Whisper of Waves

51

22 Tarsakh, the Year of the Wave (1364 DR)

SECOND QUARTER, INNARLITH

Why didn’t you die, you decrepit old bag of bones, you useless old troll?” Willem hissed into Khonsu’s ear. “I’ll split you in two this instant-this instant!”

The frail old man, dressed in a graying night gown, lay on his back on the floor of his musty bedchamber. Willem Korvan kneeled over him, his left hand pressing hard over the old senator’s mouth, his right holding a wide-bladed kitchen knife against Khonsu’s side.

“Step down,” Willem whispered. “Step aside!”

The old man shook his head, eyes bulging, fixed on Willem’s.

The matronly maid and perhaps other household staff were still in the house. Willem had crept in through a window, surprising himself at a natural tendency toward stealth he never knew he had. Passing through the kitchen, he’d found the knife. Then he’d gone straight to Khonsu’s bedchamber, tore him violently from his bed, stifled his screams with one hand, and there they were, Willem doing his best to keep quiet while still raging at the old man.

“Do you think I’m some kind of joke?” Willem growled low. “Do you laugh at me, old man? Am I good for a laugh? A young man, toadying to a lesser senator, kowtowing to that insipid master builder you so loathe in private, denigrate in public, and befriend to his face? Are we all just players in some comic play staged for your amusement?”

The old man’s eyes threatened to burst from his skull and even in the dark bedchamber Willem could see him going from red to purple. He couldn’t breathe, let alone answer.

“Will you step down?” Willem insisted. “Or do I gut you like the pig you are? Too old to breed, good only for your meat?”

Khonsu closed his eyes.

Willem’s body tensed and he started to realize what he was doing, what he was saying, but then he pushed it all away and there was only rage again: anger, resentment, embarrassment, loathing for himself and everyone he knew who had let him be this man he’d become, this joke, this failure, this social-climbing nothing, this servant of a servant of a servant. All that came together in Willem Korvan and was let loose as hate for Khonsu.

“Do I slay you then?” he asked.

Khonsu’s eyes opened again, pleaded.

“If I let my hand go from your mouth, will you cry out?” Willem asked. “If you cry out, you are disemboweled.” For effect, Willem pressed the knife into the old man’s side, almost hard enough to break the skin. “Will you cry out?”

Khonsu shook his head, and Willem believed him.

He took his hand off the senator’s mouth but still held it to his chin, ready to quickly silence him again if need be.

“I won’t,” the old man squeaked, and even from inches away, Willem barely heard him. “I won’t step down.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s who I am,” the old man whispered.

Willem had to close his eyes. Tears burned his cheeks. He drew in a breath but managed to hold back a body-wracking sob.

“You were right,” Khonsu whispered, “I should have died.”

“You would rather die than step aside?” Willem asked, unable to keep his low, thready voice from cracking.

“What is the difference, one or the other?” the old man asked. Tears rolled down from his red, puffy, still-bulging eyes. “If you kill me, they’ll make you a senator, won’t they, boy?”

“Who?” Willem asked.

“Who?” Khonsu asked in return. “No one sent you?”

Willem shook his head.

“Then let me make one last vote as a member of the Senate of Innarlith,” the old man squeaked. “Kill me if you have to, but hear me. Hear me.”

“Speak,” Willem sobbed, unable to pull his eyes away from Khonsu’s, hard as he tried.

“Inthelph can’t help you anymore,” the senator whispered. “Meykhati. He likes you. He’s the one … he’s the one who chooses.”

“Meykhati?” Willem asked. “That fool? The one who dresses like a Shou and talks and talks and talks? Jabbering with that wife of his?”

“He plays the fool,” the old man said, “but in the meantime he works this city like a sava board. He’s the one who’s picking the new senators now.”

“How do you know?” Willem demanded, his voice still barely more than a whisper.

“How do I know?” Khonsu replied, crying. “Because it used to be me.”

Willem looked as deeply into the old man’s eyes as he could in an effort to pry the truth of his words from his very skull.

“Meykhati …” Willem whispered.

Khonsu nodded, then turned his head to one side and whispered through the quivering spasm of a sob, “Make it quick, boy.”

Willem looked at the shuddering old man, the once great senator, the once influential leader, and saw only garbage, the refuse of a life.

“Such a waste,” Willem breathed.

“Quick, boy,” the old man pleaded.

“No,” Willem whispered, clasping his hand over Khonsu’s mouth again. “No, Khonsu, you quivering worm. I’m no boy, and neither of us deserves a quick death.”

Khonsu’s eyes went wide, pleading again.

Willem pressed with the knife and it hesitated, stretching the old man’s papery skin, but not too far, before it popped in. The old man jumped and bucked on the floor, but he was so old, so light, and so weak, it did nothing but make the knife wound a little deeper, a little more jagged, and quite a bit more painful. Willem kept pressing until the blade stopped on a bone-a rib, maybe, or the old man’s pelvis-then he twisted his wrist and pulled the knife across Khonsu’s gut.

Willem was surprised by how hot the old man’s blood was. He expected Khonsu to be as cold and shriveled on the inside as he was on the outside, but the blood burned him.

“Please …” the old man gasped through a mouthful of blood, and the next attempt at speech rattled and gurgled in his throat.

Willem didn’t remember taking his hand off the old man’s mouth.

Khonsu’s hands worked at him, brittle fingernails snapping against the younger man’s hard, straining muscles.

Willem moved the knife across again, tearing muscle, slicing flesh, destroying kidney, liver, spleen, stomach, and lung.

“Die,” Willem hissed, his voice like a snake’s, alien to himself. “Die.”

Senator Khonsu’s trembling stopped one limb at a time. A grasping hand fell away, one leg stopped kicking, the other hand dropped, then the other leg fell still.

Willem worked the knife one more time and the blood oozed and pooled instead of pumping.

“For you, Phyrea,” Willem whispered at the corpse of the first man he’d ever killed. “For you, Mother.”

He wouldn’t say Halina’s name, though. He couldn’t.