L. Modesitt - Magi'i of Cyador

The firewagon lurches ever so slightly, as if the wheels had struck something, and then crushed it, before the faintly rumbling sounds of normal travel resume. For a moment, the enumerator’s snores cease. But only for a moment, Lorn reflects.

The firewagons on the Great Northern Highway are smaller than those on the Great Eastern Highway, for all that the travel distance from Cyad to Chulbyn is less than a third the distance to Syadtar. Has it always been that way? Leaning back in the seat that become harder and harder, Lorn fingers a chin getting all too stubbly.

Will Cyad seem any different? Lorn smiles. Different it will seem, but in what ways he does not know. He hopes he will be able to recognize those differences and that he can spend some time with Ryalth.

A frown replaces the smile. Has Myryan been able to deal with being Ciesrt’s consort? He takes a long and slow breath. Should he have taken matters in hand there? Will he ever know? Does he want to know?

Outside the forward compartment of the firewagon, aschaos powers the vehicle along the gleaming white pavement of the Great Northern Highway, the twilight deepens into night. Inside, the enumerator snores; the merchanter sleeps, and Lorn ponders the days ahead.

THE FIREWAGON PASSES between the two sets of angled whitened granite pillars that symbolically mark the northern boundary of Cyad, the City of Eternal Light and Prosperous Chaos, and at that moment those pillars are half in the late afternoon sun, half in shadow.

Lorn sits in the middle of the rear-facing seat in the first compartment. To his left is the silent Lancer majer who had boarded the firewagon in Chulbyn and who has spoken to no one. To his right is a black-haired and sharp-nosed merchanter, almost as silent as the majer. Across from Lorn sits a painfully thin young woman in the pale green of an apprentice healer, with her father by the door to her right. Her father-even more spare than his daughter-wears the unadorned white of a magus, without the lightning bolt pin of an upper level adept. The magus alternates between studying the younger men in the compartment, although his observations of Lorn are less intense, as if he has already decided Lorn is scarcely worthy of attention.

Lorn leans back, waiting until the firewagon completes its traverse of the city and arrives at the main firewagon station to the west of the Palace of Light. His thoughts are upon Ryalth and Myryan … and upon Jerial and his parents. None have seen him as a Mirror Lancer officer.

He does not look up as the chaos vehicle takes the upper Way of Far Commerce and passes the three-story sunstone residences of the merchanter clan principals, small palaces on the fourth highest hill within Cyad. Nor do his eyes lift as the firewagon, moving smoothly over the polished granite blocks that floor all thoroughfares in Cyad, glides by the exchange halls that dwarf all but the Palace of Light and the structures that comprise the Quarter of the Magi.

“You’re from Cyad, then, Captain?” asks the majer, addressingLorn for the first time on the entire journey of more than two hundred kays from Chulbyn.

“Yes, ser.”

The majer nods. “I thought so. You’ve seen it before, many times.”

In the seat facing Lorn, the magus lifts his eyebrows, and he tilts his head, as if viewing Lorn for the first time.

“Yes, ser.” Lorn nods politely to the majer, but the other officer relapses into silence.

A time later, when the firewagon slows to a stop, Lorn eases himself erect. After the driver opens the door to the front compartment, Lorn nods to the magus. “Good day, ser.”

“And to you, Captain.” The thin man turns his head and murmurs, “Carefully, Kilenya.” He slides out the open door, then turns to offer his hand to his daughter. The young healer apprentice looks neither at Lorn nor at her father as she takes a small green bag from under the seat and slips from the compartment.

The lancer majer eases his sabre from beside him, takes a single kit bag, and leaves as silently as he had entered so long before, offering a brusque nod to Lorn. In turn, the sharp-faced merchanter inclines his head to Lorn.

“Go ahead,” Lorn says with a smile. “I’ve a great deal under the seat.”

“For your courtesy.” The merchanter nods once more, and slips from the firewagon.

Lorn reclaims his sabre and clips it in place before sliding out the two bags that hold his kit. Once on the platform under the granite pillars of the portico, he takes a slow breath of sea-perfumed air, air far damper than he has felt in three long years. He steps closer to the nearest pillar and sets down his gear, waiting for the others to leave the pillared portico, watching as the provincial mage and his daughter take the first waiting carriage, and the majer the second. The merchanter talks with a white-haired enumerator, both standing by a wagon waiting on the far side of the platform, presumably for some goods that will be unloaded from the center compartment of the firewagon.

Lorn picks up his gear and crosses the narrow way to the carriage-hire lane, where he addresses the first driver of the pair of carriages remaining. “The Road of Perpetual Light, at the crossing of the Tenth Way.”

“Yes, ser.”

Lorn opens the carriage door and sets the two duffels that contain his kit on the floor, then adds, “Straight down to the Third Harbor Way, and then out.” He grins. “It’s faster that way.”

“Yes, ser. As you wish, ser.” The driver bobs his head nervously with each word he utters.

Lorn slides into the uncovered carriage and closes the half-door, settling back into the upholstered seat and taking another long breath of the moist air of Cyad. For a moment, he glances up at the thin white clouds that seem to hang motionless.

As the two horses pull the carriage southward, Lorn studies the harbor, the white granite piers that hold near-on a dozen vessels, more than two thirds long-haulers with stern ensigns of either Hamor or Nordla. He sees but a single white-hulled fireship and two ships with the blue of Cyadoran houses, and he wonders if one might be a ship in which Ryalor House holds an interest. He laughs softly, telling himself he has no claim on Ryalor House or its assets. None whatsoever.

Except … he shakes his head.

The chill of a chaos-glass screeing him comes over him, as it has intermittently since he went to Isahl, although this imaging is warmer. His father? The feel is similar. He shakes his head. He must work that out-and somehow reconcile his father to Ryalth.

But can he even work matters out with Ryalth? Without her suffering for his transgression of having been a student magus? Will she even consider it? And what of Myryan? Is there anything he can do to remedy her consorting with Ciesrt? Or did he have but one chance where he has already failed?

His eyes do not truly see the City of Light as the carriageconveys him toward the harbor and then eastward beneath and past the Palace of Light, for he wrestles with all the questions seething behind the composed expression upon his visage.

“Ser? This corner?” asks the coachman for hire. “Is this where you wished to be?”

Lorn straightens, glances toward the northwest corner, toward the four-story dwelling where he was raised. The house is larger than he recalls, a dwelling that would be a merchanter palace in Syadtar. “Yes.”

“Three coppers, ser. It was half the city.”

Lorn offers four, and opens the carriage half-door, easily lifting the two duffels, and instinctively managing to keep the sabre from striking anything as he alights. By the time he has carried his kit to the front and formal gate of the house, Jerial is standing on the lower steps, well before the green ceramic privacy screen that protects the main entrance overlooking the Road of Perpetual Light.