Colors of Chaos (Saga of Recluce)

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  “He plotted to kill Eliasar, and then me. And lied about it. When I questioned him, he took poison. I executed ten others who were part of the plot. Things have run better since then, but we need some larger traders, with ships like yours.”

  “And you would hand over his lands and facilities for me to do what I would do anyway?”

  “I have a condition,” Cerryl admitted.

  “Just one?” Layel raised his eyebrows.

  “Two, I suppose. I want you to be loyal to Fairhaven—not to the High Wizard, whoever that may be—and I want you to set up trading here as if Spidlaria were Fairhaven, except with lower tariffs, say a twentieth part, except for the surtax on goods from Recluce. The mage Lyasa is serving as the mage in charge of the lancers who will make sure the tariffs are collected.”

  “Do you intend to send all the tariffs to Fairhaven?”

  “We are setting aside some to pay our lancers here.” Cerryl offered a lopsided smile. “And for a few other matters—such as repairs to the wharves and the harbor.”

  “Sterol won’t like that you are charging lower tariffs. Or not sending every last gold back to the White Tower.”

  “The only ones who know that are you and the traders, and me and Lyasa. Lyasa won’t tell, and I can’t see traders complaining that their tariff levels have been lowered.”

  “Ha! That you have the right of, even here. No trader worth his coins would mention a word of such, even in this cold place.” Layel glanced toward the closed porthole. “It can get terrible cold here.”

  “Better cold than dead, and you would be if you had remained in Fairhaven too much longer. You are Leyladin’s father and Muneat’s and Jiolt’s rival.”

  “And,” Layel raised his eyebrows, “the father of your consort. You and I know that’s so, for all the words saying Whites have no consorts.” He waved aside Cerryl’s protest. “None of those are good to be at this moment, that is true.” Layel fingered his chin. “Yet I wonder about her.”

  “They need her skills, and, since she can muster no chaos, she is seen as no threat.”

  “My head says you are right, but my heart is troubled.”

  “I do worry.”

  “She frets over you, she does, and fears that you need return afore long.”

  “I doubt Anya or the High Wizard wish my return.”

  “What the High Wizard may wish may not be best for you or the lands.” Layel shrugged.

  “True.” Cerryl stood. “Do you wish to see what you will work with before you decide on what to do with your cargoes and coins?”

  “Always in a hurry, you young folk are.” Layel rose with a grin.

  “I’d like to see a certain healer, and I can’t until I get this land back on its boots.” Cerryl opened the cabin door.

  “Like I said.” Layel’s grin broadened.

  CLX

  AT THE SOUND of footsteps on the chill and polished stone of the hallway floor, Cerryl turned.

  Kalesin walked quickly toward Cerryl and the pair of lancers outside his study door. “I’d like to talk with you, ser.” The smile that followed the words was false and forced.

  “I was headed out to accompany Lyasa on an inspection.” Cerryl reopened the study door and stepped inside, moving behind the desk to put some space between him and the other, but not seating himself.

  Kalesin closed the door with a dull thud. “I know that, ser.” His eyes were hard as he glanced at Cerryl. The stocky blonde mage’s eyes were cold, above a body that had thickened in the seasons since Cerryl had returned to Spidlaria. “I don’t understand. What have I done to displease you? You’re letting her handle the tariff coins and supervise the lancers, and she’s not even an arms mage.”

  “She is good at what she does,” Cerryl said evenly. “I give you those things to do that you do well.” He paused. “Many of the tasks you do are the same sorts that I did for Jeslek, or Kinowin, or that Anya does for the High Wizard.”

  “I proved I was capable of more for the honored Eliasar,” Kalesin replied firmly.

  “You may well have,” Cerryl said gently, “but what we are capable of doing is not always what needs to be done. I need the lists and the locations of merchants if we are to ensure that we can collect taxes and tariffs. Such a task is tedious, but it is necessary, and it takes a mage who can use a glass.”

  “I can do more than that,” Kalesin insisted.

  “I’m sure you can. But if you did more, you would not be doing what needs to be done.” Cerryl tried to make the smile friendly.

  Kalesin’s lips tightened, and he was silent.

  “Is there anything else?”

  “No, ser.” After another pause, the blonde mage asked, “By your leave?”

  “You may go.”

  “Thank you, ser.” Kalesin turned and opened the door.

  Cerryl followed him into the hallway.

  As Kalesin stepped away from the study door and walked toward the main entry of the building, the blonde mage’s fingers tightened around the hilt of the long dagger in his belt, a long iron dagger, with a heavily wrapped tang and a thick scabbard.

  Cerryl concealed a frown before he turned to the guard. “I will be riding to the large barracks with the mage Lyasa and the lancers from one of Captain Teras’s companies.”

  “Yes, ser.”

  The arms mage walked quickly out to the courtyard, trying to make up for the delay caused by Kalesin’s interruption.

  Lyasa stood by her mount, holding the mare’s reins and those of Cerryl’s gelding. “You don’t have to come with me, you know?”

  “If I don’t show up occasionally when you inspect the barracks and the lancers, they won’t remember who I am.” Cerryl took the leathers and mounted the gelding.

  Lyasa gestured toward the gate. “Kalesin just rode out of here. He was angry.”

  “He’s angry most of the time, these days. He wants to do great and challenging things when what we need is painstaking and tedious chores. I try to keep a close watch on him.”

  Lyasa urged her mare toward the open courtyard gate, and the cold wind ruffled her jet-black hair, blowing it back off her ears. “I hate to say this…You’d be better off if he were in Fairhaven.”

  Cerryl flicked the gelding’s reins to catch up with her. “I can’t send him back. They’d probably send someone else and then call me up before the Council. They’d claim I sent him away because I was taking the coins. Like I thought Shyren had. Those are the coins we have yet to collect. So I give him things to do that need to be done, things that he can’t foul up without my knowing immediately.”

  “He knows that, and it just makes him angrier.”

  “Do you have any suggestions about Kalesin?”

  “Oh, Cerryl…all you can do is watch him.”

  For now. “I know.”

  The hoofs of the horses clicked on the hard and cold stones of the street that led to the main barracks.

  CLXI

  CERRYL WATCHED FROM the study window as Kalesin once again rode angrily through the courtyard and out through the front gate, a half-score of lancers at his back. The cold wind flicked intermittent flakes of snow past Cerryl’s face, reminding him of how much earlier winter came in Spidlar—and of how much colder it would be. His eyes drifted to the harbor, where one of Layel’s ships remained moored. The other had left for Sarronnyn, in hopes of picking up dried fruits and surplus grain and returning before the winter storms struck the Northern Ocean and it began to ice over. Then both would leave on a long voyage somewhere over the winter, for Layel noted there was little point in maintaining an idle ship.

  How long…how long before you can get Spidlaria somewhere close to being a normal city again?

  He laughed softly. That wasn’t the problem. His problem was that he wanted Spidlaria to be more like his image of Fairhaven and what it could be. That will be hard, since all the Council wants is repayment of the golds spent to conquer it.

  Once he was sure Kalesin was safely on his
way, Cerryl stepped out of the study past the guards and toward the stairs that led up to his bedchamber—and the ones on the third floor used by Kalesin and Lyasa.

  Before touching the door lever, Cerryl studied the door with his senses and his sight, but there were no traps or chaos concentrations in the locks or elsewhere. After a moment, he pulled the new leather gloves from his belt and slipped them on. They would keep any sense of order or chaos from him from remaining on whatever he might touch, a trick Kalesin had yet to learn from all the chaos residue Kalesin had left on all the scrolls he had intercepted and scanned.

  Cerryl pressed the door lever and stepped inside the corner room. Without moving anything, he looked over the small desk and the three stacks of papers, each held down by a fired clay weight in the shape of a shield. The inkstand needed refilling, which surprised Cerryl not at all, and the quill could have been sharper. The lamp mantle was coated with soot.

  Cerryl finally lifted a paperweight. The first two stacks of papers held nothing but rough copies of the lists and reports he had requested of Kalesin. The third stack was shorter and dated back to before Cerryl’s return. Several sheets held columns of numbers. Cerryl studied the numbers and the names opposite them. From what he could tell, the sheet held a listing of merchants and tariffs they had paid. Most of the names were unfamiliar, except for a handful like Tyldar, whom he knew as smaller merchants.

  He leafed through the rest of the stack, but none of the sheets held the names of the more important—and largely dead—factors. Cerryl pursed his lips. “Interesting.”

  He surveyed the room, then found, in a box in the bottom of the wardrobe, another stack of parchment and paper, and those seemed to be personal scrolls to Kalesin, largely in a feminine hand. Cerryl studied them and sniffed them, but neither the hand nor the scent was Anya’s. Skeptical you are. The signature on those read: “Zylariae.”

  He frowned. He was wrong. There was a faint scent of trilia and sandalwood in the wardrobe. He tried to follow his nose, but all he could determine was that the scent lingered around the lighter wool cloak hanging on one of the side pegs. But there was no sign of a scroll, and none of those in the box carried that scent.

  Cerryl shook his head and scanned the letter scrolls, as quickly as he could, looking for some hints—of anything. Phrases from some letters struck him as he hurried through them:

  …must be patient, dearest…No mage reaches high position quickly…

  …he is from a coinless hearth and will not understand the true power of coins…For that deficiency you cannot blame him, but you must be wary…

  …trust not the redhead, for all she promises…

  Cerryl nodded. That opinion was widely held.

  …many think highly of him, and he is most powerful but tries not to show that power…

  …a mage loved by a healer cannot be totally stupid nor without intelligence. You MUST be careful…

  That was the last scroll, and he replaced the sheets in the box carefully, hoping Kalesin was as careless with his memory as he had been with everything else.

  Cerryl could discover nothing else save several sets of whites, and personal toiletries, including scented soap, and a white-bronze razor.

  After he slipped out of the room and closed the door, Cerryl frowned as he walked down the steps to his own bedchamber. Eliasar had not collected much more than a few hundred golds, if that, and most of those had come from the smaller merchants and traders.

  That follows. Did Eliasar start after the old large traders then? Was that why they sought help from Rystryr or whoever?

  Either that or Kalesin had disposed of the papers that had held the tariff collections from the larger traders, just as he had received something from Anya recently—and had destroyed it or hidden it somewhere.

  Cerryl took a deep breath.

  Once more, he did not know as much as he should, except that his instinct not to trust the blonde mage had been sound and that he had to exercise even more care. And again, he was reminded that where power and traders were concerned, evidence of anything was hard to come by. You have to trust your senses.

  That was hard, too, at times.

  CLXII

  THRAP!

  Cerryl concentrated on the glass before him, letting Leyladin’s image fade and focusing on the outside of the door. The silver mists swirled and revealed a stolid-faced, stocky blonde mage. “Come in, Kalesin.”

  “Ser, here are the scrolls from the courier for you.” Kalesin extended three scrolls.

  “Thank you.” Cerryl rose and took them.

  “We only mean to please, honored Cerryl.”

  Even without looking closely, Cerryl could tell that someone had sliced the seal on at least one of the scrolls and then reheated it. Cerryl studied the other mage impassively. “I appreciate it, Kalesin.”

  Kalesin inclined his head, then turned and left.

  Once the door shut, Cerryl studied the scrolls more closely. One was sealed with a purple wax, the second with red, and the third with green. All had been opened and resealed.

  “Let’s read the worst first.” He broke the seal on the one from Sterol or Anya and skimmed through it, centering on the key phrases:

  …wish to remind you that the turn of winter approaches and that the Council expects at least several hundred golds in tariff revenues, with the balance to follow by the turn of the year at midwinter…

  That missive had been signed and sealed by Anya at the direction of “His Supreme Mightiness, the High Wizard Sterol.” There was more, but all in the vein of reminding Cerryl of the urgency of tariff collections. He set the first scroll on the desk and opened the second. As he had suspected from the purple wax, it was from Kinowin.

  Cerryl—

  I would like to remind you that you promised to bring me, if possible, a purple hanging from Spidlaria. I am doing my best to look after the one in green silk that I feel you entrusted to me, though I know that was not precisely your intent. As with Myral, age has begun to creep upon me, and I may not be a fit custodian for all that much longer…

  I would like to see the handiwork Myral promised you would bring me before too much longer…The handiwork is important, and though some will quibble over the coins, good workmanship outlasts coins.

  Kinowin

  Cerryl swallowed, set the second scroll down, and hurriedly broke the seal on the third, a seal he suspected had been cut and resealed twice.

  Dearest—

  I know that you have had great duties laid upon you, but I thought you would like to know that Mother is close to the end. Knowing how you have respected her, it might be best that you return to Fairhaven as quickly as you can, if possible. Kinowin can no longer leave his quarters, now, as you suspected might happen. I have no one to assist me now that Father is helping you in rebuilding factoring in Spidlar, and Aliaria and Nierlia are occupied with their children and legacies…

  If this is not possible, I understand. It may be hard to explain to certain relatives, particularly one niece who left a message suggesting that if you respected her judgment, you should hasten homeward—as if you had ever jumped to her scented wishes.

  As always, we all miss you.

  Leyladin

  Cerryl looked at the words of the scroll again. He frowned. The words were in Leyladin’s hand. The order behind them was Leyladin’s, but she never would have said something like that, especially such nonsense. His regular screeing of her showed her in no danger, and her mother had died long before…

  “You’re stupid, Cerryl.” He nodded grimly. The message was the same as what she had written—get back to Fairhaven—but the other words, the reasons, were there for whoever might have opened and read the scroll, and the niece had to be Anya—she was Muneat’s niece and wore too much scent.

  Cerryl studied the scroll, looking with his senses for the slightest touch of chaos on the inner parchment—and finding it. Lyasa had not been around, and the chaos was too fresh for it to have been anyone oth
er than Kalesin who had opened the scroll.

  He stood and walked into the hall. “I’m going out for a bit of air.”

  “Yes, ser.”

  Instead, once around the corner, Cerryl raised the blur shield and started up the stairs to the third floor.

  As he had suspected, Kalesin was seated at the small desk in his bedchamber on the third floor.

  When Cerryl stepped into the room, closing the door behind him, he let the blur shield drop. “So what are you sending to Anya? Or is it Rystryr?”

  Kalesin rose and turned slowly, bringing the long iron dagger around. “I’ll use this on you, if I have to. You can’t order me around, Cerryl. I’ve been a mage longer. They sent you here to get rid of you. You aren’t going to sneak home and leave me with the mess you’ve made. And you’re not proof against cold iron, no matter what—”

  “Why not? You’d like being in charge—”

  As Kalesin lunged forward, Cerryl didn’t even hesitate but slammed the focused light lance into the blonde mage’s chest.

  The sandy-haired mage flew backward, his dead face frozen in surprise.

  Cerryl played chaos over the body carefully, trying to ensure that no trace of the man remained, except for the white ashes that would dissipate and the dagger that had fallen to the floor.

  Then he rearranged the desk back in the order in which Kalesin kept it. He picked up the dagger and set it alongside the third stack of paper, leaving everything neat, except for the half-written scroll, which he read quickly.

  Anya—

  Cerryl has become insufferable…He has received a scroll bidding him return to Fairhaven…from that blonde harlot…and another one from doddering old Kinowin, begging for a hanging before he dies…

  Cerryl wanted to shake his head. Kalesin had been more stupid than Cerryl could have imagined, and that meant that Kalesin hadn’t been any real danger at all, except as Anya’s tool. How many tools has she? He tucked the half-written scroll under the blotter and replaced the quill and inkstand.