L. Modesitt - Natural Ordermage

“Everything you learned could help us all, and give my best to Shyret.” She paused. “One other thing.”

“Yes, Captain?”

“I just wanted to give you a few words from a woman who’s been around.” Liedra smiled ruefully. “Whatever you’re doing when you’re out of the Merchant Association, be careful. Be especially wary around the girls. Any woman seen in public with any of her body uncovered is a slave or servant. If she’s paying attention to you-or any other young fellow-she’s probably working to ensnare either your coins or your body. You have to watch closely, because the free women with golds often wear fabric and scarves so sheer that their shoulders look bare, but you won’t see more than that. If you do…watch out.”

“The body-snatchers get you,” added Galsyn, “and you’ll end up working in the great ironworks at Luba, or lugging stone on one of those great highways the Emperor’s building and rebuilding…”

Rahl had heard often enough while at the training center about the ironworks at Luba, but he didn’t recall anything about the great highways.

“Watch everything,” added the captain. “Best of fortune.”

“Thank you.” Rahl picked up his pack and walked down the gangway toward the remaining wagon from the Merchant Association. When his boots rested on the wide stone wharf, a mixture of order and chaos swirled up around him, then seemingly receded slightly.

“You the clerk?” called the teamster from the seat of the remaining wagon.

“Yes. I’m Rahl.”

“Climb on up. Need to be moving. Otherwise the red-and-tans get nasty.”

Rahl hurried to the wagon and swung his pack up, then scrambled onto the hard painted wood of the bench seat.

“I’m Guylmor,” offered the driver, a dark-skinned man with a short-cut graying beard who wore a blue shirt and trousers, both so faded that they were more like a light gray shaded blue. “Teamster for the mercantos.”

Mercantos? Then Rahl nodded and asked, in Hamorian, “Do you live near the Merchant Association?”

“Where else?” Guylmor laughed, not quite bitterly. “We have a bunk room. My consort, she lives out in Heldarth. I go there on end-days.” He flicked the leather leads, gently. One of the dray horses snorted, but the wagon began to move, slowly. “Where are you from? Did you grow up in Atla?”

“A long ways from there, but I learned to speak from…someone like an uncle…who lived there.”

“Some of the vendors will try to cheat you. They don’t think Atlans are that smart.”

“Are you from…Heldarth?”

“My family is from south of there.” Guylmor shook his head.

The wagon rolled slowly down the pier, inshore toward the buildings beyond the end of the pier. Rahl’s eyes flicked from point to point, but so much was going on that he scarcely knew where to look-or for what. The wagon passed a cart with an open grill, so close that Rahl almost could have reached out and grabbed one of the spiced fowl roasting on spits there.

“No better fowl anywhere…” The words in guttural Temple were followed by another set in far more precise Hamorian. “The best young chickens, fattened and roasted…”

Voices pitching wares and more came from everywhere, or so it seemed.

“Indentured servants…young and in the best of health…young men, young women…”

On the opposite side of the wagon from where Rahl sat was a stage on which a young man and a girl stood. They wore little but cloths around their loins, and the girl was red-haired. For a moment, he thought she might be Fahla, but the girl was shorter and more fragile. Was that what had happened to Fahla-because she wouldn’t betray her father to the Council? A flash of anger swept through Rahl.

“…in the best of health and form…”

The teamster jerked his head toward the slave stage. “The only ones they show here are trouble. They’re crazy or damaged in some way. They look good, but the best slaves never come to the piers. A little cheaper, though, and I wouldn’t mind having the redhead, if I had the coins. Good thing about slave women-they can’t tell you no.”

Two darker-skinned men wearing short-sleeved shirts and trousers of a light khaki fabric stood in a loose formation at the end of the pier, just at the point between the pier itself and the stone-paved causeway perpendicular to it. Each wore a khaki cap with a blue oval above the visor. They also carried polished oak truncheons and wore falchionas at their black belts.

Rahl looked at the Hamorian patrollers, or whatever keepers of the peace were called in Swartheld. Both were hard-eyed and made the Council Guards of Recluce seem friendly by comparison.

Directly behind the armsmen was a younger man, barely older than Rahl. The younger man bore only a falchiona, but above his cap visor was a bronze or gold starburst set on a red oval. A whitish chaos-mist surrounded him. He had to be one of the chaos-mages serving the Emperor. Rahl was careful not to look long at the man, but he had a feeling that the chaos-mage still had noticed him.

Once the driver had the wagon off the pier and onto the street that fronted the harbor, the crowding eased, and the wagon began to move more quickly. On the streets heading south from the harbor boulevard, there were few peddlers or carts, but more people, and despite his understanding of the far larger size of Swartheld, all the people made Rahl feel cramped and crowded.

“How much farther?” asked Rahl.

“Less than half a kay,” replied Guylmor.

The shops Rahl could see and make out carried everything, but a greater proportion seemed to deal with fabrics-silks, woolens, linens, cottons-and even costly shimmersilk. The shop that displayed the shimmersilk had two large armed men in maroon by the door. In just a few blocks were as many bolts of cloth as in all of Nylan, Rahl suspected.

Even though he had done little more than ride in the wagon, Rahl could feel even more sweat beading on his forehead and neck and running down his spine. A haze hung over the city, mostly from the heat, Rahl thought, but some of it might have been from chaos-or just from so many buildings and people. He tried to take in what they passed, but there were so many factorages and shops that he soon lost track of all that he had seen.

The teamster cleared his throat, then gestured with his left hand. “There’s the traders’ building. We’ll be unloading in the rear yard. That’s where the warehouse is.”

“I need to tell Ser Shyret I’m here.” Rahl glanced around, trying to take in what he could. Across the street from the Merchant Association building was a shop that displayed weapons-many shimmering in the front display window-sabres, cutlasses, an especially menacing falchiona, a huge wide broadsword, and all manner of knives and dirks. “Thank you for the ride.”

“Serfing together and company’s welcome,” Guylmor replied.

Rahl waited until Guylmor slowed the wagon to bring it through the brick-pillared gates before hopping off and hurrying toward the front door of the building. Before he put his hand on the polished-brass door lever, he paused, then firmly pressed down and opened the door.

Inside, the building was cooler than the street, but only slightly. The ceilings were high, close to ten cubits, and the walls were white plaster over brick, with occasional yellow-brick pillars. Unlike the Merchant Association in Nylan, there was no counter, but a single long desk facing the door. The blond-wood surface was not quite chest high.

The clerk seated on a stool behind the desk was turned, listening to a man at the side.

“…be getting the cargo and declarations from the Diev …”

Rahl intended to wait, but the man turned, as did the clerk.