Lies of Light (15 page)

“You know, of course, that I can help you,” Marek said as he crossed the room to one of the crates. “Please excuse the mess. We’ve only just begun to move in. Do you like it?”

Willem nodded, lying. The building was garish and overly large for one man, and he’d heard that Marek didn’t even intend to live there.

“I understand you’ll be keeping the house, too,” Willem

said, as much just to make conversation to cover his nervousness than to verify the rumors.

“Of course,” the wizard replied as he dug through first one crate then another. “This is a place of business. From this compound, the finest in magical items will be made available to the fine people of Innarlith.”

Willem nodded, watching the man search apparently at random for the promised item, and asked, “It will be an embassy, too, I understand.”

Marek stopped and turned to regard him with a gaze that made Willem’s skin crawl.

Marek turned back to the next crate and continued his search, but just a little more slowly than before.

“It might one day serve a similar function,” said the Red Wizard. “I suppose it’s safe to consider this Thayan ground. But it’s not so much an embassy as an … an enclave. I am here not to influence, but to serve.”

“You influence anyway,” Willem said.

Marek chuckled and stopped rooting around in the crate. When he turned he held a small box of polished maple and wore a warm grin.

“When I am asked a question,” the wizard said, “I answer. When my opinion is sought out, I oblige. If I influence, it is because I have made every effort to help, and always in the best interests of my adopted home.”

Willem smiled and nodded, but couldn’t help staring at the box. “Is that it?” he asked.

Marek glanced down at the box in his hand but said, “I understand you’ve had some success recently that has brought considerable coin to your personal coffers.”

Willem nodded.

“An apple orchard, of all things,” said the Thayan. “Really, Willem, my lad, I can’t possibly be asked to imagine you a farmer.”

“I’m no farmer,” he said. “There are tenants to tend the trees. I just…”

“Own it?” the Thayan prompted.

“I’ve been told that a senator must have an income,” Willem said. “I was encouraged to acquire land.”

“But at so meager a price,” Marek replied, “and for so rich a harvest.”

Willem shrugged, still staring at the box.

“You can afford more,” the wizard said with a wink. “This is… a trifle.”

“But it will do what I asked?” Willem asked. “It’ll do what I need it to do?”

The Thayan nodded and stepped forward, holding the box out. Willem took it, flinching when Marek touched the back of his hand with a cool, clammy fingertip. Willem fumbled the box a little, and almost dropped it. Marek placed it in his hand, and Willem snatched it away a bit too quickly for decorum’s sake. A brief glow passed through Marek’s eyes that made Willem’s breath catch in his throat.

They both released a breath together, and Willem opened the box.

“You have but to wear it,” Marek said.

Inside the box was a simple brooch of fine gold fashioned in the likeness of a heart held in the palm of a hand. Willem had seen better workmanship. There was nothing about the thing that seemed particularly special.

“And if I do?” Willem asked.

“You will bear up under the strain,” the Thayan explained with a smirk. “It will embolden you. You will not be so easily intimidated.”

Willem looked up at him, his jaw tense. Marek was surprised but showed it only for the briefest fraction of a heartbeat before smiling once more.

“It may even have some benefit where the fairer sex is concerned,” said Marek.

“What do you mean?” Willem asked, closing the box. “May I?”

Marek nodded and Willem put the box in the deep pocket of his weathercloak. From the same pocket he

withdrew a purse heavy with coins.

“I mean that perhaps with its subtle influence you will finally be able to leave my niece in your wake,” the wizard explained.

Willem shivered. He looked at his hand, which held the purse out to Marek, and saw it shake.

Marek wrapped his sausage fingers around the bag of coins and said, “A thousand?”

“As we agreed,” Willem replied, letting his arm fall to his side. “So, with that I’ll-“

“Oh, bother,” Marek cut in, dropping the coin purse into one of the open crates. “Don’t be like that, my lad. You know of my fondness for Halina, and certainly your perpetually-impending nuptials would be a rare social event among the least imaginative of Innarlan society, but honestly, is she the best choice?” •

“The only times I can remember feeling even the slightest bit happy have been in her presence,” Willem said. Sweat gathered at his hairline and under his arms. He hadn’t meant to reveal so much, especially to the Thayan. “But my mother is of similar mind to you.”

“Ah, yes,” Marek replied. “And how fares the lovely Thurene?”

“She is well.”

“Just’well’?”

Willem shrugged. He didn’t know what else to say.

“She whispers a name in your ear, I’ll wager,” Marek said. “I know that the master builder has been, too, and for some time.”

Willem shook his head, hoping against hope that Marek wouldn’t say the name.

“I’m happy with Halina,” Willem said.

“And what of that?” asked the wizard. “Who are you to be happy?”

Willem looked him in the eye and shook his head. Had he heard the man correctly? “I’m…”Willem started.

“All men are equal,” the Thayan said. “We all have our roles to play in the gods’ great theater. Who are you to expect to be happy when so many suffer? So what if you love Halina? You should marry Phyrea. Her father wishes it, and so do many others in this city—many others who have been watching over you and will continue to watch over you both.”

“But…” Willem grunted. He didn’t know what to say. He didn’t want to have the conversation Marek seemed intent on bullying him into.

“I’m sure you find the fair Phyrea pleasing to the eye,” said Marek.

Willem nodded, but said, “Will you forbid me from marrying your niece? Will you prevent me from seeing her?”

Willem had tried to keep that last from sounding like a plea, but he couldn’t help it. Anyway, Marek Rymiit was too intelligent and astute a listener not to have sensed it. Willem could see it written plainly in the Thayan’s sparkling eyes and uneven smile.

“I will do no such thing,” said Marek. “If you are dead set on embarking on a path pointed away from the goals you’ve worked so diligently to achieve, how could I presume to stop you?”

“Phyrea hates me,” Willem said.

“Wives hate their husbands, lad,” Marek replied.

“Before they’re even married?”

“Well…”

There was a heavy silence while Willem hoped he looked like he was thinking long and hard.

“Phyrea—” Willem said, his voice barely more than a whisper.

Marek smiled and said, “Wear the pin, son. It will help.”

30 Nightal, the Year of the Sword (1365 DR) The Palace of Many Spires, Innarlith

The evening had begun with a lengthy and confusing prayer of appeasement to Malar, given by the newly confirmed ransar himself. Salatis had insisted that his guests attend the festivities in the guise of an animal, and Willem Korvan had chosen for himself the weasel.

“It’s a creature with its own nobility, wouldn’t you say, Meykhati?” Willem said. “Or should I say, ‘Sir Crane’?”

The elder senator indulged him with a largely uninterested laugh from behind his avian mask of fine Shou porcelain and said, “If you say so, Will—Senator Weasel.”

The laughs that sizzled up from the circle of guests Willem had merged with mocked him. He put a hand lightly to the brooch that held his cloak around his shoulders. A palpable sensation of warmth flooded his chest when he touched it.

“Tell us more, Senator Weasel,” requested the woman with purple hair, a mask in the likeness of an eagle, and the familiar accent of Willem’s homeland.

“You’re Cormyrean,” he said.

The woman, stout and heavy, immaculately dressed in a gown that included actual eagle feathers, bowed slightly and introduced herself as Tia Harriman, the newly-appointed ambassador from Cormyr.

The others—Meykhati behind his crane mask; the master builder with an elephant’s ghastly trunk; Rymut’s man Insithryllax, wearing a frightening black dragon’s head; Kurtsson with the face of a bear; and his mother, who pressed close to him, her eyes as cold and hard as the tigress whose features she’d borrowed—heaped niceties on the woman.

“I’m surprised,” Willem said, marveling at the sound of

his own voice—so clear and strong.

“Whatever do you mean, my dear?” his mother inquired. He could feel her nervousness, and perhaps for the first time in his life he didn’t care.

“Why does Azoun suddenly feel that Innarlith, of all places, requires the presence of an embassy?”

Willem stood in the center of the ensuing silence feeling like Talos in the eye of a hurricane of his own creation. Thurene squeezed his arm, but he ignored her.

“His Majesty,” the ambassador replied, correcting his protocol, “has taken an interest in the canal.”

“Well, you get right to the point, don’t you, Ambassador?” Willem replied. He felt cheerful, and let his voice convey that. Everyone relaxed, at least a little. “I suppose I can see why Cormyr might benefit from it. Too bad it will never come to pass.”

“Won’t it?” asked the ambassador.

“No, madam,” Inthelph answered before Willem could, “I don’t think it will. The only two people in Innarlith who might make a go of it”—he nodded to Willem—”are standing before you right now. And neither of us have any interest in that fool’s errand.”

“No?” asked the ambassador. “And why not?”

“It’s not necessary,” Inthelph said.

“There are already means to travel from here to the Vilhon Reach,” Kurtsson cut in, the voice from behind the bear mask had an exotic accent. “I could take you there myself right now, and back again, in but the blink of the eye. And I can do the same with an entire ship. Why, then, all the digging?”

The contempt he put into that last word stuck in Willem’s ear a bit. An answer to Kurtsson’s question occurred to him, but he didn’t speak it. The idea for a canal was brilliant, and he knew full well that if anyone in Faerun might have a chance to make it work it was Ivar Devorast, but that was the last thing he’d tell the people around him just then.

“My friend the bear is correct,” said the strange man behind the black dragon mask. Even under the influence of the brooch’s magic, Willem recoiled a little from the man, as did all of them. “But perhaps a more cheerful subject is in order.”

“Indeed, Sir Dragon,” the ambassador said. “I do have a question for our friend the weasel.”

“Of course,” said Willem. “We hunt birds, rabbits, rats, frogs, and various small rodents by the hundreds.”

There was a pause while they all struggled in their own ways with his answer, then a few reluctant, almost frightened giggles.

“Oh, Willem, my dear, don’t be silly,” Thurene said as she dug her fingernails into his arm.

Willem endured the pain and said, “Interesting thing about us weasels: the young are born almost exclusively in the month of Tarsakh—as few as two, and as many as ten in a litter—in a nest lined with the fur of the mother’s kills. Like humans, the female weasel has a strong instinct to protect her young. It takes three and a half tendays for their eyes to open, but they’re hunting by the end of their second month of life.”

“It must be difficult for the mother weasel to see them leave,” the ambassador played along.

“Oh, my,” Meykhati interjected. “Were we to have been prepared to discuss the behavior and mating habits of our animals? Isn’t the dreadful mask enough?”

“Fear not, Senator,” Willem reassured him. “For me, the weasel has always been of interest—its habits and its upbringing. I chose the mask for that reason, not the other way around. A similar devotion on the part of any other guest to their totems is hardly required. But in any event, I hope the ambassador is entertained.”

“I am,” she replied. “But I hadn’t intended to inquire into the secret mating rituals of the weasel. I remain curious as to why one of His Majesty’s subjects sits on the governing body of an independent city-state so far from

home? Surely a young man of your accomplishments could have found a suitable position at home?”

“One would think,” Willem answered, letting all the bile, all the old animosity he could muster weigh heavily on his words. Meykhati actually took a step back, Insithryllax tensed as if expecting a fight to break out, and Thurene gasped. “But, alas, I was wooed away. Once again, I’m reminded of the weasel. Their fur-lined dens are stolen from the burrowing animals they’ve killed and eaten.”

“Have you killed and eaten us then?” Meykhati asked.

“Not quite eaten yet, no,” replied Willem.

A waiter passed by, his naked body painted to resemble the colorful feathers of a native bird Willem didn’t know the name of. He took a tallglass of wine from the proffered tray and drained half of it in a single swallow. The mask made that difficult, but he managed it without spilling any, even with his mother pulling on his arm.

The master builder cleared his throat and said, “So, Willem, do tell. Have you given any further thought to Phyrea?”

“Phyrea?” the ambassador asked.

“The master builder’s lovely and charming daughter,” Thurene answered. “Senator Inthelph and I have hopes for them.”

“Our humble take on the royal marriage,” Meykhati joked.

Willem took a deep breath and almost spilled the wine on his silk tunic when he went to touch the brooch again. It steeled his nerves, but did nothing to help him organize his thoughts. The mention of that name was enough to send him almost into a swoon. Phyrea—beautiful and disturbed, with her bizarre convictions and mysterious agendas—and Halina—soft and insubstantial, but comfortable—the two women in his life.

“Really, my dear,” Thurene said, “what could possibly cause you to hesitate? She’s such a lovely girl.”

Three women, Willem corrected himself.