L. Modesitt - Colors of Chaos

This time, Leyladin flushed. “Father, I can’t believe you.”

“Too old to deceive myself, or let you do it.” The trader grinned.

Cerryl stepped toward the mounting block, and she stepped down into his arms, and they did embrace, ignoring the late-afternoon heat.

How long Cerryl wasn’t sure, except he heard Layel clearing his throat.

“Now that you two have greeted each other, I’m for eating. Meridis has doubtless scraped something together.”

“Give me a moment to wash off the worst of the road dust,” Leyladin offered as she and Cerryl separated. “I’m hungry, too. I won’t be long.”

“Not with your mage waiting, I’d wager.”

“Father…” Still blushing, she took the roses as Cerryl handed them to her again. She and Cerryl held hands and walked toward the front door.

Both Meridis and Soaris stood in the entry hall beyond the foyer.

“Meridis…he brought roses.” Leyladin smiled. “Could you…while I wash up?” She extended the roses to the older woman.

“I’ll put them in the good crystal vase, where you always like them,” said Meridis. “Now, don’t be dallying. The supper’s ready.”

“I won’t.” The healer reached out and squeezed Cerryl’s hand. “Cerryl, Father, I’ll meet you in the dining hall. I won’t be long.”

“I believe I have heard words like that before.” Layel’s words were gentle, teasing.

“You have, but I won’t be.” With the last word, she slipped down the hall and out of sight.

Cerryl followed Layel through the sitting room.

“You felt her, didn’t you?” asked the trader. “She said you two could do that. So close, and yet you dare not have children.”

Cerryl winced. “It might kill her.”

“She told me such, and she will have none but you.”

“I’ll have none but her.”

They had barely reached the table when Leyladin appeared, still wearing her green trousers and silk shirt, with the black vest that seemed even darker than black itself in the fading light of day and the glow cast by the oil lamps in their wall sconces.

“I said I would not be long.”

“And so you did.” Layel seated himself at the head, and Cerryl and Leyladin sat on each side, across from each other.

As Layel poured the cool white wine into the three goblets, Cerryl looked across the table into Leyladin’s dark green eyes. “How was your trip back?”

“The highway was almost empty.”

“More and more like that these days.” Layel nodded morosely.

“Trade is bad?”

“So little I’d not be calling it trade. Enough of that.” He raised his goblet. “To both of you being home.”

“To being home,” echoed Leyladin.

Cerryl raised his goblet with a smile, without words, and they drank.

Meridis set three platters on the table. “The cold spiced fowl and the chilled pearapples and the riced beans. Nothing to be making you hot on a warm evening.”

“What will you be doing now, Cerryl?” Layel eased the fowl platter toward his daughter.

“The High Wizard gave me some duties to carry out for Overmage Kinowin, probably until he can find somewhere distant to send me.” Cerryl went on to explain in very general terms his assignments. “…and that means reporting every day on what the Blacks are doing with that ship.”

“It truly moves against the wind?” Layel frowned.

“It does, and sometimes faster than a normal ship.”

“A ship such as that, well, many be the traders who’d find a use for such.”

“I cannot see how Recluce would allow a chaos engine, even one bound in black iron,” ventured Leyladin before taking a bite of the fowl.

“In time, in time, a better ship will turn any trader’s mind,” mumbled Layel, “and your White brethren forget that the Black ones are traders first and order mages second.”

Traders first and mages second . “And you think the Guild puts magery first and trade second?”

“Power first, magery second, and trade a poor third,” suggested Layel. “Yet trade builds power. That the Black ones have discovered. All power is built on coins, and coins come from goods, and goods can but be sold through trade.”

Cerryl ate a mouthful of the sweetened and chilled pearapples, thinking about Layel’s words, about all the golds he had seen in Gallos and even in Spidlaria.

“Father would have been a great lord elsewhere.” Leyladin laughed. “Wertel will make him one yet, from all he does in Lydiar, over Father’s protestations.”

“Fairhaven is my home,” grumbled the trader. “Yet only the old overmage understands how what I do benefits her.”

“Kinowin?”

“Aye, but he’ll be gone in a handful of years, and then that spawn of Muneat’s dead brother will turn the city over to Muneat and Jiolt.”

“Anya?”

“That’s the one. She plays Jiolt like…” Layel shook his head in disgust. “Muneat sees through her, but he’s near on a score of years older than I am, and his boy Devo-well, he couldn’t count golds with his fingers.”

“Anya tried to play Jeslek.” Cerryl glanced across the table.

“And he’s dead,” Leyladin pointed out.

“Sterol uses her. I don’t think he’s taken in.”

“She’ll find a way to turn the Guild against him,” predicted Leyladin. “That’s why Jeslek was trying to make that smith in Diev your problem.”

“So is Sterol.” Cerryl nodded slowly. “I have to follow the smith with the glass and report every day.”

“She’s clever,” mused Leyladin. “If you don’t keep track, then you’ll be in trouble. If you do, and everyone knows it, then Sterol will have to do something.”

“I worry about that,” Cerryl admitted.

“We can’t do anything tonight. Not about Anya. How are Aliaria and Nierlia? I need to see them.” The green eyes danced. “They should meet Cerryl.”

“You’re going to be an aunt again. Nierlia says this one will be a girl and she’ll name her after you.”

The hint of darkness crossed the healer’s face, followed by a smile. “I’ll spoil her.”

“Not any more than Nierlia will,” suggested Layel. “Oh…and Aliaria’s oldest-I can never remember her name-Aliaria has her taking guitar lessons from some music master who claims he’s from Delapra…”

“…she doesn’t have any rhythm…”

“…Aliaria thinks it will improve her chances for a good consort…”

“…barely over a half-score years…”

Before Cerryl knew it, the small talk had drifted into silence. Layel stretched and yawned almost ostentatiously. “I think I’ll be leaving. I need to write a scroll to Wertel before the evening’s over so that it can go on the morning post coach.” He stood. “You might find the front room more comfortable, but you two are young, and you’ll find whatever suits you.”

Meridis appeared, as though she had been waiting. “Be best if I could clean all this before I have to burn every lamp in the place.”

Leyladin laughed. “We’re being directed.”

“No one directs you, Daughter!” called Layel from the door to his study.

The two mages-White and Black-stood and walked into the sitting room, where they paused. Meridis had arranged the roses in a crystal vase on the low table beneath the portrait of Leyladin’s mother.

“You don’t mind that they’re there?” the healer asked.

“No…why?”

“Mother loved roses. I haven’t been so good as I should.”

“Wherever you would like them.”

Leyladin touched his hand, and they crossed the entry hall into the darker front room, where not a single lamp was lit against the growing late-summer dusk. They sat on the long settee that faced the open windows, and the cooler evening breeze wafted around them.