L. Modesitt - Natural Ordermage

“You must be the new clerk.”

“Yes, ser.” Rahl inclined his head politely. “Are you Ser Shyret?”

“‘Director’ will do.” Shyret was stocky, and the top of his head barely came to Rahl’s nose. The managing director was also clean-shaven, with iron gray hair cut short, and he wore a loose-fitting white shirt decorated with silvered embroidery and lace. “Say something in Hamorian.” The tone was polite enough, but preemptory.

“I look forward to working here and doing my best.”

“That will do.” Shyret nodded brusquely, inclining his head toward the thin-faced man at the high desk. “Daelyt is the senior clerk. He will assign your duties. You are to speak Hamorian at all times when anyone else is here, even if you are addressed in Temple. The one exception is any ship’s master. You reply in whatever language the captains use to you.”

“Yes, ser.”

“Show him his duties, Daelyt. You can see me later.”

The senior clerk nodded.

Shyret turned and walked through a wide archway at the rear of the main office. There was a faint chaos-haze about him, not as much as if he were a white wizard, Rahl thought, but he wasn’t sure about that.

“We might as well get you started,” said Daelyt. “What do you know about manifests and declarations?”

“I worked in the Nylan Association for several eightdays, and I was the assistant to the purser on the Diev for the voyage here.”

“You can write Hamorian?”

“Enough for the forms.”

“You’re going to make my life much easier.” Daelyt smiled. “There are some differences in what the magisters want in Nylan and what the Imperial tariff enumerators want here. Set down that pack, bring over another stool, and we’ll go through them.”

Rahl carried a stool from the side of the room and set it close enough to Daelyt’s so that he could see what the older clerk was doing. He sat down, then wiped his forehead with the cloth he’d tucked inside the light tunic. “Is it always this hot?”

“You’re fortunate,” said Daelyt. “You came in on one of the cooler days of summer. But it’s in the high season. Some days, even the locals don’t go out unless they have to. So the wealthier traders send their families to their east-hill villas or their seaside places. Once we get into fall, Swartheld won’t be quite so uncrowded as it is now.”

Daelyt took out a set of declaration forms and laid them on the desk before Rahl. “We’ll start with the differences…”

After going through all the variations on the forms, then making Rahl copy one set, abruptly, the older clerk looked up. “Time to get something to eat and show you where you’ll sleep.”

“I was wondering about food…”

“We get two meals a day from Eneld’s. It’s the cantina across the street, beside the arms shop. We have to eat in the back, but the food’s not bad, and you don’t have to use your own coins.”

“What about my pack?”

“Oh…I’ll show you your alcove.” Daelyt turned and walked through the archway that Shyret had taken earlier, except he went through another door into a small storeroom. “Here’s your space. There’s a water barrel for drawing your wash water out the back door there.”

In the corner on the right side of the storeroom was what amounted to a narrow chamber without a door, but with a cloth curtain, half-drawn back.

Rahl glanced around the narrow area behind the curtain, little more than a narrow pallet with shelves above the foot of the bed and a pegboard affixed to the wall for hanging a few clothes. There was a bowl and pitcher on the shelves for washing, and one thin worn towel folded beside it. There was also a chamber pot against the wall.

“The chamber pot wastes and water go down the sewer out the rear door. It’s the circular cover. Just lift it and dump. Don’t toss wastes into the alley. The patrollers catch you, and it’ll cost you a silver the first time, and the quarries the second.”

That stopped Rahl for a moment. Finally, he said, “Thank you for the warning. Where do you…”

“My consort and I have rooms and a kitchen above the main warehouse.” The older clerk’s eyes dropped to Rahl’s belt and the truncheon. “You can use that?”

“Yes.”

“Good. You won’t have much cause to use it most nights, but you can never tell. Not in Swartheld. We don’t keep many golds here-just enough in case we need supplies or if someone pays us late in the day after the Exchange is closed. That makes the director very unhappy, but sometimes it happens.”

“There’s a strong room?” asked Rahl.

“Of sorts. It’s really an ironbound closet in the back of his study. Now…let’s eat, because we’ll be working late on the Diev ’s declarations.”

Rahl followed Daelyt to the main door and out into the growing twilight. From what he could tell, there were even more people on the street than there had been earlier.

“The bar works better, but we can’t use it and get out.” Daelyt grinned as he turned and locked the main door with an oversized brass key. “The director doesn’t like to be surprised when he’s here alone, but he won’t leave until he’s seen the declarations, and we won’t get them until everything’s stored in the warehouse and checked off by Chenaryl and the enumerator.”

“Chenaryl?”

“He’s the warehouse supervisor.”

“Thank you.” As he followed Daelyt across the street and toward the cantina, Rahl wondered just how many more names and forms he’d have to learn.

Rahl and Daelyt sat on stools on opposite sides of the small battered wooden table in the corner behind the kitchen of Eneld’s cantina. The brownish wood of the tabletop was so battered, stained, and polished with years of grease that Rahl had no idea what kind of wood might have been used. The light brown crockery platter that held his dinner was so chipped along the rim that handling it there risked cutting fingers, and a fine tracery of lines through the glaze proclaimed its age and wear. The meal itself consisted of shreds of unnamed fowl mixed with various root vegetables and a grain half the size of rice and twice as tough, all covered with a pungent melted cheese and a greenish brown sauce that made his mother’s pepper fowl seem cool and mild by comparison. The whole concoction had arrived wrapped in fried but still-soft flat bread and accompanied by a weak amber beer.

After he finished eating, Rahl wiped his forehead surreptitiously, then swallowed the last of the bitter beer, noting that Daelyt had only eaten about half of his dinner, but had drunk all of his beer. The meal had not been that large, either. No wonder the clerk was so thin.

“How did you like the kurstos?” asked Daelyt.

“Hot…but good.”

“Just wait until you try Eneld’s burhka. Your whole head will go up in flames.” The clerk laughed.

Rahl could hardly wait. “How long have you been working for Shyret?”

“Five years come the turn of winter.”

Rahl nodded. “Does it get any colder here in winter?”

“At night, you might need a heavy tunic or a coat. Fall and winter are when it rains. Not that much, but the only time it does.”

Rahl quietly studied Daelyt. The clerk had to be more than ten years older than Rahl himself, and there was the slightest hint of a white chaos-haze around him. But then, there had been around Shyret as well, and a fainter haze of the same type had been present everywhere Rahl had been in Swartheld so far. Did living in Hamor make everyone slightly chaotic?

“You finished?”

Rahl nodded.

“We need to get back. It won’t be long before we get the declarations back from Chenaryl, and we’ll need to redo them in Hamorian.” Daelyt rerolled and folded the half of his meal he had not eaten in the flexible flat bread, holding it carefully in his left hand as he stood. “We’ll walk by the warehouse before we head back. You should see it, and you need to meet people.” He turned and called, “Seorya…we’re leaving. Thank you for the exquisite dinner.”