“High praise indeed, my boy. High praise indeed,” Fharaud replied. “Not yet, though. I prefer to see her in the flesh before I name her. She’s like a baby, you know.”
He paused to see some reaction from Devorast, but there was none.
“You know when you conceive a child,” Fharaud pressed on, “or at least you know when you might have.” He winked at Devorast, who didn’t look up to see it. “Anyway, you can see it growing in the womb, see it being built in whatever way it is that a baby is built by a woman.”
“But you don’t name it,” Devorast cut in; “until it’s born.”
“You don’t name it until it’s born,” Fharaud concurred.
Devorast sighed, and leaned back from the drawing table, regarding the plans down the length of his nose.
“Yes, I know,” Fharaud said, having seen the look too many times already.
“It’s too big,” Devorast said. “It’s too big and it’s too far away.”
“The client wanted it big, and the client asked that it be built here,” Fharaud said. Devorast shook his head. “It will be fine, Ivar.”
“It makes no sense,” Devorast said. “Why would Cormyr have us build a ship for them, here, on the shore of the Lake of Steam?”
“I wasn’t always a used-up, bitter old boatwright, my boy,” Fharaud joked. “I was a fine salesman in my day.”
Devorast ignored the remark and said, “There’s no way to get this ship from here to Cormyr. There is no navigable waterway to connect us, or the Sword Coast and beyond for that matter, to the Sea of Fallen Stars. This ship is too big to be taken overland. The hull wouldn’t stand it. It would get to the Vilhon Reach in tatters.”
“She would get to the Vilhon Reach in tatters,” Fharaud corrected.
Devorast ignored that too and said, “It’s folly.”
“There are ways to move a ship besides through water, Ivar. We’ve discussed this.”
Devorast sighed again and said, “I know, I know. These magical portals. You know I don’t trust them.”
“I don’t know why,” Fharaud said. He took another sip of brandy then stood, stretching limbs that were stiff in the cold air. “We have a long road ahead of us before we have to worry about that anyway. The ship still has to be built, and that will take a year and a half or more. Perhaps two years.”
Devorast said, “Of course, but not to plan ahead for its delivery is irresponsible.” He shook his head, then glanced again at the brandy.
Fharaud drained his own glass, coughed when the brandy burned the back of his throat, then set his glass on the table next to Devorast.
“Build me a grand ship, Ivar,” Fharaud said, reaching out to take the younger man’s untouched snifter, “and I’ll see it delivered to Azoun’s navy.”
Fharaud downed the brandy in one searing gulp, ignoring the look of doubt from Ivar Devorast, though the look was no less searing.
16
9 Mirtul, the Year of the Serpent (1359 DR) Second Quarter, Innarlith
Willem Korvan had a very busy year.
In that time he continued to rise in the ranks of the office of the master builder. He hadn’t quite become Inthelph’s “right hand” as Halina had predicted, but he had managed to make himself indispensable.
Most of the time he succeeded by being close at hand. There was not a single day that went by, even those days Halina hoped he would set aside entirely for her, that he wasn’t at the wall or at the home or offices of the master builder. When an assignment came up he always volunteered, until it became something of a joke among the master builder’s staff. Finally Inthelph stopped asking for volunteers and rewarded Willem ahead of time with the plum assignments.
Few in the master builder’s staff complained. The few who were not quite friends of Willem’s knew that Willem I had too many friends. No one got in his way by choice, though Willem never detected a sense of fear or intimidation in anyone around him. He hadn’t set out to make anyone afraid of him, after all. He just wanted to be indispensable, and he was. He wanted to be liked, and he was. His casual manner and disarming good looks carried him far in the social circles of Innarlith, and he found himself attending an increasing number of posh gatherings and official functions, sometimes with Halina on his arm and sometimes not.
For her part, Halina continued to be a grateful and attentive lover, and over the months they saw a great deal of each other, though still he had not met her important uncle. She tried time and again to introduce them to each other, and Willem had developed quite a bag of tricks to help him dodge the meeting over and over again. He was delighted, but also a bit disappointed, that Halina never seemed to notice the intent behind his sudden need for a fresh drink, a breath of air, or the uncontrollable urge to whisk her off to a quiet bedchamber away from the guests and the looming specter of her uncle.
There were two reasons that Willem didn’t want to meet Marek Rymiit. The first was the least of the two, but one he still couldn’t deny, at least to himself. The promise implicit in their meeting, the promise he’d made to Halina, would turn an hourglass. When that sand ran out, the whole of Innarlith would expect there to be a wedding, and though the feel of her skin still thrilled him, and he time and again found himself telling her things he’d promised himself he’d tell no one, he couldn’t bring himself to marry the girl.
She was the bright spot of true happiness in an otherwise difficult and nervous existence. All the time Willem’s mind spun with plots and schemes and the constant push and pull of social climbing. The wall reconstruction went slowly, ran frighteningly over budget, and one senator after another stepped forward to oppose it, to oppose even the retention of Inthelph as the city’s master builder.
How could he marry Halina Rymiit-Sverdej, much less meet her uncle, while things were still so uncertain?
Marek Rymiit had become one of those sunlike men, those bright centers around which others rotate in fixed orbits of favors and secrets. With any hint that the project he’d become so integral a part of was proceeding under any but the most ideal circumstances would put Willem in too precarious a position. Would someone like Rymiit support a young man who some senators were already saying was helping to bankrupt the city? Certainly not.
The wall would have to be finished before he could meet Halina’s uncle. She would just have to wait. They both would.
Willem was torn between wanting the project to continue forever that it might never be that last passed hurdle before he’d have to marry Halina and wanting it to be done and done well so that his position in the city would finally be fixed and strong. Though Marek Rymiit was an important man, he was Thayan. He was a foreigner, and so was his niece. Could Willem attain the position he wanted in Innnarlith if he was a foreigner married to a foreigner? There was a better girl out there, wasn’t there? Was there?
All thoughts of returning to Cormyr, where he would never be anything but a boarding house owner’s son, had long since fled him. He meant to stay in Innarlith. He meant to buy himself a seat on the senate. He meant to keep going, all the way to the ransar’s Palace of Many Spires.
He was still young, and there was time. Still, he could afford few if any mistakes.
Not only Halina, but Thenmun had begun to show himself as a possible mistake.
Willem had put his trust in the young lieutenant, and for a few months it seemed as though that trust was well placed, but then the senators started to whisper, and those holes in the master builder’s social armor-tiny as they werewere revealed. Thenmun had started to get ideas, and like Ptolnec before him, he started to identify mistakes.
Many sleepless nights of hand wringing and sweating gave Willem a final answer for his problem with Thenmunor more appropriately, his two problems with Thenmun. The first was Thenmun himself. The lieutenant was too smart, too well-liked, and had scented the master builder’s blood in the water. Even if Willem stopped making the mathematical errors that plagued him and the project itself, the lieutenant wouldn’t stop until he had built a career on the ruins of both Willem’s and Inthelph’s.
