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happen to damage Willem’s-face, why on spinning Toril would he care if the two men came to blows? Of course, he wanted to hear their conversation but knew that as soon as he was close enough to hear them without the aid of a spell they’d stop talking in front of him.
    Whatever the reason, he arrived at their side in a shot, but refused to look at Devorast.
    “Ah, Senator Korvan,” he gushed, “there you are.”
    “Master Rymiit,” Willem mumbled, his face red, his eyes darting around as though he were a rabbit caught in a snare. “May I present—”
    Marek didn’t want to be introduced to Ivar Devorast just then. Not yet, he thought. So he clamped his hand on Willem’s arm and squeezed.
    “Master Rymiit….” Willem almost protested, but let himself be led away at a pace that drew alarmed glances from the mingling aristocrats around them.
    When they were out of earshot of Ivar Devorast, Rymiit said, “Really, Senator, you should take care with whom you’re seen conversing.”
    “But—” the pretty weakling started to protest.
    “Go tell our host how much you enjoy this hideous
    clanging and stomping about,” he said, pushing Willem away, but releasing his grip only slowly, and with some reluctance.
    Willem looked down at his hand with vague discomfort, but Marek was quickly distracted by Phyrea. The girl stood on her tiptoes, peering as best she could above the heads of the other guests. The crowd erupted in insincere applause for the imported entertainment, and Marek stopped to make a show of it. His eyes never left Phyrea though, and he took some interest in her crestfallen mien.
    As the applause died down, he made his way to her side. She looked up at him as if he were the last man in Faerun she wanted to see, and maybe he was.
    “Master Rymiit,” she said, “hello again.”
    “Hello again to you too, my dear. I couldn’t help but notice… were you looking for someone?”
    She sighed, her shoulders slumped, and she looked off to her right at nothing.
    “Phyrea?”
    “Yes,” she answered fast. “No. I mean … that man. Devorast is his name.”
    “The savior of merchant captains across Toril, yes,” Marek mumbled. “What of him?”
    “He’s…”
    “Gone, yes,” Marek said. “I’m sure Senator Korvan told me he was just leaving. Surely you don’t have anything to do with that beastly man.”
    She nodded and shook her head at the same time, and Marek risked a playful laugh at her confusion.
    “The ransar—” she started.
    “Is not immune to the occasional ill-considered decisions, my dear,” he finished for her. “I assure you that Ivar Devorast is just that.”
    “Still, there’s something about him, don’t you think?”
    “No,” he lied. “There’s nothing about him at all but a man in deep water who hasn’t sorted out that he’s already drowned.”
    Phyrea wasn’t listening. Marek could tell. She listened to someone else, and nodded ever so slightly in response.
    What do you hear? Marek Rymiit wondered. What do you know?
    9_
    27Alturiak, the Year of the Sword (1365 DR) The Canal Site
    The stout wooden planks that braced the sides of the trench shattered. They crumbled to sawdust all at once; an explosion of brown dust that followed a loud sizzling sound that must have been a million softer cracks all intermingled.
    Hrothgar looked up at the sound. He’d heard a lot of new, strange sounds in his time among humans, under the limitless sky and so near the unforgiving sea, but he’d been at the canal site long enough to grow accustomed to its noises, and that one—those millions at once—didn’t belong. Because of the sound, though, he saw the planks shatter, and the dried-mud walls begin to crumble. He saw the men inside paw at their dust-blinded eyes, and their screams tore up from the depths of the trench. As tall as the humans were, the lip of the trench towered over their heads, twice again as tall as the tallest of the diggers.
    “By the unhewn rock of Deepshaft