decided to make her my wife.”
Willem blinked, choked back the impulse to chuckle, and shook his head.
“My deepest apologies, Senator Pristoleph,” he said, “but for a moment I thought you said…”
The look on Phyrea’s face made it impossible for him to continue.
“You will step away,” Pristoleph said. “Phyrea and I will leave on the morrow for a long sea journey. When we return, we will be wed.”
“But…” Willem blustered. “But that’s…”
He looked to Phyrea, who smiled at him in a freakishly maternal way that made Willem’s skin crawl anew.
“You will go back to the canal,” Pristoleph went on. “Go back and finish it. Make a name for yourself. From what I understand you don’t deserve it, but Phyrea has askedby the Nine Hells, she’s demandedthat you be allowed to finish it. It will be your monument, your greatest achievement, and Phyrea will be mine.”
Phyrea smiled and looked down.
Willem’s jaw opened and closed, but no words came out.
“You can, of course, choose to be difficult,” Pristoleph said, and again, Willem’s attention was dragged kicking and screaming to the man’s eyes. A spark blazed in them that Willem didn’t think matched the candlelight, as though his eyes were lit from within. “Will you be difficult about this?”
Willem swallowed, mesmerized by the strange man, and well aware of the otherworldly woman that had attracted his attention. Willem didn’t think either of them were human, certainly not human like he was, not flawed, afraid, incompetent, and
“Willem?” Phyrea asked.
“I won’t be,” he said. It was so difficult to get the words out he practically barked. “I won’t stand in anyone’s way.”
“Very well, then,” Pristoleph said, his voice as light and as casual as though they’d just come to agreement to get together later for a game of sava, not that he’d just appropriated a man’s wife. “Let’s eat, shall we?”
Willem sat through the meal desperately trying not to throw up.
62
21 Uktar, the Yearof the Banner (1368 DR) The Canal Site
Fifteen more dead men awoke, choked out a dusty black coal, and staggered to their feet.
“I’m beginning to think,” Willem said with a sigh, “that for every one you bring back from the dead, two or three living workers flee back to the city.”
Marek Rymiit chuckled and said, “Let them go. We’ve made arrangements to collect bodies from the Fourth Quarter mass graves, so they’ll come back from the city in due course anyway.”
Willem shuddered at the thought of it. He rubbed his wrists where he’d been cut and healed again. His body shook, his nose ran, and his head throbbed. He wondered if he had any more blood to lose.
“I hate the winter here,” he muttered. “It’s so cold. Every day it’s so dark and cold.”
“But isn’t it colder in Cormyr?” Marek asked. “It’s likely snowing there, no?”
Willem shook his head, but replied, “Yes, I suppose it is. Still, this dampnot damp but incessant soaking rainsucks the warmth from your body. It’s killing me. Its absolutely killing me.”
“This?” said Kurtsson, who’d finish creating a handful of zombies himself. “This is warm. It’s warm here.”
“Ah,” Marek said with a jovial laugh, “the Vaasan perspective. Surely even you can take heart in that, Willem.”
“No, I can’t,” said Willem.
“Really, my boy,” Marek said, “perhaps you need to spend more than a night or two with that lovely wife of yours. I’ve been encouraging you to get back to the city more often and for longer stretches.”
“My lovely wife isn’t there,” Willem said, surprised that Marek, who always seemed to know everything, didn’t know that. “She’s gone off with another man.”
Kurtsson laughed at him, and Willem spun on the Vaasan, which only made him laugh harder.
“Kurtsson,” Marek said in a stern tone, “perhaps you could be of use with spells for the cause?”
The Vaasan wizard quieted a bit, but didn’t stop laughing. He wandered off into the work camp, playfully passing between shambling rows of undead workers. Willem watched him go, not keen to see the look on Marek Rymiit’s face, one way or another.
“I have to admit that I’m a bit disappointed you’re only now telling me this,” the Thayan said. “I knew, of course, but I was hoping that by now I’d gained your confidence.”
Willem choked back a sob and wiped snot from his nose onto the back of his sleeve. His clothes were ruined from the wet and mud anyway, so what was the difference?
“Do you know where they’ve gone?” Marek asked.
“Do you?” Willem shot backtoo fast, too forcefully and fear that he’d offended the Thayan actually staggered him. “My apologies, Master Rymiit. I’m not myself.”
“I should say you aren’t,” the Red Wizard replied, his voice devoid of anger. “You look terribleworse every time
I see you. You’re not wearing that item I provided you.” “It stopped working.” “I can find you an”
“I’m dying out here,” Willem said. “This thing is killing me.”
“That was no one’s intent, Willem. If you’d prefer to come back to the city, no one will fault you.”
“But we both know that they will,” Willem said. “They will fault me, they will blame me, they will shun me, they will punish me, and as sure as the mud and rain will kill me, they will just as fast.”
“People will speak and act on your behalf,” Marek promised without sincerity.
Willem gasped out something like an exhausted laugh and said, “I’m sure they will. Maybe one of the other senior senators will decide to move into my house. Meykhati, maybe? Or what if Salatis covets my eyes? He’ll have them dug from my screaming skull as easily as Pristoleph took my-“
Willem stopped. His throat closed over anymore words. Tears streamed down to mix with the rain on his face.
“You’ve put yourself in the dragon’s lair, my boy,” Marek said. “This little city on the edge of the world has its own rules, and chief among those rules is the strong survive. Gold is what they all covet, gold and the power it brings. You’ve gone after power, Willem, and I’m surprised to find you naive enough to believe that there would be no consequences.”
“This place has no honor,” Willem said.
That made Marek laugh, and laugh long and loud.
When the Thayan finally got hold of himself he said, “Please, Willem. The same is true in your precious Cormyr, as it is in my own beloved Thay. The thing is, you see, that as the son of a boarding house wife, you simply weren’t prepared for it.”
Willem shook his head, though he knew that Marek spoke the truth.
“So, what now, then?” the Thayan asked.
“I will stay here and die desecrating the dream of a better man,” Willem said.
“My, Willem, you do have a sense of the dramatic at times. I’ll grant you that.”
“Look at them,” Willem said, ignoring the wizard’s last comment. “I know you created them, but have you really ever looked at them?”
“The zombies, you mean.”
“The walking dead,” Willem replied, “yes. Don’t you sometimes wish you could be like that?” “No,” Marek said. “No, I don’t.”
“They haven’t a care in the world,” Willem went on. “They aren’t happy, but they aren’t unhappy, either, and do you know why?”
“Because what little brains they had in the first place are rapidly rotting in their skulls?”
