Magic Engineer

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  “Don’t leave just yet, Dorrin.”

  “It’s not as though I have anywhere to go.” Dorrin looks at the heavy planks of the deck. Finally, he sets his mug down and refills it, following the tea with an enormous dollop of honey from the server, an earth-brown squat pitcher that matches neither the mugs nor the teapot.

  “You’re something,” begins Kadara, her voice rising. “You stay on deck until we’re asleep. Then you come in and wake us up, and then you get up with the sun and do the same thing.”

  Brede sips his tea and looks blankly at the table before him.

  Kadara takes a deep swallow of the tea and pulls a pile of mixed fruit off one platter-mostly dried apples. She replaces most of the apples and picks some peaches and pearapples. Next come some of the hard rolls that it would take the force of Hegl’s hammer to dent.

  At the moment, Dorrin misses the smith more than he appreciates Hegl’s daughter across the table from him. Dorrin takes a sip of his tea, bitter even with the large glob of honey.

  Brede crunches through a hard roll, oblivious to the sounds or the force he has exerted. He follows the destruction with a gulp of tea that drains the mug. A huge hand reaches for the pitcher and refills the mug.

  Finally, as the silence drags out, Dorrin puts his half-empty cup in one of the slots in the center of the table and stands, glancing from Kadara to Brede and back. Kadara looks up. “We’ll join you on deck later.”

  Brede just keeps eating, slowly and methodically, his eyes on the smooth brown wood of the table as he shovels in the heaping pile of fruit, cheese, and hard rolls.

  Outside on the main deck, the wind has dropped into a gentle breeze, and patches of blue appear in the clouds to the west. Dorrin stands on the left side of the Ryessa, watching the wind carry spray from the crests of the dark green waves. The Ryessa does not exactly cut through the sea, her motion more closely approximating a lumber.

  Dorrin wipes the spray off his forehead. How can he even decide what he wants to do? Lortren, Gelisel, and his father have all been telling him that everything is obvious, that machines are the tools of chaos. But are they? A still small voice within Dorrin protests that classification.

  The Ryessa surges through another heavy swell, and the spray from the impact cascades over Dorrin.

  “May I join you?”

  Dorrin jumps.

  Kadara stands almost beside him.

  “Where’s Brede?” Dorrin asks.

  “You’re as direct as ever,” she says. “He’s still eating, but I imagine he’ll be here shortly.”

  “Wonderful.”

  “Dorrin…” Kadara’s voice is soft, but carries an exasperated edge.

  Dorrin holds a sigh. Does he really want to talk to her? “Sorry.”

  “Brede can’t help it if he’s good with a blade.”

  Or with you, Dorrin thinks. Instead, he answers, “I suppose not.”

  “You know I owe this to you?” Kadara does not look at Dorrin as they stand by the railing.

  “You’ve said so more than once.”

  The stiff western breeze carries the tang of salt as it whips the short red hairs around Kadara’s face.

  “Do you mind if I join you?”

  Dorrin looks over his shoulder and up at the tall blond figure with broad shoulders. “Feeling better, Brede?”

  “I was hungry.” The blond man smiles, a warm and winning smile. He wears gray trousers and a bright blue, long-sleeved shirt. Without the long sword he usually wears across his back, he looks far more like the Feyn Valley farmer’s son he is than the well-practiced blade he has become in the two seasons the three have spent at the Academy under Lortren.

  “How long before we get to Tyrhavven?” asks Kadara.

  “Another day or so, at least,” answers Brede.

  Dorrin shrugs, looking back at the bow of the Ryessa just in time to catch another faceful of stinging salt spray.

  A gust of wind sprays fine blond hair around Brede’s face, and a hand twice the size of Dorrin’s absently brushes it back.

  “That’s a long way from Land’s End,” muses Kadara.

  Silence and the swishing of the sea are preferable to a dubious discussion. Instead, Dorrin watches the water. Brede frowns, then straightens and heads toward the stern. Another spray almost touches the edge of the deck.

  “You don’t make conversation easy, you know.” Kadara’s voice is quiet.

  Dorrin barely hears her above the waves, the whisper of the wind, and the creaking of the ship. “What is there to say?”

  “That’s it. You never talk to me anymore. It’s as if we’re strangers, yet we grew up next door to each other.”

  You have Brede, Dorrin wants to snap at her. Instead, he shrugs.

  The Ryessa lurches, and a sheet of water sprays past Dorrin, leaving him with wet legs and a tighter grip on the railing.

  When he looks up again, later, Kadara is gone.

  XVII

  DORRIN WALKS THE deck, studying how the ship is constructed. He probes at the underlying patterns, the forces, the stresses- and especially he looks at the simple machines.

  Flappppp… thwipp…

  Aloft, some of the crew are resetting sails. Not all of them, but the mainsails. A line of dark gray and brown stretches southward off the port side. Dorrin looks up where a huge Suthyan flag flies atop the aft mast. The clouds that had splashed the ship with rain in the early morning have lifted, but the skies are still gray.

  The Ryessa continues to make surprising speed into the wind, angling toward a break in the low dark hills. Behind the coastal hills is another set of low clouds. Dorrin looks again, this time with his senses, before realizing they are not clouds at all, but a second line of snow-covered hills. While spring may have come to Recluce and to Tyrhavven, it has not yet reached the higher hills that lie south of the Sligan port.

  He heads back toward the cabin. There Kadara and Brede have finished replacing their gear in their packs-long enough ago so that the two step apart as Dorrin opens the door.

  “We should be landing in a little while,” he notes curtly, ignoring the flushed looks. He grasps the pack he has prepared earlier from his bunk.

  “We’ll be up in a little bit,” offers Kadara.

  “It takes a while to tie up,” adds Brede.

  Neither moves away from each other or toward their packed gear. Brede does not wear his shoulder harness or sword, nor does Kadara.

  “Fine.” Pack in hand, the wiry young man grasps the staff and turns back toward the door. He does not shut the door as he leaves.

  As the Ryessa eases shoreward, Dorrin studies the harbor town. His pack and quilted leather jacket and staff now rest by his feet. Tyrhavven is scarcely inspiring. Only two short piers, smaller than those of Land’s End, comprise the harbor facilities, and the stone breakwater is half the length of its counterpart on Recluce. The two piers are of heavy weathered and unpainted gray timbers, except where a brown line shows the replacement of an older plank by a newer one.

  “I told you it would take some time.” Kadara, wearing dark gray, appears with her pack. At her belt are two blades, both gray-hilted; the one on the left is a Westwind shortsword.

  Brede towers behind her, his single blade heavier than either of Kadara’s, strapped in place in his shoulder harness. His open gray jacket shows his heavy blue shirt.

  The wind seems to pick up as the ship wallows toward the pier.

  “… sails!” Commands issue from the bridge. “… hard port…”

  With his broad shoulders and long-chinned but square face, Brede grins. “Ready for an adventure?”

  Dorrin is neither ready for an adventure, nor enthusiastic about the relationship between Brede and Kadara. But what can he do?

  “Neither am I,” admits Kadara.

  “Well… like it or not, we’re going to have one, and we stand a better chance together than separately.”

  Brede makes sense, and Dorrin would be foolish indeed to spurn the a
ssistance of the bigger and quicker man’s blade and disarmingly cheerful manner. Dorrin takes a deep and slow breath, nodding slowly.

  “Why so reluctant, Dorrin?” Brede’s voice is warm and friendly.

  “Dorrin would be happier if they had just let him play with his machines,” observes Kadara.

  “They never will,” Dorrin adds. “So… I’m off on an adventure.”

  In the short time the three have talked, the Ryessa has jockeyed up to the empty pier. Perhaps half a dozen figures stand waiting; two wearing white surcoats are armed.

  “White guards…” Brede moves up to the railing.

  Dorrin turns to see the captain motioning. “He wants us off the ship.”

  “That’s not surprising,” Brede snorts. “Fairhaven hasn’t ever liked the coasters’ being involved with Recluce.” He swings his pack on his shoulder, readjusting the harness to ensure that he can still reach the blade quickly, and marches toward the gangway.

  The gangplank is barely in place as the three line up.

  “Thank you for a smooth trip, Captain.” Brede’s voice is deep and mellow.

  “Yes.” Kadara offers a flash of the smile that Dorrin wishes were directed at him.

  “My pleasure, lady,” answers the captain. “My pleasure.”

  Dorrin nods politely to the ship’s master, but only mumbles a low “Thank you.”

  The captain inclines his head in return.

  A pair of seamen are still tying lines to the bollards on the pier as Dorrin steps onto the weathered planks.

  A long-faced functionary with a white circular patch on the shoulder of his heavy quilted leather jacket waits just shoreward of the gangplank. He carries a thin leather folder. Behind him stand the two White guards, while off to one side loiter three travelers, all with grips or packs, presumably waiting to embark upon the coaster. Each guard wears a sword, but their hands are empty as they wait with bored looks upon their faces.

  In the chill sunlight of midmorning, more like late winter than the. spring that the calendar indicates, Dorrin wants to shiver. Instead, he stands straight behind Brede and Kadara, tightening his grasp on the staff.

  “Travelers?” squeaks the long-faced man in a high and thin voice. Because he is not even as tall as Dorrin, his eyes must look up to Brede, who overtops everyone on the pier by a least half a head. “The entry fee is half a silver a person.”

  Brede presents a single coin. So does Kadara. Dorrin fumbles forth five coppers.

  The functionary places the coins in a purse and makes three marks on a parchment sheet. “Do you have any weapons beyond what you show?”

  “Nothing except a brace of knives…”

  “Knives…”

  “A knife,” finishes Dorrin.

  “Noted. You are free to travel the domains of Candar.” The functionary jerks his head at the guards. “The cargo and the manifest…”

  Dorrin glances back at the Ryessa. Only a regular crewman remains by the railing looking at the pier. The man grins at Dorrin, then lets his face turn impassive as the captain walks past him to the top of the gangplank to greet the long-faced man with the folder.

  Dorrin follows Brede and Kadara up the pier toward Tyrhavven. The wind from the hills behind the city ruffles his hair, but not even a gale would loosen those tight curls. His ears tingle in the chill that seems more like winter than spring.

  Of the bollards on both piers, only three sets are used. The Ryessa is moored on the eastern pier. Two smaller fishing boats rest at the western pier.

  Dorrin lengthens his stride to catch up to Kadara. Her steps are still quick, and she does not even look at the shorter man as the three step off the pier and onto the stone pavement in front of what appears to be a warehouse.

  “Where now?” asks Dorrin.

  “Who knows?” snaps Kadara.

  “We need to see about mounts,” interjects Brede quickly. “We can’t just walk across Candar.”

  “What about provisions?” asks Dorrin.

  “That, too.”

  The buildings behind the warehouse-timbered and weathered-scarcely resemble the neat and polished stone frontages of Land’s End. He swallows, wondering if he will see Land’s End again.

  XVIII

  DORRIN TRIES TO match the map in his head, with its neat drawings, to the weathered, almost abandoned-looking buildings, the muddy street, and the ragged and disreputable figures lounging by the end of the pier. Tyrhavven is all too real, especially as the harbor town smells of salt and rotten fish and seaweed, overlaid with wood smoke. Finally, Dorrin looks southward up the gentle slope of a half-cobbled street that seems to lead toward a row of two-storied buildings. From the chimney of one building rises a thin gray plume.

  “Come on.” Kadara’s voice is gently insistent. “The chandlery has to be this way.”

  “But chandleries are for ships,” protests Dorrin.

  “Here they sell everything,” adds Brede, over his shoulder.

  “But shouldn’t we get horses first?”

  “The chandlery is next to the stable.”

  “How do you know?”

  Dorrin adjusts his pack and scrambles to follow the two taller exiles as they stride away up the uneven pavement.

  “… haa… haaa…”

  The redhead with the wiry hair ignores the cackling laugh of the old man sitting against the seawall, but he moves even faster to catch up.

  “… haaa… haa…”

  The three turn left at the first cross street. While the brown cobblestones are worn and often cracked, the street does contain virtually all its paving stones. Only a few small puddles offer a reminder of the morning rain, although the clouds remain dark and threatening. A single horse, swaybacked, is tethered before the store Brede points out as a chandlery. The sign that swings from the protruding crossbeam has no name, just a crude black outline of two crossed candles on a white background. -Much of the white has flaked away, showing weathered gray wood beneath.

  Brede’s feet, half again as big as Dorrin’s, whisper on the wide plank steps, as do Kadara’s. Dorrin’s boots thump as though he were the heaviest.

  The interior of the store smells faintly of oil, varnish, rope, and candles. Those are the scents which Dorrin can distinguish. A dozen steps inside the doorway stands a squat iron stove, radiating a gentle heat. On the right hand wall is a row of barrels. Each barrel is topped with a circular wooden cover. Across from the barrels is a counter running the remaining depth of the store. Another counter runs across the back of the store.

  Beside the stove lies a thin dog on a tattered blanket folded into a rough bed. One eye opens as Dorrin closes the door with a thunkkkk…

  “Is there anything special you need?” The flat voice comes from a man with thinning sandy and silver hair and a drooping handlebar mustache. His leather jacket bears a range of leather patches that do not match the original, and he sits on a stool behind the counter almost opposite the stove.

  “We’re looking for some travel goods,” explains Kadara politely.

  “Suit yourself.”

  Brede studies the counter, while Kadara starts with the barrels.

  … hhhnnnnn…

  Dorrin looks at the dog again and swallows, sensing the animal’s pain. Then he looks at Brede and Kadara, efficiently determining their needs. He steps toward the counter.

  … hhhnnnn…

  With a sigh, he edges toward the stove and squats next to the hot iron and the dog. “You hurt, lady?” His voice is low.

  “She’s just old.” The storekeeper’s voice remains flat.

  “All right if I pet her?”

  “Suit yourself. She’s a touch cranky.”

  Dorrin extends his senses toward the dog, feeling the infection and the age within the body.

  … hhhhnnnn… thump… The dog’s tail flicks against the plank floor.

  His hands, as gently as he knows how, scratch the shaggy brown coat between her ears, even as he tries to help the ailing animal
. Certainly, a little order cannot hurt.

  … slurrppp… A damp tongue runs across his wrist.

  “Easy, lady, easy…”

  … thump… thump…

  Dorrin scratches the dog’s head again before standing up. “You’ll feel better in a while, lady,” he says quietly, bending and patting her head.

  Both eyes are open, watching as the wiry redhead walks to the counter.

  “Like dogs, boy?”

  Dorrin looks toward the flat-voiced shopkeeper. “I never had one,” he admits, “but I do like them. She seems nice.”

  “Best bird-dog I ever had. Just got too old.” The man shifts on his stool, but does not rise.

  There is another silence while Dorrin studies the small rectangles of dried travel food wrapped in paper and dipped in some sort of wax.

  “The trail cheeses are in the cooler at the end.”

  Behind him, Dorrin can hear Brede and Kadara quietly talking about cooking sets. “What about horses, ser? Is the stable across the way…”

  “Hope so.” A snort follows. “My sister’s man runs the place for Rystel.”

  Dorrin smiles faintly. “Do you have any saddlebags? Perhaps an older set?”

  “Halfway down the counter. Some sets there, a few others on the bottom.”

  Dorrin follows the instructions. One set is practically new, huge, and made of heavy stiff leather. He sets the bags aside, and picks up the second set, setting it down quickly as he feels the whitish red that signifies chaos. Although he has only felt chaos as a part of healing, there is no doubt that the bags have been associated with chaos. The third set is serviceable.

  Finally, he drags out a dusty pair from underneath the counter. Although the leather is stained, and the bronze fittings are pitted in places, Dorrin nods, more to himself than anything.

  “Good eye there. Cheap, too. A silver for you.”

  “How much are the heavy ones?” Dorrin asks idly.

  “Those? You’d need a draft horse to carry them. Half a gold.”

  Dorrin purses his lips. While he has enough coins for the cheaper saddlebags, he does not know about the trail food, and he really needs a waterproof of some sort. He also does not like purchasing goods before he even has a mount to carry them. Unlike Brede, he worries about such details. “I need some sort of waterproof.”