would have to stay with Willem, she’d told him he could stay there. With the canal site deserted, the workers gone home, he had nowhere to go.
“Touch me,” she whispered. Then louder: “Hold me.”
He walked to her, and she met him in the middle of the room, collapsing into his arms. He started out holding her, but within a few heartbeats, he was holding her up.
“What’s happened?” he asked.
“I gave myself to Willem Korvan,” she sobbed.
“Why?” he asked, and in only that one word she could detect no trace of how he actually felt about what she’d said.
“Because you wouldn’t let me give myself to you,” she said. He stepped away from her, and she almost fell to the floor. “I love you.”
“And I love you,” he said.
She couldn’t tell what he was thinking, but she could tell he was thinking. “Tell me,” she pleaded.
He can’t, the old woman told her. He can’t tell you, because he doesn’t know.
He can’t give you what you want, the sad woman added.
“There’s nothing more to tell,” he said. “I’m happier when you are with me than when you aren’t. I don’t know what else you want me to say.”
She went to him, and he took her in his arms again. She kissed his neck.
“What do you want from me, Lady Korvan?” he said.
She stepped back and slapped him across the face so hard it stung her fingers and left her numb up to her elbow. A welt raised on his cheek, and a brief flash of rage crossed his face, but in an instant he was back to his normal emotionless mask.
You see? the old woman’s voiced echoed in her head. All you’ll ever get from him is a passing rage, then nothing. He’ll give you nothing.
And we can offer you eternity, the man with the scar said.
“What’s keeping you in Innarlith now?” she asked Devorast. He shrugged and shook his head. “Can’t we go away, then? Can we just get on a ship and go? The Shou woman, your friend, if she’s in port can she take us to Shou Lung? Can we go to Calimport or Marsember? Raven’s Bluff, maybe, or even Waterdeep?”
She went to the door and threw it open.
Go, the man in her head told her, but not with him.
“Walk through this door with me,” she said. “Come away with me, and we’ll never smell this rotten city again.”
He shook his head and replied, “I’ve started something here.”
“And they won’t let you finish it.”
Can we go home reou›? the little girl asked.
“You know I’ll finish it anyway,” he said, “eventually.”
“Eventually?” Phyrea almost screamed. “What does that mean? I have no idea what that means. Eventually?”
“What of your husband?” he asked.
She had to look away from him for a moment and she said, “To the Nine Hells with him. To the Abyss with him.”
Damn itjustgo.’the little boy screamed in her head.
“If we could just go, we could be happy,” she said.
Devorast shook his head, and the gesture made Phyrea feel as though she was going to pass out.
“I’m exhausted,” she whispered. “I’m just so tired.”
Go back to Berrywilde, the sad woman whimpered. Go back there and rest, with us. We’ll let you rest.
“Stay here,” Devorast said. “Sleep here tonight, and in the morning, do whatever you want to do, and go wherever you want to go.”
“But not with you.”
He didn’t answer, but she shut the door anyway. He can never give you what you want, Phyrea, the old woman told her.
“I know,” she whispered, and still she stayed the night.
49
20Alturiak, the Yearof the Shield (1367DR) Second Quarter, Innarlith
The office of the master builder had acquired a smell to it that made Willem’s stomach turn. The first time he’d been there, he’d been impressed with its opulence, drawn to the power of the position that could command such a space. In time, though, it had come to smell like decay, it had withered like the old man who inhabited it. The space itself seemed to have shrunk.
“It’s extraordinary,” the master builder said, shuffling through a huge stack of parchment sheets. “With a little work, this could actually be done.”
“A little work?” Willem couldn’t help but say.
The parchment sheets held Devorast’s designs for the canal, seized by Salatis’s men. Willem didn’t even want to look at them. He knew what the pages contained. And he knew that no work on the part of Inthelph could possibly improve on them.
The master builder nodded and pushed the sheets aside. He sighed, and his teeth began to chatter, though the room was warm. He stared down at the floor, at nothing.
“I’ve news,” Willem said.
The master builder didn’t seem to have heard him. He just stared down, his teeth clicking. “It concerns Phyrea,” said Willem.
Inthelph looked up at that, the beginnings of a smile on his face. He blinked and rubbed his eyes with weak hands.
“She and I have been married,” Willem said. “It all happened very fast. I can’t begin to apologize for your not being there, not having the opportunity to send her off with a proper ceremony, and so on, but…”
Inthelph grinned from ear to ear and stood on legs that seemed to creak under his meager weight. He stepped to Willem, reached up, and put his dry hands on either side of the younger man’s face.
“My boy,” the old man said. “My dear, dear son. I could not possibly be happier to hear this news. This is the sort of thing Fve been waiting for, you see.”
Willem took a step back and Inthelph flinched away. A look of passing terror showed in his eyes and something about that petty weakness made Willem angry. The anger must have showed on his face because Inthelph stepped even farther away, moving into the corner of the room like a caged animal.
“What have you been waiting for?” Willem asked.
Inthelph swallowed and said, “For you.”
“Forme?”
The master builder nodded and said, “You have no idea how much I worried about Phyrea. She’s my only child, my only heir. Bad enough she was a girl, but then she insisted on rejecting everything I tried to give her. She would steal things, break things… she had no respect for me, for her betters, or for herself. Until you came along, that is.”
Willem shook his head, speechless at how wrong the master builder was.
“I knew you were the one, Willem. I knew you would be the steadying influence that both my daughter and my city needed.”
Willem closed his eyes, amazed at the master builder’s upside down interpretation of everything. Willem wasn’t even a steadying influence on himself.
“I’ve felt like a father to you, my boy,” Inthelph went on. “I hope you’ve felt like a son to me. And now that’s true under the law and not just in the way we see each other. You are my son now.”
