L. Modesitt - The White Order

“Yes, ser. If you like, I can copy them over with narrower letters.” Cerryl kept his voice even, standing just inside the doorway.

“Why didn’t you do it that way to begin with?” Tellis’s voice took on a tone that almost verged on whining. “I’ve showed you time and time again.”

“I thought I was doing it the way you wanted, ser.” Cerryl struggled to keep his voice even and subservient.

“It is not the way I taught you. Can’t you get anything right?” Tellis waved the vellum.

Cerryl did not answer.

“Can’t you? I have spent seasons instructing you, and you still make your letters too wide.” The scrivener’s eyes flicked to Cerryl and then toward the doorway to the front room. “I never had white mages in the shop, except to purchase books. Now. . we are watched and questioned. What do you say to that?”

“Ser, I have done nothing wrong.” Clearly, any answer would be useless, but not answering would be worse.

“The only thing you do right is run errands and scrub the floor. Even your ink will fade before its time.”

“Yes, ser.” Cerryl understood. For some reason, Tellis did not want to throw Cerryl out on the street, but he was going to make life impossible for his apprentice. . so impossible that Cerryl would not stay. Yet, at the moment, he dared not leave, not if his feelings were accurate, and they were all he had to guide him.

“All your wages-what I owe you-would not pay for the vellum you have ruined.”

“You may have my wages, ser. I would not displease you.”

“You have displeased me.” Tellis sniffed. “Go empty the chamber pots.”

“Yes, ser.”

“And wash them.”

“Yes, ser.”

“Wash them well.”

Cerryl bowed and turned.

“Then you can go to the renderer’s for hoofs. I need to make binding glue.”

“Yes, ser.”

As he stepped out of the workroom, the apprentice could still hear Tellis muttering.

“A favor for Dylert. . and where does it get me? Because he helped my son. . and still, where, light forbid, is the justice in it? This may right the balance, if I can but survive.”

Cerryl stepped into the kitchen, wondering what he could do, and how he could stay, at least until the white mages lost interest in him.

“Where you be going?” asked Beryal.

“Tellis told me to empty the chamber pots and wash them.”

Beryal smiled. “You cannot be doing that. Your own is clean, for I saw you do that, and so is mine, and my daughter would have your head faster than would Tellis were you to wake her so early.”

“What can I do?” Cerryl glanced back toward the workroom.

“The courtyard could use a sweeping, and Tellis could use some time by himself, and I will tell him that I told you to do that after you cleaned the two chamber pots.” Beryal looked at Cerryl. “He is fearful. He has seen what the mages do to those who displease them. He has seen such too many times.”

“But he has done nothing, and surely the mages know that.” Cerryl glanced over his shoulder again.

“His son. .” whispered Beryal, looking toward the front room. “We all carry black angels, and fear is Tellis’s. Later. .” Her voice resumed its normal timbre. “Go sweep the courtyard.”

Cerryl picked up the broom and walked through the common room and into the courtyard, wondering if Tellis would complain about his sweeping as well. Beryal had started to say something about Tellis’s son. Had that been the Verial that Benthann had mentioned?

Cerryl wanted to scream and cry all at the same time. No one said anything, and he was in no position to ask, and yet the answers affected him somehow. Would life always be like that?

With a silent sigh, he started sweeping in the corner by the door, making sure that the broom straws flicked each join in the stone tiles clean. He supposed he could scrub the tiles once more after he finished sweeping.

“Cerryl!”

He looked up from the broom. Tellis stood in the doorway, paler than the white granite of the avenue. “Yes, ser.”

“The mages want you.”

Cerryl forced his eyes away from the rear gate, the only possible escape, except that escape was a trap. Perhaps all life was a trap. He turned toward Tellis, still holding the broom. “Me, ser?”

Tellis gestured.

Cerryl walked toward the door, only slowing to lean the broom against the wall.

“In the front,” rasped Tellis, pushing his apprentice in front of him and toward the front room with the bookcases and copied volumes.

Cerryl walked through the common room and kitchen, knowing that Beryal was there, yet not really seeing her. He also ignored the murmured words of the scrivener, who followed.

“This is what I get for doing a favor for Dylert. . the white guards at my shop door.” Tellis sniffed self-sympathetically.

In the showroom stood a single mage in white, a tall and rugged blond man with a purple blotch on one cheek, a mage whom Cerryl had never seen. “You are the scrivener’s apprentice?”

Cerryl bowed. “Yes, ser.”

“Your name is Cerryl?”

“Yes, ser.”

“You are to come with me. Now. You need nothing. You bring nothing.”

“Yes, ser.”

The mage turned to Tellis. “You owe him nothing, and you are free to find another apprentice. Good day, scrivener.” The gray eyes, overlaid with a sheen of gold, fixed on Cerryl. “Outside.”

“Yes, ser.” Cerryl understood he had no chance if he ran. His only hope was to stand firm and admit nothing more than the mages already knew about him, and to be unfailingly polite. He bowed and turned, opening the door.

Outside the shop were six guards in white, and before them two others in white tunics and trousers like the mage, except that their tunics bore a thin red stripe across each sleeve.

Already the day was hot, and white dust sifted through the air on the lightest of breezes. Cerryl wanted to rub his nose but didn’t, wrinkling it slightly to try to stop the itching.

“Walk beside me.” The mage smiled, an expression without warmth, and absently brushed something darkish from the white tunic.

The mage nodded to the guards and the two others in white.

All the shutters flanking the way of the lesser artisans between the scrivener’s and the artisans’ square were shut. So were the doors, despite the bright sunlight and the warmth of the morning.

Once on the main avenue, walking briskly toward the mages’ square and the white tower that loomed over it, Cerryl took more notice of his surroundings.

They passed the last of the artisans’ shops and left the square behind. An ostler led a saddled chestnut out of the stable toward a tall man dressed in blue, standing before the small inn. The saddlebags on the horse bulged, indicating a traveler. Past the ostlery was the long grain exchange building. No carriages stood by the vacant mounting blocks, though the windows and the shutters of the exchange were open, and two men in maroon tunics talked in the arched doorway.

At the grinding of ironbound wagon wheels, Cerryl could feel the white guards move closer. Did they think he would try to jump on a wagon-or under the wheels? The ubiquitous fine white dust rose from the avenue as the brown-stained wagon, behind two horses, rolled past. In the wagon bed were a half-dozen huge barrels, each nearly man-high, roped together. Who needed barrels that large?

Feeling the dampness on his forehead, Cerryl stepped across the narrow side way and back onto the stone walk of the jewelers’ block. Perhaps half the iron-banded doors were open, and the air held the acrid odor of oil, hot metal, and other burned substances. Cerryl glanced sideways at the white mage, but the man’s oval face remained impassive.