Whisper of Waves Page 14

  The man looked disappointed, perhaps, but not angry. He was not upset at having been removed from his position, but he appeared to have left something unfinished.

  Ran Ai Yu stepped backward out the door and into the salt-and-sulfur air of the quayside. She waited, thinking.

  The man she had seen was the man who had been described to her: the wild red hair, the confident and even superior manner. Though she had been in Innarlith only a month, she had spent that time productively, of course, and went to that particular shipbuilder on the recommendation of many and the condemnation of many more. It was the open hostility to the red-haired man that had really brought her there. No one of mediocre quality could illicit so strong a revulsion from those who thought themselves his peers.

  After only a short time, he emerged from the building and Ran Ai Yu considered the shape of the man against the outline of the structure. Western architecture did not appeal to Ran Ai Yu. She found it square and unimaginative. The man, though, was more suited to the East. Though no bigger than the average westerner, which is to say quite large, he seemed to soar above the landscape around him.

  “Excuse me, sir,” she said, stepping into his path.

  He was startled but took her in quickly with eyes a color brown Ran Ai Yu had never seen, though everyone in Shou Lung had brown eyes. He didn’t seem pleased or displeased by her appearance, and Ran Ai Yu had had her pick of suitors in Shou Lung. He didn’t even seem surprised by her foreign features, eyes and skin that so many ignorant westerners would mistake for an elf’s.

  “I am Ran Ai Yu,” she said. “It is my desire that you are Devorast Ivar.”

  He said, “I am Ivar Devorast.”

  Ran Ai Yu bowed and corrected herself, “Ivar Devorast. Apologies.”

  “Is there something I can do for you?”

  “Build a ship,” she said.

  He looked at her as if he didn’t understand, though Ran Ai Yu was sure of the words.

  “You are a shipbuilder,” she said. “Ivar Devorast.”

  “Yes,” he said, “but I’m afraid that … been …”

  “What are these words, please,” she asked, “‘I’ve’ and ‘discharged’?”

  He explained the words to her in simple terms she easily grasped and she responded, “I hear that. To me it does not matter. I want you ship, not his ship. You will build it for me, yes?”

  “Who are you?” he asked.

  “I am Ran Ai Yu,” she said. “I am a merchant, who trades from Tsingtao in far Shou Lung. My own ship, a fine Shou ship, went below the waves of your Lake of Steam. I escaped the waves and so did my crew, and some also of our cargo. I have traded and I have gold, and that gold will be given to you that you will build a ship.”

  “A ship to carry cargo,” he said, “all the way back to Shou Lung?”

  “A journey of much distance,” she replied with a bow.

  Something began to glow in Ivar Devorast’s face, and he smiled.

  “That is yes,” she said.

  “You will sail this ship all the way back to Shou Lung,” he said. “Sailing, the whole way.”

  “I do not trust any other journey,” she said, hoping that conveyed what she thought would be a point over which they agreed: their mistrust of magical means of travel. “I will sail.”

  “Then it would be my pleasure to build your ship, Miss Ran Ai Yu of Shou Lung,” he said.

  32

  6 Kythorn, the Year of the Helm (1362 DR)

  FIRST QUARTER, INNARLITH

  Would you believe it’s taken over a month for word of all this to filter to me?” Willem asked.

  His old friend Ivar Devorast had no response. Instead, he continued to chip away at a block of what Willem thought looked like mahogany. The tool took both delicate slivers and crude chunks from the hardwood, precisely as Devorast desired.

  “I never knew you were so handy with an adze,” Willem said as he settled on a stool in Devorast’s cramped, busy workshop. “And the workshop … it’s small, but it suits you somehow. So I guess you’re your own man now, eh? Master Shipbuilder Ivar Devorast?”

  Devorast allowed him a shrug at last and Willem forced a smile.

  “I’ve heard complaints about you, you know,” Willem said.

  Without pausing in his exacting work, Devorast replied, “The meaningless chatter of tiny minds.”

  That made Willem laugh, and for the briefest moment he thought he saw Devorast smile too.

  “They’re a curious people, aren’t they, our new neighbors,” said Willem. He glanced around at the crew Devorast had hired to help build his ship. He saw a pair of dwarves, but the rest looked like locals with their dark skin and lean physiques. None of them were speaking, all simply bent about their tasks. “At risk of sounding elitist, they don’t seem to … to …”

  “Like themselves?” Devorast offered.

  Willem was surprised by that but only a little. He had been leaning in that direction, though he also tried to take a more diplomatic tack. The locals nearby either hadn’t heard, believed he was right, or needed the work too much to risk defending themselves.

  “You’ve seen it too,” he said.

  Devorast nodded and paused from his carving.

  “They import everything,” Devorast said, “as if their own hands aren’t capable, but they are capable. I’ve seen good, solid tools made by local craftsmen on sale in the Third Quarter for half the price—less than half—of a cheap piece of cast-off iron from someplace like Waterdeep or Sembia. It’s their principal weakness, this distrust of themselves.”

  Willem thought about that for a moment as Devorast went back to his work.

  “I’ve been collecting friends since we came here,” Willem said. “You probably sorted that out though, eh? Friends and contacts, patrons and mentors, and they all share that same curse, that lust for anything from anywhere but Innarlith.”

  “Including engineers,” Devorast said with no hint of meanness.

  “Or shipwrights,” Willem shot back, likewise without malice.

  A little while passed as Devorast continued his precise carving and the crew buzzed around him like so many bees at work on their hive, but instead of a hive, what was taking shape in that rented space on the quayside was a ship unlike anything Willem had ever seen.

  “I understand your patron …” Willem said, “or is it matron … is from Shou Lung.”

  Devorast stopped long enough to nod, examine his progress a bit, then continue.

  “I suppose that makes your vessel the greatest prize an Innarlan could imagine,” Willem said.

  Devorast looked up and said, “Is it?”

  “Certainly,” Willem replied. “A ship built by a Cormyrean for a Shou. If that’s mahogany from Kozakura you’re working on, I’ll have to wonder if there’s anything of Innarlith in it at all. And what could these dwarves of yours be about? I didn’t think their kind could float.”

  The look Devorast gave him then made the blood start to run from Willem’s face. When Devorast went back to work, though, he managed to gather himself.

  “The wood,” Devorast said as he chopped and chipped, “is teak, and it’s from the jungles of Chult, so you’re partly right.”

  “And the dwarves?” Willem asked, trying his best to ignore a sidelong glance from one of the stout little men.

  “They’re helping me with the tiles,” Devorast replied.

  “Tiles?”

  “The hull will be covered in cut stone and ceramic tiles,” Devorast explained.

  Willem looked at the shell of the ship’s hull. Wide and shallow, it was made of wood and where planks had yet to be installed Willem could see something of the interior structure.

  “You know I’m no shipwright, Ivar,” he said, “but your hull seems a bit thin.”

  “That’s why the tiles,” Devorast replied.

  “It couldn’t possibly float,” Willem whispered, knowing even as he said it that …

  “It’ll float,” Ivar Devorast
said.

  Willem Korvan had no doubt that it would. It would be the first such ship he’d ever heard of.

  “Is that how they build them then, in Shou Lung?” Willem asked.

  “No one has ever built a ship like this,” Devorast said with no hint of pride or arrogance in his inflection.

  Willem nodded, then started to think of an excuse to leave.

  33

  18 Kythorn, the Year of the Helm (1362 DR)

  FOURTH QUARTER, INNARLITH

  Every part of Fharaud’s body had become unreliable. His vision, for instance, would be fine one day, then slowly blur, then start to return to normal, then everything would go dark. When he was blind it was difficult for him to tell if he was awake or asleep, alive or dead. Sometimes he could hear people shuffling around his room and when he tried to call out, the words wouldn’t form on his useless tongue. Sometimes he managed a pained, animalistic grunt or a kind of ragged roar, and sometimes he could speak perfectly. Once his vision became so acute he spent an afternoon examining every detail of the wings of a fly that had lit on the ceiling above his bed.

  He slept for long stretches of time and awakened for long stretches of time or slept for a moment or two then awakened for a moment or two.

  On more than one occasion he climbed from a deep sleep to find that he’d soiled himself and his bed. Once he awakened feeling damp and warm as if fresh from a bath he had no recollection of taking. If there was food waiting for him when he awoke he ate. If there was water he drank. Sometimes he was naked, sometimes he was wearing a dressing gown, sometimes a tunic but no pants, and he never remembered dressing himself.

  The face he saw in his room most often belonged to Devorast and on rare occasions they would speak.

  On that warm day that might have been the first day of summer, Fharaud watched Devorast prepare something in a dented pot in the little fireplace. It smelled like soup.

  “Something bad,” Fharaud said to Devorast’s back.

  His former apprentice turned to face him and Fharaud could see by the look in his eyes that Devorast didn’t understand, wouldn’t understand, and only pitied him.

  I’m babbling, he tried to say, but his lips wouldn’t open.

  “Rest,” Devorast said. “We’ll eat soon.”

  Fharaud had to say, “Bad things,” then repeat, “Bad things.”

  Devorast went back to his soup and Fharaud let his weak neck turn his head back up to the ceiling.

  He’d never seen words there before, though at first it looked like his own handwriting. Even as he puzzled over how the message had gotten onto the ceiling, who had written it—and it couldn’t have been Devorast—he read it aloud: “The master tells the revenant that he’ll have his chance to kill you soon, but he wants you to finish it first. He wants him to go back to being a second-rate human before he’ll allow him to be a first-rate monster.”

  As his rough, phlegmy voice faded, so did the writing. With a few blinks of the eye it was gone as if it had never been there, because it really had never been there.

  “Will you be able to eat?” Devorast asked.

  Fharaud closed his eyes and though he didn’t feel as though he’d fallen asleep, he started to dream. He saw the girl—the beautiful girl—and the things that lived inside her.

  “The serpent girl,” he tried to shout, but instead whispered.

  “It’s all right, old man,” Devorast said, and Fharaud felt a hand on his shoulder.

  He opened his eyes, but couldn’t see.

  “I’m blind again,” he said.

  “I know,” said Devorast, but how could he?

  How could he know?

  “There are things I have to tell you,” Fharaud said, “but I don’t know why, and I don’t know how.”

  He felt a spoon touch his bottom lip and despite wanting to talk he sipped the warm soup. It was salty and good and as he swallowed it made red and purple flashes of light dance in the black void of his lost sight. He read aloud the message contained in that light.

  “The girl who hears the whispers of the dead …” Fharaud said.

  “What about her?” Devorast asked.

  He was humoring him. Fharaud could hear it in his voice.

  “You think I’m mad,” he said. “Black firedrakes.”

  “No,” Devorast lied. “Eat a little more, then rest.”

  Devorast fed him some more soup while Fharaud cried then sat with him in silence until he fell asleep.

  34

  17 Flamerule, the Year of the Helm (1362 DR)

  SECOND QUARTER, INNARLITH

  She was a handsome woman by anyone’s standards.

  No, Marek thought, not “handsome,” but beautiful. Her smooth skin was a color that he’d seen only rarely, though trade with Shou Lung and the exotic east was becoming increasingly commonplace in Innarlith and throughout the southern Realms. Her thin eyes sparkled with wit and intelligence that Marek knew enough to be wary of.

  “I must thank you for agreeing to meet with me,” he said, tipping his head in a slight bow.

  She smiled and Marek was sure that most men would have melted at the sight of it—fallen in love with her instantly and completely.

  “Of course I have heard your name,” she said, charming him with her accent. “You are a man who must be known should one trade in Innarlith.”

  Marek offered her a shrug and said, “I have been fortunate to make the acquaintance of the right people and to offer my services from time to time. I will admit, however, that I am a bit at a loss with you, if I may say so.”

  Marek took note of the fact that that seemed to please her. She tipped her head, beckoning him to elaborate.

  “Your name, though most pleasing to the ear,” he said, “confounds my sense of protocol.”

  “I do not understand,” she said.

  “How do I address you?” he asked. “To show the proper respect.”

  “My name is Ran Ai Yu,” she said with a cheerful smile. “It would be customary to say ‘Miss Ran,’ if that pleases you, Master Rymüt.”

  Calling him “Master” and not “Mister” told him she had done some investigating of her own. She looked like some kind of exotic courtesan, some kind of porcelain doll, but she was a merchant through and through.

  “Well, then, Miss Ran,” Marek said, “please, sit.”

  He motioned her to a chair and stayed on his feet until she lowered herself to the fine silk cushion. Afraid she would be reluctant to come to his home he’d asked her to meet him at a particularly exclusive tea house that specialized in teas from Kozakura and Shou Lung. He chose the place not sure if he wanted her to feel at home, if he wanted her to see that he knew something of her culture and customs, or if he simply liked the tea himself. In any case, the surroundings were quiet and cultured enough that they could speak without the venue overwhelming the conversation.

  “Your message made me …” she said, hesitating, searching the air above her head for something. “Apologies for not knowing the word … hào quí?”

  Marek didn’t recognize the language but guessed, “Curious?”

  “Not certain, but wanting to know more?” she said, floundering a bit.

  “Curious, yes,” he said.

  She nodded and said, “Your message made me curious.”

  “Well,” he said, “it’s actually quite simple. It’s come to my attention through various sources here in the city that your ship met with some misfortune and you currently find yourself unable to return home by that means.”

  “The rescue of myself and my crew from the waters of your Lake of Steam was no secret, I am sure,” said Ran Ai Yu.

  “Oh, no,” said Marek, beginning to sense an impatience in the beautiful Shou merchant. “It was quite the sensation, actually.”

  “And you have some service to offer,” she prodded.

  A serving woman came and set a small porcelain tea pot and two dainty little cups and equally dainty little saucers on the table. She took the han
dle of the tea pot, but Marek waved her off. She scurried away and he poured the tea, first into Ran Ai Yu’s cup, then into his. She never took her eyes off his face and he wasn’t even sure she breathed while he poured.

  “I can return you, your crew, and your cargo to Shou Lung,” he said, “without the necessity of a ship or the considerable time it would take to sail.”

  “You would accomplish this by the use of magic,” she said.

  He nodded and sipped the tea. He found it bitter but tried not to let his face pucker.

  “That will not be necessary,” she said.

  Marek hoped she would think it was the hot tea that made his face flush, not the sudden anger that welled up inside him.

  “You have made other arrangements?” he asked, even though he knew in some detail the arrangements she’d made.

  “A ship is being built,” she said.

  She made no move to drink the tea.

  “Ah,” Marek said. “Time.”

  She raised an eyebrow.

  “Time to build a ship,” he said, “and time to sail the ship.”

  Ran Ai Yu shrugged.

  “I could have you home on the morrow.”

  “I thank you for your offer, Master Rymüt,” she said, “but with respect, decline. I am not of a mind to travel in the Weave.”

  “I can assure your safety,” Marek promised.

  “On a ship,” Ran Ai Yu said, “I can assure my own safety.”

  “On a ship built by whom, may I ask?” Marek said, baiting her.

  “Ivar Devorast,” she answered.

  “Ivar Devorast,” Marek repeated. “I’ve heard of him. Though it may well sound as if I’m trying to sway your opinion in favor of my own service, I feel I have a duty to inform you that this Devorast character has a rather less than admirable record when it comes to the seaworthiness of his vessels. The locals here won’t have anything to do with him. He and his former employer were, in fact, responsible for the deaths of dozens of sailors in a particularly disastrous catastrophe at sea.”