. He traced the edge of her shoulder blade with a finger and she put a hand on his chest.
“You were a pretty boy,” she said as if trying to convince herself that that had any significance.
“I’m no boy,” he said, and moved his hand down to wrap around one perfect breast.
“No,” she whispered, her flesh responding to his touch even if her voice didn’t.
“I will love you,” he whispered, “if that’s what you want.”
She shook her head and replied, “That’s the last thing I want.”
She leaned in and let her lips play along the side of his neck. He closed his eyes.
“Tell me what you want,” he said.
“No,” she replied.
A tear came to Willem’s eye, and he wrapped his hands around her neck, but didn’t squeeze.
“Are you going to kill me?” she whispered. “Are you going to strangle me in your bed, with your mother in the next room?”
He clenched his jaw closed so tightly he thought his teeth might shatter.
“If I thought for a moment you could do that,” she breathed. “I never would have come.”
He kept his hands on her throat, and took a deep, steadying breath.
“If that’s where you want to touch me, suit yourself,” she said. “I want you inside me, Willem.”
He took his hands away from her throat.
“That’s a good boy,” she whispered.
Halina, he thought. I’m sorry.
46
18 Alturiak, the Year of the Shield (1367 DR)
THE SISTERHOOD OF PASTORALS, INNARLITH
Marek Rymüt couldn’t believe they’d allowed him entry. He’d seen the building from a distance a few times. One part temple, one part convent, the Sisterhood of the Pastorals seemed cut from glass. He’d never seen so many windows, or uninterrupted panes of glass quite so enormous. His off-hand comment to the dour old woman who’d shown him in, that the clerics and lay-worshipers who called the place home “should surely think twice before throwing stones,” was utterly lost on her.
She took him to a hothouse of sorts where Halina knelt on a flagstone floor, digging with her hands in a pot of dirt. Dressed in a simple peasant’s smock, no shoes on her feet, her hair a tangled mass pinned up out of her face, she looked twice her true age. She didn’t notice him standing there, looking down at her, for what felt like a terribly long time. The dour sister shuffled off, and Marek ignored her stern, warning glance.
“Has your dirt goddess made you deaf, girl?” he said.
Halina was so startled, she tipped the pot over, spilling dirt into her lap and burying the little plant that sat on the floor in front of her.
“Uncle?” she said, looking up and blinking.
“One and the same.”
“How did you …?” she muttered, still blinking.
“I presented myself at the door and asked for you,” he said. “That will be the last time, I should add, that I will answer a partial question. You may be surprised to see me, but let us take that as a sign of your own shortsightedness and move on from the shock and awe of it so that we can speak in complete sentences.”
Halina looked down at the floor and said, “If you’ve come here to take me ho—to take me to your house, I’m afraid I will not be going with you.”
“I’ll do nothing of the kind,” he said. “I made promises to your mother, my younger sister, that I would see to your care after her death. Surely I can’t allow you to just wander off without explanation.”
“I’m sorry, Uncle,” she muttered, still not looking at him.
Marek stepped back from her and let his attention drift to the many potted plants that lined the glass room. He touched the petal of a large red flower.
“I can’t say I’ve ever been to this part of the Third Quarter before,” he said. “It doesn’t smell as vile right here as it does in the rest of the quarter.”
The Sisterhood of Pastorals sat only one major thoroughfare east of the Golden Road, barely more than a stone’s throw from the north gate. Across the street to the east was the impoverished and crime-ridden Fourth Quarter.
“The sisterhood is a beacon for the people who call this part of the city home,” Halina recited. “It reminds them of the beauty of nature and the loving embrace of the Great Mother.”
“Yes,” Marek drawled, “I’m sure the beggars and drunkards of the Fourth Quarter are delighted to accept the Great Mother’s loving embrace in lieu of food.”
“Please,” Halina whispered, and her voice had a desperate sound to it that grated on Marek. “Please don’t say things like that. Not in here.”
The Red Wizards looked around and smiled. He was in Chauntea’s temple after all—enemy territory in some ways. He made a show of shrugging and moved to another potted plant that he pretended to examine.
“If you intend to stay here,” said Marek, “I will be happy to be rid of you.”
Halina let go a long, hissing breath then said, “I’m just trying to lead a good life.”
That perked Marek’s interest. “A good life?” he asked. “And what is a good life? Planting flowers in pots at the command of a pack of—” He stopped before saying “nature witches” aloud. He was, after all, surrounded by nature witches. “Well, there now. I’ve done it myself. Perhaps there’s something in the air here that makes it difficult for one to finish a thought.”
He smiled down at her, and Halina looked up at him. She returned his smile, but it was half-hearted at best. Brushing the dirt from her gown, she stood and faced him.
“I don’t know what a good life is,” she said.
“No?”
She shook her head and told him, “Maybe it’s a life spent crying less than I do. I would like that life, good or evil.”
“Indeed,” Marek said with a sneer. “Crying, Halina, is not a legitimate form of expression. It’s a sign of weakness—of a loss of control. You know I forbid it in my house. Are you telling me you’ve cried under my roof?”
She couldn’t look at him anymore, but to her credit at least she didn’t back away.
“Every day,” she whispered.
“You’re forgiven,” he said, speaking quickly so as to keep her off balance.
“No,”
she said. “No, I’m not. I’m sorry.”
“Do you think I’ve led a good life?” he asked.
He waited for longer than he should have for her to answer and was about to go on when she said, “No.”
“Really?” he replied, glancing at her only briefly before returning his attention to the plant.
“I don’t know. I don’t know if you’ve led a good life, or even if I’ve led a good life. I just know I want to lead a good life.”
“That Cormyrean did things to you, didn’t he?”
He could feel her vibrate from a distance, she squirmed so terribly. Marek resisted the urge to laugh, and instead made himself wait for her answer.
“He did nothing I didn’t want him to do,” she whispered. “Don’t make me talk about that.”
“He seemed happier after he’d been with you,” Marek said. And he wasn’t simply torturing her—though he was doing that, too—it was something he’d actually noticed. Willem Korvan was in love with her.
“Did he?” she asked. “I could never tell.”
“Did he throw you out?” he asked. “Is that why you came here to dig in the dirt?”
“No,” she replied, “he didn’t throw me out.”
“But he didn’t marry you.”
She sighed and shook her head.
“What are you doing here, really?” he asked, and looked her in the eye.
She met his gaze for only a heartbeat before turning away and saying, “I’m helping people.”
“How?”
“The Sisterhood of Pastorals teaches people how to tend to the soil and harvest the bounty of the Great Mother. We teach people how to feed themselves, and if we can’t do that, we feed them. We help people to live.”
“Do ‘we’?” he asked. She seemed quick to include herself among Chauntea’s Pastorals. “You’ve only been here a few days, Halina. How many people have you helped?”
“No one, yet, I suppose,” she replied. “But if I stay, if I work hard, I could help hundreds, maybe thousands.”
He laughed, but just a little.
“You shouldn’t laugh at that,” she said. “That’s not funny here.”
“The idea that by planting flowers in pots you’re going to help thousands of people is funny anywhere, Halina,” he said, risking Chauntea’s wrath. “But leaving that aside, are you telling me that altruism alone guides your actions now? If you can’t satisfy one eager young Cormyrean, why not feed the masses?”
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