“The only times I can remember feeling even the slightest bit happy have been in her presence,” Willem said. Sweat gathered at his hairline and under his arms. He hadn’t meant to reveal so much, especially to the Thayan. “But my mother is of similar mind to you.”
“Ah, yes,” Marek replied. “And how fares the lovely Thurene?”
“She is well.”
“Just’well’?”
Willem shrugged. He didn’t know what else to say.
“She whispers a name in your ear, I’ll wager,” Marek said. “I know that the master builder has been, too, and for some time.”
Willem shook his head, hoping against hope that Marek wouldn’t say the name.
“I’m happy with Halina,” Willem said.
“And what of that?” asked the wizard. “Who are you to be happy?”
Willem looked him in the eye and shook his head. Had he heard the man correctly? “I’m…”Willem started.
“All men are equal,” the Thayan said. “We all have our roles to play in the gods’ great theater. Who are you to expect to be happy when so many suffer? So what if you love Halina? You should marry Phyrea. Her father wishes it, and so do many others in this citymany others who have been watching over you and will continue to watch over you both.”
“But…” Willem grunted. He didn’t know what to say. He didn’t want to have the conversation Marek seemed intent on bullying him into.
“I’m sure you find the fair Phyrea pleasing to the eye,” said Marek.
Willem nodded, but said, “Will you forbid me from marrying your niece? Will you prevent me from seeing her?”
Willem had tried to keep that last from sounding like a plea, but he couldn’t help it. Anyway, Marek Rymiit was too intelligent and astute a listener not to have sensed it. Willem could see it written plainly in the Thayan’s sparkling eyes and uneven smile.
“I will do no such thing,” said Marek. “If you are dead set on embarking on a path pointed away from the goals you’ve worked so diligently to achieve, how could I presume to stop you?”
“Phyrea hates me,” Willem said.
“Wives hate their husbands, lad,” Marek replied.
“Before they’re even married?”
“Well…”
There was a heavy silence while Willem hoped he looked like he was thinking long and hard.
“Phyrea” Willem said, his voice barely more than a whisper.
Marek smiled and said, “Wear the pin, son. It will help.”
27
30 Nightal, the Year of the Sword (1365 DR) The Palace of Many Spires, Innarlith
The evening had begun with a lengthy and confusing prayer of appeasement to Malar, given by the newly confirmed ransar himself. Salatis had insisted that his guests attend the festivities in the guise of an animal, and Willem Korvan had chosen for himself the weasel.
“It’s a creature with its own nobility, wouldn’t you say, Meykhati?” Willem said. “Or should I say, ‘Sir Crane’?”
The elder senator indulged him with a largely uninterested laugh from behind his avian mask of fine Shou porcelain and said, “If you say so, WillSenator Weasel.”
The laughs that sizzled up from the circle of guests Willem had merged with mocked him. He put a hand lightly to the brooch that held his cloak around his shoulders. A palpable sensation of warmth flooded his chest when he touched it.
“Tell us more, Senator Weasel,” requested the woman with purple hair, a mask in the likeness of an eagle, and the familiar accent of Willem’s homeland.
“You’re Cormyrean,” he said.
The woman, stout and heavy, immaculately dressed in a gown that included actual eagle feathers, bowed slightly and introduced herself as Tia Harriman, the newly-appointed ambassador from Cormyr.
The othersMeykhati behind his crane mask; the master builder with an elephant’s ghastly trunk; Rymut’s man Insithryllax, wearing a frightening black dragon’s head; Kurtsson with the face of a bear; and his mother, who pressed close to him, her eyes as cold and hard as the tigress whose features she’d borrowedheaped niceties on the woman.
“I’m surprised,” Willem said, marveling at the sound of his own voiceso clear and strong.
“Whatever do you mean, my dear?” his mother inquired. He could feel her nervousness, and perhaps for the first time in his life he didn’t care.
“Why does Azoun suddenly feel that Innarlith, of all places, requires the presence of an embassy?”
Willem stood in the center of the ensuing silence feeling like Talos in the eye of a hurricane of his own creation. Thurene squeezed his arm, but he ignored her.
“His Majesty,” the ambassador replied, correcting his protocol, “has taken an interest in the canal.”
“Well, you get right to the point, don’t you, Ambassador?” Willem replied. He felt cheerful, and let his voice convey that. Everyone relaxed, at least a little. “I suppose I can see why Cormyr might benefit from it. Too bad it will never come to pass.”
“Won’t it?” asked the ambassador.
“No, madam,” Inthelph answered before Willem could, “I don’t think it will. The only two people in Innarlith who might make a go of it”he nodded to Willem”are standing before you right now. And neither of us have any interest in that fool’s errand.”
“No?” asked the ambassador. “And why not?”
“It’s not necessary,” Inthelph said.
“There are already means to travel from here to the Vilhon Reach,” Kurtsson cut in, the voice from behind the bear mask had an exotic accent. “I could take you there myself right now, and back again, in but the blink of the eye. And I can do the same with an entire ship. Why, then, all the digging?”
The contempt he put into that last word stuck in Willem’s ear a bit. An answer to Kurtsson’s question occurred to him, but he didn’t speak it. The idea for a canal was brilliant, and he knew full well that if anyone in Faerun might have a chance to make it work it was Ivar Devorast, but that was the last thing he’d tell the people around him just then.
“My friend the bear is correct,” said the strange man behind the black dragon mask. Even under the influence of the brooch’s magic, Willem recoiled a little from the man, as did all of them. “But perhaps a more cheerful subject is in order.”
“Indeed, Sir Dragon,” the ambassador said. “I do have a question for our friend the weasel.”
“Of course,” said Willem. “We hunt birds, rabbits, rats, frogs, and various small rodents by the hundreds.”
There was a pause while they all struggled in their own ways with his answer, then a few reluctant, almost frightened giggles.
“Oh, Willem, my dear, don’t be silly,” Thurene said as she dug her fingernails into his arm.
Willem endured the pain and said, “Interesting thing about us weasels: the young are born almost exclusively in the month of Tarsakhas few as two, and as many as ten in a litterin a nest lined with the fur of the mother’s kills. Like humans, the female weasel has a strong instinct to protect her young. It takes three and a half tendays for their eyes to open, but they’re hunting by the end of their second month of life.”
“It must be difficult for the mother weasel to see them leave,” the ambassador played along.
“Oh, my,” Meykhati interjected. “Were we to have been prepared to discuss the behavior and mating habits
