L. Modesitt - The White Order

“Cerryl?” said Dylert.

“Yes, ser?”

“I was going to have you clean the pit today, seeing as things are slow.” He coughed. “Dyella, though, she pointed out how the roof of the chicken shed is sagging, and my bones tell me we might yet see more snow. I’d like you to clear that afore you come down to the mill.”

“Yes, ser.”

“Got an old pair of mitts.” Dylert glanced toward the narrow table by the door to the porch. “Need those, you will, lest your fingers chill.” He coughed. “Best you keep them till the weather warms.”

“Thank you, ser.” Cerryl nodded and smiled, trying to show that he appreciated the gesture. “Thank you.”

“Can’t have you getting frozen hands. Darkness, this been a cold winter. Coldest in years.”

“Coldest I can recall,” added Dyella.

Cerryl eased off the bench and nodded to Dylert and then Dyella. “Thank you. The porridge was good.”

“Stick to your bones,” Dyella said.

After slipping the mitts on and easing out the door onto the porch, Cerryl took the slick steps carefully. Once his boots were on the packed snow of the path, he glanced at the mill. A thick plume of smoke billowed from the chimney.

At least the mill would be warmer than his cubby. He trudged toward the chicken shed, conscious of how much warmer his hands were in the heavy leather mitts, mitts big enough for a grown man.

Before he reached the chicken shed, his toes were cold, jammed as they were into his boots. The path went to the door of the chicken house, but the roof was slanted down to the left. Cerryl struggled from the path through the kneedeep snow around to the left side of the building, where he could reach the lower edge of the slanted roof.

The bottom edge was but chest high, and Cerryl stretched and used his right arm to sweep the snow clear-except the powdery stuff swirled into the air and came down on his face and hair, and sifted down the back of his jacket.

He brushed off his hair and face, then swept another heavy armful off the lower roof. More snow swirled around him and drifted down his neck, inside his jacket and shirt. Grimly, he swirled aside more snow, and more of the powder sifted around him, even getting into his nose and mouth.

He stepped back, all too conscious of cold dampness down his back and toes going numb, looking up at the snow beyond his reach.

“Here! Use this,” said Brental, handing Cerryl a small timber-quarterspan by quarterspan-perhaps six cubits long.

“Thank you, Brental.” Cerryl gratefully took the timber.

“No thanks. You be getting it done sooner this way. Da wants the sawpit cleaned later. Said he’d tell you, but Ma feared for the hens if’n the roof went.” The redheaded young man grinned. “I’m off to clear the barn roof.”

“Lucky you.”

“When you’re taller, you can help.” Brental laughed. “Make sure you brush off that snow ’fore you go into the mill. It be getting warm there now, and you won’t be wanting wet clothes.”

Cerryl nodded. No. . he wouldn’t be wanting wet clothes. He took a firm grip on the end of the pine timber and began to sweep the rest of the snow off the chicken house roof.

CERRYL LAY ON his back, the heavy coarse blankets up to his chin, looking up through the darkness at the wide planks overhead. He could sense, rather than see, the heavy timbers that rested on those planks-the end of the finish timber rack holding oak beams. Almost a dozen score were stacked above Cerryl, seasoning, waiting for a buyer.

Even in designing where his workers’ rooms were, Dylert wasted nothing, not even barn space, since any storage where the rooms were would have been almost inaccessible. Cerryl frowned, thinking about the three men-his father, his uncle, and Dylert. One had failed and died; one had failed, but not died; and one had succeeded. Was it luck? Order? Or had chaos just struck down his father and crippled Uncle Syodor?

He recalled something Syodor had said to Nall-one night when they had thought Cerryl was sleeping-something about his father screaming he could have been High Wizard of Fairhaven had he only come from coins. Somehow, Cerryl didn’t think that being High Wizard was something coins could purchase. Or had his father meant something else? Or had Syodor really recalled what his father had said?

Cerryl inhaled deeply, then exhaled slowly with no answers. His breath no longer steamed like hearth smoke, and the worst of winter had passed, or so he hoped. One eight-day had been so cold that both he and Rinfur had slept by the hearth in the millmaster’s house. The gray-haired woman who tutored Erhana on her letters had not been to the mill in four or five eight-days.

It had taken Brental a two-stone black oak timber to break the ice in the well. Cerryl shivered at the memory, glad that only an eight-day had been that chill.

His eyes went to the board under the cubby, the one he’d spent eight-days loosening. Behind it was the book he’d brought, the one he still kept puzzling over when he could.

That, too, he could sense behind the wood, in a different way, with a faint white glow, not so reddish as a fire, but with the same hidden depths. The book held a key, that he knew, but how could he find it when he couldn’t even read?

He sighed again, his eyes blank, fixed on the planks over his pallet.

A LIGHT BUT chill spring breeze blew through the open mill door, carrying the scent of damp earth and pearapple blossoms, and the hint of the words Dylert exchanged with a crafter in brown near the mill door.

Cerryl was on his knees, a relief to be off his feet, half under the fresh pine cuts rack, half-pushing, half-sweeping sawdust clear from underneath the lowest rack, using the side of the broom. He tried to ignore the itching in his nose and across his bare forearms, an itching that was worst around the pine sawdust.

“Cerryl!” called Dylert from the center aisle. “Where are you?”

“Yes, ser?” Cerryl straightened and stood, using his left hand on the rack to keep his balance. “I was cleaning out under the pine racks.”

“Good.” Dylert nodded as though he had personally ordered Cerryl to clean there. Beside him stood a burly man in brown, black-bearded with a dour look upon his face.

“There’s a handcart in the second lumber barn. Use it to bring three dozen of the narrow rough floorboards from the second barn. The best ones we have there, mind you.”

“Yes, ser.” Cerryl set the broom carefully against the rack, watching Dylert.

The millmaster turned toward the man in brown. “What will you be needing for timber? We have. .”

Cerryl eased himself away from the rack, walking as quickly as he could toward the mill door, each step sending a knife jab up his legs.

Outside was a cart, and between the traces was a brown mule, thin and bony. The mule’s leads, and a halter rope as well, were tethered to the ring on the millrace side of the causeway.

Cerryl glanced up at the thickening clouds, then staggered and put his hand on the door frame to steady himself.

“Gee-ahh!” Brental guided the empty log cart back toward the mill, gesturing for the oxen to stop as they neared the mule cart.

With a pleasant smile plastered in place, Cerryl tried not to limp, but his toes and calves knotted with every step.

“Cerryl, what’s the matter?” asked Brental.

“Nothing. I was sweeping under the pine racks. I’m stiff.”

“Cerryl. .” said the redhead firmly. “Sit down on the wall there. Next to the hitching post. Right now.”

“Dylert said I was to use the handcart and bring him three dozen of the narrow rough floorboards from the second barn.” Cerryl stopped beside the hitching post but did not sit.