L. Modesitt - The White Order

“It’s not always bad to be a coward,” observed Cerryl, stifling the urge to swallow and managing somehow to maintain an even tone. “Especially if you recognize those times and what you are.”

“You don’t have to be a coward.” She stepped toward him.

Cerryl could smell the roses, and something else, something that beckoned. He just stood there, barely able to keep from lurching toward her, just as he had wanted to lurch back into Muneat’s small palace, or summon the image of the woman in green again and again.

“There’s no one else here.”

“I’m here,” he finally said, all too hoarsely.

Surprisingly, Benthann smiled. “You’re smarter than they were.” She stepped back.

Cerryl shook his head. “I’m not that smart. I just watch and learn from others.” He wondered if he’d been all that wise to back away. He swallowed again.

“Hard, isn’t it?” Benthann smiled more gently. “I mean, when a woman says she wants you-a pretty woman.”

“You are pretty.” That was true and safe.

“I am. I know that, for what it’s worth. Pretty and good at selling my body. You wonder why my mother puts up with me?” Benthann laughed. “I saved us both. I climbed into Tellis’s bed, and I don’t regret it. He was grieving, and he needed something.”

“His consort?” ventured Cerryl.

“And his son. Barely older than you, and he fled to the black isle.” Benthann smiled crookedly. “I knew Vieral; that’s how I found Tellis. It was better that than working off your debts and dying on the white road because your father gambled and drank his tavern away.”

Cerryl wanted to shake his head. . or something, but he listened, and his eyes strayed back to the thin shirt, and the curved figure beneath.

“Sex is the only power a woman has in Fairhaven. Remember that. Even if she has a strong room full of coins, or, light forbid, she’s a mage, sex is the only real power a woman has.” She smiled brightly. “But I like you, Cerryl. You look at me like I’m real.”

“You are real.” His voice was hoarse.

His words brought a headshake. “I’m not. Everything is a pantomime. Oh, I’m mostly honest with myself, but no matter what I try or see, it’s all the same. Sex is all a woman really has.”

Cerryl struggled for words before he spoke. “What about those women devils, the ones who used twin blades?”

“Westwind? They’re all dead, aren’t they?” Benthann stretched again.

Cerryl could see her nipples through the thin white fabric of her shirt, and he forced himself to think about the differences in the shape of the letter tok in Temple and old tongue.

“A woman who has to defend herself with a blade doesn’t know her real power.” Her fingers played with the shirt again, and Cerryl caught a glimpse of a darker nipple against creamy skin. “Nor one who has to use coins to buy her men.”

He swallowed silently.

“Let me show you.” She leaned toward him, and her lips brushed his cheek. “I could. . and I like you. You haven’t grinned that awful smile or panted all over place.”

He could feel his trousers tightening. “I believe you. You don’t have to show me anything.”

Benthann fingered the fourth button on the thin shirt, and leaned toward him.

This time Cerryl did swallow.

“I’m much prettier than that weaver girl.”

“Yes,” Cerryl said hoarsely. “Yes, you are.”

He couldn’t move as she took one last step and brushed his lips with hers, his chest with hers. She stepped back quickly. “Like all of them, you’re a liar. But you’re a sweet liar, and you try to do what’s right.” She offered a too-bright smile. “I won’t make both of us liars.”

Cerryl swallowed, still swimming in the fog of roses and unknown flowers that ebbed and flowed around him.

Benthann half-slumped against the trestle table. “I am a bitch. I told you that”

He shook his head.

“The white mages are the same, you know?”

Cerryl could feel the look of bewilderment cross his face before he could control it.

“They’re men. They like sex. No matter what they say, that’s all a woman offers them.”

“Women offer more than that,” protested Cerryl.

“You’re young, Cerryl. See if you feel that way ten years from now. Even five.” Benthann gave a hard short laugh. “It works the other way, too. The only thing a man offers a woman, really, is power. Coins are power. Don’t forget that. Sex for power, power for sex, that’s the way the world works. Tellis had the power to save us, and I give him sex for that, and sometimes he’s gentle.”

Cerryl let the appalled expression fill his face.

“I could love you just for that look. Tellis is pretty good to me, but he’s still randy beneath that proper exterior. Who would think it of the most proper scrivener?”

His apprentice would have, especially after thinking of the green angel book, but he didn’t think voicing such an opinion would have been exactly wise-not at that moment. “We don’t see everything, no matter how hard we look.”

“Some folks don’t want to see things.”

“I can see that.” Cerryl took a half-step toward the kitchen.

Benthann smiled lazily. “Still worried?”

“Yes.” Cerryl took another step.

“You should be.” She paused, then added, “You know, Cerryl, I could have gotten you between the blankets, if I’d really wanted to.”

“I know,” Cerryl admitted, slipping slowly toward the door to the front room. “I know.”

“You’re too nice. You didn’t pretend to listen. You really listened.”

“Next time, I might not be so nice,” he answered, his hand on the doorway to the showroom.

“I’ll remember that.”

Cerryl smiled, almost sadly, knowing there wouldn’t be a next time, knowing Benthann knew that as well. Neither could afford a next time.

IN THE HOT and still air of the workroom, Cerryl set the jar of ink on the worktable.

“Let’s see.” Tellis poured a small amount of the fluid into the inkstand, then lifted one of the older quills from the holder before him and dipped it into the ink. “It looks right.”

The master scrivener wrote three words on his working palimpsest, with a quick fluidity that Cerryl envied. Then Tellis set aside the quill and studied what he had written. Finally, he nodded. “You can’t tell for certain for years, but I’d say you did a good job. It feels right, and you do get a feel for these sorts of things in time.”

“Thank you, ser.” Cerryl didn’t know what else to say.

“You listen, Cerryl. I wasn’t sure at first, you know. You always are so polite. Some folks are polite and never hear a thing.” Tellis cleared his throat. “Enough praise. You need to get to work on the new job.” He looked toward the volume by the copy stand- An Alchemical Manual .

Cerryl nodded. He’d already looked through the first pages, and the manual was even more boring than the herbal book had been, even more boring than the measurements book had been.

“After you finish cleaning up,” Tellis added.

Clunk! With the sound of the opening door to the front room came a hot and light breeze, more of the fine white dust from the street-and voices.

“Is this the place?”

“Trust me, Fydel.”

“Not so much as others, dear Anya.”

Tellis glanced at Cerryl. “You stay here. You can fill the inkstands and then put away the ink.” The scrivener hurried around the worktable and into the front room. “Could I help you, sers?”

“Do you have The Book of Ayrlyn! ” The voice was feminine, if hard, and Cerryl thought he’d heard her before. The white mage in the street? What was she doing at the scrivener’s? His heart beat faster. Why would she enter the shop?