The White Order (44 page)

   Cerryl smiled. “Thank you.”

   He followed the innkeeper through the side door.

   “Public room be that way. Stairs here.”

   He followed the squat man up the narrow steps.

   The end room on the single upstairs corridor that was now more than two cubits wide had a battered gold oak door, and Prytyk pushed it open. “This be yours. Not much fare left this late, but you come down and I'll have Foera get you the best we can.”

   “I'll be there shortly.”

   “No bare iron in the public room.”

   Cerryl nodded.

   Once Prytyk had left, Cerryl glanced in the wall mirror. The face that looked back at him was drawn, lightly bearded, and blood-streaked. The crooked smile that greeted him seemed almost cruel.

   “Well, without a razor...” How would Leyladin have found The Golden Bowl? He didn't doubt it was beneath her, well.beneath her.

   He used the washbasin to remove the blood, still wondering how he ended up with it on his face, and the worst of the grime, then slipped off the cloak, the white leather jacket, and the red-striped overtunic. A plain white shirt, travel-stained, and brownish trousers-and a blade- scarcely the picture of a mage. The jacket and tunic went in his pack. He left his borrowed cloak on the wall peg and eased the pack and bedroll against the wall on the far side of the bed, out of easy sight, not that there was much of value there, except the jacket, but wearing it close to people would cause too much notice.

   The public room was smoky from a low fire in the small corner hearth, with grease in the air, and loud chatter. Twelve tables were situated haphazardly, and all but two were taken-a round one still bearing empty mugs and dirty platters, and a small square one against the wall. Cerryl took the small table, turning the chair so that he could watch the archway without seeming to do so. “... care where you get wool...”

   “... you think she cares ... All she wants is silks from Naclos .. . and a larder full of spices and a matched pair of milk cows ...”

   “... young fellow ... there ... just came in... another bravo .. . Prytyk said he'd like as kill...”

   “... doesn't look that bad .. .”

   “... blood on his face . .. some on his blade, Prytyk said ...”

   “. .. worry . . . not here. If he be a real bravo ... safe enough ... don't do their work where they stay. Now... wouldn't want to be down at The Black Kettle ...”

   Cerryl glanced up as the serving girl, thin, harried, and wearing a stained apron, eased by the adjoining table.

   “Ser ... you're the one Prytyk said came in late?”

   Cerryl nodded.

   “Best we have is the stew and a leg from the fowl. Bread, a course.”

   “That's fine. What to drink?”

   “The good ale is two, the red swill one.”

   “The ale.” Drinking anything called swill didn't appeal to Cerryl.

   The brown-haired serving girl was gone as quickly as she had come. He glanced at the corner table, the one where the conversation had been about him. Three older men sat around the battered and whitened circular table, nursing tall mugs. A single basket of bread sat in the middle.

   Cerryl turned his glance to the table where a blonde woman of indeterminate age, but not profession, sat with a gray-haired and heavy man in rich browns. He wished a certain blonde mage had been sitting across from him. Since she wasn't, his ears picked up the conversation from the corner.

   “... see what you mean... looks right through you ...”

   “... coulda taken him ... years ago ...”

   “It's not years ago, Byum. Ha!”

   A faint smile creased Cerryl's lips.

   “Here you be.” The bread and ale arrived with the thin server, a half-loaf of rye and a tall gray mug of dark ale, smelling strong enough to chew. Cerryl laid out two coppers and took a careful sip. At the prices in Fenard, he'd have to be careful-and quick.

   The bread was moist, at least, moister than that in the Halls of the Mages, and by the time the platter that held a single fowl leg and a chipped brown crockery bowl of stew appeared, Cerryl had finished half the bread.

   “Here you be.”

   “Thank you.” Cerryl knew he needed to give her something. He fumbled out a copper.

   “Thank you, ser.” She flashed a professional smile and slipped away.

   The stew was peppery, hotter than burkha, and Cerryl didn't care, but he listened as he ate.

   “... a lot of lancers going out the east gates these days. Don't see so many coming back ...”

   “... know a good cabinet-maker? She says we need a dowry chest for Hirene ...”

   “... good riddance to him .. . mages nothing but trouble . ..” Cerryl's ears burned, but he took another sip of ale, another mouthful of bread, and then more stew.

   “... say the white devils are raising mountains to the east...”

   “Ha! Even they can't do that... more stories ... Like as not, next they'll be talking of the black angels returning to Westwind. Or the great white birds landing on the plains of Kyphros ... Don't believe all you hear.”

   “Don't hear much about the black isle these days.”

   “Good that we don't. Got any ideas of whether Frysr do a better job on that chest than Donleb?”

   “Frysr be a better crafter, but he'll be costing twice what Donleb will.”

   “She'll say Frysr-only the best for Hirene.”

   “Lucky you.”

   Cerryl looked at the bowl and platter. He'd finished it all-and probably too quickly. With another glance around, he slipped away from the table.

   No one seemed to notice-not obviously-when he left, and the hall upstairs was empty but not silent. A bed creaked repeatedly as he passed the door adjoining his.

   His room seemed untouched, and there was no sense of chaos or disruption.

   Cerryl dropped the bar in place. He brushed the bed with chaos, hoping that would remove most of the vermin, then took off the blade and sword belt, both sets of trousers and tunic and did the same with them.

   He stretched out on the bed, feeling his eyes close almost immediately. Darkness, it had been a long day.

Cerryl woke with the gray light that filled the room even before dawn. His head ached, and his back and legs were sore. One arm itched with several small red bites-despite his efforts of the night before with the vermin.

   He swung his feet over the side of the bed and just sat there for a time, slowly massaging first his neck and then his forehead. Finally, he stood and walked to the basin, where he washed up as best he could. After that, he pulled on his boots and the sword belt. The tunic and jacket had to stay in his pack.

   In the wavering image of the wall mirror, thin-faced and drawn, he looked like anything but a well-fed student mage-or a mage of any type. More like a brown-coated weasel or something, he decided, or even a bravo down on his luck-as if he could do more than hack with the blade at his belt.

   He definitely missed the razor-and the lady who had given it to him. Would he see her again? Would she care?

   Don't think about it... You have a task to finish.

   He left his pack beside the bed and went downstairs to find something to eat. The hearth in the corner of the public room was cold, with the smell of ashes. The tabletops were covered in a thin film of whitish dust, and the only table taken was filled by the same three older men that had been there the night before. The three looked Cerryl over, nodded to themselves, and resumed their low conversation.

   “... still looks like a bravo ...”

   “... you figured out the materials, yet, Byum?”

   “... get to it... You know that...”

   “... figures out everything but the important stuff...”

   A single serving girl-portly-stepped out from the kitchen and looked at Cerryl. “Breakfast don't come with the room.”

   “How much for some bread and cheese and ale?”

   “Three.”

   Cerryl nodded and sat down at the same table where he'd eaten the night before.

   A scrawny white-bearded man shuffled in and sat down at the round table in the corner, not looking at Cerryl or the other three. The older man waited, head down, until the heavyset blonde brought him a mug. He slurped it slowly, holding it with trembling hands.

   Thump. “Bread and cheese, dark ale.” The blonde's voice was hard, as if she wished she didn't have to serve him.

   Cerryl handed over the three coppers. The serving girl vanished through the door to the kitchen. The three men continued talking in their low voices as he ate a half-loaf of the day-old rye bread and some hard white cheese, washing both down with ale. When he had finished, more quickly than was polite, but in character for a bravo, the headache had begun to fade. Did using chaos too much take extra food?

   He swallowed the last of the ale, rose, and headed back up to his room, where he used the chamber pot and set it by the door. Then he donned the too-large cloak before picking up his pack and bedroll.

   The bed in the room adjoining his was creaking once more as he passed.

   Exactly what type of inn had he chosen? He shrugged. At least it wasn't the kind where everyone looked cross-eyed at strangers. Maybe he'd been lucky in that respect.

   Out in the dusty courtyard, the stable boy looked at Cerryl and his pack and bedroll. “You not coming back, ser?”

   “Would you leave your gear there all day?”

   The dark-haired boy grinned. “I'll get your mount. The chestnut, right?”

   “That's the one.” Cerryl glanced back toward the inn but didn't see Prytyk, which was just as well. A thin line of smoke rose from the chimney, and the smell of something baking drifted into his nostrils, a scent far more pleasant than his stale breakfast or the smell of the streets. Overhead, puffy white clouds, with barely a touch of gray, dotted the green-blue sky.

   The stable boy had brushed the chestnut. That was clear enough from the sheen of the horse's coat. “I gave him some grain. Not supposed to...” The boy glanced toward the stable, then over Cerryl's shoulder toward the inn door.

   Cerryl smiled and slipped the youth another copper he couldn't afford.

   “Thank you, ser.” A pause followed. “Some say you're a bravo ...”

   “You wonder if that's true?” Cerryl smiled as he began to strap his pack and bedroll on the chestnut, unwilling to leave them behind, even for the day. “I can't give you an answer you'd believe. If I am, then I won't say I am, and if I'm not, I won't say I am.” He laughed, pleased at his answer.

   “I don't think you are.”

   “Probably not in the way you mean.” The mage swung up into the saddle, half-amazed that he'd finally gotten somewhat graceful at mounting the big horse. “Tonight.”

   “Yes, ser.”

   Cerryl hoped he didn't have to stay another night, but he had no idea of what to expect in Fenard-or if he could even get close to the prefect. Or if the prefect even happened to be in Fenard.

   The Golden Bowl looked even more dingy in the morning light, yellow plaster walls grayed and chipped, roof tiles cracked, with some missing. One shutter beside the front door hung tilted from a single bracket. Cerryl held in a shiver, noting that it was probably a good thing he hadn't been able to see the place well the night before.

   He guided the chestnut out onto the narrow street and west, toward the main avenue, through the sour odors of a city with too many open sewers. There, even in the early morning, a line of carts trundled to his right, north, in the direction he hoped led to the central square or what passed for such.

   He'd only ridden a block or so when he had to guide the chestnut around a cart that had collapsed, one wheel snapped in half, the cart tilted, and baskets of potatoes half-emptied into the cart bed-and into the street, and even the open sewer ditch.

   A half-dozen urchins were scooping up the tubers into their ragged shirts, then scuttling down the alley. Cerryl swallowed as he watched one scoop two potatoes out of the filth.

   “Out! Leave a poor farmer alone!” The carter lifted a staff, and the urchins suddenly vanished.

   Cerryl kept riding, his eyes never stopping their study of the surroundings, even when he passed a set of ancient rock pillars and looked into the central square-just a cobblestoned and open expanse filled with carts and wagons and hawkers. Most of the wagons were of bare wood, brown or gray, not like the painted carts in the market square in Fairhaven.

   To his right, standing on an empty mounting block, an urchin with cold eyes studied Cerryl, then looked away.

   “You!” snapped the mage.

   “Ser? I didn't do nothing. I didn't.”

   “Which way to the prefect's?”

   “You? They won't let you in the gate.” The urchin gave a diffident sneer.

   “My cousin's in the guard there.”

   “Up the hill past Gyldn's. The goldsmith.”

   “Thank you.”

   “Frig you, bravo.” The urchin spat.

   Cerryl urged the chestnut into the square, eyes traveling across the carts, the women with baskets, and the two wagons tied on the other side, opposite what looked to be a warehouse. Two men lugged bundles wrapped in gray cloth from the wagon through the open door.

   “Spices! Best winterseed this side of the Gulf...”

   “Ser! Flowers for your lady!”

   Cerryl shook his head.

   “Then she be no lady!”

   The young mage half-grinned, looking for the goldsmith's as the chestnut carried him around the square. A signboard with a golden chain against a green background caught his eye, and he made for the place, and the street that seemed to slope gently up past three-story buildings that bore shops on the main level and dwellings above.

   “Scents and oils . .. scents and oils ...”

   “... harvest-fresh roots .. . fresh roots ...”

   Once out of the square and on the cobblestones of the upsloping side street, he could make out the walls ahead on his right. The prefect's palace was indeed walled, and the walls were a good ten cubits high. Two hundred cubits uphill on the paved street was a gate-or the first gate. While the two wrought-iron gates were open, the four guards were alert, one studying Cerryl as he rode by. Cerryl ignored the scrutiny and continued past the gate, a gate made up of interlocking iron bars forming rectangles that afforded a view of an empty paved courtyard.

   Should he be cautious?

   He shook his head. There was a time to be bold and a time to be cautious. Mostly, in the past, he'd had to be cautious, and that had to be what Jeslek was counting on. Despite Sterol's advice about there being no old bold mages, if he weren't bold, he'd never have the chance to get old. The sooner he removed the prefect-if he could-and returned to Fairhaven, the better ... before Jeslek's stories could get out of hand.

   On the cross street, at the top of the hill was another gate, but it was locked, and chained, and looked not to have been used in some time. On the north side of the walls was a third gate, where several wagons were lined up-the tradesmen's gate, Cerryl guessed as he rode by. The bottom gate, less than a block from the square but north of the street he'd taken first, offered entry, from what Cerryl could tell, only to the guards' barracks, and but a single guard lounged by the guardhouse.

   That meant that the southern gate was the one that led where he needed to go. He rode slowly down another side street, trying to find an avenue that angled back toward the gate he wanted. The simplest thing would be to cloak himself in the light shield and follow someone, or someone's carriage, into the palace-but what would he do with the chestnut?

 
 He smiled-why not just tie the horse somewhere? No one was going to kill a horse. His rider perhaps, but not the mount. They might steal the mount, but the chances were less if he tied the gelding somewhere fairly prosperous looking. He shrugged. If someone stole the gelding, he could find a way to steal another horse. After what he had to do, horse theft couldn't make it any worse if he were caught.

   He rode down several streets and had to retrace his way several times before he finally found what he was looking for-several well-kept shops in a row-not more than a block and a half from the palace walls. The first shop was that of a silversmith-attested by the painted silver candlestick and pitcher that adorned the purple-bordered signboard by the door. The second was some sort of weaver's or cloth merchant, with bolts of cloth shown behind real glass windows. The third was a cooper's, with a small half barrel set on a bracket on the left porch post.

   Two stone hitching posts with iron rings were set against the cooper's open wooden porch. Cerryl glanced around, but the cooper's door was shut, although he could hear muffled hammering within.

   He dismounted quickly, tied the gelding, and slipped around the corner of the building and down the short alley to the side street that led to the perimeter street that flanked the southern gate to the prefect's palace.

   Don't run... Don't hurry.., Just look as though you have business to take care of... The side street curved slightly, and Cerryl stopped at the corner, just back of a large rain barrel that was held to the timber walls of the dwelling with an iron strap. His hand brushed the iron, and he felt a tingling, but the iron didn't burn. Not yet...

   Leaning against the wall, in the morning shadows and out of sight of the gate guards, Cerryl watched the street running up from the main square.

   After a while, after a cart and two men bearing something wrapped in cloth on a long pole between them had passed, an officer with a single gold slash on his sleeve made his way up the street, his mount's hoofs clicking on the cobbled paving stones, so much rougher than the smooth blocks of Fairhaven's avenues. The officer barely paused as he rode through the gate. Cerryl strained to hear the exchange between guards and officer.

   “Good day, Undercaptain. Here to see Captain Yurak?”

   “If he's in.”

   “He's there.”

   As the sorrel carried the captain across the courtyard, one guard turned to the other, but from behind the corner, Cerryl could not catch the words.

   He waited. The sun got warmer, and the sky clearer. Another officer, a full captain, rode through the gate, but the guards did not speak.

   Cerrly continued to wait as scattered riders and a cart, then a wagon, passed. Three women bearing laundry walked out of the side street, right past Cerryl, ignoring him, and down toward the square.

   “... Elva ... too good to do her own laundry...”

   “Would I had her coins, and I wouldn't either.”

   Cerryl drew himself up. A carriage-a dark carriage-had started up the street, and both guards had stepped forward, stiffening into positions of attention. Whoever it might be, the guards expected the carriage, and it might be his only chance for some while.

   Cerryl slipped the light cloak around him and eased across the street. Despite his care, since he could only sense things in rough terms, he almost tripped on the uneven stones. He stopped against the wall on the north side of the gates, where he could slip behind the coach and walk in after it. The coach slowed as it approached and turned through the wrought-iron-gate-flanked entry. Cerryl walked quickly, almost abreast of and between the back of the rear wheels, glad that the coach was not the kind with footmen.

   “Good day, ser.”

   There was no answer from the carriage to the guard's pleasantry, and the coach continued to roll slowly through the courtyard and then under another archway. Cerryl found he was panting when the coach creaked to a halt, and he forced himself to breathe more deeply and slowly.

   Which side should he take? Cerryl eased up next to the right rear wheel, listening as the coach door opened and a man stepped out onto the mounting block.

   An officer, perhaps the same undercaptain who had entered the palace earlier, stood in the archway above the steps. “The prefect is waiting in his study, ser.”

   “Very well.” The voice was modulated, and bored. “I will see him before I deal with Overcaptain Taynet. Would you inform the over-captain that I will be there presently, and that I expect him to await my arrival.”