Bostric had more potential than Perlot’s Grizzard, of that I was convinced, but he still didn’t have the confidence, and only time would build that.
First, I made him work on breadboards, but only a few, mainly to give him confidence. The market for breadboards was limited, and designing and carving breadboards that didn’t sell wasn’t building confidence. I called them display pieces, and two actually sold, right from the window.
Then I talked to Wryson, who ran the dry goods store off the jewelers’ street, and persuaded him to commission a storage chest, a simple piece but lined with cedar, to provide summer storage for woolens.
Doing it took twice as long, because I made Bostric do a lot of things I would have done.
“Why don’t you do this, ser? I have to struggle, just getting the lines right.”
“So did I,” I snapped. “But will I always be here?”
“If you’re not here, honored mastercrafter, how will I learn?” He said it in a respectful tone with a straight face. Only his eyes betrayed him.
“I’m not a mastercrafter. I’m just a journeyman woodcrafter.”
“I understand, ser.”
He gave me that hangdog look, and with his unruly red mop, freckles, and bushy eyebrows, resembled a sheepdog more than an apprentice. Then, maybe the two were similar. Sometimes it was hard to remember how frustrated and bored I had been, and how I would have liked to have said what I felt.
“But, honored journeyman, I still don’t see what you want.”
I couldn’t help grinning. “Sorry… you’re right. It is hard to learn how to do.” I took the calipers once again and showed him what I wanted, then I watched and corrected him when necessary, trying not to laugh.
In the end, on that piece, everything worked out. Wryson was pleased, and placed an order for another chest, but not until early in the fall, when he would be getting his last shipment of finished woolens from Montgren.
Sometimes, it didn’t work out so well-like the chair for Wessel. Bostric had trouble with the spooling, and that was my fault. He wasn’t ready for it, and I had pushed too hard. We gave his effort, sturdy enough, to the Temple sisters, and I completed the second one myself. The bonus almost paid for the extra wood.
Deirdre turned out a matched cushion that made the piece even more spectacular, and I made a mental note to have her do more work like that in the future. She would be a real partner for Bostric.
After that, I suggested that Bostric try a bench to match the ones Destrin was making for the Horn Inn, perhaps the seediest drinkery in Fenard. At least, the breakage and Destrin’s low prices had given him a steady, if poor, income.
Destrin had hummphed at my suggestion, coughed some more, but hadn’t openly objected.
In the meantime, to try to upgrade Bostric’s finishing skills, I had sketched out a child’s table for him, scaling down a simple one from Dorman’s incredible plan book. Once I had gone through it several times, and explained the reasons for everything, Bostric finally nodded. I could sense the understanding.
The table turned out well, although it sat in the window for more than an eight-day before Wryson, the dry goods merchant, paid two silvers for it and a matching pair of armless chairs. I think that was because the weather had closed in, drifting snow over the roads toward Kyphros, and an expected shipment of Kyphros silverware had been delayed until after the holidays. So he needed a year-end present for his littlest.
I put my share into the hidden strongbox to go with the dower chest, and Bostric bought himself a pair of boots, barely used, but an improvement over his muckers.
Still… the table had been an experiment that almost hadn’t sold, and that bothered me. We couldn’t count on the weather to save us every time.
I rubbed my chin, then looked at the white oak I was working for a corner cabinet. White oak was so clean, but that meant that any mistake was there where no one could miss it, at least no one with a half-trained eye. Strangely, the same was true for black oak, but for the opposite reason. Everyone scrutinized it so closely that inevitably the flaws were discovered.
With a silent sigh, I looked over the boxes and the side table on the display stage and out into the mid-morning… gloomy as only a late-winter morning could be in Fenard.
Finally, I added another log to the hearth.
“I’ll be back.”
Destrin hummphed, hunched himself into his sweater and looked at the square storage box on his bench.
Bostric, behind Destrin, raised his eyebrows at the box, then looked to me. I glared, and he sighed. Destrin wasn’t always communicative, but Bostric was going to end up with everything, and the least he could do was accept Destrin’s faults.
“Do take care, honored journeyman,” Bostric called. His voice was mock-plaintive.
I swallowed another grin and drew my cloak around me as I stepped into the chill on the street, making sure the door was closed behind me. My steps carried me toward the market square.
As I stepped onto the sidewalk beside the avenue, one of the few streets with an actual raised stone sidewalk separate from the road surface, I could sense a tension in the chill and damp air. Without even a hint of a breeze, the odor of wood smoke hung over Fenard, imparting an acrid edge to every breath.
A tinker pushed his cart listlessly toward the square. Behind him waddled a balding and white-haired man carrying a satchel. Neither looked up as I skirted them.
Overhead, the sun was lost behind the featureless gray clouds that appeared unmoving.
Clink… clink… clink… At the sound of the coach on the stones behind me, I stepped toward the bricks of the shop walls.
… dink…
A glimmer of golden wood caught my eye, just as the unsmelled odor of chaos gripped at my feelings, as the chaos-master’s coach rolled slowly by, drawn by the two oversized white horses I had first seen on the road from Freetown the previous fall. Behind the coach were the same two guards on their matching chestnuts, and the same dead-faced coachman drove.
Outlined in the coach window was the profile of a woman, the veiled woman I had seen at the inn in Hewlett. The coach rolled down the avenue before I really cast my senses at the passengers.
Crack! The whiplash was metal, but I nearly cringed on the street from the force of the reaction, and from the immediate dull ache. Retreating behind the defenses Justen had taught me, I forced my steps to remain even as I continued toward the square.
“Geee-haw…” The mechanical voice of the driver echoed from the bricks and stones.
I did not rub my forehead, much as I wanted to, wondering at the fleeting impression I had received of three people within the coach. There had only been two, that I knew.
By the time I had passed by the square, with the rusted open market gates patrolled by the prefect’s guards, and was farther toward the palace, I could see that the heavy iron gates of the palace had already closed.
I shook my head slowly, turning back toward Destrin’s. Every time I acted without thinking, I exposed myself. Now Antonin would know that there was at least one order-master in Fenard. The contact had been so brief, and his response so automatic and contemptuous, that I hoped he would not • recognize me as an outsider or from Recluce.
I hoped, but there wasn’t much else I could do, except keep on woodworking and learning… and trying to think before I acted. And all of that without letting my boredom push me.
Overhead, the clouds remained gray, but the faintest hint of a breeze touched my cheeks.
XLV
PERLOT’S CRAFTING-THAT was what the ornately-carved sign read. The chiseled letters, old temple-style script, were painted black. A pale hard-finish coat that did not carry the gold overtones of most varnishes let the warm red-oak tones shine through.
As the morning mist beaded on my cloak, I tied Gairloch to the post in front of the shop. The winter had dragged out longer than usual, and when spring had come, the rains and the cold had mixed, like in the downpour that floode
d the stable because I had neglected to clean the drainage gutters outside Gairloch’s stall. Cleaning muck, and hay, and ice chunks, with the rain sheeting across my neck and back-that had been a real joy, and cleaning myself afterwards hadn’t been much more fun.
“You must really like cold baths…” Bostric had observed with a straight face in his oh-so-respectful tone.
“Next time you can join me,” I had told him, but it had only stopped the banter for a while, until I was back working in dry clothes.
Recalling Bostric’s teasing, and glad that spring had finally come, I studied the chairs in the window-drawn especially to the sitting-room chair on the right. That design I had never seen, not even in Uncle Sardit’s sketchbooks. The curves of the legs were understated, minimal, yet made the chair seem more delicate than it was.
“You!”
I looked up at the gruff voice.
A thin man, not much older than I was, a thin film of sawdust stuck to the sweat on his forehead and wearing a tattered gray shirt under his leather apron, glared at me.
I returned the look evenly. “Yes?”
“Are you-”
“Invite him in, Grizzard,” added a raspy voice from within the shop.
Grizzard looked puzzled, and I just stepped around him. Directly inside the shop were three chairs, elegant in the Hamorian style, but a trace too heavy in the legs and squared cross-braces. Between them was a low table, the kind whose use I had never figured out except as a place on which clutter collected.
While all the pieces were good, they were clearly high-class rejects, too expensive for the tradesman, and not quite good enough for the gentry. Probably Grizzard’s work, rather than Perlot’s. Somehow, Perlot never would have let a poor piece get that far.
Reddish coals glittered in the corner hearth, with a warmth I could feel even from the doorway. Perlot stepped around a bench and toward me.
I nodded.
“So we meet again, Lerris, or should I say craft-master Lerris?” Perlot stopped behind the chairs, next to the half-wall that separated the small waiting area from the workshop.
I bowed to the mastercrafter, and I meant it. His work was good, some of it, like the chair in the window, not only as good technically as Uncle Sardit’s, but possibly even more inspired. “I was admiring the sitting-room chair. It’s possibly the best piece I’ve seen like that.”
The narrow craggy face creased as he frowned, and the craft-master closed his mouth. Then he wiped his hands on the underside of his apron. “Mean that, don’t you?”
I nodded again.
“Grizzard, stop standing there like a dolt. You still haven’t finished the detailing on the chest.”
“Yes, ser.” Grizzard scurried around us, the puzzle lines still graven in his forehead.
“Would you sit down?”
“Only for a moment, ser.” I eased into the chair toward which Perlot had gestured, and he sat down across from me.
“Like to set things straight, young fellow…”
“There’s nothing to set straight, mastercrafter. You didn’t know me, and you had never seen my work. I could have been a wood-grifter from Freetown or Spidlar-”
Perlot motioned me to silence, and I stopped.
“You’re not. I’ve looked at your work. It’s better than any journeyman’s here in Fenard, and it’s getting better. Some is mastercraft level, like the chair you did for Wessel.”
I must have lifted my eyebrows.
Perlot smiled. “He asked me for my opinion. I told him that he stole it from Destrin, and that it was the best single piece in his house, including the dining-room set I did last year.”
“You flatter us.”
“No. I don’t flatter. It’s not Destrin, poor soul. It’s you. What do you intend to do? Take over Destrin’s shop, and his daughter, and put him out to pasture?” The question was idly phrased, but the dark eyes hung on me.
I shook my head slowly. “Sometimes I wish that I could. It would be simpler that way. But that would not be fair nor right. In too many ways, I am still a journeyman, with more than a little left to learn.”
Grizzard was trying to listen and concentrate on the detailing, and both efforts were suffering.
This time Perlot nodded. “Bostric won’t ever be in your class.”
“He will be a good craftsman, given time and training.”
“He might be.” The mastercrafter smiled. “Don’t sell yourself short, young fellow. You’ve changed a lot in the time since you came. Besides, there’s a difference between the quality of your cabinets and the quality of your soul.” He laughed. “Poor Destrin. First-class soul, but…” Perlot shrugged.
“I don’t think you can craft good wood without order in your soul,” I added.
“Nor do I, boy. But an orderly soul doesn’t guarantee good work. Having an orderly soul and being an order-master are two different propositions.” He stood up. “What will you do about that chair in the window?”
“Nothing. It’s your design.” I grinned. “Now… if I can find something as good-and different…”
“You mean that, don’t you?”
I nodded.
“Give Destrin my best, Lerris. Do what you can while you’re here.” He stood up abruptly.
With that dismissal, I also stood, but did take the time for a last look at the chair before stepping out into the spring warmth.
Gairloch waited patiently, as always.
Wheeee… eeee…
“I know. You don’t get enough exercise, but I try, and one of these days, we’ll take a longer trip. Just be glad that you’re not hauling wood for the mills. You could belong to a carrier and not to a poor and impoverished woodcrafter.”
Gairloch didn’t seem impressed. So I patted him on the shoulder after I mounted. He didn’t flatter me, honest beast.
Perlot’s comments about Bostric bothered me. While I wished I could avoid it, before long I would have to talk to Brettel. Destrin continued to fail, and nothing I could do would help but prolong his failing.
XLVI
TEEEL… LEEELL… AN unfamiliar bird warbles from beyond the olive groves.
Sccuuuffff… Soft steps cross the graveled courtyard leading to the cavalry stables.
A single torch flickers in the holder by the stable door, where a tired youngster wearing the greens of the autarch snores softly.
As the steps pause, a woman with long dark unbound hair looks down at the youngster. She wears a peasant dress, yet carries a bulging field pack whose straps press into the lithe muscles of her shoulders.
After a sad nod, she eases around the sentry and into the darkness of the stable, counting the stalls until she reaches the third.
Whuffllll…
“… Easy… easy…”
In the darkness, the dark-haired woman eases the pack off her shoulders and lifts the two soft leather bags, and the heavy powder within each, out of the field pack she has carried from the engineering barracks. Next she checks the empty set of saddlebags before placing one bag of powder in each saddlebag, carefully fastening the clasps. The map she leaves tucked inside the waistband of the skirt.
She walks through the darkness to the end of the stable, where she eases the field pack into a corner. While it will certainly be discovered in a day or two, how and why it was placed there will not matter. Her squad will be leaving to face the Freetown rebels in the morning.
Her steps, even more silently, carry her back out past her mount and past the still-snoring stable guard. In time, she slips into her own room, where she lights a single candle, ignoring the woman on the occupied narrow cot. She rips off the peasant blouse and skirt and immerses herself in the tub of chill water she drew after the evening meal.
“At this time of night, Krystal?” asks a sleepy-eyed blond woman, sitting up and swinging her legs onto the floor.
“Never… again… no matter what.”
“What?”
“It doesn’t matter.” The dark-haired woman ja
bs a hand toward her own cot. “See those scissors?”
“Yes. Why?”
“Would you get them?”
“You’re not…”
“I am. Like I said, never again, not even for the best of causes.” She has dried herself and is pulling on bleached and faded undergarments.
“You aren’t making sense.”
“I am. For the first time, I am.” Her lips quirk into a genuine smile as the long black tresses fall away.
XLVII
WITH THE FLOWERS in the street boxes in bloom, and a brisk breeze from the north, the walk along the avenue was pleasant enough, even if I felt Bostric was always about to lurch into me. His feet always threatened not to follow his body- or the street ahead.
Destrin was back in the shop muttering over a simple box-just a box for Murran, the wagon-master who carried spices and silver along the north-south road from Fenard through Kyphros and all the way to Horgland on the South Sea. He would probably still be muttering and coughing when we returned.
No single street in Fenard bore sign, but everyone named them-the avenue, the street of jewelers, the north road. I’d learned the names of many just by listening, but as for the side streets, the alleys, I doubted anyone who hadn’t spent a lifetime in Fenard or a great deal of time loitering would ever know all the names.
The names changed. I overheard Deirdre and Bostric talking about when the grocers’ lane had been the place of old inns. But the avenue was the avenue, the only really straight and perfectly-maintained street in Fenard. That might have had something to do with the fact that it ran from the prefect’s palace past the market square and straight to the south gate.
Because the day was pleasant, and because I wasn’t in the mood for doing detail work on the writing desk, not with Destrin in good enough health, temporarily anyway, and because Deirdre was sniffling and sneezing from the early flowers blooming, I had volunteered to wander past the market square to see if the cloth merchants from Horgland had arrived.
Bostric, of course, was happy not to be in the shop, caught between Destrin’s complaints and my demands.
The Magic of Recluce Page 33
