Lies of Light

52

17 Flamerule, the Yearof the Shield (1367DR) The Sisterhood of Pastorals, Innarlith

Warm today, isn’t it?” Surero said to the girl who ladled soup into his bowl.

She glanced up at him, and he smiled as wide and as brightly as he could. The expression caught her eye, but she didn’t return his smile.

“Thank you, Sister,” he said.

“I’m not a sister,” she replied. She spoke with a thick accent that the alchemist couldn’t immediately place. “Not a proper sister, anyway.”

“Your accent,” he said. “You’re not Innarlan.”

She shifted her eyes as if ashamed, at least for a fleeting moment, and said, “I am Thayan.”

“Have we met before?” he asked, before he’d even thought to say it. She didn’t really look familiar, but there was something about her…

She shook her head, her blue eyes narrowed, and she seemed to try to place him but couldn’t.

“My name is” he started, but was interrupted by a nudge to his shoulder.

The man behind him in line, a rough-looking middle-aged sailor with skin like centuries-old leather was impatient for his soup.

The girl handed Surero his bowl and said, “Please accept this with the prayers of the Pastorals that you will find your way under the blessed eyes of the Earth Mother.”

He’d heard her say precisely the same words to the men in line in front of him.

Surero took the soup and said, “May I have one more, for my friend?”

“Aye, missy,” the old sailor grumbled, “and I’ll be needin’ a dozen fer me crew.”

The old man broke out in gales of toothless laughter, and Surero laughed a little with him. The girl appeared embarrassed.

“I’m sorry,” Surero said, “but it really is”

She silenced him with a wave of her hand and poured another bowl of soup for him. When she handed it to him she smiled.

“Thank you, Si” he stopped himself”sorry.”

“Halina,” she said. “Please accept this for your friend with the prayers of the Pastorals that he will find his way under the blessed eyes of the Earth Mother.”

“Halina,” he replied, “thank you.”

“Aye,” the old sailor cut in again, “thanks be to ye an’ yers, and now maybe the rest o’ us can sup a bit, eh?”

Surero shared another smile with the pretty Thayan girl, took the two bowls of soup, and made way for the rest of the hungry men. As he walked back to the table he tried to imagine that she was watching him go, but in truth he couldn’t feel her eyes on him. The exchange had lifted his spirits some, and he was still smiling when he set the soup bowls down on the table.

“Thank you,” Devorast said as Surero sat. “I could have gotten my own.”

“Think nothing of it,” the alchemist replied. “I thought I’d spare you the blessing. I know how you feel about gods, priests, and prayers.”

“Why the smile?” asked Devorast.

Surero blinked. Though it would have been a perfectly normal question from just about anyone else in Faerun, from Devorast it made Surero’s head spin.

“Why the smile, he asks me,” Surero said. “All right, then, Ivar, it was a girl.”

Devorast began to eat his soup, giving no indication that he was listening at all.

“You know, like people, only female?” Surero said.

“I’m familiar with the species,” Devorast replied between bites.

Surero wanted to laugh, but it caught in his chest. He took a deep breath as a wave of anguish washed over him. Sweat broke out in strange places on his body. When he looked down at the soup, his stomach quivered, and he couldn’t imagine eating it.

“This is it, then,” he said.

He paused, hoping Devorast would say something, but he didn’t.

Surero looked around himself at row upon row of crude tables that had been cobbled together, perhaps by the sisters themselves, from scraps of salvaged lumber. The tables were scattered with dented tin bowls and spoons of one sort or another. The men who sat at the tables were the same: dented, old, salvaged, scattered.

“The fact that they’ve beaten me is easy enough to believe,” Surero said. “I expected it all along. But they didn’t really beat me, though, did they? Who was I? All I did was mix a few common elements together to help you dig faster. It’s you they’ve defeated, and that just… I really didn’t think it was possible.”

“All you’ve talked about for months is how ‘they’ will eventually win,” Devorast reminded him.

“In the name of every god in the steaming Astral, Ivar, I didn’t really think it would happen. I mean, honestly. Marek Rymiit is dangerousbut he’s dangerous to people like me, not to people like you. And Willem Korvan?”

Devorast shrugged at that.

“I should thank you, still,” Surero said. “You’ve been very kind to me, in your own way. I won’t forget that you’ve supported me all this time since the… since we came back to the city. I can never forget that. If I’m alive today it’s because of you.”

“Why did the Thayan have you released?”

Surero almost gasped, he was so startled by the question, but he answered, “I have no idea. And don’t think that question hasn’t plagued me.”

“He would have done it for some reason,” Devorast went on. “You think you’ve been beaten now, but what of then? He had you in the ransar’s dungeon. All he had to do was say one word in the Chamber of Law and Civility, and they would have hanged you.”

Surero rubbed his eyes with the palms of his hands, heaved a great sigh, and said, “No, they would have beheaded me.”

“In Cormyr, you would have been hanged.”

Surero laughed and said, “Six of one…”

Devorast went back to his soup, and Surero picked up his own spoon, thinking he might give it a try, but he just didn’t want it.

“I can’t even feed myself,” the alchemist said, his voice quiet, his heart heavy. “I have no means to keep myself alive but the mercy of others.”

“Your smokepowder is unrivaled,” Devorast said. “I’ve never heard of anything like it.”

“I wonder how far away I will have to go before someone will be willing to risk buying it from me.”

“Marek Rymiit’s power doesn’t extend beyond this city,” Devorast told him.

“So at the very least he’s driven us out.”

“Leave if you want to,” Devorast said, then paused to finish his soup. “I still have work to do.”

“No, Ivar, it’s over. The canal is theirs.”

“No,” Devorast said, and Surero almost fell out of his chair, driven back by the weight of Devorast’s self-confidence. “That canal has never been anyone’s but mine, and it always will be.”