L. Modesitt - Colors of Chaos

“A set of ten, it is ten platters.”

Cerryl turned to Karfl. “What did you think he said to you?”

“A set of ten, and that means platters and mugs. Some places, it be even ten small plates as well, but I weren’t expecting that.”

Cerryl pursed his lips. Demons! People arguing over the meaning of what a set was. He directed his next words to Queas: “If a merchant, like Likket or Nivor, or Tellis the scrivener, asked you for a full set of ten pieces of china…what would he expect to get?” Cerryl’s eyes focused on the potter, as did his senses.

Queas shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “Ah…but…ser mage…Karfl is not…ah…he is a mason.”

“You have a different meaning for masons?”

Queas bowed his head. “I will make ten mugs. It will take an eight-day, though. I cannot fire and glaze properly, not with the work I have accepted coins for…not sooner.”

Cerryl looked toward Karfl.

“An eight-day don’t matter, ser mage. Just so as I can get a proper consort gift for Viaya.” The mason squared his shoulders.

Cerryl addressed the two. “I trust this will not come before the Patrol again.”

“No, ser mage,” murmured Queas.

“Not ’less he don’t deliver the mugs,” stated Karfl.

Cerryl nodded to Sheffl. The lead patroller gestured to the door, and Karfl marched out, followed by a subdued Queas.

“…mages got some uses.”

Cerryl smiled faintly as he heard Karfl’s muttered comment. He wasn’t sure he wanted to hear what Queas might be saying or thinking.

Back in the duty room, Cerryl sank into the high-backed chair. Sometimes, even when people heard the same words, they still didn’t agree. Sometimes people, like Queas, were too quick to interpret words in the way that they wished. He took a deep breath. At least, he hadn’t had to put them on road duty or refuse duty or flame them.

At the scritching sound, he looked up.

Wielt paused in the doorway. “Ser?”

“Yes, Wielt…come on in.” Cerryl gestured to the chair. “Sit down. Your feet have to be sore.”

The blonde messenger glanced around the duty room, then leaned forward and murmured, “Ser…you have to be careful.”

Cerryl frowned. “Careful? I always try to be careful.” His words were low, probably because the messenger’s had been also.

Wielt whispered, “It’s not in the southwest, ser.” He straightened and said loudly, “Will that be all, ser mage?”

Cerryl swallowed, then answered. “Ah…” He raised his voice: “That’s all for now, Wielt.”

“Thank you, ser.” Wielt left quickly.

“Be careful,” Cerryl murmured. And not in the southwest section …Why? His inquiries about silksheen? Why would that upset people? Yet Isork had suggested care. Where had Wielt heard what he’d heard? Cerryl smiled. Messengers often overheard things, he imagined.

He frowned.

As with so many other things in Fairhaven, much more was hidden than revealed. He needed to talk to Leyladin, if he could, since she was the only one beside Myral and Kinowin he trusted. But Myral was failing, and Kinowin was Isork’s superior. That left Leyladin, yet…he worried about bringing her too much into the intrigues.

CERRYL STEPPED OUT of the foyer and down the stone steps onto the paved sidewalk beside the Avenue, turning north into the cold rain that seemed to get heavier with each step. Not wanting to discuss all the warnings he’d received in the Halls of the Mages, where all too many might overhear, he’d asked Leyladin the evening before if he could stop by her house after his duty. With a smile, she had agreed.

“You just didn’t realize it would be raining,” he muttered to himself. Ahead, the colored carts in the Market Square were shrouded in rain and mist rising from the pavement warmed by the vanished sunlight. His eyes flicked through the fall rain, and he forced himself to concentrate despite the headache the storm had brought. He turned westward on the street south of the square. Someone was watching him-not quite as in a screeing glass, but definitely watching. Cerryl could half-feel, half-sense the observation, and he studied the line of walls fronting the house to his right.

A blurred figure, half-concealed by a tree limb, stood at the corner of the wall less than thirty cubits away. A figure holding something…a bow?

Abruptly, and as quickly as he could, Cerryl raised a wall of chaos all the way around him-or tried to-and lurched forward and toward the nearer section of the wall, where he hoped the archer could not get a clear shot. He half-tripped, half-dropped to his knees.

Pain flared through his left shoulder.

On his knees, still a half-dozen cubits from the wall, he overlooked the burning of the heavy shaft in his arm. His eyes narrowed toward the figure in blue nocking yet another shaft.

Anger flared through Cerryl, and chaos flowed after the anger.

Whhhstt! The bowman flared into a pillar of fire, white ashes dropping across the wall with the rain.

Cerryl forced himself to concentrate, somehow focusing chaos wrapped in order around the iron, using that raw force to expel/destroy the arrow. White stars flashed across his eyes, and he closed them, but for a moment.

Opening his eyes, ignoring the stabbing in his arm, he staggered upright, then looked down at the redness welling from the wound across the white of his shirt and tunic. He clasped his right hand over the wound, hoping it would help staunch the blood.

He put one foot in front of the other, then repeated the action until he found himself tottering up the stone walk to Leyladin’s door.

He had barely let the knocker fall when she appeared.

“I felt it! What happened?” Her eyes and senses encompassed him. “Darkness! Take my arm.”

She helped him inside through the foyer and the front hall, leaving drippings of mud and blood, and laid him out on the settee in the front room to the left of the foyer-the pale blue silk-hung room he’d never entered.

“I’ll get blood on-” he protested.

“Hush.” She concentrated, and he could feel the order and the warmth from her infusing his upper arm and shoulder, even as she gently cut away the white fabric from around the wound. “It’s not as bad as it could have been.”

“I blocked some of it-just not quick enough.”

“I need to clean this and then stitch it up. The muscle is ripped up, but it’s not so deep as I’d thought. You must have done something to hold it off.”

“Told…you…”

“Hush…” She pressed a cloth against the wound. “Hold this. I’ll be right back.”

Cerryl held the cloth, listening to Leyladin as she entered the kitchen.

“…a bottle of the brandy, Meridis! I don’t care what Father says…It works.”

Even before the words died out, the healer was back with a small case, a bottle, and a clean white cloth. “First, we need to clean off the blood and everything else.”

The cork came from the bottle, and Cerryl wanted to scream as the liquid sloshed across the wound.

“Sorry…dear one…but it helps. No one’s quite sure why, but with both brandy and order most wounds heal cleanly.”

Cerryl didn’t like the word “most.”

“Don’t squirm. There’s still cloth in the wound, and I need to get it out…chaos behind it…not much, but it will grow if I don’t…”

Cerryl kept his teeth clamped together, hoping he wasn’t biting his tongue, feeling the sweat bead on his forehead and the salt run into the corners of his eyes.

“There-that’s the worst of it. Now…more brandy and some order…”

Cerryl winced again, in spite of himself. “That hurt more than the arrow.”