L. Modesitt - Natural Ordermage

“I was over at Alamat’s. He wanted me to write a letter to his son in Valmurl.”

“Valmurl? That’s in Austra. How…” Rahl didn’t ask why Kian had gone to the weaver rather than having Alamat come to the scrivener. These days, scriveners couldn’t be too choosy.

“By ship. It will cost two silvers, and Lieran will have to pick it up at the port-master’s at the harbor there.”

How did a weaver’s son end up in Valmurl? Rahl wondered. “Two silvers for just a letter?”

“How else can he keep in touch?” asked Kian. “Lieran insulted Magister Rustyn. Rustyn told him to behave. Lieran told Rustyn that he was a useless flea on the back of the mangy dog that was the Council. They put him on the next ship out. He was lucky it was bound to Austra, and not Candar or Hamor.”

“Oh.” Lieran didn’t sound terribly dangerous. Stupid, but hardly dangerous to the Council. “When did this happen?”

“Nine years ago. Alamat finally got the first letter from Lieran something like three years ago. It took a while for the boy to get settled, but he’s a weaver in Valmurl now.” Kian shook his head. “When Lieran talked to Rustyn, he’d had too much hard cider and not enough sense to go home and sleep it off. Quelerya was on her way from Feyn. They were to be consorted, but Lieran was gone before she arrived.”

“And she just stayed?”

“Why not? Alamat’s not as young as he used to be, and Lieran was their only boy. Quelerya’s a good weaver. Your mother says she never wanted children anyway. If she were younger, she’d be a good catch for you.”

Ax-faced Quelerya? Whose tongue was as sharp as her nose and eyes? Rahl repressed a shudder.

“I’d like you to take the letter down to the portmaster right now. Alamat’s already paid for it, and Hyelsen is expecting it from either you or me. There’s a Suthyan trader coming in, according to the ensign she’s flying, and they usually run straight from here to Brysta, then Valmurl.”

Rahl cleaned his pen and set it aside, then rose from his stool. He was more than happy to run the letter down to the port. Much as he didn’t mind copying, he did get stiff sitting on the stool all the time, and he now had a way to stop by the chandlery and see Fahla without his parents being the wiser.

“No detours through the orchard on the way back, either,” added Kian.

“No, ser. I won’t be headed to the orchard.” He still wished they wouldn’t keep harping on the orchard and Jienela. At least they didn’t know about Fahla, or they’d be telling him not to stop at the chandlery as well.

Kian handed Rahl the parchment envelope with the blue wax of a scrivener that held the imprint of Alamat’s simple seal. The outside bore the inscription: Lieran, Weaver, Portmaster, Valmurl, Austra.

“Don’t be long. You’ve got copying to do.”

“Yes, ser.” Rahl inclined his head, then slipped out through the door. He closed it quietly. The air was warm and still, the sky hazy, and the afternoon would be warmer than usual for midspring, almost like summer, Rahl suspected.

Envelope in hand, he turned northward and headed down the gray-stone-paved street that led from the orchard and crafthouses on the slopes south of the town down toward the center of Land’s End. His sandals scuffed the stone, and the fine sand filtered around his toes. He would have liked to have boots, but decent boots were too expensive for a scrivener.

Within half a kay, the dwellings and shops were closer together, and even the gardens beside the dwellings were narrower. Before long, the street intersected the avenue that led to the harbor. After dodging behind a wagon heaped with coal, Rahl crossed to the east side and headed north. If he had turned the other way, he soon would have reached that point where the avenue became the High Road that stretched the length of Recluce, all the way from Land’s End to Nylan in the south.

He walked through the crafters’ quarter, passing first a tinsmith’s, and then a cabinetmaker’s, and beyond that the shuttered windows and closed doors of a shop that Rahl thought had been an apothecary, but it had been closed for years.

Behind the crafters’ shops, on the low rises to the east, overlooking the avenue, were a handful of grander two-storied dwellings, surrounded by walls with iron gates, behind which were vast gardens and fountains. They belonged to shipowners and factors. At least, that was what Khorlya had told her son.

As Rahl walked northward on the wide avenue that was the northern end of the High Road, the closer he got to the harbor piers, the more wagons and carts appeared. Still, there were probably less than a score in the two or three hundred cubits before the avenue reached the base of the piers. Voices rose over the creak of wagons and the clopping of hoofs on the stone pavement.

“…careful with that team!”

“…got a consignment of fruitwood logs from Naclos…tell you, those are rare…Druids don’t cut many…”

“…need to be here when they port. Suthyans travel fast and keep cargoes dry, but they’d just as soon sell to whoever offers a single silver more than you…contracts not worth the paper they’re written on…”

“…frigging idiots…don’t leave shit hanging out the tailgate…”

Rahl stayed on the eastern sidewalk and kept moving. At the foot of the pier was a pair of Council Guards from the keep assigned to port duty. He scanned the faces quickly, but neither was a familiar face from the handful of Council Guards he’d met through Kacet before his brother had been transferred to the keep at Reflin.

Just beyond the guards was the black-stone building that held the portmaster and the customs collectors. Rahl slipped through the port-master’s door, then stopped short of the guard stationed inside. The guard took in the truncheon at Rahl’s belt and dismissed it.

That irritated Rahl, but he merely straightened, and announced firmly, “A letter for dispatch.”

Portmaster Hyelsen sat on a high-backed stool. The window to the right of where he sat allowed him to look down the main black-stone pier. Three vessels were tied up there. One was a three-masted square rigger, and one was a brig. The other was a smaller schooner. Before Rahl could determine more, the portmaster turned. His eyes fixed on the scrivener.

“Young Rahl…I expect that will be the letter the weaver paid to have dispatched to Valmurl.”

“Yes, ser.” Rahl stepped up past the guard and extended the letter.

“Just in time. The Suthyan trader-the square rigger-she’ll be leaving late this afternoon, on the evening winds, for Brysta. Valmurl after that.” Hyelsen produced a pen from somewhere and wrote a few words on a small square of paper, then handed it to Rahl. “Here’s the receipt for you.”

“Thank you, ser.” Rahl slipped the square into his belt wallet, inclined his head, then turned and hurried out. Something about the portmaster troubled him, but he couldn’t have said what, not exactly, except that when Hyelsen looked at Rahl, he seemed to be sensing more than Rahl’s words or appearance.

As he cleared the pier, Rahl took a deep breath. He was still careful to watch for wagons and carts, and for what the horses might have dropped on the pavement.

Across the paved serviceway that fronted the main pier and the two flanking it and back, past the memorial park to the east, Rahl caught sight of the time-faded black stones of the Founders’ Inn.

Had Creslin really so enchanted all the Westwind Guards and the Montgren troopers with his songs that they worked together from that moment on? Rahl snorted. There had to be a limit to what song-even something like ordersong-could do.

He looked farther south and up the wide stone road that ran through the center of Land’s End to where it climbed the rise south of the town to the Black Holding, where the Council still met. Rahl shook his head. No matter what the magisters said and Tales of the Founders recounted, Creslin and Megaera couldn’t have been that great. No one could have been.