They say he just came out of it all at once,” Inthelph whispered, but not so softly that half the room didn’t hear him. “He lay at death’s very door for … how long?”
“Five months,” Meykhati provided.
“So long….” Inthelph whispered.
Willem’s head spun and his hands shook. He couldn’t look at the master builder or at any of the senators that stood around him. He breathed only with some difficulty.
“At the very least,” said Senator Djeserka, “you have to give the old man his due. I heard he had enough of that poison in him to drop a stone giant.”
Meykhati nodded and said, “He had a team of clerics working on him practically day and night. Apparently he’d given Waukeen’s temple enough gold over the years that the Merchant’s Friend thought he deserved another year.”
Willem’s mouth went dry. It felt as if he’d crossed the Calim Desert on foot.
“If Waukeen was any kind of friend to that particular merchant,” the master builder said, “he would have let him go.”
“Are you all right, Willem?” Meykhati asked.
Willem’s eyes went wide when he realized the men were looking at him. If he looked half as bad as he felt …
“I’m well, thank you, Senator,” Willem answered, faking a smile.
“My, Inthelph, I think you might be keeping young Willem out in the rain too much,” Meykhati joked, slapping Willem on the back with a fatherly wink.
“Willem has been working very hard lately,” said the master builder. “He’s decided to take control of his own fate.”
Willem spun on Inthelph, his face flushed, sweat soaking him. The three senators were taken aback, but Inthelph laughed and the moment passed.
“He’ll be a senator soon enough,” the master builder said.
Willem studied his cheerful, sociable demeanor and told himself that Inthelph didn’t know anything, didn’t know it was he who had poisoned Khonsu.
The senators moved on to other subjects, including the names of their younger, easier-to-manipulate colleagues whom they had managed to move into the committees once run by Khonsu. Though the old man could maintain his seat on the senate-he’d paid for it long ago, after all-he was a lone vote without consensus or allies. He could sit on the senate forever, but for him it would never be anything but a meaningless title ever again.
Willem swallowed his third glass of brandy and closed his eyes while it burned his throat. His hands were still shaking but not as bad.
He wanted to say, “I got away with it.” He wanted to tell Inthelph and his smug friends who had set the stage for their triumph over the old man. What would they have done?
Willem didn’t know, which is precisely why he kept his mouth shut. Instead he looked across the seemingly endless ballroom at Khonsu.
The old man sat in a chair-a strange contraption with wheels on the sides. A blanket was draped over his frail, sticklike legs. His skin was the color of bleached parchment. What little hair he’d had was gone and his dull eyes were lined with red.
Behind him stood the old chambermaid. She didn’t look much healthier than her half-dead employer.
Willem crossed the room. He didn’t know why, but he wanted a closer look. He wanted to be sure the old man really was still alive. From a distance he looked dead.
“Senator,” Willem said.
Khonsu looked up, his eyes twitching and rolling, looking for the source of the sound.
“Senator Khonsu,” Willem repeated, leaning in a bit.
The old man’s eyes found him and bulged. He drew in a deep, ragged, phlegmy breath.
“Senator,” Willem said, glancing at the chambermaid. The old woman looked at him the way she might a melon in the marketplace, if she wasn’t in the market for melons. There was no recognition, no realization that the mysterious Mister Wheloon had crossed her path again. “You’re alive.”
The old man opened his mouth, and his chin quivered. His eyes twitched in their sockets.
“It’s all right, Senator,” Willem said.
“What do you want?” Khonsu rasped.
Willem looked at the maid again. Her mind was on the buffet on the other side of the room. Though she wasn’t paying any attention to either of them, Willem knew he couldn’t say what he really wanted to say.
“No one knows who did this to you, Senator,” he said instead.
Khonsu shook his head. His legs jumped a little under the blanket and he turned his face away as if afraid Willem was about to strike him.
“They say no one will ever know,” Willem chanced.
“No,” the old man whispered. “No.”
“You will let me know,” Willem said as he took a step back, “if there’s anything I can do for you.” And Willem lay awake the entire rest of that night wondering what made him say, “A cup of tea, perhaps?”
45
8 Flamerule, the Year of the Wyvern (1363 DR)
THE NAGAWATER
Svayyah had cast an array of spells on the bubble and on the man. She wanted to know if he was lying, what he was thinking before he spoke, what spells or magical items he might have had on his person, and so on-anything she could think of, and Svayyah could think of a lot.
They spent the first hour of their meeting discussing the bubble itself. The human was fascinated by it, as if he’d never seen magic in use before, but there was no awe in his eyes or voice. He asked the most bizarre questions, all focused on the fundamentals. He refused to accept that she’d made the sphere of breathable air ten feet below the surface of the long, narrow lake called the Nagawater simply by magic.
Ivar Devorast wanted to know how the magic worked-exactly.
Svayyah was perfectly capable of answering his questions. She wasn’t a mindless monster, as most dista’ssara believed. The Art was Svayyah’s life, and she knew what she was doing, and how she was doing it, at all times.
At the end of that first hour, though, Svayyah was forced to admit to herself that she had spent an hour explaining herself to a human who to her was still largely a mystery. Had it been any other human that would have angered her.
“Enough of that,” she said finally, though she knew Devorast was satisfied anyway. “You are putting us at a disadvantage.”
“I will never compete with you in the creation of magical air bubbles, Svayyah,” he said with that disarming smile.
“Careful how you speak to us, dista’ssara,” she warned. “You have to know that there are a thousand ways we could kill you right now in the blink of an eye.”
“Collapsing the bubble, for instance,” the human replied.
“To begin with,” said the water naga.
“In what way would that benefit you?”
Svayyah stopped herself from answering and thought about the question instead. Perhaps he did have her at a disadvantage after all.
“But,” he said, “we’re here to discuss something else.”
Svayyah nodded and replied, “We have discussed your intentions with our tribemates, and they are intrigued.”
“Do you speak for them all?”
“As much as anyone speaks for the Ssa’Naja,” she replied. “We do not gather into realms and kingdoms the way you lesser beings do. No single naga would ever agree to be placed under the dominion of another. There are enough of us, however, and we are enlightened enough, that here in the lake and in the river south, we consult one another, warn one another of dangers, and have been known to gather together to further a common goal.”
“They understand what this will entail?”
Svayyah suppressed an angry hiss and said, “We are not snakes, ape-creature. We have discussed, and we understand. Don’t forget that if you succeed in this-and we are not the only one among the naja’ssara who believes you will not-we will expect to be compensated for the use of our waters.”
“You claim the river and the lake,” Devorast agreed. “That will be fair, as long as you and your fellows are fair.”