Free Whisper of Waves by Philip Athans Page B

the neck and drawing her in for another kiss. “I should meet him. We should be introduced to him as… as a couple. To him, at least, if not all of Innarlith.”
    Her face changed again, just as fast and just as completely. She thought he had said what he wanted her to think he’d said, and the look on her face made his skin crawl.
    “Oh, Willem,” she said, a tear appearing at the corner of her eye, “my love.”
    Then they kissed and touched each other just long enough for him to think of a reasonable excuse to ask her to leave.

15
    5 Uktar, the Year of Shadows (1358 DR) First Quarter, Innarlith
    Fharaud let the brandy sit on his tongue for as long as he could take it, then he swallowed loudly and smiled. He looked over at Devorast, hunched over a drawing table, his own snifter of brandy sitting untouched on the table next to him.
    “Really, Ivar, you should try it,” Fharaud said, pausing to take another sip of the potent liquid. “It’s really among man’s most extraordinary creations.”
    Devorast made a notation on the drawing in front of him. His handwriting was so small Fharaud shouldn’t have been able to read it from where he sat, but it was so precise he found he could make out the words: “Adjust beam angle up one eighth of one degree.”
    One eighth of one degree, Fharaud thought, then said, “I doubt the boatwrights’ tools will allow for so fine a measurement.”
    Devorast looked up at him with an expression Fharaud had come to know too well. It was one of fulfilled expectations at having been confronted with some inadequacy in the world, irritation at having once again to suffer at such a deficiency’s hands, and a determination to set the problem right.
    The next note read: “Refine tools—again—to achieve proper angle.”
    “You know,” Fharaud said, “you could make a fortune on the tools you’ve invented alone.”
    “I’m not interested in tools,” Devorast replied, “only what I can build with them.”
    “A contradiction?” Fharaud asked, just to make conversation. “It takes tools to make tools after all, and isn’t a ship but a tool men use to ply the seas and not an end to itself?”
    Devorast didn’t take the bait, but then why would he?
    “People don’t like you, Ivar,” Fharaud said, the brandy— his second glass—loosening his tongue. “They think you’re arrogant and closed-minded.”
    “A mind isn’t something to be left open,” the younger man said, “so that just anything might crawl in and take up residence there.”
    Fharaud laughed. He had come to treasure those rare bursts of sincere humor and simple, if unsociable, wisdom from Ivar Devorast.
    “Ah, Ivar,” said Fharaud, “I’d take you under my wing if I thought I had a wing big enough.”
    “You have taught me much,” Devorast admitted.
    That made Fharaud sit up straighter in his chair. The air was cold in the little room he called his office, the breeze coming from the north unusually cool but characteristically damp. Neither of them had bothered to get up and tend the little wood stove, and the fire had gone to slowly blackening orange coals.
    “By all the gods above us, Ivar,” Fharaud said, “I do believe you just paid me a compliment.”
    Devorast, try as Fharaud was sure he was trying to hide it, smiled at that, then glanced at the brandy.
    “Go ahead, my boy,” Fharaud urged. “Drink up. It might loosen the reigns you keep on yourself.”
    Devorast shook his head, the smile fading.
    “We’re ready to build it, aren’t we?” Fharaud asked with a nod at the stack of drawings in front of Devorast.
    “You should name it,” Devorast said, thumbing through the drawings. “It’s good.”
    “High praise indeed, my boy. High praise indeed,” Fharaud replied. “Not yet, though. I prefer to see her in the flesh before I name her. She’s like a baby, you know.”
    He paused to see some reaction from Devorast, but there was none.
    “You know when you conceive a child,” Fharaud