Whisper of Waves

54

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

FIRST QUARTER, INNARLITH

It’s beautiful,” Willem whispered.

He couldn’t make his voice go any louder. His throat and jaw tightened.

He’d picked up the sheet of parchment at first, but as the lines coalesced on the page and revealed themselves in detail he finally had to set the drawing down on the table and take half a step back away from it. He couldn’t bring himself to touch it for the longest time.

Ivar Devorast sat behind him, not speaking, breathing quietly.

“You’ve thought of everything,” Willem said, his eyes still playing over the page.

Devorast didn’t respond, but he didn’t have to.

He had thought of everything. The spire was drawn in excruciating detail, from the very tip of the snowflake-lace finial down the crocket-edged fleche to the hexagonal foundation base. It was magnificent-so extraordinary Willem doubted if any human hands could actually build it.

“I wonder, Ivar,” he said, “if there’s anything you can’t do.”

“Of course there is,” Devorast replied, “but what I care to do, I insist on doing well.”

Willem’s chest tightened and he held his breath while his heart beat hard in his chest.

“You have everything?” he asked. “Everything I asked you for?”

Devorast might have nodded, but Willem didn’t turn around and look. He took a deep breath, trying hard to ignore the dank odor of Devorast’s quayside hovel. He reached out and brushed the top sheet aside just enough to reveal the edges of the pages beneath it. Devorast had finished everything: materials lists, detail drawings, ornaments, instructions for stonecutters, masons, carpenters, and blacksmiths. He’d even drawn plans for a new sort of scaffold rig that Willem didn’t quite understand, and a whole range of other purpose-built tools. It was a life’s work in that stack of parchment, but drawn over a few months in Devorast’s quick, sketchy hand and precise handwriting.

“It just comes right out of you, doesn’t?” Willem asked, not expecting an answer.

“There’s no sense in drawing until you see it in your head. I imagine it, in every detail, then draw what I see.”

“I’ve never been able to do that,” Willem admitted.

“Your skills lie elsewhere,” said Devorast.

Willem’s face grew hot, and he pressed his teeth together. His anger was so intense it blurred his vision.

“Oh, really,” he said, “and where do my talents lie?”

He picked up the stack of parchment and rolled it quickly, making himself not worry about smudging or tearing them even though they were the single most important documents of his entire life. It was going to take him tendays to copy them all, but once he had and construction began, and he was given his seat on the senate, he could finally relax, spend the gold he’d sacrificed no less than his soul for, and to the deepest pits of the Nine Hells with all the rest of it.

He’d be done. He’d have succeeded.

“People,” Devorast said. “You can be around people. You can talk to people.”

“Yes,” Willem replied as he slid the parchment into the leather tube he’d brought with him. “I am very good at changing myself to make other people like me better. I’m very good at getting what I want from people while giving them as little as possible in return.”

Still not turning to look at Devorast, Willem started to walk to the door.

“Are you going to give me as little as possible in return?” Devorast asked.

Willem stopped but still didn’t turn around.

“Willem?”

“We’re finished, you and I,” Willem said. “This is the last one.”

“Retiring early?”

“After a fashion,” Willem replied, still not turning around.

“I suppose I should kill you before I let you walk out of here with those,” Devorast said. His voice was as flat as always, almost monotone.

Willem tensed and lifted the heel of his right boot a fraction of an inch off the floor. He kept a silver-bladed dagger in his boot and had been practicing with it-slashing, stabbing, even throwing.

He didn’t hear Devorast stand. He hadn’t moved.

“Why don’t you?” Willem asked, still not turning around, just standing in the doorway, one foot inside and one foot outside of the little shack. “You should kill me. I would kill me, if I were you. I made you promises. You worked very hard, created something that will live forever in the skies above Innarlith, casting its shadow on all the city’s inhabitants for all time to come. Here I am, stealing it from you, walking away with it without even turning around to look you in the eye.”

Devorast heaved a world-weary sigh that only fanned the anger that smoldered in Willem.

“I hate your stinking guts,” Willem said, his voice low and quiet, an animal’s growl. “You should kill me for what I’m doing, but you don’t even think that much of me, do you? You don’t even notice me enough to hate me. Is that it, you arrogant son of a whore? Is that why you’re going to let me walk out of here with these, without leaving a thin silver behind?”

“No,” Devorast said, and still his voice hadn’t changed in the slightest. “I’m not going to kill you because you’re going to build it.”

“The tower?”

“The tower,” Devorast replied. “You’re going to build it, down to every detail, aren’t you?”

“We built the keep up north,” Willem said. “We built it just as you planned.”

“So, go,” Devorast said, absolving Willem of at least that afternoon’s sins.

“That’s it?” he asked. “No gold? No threats?”

“Go and build it, Willem,” said Devorast. “Build it and you can keep your gold.”

“No one will ever know it was you. No one. Not ever.”

“I don’t care,” Devorast replied, and Willem believed him.

“You will die in obscurity,” Willem said, “and you could have been anything you wanted to be.”

“All I ever wanted to be was me,” Devorast said, “and I’ve had that all along.”

Willem nodded, and though he wanted to laugh, he couldn’t.

“Build it, Willem,” Devorast urged. “I’ll see it every day and know it’s mine. I don’t care if anyone else knows its mine. I don’t care if I never have two coppers to rub together. I want to see that built, though, and I don’t mind telling even you that.”

“Even though we’re enemies now, you and I?” Willem asked, suspicious.

“We’re not enemies,” Devorast said.

Willem almost turned around, almost turned on him, almost attacked, almost screamed, almost … but he didn’t move.

“Do you have a sword, Ivar?” he asked.

He took Devorast’s silence for a no.

“You should carry a weapon with you now,” Willem said. His voice was so low, so pained, he had to force each word out with deep, hard pressure in his chest.

Willem walked away, not waiting for Devorast to respond. He wouldn’t anyway.