Lies of Light

61

14 Uktar, the Yearof the Banner (1368 DR) Pristal Towers, Innarlith

Even the place setting was intimidating. Willem placed his hand on the handle of the fork without picking it up, and ran his fingertip over the row of tiny ruby berries that accented the engraving of twisting vines. He blinked at a sparkling rainbow that beamed from a crystal decanter. The empty plate before him was made of a material he couldn’t identify with any certainty. It appeared to be ivory, but somehow hewn from a single piece. It couldn’t be, and he was afraid to ask.

Phyrea sat across from him and as hard as it was to tear his eyes from the magnificent opulence around him, he couldn’t keep himself from looking at her. He’d never seen her look more beautiful, and for the thousandth time at least he wondered if she were truly human at all, and not some Astral being, some creature of the outer heavens. But as she listened to Pristoleph’s perfunctory small talk, there was something else about her, something he’d never seen in her before. She seemed almost at peace, and peace was something he’d stopped trying to imagine for her.

Tm curious, Senator,” Pristoleph said. “How goes your canal?”

Willem bristled and had to clear his throat before he could answer, “It’s an honor to be asked to work on something so monumental, but of course it’s the ransar’s canal, not mine.”

He felt Phyrea’s burning stare then, but wouldn’t look at her. He knew what she was about to sayor maybe she would leave it unsaid: It was Ivar Devorast’s canal.

“I’d go you one more, Willemif I may call you Willem?” said Pristoleph.

There was no sense that any other answer but “yes” would ever be acceptable. It was the senior senator’s way of informing him that henceforth he would call Willem by his first name. Willem nodded without hesitation.

“I’d say the canal belongs to the people of the city-state of Innarlith,” Pristoleph went on.

“If not all the people of Faerun,” Phyrea cut in.

Willem’s skin crawled, and he looked at everything but Pristoleph and Phyrea.

“All the people of Toril, even,” Pristoleph said with a heaviness to his voice that brought out the beginnings of a simmering rage in Willem, though he didn’t understand in any concrete terms why he would feel that way. “It will spark a revolution in trade.”

Willem nodded and cleared his throat again.

“Don’t you think so, Willem?” Phyrea prompted.

She seemed legitimately interested in what he had to say, and it was so unexpected, all he could do was clear his throat again.

“Are you quite all right?” Pristoleph asked.

“Yes,” Willem said around a deep breath. “I’m fine, thank you. It’s just… difficult for me, sometimes, to remember what it’s like to sit at a proper table and have a proper conversation with proper people.”

“Conditions at the canal site are rather primitive,” Phyrea explained.

“I can imagine,” said Pristoleph.

“I’m not sure you could, Senator,” Willem said, plunging forward despite his best intentions. “It’s awful. The cold, the rain, the mud… the mud gets everywhere. It’s all over you in the space of the first afternoon. None of your clothes are ever dry. Fires provide warmtheverything. You live your life around an open fire like oresworse, goblins. It’s not a life fit for humans to live.”

“I’m sure there are humans living in worse conditions,” Pristoleph said.

“I can’t imagine,” Willem replied.

There was a short silence that commanded Willem’s attention. Almost against his will, he turned to face the senior senator, whose hair seemed to dance more quickly, as though agitated.

“I don’t have to imagine,” Pristoleph said, and his eyes allowed no argument. “I have but to remember. You see, I was born to the streets of the Fourth Quarter. From the day I could walk I started to fight to survive. I had no family to speak of, and in parts of this city, one doesn’t have to actually do anything to attract enemies.”

Willem nodded, his neck stiff, and sweat began to pool under his arms. He wanted a sip of water but was afraid to pick up the goblet for fear of revealing how badly his hands were shaking. He kept his hands in his lap.

“It was a difficult life,” Pristoleph went on, “but not without rewards. Growing up that way, being that sort of a child, made me the man that I am today.”

Willem nodded again and glanced around the cavernous dining rooma space so large Willem’s entire house could easily have been constructed inside it. Part of him wanted to ask Pristoleph if he was, in fact, the richest man in Innarlith, but then he didn’t have to. He was sitting in all the proof of that anyone would ever need.

But then Willem wondered: Wouldn’t he be more important than he is? Wouldn’t he be ransar, if that were true? Instead he seemed to be the senator that everyone deferred to when they had to, but rarely even spoke with. His appearances at social affairs both private and public were rare occurrences.

“I am a man who doesn’t trust easily, Willem,” Pristoleph continued. “I keep my own counsel, and I do what I think is best. Often, that is also what’s best for Innarlith. Rarer still, it’s what’s best for other people.”

“We should always consider others,” Willem muttered. His face flushed, and he cleared his throat again, feeling like a child speaking out of turn.

Pristoleph laughedlaughed at himand the blood drained from Willem’s face.

“Wherever possible, yes, I suppose so,” the strange man with fiery hair replied. “But not always, and so here we come to the reason I asked you and your lovely young bride to join me for dinner.”

“I’ll admit, Senator,” Willem said, “that I’ve been curious…”

“Three days ago I met Phyrea for the first time,” Pristoleph said. “For the first time in person, at least”the two of them traded a conspiratorial smile that almost made Willem whimper in fear”and very quickly afterward I decided to make her my wife.”

Willem blinked, choked back the impulse to chuckle, and shook his head.

“My deepest apologies, Senator Pristoleph,” he said, “but for a moment I thought you said…”

The look on Phyrea’s face made it impossible for him to continue.

“You will step away,” Pristoleph said. “Phyrea and I will leave on the morrow for a long sea journey. When we return, we will be wed.”

“But…” Willem blustered. “But that’s…”

He looked to Phyrea, who smiled at him in a freakishly maternal way that made Willem’s skin crawl anew.

“You will go back to the canal,” Pristoleph went on. “Go back and finish it. Make a name for yourself. From what I understand you don’t deserve it, but Phyrea has askedby the Nine Hells, she’s demandedthat you be allowed to finish it. It will be your monument, your greatest achievement, and Phyrea will be mine.”

Phyrea smiled and looked down.

Willem’s jaw opened and closed, but no words came out.

“You can, of course, choose to be difficult,” Pristoleph said, and again, Willem’s attention was dragged kicking and screaming to the man’s eyes. A spark blazed in them that Willem didn’t think matched the candlelight, as though his eyes were lit from within. “Will you be difficult about this?”

Willem swallowed, mesmerized by the strange man, and well aware of the otherworldly woman that had attracted his attention. Willem didn’t think either of them were human, certainly not human like he was, not flawed, afraid, incompetent, and

“Willem?” Phyrea asked.

“I won’t be,” he said. It was so difficult to get the words out he practically barked. “I won’t stand in anyone’s way.”

“Very well, then,” Pristoleph said, his voice as light and as casual as though they’d just come to agreement to get together later for a game of sava, not that he’d just appropriated a man’s wife. “Let’s eat, shall we?”

Willem sat through the meal desperately trying not to throw up.