Scream of Stone

28

19 Nightal, the Year of Wild Magic (1372 DR) The Canal Site

Pristoleph pulled the two boards apart with his bare hands, the too-small nails squeaking and bending as they gave way. He blinked in the drizzling rain and watched as Devorast pried two more boards apart with a crowbar. He placed the board with no nails left in it on a neat stack of weathered planks then went to work on the nails sticking out of the other board.

“There will be no shortage of disappointed dilettantes in Innarlith this evening,” Pristoleph said.

Devorast glanced at him but didn’t answer.

Pristoleph smiled and looked at the viewing stand. It was half the size it was when it was filled, just days before, with gawking spectators. The previous overseers of the canal project had had it moved along the length of the slowly-growing canal so the curious could see the construction and the accidents up close.

“They’ve gotten used to seeing people killed again,” Pristoleph went on. “When you were operating in secret and the rate of accidents fell sharply off, they’d stopped coming, but while you sat in the dungeon, the bloodshed returned, and so did they.”

Devorast, who’d removed the nails from the board he was working on, placed it on the stack and went to work on another step with his crowbar. Only he and the ransar worked on disassembling the viewing stand. The rest of the workers were busy on the canal itself, and Devorast refused to allow them to waste their time taking apart something that shouldn’t have been built in the first place.

“Perhaps I should have left you in there,” Pristoleph said, intentionally baiting Devorast. “I could have sold tickets. As long as things blew up in people’s faces and men were buried alive in mud, I would have made a fortune.”

“You already have a fortune,” Devorast said.

Pristoleph laughed, but studied the man at the same time. There was no anger apparent on his face, but he did seem annoyed, if only just a bit.

“I suppose you’re right,” the ransar said. “I have several fortunes. Perhaps you can go home, abduct your realm’s infant king, and come to me for the ransom. I can pay it.”

“But would you?”

Pristoleph stopped, making a show of the surprise he felt hearing Devorast actually ask a question. He didn’t pretend to know the man, but he could feel it was unusual for him. Pristoleph thought he might have been getting somewhere.

“No,” Pristoleph said, “I wouldn’t. Would you? If you had the means, of course.”

“The king of Cormyr is not my responsibility,” Devorast said, “and besides, he has the royal family to pay his ransom.”

“Someone else, then,” the ransar prodded. “Someone closer to you?”

“It’s a meaningless question, Ransar.”

“I wasn’t always the man I am today, you know,” Pristoleph said.

Devorast stacked more weathered lumber then started prying apart another step.

“I grew up in the Fourth Quarter,” Pristoleph said. “I grew up in the streets, but never in the gutter. I made myself what I am today by the force of my own will.”

Devorast glanced at him, but Pristoleph couldn’t quite decipher the expression.

“It was a long and difficult road from the Fourth Quarter,” Pristoleph said, “to here, where I am now: the highest-paid garbage man in Faerun.”

“I’m not paying you,” Devorast said.

“Nor are you understanding any of my jokes,” the ransar said. “Still, I get the feeling you have a sense of humor. After all, here you are working peacefully side by side with the man who held you in a stinking hole in the ground for more than a year. I would have killed me.”

“I’m not stopping you,” Devorast said.

Pristoleph laughed loud and hard, and for a while they went to work taking the viewing stand apart in silence.

“I also had to rely on myself as a child,” Devorast said, and Pristoleph was startled as much by the sudden sound of his voice as by the admission itself.

“Then you know what it’s like,” Pristoleph said, “to struggle for everything, to fight for every hint of power and influence, and every copper.”

“No, I don’t.”

Pristoleph stopped what he was doing and stared at Devorast, waiting for him to go on.

He had to wait a long time before Devorast said, “I’ve never been interested in power and influence. I don’t want to control people, and coins are tools to be used when you have them, and replaced by other tools when you don’t.”

“So what do you want?” Pristoleph asked. “I want to take apart this viewing stand, then use the lumber to build two ladders and a pair of trench braces.”