Whisper of Waves

32

6 Kythorn, the Year of the Helm (1362 DR)

FIRST QUARTER, INNARLITH

Would you believe it’s taken over a month for word of all this to filter to me?” Willem asked.

His old friend Ivar Devorast had no response. Instead, he continued to chip away at a block of what Willem thought looked like mahogany. The tool took both delicate slivers and crude chunks from the hardwood, precisely as Devorast desired.

“I never knew you were so handy with an adze,” Willem said as he settled on a stool in Devorast’s cramped, busy workshop. “And the workshop … it’s small, but it suits you somehow. So I guess you’re your own man now, eh? Master Shipbuilder Ivar Devorast?”

Devorast allowed him a shrug at last and Willem forced a smile.

“I’ve heard complaints about you, you know,” Willem said.

Without pausing in his exacting work, Devorast replied, “The meaningless chatter of tiny minds.”

That made Willem laugh, and for the briefest moment he thought he saw Devorast smile too.

“They’re a curious people, aren’t they, our new neighbors,” said Willem. He glanced around at the crew Devorast had hired to help build his ship. He saw a pair of dwarves, but the rest looked like locals with their dark skin and lean physiques. None of them were speaking, all simply bent about their tasks. “At risk of sounding elitist, they don’t seem to … to …”

“Like themselves?” Devorast offered.

Willem was surprised by that but only a little. He had been leaning in that direction, though he also tried to take a more diplomatic tack. The locals nearby either hadn’t heard, believed he was right, or needed the work too much to risk defending themselves.

“You’ve seen it too,” he said.

Devorast nodded and paused from his carving.

“They import everything,” Devorast said, “as if their own hands aren’t capable, but they are capable. I’ve seen good, solid tools made by local craftsmen on sale in the Third Quarter for half the price-less than half-of a cheap piece of cast-off iron from someplace like Waterdeep or Sembia. It’s their principal weakness, this distrust of themselves.”

Willem thought about that for a moment as Devorast went back to his work.

“I’ve been collecting friends since we came here,” Willem said. “You probably sorted that out though, eh? Friends and contacts, patrons and mentors, and they all share that same curse, that lust for anything from anywhere but Innarlith.”

“Including engineers,” Devorast said with no hint of meanness.

“Or shipwrights,” Willem shot back, likewise without malice.

A little while passed as Devorast continued his precise carving and the crew buzzed around him like so many bees at work on their hive, but instead of a hive, what was taking shape in that rented space on the quayside was a ship unlike anything Willem had ever seen.

“I understand your patron …” Willem said, “or is it matron … is from Shou Lung.”

Devorast stopped long enough to nod, examine his progress a bit, then continue.

“I suppose that makes your vessel the greatest prize an Innarlan could imagine,” Willem said.

Devorast looked up and said, “Is it?”

“Certainly,” Willem replied. “A ship built by a Cormyrean for a Shou. If that’s mahogany from Kozakura you’re working on, I’ll have to wonder if there’s anything of Innarlith in it at all. And what could these dwarves of yours be about? I didn’t think their kind could float.”

The look Devorast gave him then made the blood start to run from Willem’s face. When Devorast went back to work, though, he managed to gather himself.

“The wood,” Devorast said as he chopped and chipped, “is teak, and it’s from the jungles of Chult, so you’re partly right.”

“And the dwarves?” Willem asked, trying his best to ignore a sidelong glance from one of the stout little men.

“They’re helping me with the tiles,” Devorast replied.

“Tiles?”

“The hull will be covered in cut stone and ceramic tiles,” Devorast explained.

Willem looked at the shell of the ship’s hull. Wide and shallow, it was made of wood and where planks had yet to be installed Willem could see something of the interior structure.

“You know I’m no shipwright, Ivar,” he said, “but your hull seems a bit thin.”

“That’s why the tiles,” Devorast replied.

“It couldn’t possibly float,” Willem whispered, knowing even as he said it that …

“It’ll float,” Ivar Devorast said.

Willem Korvan had no doubt that it would. It would be the first such ship he’d ever heard of.

“Is that how they build them then, in Shou Lung?” Willem asked.

“No one has ever built a ship like this,” Devorast said with no hint of pride or arrogance in his inflection.

Willem nodded, then started to think of an excuse to leave.