Whisper of Waves

28

24 Nightal, the Year of Maidens (1361 DR)

THIRD QUARTER, INNARLITH

A break in the nearly incessant winter rain had brought Willem and Inthelph to the workshops of the Third Quarter to discuss certain fittings with a blacksmith and his apprentices. It wasn’t work that the master builder himself normally took a direct hand in, but the clear blue skies and seasonably cool breeze seemed to have pulled all the citizens of Innarlith into the streets, and Inthelph was no exception.

The trouble with Devorast far behind them and work on the wall progressing well, their conversations had again turned friendly and warm, if a bit dull. But they strode through the winding bazaars where traveling merchants pitched tents, parked carts, or just claimed a stretch of the cobblestone street to show their wares, Willem found himself growing increasingly uneasy, and he sensed a similar change in Inthelph’s mood.

A man brushed past him, sparing no word of apology, just a sideways glance at Willem’s fine embroidered tunic and practiced aristocratic manner. The man smelled of raw meat and wore the blood-smeared apron of a butcher. He hurried off into a side alley, followed quickly by a number of others, all men, all in the garb of simple tradesmen and laborers. Inthelph paused to examine the clay pots of a man who repeated over and over that his wares were of the finest Shou workmanship, and Willem took a moment to look both ways down the crowded street.

Trickles of men worked their way through the crowds, paying no attention to the merchants. Willem watched as whispered words were exchanged with porters and laborers along the way. Men and boys hurried to finish their tasks, some left incomplete, and hurried off until the trickle became a stream cutting across the avenue of merchants. The traders also took notice, and some began to secure their wares, their faces showing the beginnings of a familiar fear.

“What is it, Willem?” Inthelph asked.

Willem shook his head, and the master builder started looking around at the crowd as well.

“Where are they going?” Inthelph wondered, and Willem could see he was trying hard not to let his own mounting fear show in either his face or voice.

“We should get you home,” Willem said, though he wasn’t quite sure why.

“But …” the master builder said, then quieted himself.

A man with soot-stained skin and grimy clothes passed close enough that they could smell him: sweat, singed hair, and burned flesh. The look on the tradesman’s face was one of open hostility and simmering violence. Willem’s heart fluttered in his chest and he froze, his feet seeming nailed to the cobblestones. Panic stopped his breath.

The man passed without incident.

“Yes,” Inthelph said, taking Willem by the elbow. “Perhaps our business here is done.”

Having been closer to the Second Quarter than the Fourth, they made it back to the master builder’s fine manor before the mood on the street got any more threatening. Once they crossed into the Second Quarter, Willem detected a more-visible-than-normal watch presence on the streets. The few people out all looked to be on their way home, sparing no time for idyll chatter with passing neighbors. It was as if the aristocracy was being run to ground.

They met an elderly gentleman at the gates to the master builder’s house. Willem remembered having been introduced to him once, but-

“Senator Khonsu,” Inthelph said, reaching out a hand to stop the man, though he was scuffling only very slowly past. “Senator?”

Khonsu, a frail man Willem did indeed remember from several of the master builder’s social gatherings, was the oldest sitting senator in Innarlith’s ruling body. A long-time political ally of the master builder’s, Khonsu was one of the few men Willem had ever seen Inthelph truly kowtow to.

“Inthelph,” the old man said, his phlegmy voice whistling through panting breaths, “thank goodness. I was told you were out and about today.”

“I was, Senator,” the master builder replied. “My man and I … you remember Willem Korvan of Cormyr …” the senator obliged Willem with a nod … “were in the Third Quarter on an errand, when the strangest mood fell over the streets.”

The old man cleared his throat and produced a fine linen handkerchief with which to wipe his mouth and forehead.

“Forgive me,” Inthelph said. “Please do come in.”

When they were safely inside, Willem poured brandy while the older men settled into overstuffed leather chairs with a sava board on a small table between them that Willem had never seen anyone play.

“Some damned fool has called a general strike,” Khonsu finally explained. “Word of it is spreading through the city like wildfire.”

“A general strike?” Inthelph asked, his face all incredulous, his voice not the least bit sincere. “In Waukeen’s name, whatever for?”

Khonsu made a great show of shrugging and said, “Who would bet that they even know? It’s a political move. Some dolt stirring up the common folk to show that he’s the voice of the people and oh how they should all love him.”

“Do you know who?” asked Willem.

Khonsu looked up as if startled.

“I have it on good authority that it’s that new one, what’s his name?” Khonsu said, looking at Inthelph for a name.

Willem remembered that Khonsu had a habit of calling anyone who’d been in the senate a shorter time than he a “new one,” and since no one had been on the senate as long as Khonsu, they were all new ones.

“Surely no senator would-” Inthelph started.

Khonsu interrupted, “Pristoleph. That’s his name. The one with the funny hair. The funny red hair?”

“Pristoleph,” the master builder said, swirling the brandy in his glass. “Are you certain?”

The old man shrugged again and took a long sip of brandy that made him cough a little and put the handkerchief once again to his lips.

When he’d steadied himself the old senator said, “That’s what I hear, and who wouldn’t put it past him? All this business about coming up from nothing, about having lived on the streets. All that nonsense about the common man … the common man, please. That bastard’s richer than the rest of us combined.”

Willem listened intently, growing ever more curious about the young senator in question. He’d heard the name on several occasions, but Pristoleph didn’t circulate among the master builder’s circle, so they’d never had an opportunity to meet. Willem couldn’t help wondering how a member of the ruling elite could help arouse the base passions of the working class, but then to hear the two older men speak, there was a political if not economic motive behind it. Willem started to think that maybe Senator Pristoleph possessed a brand of courage lacking in the master builder and his decrepit patron.

“You should go,” Inthelph said.

It took Willem an embarrassingly long time to realize the master builder was speaking to him.

“I’m … I’m sorry, sir,” he muttered.

“To the Third Quarter, man,” Khonsu barked.

“Yes,” Inthelph cut in with a measure more calm. “Go there and see what these people are about. Apparently there are to be speeches.”

Willem staggered through a few attempts to decline, but soon he found himself being pushed along by the two men through the lower floors of Inthelph’s great house. He was only dimly aware in his growing panic of clothing being borrowed from servants-a stableman, he seemed to remember-and the two old men helping him dress the part of a common tradesman, then he was hurried out the door.

Willem walked as fast as his quivering knees would carry him, following the path he and the master builder had taken back into the Third Quarter. He felt like some kind of automaton, a golem of flesh commanded by his wizard master on an errand that would spell his demise even as it profited the wizard. A small part of his consciousness realized he was being more than a bit over dramatic, but fear can put the strangest thoughts into anyone’s head.

Once deep into the Third Quarter it was an easy thing to follow the crowds of tradesmen to the source of all the trouble. In a square surrounding an imposing public well, a crowd of thousands had gathered. Next to the well a crude wooden platform had been erected that Willem thought resembled a gallows.

The crowd reminded him of a demonstration he’d watched as a boy. Thousands had taken to the streets of Marsember in spontaneous support for King Azoun IV in his valiant struggle against Gondegal, the so-called “Lost King.” He’d seen nothing like it again in the intervening decade, and the gathering he found himself in the middle of in Innarlith was somewhat less cheerful, rather more tense.

A small group of men, all attired in what even from a distance Willem could tell were the least expensive drawn from an aristocrat’s extensive wardrobe, stood on the stage. Leading the wealthy men trying to look poor was a stout, slightly overweight man with a too-big hat of the sort commonly worn by carpenters and masons when they had to work in the rain. His ordinary demeanor was offset by his powerful voice, which boomed through the square so loudly and so clearly that Willem had no trouble making out every word he said, though he was some two dozen yards away.

“And in conclusion,” the man thundered, “all previous historical movements were movements of minorities or in the interest of minorities. The tradesman’s movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority in the interests of the immense majority. The tradesman, the lowest stratum in our present society, cannot stir, cannot raise itself up, without the whole superincumbent strata of official society being sprung into the air.

“Though not in substance,” the orator went on, “yet in form, the struggle of the tradesman with the aristocrat is at first a local struggle. The tradesmen of each realm must, of course, first settle all matters with its own oppressors.”

Willem, having missed the majority of the man’s speech, had some difficulty understanding his point. From the looks on the faces of the commoners filling the square, though, the speech stirred their passions in a most unsettling way. While puzzling over how the speaker thought his audience of tradesmen and laborers might not struggle with words like “superincumbent,” the man’s parting words were lost on him. Only when the next of the men on the makeshift stage clapped the speaker on the back and said, “Thank you, Marek Rymut, friend of all common men, for your stirring words,” did Willem start to pay very, very close attention.