L. Modesitt - Natural Ordermage

The guard-captain was standing, waiting beside the table desk. She was a woman, with gray-and-white hair cut as short as any man’s. Her shoulders were broad and muscular, and eyes watery gray and rimmed in red. Her face was so weathered that Blacktop couldn’t tell what her age might be, save that it was beyond middling. Beside her was a mage-guard, a thin-faced man who looked to be nearly as old as she was. Neither smiled.

“You may wait outside, overseer.” The guard-captain’s voice was like rumbling gravel, slightly softened by sand. “Close the door.”

“Yes, ser.”

The guard-captain did not speak until the door closed.

“The overseer claims you were writing on the table, Blacktop.”

“Yes, ser, but only in the dust. I didn’t make any real marks on the table.”

“That’s good. We don’t like destruction of any sort here in Luba. This is where all that Hamor builds begins.” She laughed, softly, harshly. “That was not my real question. Can you write?”

“I think so, ser…it’s been so long, and there is so much I don’t remember.”

“What did you do before you came here?”

“I don’t remember, ser.”

She glanced to the mage.

“He does not remember, Captain.”

“Do you remember anything?”

“Just one or two things, ser. I remember a girl giving me a pouch, and I think it held pen nibs, and I remember being rolled into something hot and dark.”

“Nothing else?”

“Just the words…and how to write them, ser.”

The mage-guard nodded.

The guard-captain pointed to the stool at the side of the desk. “Sit down. There is paper. There is a pen. Write something.”

Blacktop sat. Slowly, he took the pen. He had never seen it, yet it felt familiar. He looked down at the rough paper, and he realized he would have to be careful, or the point might snag…but…how did he know that? What could he write? He could feel the guard-captain and the mage-guard looking at him.

Slowly…he began.

The ironworks are in a valley in Luba. The blast furnaces roar night and day, and the coal goes into the ovens and comes out coke, and the coke goes into the furnaces…

“That’s enough.”

Blacktop cleaned the pen and laid it beside the inkwell. Both the guard-captain and the mage-guard had watched him do so.

The guard-captain lifted the paper, studied it, and handed it, without speaking, to the mage-guard, who in turn studied it.

“His hand is as good as an old-time scrivener’s,” offered the mage. “You don’t see penmanship like that anymore.”

Scrivener? Blacktop thought that word sounded familiar. Had he been a scrivener? But how would a scrivener come to be a loader in the ironworks?

“Except in the hills west of Atla, or in the mountains of Merowey.” The guard-captain looked down at Blacktop. “Do you know numbers? How to write them?”

“Yes, ser…I think. I haven’t written any, not even in the table dust.”

“I’m going to give you numbers. I want you to write them down in a column, so that they can be added together.” The mage-guard set the paper back in front of Blacktop.

“Yes, ser.”

“Twenty-three…nine…seventeen…thirty-five…”

Blacktop wrote each number, lining them up from the rightmost column.

“Now…add them together and write down the sum.”

Sum? Oh…that was the total, Blacktop recalled. He wrote 84 under the summation line.

“Might have been a clerk. That’s a merchanting sum line.”

“Your gain, Captain,” suggested the mage-guard.

“Did anyone tell you why you were sent to Luba?” asked the guard-captain.

“I don’t remember, ser.”

“What do you remember?”

“Just being a loader, ser. Except I don’t remember much of when I was first here, either.”

“Would you like to do something else, with better food and a better place to sleep? It wouldn’t be quite so hard, but you would have to write and do sums all day.”

“Yes, ser.” Blacktop didn’t have to think about that long.

The guard-captain nodded. “Go out into the front room and wait.”

“Yes, ser.” Blacktop bowed slightly, then turned and opened the door, stepping out into the outer office.

“Get him a shower and clerk’s garb. He can start at one of the plate-loading docks. Can’t exactly do that much harm there if it doesn’t work.”

Just before he closed the guard-captain’s chamber, Blacktop heard a few words of what the mage-guard said.

“…wonder what merchant he offended…”

Why did they think he had offended a merchant? Because his writing and his ability to do sums suggested that he had been a merchant clerk? What could he have possibly done? Even that thought tightened his guts, and he could feel the seething rage starting to rise before he pressed it back into the darkness within himself.

Within moments, the mage-guard emerged from the guard-captain’s study and looked at the overseer and the two guards. “Thank you. You three can return to your duties. We’ll take care of Blacktop.”

After the three left, the mage-guard looked at Blacktop. “Let’s go.”

Another wagon carried him and the mage-guard down from the mesa, but the road they took was on the west side.

As they rode, the mage-guard began to talk. “Blacktop…your job is going to be very simple, but very important. We need to keep track of how much steel is produced. Each time a wagon is loaded, you need to write down the wagon number, where it is being sent, and how many sheets of each size of iron plate are in each wagon. You will need to write this down in a book called a ledger.”

Ledger? He’d heard that before. It was a book where things were listed by name and number.

“Blacktop?”

“I’m sorry, ser. I was just remembering what a ledger was. I can do that.”

For several moments, the mage-guard did not speak. Then he said quietly, “You may remember more in the eightdays ahead. Do not get angry. Before you say anything, think about everything that you do. Duty and performance can get you better positions in the ironworks. Sometimes, they can get you out of the ironworks. Violence and anger will only turn you into a slogger-if you aren’t killed first.”

“Yes, ser.” Blacktop already understood about anger and violence.

At the same time, he wondered what else he would remember.

By midday, Blacktop had showered in cool water, changed into a tannish short-sleeved shirt and matching trousers, been assigned to a real bunk in a dormitory at one end of the mesa, and dispatched by a wagon to loading dock number three. The mage-guard accompanied him, still providing information.

“The loading dock is where the sheets of iron plate are lifted onto the short-haul wagons that take them to the river piers. From there they’re barged up-or downriver. The head supervisor is Moryn. You call him and any other supervisor ‘ser’ or ‘supervisor,’ not that you wouldn’t anyway.”

“Yes, ser.”

“All you have to do is pay attention and write down how much iron plate of what sizes leaves the loading dock.”

That seemed simple enough to Blacktop, and he nodded as the wagon neared its immediate destination.

“You get two coppers an eightday for wages. It’s not much, but you can buy things at the small chandlery next to the dining hall…”

Wages?

“You’ll work from breakfast to dinner, but after today, you’ll get an extra half loaf of bread at breakfast to take with you for a midday meal. A wagon picks up all the checkers and brings you back to the dormitory and dinner…”

Blacktop kept listening, trying to fix what the mage-guard said in his memory.