Whisper of Waves

62

1 Eleint, the Year of the Wave (1364 DR)

THE PALACE OF MANY SPIRES, INNARLITH

Fifteen people sat on various chairs and sofas in the enormous office of Ransar Osorkon. Some of them were mages, six were bodyguards, and the rest were advisors and hangers-on or part-time spies. A few of them read through journal books and ledgers, occasionally making notes. Two of them played a long, half-hearted game of sava. The rest gazed at one or another of a score of crystal balls that had been arranged on stands around the room. From those enchanted devices, Osorkon was able to look in on the comings and goings of friends and enemies alike.

A small group of men stood around one crystal ball, leering and giggling at the magically conjured image of a senator they all knew well who was engaged in an illicit dalliance with his upstairs maid. The senator’s wife appeared in another of the crystal balls, taking tea with two other senators’ wives in an opulent sitting room elsewhere in the Second Quarter.

Osorkon sighed and propped his head in his hands, his elbows on the gigantic desktop in front of him.

“Oh, my!” one of the men looking into the crystal ball at the senator and his maid exclaimed.

Osorkon looked up, noticing the sudden change in mood. The men around the crystal ball stared at the image with shock and concern, all leering gone. The crystal ball showed the senator clutching at his chest, his left arm dangling limply at his side. The young maid scurried about, naked, screaming. They couldn’t hear through the crystal ball, but it looked as though she was screaming. They all paused for a moment to watch the man die in his bed while the crying maid hurried to get dressed and get out.

One of the mages passed a hand over the crystal ball and the group of men dispersed, all looking vaguely embarrassed. None of them looked at the image of the dead man’s wife, still enjoying her tea and gossip.

Osorkon heaved another sigh, louder and deeper.

“Is something the matter, Ransar?” one of the mages asked.

Osorkon shook his head.

“Is there anything I can get you, my lord?” one of the advisors inquired.

Osorkon ignored him and started sifting through the parchment, paper, and vellum on his desk. There were letters, account ledgers, writs, and requests, and they all bored him to tears. He’d fallen behind with all the reading and signing, signing and reading, and the more he tried to force himself to get caught up, the less work he actually did. The advisors had gone from tolerant to testy to insistent and back to tolerant again, having lost interest in the fact that he’d lost interest.

As the bulk of the people in the room watched the sava game, none of them really interested in it, Osorkon quickly skimmed one sheet after another, sliding them off the desktop as he read them. He signed one, a request for the release of a hundred gold pieces to buy bricks to shore up a falling pier. A letter from a housewife from the Third Quarter that seemed not to have a point at all was sent off the edge of the desk only partially read. That went on for a long time.

When he saw Fharaud’s signature at the bottom of an expensive sheet of bleached white paper, he stopped.

Fharaud had been dead for months. They had been friends-a long time ago, before the shipwright’s public disgrace. The signature at the bottom of the letter was ragged and shaky. The letter was dated, and more than five months, almost six, had passed since it had been written. Ransar Osorkon read the letter.

Then he read it again.

He stood and crossed to a map of the city and surrounding territory that he’d had painted onto one of the walls of his office. The map covered everything from Firesteap Citadel at the northern foot of the mountains to the south, all the way north to the middle of the Nagawater. He had to reach up and stretch to do it, but he touched the thin blue line of the southern Nagaflow at the site of his new keep, then traced a straight line down with the tip of his finger to the shore of the Lake of Steam.

“Forty miles, give or take,” he whispered to himself.

More than one of the people in the room asked, “Ransar?”

He looked at the letter, then asked the room, “Has anyone heard of this man, Ivar Devorast?”

The people in the room looked at one another, and most of them shrugged.

“A Cormyrean,” Osorkon said, reading from the letter. “Once apprenticed to Fharaud, the shipbuilder.”

One of the mages stepped forward and said, “I believe the name is familiar, my lord. He was bound up in the tragedy of the Neverwind.”

“Everwind,” Osorkon corrected then waved it away. “Who is he?”

“No one, my lord,” the mage said.

“Would Rymut know him?” Osorkon asked the ransar. The wizard’s face went white and he stuttered, “M-my lord?”

“This Cormyrean has an idea that I find interesting,” Osorkon said. “It’s an idea that you mages might not like, an idea some Red Wizards might not like.”

“My lord,” the mage said. “Master Rymut may be Thayan, but-”

“I’d like to speak with this man,” Osorkon interrupted, and the mage knew well enough to quiet himself.

Two of the bodyguards stared him down and the wizard bowed.

“I heard that Rymut tried to kill him on at least one occasion but couldn’t,” said one of the advisors, the sort of man who listened to gossip but rarely passed it on.

“Shall I try again to scry him, my lord?” another of the mages suggested. “Rymut, I mean.”

The ransar waved again and said, “There’s no point. He’s blocked your every attempt. No, I think I’ll speak with this Devorast. If Marek Rymut wants him dead, and Fharaud wrote his last letter on his behalf, he must be worth meeting. Find this man for me.”

The fifteen people in the room looked at each other. They had all been given the same task, but very few of them would make any attempt at all to find Ivar Devorast.