Phyrea stared across the hall at Pristoleph and when he approached her she backed away, fending him off with her hands. He stopped a few paces from her. She looked around herself but couldn’t see any of the apparitions.
None of them spoke to her.
“How do you know about him?” she asked, not sure she wanted to hear the answer.
“The pince-nez,” he replied. She squinted at him, and he explained, “Spectacles… lenses that you wear over your eyes. Marek Rymiit gave them to me. When I put them on I could see through your eyesit was as though I were you. That’s when I saw you for the first time, eighteen days ago, in your own mirror.”
“And you saw… him?”
“It looked as though he was there, but not entirely. It was as though he was somehow added onto what I was seeing.” “Made of purple light,” she whispered, and he nodded. “Do you see him now?” he asked. She shook her head. “Do you see him often?”
“Most of the time,” she replied. “They appear to me everywhere, any time they wish, except when I was with”
She almost choked on his name. The ghosts were gone, then, just like they used to stay away when she was with Devorast.
“Used to,” she whispered.
“What did you say?” Pristoleph asked. “Are you talking to him now?”
“No,” she said, and felt the almost forgotten sensation of a smile on her face.
He smiled back at her, and for the first time she noticed his hair, red like Devorast’s, but differentnot human, somehow. It appeared to move as though blown by a wind from below.
“Why did he give you those lenses?” she asked. “Why would Marek Rymiit want you to see through my eyes? Why would he arrange for us to meet tonight?”
Pristoleph said, “He arranged this meeting because I asked him to. As for the pince-nez, I have no idea, but I’m happy that he did.”
Phyrea smiled, still, even when she began to cry.
61
14 Uktar, the Yearof the Banner (1368 DR) Pristal Towers, Innarlith
Even the place setting was intimidating. Willem placed his hand on the handle of the fork without picking it up, and ran his fingertip over the row of tiny ruby berries that accented the engraving of twisting vines. He blinked at a sparkling rainbow that beamed from a crystal decanter. The empty plate before him was made of a material he couldn’t identify with any certainty. It appeared to be ivory, but somehow hewn from a single piece. It couldn’t be, and he was afraid to ask.
Phyrea sat across from him and as hard as it was to tear his eyes from the magnificent opulence around him, he couldn’t keep himself from looking at her. He’d never seen her look more beautiful, and for the thousandth time at least he wondered if she were truly human at all, and not some Astral being, some creature of the outer heavens. But as she listened to Pristoleph’s perfunctory small talk, there was something else about her, something he’d never seen in her before. She seemed almost at peace, and peace was something he’d stopped trying to imagine for her.
Tm curious, Senator,” Pristoleph said. “How goes your canal?”
Willem bristled and had to clear his throat before he could answer, “It’s an honor to be asked to work on something so monumental, but of course it’s the ransar’s canal, not mine.”
He felt Phyrea’s burning stare then, but wouldn’t look at her. He knew what she was about to sayor maybe she would leave it unsaid: It was Ivar Devorast’s canal.
“I’d go you one more, Willemif I may call you Willem?” said Pristoleph.
There was no sense that any other answer but “yes” would ever be acceptable. It was the senior senator’s way of informing him that henceforth he would call Willem by his first name. Willem nodded without hesitation.
“I’d say the canal belongs to the people of the city-state of Innarlith,” Pristoleph went on.
“If not all the people of Faerun,” Phyrea cut in.
Willem’s skin crawled, and he looked at everything but Pristoleph and Phyrea.
“All the people of Toril, even,” Pristoleph said with a heaviness to his voice that brought out the beginnings of a simmering rage in Willem, though he didn’t understand in any concrete terms why he would feel that way. “It will spark a revolution in trade.”
Willem nodded and cleared his throat again.
“Don’t you think so, Willem?” Phyrea prompted.
She seemed legitimately interested in what he had to say, and it was so unexpected, all he could do was clear his throat again.
“Are you quite all right?” Pristoleph asked.
“Yes,” Willem said around a deep breath. “I’m fine, thank you. It’s just… difficult for me, sometimes, to remember what it’s like to sit at a proper table and have a proper conversation with proper people.”
“Conditions at the canal site are rather primitive,” Phyrea explained.
“I can imagine,” said Pristoleph.
“I’m not sure you could, Senator,” Willem said, plunging forward despite his best intentions. “It’s awful. The cold, the rain, the mud… the mud gets everywhere. It’s all over you in the space of the first afternoon. None of your clothes are ever dry. Fires provide warmtheverything. You live your life around an open fire like oresworse, goblins. It’s not a life fit for humans to live.”
“I’m sure there are humans living in worse conditions,” Pristoleph said.
“I can’t imagine,” Willem replied.
There was a short silence that commanded Willem’s attention. Almost against his will, he turned to face the senior senator, whose hair seemed to dance more quickly, as though agitated.
“I don’t have to imagine,” Pristoleph said, and his eyes allowed no argument. “I have but to remember. You see, I was born to the streets of the Fourth Quarter. From the day I could walk I started to fight to survive. I had no family to speak of, and in parts of this city, one doesn’t have to actually do anything to attract enemies.”
Willem nodded, his neck stiff, and sweat began to pool under his arms. He wanted a sip of water but was afraid to pick up the goblet for fear of revealing how badly his hands were shaking. He kept his hands in his lap.
“It was a difficult life,” Pristoleph went on, “but not without rewards. Growing up that way, being that sort of a child, made me the man that I am today.”
Willem nodded again and glanced around the cavernous dining rooma space so large Willem’s entire house could easily have been constructed inside it. Part of him wanted to ask Pristoleph if he was, in fact, the richest man in Innarlith, but then he didn’t have to. He was sitting in all the proof of that anyone would ever need.
But then Willem wondered: Wouldn’t he be more important than he is? Wouldn’t he be ransar, if that were true? Instead he seemed to be the senator that everyone deferred to when they had to, but rarely even spoke with. His appearances at social affairs both private and public were rare occurrences.
“I am a man who doesn’t trust easily, Willem,” Pristoleph continued. “I keep my own counsel, and I do what I think is best. Often, that is also what’s best for Innarlith. Rarer still, it’s what’s best for other people.”
“We should always consider others,” Willem muttered. His face flushed, and he cleared his throat again, feeling like a child speaking out of turn.
Pristoleph laughedlaughed at himand the blood drained from Willem’s face.
“Wherever possible, yes, I suppose so,” the strange man with fiery hair replied. “But not always, and so here we come to the reason I asked you and your lovely young bride to join me for dinner.”
“I’ll admit, Senator,” Willem said, “that I’ve been curious…”
“Three days ago I met Phyrea for the first time,” Pristoleph said. “For the first time in person, at least”the two of them traded a conspiratorial smile that almost made Willem whimper in fear”and very quickly afterward I
