Colors of Chaos (23 page)

“Silksheen,” he murmured, letting Kesal see the fragment before slipping it into his belt wallet.

Kesal nodded sadly. “If that was what the cart carried, a duke’s ransom or more, we’ll be finding the body in the last sewer pond drained. They know which one will be last.”

“They?”

“Whoever killed him.”

Cerryl wanted to frown. That sort of peacebreaking wasn’t supposed to happen in peaceful
Fairhaven. Not at all, and Kesal acted as if it were common-or, at least, not uncommon. He tried to think. “Who would buy silksheen? Who could afford it?”

“No one in the southeast section.” Kesal laughed ironically.

“How many bodies will there be in the settling ponds?”

“Hard to say, ser. Might not be any. Usually they find one or two, though.”

Myral hadn’t mentioned bodies in the ponds when Cerryl had learned all about the sewers from the older mage… just that Cerryl should look into any that he found in the sewers. Was that because entering the sewers meant breaking through chaos locks? “No owner’s marks on the horse, ser,” Bleren announced.

“Unhitch the cart.” Kesal turned to Pikek. “Once it’s clear, you go to the main Patrol building and tell them to collect the cart. Then come back and find us.” The lead patroller looked at Cerryl. “Someone will buy it at the auction.”

Cerryl waited until the two patrollers had wrestled the cart and harness away from the dead horse. Pikek glanced at Kesal, getting a nod, and then turned and walked quickly westward and toward the Avenue.

“What be going on?” A man in brown peered out a door looking into the alley.

“Is this your cart?” asked Kesal.

“No, ser. Never saw it before.” The man’s eyes darted from Kesal to Cerryl and then to the cart before going back to Cerryl.

“Good. It was stolen.”

“Ser, I never saw a purple cart like that-except ones in the
Market Square
.” The man in brown closed the door with a thud.

“Ser, if you wouldn’t mind…” Kesal glanced toward the dead horse.

“There’s nothing else we can find out from the horse?”

“A ten-year-old chestnut, I’d guess. No markings, no ear notches-could be scores around
Fairhaven. Unless someone reports the theft, we’ll never find out.”

Cerryl nodded, then studied the dead animal. After a moment, he gathered chaos around him, then released it.

Whhsttt! The dead horse vanished with the burst of chaos fire, and white ashes sifted across the worn paving stones of the alley.

“Bleren, you wait for the collectors,” ordered Kesal.

“Yes, ser.” The patroller brushed back his wispy strawberry blond hair and offered another gap-toothed smile.

“We’ll be going east on the Tanners’ Way then coming back on the Way of the Masons.”

Bleren nodded.

As Cerryl and Kesal walked out of the alley and back to the street, Cerryl asked, “How often does this happen?”

“With the body missing? A couple of times a year. Usually, we find the body with the cart.” Kesal laughed harshly. “Most times we still don’t know who it is.”

“Might not have even been silksheen in the cart,” Cerryl hazarded.

“It probably was, or something just as costly. The cart bed was clean.”

The two paused before crossing to the next block as a narrow wagon creaked by. The white-haired driver barely looked at the four patrollers. After the wagon turned westward on the Way of the Tanners, toward the Avenue, Chulk crossed back to the north side of the street.

Kesal took a deep breath, then shook his head, squinting into the low eastern sun. “Tannery row… could do without the smell.”

Cerryl nodded, his eyes going to the familiar sign in the block ahead: ARKOS-TANNER. The iron grate was swung back from the ancient oak door, and the door stood ajar. Flanking the door were two iron-grated windows. The Patrol mage sniffed at the acrid odors drifting into the street from the vats concealed behind the recently white washed plaster walls, an acrid scent that mixed with the smell of greasy meat being fried somewhere nearby. How many times had he run from Tellis’s shop down to Arkos’s to fetch parchment or vellum for some book or another? It almost seemed like another life. Then… it had been.

“You know the place?” asked Kesal.

“Yes. I used to fetch vellum for Master Tellis. Scriveners’ apprentices get to know tanners.”

“Maybe we should say ‘good day’ to him,” suggested Kesal.

“He probably won’t recognize me.” Cerryl glanced at Kesal. “You think he’s doing something to break the peace?”

“I don’t know. He is from Spidlar, and too many strangers visit here. That’s what Fystl told me, and I’ve seen a few myself over the past eight-day.”

Was the patroller reflecting the Guild’s growing dislike of Spidlar? Or was it just the bad reputation of Spidlarians? Or was Arkos indeed involved in some hidden form of peacebreaking? “Could he be smuggling?”

“He gets a lot of hides in wagons,” reflected Kesal. “I don’t worry about the hides, but you can put oils and things in leather containers, and most gate mages can’t sense them. Unless the stuff is metal,” he added.

“He’s one of the better tanners,” said Cerryl. “Why would he risk smuggling?”

“Why does anyone risk breaking the peace?” asked the wiry and bearded patrol leader, his voice dry.

“So you think it wouldn’t hurt for Arkos to know that the Patrol is interested?”

“It never hurts to show interest. Specially before someone draws bare steel or bronze.”

“And especially when you have a Patrol mage with you?”

Kesal grinned, then shrugged. “Well… ser.” He turned to the swarthy Olbel. “We’re going into the tanner’s.”

“I’ll be out here.” Olbel grinned, teeth white against his dusky skin.

The hatchet-faced Arkos seemed to shiver behind the worktable as Kesal and Cerryl entered the small front room. His eyes widened as they flicked from the patroller to the mage, and he bowed quickly. He did not look at Cerryl, but at Kesal.

The odor of frying meat was heavy, almost rancid, within the tanner’s room, and Cerryl swallowed quietly.

“Ser Arkos,” said the lead patroller jovially, “I just thought you’d like to meet one of the section Patrol mages. Mage Cerryl here is new to the southeast section.”

“I am pleased to meet you, ser mage,” Arkos said carefully, his luminous brown eyes meeting Cerryl’s pale gray ones for but a moment.

“There have been a number of visitors here over the past eight-days,” Kesal observed.

“My family-my cousins and their consorts-they have come from Kleth.”

“From Kleth?” asked Kesal. “All that way to visit? Tanning must have become far more prosperous.”

“Spidlar is not so good a place to be.” Arkos shrugged. “And it will get less good. So they come to work for me. I do not need so many helpers, but…” He looked helplessly at Cerryl and then at Kesal. “Family is family.”

“Have you seen any silksheen lately, Arkos?” Cerryl asked idly.

“Me, honored ser? How could I find the coins for such?”

Cerryl could sense the honesty behind that response, as he had with the tanner’s response to Kesal’s questions.

“Is Tellis still asking for your best vellum?”

Arkos’s eyes narrowed momentarily. “Ah… yes, ser. Does he not always?”

“Always,” Cerryl agreed. “Good day, ser Arkos.”

“Good day, ser mage.”

Back outside on the stone walk flanking the street, Kesal chuckled. “You worried him with the comment about vellum.”

“He was telling the truth about his family. And about the silksheen.”

“Good. One less problem to worry about.”

One less problem for the Patrol, but not necessarily for the Guild, not if people are already fleeing Spidlar.

“We turn here-that’s the next patrol area to the east.”

The four walked down the north-south side street past three narrow plaster-fronted two-story houses that, while clean, bore the stamp of years. At the corner, Kesal glanced eastward along the Way of the Masons, where a heavy woman carried a basket on her head and dragged a blond child with one free hand. To the west, the street was empty, but two boys sat on a stone stoop three doorways to the west.

At the sight of the white and crimson, both youths eased inside, leaving a blank door.

Cerryl nodded. He could feel the residual chaos, although it was faint, very faint, and he made a mental note to send a scroll to Kinowin. The overmage was the only one he trusted to handle that fairly.

Two blocks later, they passed a shop with a signboard in black with a white pestle-an apothecary whose name Cerryl didn’t recognize:

LIKKET.

“What sort of apothecary is Likket?” asked the mage.

“Who knows? You see servants, women, and apprentices running in and out.”

Cerryl fingered his chin. “Some apothecaries furnish different things. Nivor-his shop is on the other side of the Avenue-that was where Tellis got brimstone and oak galls to make ink. I heard that Rudint dealt mostly in oils for creams and unguents.”

Kesal shrugged. “Can’t say as I know. Seldom have trouble with apothecaries, and patrollers tend to learn things where they find trouble.”

That made sense, but it bothered Cerryl, and, again, he couldn’t exactly say why.

XXXIV

In the afternoon quiet of the duty room, Cerryl looked at the blank sheet of paper before him and then at his informal journal beside it.

Dulkor brought in Aarhl, accused of stealing three barrels of molasses from the loading dock of the factor
Hsian. Truth-read. Aarhl sent to south prison for preparation and assignment to road duty… Beggar without a name stole three coppers from youth on the Way of the Masons. Caught by Jiark’s patrol and attacked Jiark with dagger. Turned to ash…

Cerryl began to write slowly, glad that the beggar remained only the third peacebreaker on whom he had been forced to use chaos fire during his first three eight-days as a Patrol mage for the southeast section. Using chaos fire troubled him, especially on beggars and old women. Is it because you don’t understand them? Why would anyone attack a mage when the attack meant death? And why did people steal when most were caught and ended up spending their lives on the road crew? The beggar would have gotten better fare on the road than begging-and yet he wanted to die? Or he couldn’t stand the thought of abiding by another’s rules? Yet everyone, even the High Wizard, lives by rules, and life would be sorry indeed without them.

Cerryl shook his head. Yet he’d killed several score as an apprentice and a mage. The reasons did not make it easier, not much, but the alternative was worse. Still…

One every eight-day? More than two score in a year? He shook his head, hoping that his patrolling and firmness would reduce those numbers.

From what he’d seen, he had few options. He kept writing. The first midafternoon bell had rung, and it wouldn’t be long before Gyskas arrived.

Cerryl could sense that chaos that accompanied Gyskas long before the balding and graying older mage marched into the duty room with the second midafternoon bell, just as Cerryl was folding and sealing his daily report.

The oncoming duty mage nodded, and his deep-set green eyes swept the room. “Not too long a report?” He pushed fine brown and gray hair back off his high and receding forehead.

“No. One beggar took a knife to Jiark.” Cerryl shrugged. “How many do you have to flame every eight-day?”

“On this shift?” Gyskas frowned as Cerryl stood. “Two or three. Mostly outsiders. Our people know what happens if they attack a patroller.” He took a deep breath. “It gets to you sometimes, but you can’t have a set of rules that’s harder on locals than on outsiders.”

Cerryl stepped around the flat desk and called, “Wielt!” Waiting for the sandy-blond youth, he added, “If you figure we’ve got four sections with two shifts…”

“Fortunately, it doesn’t work that way. There’s more peacebreaking here than in the other three combined. Lucky us.”

Or is it more peacebreaking of the kind that comes to the Patrol’s attention? Cerryl wondered.

The messenger appeared in the duty room doorway. “If you would, take this to Mage Isork or Huroan at the main Patrol building.” Cerryl handed the folded and sealed daily report to the stocky messenger in red.

“Yes, ser.” Wielt turned to Gyskas. “Voar is in the assembly room, ser.”

“Thank you,” Gyskas turned his eyes back to Cerryl, coughing once. “Tomorrow’s your off-day?”

“The day after tomorrow. I think Dujak…”

“That’s right. He’s covering most of the morning off-days this season, here and in the southwest section.” Gyskas glanced toward the chair.

“Oh… sorry.” Cerryl stepped around the desk. “Have a good afternoon and evening.”

“It’s never that good, Cerryl. You’ll see.” Gyskas gave the younger mage a twisted smile. “Say… in a year or so. Enjoy morning duty while you still can.”

Cerryl nodded before turning and leaving the duty room, nodding to the black-haired Voar, who stood by the messenger stool. Then Cerryl walked past the assembly room and through the doors.

Several off-duty patrollers followed Cerryl outside, where the wind had picked up under a dark gray sky, and the air held a damp chill-After a smile and a nod, Cerryl headed west toward the Avenue, picking up the low murmurs they exchanged as they left. “… didn’t wait for Isork to ash that beggar…”

“… not like Klyat last spring…”

“… bet he’s going walking through the section again.”

“… least you don’t have to explain where something happened.”

Cerryl kept from nodding as the low voices died out behind him. When he reached the Avenue, he stopped for a moment and watched.

A long canvas-covered wagon creaked northward, pulled by a four-horse team. Beside the driver sat a guard with a spear. A pair of mounted guards rode behind. All four wore a green livery Cerryl hadn’t seen before.

He extended his perceptions, and from what he could tell the wagon held bales of cleaned and carded wool. Wool-so late in the year? Or had it come from Kyphros on its way to Lydiar? He shook his head. The wool had to have come from Montgren. Was it being shipped later in the year just because prices were likely to be higher? But why all the guards?