“Halina,” he mumbled.
“Willem,” she panted. Her cheeks were wet with tears, her eyes red and puffy.
“You’ve been crying,” he said, hearing just how flat and uninterested his voice must sound.
“I know it’s terribly late,” she said. Her voice was raw and quiet. “I’m sorry. May I come in?”
Willem didn’t know what to say or do. He just stood there, looking at her.
“Please, Willem?”
He stepped aside and said, “I’m sorry. Of course. Of course. Come in.”
She stepped in but not past him. Instead, she wrapped her arms around him and buried her face in his neck. He could feel her tears, hot against his skin.
“I haven’t seen you in so long,” she sobbed into his neck. “I just… I just woke up tonight with the worst feeling. I can’t shake it. I just know that something terrible…”
If she was anyone elseif she were Phyrea, or his motherhe would have thought that she’d trailed off like that for the dramatic effect of it, as a way of demanding that he ask her what was wrong, and play into whatever lace- fringed trap she was setting.
But she wasn’t Phyrea or his mother.
He pushed her away gently and closed the door. She turned away from him and dabbed at her eyes with the back of a trembling hand. With great care he drew the weathercloak from her shoulders. She must still have been cold from the night air, and she wrapped her arms across her chest, squeezing herself. Willem hung her cloak on a hook.
“I want to get married right away,” she said in a quiet voice that trembled as violently as her shoulders. “Marry me now, Willem. If you don’tif we wait even another tendaysomething bad will happen. Something will keep us from…”
She started to cry harder and Willem stepped behind her, taking her shoulders in his hands. She spun on him so fast he startled away. Happily, she didn’t notice and instead pressed herself into him again.
“I love you,” he whispered to her. “Halina, my dear, dear, patient love. I hope you’ll be able to forgive me. Tell me you can forgive me.”
“I forgive you,” she whispered back, having no idea what Willem wanted most to be forgiven for.
“I’ve been beastly,” he said. “I’ve been monstrous.”
Halina giggled a little though she was still crying.
“You hate me,” he said.
“No,” Halina replied. “Willem, I could never hate you, and you’ve hardly been monstrous. You have reasons for waiting, and I understand, but… but…”
“But you’ve waited long enough,” he said.
“No,” Halina whispered. “Yes.”
“Then that’s it,” he told her, looking her in the eye and lying, though he so wished he wasn’t. “We’ll be married straight away. I’ll speak with your uncle at his earliest convenience.”
“Willem,” she cooed, “do you mean it?”
He meant to answer her but just then he saw his mother, her arms folded in that way she had of telling him he was making a terrible mistake, standing in the doorway to the sitting room.
“Really,” Thurene said, her voice like freezing rain. “I suppose I should be thankful that this is happening in the middle of the night so at least the neighbors will be spared the unseemly melodrama.”
Willem could feel Halina stiffen in his arms. He watched her try to gather herself, having no idea what to say to her or to his mother.
Halina made sure not to look at Thurene but gave Willem a moony-eyed glance then took her weathercloak and ran out the door, down the steps, and into the dark street.
“Close the door, my dear,” Thurene said, her voice still unthawed. “You’ll catch your death.”
He closed the door and leaned against it, his eyes falling to the floor as if attached to heavy weights.
“Really, Willem, the Thayan?”
Willem didn’t bother to sigh. He was so tired.
“Please tell me you didn’t mean that,” she pressed.
“I love her, Mother. I’ve already promised her”
“What, my dear?” Thurene almost shouted, then calmed herself. “You’ve promised her what? That you’d ruin your life for her? Throw away your career and your fortune for her? Sacrifice your future for her? Is that what you promised?”
“You know what I promised,” he said. “It’s a promise I made a long time ago.”
“And the master builder?”
“What about him?” Willem asked.
“Does he know about this promise you’ve made to a foreign girl, the niece of a man you’ve told me yourself is some sort of rabble-rouser?”
“A foreign girl?” he said with a sigh. “In case you’ve forgotten, Mother, I’m a foreign boy.”
“Oh, no, my dear,” Thurene shot back. “You’re neither a foreigner nor a boy. You’ve made this city your home. You’ve told me so yourself. You’ll be a powerful man, here, Willem, and you’re no boy, so stop acting like one.”
Willem let all the air out of his lungs and sagged. His knees almost gave out on him. He put his hands over his face.
“I’m so tired,” he sighed.
“Then go upstairs and go to sleep,” his mother said. “In the morning you will go see the master builder and you will ask for his daughter’s hand in marriage. You know he wants the match, and we both know what it will mean for you. Your loyalty has to be to Inthelph, Willem, at least for now. If you have to… see this little girl in the meantime, well, as I said, you’re a man, but don’t marry her, my dear. Don’t do that to yourself. Don’t you dare do that to yourself.”
Willem thought of the beginnings of a thousand arguments but his mind wouldn’t let him think them through. All he wanted was to sleep.
“Inthelph has done so much for you, Willem,” his mother went on. “He is a very important senator and the master builder. He not only. can arrange a title for you, Willem, but he’s willing to. Willing… He can hardly wait to get you that title. A title, my dear! Show him you’re willing to sacrifice for him. Not that marrying that lovely girl of his is so much a sacrifice.”
“Sacrifice?” Willem whispered.
His mother couldn’t know what he’d already sacrificed for the master builder. She had no idea the extent to which he’d sold his very soul to help Inthelph maintain his position in the city, and in fact neither did Inthelph. Even though the poison had failed to kill tough old Khonsu in the end…
“Maybe…” Willem said aloud, but finished the thought to himself alone:
Maybe it is time I do a favor for Inthelph that he actually knows about.
“No, my dear,” Thurene said. “Not maybe.” Willem nodded.
“Good boy,” his mother replied. “Now off to bed.”
42
2 Ches, the Year of the Wyvern (1363 DR) Second Quarter, Innarlith
Did you poison Khonsu?” Pristoleph asked.
Marek Rymiit often thought that if he didn’t have such a wonderful sense of humor he’d have to just kill everyone in Innarlith, they were so stupid.
“No,” Marek said, suppressing the laugh with a shallow breath. “I daresay if I had, he would be dead and not locked in that trancelike state. The priests can’t seem to decide if the assassin used too much of the poison or not enough.”
He sat across a wide, marble-topped desk from a fire genasi. What made that funny, and the Innarlan so
