L. Modesitt - Colors of Chaos

Duarrl stopped at the edge of a small square with a fountain. The water spurted out of a time-worn marble vase taller than a man. “They say this be the old square, the center of Fairhaven before the first Whites fled from the Westhorns.” An apologetic smile crossed the patroller’s thin face. “Not that I’d be knowing that, you understand, ser, but that be what the folk say.”

“It could be true,” Cerryl said. “I wouldn’t know. That’s the sort of thing no one would have a reason to lie about.” He glanced around the near-empty square. An old man sat on the sunny side of the fountain basin, covered with a patched gray blanket, his eyes closed. Beside him rested a yellow dog with pointed ears, whose nose twitched as it surveyed the pavement.

A woman struggled down the narrow street to the east of the fountain, bent under a load of willow rods, while a cart pulled by a small donkey creaked past her and toward the square. On the far side, two boys, not even to Cerryl’s chest, tossed a ball back and forth.

“Good folk here,” observed Duarrl. “Mostly from the countryside. Stay in the houses along the square for a time. Then they go back to the country or make enough coins to move north.”

A black stone structure, almost cubical, stood at the far side of the square. Because it had been initially obscured by the fountain, Cerryl hadn’t really seen it. The stones were dark gray, and the side of the wall that Cerryl saw was polished smooth-except in a handful of places where something had struck the stone and left a grayish gouge and radiating cracks.

“What’s that?”

“Oh…that be a lodging house for laborers come from the country. Messil-he’s Praytt’s cousin or some such-runs it.”

“That black stone?”

“Aye…said it was a Black Temple years and years back, long before Fairhaven looked as it did. Folks say at first no one could move the stones. A shame to waste it, Messil claims, saving only outsiders’d sleep there. Still, he runs a quiet lodging house.”

A Black Temple in Fairhaven-they were scarce enough anywhere, and to find what had been one in the White City? Cerryl let his senses range over the building, finding only faint traces of the order that had once reinforced all the stones, but no more order than reinforced the stones and masonry of the Great White Highway.

“It probably was,” Cerryl reflected.

“You know any of this part of the city, ser?” Duarrl asked deferentially.

“Not much south of Arkos’s tannery-I’ve been in the potter’s place. Lwelter’s, I think.”

“Old Lwelter died last season,” Duarrl said.

“I met his son, but I don’t remember his name.”

“Flait be the one who has the shop now.”

Cerryl nodded. “He wasn’t exactly pleased when I appeared at his door.”

“Begging your pardon, ser, but more than a few would rather not see the pure White at their door, much as they prefer the city itself.”

“I was one of them,” Cerryl confessed with a laugh. “I preferred not to encounter mages.”

“You did not expect to be a mage?”

“No. I thought it impossible for a poor boy.”

Duarrl nodded, then pointed ahead to a signboard hung out over the street, bearing the black outline of an oversized pot above a fire. “There be The Black Pot. Fansner’s the keep. I’d not eat there. Good folk, but the fare…” He shook his head.

“Where would be a good place to eat?”

“The Broken Blade. Turgot has a good stew,” mused Duarrl. “Then the bakery down the way there, Jeloran’s. No signboard, but you can smell it. Nothing like The Ram or Furenk’s. Sometimes, The Blue Heron be not too bad.”

Cerryl watched as Reyll slipped out of yet another alleyway and shook his head.

“Alleys are clean today. Not always like that. Betimes, you be ashing rubbish and things may not be rubbish.”

The mage nodded. Tossing rubbish in the streets or alleys was considered breaking the peace, because it could catch fire or harbor flux.

Duarrl pointed down the narrow street to the south. “Where the tin smugglers live. Second and third houses.”

Cerryl’s eyes followed the lead patroller’s gesture, picking out the pale blue and pink plaster-fronted brick houses. “You let them live there?”

“Ser, we all know they smuggle tin in, but they don’t use wagons, and the laws don’t say anything about goods folk carry on themselves. ’Sides, how would the coppersmiths make their bronze-the little shops? They’d not be able to buy tin from the factors. A factor like Muneat, he won’t sell tin in less than five stone lots. Chorast likewise.”

“What else gets smuggled in like that?”

“Most anything, I’d guess, but so long as it’s in small lots, and they don’t use the sewers or break the peace…” Duarrl shrugged.

Cerryl kept listening, all too aware of how right Kinowin had been, of how little he truly knew about Fairhaven.

AFTER NEARLY AN eight-day of walking the southeast quarter of Fairhaven, Cerryl was gaining an appreciation of just how much he hadn’t known about the city-as well as very sore feet. So he was pleased to be able to ride the big chestnut out beyond the southernmost part of Fairhaven to where the sewers ended-at the southeastern side of Fairhaven, beyond and to the east of the southern gates.

A single white granite building stood on the edge of the plateau that marked the end of Fairhaven and overlooked the ponds and fountains. Cerryl tied his mount to one of the stone hitching blocks on the shaded east side of the stone building that was mostly warehouse.

Duarrl and Cerryl walked another fifty cubits south, to where they could survey what lay below. The four patrollers had dismounted but remained in the shade beside their tethered mounts.

“The other problem we get is the sewer outfalls. Have to check those regular-like. Isork thought you ought to be along. Otherwise he’d have to come, seeing as there’s always the possibility of smugglers or some such.”

“I found that out. I ran into smugglers-or brigands-when I was on sewer duty.” Cerryl nodded. “Isork mentioned that, I think.”

Duarrl laughed. “For a little mage, you been a lot of duty places-mines, sawmills, sewers battles.”

“I did spend a little time with a scrivener,” Cerryl admitted. “That’s where the Guild found me.”

“Doesn’t that beat all…” Duarrl shook his head.

For a moment Cerryl looked down across the tiered ponds and the fountains that sprayed foul water into the air to be cleansed by the chaos of the sun. A hint of ancient chaos seeped from beneath the granite that walled the slope-a hint that suggested the hillside was far from completely natural.

The sewage flowed directly from the two main tunnels into four settling ponds. The pond on the west end was empty of water, and a dozen prisoners shoveled the settled mix of offal, sludge, and other solids into handcarts, which were pulled by ropes to the side where the contents were loaded into a larger wagon. The solids were carted off to a dry gorge to the northeast of the city on the eastern side of the hills where runoff would only seep into the higher grasslands southwest of Lydiar.

Cerryl studied the group but didn’t see any sign of Lyasa. Perhaps she was not on duty yet or somewhere else in the vast sewer collection system. His eyes drifted downhill.

From the settling ponds the water flowed into channels that spread the sewer water into thin sheets that flowed down the flattened sloping granite inclines, exposed to the chaos of the sun, to be collected into another set of ponds that fed the lower fountains. Those fountains, in turn, flung the water into the air in fine sprays where the pure chaos of the sun would destroy much of the remaining unnatural chaos in the water.