Colors of Chaos (27 page)

Cerryl strode through the open double doors of the section building’s assembly room and crossed the floor to the speaking stones, ignoring the murmurs from the four patrollers to the right of the entryway. He stepped up on the stones and looked out at the small group. His eyes fixed on lead patroller Sheffl. “What happens to be the problem?”

The muscular patroller cleared his throat. “Ser mage, these two men cannot agree. They stopped us on patrol.” He raised his eyebrows and half-smiled, gesturing to the two shorter figures who stood on either side of him.

A squat, fair-skinned, and red-haired man dressed in brown glared at the other man. The second had short gray hair, was tanned as if he worked in the open often, and wore faded blue trousers and a sleeveless blue vest. The tanned man in the vest ignored the glares from the squat man, and his eyes rested on Cerryl.

“They were arguing?” Cerryl asked the patroller. “Close to breaking the peace?”

“You might say that, ser.” Sheffl’s limp black hair flopped across his forehead with the nod he gave. “Karfl-he’s the mason there, in the blue vest-he was waving a stone hammer a lot. Queas was reaching for a staff. He was really yelling, could hear him from the back alley. Thought maybe…” The lead patroller shrugged.

Beside the double doors, just inside the room, the other four patrollers waited, watching, their faces indicating various degrees of boredom and interest.

Cerryl looked at the tanned mason. “Why were you arguing?”

“Demon-damned artisans… be all the same. Queas… he said he be a-tradin‘ a set of china pieces, ten platters and ten mugs and two pitchers, if I would repair and rebuild the stone wall at the back of his courtyard.” Karfl shrugged. “Should have known better. Got the wall one, and a bit of work it was, too. Some fool had backed a wagon through it, mud-brick and not fired brick or stone. Then Queas offers me ten platters and two pitchers and says I should be lucky. Only did it because I wanted the set as a consort gift for my daughter Viaya.

Can’t have a consort gift without mugs.“ Another shrug followed.

“I see.” Cerryl could sense the man’s belief that the situation was as he had told the Patrol mage. After a moment, Cerryl glanced at Queas. “What do you have to say?”

“I offered him ten platters, yes, and two pitchers, but not the mugs,” Queas replied. “I am a poor potter, and I had the platters already. So the pitchers I had to throw and fire and glaze. Pitchers, they are not easy, not if you want their handles to be strong. But the pitchers, they are good, good enough to sell anywhere. So are the platters.”

Cerryl held up a hand. “Did you offer him the platters and the pitchers when you first talked about how you would repay him for repairing the wall?”

“That is what I said, ser mage.”

Cerryl frowned, catching something about the words. “Did you tell him that you were offering ten platters and two pitchers, or did you say you were offering him a set of ten and two pitchers?”

“A set of ten, it is ten platters.”

Cerryl turned to Karfl. “What did you think he said to you?”

“A set of ten, and that means platters and mugs. Some places, it be even ten small plates as well, but I weren’t expecting that.”

Cerryl pursed his lips. Demons! People arguing over the meaning of what a set was. He directed his next words to Queas: “If a merchant, like Likket or Nivor, or Tellis the scrivener, asked you for a full set of ten pieces of china… what would he expect to get?” Cerryl’s eyes focused on the potter, as did his senses.

Queas shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “Ah… but… ser mage… Karfl is not… ah… he is a mason.”

“You have a different meaning for masons?”

Queas bowed his head. “I will make ten mugs. It will take an eight-day, though. I cannot fire and glaze properly, not with the work I have accepted coins for… not sooner.”

Cerryl looked toward Karfl.

“An eight-day don’t matter, ser mage. Just so as I can get a proper consort gift for Viaya.” The mason squared his shoulders.

Cerryl addressed the two. “I trust this will not come before the Patrol again.”

“No, ser mage,” murmured Queas.

“Not ‘less he don’t deliver the mugs,” stated Karfl.

Cerryl nodded to Sheffl. The lead patroller gestured to the door, and Karfl marched out, followed by a subdued Queas.

“… mages got some uses.”

Cerryl smiled faintly as he heard Karri’s muttered comment. He wasn’t sure he wanted to hear what Queas might be saying or thinking.

Back in the duty room, Cerryl sank into the high-backed chair. Sometimes, even when people heard the same words, they still didn’t agree. Sometimes people, like Queas, were too quick to interpret words in the way that they wished. He took a deep breath. At least, he hadn’t had to put them on road duty or refuse duty or flame them.

At the scritching sound, he looked up.

Weilt paused in the doorway. “Ser?”

“Yes, Weilt… come on in.” Cerryl gestured to the chair. “Sit down. Your feet have to be sore.”

The blond messenger glanced around the duty room, then leaned forward and murmured, “Ser… you have to be careful.”

Cerryl frowned. “Careful? I always try to be careful.” His words were low, probably because the messenger’s had been also.

Weilt whispered, “It’s not in the southwest, ser.” He straightened and said loudly, “Will that be all, ser mage?”

Cerryl swallowed, then answered. “Ah…” He raised his voice: “That’s all for now, Weilt.”

“Thank you, ser.” Weilt left quickly.

“Be careful,” Cerryl murmured. And not in the southwest section… Why? His inquiries about silksheen? Why would that upset people? Yet Isork had suggested care. Where had Weilt heard what he’d heard? Cerryl smiled. Messengers often overheard things, he imagined.

He frowned.

As with so many other things in
Fairhaven, much more was hidden than revealed. He needed to talk to Leyladin, if he could, since she was the only one beside Myral and Kinowin he trusted. But Myral was failing, and Kinowin was Isork’s superior. That left Leyladin, yet… he worried about bringing her too much into the intrigues.

XXXIX

Cerryl stepped out of the foyer and down the stone steps onto the paved sidewalk beside the Avenue, turning north into the cold rain that seemed to get heavier with each step. Not wanting to discuss all the warnings he’d received in the Halls of the Mages, where all too many ought overhear, he’d asked Leyladin the evening before if he could stop by her house after his duty. With a smile, she had agreed.

You just didn’t realize it would be raining,“ he muttered to himself. Ahead, the colored carts in the
Market Square
were shrouded in rain and mist rising from the pavement warmed by the vanished sun-light. His eyes flicked through the fall rain, and he forced himself to concentrate despite the headache the storm had brought. He turned westward on the street south of the square. Someone was watching him-not quite as in a screeing glass, but definitely watching. Cerryl could half-feel, half-sense the observation, and he studied the line of walls fronting the house to his right.

A blurred figure, half-concealed by a tree limb, stood at the corner of the wall less than thirty cubits away. A figure holding something… a bow?

Abruptly, and as quickly as he could, Cerryl raised a wall of chaos all the way around him-or tried to-and lurched forward and toward the nearer section of the wall, where he hoped the archer could not get a clear shot. He half-tripped, half-dropped to his knees.

Pain flared through his left shoulder.

On his knees, still a half-dozen cubits from the wall, he overlooked the burning of the heavy shaft in his arm. His eyes narrowed toward the figure in blue nocking yet another shaft.

Anger flared through Cerryl, and chaos flowed after the anger.

Whhhstt! The bowman flared into a pillar of fire, white ashes dropping across the wall with the rain.

Cerryl forced himself to concentrate, somehow focusing chaos wrapped in order around the iron, using that raw force to expel/destroy the arrow. White stars flashed across his eyes, and he closed them, but for a moment.

Opening his eyes, ignoring the stabbing in his arm, he staggered upright, then looked down at the redness welling from the wound across the white of his shirt and tunic. He clasped his right hand over the wound, hoping it would help staunch the blood.

He put one foot in front of the other, then repeated the action until he found himself tottering up the stone walk to Leyladin’s door.

He had barely let the knocker fall when she appeared.

“I felt it! What happened?” Her eyes and senses encompassed him. “Darkness! Take my arm.”

She helped him inside through the foyer and the front hall, leaving drippings of mud and blood, and laid him out on the settee in the front room to the left of the foyer-the pale blue silk-hung room he’d never entered.

“I’ll get blood on-” he protested.

“Hush.” She concentrated, and he could feel the order and the warmth from her infusing his upper arm and shoulder, even as she gently cut away the white fabric from around the wound. “It’s not as bad as it could have been.”

“I blocked some of it-just not quick enough.”

“I need to clean this and then stitch it up. The muscle is ripped up, but it’s not so deep as I’d thought. You must have done something to hold it off.”

“Told… you…”

“Hush…” She pressed a cloth against the wound. “Hold this. I’ll be right back.”

Cerryl held the cloth, listening to Leyladin as she entered the kitchen.

“…a bottle of the brandy, Meridis! I don’t care what Father says…It works.”

Even before the words died out, the healer was back with a small case, a bottle, and a clean white cloth. “First, we need to clean off the blood and everything else.”

The cork came from the bottle, and Cerryl wanted to scream as the liquid sloshed across the wound.

“Sorry… dear one… but it helps. No one’s quite sure why, but with both brandy and order most wounds heal cleanly.”

Cerryl didn’t like the word “most.”

“Don’t squirm. There’s still cloth in the wound, and I need to get it out… chaos behind it… not much, but it will grow if I don’t…”

Cerryl kept his teeth clamped together, hoping he wasn’t biting his tongue, feeling the sweat bead on his forehead and the salt run into the corners of his eyes.

“There-that’s the worst of it. Now… more brandy and some order…”

Cerryl winced again, in spite of himself. “That hurt more than the arrow.”

“You will recover.” Leyladin forced a laugh. “Now… just rest for a moment. You need it and so do I.” She sat down on the floor beside the settee. “Should I send a messenger to Isork?”

“Not yet…” Cerryl didn’t know when would be a good time, if ever. “Kinowin… later.”

“Lady Leyladin. You be white.” Meridis scurried into the sitting room, carrying a tray of bread and cheese and a bottle of wine and two goblets. “Ser Cerryl… you look like some nourishment might not hurt.”

The tray went on the floor beside Leyladin, who took a small knife and began to cut wedges off the block of white cheese.

Cerryl smiled as Leyladin handed him a small wedge of cheese, then chewed it slowly, realizing just how tired and hungry he felt. He glanced at the healer-as pale as Meridis had said.

“Healing is hard work, I see.”

“Harder than most reckon,” she said after swallowing. “Much harder, sometimes.” She passed a chunk of bread.

“Thank you,” he said quietly. “I was lucky you were here.”

“Fortunate, not lucky, that you’d asked me to be here.” After pass-ing him a glass of wine and taking it back after he had swallowed some, she asked, “Do you know who did it?”

“I was so angry that I lashed out. A bowman in blue, I think, but he’s ashes. He was nocking another shaft. Didn’t wait to find out.”

“Blue…that’s the color of a half-score of houses.”

“Not the blue Meridis wears, or Soaris. A brighter, deeper blue.” Leyladin’s eyes narrowed briefly, but she did not speak.

“I think I’d better get back to the Halls,” Cerryl said.

“You can stay here…” Leyladin insisted. “You should stay here.”

Cerryl shook his head. “No… I’ll be fine in my own quarters.”

“You weren’t fine walking here.”

“It happened on the street, not in the Halls. I don’t think it would be good for me to stay here.”

“Then I’ll tell Myral and have him look after you somehow. He can tell Kinowin.” The healer cocked her head to the side, then nodded. “You shouldn’t be going back, but you surely should not be walking. I’ll send Meridis to summon the carriage.”

Cerryl didn’t argue that point, taking another swallow of wine as Leyladin scurried out to the kitchen. He was no longer dizzy, but the aching in his arm and his head had grown even stronger, more throbbing.

“The carriage will be ready shortly.” Leyladin looked at the tray on the floor. “Can you eat more?”

“Yes.”

“Then you should.” She handed him another slice of the white cheese.

When Meridis announced the coach was ready, Cerryl had finished most of the bread and cheese, as well as a full goblet of wine. As he walked slowly through the front hallway, Meridis looked at him. “I can’t believe anyone would try to attack a mage. I can’t believe it. What is the world coming to?”

“What it has always been,” said Leyladin crossly.

Cerryl continued walking out to the coach, through the rain that had subsided to a drizzle, feeling slightly light-headed. Because of his use of chaos? The wound? The treatment? All three? He wasn’t sure, and it didn’t matter.

Soaris sat in the driver’s seat, studying both Cerryl and Leyladin as they walked toward him. A footman armed with a shortsword watched impassively as Cerryl climbed into the coach. Leyladin slipped inside, closed the door, and sat beside him.

The carriage eased forward, gently, for which Cerryl was most grateful, and the rain began to splat more loudly on the roof.

After the coach pulled up at the front entrance to the Halls of the Mages and they stepped out, Soaris announced, “We will wait here for you, Lady Leyladin.”