The Magic of Recluce (34 page)

T
HE DRAWING WAS
simple enough—a wooden armchair, with the five spokes supporting a simple contoured back. Dorman's tools, old as some of them were, were more than adequate for the job, and in adapting an old Hamorian design in the faded book, I thought Bostric and I could deliver the armchairs for less than Jirrle. The dining set would have meant bidding against Perlot.

“We can do it,” I said quietly.

The glint of gold from the back of the shop told me that Deirdre was watching from the darkness pooled at the bottom of the stairs that led up to the family living quarters. I almost sighed. She was certainly pretty enough, and willing, but…somehow…that would have been poor repayment for Destrin. I think both Deirdre and I knew what could not be, not that either of us was totally happy about it.

“For eight golds or less?” asked the crafter. He still had on the ratty sweater, and the rear window was open but a trace.

I wiped my forehead before answering. “With what I have in the stable, plus the logs—say four golds. Five or six days' work over two weeks. We bid ten.”

“If you can do it, then I'll mark the bid,” Destrin said slowly. His color remained grayish, despite all I had done.

I didn't like doing work for someone like a sub-prefect, especially in Gallos, but steady as the income from the benches was, and despite Brettel's commissions and the work from Wessel and Wryson, there wouldn't be enough coin to meet the quarterly tax levies. That left only a few choices, like indenturing Deirdre to one of the local gentry, or a work indenture for Destrin himself—not a personal indenture, but that of all his output to the prefect or a local merchant. Destrin couldn't meet the terms of an indenture, and the default would leave Deirdre penniless. As for indenturing Deirdre—I shivered at that.

Since the bids were publicly opened, Jirrle couldn't use whatever influence he might have to change the award.

Even if we were successful, that only bought Destrin and Bostric time, perhaps a year. Unless the levy were reduced, the shop would have to close. But in a year, a great deal could happen.

As for me, a lot of questions about the prefect still remained unanswered. How could a ruler who opposed local corruption so fiercely be so close to Antonin and his lady Sephya, who appeared to be nearly as adept as the white wizard himself?

“You sure we can do this?” Bostric asked yet again. Sawdust stuck to his forehead, glued in place by his sweat. For once, there was no mock-respect, no banter, and that told me that even he was worried.

I sighed. Doing the work was getting to be the least of my problems.

“Would anyone like some cold redberry?” interrupted Deirdre. “Allys had a little ice left over.”

I nodded, wiping my forehead again.

“I'll take mine without ice,” Destrin whined.

“Ice, please,” Bostric added. “I need to cool off even more now.”

Both Deirdre and I ignored his added comment. Destrin hadn't heard it.

Deirdre served me first, and I drained nearly all of it in one gulp, trying to cool off from too much warmth in the shop. Destrin was always cold, and while I could take the cold, adapting to too much heat was far harder.

Finally, I wiped my forehead again. “I'm taking a walk.”

Neither Destrin nor Bostric said a word.

“Will you be back by midday for dinner?” asked Deirdre from the stairs, where she had stopped.

“Probably. I just need some fresh air and to think a while.”

She nodded and was gone, her feet barely whispering up the steps.

After leaving the leather apron in my alcove and pulling on one of my two plain shirts, I stepped out onto the street.

Left or right? To the left lay the square. I turned right, taking a deep breath of the cooler outside air, avoiding a puddle that still remained from the rain the night before. The evening showers hadn't been as bad as the ice and rain storm several days earlier, but for the past eight-day late spring fogs had clouded the streets in the early morning right after dawn. Just as winter had been late in leaving, so too spring had lingered.

Click…click
…My boots rang on the stones as I ambled down the street of jewelers and around the corner into the wider street where the healers practiced.

Not all my time was spent in the shop, nor in cleaning the stable, nor riding Gairloch, nor in obtaining the woods from Brettel for our work. Besides my slow night-studies of order, and my cautious attempts at applying them in small and hidden ways—like creating stronger glues by working with the internal order of the broths—I also wandered through the streets of Fenard, just somehow trying to understand why it felt the way it did.

According to the book, feelings preceded understanding. I hoped the understanding didn't lag too much, because I was definitely having worried feelings, particularly after having seen Antonin and Sephya entering the prefect's palace.

Even recalling her gave me a chill, more so than seeing Antonin, or feeling him brushing me aside…or walking down the healers' lane.

Each healer had a different sign.

Rentfrew—Disease Casting
. That one was in white letters upon a red background, over a doorway that radiated, to my senses, a dull white-red.

I forced my feet not to cross to the other side of the pavement.

Clickedy…clack…clickedy
…A black horse pulled an equally-black carriage away from an awning-covered doorway further up the street, heading away from me.

Healing
. The letters were etched into white oak and painted green. No aura surrounded that doorway. Either simple physical medicine with herbs and the like, or a pretender—or both.

Another doorway bore only the sign of a snake twisted around a staff. Why, I had no idea.

A woman wearing a heavy cloak and a broad-brimmed dark-leather hat with a black veil glided from a doorway almost in front of me and back down the slanting pavement toward the street of jewelers. The odor of roses upon roses told me more of what she was even than the sickness buried within her—that disorder that had so wrenched my guts when first I had sensed it in such profusion when Bostric had led me into the street of harlots. Since then I had noted it within a woman peddling combs in the square, and even in a lady attached to one minister.

Supposedly, a high chaos-master could remove the disease, but the price was reputed to be more than most women would pay.

I shook my head and kept walking.

“Love philtres…love philtres…” hissed a voice from the shadows, understandably enough, since street peddling outside the square was forbidden. The woman's face was thin, scarred on both cheeks, and pock-marked. The disorder within was worse, and I hastened my steps.

Tenterra—Nature's Healer
. A guttered-out lamp, painted bright red, swung idly in the breeze beneath the sign. The doorway was banded in cold iron and barred—a tacit announcement that chaos was barred from Tenterra's. So, of course, was order; but who would know?

“…love philtres…” The words hissed up my spine even after I passed three more closed doorways and reached the black awning. The door underneath was black oak, banded in black iron, and bore no name nor any sign.

I could feel nothing, either of chaos or order, and passed back onto the far end of the jewelers' street where it curved around and led back toward the avenue. Even when you started in one direction in Fenard, you could end up going somewhere else.

Did I want to pass by the palace gardens? I shrugged. Even my simple shirt felt clinging and warm as the sun struggled to break through the low clouds that had been fog at dawn.

Two guards, one by each side of the gate, each bearing a halberd in addition to a short sword, watched as I walked toward them. If I looked to my right, I could see the green leaves of spring just barely blurring the outlines of the oak and maple branches extending above the stones of the wall. On the other side of the avenue were the grand town homes of the ministers.

“You! What are you doing here?” The nearer guard lowered the halberd slightly, as if in threat.

“Just taking a morning walk.”

“Not for the likes of you,” he growled.

As I drew nearer, slowing and stopping, I could feel the incredible sense of chaos that enveloped him. Yet beneath that disorder was a kernel of something else, as if the disorder had been dropped upon him, and he had been too weak to resist, but too strong to surrender totally.

Without thinking, I reached out and strengthened his basic honesty and order, letting it push away the chaos as I stood there. “You're right. I'll be going.” As I left him standing there, I could sense the honest confusion as he tried to recover himself.

Click…click
…The sound of my heels on the polished stones of the street before the ministers' houses echoed loudly in my ears.

“…who was that?” whispered the second guard.

Clink…clink
…The sound of horses and mounted men rebounded from behind me, and I stepped as close to the side of the street as I could, looking back over my shoulder. A troop of fresh cavalry rode in my direction. Standing aside in the shadows that had begun to appear as the sun burned off the last of the morning fog, I watched.

The standard-bearer, younger than me, borne by a chestnut, passed by with an impassive face and a reek of chaos, a reeking disorder only compounded by the armed men who followed.

Clink…clickedy, click, click…clink
…

As I leaned back against the brick wall of an unknown house, I slowly gathered my near-shredded senses back into myself, marveling at the array of chaos-energy expended on the troop. Marveling—and suppressing the urge to retch.

Antonin and Sephya—it had to have been their work.

Why I didn't know, but Antonin's hands were on it as surely as though he had signed the city the way Uncle Sardit signed a chest with his maker's mark.

With the horses safely past, I eased my steps back toward Destrin's. Had I been unwise in helping the guard struggle against unwanted chaos? Probably. Would I have done it again? Had there really been a choice?

I tried not to shrug as the sun ducked behind another cloud and the shadows faded into gray again.

P
ATTERNS—THERE ARE
patterns everywhere. That was what the book said, and what everyone had tried to point out to me. Just by creating ice crystals too small to see, some of the Masters of Recluce had started a change in climate that prostrated the Duchy of Freetown.

People create patterns, too, and by becoming Destrin's journeyman, my presence was changing the patterns in Fenard. How much the order I had added changed things…who could tell?

Before I rode Gairloch out to the mill to check the available black oak for the sub-prefect's chairs, I made sure to cross the market square, stopping to buy a biscuit, nodding to the few people I recognized or thought I recognized, and listening, always listening.

The high clouds were hazy and gray, yet the day was humid, almost steamy, and sweat dripped from my forehead. The late and short spring was turning to summer.

The market looked the same as always, a scattering of small stalls, carts, and merchandise strewn across the open expanse of granite, all of it able to be moved at day's end when the sweepers pushed through their brooms and refuse carts and the open space returned to a cavernous granite-walled emptiness.

The prefect was bright, or his advisers were. Half a silver a day was what it cost to use the market if you had a stall, a penny if you could carry your wares on your back. For that you got guards posted at each street departing the plaza and guards who patrolled in leather vests with clubs. You also got some guards who looked like merchants and hangers-on. If you couldn't fit your goods in a single stall, you had to find a permanent store or sell to someone who had one.

A fair trade, all in all. Sellers got a place relatively free from theft and graft. The prefect got revenue and information, particularly since his open market was one of the few in Eastern Candar exempt from major corruption. Reputedly the autarch's markets were better, but the prefect's border posts supposedly confiscated anything coming from the south without the prefect's authorization.

I hesitated as I neared the fountain.

“…did you see the golden coach?”

“…came through the west gate, as if it had come from below the Westhorns…”

The second speaker was Mathilde, the plump blond flower lady whose flowers seldom lasted more than two days. People with chaos in their blood should never handle living things, yet they seem to enjoy plants and pets and delight in gossip. She bulged out of a long tunic and stretched the seams of her faded purple trousers. Unwashed and gnarled toes protruded from her battered sandals.

“Probably some retainer of the prefect's,” I offered gratuitously.

“It couldn't have been. There were two armed guards and a blood-red banner on the coach staff. The prefect doesn't allow mounted armed guards inside the city gates, saving his own.”

“Maybe they forgot…”

“Young fellow, are you trying to provoke me?”

I grinned at the flower seller. “Just trying to be charitable to the poor guards that had to chase their boss across the countryside.”

“Poor guards, my trousers! That coach was worth a fortune, and the geldings that carried those guards were a matched pair. And I saw a veiled woman in that coach, the kind they sell in Hamor only to the wealthiest of landowners. Not only that, but the coach was of wood and leather, without a scrap of iron…”

I shrugged. “Some chaos-wizard, then, on his way to help the new Duke of Freetown. That's where everyone is headed to make their fortune. He just stopped to pay his respects to the prefect.”

“Wrong again!” cackled Mathilde. “The coach is stabled at the prefect's palace.”

“Why does the prefect need a chaos-wizard?” asked the peddler, as she unpacked and placed her crooked pots on the ledge by the dry fountain that had not worked since before I came to Fenard.

“The rumor is Kyphrien…” hissed Mathilde.

Kyphrien? I almost stopped then and there. Instead I looked at a particularly crooked pot, so ugly I could never have been tempted to buy it. “Kyphrien? The autarch?”

“Why not?” asked Mathilde. “The prefect and the autarch aren't friends.”

I nodded and put down the pot, well-aware that the ragged man edging up to look at the other pots on the lower step of the fountain was some sort of spy for the prefect, and a chaos-tainted one at that. “Do you think the autarch is planning something?”

Mathilde saw the ragged man in the tattered brown leathers that were a shade too clean and shrugged. “Who knows what rulers plan? I just sell flowers, like you work wood.”

Looking at the flowers mock-regretfully, I grinned falsely. “I'd buy some, but I'd better get to the mill.”

“You still supporting that broken-down crafter? Why don't you open your own shop?”

“I'd have little without him. Someday…”

“Oh…it's the golden-haired daughter…you want it all, you schemer…” She leered at me, and the pot peddler looked at us both as if we were crazy, while the ragged spy looked at no one.

Listening again, I stepped down from the fountain and headed toward Fair Road.

“…never see better-cured leather west of Recluce…”

“…only half a silver for this, scabbard and all…”

“Fresh yams! Fresh yams!”

Wiping my dripping forehead with the back of my short-sleeved working tunic, I saw another man in ragged leathers, not following me, but watching the arms merchant and noting the blades.

“…the finest in worked steel…flexible enough…sharp enough to cut a spider's web…”

“…finest Hamorian cotton…cool to wear…the finest in cotton…”

“Winter-saved apples, order-spelled and ready to eat…”

I shook my head at the fruit vendor's outrageous claim. Winter-saved apples they might be, and even kept in the coolest of root cellars, but order-spelling fruit took more effort than any order-master in his right mind would ever want to do—unless you were talking about killing off the vermin, and cool water and care did almost as well.

“…a half-copper for a tale of adventure! A song of joy…”

A thin woman in rags lingered around the minstrel's corner. Her muscles were too heavy and her skin too smooth for her to be the beggar she played.

I did not shake my head this time, but I wondered what the autarch wanted to know, and why Kyphrien was important.

At the iron gates to the market square, gates which were rusted open, I suspected, three guards watched the road and the passers-by. Two in leathers, with their clubs and blades—and one posing as a stonemason's helper. The mason was restoring a damaged arch leading into a leather shop.

The shops on that unnamed street I never frequented, not with my limited funds and disinterest in pure luxury.

My feet carried me automatically toward the turn leading back to the alley behind Destrin's and the stable. Gairloch needed the exercise, and Brettel's mill was far enough to make it better for both of us if I rode.

Another reason for Destrin's problems—the shop he had taken over from his father had catered to the personal needs of merchants and their ladies, supplying a level of crafting Destrin could not match. Destrin's rough benches and chairs belonged in the trade quarter, but he refused to move from the once-proud house and shop.

Again, I thought about the bid on the chairs for the sub-prefect, wondering if it had been a good idea, even though I could see no other alternative.

Gairloch could tell I was worried, and he danced around a lot as I saddled him.

“Settle down!” I finally snapped. And he did.

I kept thinking about the bid on the chairs.

Compared to the work that would be involved in completing the sub-prefect's chairs, getting the bid for them had not been all that hard. Destrin had signed the paper, and I put it in the envelope. Then we all had gathered on the steps of the sub-prefect's house the next morning.

“For a bid of ten golds, the commission on the five matched chairs is let to Destrin the woodworker.”

“What?” Jirrle had been on his feet, his face purpling. But a younger man, with similar features, hauled him back down.

“Bids were also received from Jirrle, the woodcrafter, and from Rasten. If the chairs are defective, the bidder will pay a default fee of one gold and the second bidder will be awarded the commission.”

I had winced at that, not that I expected the quality to be inadequate, but was that phrase merely a way to get out of the contract? I shook my head, not knowing what exactly I would do if that were the case.

Although Brettel's mill was nearly a kay farther down than anyone else's, he offered better prices, at least to me. He also knew what was happening. Few of the other crafters talked to me, for I was only a journeyman working for an excuse for a woodcrafter.

“Lerris! What now? Some seconds on green oak? Perhaps some red oak limbs?”

“Actually, I was looking for something else…green oak twigs for baskets!”

Brettel shook his white-and-silver thatch. “That bad, now?”

I raised my shoulders. “Black oak.”

“So…the rumor was true. You did underbid Jirrle and Rasten on that chair set. Jirrle was livid. He said that Destrin couldn't make one straight spoke, let alone enough for a single chair. I agreed.” Then the mill-master grinned. “I didn't tell him that his journeyman was probably going to do it all.”

“Me? A broken-down excuse for a woodworker?”

“Is that what he called you?”

“Not to my face…”

Brettel's face dropped the joviality. “Black oak's expensive, Lerris.”

“I know. We can cover it, and what choice is there?”

“Didn't the tavern benches help? Those were better than anything Hefton ever turned out.”

“They helped, but the quarterly assessment is coming due.”

“Deirdre?”

“Unless we can deliver on the benches…”

Brettel shook his head. “Old Dorman feared this, but what else could he do?”

I shrugged. “I owe him something.”

“What if the prefect finds out you're a craft-master?”

“Brettel. I'm scarcely a master. I never even technically finished my journeyman training…”

Brettel's eyebrows raised, and I realized my mistake.

“…but there's no requirement in Fenard for guild certification…”

“…so that's why you chose Destrin…”

“I had a problem with the mastercrafter…”

The mill-master nodded to himself, as if I had cleared up a minor mystery. “What do you need?”

“Black oak. I'd like to look at the logs.”

Brettel frowned again, but I couldn't help it. I needed to see the wood before it was shaped. We couldn't afford any wastage.

He turned and headed toward the racks at the back of the brick stacking-warehouse.

I followed, glancing around and noting again how orderly Brettel kept his milled timbers and planks.

“Here you are. Graded in size down. The ones with the two red grease slashes are a gold per log, the single reds are five silvers, the blues are two silvers, and the yellows are one silver.”

I'd figured it out already, how to use the heartwood for the spokes and braces and the wood around the heart for the backing and seat plates. Now all I had to do was find four logs that met the measurements.

“How much more if I ask for the cuts?”

Brettel shrugged. “Nothing, if you stay and they're normal straight runs through the saw.”

I began checking the blue logs, sensing them as well as looking, but only two were right, and that meant I needed two reds.

After a time, I pointed. “These two, and this one.”

“I'll give you the bigger one there for five silvers.”

I stared again, all too aware of my double sight as I studied the log Brettel had fingered. On the outside it looked generous, but the heartwood was not old and hard and dense, even brittle, but soft and spongy. When you bought black oak, you were paying a premium for the heartwood, so dense it rarely decayed, and so tough that the best in edged steel was barely good enough to cut and shape it.

“That's not quite right,” I told Brettel.

“It's fine,” the mill-master insisted.

I shrugged. “It's not what Destrin needs. Either this one—” I pointed to the smaller log to the right “—or that one.”

Brettel raised his shoulders, obviously thinking I was crazy, turning down the larger prime log for the smaller ones. “Then it's still five silvers each for the two single reds.”

“That's what I'll need.”

Brettel didn't quite shake his head as he greased the stump end of the four trunks with Destrin's mark, a large “D” with a half-circle over the top of the letter. “Who's paying?”

“I'll take care of it.” I had the coins in my belt. While Brettel was honest, he wasn't about to cut black oak on my word. I scrambled around to come up with the coins.

He checked them with the cold iron, just out of habit. “You want to do the cuts now?”

“If you can.”

“Things are slow today. With that wizard at the palace, people aren't working. They're all afraid to do anything.” He trundled a work cart to the log pile, then unstrapped the log clamps.

“They were talking about some coach in the market…”

“Antonin's, I'd bet. He's often here to meet with Gollard.”

“Gollard?”

“The prefect.”

“Does that have to do with Kyphros?” I wondered how I could help Brettel with the heavy log.

“Gollard…wanted…the sulfur springs back…in the Little Easthorns.” In between words, with the aid of a steel bar and the clamps, singlehandedly the mill-master had levered the first log onto the cart.

“Can I help?”

“Just…get…in the way.”

“Sounds like he wanted to make more gunpowder.” Why, I couldn't see, since anyone with the slightest hint of chaos-ability could set the devil's brew off from a distance.