A thunderous barrage of boos rumbled up from the crowd of workers, and some began to wave torches in the air. Marek worried that someone would be burned, or the long wooden pier might be set ablaze, but Tymora favored the simple-minded once again. He let them revel in the idea that they had threatened the senate to the degree that the senate had no choice but to threaten them.
Of course, the disguised Red Wizard had no intention of warning them that the senate and their bullies could, should they finally chose to do so, replace them all with summoned and undead servants provided, for a modest fee of course, by a Thayan Enclave of Marek’s creation. And those automatons would never stop to eat, drink, sleep, or do any of the other things that plagued the living. They would work all day and all night, every day, without pause for rest and without the briefest whisper of complaint. Beyond the price of their creation they would require no stipend or upkeep, or even the merest morsel of food.
“As soon as we let a day go by without unloading their precious cargoes, the aristocrats will answer at once with martial law. Our guild, our long-awaited fraternity of sweat and toil, will be outlawed. Even now they argue over this in the Chamber of Law and Civility. But when a guild like ours comes finally to pass, it stands tall against the laws of the rich and weak-hearted. We will go on whether they like it or not. That, if nothing else, I can promise you!”
As Marek stood soaking in the cheers of the stinking mob of ungrateful brutes, he noted a disturbance at the far edge of the crowd. Perhaps a thousand of the dirty, sweat-soaked hulks had gathered to hear his words, and the speeches of a few of their comrades who had been duped early on by Marek’s rabble-rousing. Though Marek couldn’t see their faces, the tops of their rusted and dented helms, and the tips of their spears, rose above the heads of the men at the foot of the pier. The crowd began to compress toward Marek.
“But you will have to help me keep that promise, brothers, by taking up the struggle against the senate. Only if we draw back before them will the aristocrats be able to defeat us. But if we resist with the same strength of arm and heart with which we’ve unloaded their riches for them, the guild will become subject to its own inner law. On the quay, where we have something to say about it, a different law will prevail than what the senators try to make for us in their Chamber of Crime and Oppression.”
The tenor of the cheer that followed sounded different. In it Marek could hear both the misguided revelry of the powerless empowered, and the growing desperation of men who were beginning to fear the consequences of their actions. The former sound came from the men closest to Marek’s makeshift stagecobbled together from crates that had been waiting for a tenday to be loaded onto a coaster from Athkatlaand the latter from the men closer to the foot of the pier who had become aware through the press of their fellow workers of the presence of the watchmen who had effectively cut them off from the city.
For all Toril as though he’d never noticed the helms and spears, Marek went on, letting his false face flush red with insincere passion.
“Our new law will show itself in our utter contempt of private property. And not because we seek poverty for ourselvesI think we’ve all had enough of that, eh?”
And there Marek paused, and folded his arms across his barrel-chest. His eyes closed, he couldn’t see if the watchmen pressed the assembly further, but so what if they did?
“Our new Law of the Quayside will protect us the same way the laws of the senate protect the aristocracy, because the struggle itself makes it necessary. And what we start here today on the very edge of the city, will soon rise in the whole of Innarlith. It is revealed in our Laws of the Quayside that we can do nothing with our power unless we bend the senate to our will the same way they have bent us to theirs for so very, very long now. When our law becomes the only law, our struggle will end.”
Marek scanned the edge of the crowd and had to struggle not to let his disappointment show through his illusory features. The watchmen stood their ground and after a time only the first few rows of dockworkers continued to send fearful glances their way. The rest of the laborers seemed to have fallen for Marek’s Laws of the Quaysidea concept he had arrived upon the afternoon before and that had given him acute cases of the giggles off and on in the hours before bedtime.
“So long as our fraternity remains small, and separate from the guilds of our Third Quarter brothers, the tendency toward our mastery of all Innarlith does not come so clearly to light. But if we gather more men into our fold, and come together finally with the trade guilds, then more and more thunder gathers in the storm cloud fists of the working men. The Law of the Quayside must meet the Law of the Third Quarter. From that struggling mass there then comes about a fresh bridge between the common man and the forces by which we’ve beenuntil nowblown like the wind churns the water. A new era will come to pass. We will raise our voices in victory, even as-the senate shrieks in horror!”
The frightful cheers that rose up from those words once again made Marek struggle not to laugh. It was as though they already celebrated the impossible eventuality he’d just promised them.
The zombies, he thought, will be quieter, too.
22
23 Kythorn, the Yearofthe Sword (1365 DR) The Chamber of Law and Civility, Innarlith
"Senators,” the clerk called out in his clear, practiced baritone, “and all those having business with this distinguished body, please be upstanding for the Ransar of Innarlith.”
Osorkon watched from the doorway, making mental note of those who stood the fastest and those who stood the slowest. Everyone in between were his true enemies.
He took the podium and said, “Be seated, honored colleagues.”
He paused for a deep, dramatic breath during the ruckus that followed.
“I thank you all for allowing me to humble myself before you,” he said, speaking the traditional opening line of a ransar’s address to the senate without a trace of the contempt he held for the majority of that body. “I have come here today to speak once more of a great work.”
The murmur that swept through the senate chamber was as forced as it was predictable.
“The near-continuous efforts of a small army of craftsmen has done honor to the city of their birth, to their ransar, their senate, and the man who so capably leads them in their historic endeavor. Of course, that man of whom I speak is Ivar Devorast.”
The name sent a Shockwave of affected outrage through the senate, and the ransar smiled.
“Oh, I know how you feel about Devorast,” Osorkon continued, his tone conversational, as though the whole of the assembled senators was but one man. “Believe me, he can be”a well-placed pause”frustrating, at times. But does the city-state benefit from his genius or his charisma? Considering Master Devorast’s considerable”
“Master Devorast?” Salatis shouted from the floor of the senate. He stood, turning once to each side to indicate that he addressed his fellow senators. There were a few hisses, but most if not all of the men in that room expected someone to interrupt eventually. “Surely the ransar errs in the use of that title. For the city of Innarlith has but one master builder, and his name is Inthelph.”
Osorkon looked to Inthelph’s chair, and a few of the senators patted him on the shoulders, then urged him to stand. The master builder stood, bowed, then sat again, not once looking the ransar in the eye.