and he stepped closer to see Willem’s face.
Inthelph gasped in a breath and held it.
Willem’s lips had curled over his blackened gums, which in turn had receded off of teeth that were yellow and cracked. One of his eyes had rolled off to one side, the other locked on Inthelph and burned with a cold fire that made the master builder shiver. The smell washed over him. The cloying aroma of exotic spices mixed with the stench of rotting flesh. Willem reeked of the grave.
“What’s happened to you?” the master builder whispered.
Willem reached out and batted the dagger from the old man’s hand. The blade cartwheeled across the room and came to rest in a puff of orange sparks on the floor of the fireplace. Inthelph’s hand went numb, and when he tried to bend his fingers he heard a popping noise and a dull shot of pain arced up his arm. He hissed.
“Marek Rymiit,” Willem growled.
“Oh, no, Willem.”
Willem hit him in the chest so hard that purple and red lights flickered in Inthelph’s eyes. He felt the contents of his lungs pass his lips, and when he tried to inhale, it was as though the weight of the entire city had been laid on his chest. Staggered, he tried stepping back but fell on his behind in an ungainly and embarrassing way.
Try as he might to speak, the master builder could only gasp for air that refused to enter his collapsed lungs. Willem stepped over him and crouched, his knees snapping like dried twigs.
“Marek Rymiit,” the thing that had once been his most promising protege said again. His breath smelled of maggots and saffron. “Hate.”
Willem reached down and Inthelph tried to kick him. It was a feeble, comedic attempt to fight back, but Willem didn’t laugh. Hard, dry fingers closed around the master builder’s calf and squeezed so hard Inthelph felt cold talons puncture his skin.
Inthelph’s lips moved but he couldn’t speak. He wanted to ask what Marek Rymiit had done to Willem. He wanted to know why the Thayan wizard would want him dead, and why he would send Willem Korvan to do it.
Or was it Willem Korvan? If it was, the promising young senator the master builder knew was dead.
The thing pulled on his leg and the pain rumbled through the master builder’s body like a thunderstorm raging across a summer plain. When the Shockwave reached his head he reeled and almost fainted.
He wished he had.
The sensation of his leg coming away at the knee, the stretching and tearing of tendons, the grind of bone on bone, the ruin of flesh made his chest convulse and his vision narrow until all he could see was Willem’s ruined face.
His own foot hit him in the mouth. Willem drew the leg up and smashed it down again. Inthelph’s jaw cracked and one of his eyes went blind. His head vibrated and he felt pressure build and build until he was certain his skull would burst from within.
“I’m…” Willem whispered from his dry, dead mouth, “so… so sorry.”
It was the last thing Inthelph heard. When his skull cracked in two he was already unconscious. When his own foot came down again and pulped his brain, he was dead.
2
4 Hammer, the Year of the Gauntlet (1369 DR) The Thayan Enclave, Innarlith
Pristoleph looked over Marek Rymiit’s shoulder as they both sat. The thing that stood in the corner shifted its weight from foot to foot. It was a man, or at least it used to be. Marek turned his head ever so slightly to one side, following Pristoleph’s gaze. Their eyes met and the Thayan smiled.
“Please don’t mind him,” Marek said. “He isn’t listening and only understands what I tell him to understand.”
“You feel you need a bodyguard to meet with me?” Pristoleph replied. “And I thought we were friends.”
Marek twitched a little at the sarcasm, and Pristoleph smiled at him. The thing in the corner didn’t respond in any way, and Pristoleph wondered if Marek was actually telling the truth. It didn’t seem as though the thing was aware of their presence at all. It had a black leather hood over its head, tied tightly around the neck with a length of rope, so it couldn’t see them. The fact that it was dead was obvious from its demeanor and its smell.
“You get used to it,” Marek commented, and not for the first time Pristoleph wondered if the Thayan could read his mind.
“The dockworkers seem to have,” Pristoleph said, drawing them to the matter at hand.
“It warms my heart to know that I have been of service to you, and that I have been of service to my adopted home.”
Pristoleph spared the Thayan another smile, just to show that he didn’t believe a word of it.
“Is there anything at all I can get for you?” Marek asked. “A drink, perhaps? Some food?”
“No, thank you,” replied Pristoleph. He wasn’t hungry, and couldn’t have eaten in the presence of the animated corpse anyway. He nodded at the thing in the corner. “Is this something you want to show me? Something for the docks?”
“Oh, no, no,” Marek said, once again glancing back over his shoulder. “This one is special. This one I’m keeping for myself.”
“But you wanted me to see it.”
Marek looked him in the eye, and Pristoleph held his gaze. He had been sized up before. Pristoleph could pass for human easily enough, but not everyone he encountered failed to notice at least something otherworldly about him. He sat there patiently and waited for a reply.
“I’m showing off again, aren’t I?” the Thayan said with a wide, but self-conscious grin. “I hope that the workers I’ve been providing thus far have been of service to you on the docks. If you are less than satisfied with any of the services I’ve provided you, I hope you’ll give me an opportunity to rectify the situation.”
“The zombies work slowly but steadily,” Pristoleph said. “The men have gotten used to them. Even the captains have stopped complaining.”
Pristoleph, with Marek’s help, had insinuated himself into the quay, taking advantage of the chronic dissatisfaction of the dockworkers to seize control of everything that came in and out of the city through the ports.
“You require additional hands?” the wizard asked.
“Twenty,” replied Pristoleph, “to serve the caravans at the southern gate.”
“The southern gate?”
“I’ve been in contact with parties to the south,” Pristoleph said. “I will be bringing various exotic and valuable trade goods up from the Shaar.”
Marek nodded and smiled again. Pristoleph didn’t elaborate any further. The Thayan didn’t need to know about the wemics. The strange creatures, like lions with the souls of barbarians, were a temperamental lot, but Pristoleph could see the potential for powerful allies.
“Twenty of the dearly departed…” Marek mused. “I see no problem with that, but we will have to discuss a new rate.”
Pristoleph raised an eyebrow.
“The canal, you know,” the Thayan said. “Demand has risen sharply.”
Pristoleph shrugged and said, “I’m sure we won’t allow a few gold coins here or there to come between us.”
The Thayan dipped forward in a mock bow and they both laughed. Pristoleph looked away, not wanting to watch the jiggling girth of the rotund wizard shake with his girlish cackling. Perhaps sensing Pristoleph’s discomfort, Marek stopped laughing.
“I must say, my dear Senator Pristoleph, that you’ve come here this evening for more than another score of zombies to unload crates.”
“Weapons,” Pristoleph said, and Marek raised his eyebrows, waiting for him to go on. “I require enchanted weapons. Any variety will do, but I’ve been asked for polearms of various descriptions.”
