Natural Ordermage (10 page)

“Magister,” Rahl inclined his head, “how might we help you?”

“Is your father here?”

“Yes, ser.”

“Good. I need to talk to both of you.”

Rahl stepped back, and Puvort moved into the workroom, a stolid presence of order, embodying a blackness even deeper than the black of his tunic and trousers, or the polished black boots he wore.

Kian started to rise.

“You can keep your seat, Kian. I won’t be long.” The magister offered a smile, an expression of courtesy, carrying little warmth. “You may have heard that the Council has been forced to act against those who would bring chaos into Reduce. We have acted, and we will continue to act, as we must.” He looked to Kian. “Although you have no abilities in handling order, scrivener, you have always acted in accord with order, and for that the Council is pleased.” His eyes went to Rahl. “For those who may have ability with order, there is always a choice—order or chaos. That is not as simple as it sounds, because failing to make a choice is also a decision, and that apparent lack of decision often leads to chaos.”

The magister offered another smile and moved toward Kian. “Your work on the notices was excellent.” He extended a small pouch. “Here is your payment, and it includes an additional token for timeliness and craftsmanship.”

“Thank you, magister. We do appreciate it.”

“As does the Council.” Puvort glanced at Rahl. “And Rahl, I trust you’ll come to me with your decision on oneday. I’ll be… traveling… until late on eightday.” With a slight inclination of his head, Puvort turned and departed.

Not until the magister was well out of earshot did Kian speak. “What did he mean by saying you had to decide, Rahl?”

“Well… ser… on fourday, when you sent me for the pen nibs…” Rahl explained what Puvort had said about his small order abilities and the possibility of training by the magisters and magistras.

“And you don’t want to do it? Rahl… are your brains all in your trousers? Do you see the garments the ordermasters wear, and how respected they are? No scrivener is ever that well-off and respected.”

“I could end up in Nylan or exiled,” Rahl pointed out. “Puvort said that was always possible.”

“So you could,” admitted Kian. “And if you have those abilities, and they are not properly trained, do you think you’d end up anywhere else?”

For a moment, Rahl just stood there, thinking. He didn’t like to admit it, and in fact, he hated the idea, but his father had a point. He took a deep breath. “Best I go and see Magister Puvort first thing on oneday.”

“Why not now?”

Rahl gestured at the window, which showed a sun already .touching the rugged horizon. “They close the Black Holding just before sunset, and Magister Puvort said he wouldn’t be there until oneday and to see him then.”

“Sometimes…”

Rahl knew what Kian would have said, that at times Rahl put off doing things when he shouldn’t. Still, there was little enough he could do at the moment.

“I’ll go see Shahyla on end-day and Magister Puvort early on oneday.” He thought the mention of Shahyla might divert his father’s attention from himself.

“Do you like her?”

“She’s pleasant, and pretty enough, and she’s brighter than I recalled,” Rahl said. His father laughed.

Rahl forced himself to laugh as well, little as he felt like it.

Sevenday dawned hazy and warm, but at least Kian hadn’t insisted Rahl join him in a sparring session, and there had even been a piece of leftover green-apple-cracker pie for breakfast. Midday dinner had been even better, with breaded cutlets and brown gravy with roasted potatoes.

That had taken Rahl’s mind off all the things that were nagging at him. He still worried about Fahla, and Jienela, and especially about having to go to the magisters for instruction in using order. To be a scrivener, he didn’t need instruction, but after he’d seen Balmor carted off, he couldn’t afford not to take the magisters’ instruction and teaching. But that didn’t make him any happier about it, especially not after what he’d seen and heard during the past eightday.

With all those thoughts on his mind, the afternoon dragged, and he had trouble concentrating on Philosophies of Candor. Each stroke of the pen took special effort.

“Rahl… Rahl… are you listening?”

Rahl jerked himself to attention. “Yes, ser?”

“I said I’m going down to see if Clyndal has gotten in any iron-brimstone. Or if he knows who might have backing clips.” Kian shook his head. “You get a good factor, and he’s never satisfied. They’re either sloppy and could care less, like old Hostalyn, or they’re doing what they shouldn’t, like that Kehlyrt fellow. I don’t know how long I’ll be. You did a good job on Tales of the Founders and on the Natural Arithmetics, but you’ll need to be even neater on this one.”

After his father had left, Rahl looked out the windows at the corner closest to the garden, where a traitor bird had landed on the low stone wall, calling out to anyone who would listen that a cat—or something—lurked in the parsley and brinn patches. His mother had harvested some more of the early brinn and had taken some sprigs to Elantria, the old healer who lived in a neat but modest cottage beyond Sevien’s dwelling.

Finally, Rahl forced himself back to the copying at hand. The philosophy book was easier… and harder than the mathematics book had been. It was easier because he could read it as he copied, but harder because the words seemed to twist back and around on themselves. He read the paragraph again.

… there is no school of thought or of mental debate developed within or upon Candar that cannot cite or claim in its defense at least one obscure principle from the fragments remaining from the Code of Cyador… yet presented within this tome will be a unified and concrete cosmological system of thought, developed in complete synchrony with its own categoreal notions and implications, which can stand any test raised by the philosophy of organism, since all relatedness has its foundation in the relatedness of actualities, relatedness being established as that which is dominated by quality and subordinate only to quality as defined in Cyadoran sense of sensibility…

He’d read that part at least three times, and while he thought he understood the meaning of almost every single word, he still did not have the faintest idea what all the words together meant. Thwump!

Rahl looked up with a start.

A stocky young man with truncheon in hand stood just inside the workroom. It was Jaired—Jienela’s brother. The grower stepped toward Rahl, who hastily cleaned his pen and set it aside.

“Jaired… what can I do for you?” The question sounded inane, even to Rahl, but he had to say something.

“You’ll take her for your consort,” announced Jaired. While he was not so tall as Rahl, Jaired was older and stockier, and he did have his truncheon in hand.

Rahl’s was still in his small sleeping chamber. He’d never thought he’d need it while he was copying.

“Take who for what?” Rahl attempted to show surprise. “What are you talking about?”

“You know well enough what I’m saying.”

“You’re wrong,” Rahl persisted. “I have ho idea what you’re talking about or where you got this idea.” He rose from behind the copying table and closed the Philosophies of Candar.

“Jienela,” snapped Jaired. “She’s going to be your consort, one way or another.”

Rahl smiled easily. “I’m sorry. Why would I do that? I’m but an apprentice scrivener.” -

“Because you’re the one who got her with child.”

How could that be? Jienela? Rahl hadn’t sensed that she was… anywhere near that time, but Jaired bore an air of complete conviction.

“Are you so sure of that?” Rahl didn’t want to say he hadn’t slept with her.

“Who else could it be? You’re the only one she’s been looking at or walking with,” retorted Jaired.

“That’s what you’ve seen. Maybe we haven done anything more than that. Walking with a girl doesn’t get her with child.”

Jaired flushed. Then his face hardened. “You’ll not be slandering my sister. She’d not be doing what she shouldn’t.”

Rahl refrained from pointing out that Jienela couldn’t be carrying a child without having done something Jaired felt she shouldn’t have been doing. “And I suppose that was true of you and Coerlyne?”

“You leave her out of this!”

Rahl was between the copying table and the back stone wall of the workroom, and still without any weapon. “You’ve come in, here and accused me of something without even letting me say a word. Don’t you think I should be able to say something?”

“I’m not for talking. It’s what you do to make things right that counts.”

“Let’s talk about what you want me to do.”

“You ask Da for her hand. There’s nothing else to talk about.”

“Then what?” asked Rahl. “After that, I mean.”

“You become consorts. That’s what.”

“And will your da pay Jienela a stipend?”

“A what?” A momentary look of confusion crossed the young grower’s face.

“Coins. Apprentice scriveners don’t make that much. My father barely brings in enough coins for himself and my mother.”

“You shoulda thought a‘ that. That’s your problem, Rahl.”

“If… if I did what you say, it is,” admitted Rahl. “But… if you insist on our becoming consorted, it becomes Jienela’s problem as well. Do you really want your sister not to have enough to eat? Or not enough warm clothes come winter?”

“You shoulda thought a‘ that,” repeated Jaired.

Rahl was getting tired of that phrase, but he was in no position to object strenuously. Not yet.

“If… as I said, I did what you think, I should have. But if I didn’t, why would I?”

“You did it. I know you did.”

“Oh… and I suppose Jienela told you?” Rahl’s voice was gentry scornful.

“Jienela’s protecting you, but you’d not be deserving that.” Jaired raised the truncheon.

“But she is.”

Jaired stopped.

“If… if I did it, then you don’t want to injure me because how would I support your sister? If I didn’t do it, you shouldn’t injure me because I didn’t do anything wrong.”

“You twist words worse than a magister,” growled Jaired.

“I’m only pointing out that trying to beat me with that truncheon won’t do anyone any good. Neither will coming in here and yelling at me and telling me I have to do something that I never promised to do and that my parents are against.” Rahl moved away from the copying table and toward the narrow heavy frame Kian used to stretch leather for binding. There was a long knife in a battered sheath fastened to one side of the frame, the side shielded from the young grower.

Rahl had never liked using the knife; it bothered him almost as much as the gelding knife Shahyla had showed him. But Jaired didn’t have to know that.

Jaired frowned. “You think you’re so smart.”

“Everyone’s smart at different things,” Rahl said, taking another step toward the frame. He extended a hand as if to straighten the frame, then let his hand drop to the knife hilt, grasping it and sliding it out.

Jaired looked at the long knife and at Rahl.

Rahl smiled.

“You’d better think about what you’re doing,” the grower said. “Just because your da’s a scrivener, you can’t get away with hurting my sister. You’ll see.”

“I certainly didn’t force your sister to do anything,” Rahl said. “I don’t like being blamed and threatened for what she wanted to do. I never promised anything.” He took a .step forward, holding the knife low. The afternoon light coming .through the windows glinted on the polished dark iron.

Rahl could sense the other’s fear. In a strange way, that amused him, how Jaired had been so sure of himself when he’d thought he’d had the only weapon and the upper hand. Was confidence all about who believed himself to have more power?

“You can’t do that to her,” Jaired said.

“I’m not doing anything to anyone,” Rahl said. “I’m just saying that you can’t force what you want on me.” He took another step forward.

“This isn’t over,” blustered Jaired.

“I tell you what,” Rahl said quietly. “You just get out of here, and you think about things over the end-day, and so will.” -

“You better think hard, scrivener. You’d better.” Jaired backed up to the half-open door, then turned and left, hurriedly, but not quite at a run.

As soon as he was certain Jaired was well away from the house and workroom, Rahl replaced the binding knife with a shudder of relief. Then he quickly hurried to his sleeping chamber. There he reclaimed his truncheon before returning to the workroom. He laid it on the side of the copy table.

Should he tell his father and mother? He might as well—or at least suggest part of the problem. They’d find out before long and not necessarily in the way least unfavorable to Rahl. But… when… that was the question…and how much?

He didn’t know how much time had passed, but it wasn’t long before the .workroom door opened and Khorlya peered in. “I was coming up the road, .and I saw someone leaving

“That was Jienela’s brother Jaired.”