Natural Ordermage

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  Rahl didn’t ask about what happened when it didn’t work.

  “Here come the enumerators,” murmured Galsyn. “Just stand here.” He stepped forward so that he was just slightly back of Captain Liedra’s shoulder on the opposite side from the ship’s champion.

  Rahl watched. The two officials who walked up the gangway wore short-sleeved khaki shirts and long, matching trousers over black boots. Their belts were black, but the insignia on their collars and shirts were crimson.

  “Captain Liedra.” .

  “Inspector Salyx,” returned the captain. ‘”

  “You have your declaration ready.” The inspector spoke in Temple rather than Hamorian.

  Galsyn handed the tariff declaration to the unnamed inspector who had not spoken. The inspector studied if, then handed it to Salyx.

  “The tariff looks to be ninety golds, subject to verification, Captain.”

  Even though he had seen the tariff calculation, and checked it for Galsyn, Rahl still found himself amazed at the, amount. Ninety golds—and that was just an assessment of roughly one part in a hundred, although for some goods the tariff was one in a thousand, and for some, it ran as high as five parts in a hundred. Rahl doubted that his father had netted ninety golds in the last ten years, and the Diev probably made more than ten trips a year, if not more.

  The captain handed an envelope to the inspector. “A letter of credit against the ship’s account, held in the Exchange through the Nylan Merchant Association.”

  “A pleasure, .Captain Liedra.” The inspector signed the bottom of the declaration, then handed it to his silent assistant.

  The assistant produced a circular device that fitted over a portion of the. signature on both sides of the paper. He squeezed the handles, then removed the device. Rahl could see an embossed pattern across the signature as the assistant gave the declaration back to Salyx, who in turn handed it to Liedra, who passed it to Galsyn.

  Then the inspectors nodded, turned, and walked down the gangway.

  “See to the passengers, purser.”

  “Yes, ser.”

  Rahl wondered if he was supposed to help off-load passenger baggage, but Galsyn just handed him the leather folder he had been carrying, and the declaration, and said, “Wait here. It won’t be long.”

  Rahl waited.

  The first passenger to leave was a bearded dark-skinned man whom Rahl did not recall even having seen on the voyage, but he might have been ill or violently seasick, because his eyes were reddish, and he looked pale behind the color of his skin. A faint miasma of chaos clung to him.

  Valdra Elamira did not look at Rahl as she left the Diev. Neither did her bodyguard.

  The wool factor Alamyrt actually stopped for a moment. “I wish you well in Swartheld, and perhaps our paths will cross.”

  “Good fortune to you, honored ser.”

  “I’m certain it will be.” Alamyrt laughed, then turned and walked down the gangway, carrying a large satchellike case.

  Once the last passenger had left, Galsyn turned back to Rahl. “We need to get on with tracking the unloading, Rahl.”

  “Yes, ser.”

  The off-loading continued until slightly after twilight, when the piers cleared of wagons and vendors. From what Rahl could tell, the vendors tried to sell until it was almost dark, with their warbling and piercing cries, which had become even more insistent, then hurried away. At that point, the gangway was swung up and the railing closed.

  Rahl looked to Galsyn. “We’re not leaving, are we?”

  “No. It’s just the captain’s way of reducing temptation.”

  “No one gets shore leave until we’re off-loaded,” Galsyn said. “Not anywhere in Hamor. She says she doesn’t like being shorthanded. More likely she doesn’t want to lose good sailors.” With a smile, Galsyn left Rahl by the railing.

  The younger man stood there, looking out on the pier, feeling the warm air filled with scents he could not identify moving past him, and hearing the sounds of a strange port rising and falling around him in a rhythm he could sense, but not describe.

  XXXIX

  More wagons arrived on the pier opposite the Diev not long after dawn on threeday, and Rahl sat on a stool by the railing and wrote down the cargo items as they were off-loaded and as Galsyn checked each item and called it out.

  “Fifteen bales of raw wool, ship’s consignment…”

  ‘Thirteen kegs of scarletine, shipper’s consignment…“

  ‘Two barrels of quilla flour, ship’s consignment…“

  Rahl’s fingers were almost‘ numb by midafternoon, when the last goods had been transferred to one of the wagons on the pier. He was also sweating from the heat, even though he and Galsyn had been shaded from the direct sun by a square of old canvas stretched between a frame of ancient poles.

  “Better grab your gear, Rahl,” called Galsyn. “Teamster won’t wait.”

  Rahl dashed for the cubby where he’d slept for the past eightdays, scooped up his pack, and headed back out to the deck.

  The captain and Galsyn were waiting for him on the quarterdeck, just short of the gangway.

  Liedra extended a small cloth pouch. “Here’s your pay. It’s not that much, but it should help.”

  “Thank you, Captain. I appreciate it.” Rahl was well aware that she didn’t have to pay him anything. He quickly tucked the pouch into his belt wallet. “I really do.”

  “Everything you learned could help us all, and give my best to Shyret.” She paused. “One other thing.”

  “Yes, Captain?”

  “I just wanted to give you a few words from a woman who’s been around.” Liedra smiled ruefully. “Whatever you’re doing when you’re out of the Merchant Association, be careful. Be especially wary around the girls. Any woman seen in public with any of her body uncovered is a slave or servant. If she’s paying attention to you—or any other young fellow—she’s probably working, to ensnare either your coins or your body. You have to watch closely, because the free women with golds often wear fabric and scarves so sheer that, their shoulders look bare, but you won’t see more than that. If you do… watch out.”

  “The body-snatchers get you,” added Galsyn, “and you’ll end up working in the great ironworks at Luba, or lugging stone on one of those great highways the Emperor’s building and rebuilding…”

  Rahl had heard often enough while at the training center about the ironworks at Luba, but he didn’t recall anything about the great highways.

  “Watch everything,” added the captain. “Best of fortune.”

  “Thank you.” Rahl picked up his pack and walked down the gangway toward the remaining wagon from the Merchant Association. When his boots rested on the wide stone wharf, a mixture of order and chaos swirled up around him, then seemingly receded slightly.

  “You the clerk?” called the teamster from the seat of the remaining wagon.

  “Yes. I’m Rahl.”

  “Climb on up. Need to be moving. Otherwise the red-and-tans get nasty.”

  Rahl hurried to the wagon and swung his pack up, then scrambled onto the hard painted wood of the bench seat.

  “I’m Guylmor,” offered the driver, a dark-skinned man with a short-cut graying beard who wore a blue shirt and trousers, both so faded that they were more like a light gray shaded blue. “Teamster for the mercantos.”

  Mercantos? Then Rahl nodded and asked, in Hamorian, “Do you live near the Merchant Association?”

  “Where else?” Guylmor laughed, not quite bitterly. “We have a bunk room. My consort, she lives out in Heldarth. I go there on end-days.” He flicked the leather leads, gently. One of the dray horses snorted, but the wagon began to move, slowly. “Where are you from? Did you grow up in Atla?”

  “A long ways from there, but I learned to speak from… someone like an uncle… who lived there.”

  “Some of the vendors will try to cheat you. They don’t think Adans are that smart.”

  “Are you from… Heldarth?”

/>   “My family is from south of there.” Guylmor shook his head.

  The wagon rolled slowly down the pier, inshore toward the buildings beyond the end of the pier. Rahl’s eyes flicked from point to point, but so much was going on that he scarcely knew where to look—or for what. The wagon passed a cart with an open grill, so close that Rahl almost could have reached out and grabbed one of the spiced fowl-roasting on spits there.

  “No better fowl anywhere…” The words in guttural Temple were followed by another set in far more precise Hamorian. “The best young chickens, fattened and roasted…”

  Voices pitching wares and more came from everywhere, or so it seemed.

  “Indentured servants… young and in the best of health… young men, young women…”

  On the opposite side of the wagon from where Rahl sat was a stage on which a young man and a girl stood. They wore little but cloths around their loins, and the girl was red-haired. For a moment, he thought she might be Fahla, but the girl was shorter and more fragile. Was that what had happened to Fahla—because she wouldn’t betray her father to the Council? A flash of anger swept through Rahl.

  “… in the best of health and form…”

  The teamster jerked his head toward the slave stage. “The only ones they show here are trouble. They’re crazy or damaged in some way. They look good, but the best slaves never come to the ‘piers. A little cheaper, though, and I wouldn’t mind having the redhead, if I had the coins. Good thing about slave women—they can’t tell you no.”

  Two darker-skinned men wearing short-sleeved shirts and trousers of a light khaki fabric stood in a loose formation at the end of the pier, just at the point between the pier itself and the stone-paved causeway perpendicular to it. Each wore a khaki cap with a blue oval above the visor. They also carried polished oak truncheons and wore falchionas at their black belts.

  Rahl looked at the Hamorian patrollers, or whatever keepers of the peace were called in Swartheld. Both were hard-eyed and made the Council Guards of Recluce seem friendly by comparison.

  Directly behind the armsmen was a younger man, barely older than Rahl. The younger man bore only a falchiona, but above his cap visor was a bronze or gold starburst set on a- red oval. A whitish chaos-mist surrounded him. He had to be one of the chaos-mages serving the Emperor. Rahl was careful not to look long at the man, but he had a feeling that the chaos-mage still had noticed him.

  Once the driver had the wagon off the pier and onto the street that fronted the harbor, the crowding eased, and the wagon began to move more quickly. On the streets heading south from the harbor boulevard, there were few peddlers or carts, but more people, and despite his understanding of the far larger size of Swartheld, all the people made Rahl feel cramped and crowded.

  “How much farther?” asked Rahl.

  “Less than half a kay,” replied Guylmor.

  The shops Rahl could see and make out carried everything, but a greater proportion seemed to deal with fabrics—silks, woolens, linens, cottons—and even costly shimmersilk. The shop that displayed the shimmersilk had two large armed men in maroon by the door. In just a few blocks were as many bolts of cloth as in all of Nylan, Rahl suspected.

  Even though he had done little more than ride in the wagon, Rahl could feel even more sweat beading on his forehead and neck and running down his spine. A haze hung over the city, mostly from the heat, Rahl thought, but some of it might have been from chaos—or just from so many buildings and people. He tried to take in what they passed, but there were so many factorages and shops that he soon lost track of all that he had seen.

  The teamster cleared his throat, then gestured with his left hand. “There’s the traders’ building. We’ll be unloading in the rear yard. That’s where the warehouse is.”

  “I need to tell Ser Shyret I’m here.” Rahl glanced around, trying to take in what he could. Across the street from the Merchant Association building was a shop that displayed weapons—many shimmering in the front display window—sabres, cutlasses, an especially menacing falchiona, a huge wide broadsword, and all manner of knives and dirks. “Thank you for the ride.”

  “Serving together and company’s welcome,” Guylmor replied.

  Rahl waited until Guylmor slowed the wagon to bring it through the brick-pillared gates before hopping off and hurrying toward the front door of the building. Before he put his hand on the polished-brass door lever, he paused, then firmly pressed down and opened the door.

  Inside, the building was cooler than the street, but only slightly. The ceilings were high, close to ten cubits, and the walls were white plaster over brick, with occasional yellow-brick pillars. Unlike the Merchant Association in Nylan, there was no counter, but a single long desk facing the door. The blond-wood surface was not quite chest high.

  The clerk seated on a stool behind the desk was turned, listening to a man at the side.

  “… be getting the cargo and declarations from the Diev…”

  Rahl intended to wait, but the man turned, as did the clerk.

  “You must be the new clerk.”

  “Yes, ser.” Rahl inclined his head politely. “Are you Ser Shyret?”

  “‘Director’ will do.” Shyret was stocky, and the top of his head barely came to Rahl’s nose. The managing director was also clean-shaven, with iron gray hair cut short, and he wore a loose-fitting white shirt decorated with silvered embroidery and lace. “Say something in Hamorian.” The tone was polite enough, but preemptory.

  “I look forward to working here and doing my best.”

  “That will do.” Shyret nodded brusquely, inclining his head toward the thin-faced man at the high desk. “Daelyt is the senior clerk. He will assign your duties. You are to speak Hamorian at all times when anyone else is here, even if you are addressed in Temple. The one exception is any ship’s master. You reply in whatever language the captains use to you.”

  “Yes, ser.”

  “Show him his duties, Daelyt. You can see me later.” The senior clerk nodded.

  Shyret turned and walked through a wide archway at the rear of the main office. There was a faint chaos-haze about him, not as much as if he were a white wizard, Rahl thought, but he wasn’t sure about that.

  “We might as well get you started,” said Daelyt: “What do you know about manifests and declarations?”

  “I worked in the Nylan Association for several eightdays, and I was the assistant to the purser on the Diev for the voyage here.”

  “You can write Hamorian?”

  “Enough for the forms.”

  “You’re going to make my life much easier.” Daelyt smiled. “There are some differences in what the magisters want in Nylan and what the Imperial tariff enumerators want here. Set down that pack, bring over another stool, and we’ll go through them.”

  Rahl carried a stool from the side of the room and set it close enough to Daelyt’s so that he could see what the older clerk was doing. He sat down, then wiped his forehead with the cloth he’d tucked inside the light tunic. “Is it always this hot?”

  “You’re fortunate,” said Daelyt. “You came in on one of the cooler days of summer. But it’s in the high season. Some days, even the locals don’t go out unless they have to. So the wealthier traders send their families to their east-hill villas or their seaside places. Once we get into fall, Swartheld won’t be quite so uncrowded as it is now.”

  Daelyt took out a set of declaration forms and laid them on the desk before Rahl. “We’ll start with the differences…”

  After going through all the variations on the forms, then making Rahl copy one set, abruptly, the older clerk looked up. “Time to get something to eat and show you where you’ll sleep.”

  “I was wondering about food…”

  “We get two meals a day from Eneld’s. It’s the cantina across the street, beside the arms shop. We have to eat in the back, but the food’s not bad, and you don’t have to use your own coins.”

  “What about my pack?”

 
; “Oh… I’ll show you your alcove.” Daelyt turned and walked through the archway that Shyret had taken earlier, except he went through another door into a small storeroom. “Here’s your space. There’s a water barrel for drawing your wash water out the back door there.”

  In the corner on the right side of the storeroom was what amounted to a narrow chamber without a door, but with a cloth curtain, half-drawn back.

  Rahl glanced around the narrow area behind the curtain, little more than a narrow pallet with shelves above the foot of the bed and a pegboard affixed to the wall for hanging a few clothes. There was a bowl and pitcher on the shelves for washing, and one thin worn towel folded beside it. There was also a chamber pot against the wall.

  “The chamber pot wastes and water go down the sewer out the rear door. It’s the circular cover. Just lift it and dump. Don’t toss wastes into the alley. The patrollers catch you, and it’ll cost you a silver the first time, and the quarries the second.”

  That stopped Rahl for a moment. Finally, he said, “Thank you for the warning. Where do you…”

  “My consort and I have rooms and a kitchen above the main warehouse.” The older clerk’s eyes dropped to Rahl’s belt and the truncheon. “You can use that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. You won’t have much cause to use it most nights, but you can never tell. Not in Swartheld. We don’t keep many golds here—just enough in case we need supplies or if someone pays us late in the day after the Exchange is closed. That makes the director very unhappy, but sometimes it happens.”

  “There’s a strong room?” asked Rahl.

  “Of sorts. It’s really an ironbound closet in the back of his study. Now… let’s eat, because we’ll be working late on the Diev’s declarations.”

  Rahl followed Daelyt to the main door and out into the growing twilight. From what he could tell, there were even more people on the street than there had been earlier.

  “The bar works better, but we can’t use it and get out.” Daelyt grinned as he turned and locked the main door with an oversized brass key. “The director doesn’t like to be surprised when he’s here alone, but he won’t leave until he’s seen the declarations, and we won’t get them until everything’s stored in the warehouse and checked off by Chenaryl and the enumerator.”