Colors of Chaos

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

“Please join me. There’s little enough point in your standing out here in the heat, and I don’t want to have my daughter attacking my lack of courtesy.” The balding blond trader laughed.

  Cerryl stepped out of the heat, past the silent houseman Soaris, who nodded, and into the comparative cool, following the older man to the front sitting room-the one graced by the portrait of Leyladin’s mother. After laying the flowers on the side table, Cerryl took the settee.

  “How long have you been back?” asked Layel, settling into an upholstered armchair.

  “A little less than an eight-day.”

  “I imagine you’re finding that Fairhaven is not quite the city you left, though it has changed but little.” A slight smile creased the factor’s lips.

  “More that some folk I left are not quite as I recalled,” Cerryl admitted guardedly. “I don’t find that Fairhaven itself has changed, and it compares most favorably with what I have seen elsewhere.”

  “People often make the city-or a person.”

  “You mean Leyladin? I was looking for her before I even knew who she was.”

  “She told me. Can’t say as I understand, but she has always been the one who followed the shaded path. Wertel-he would have been a factor had he been born a cobbler-and Aliaria and Nierlia… well, they’ve enjoyed having their own households.”

  Cerryl tried to place the names. Wertel had to be Leyladin’s older brother. She had mentioned her two sisters, but he hadn’t recalled cither’s name until Layel had mentioned them.

  “You two are in a difficult position,” Layel said.

  “A Black and a White in love, you mean?” Cerryl frowned. “I suppose it’s also created problems for you.”

  The factor leaned forward in the big chair, eyes more firmly on Cerryl. “More here than elsewhere. Wertel trades on the impression of connections, and you are not unknown-or unrespected-but he runs things in Lydiar and not in Fairhaven. Duke Estalin depends on mages, and Sedelos favors trade.” Layel glanced toward the door. “Did you hear a coach?”

  “No. I don’t think so.” Cerryl paused, considering the other’s Words. “You seem to be saying that the Guild is not so favorable to traders as it should be.”

  “We pay higher tariffs than those who trade from other lands, yet they use the same roads and are free to enter the city on payment of a mere pittance. We can enter any city, but our costs are higher, as our tariffs are.” Layel blotted his forehead with a blue cotton cloth. “Then, there are those factors who appear more favored than others, if you take my meaning.”

  “I’d heard such,” Cerryl said carefully, “but never seen it.” He paused, thinking of how Sterol had used Kesrik’s purported attack on Cerryl as an excuse to exile Kesrik’s trader father. “Or perhaps I saw such and did not recognize it.”

  “It is there, if observed carefully.”

  Cerryl could suddenly sense a gathering presence, a bright darkness, and he stood, gathering the roses to him. “She’s almost here.”

  The slightest of frowns appeared on the trader’s face. “I’d not heard the coach.”

  Cerryl picked up the flowers, eased toward the door, and was at the foyer when the sound of hoofs on stone came through the window.

  “Not even a glass.” Layel stood more slowly.

  Cerryl hurried down the walk and then to the side courtyard where the coach had pulled to a stop. The door flew open, even before he had quite reached the mounting block.

  Standing on the whitened granite block, Leyladin looked down at Cerryl, then at the roses. “Flowers… you never brought flowers before.”

  “I missed you.” He felt himself flushing, looking into the dark green eyes, seeing the reddish blonde hair, the fair skin, and, most of all, the order and the understanding behind the fine features.

  “You’re sweet.” The healer looked at her father, who stood a pace or so behind the mage. “He is, you know.”

  “He’s also got some wit. We were talking while we waited for you.” Layel looked at Cerryl. “Go ahead. Embrace her. Kiss her. You’re as much consorted as you can be.”

  This time, Leyladin flushed. “Father, I can’t believe you.”

  “Too old to deceive myself, or let you do it.” The trader grinned.

  Cerryl stepped toward the mounting block, and she stepped down into his arms, and they did embrace, ignoring the late-afternoon heat.

  How long Cerryl wasn’t sure, except he heard Layel clearing his throat.

  “Now that you two have greeted each other, I’m for eating. Meridis has doubtless scraped something together.”

  “Give me a moment to wash off the worst of the road dust,” Leyladin offered as she and Cerryl separated. “I’m hungry, too. I won’t be long.”

  “Not with your mage waiting, I’d wager.”

  “Father…” Still blushing, she took the roses as Cerryl handed them to her again. She and Cerryl held hands and walked toward the front door.

  Both Meridis and Soaris stood in the entry hall beyond the foyer.

  “Meridis… he brought roses.” Leyladin smiled. “Could you… while I wash up?” She extended the roses to the older woman.

  “I’ll put them in the good crystal vase, where you always like them,” said Meridis. “Now, don’t be dallying. The supper’s ready.”

  “I won’t.” The healer reached out and squeezed Cerryl’s hand. “Cerryl, Father, I’ll meet you in the dining hall. I won’t be long.”

  “I believe I have heard words like that before.” Layel’s words were gentle, teasing.

  “You have, but I won’t be.” With the last word, she slipped down the hall and out of sight.

  Cerryl followed Layel through the sitting room.

  “You felt her, didn’t you?” asked the trader. “She said you two could do that. So close, and yet you dare not have children.”

  Cerryl winced. “It might kill her.”

  “She told me such, and she will have none but you.”

  “I’ll have none but her.”

  They had barely reached the table when Leyladin appeared, still wearing her green trousers and silk shirt, with the black vest that seemed even darker than black itself in the fading light of day and the glow cast by the oil lamps in their wall sconces.

  “I said I would not be long.”

  “And so you did.” Layel seated himself at the head, and Cerryl and Leyladin sat on each side, across from each other.

  As Layel poured the cool white wine into the three goblets, Cerryl looked across the table into Leyladin’s dark green eyes. “How was your trip back?”

  “The highway was almost empty.”

  “More and more like that these days.” Layel nodded morosely.

  “Trade is bad?”

  “So little I’d not be calling it trade. Enough of that.” He raised his goblet. “To both of you being home.”

  “To being home,” echoed Leyladin.

  Cerryl raised his goblet with a smile, without words, and they drank.

  Meridis set three platters on the table. “The cold spiced fowl and the chilled pearapples and the riced beans. Nothing to be making you hot on a warm evening.”

  “What will you be doing now, Cerryl?” Layel eased the fowl platter toward his daughter.

  “The High Wizard gave me some duties to carry out for Overmage Kinowin, probably until he can find somewhere distant to send me.” Cerryl went on to explain in very general terms his assignments. “… and that means reporting every day on what the Blacks are doing with that ship.”

  “It truly moves against the wind?” Layel frowned. “It does, and sometimes faster than a normal ship.”

  “A ship such as that, well, many be the traders who’d find a use for such.”

  “I cannot see how Recluce would allow a chaos engine, even one bound in black iron,” ventured Leyladin before taking a bite of the fowl.

  “In time, in time, a better ship will turn any trader’s mind,” mumbled Layel, “and your White brethren forget that the Bla
ck ones are traders first and order mages second.”

  Traders first and mages second. “And you think the Guild puts magery first and trade second?”

  “Power first, magery second, and trade a poor third,” suggested Layel. “Yet trade builds power. That the Black ones have discovered. All power is built on coins, and coins come from goods, and goods can but be sold through trade.”

  Cerryl ate a mouthful of the sweetened and chilled pearapples, thinking about Layel’s words, about all the golds he had seen in Gallos and even in Spidlaria.

  “Father would have been a great lord elsewhere.” Leyladin laughed. “Wertel will make him one yet, from all he does in Lydiar, over Father’s protestations.”

  “Fairhaven is my home,” grumbled the trader. “Yet only the old overmage understands how what I do benefits her.”

  “Kinowin?”

  “Aye, but he’ll be gone in a handful of years, and then that spawn of Muneat’s dead brother will turn the city over to Muneat and Jiolt.”

  “Anya?”

  “That’s the one. She plays Jiolt like…” Layel shook his head in disgust. “Muneat sees through her, but he’s near on a score of years older than I am, and his boy Devo-well, he couldn’t count golds with his fingers.”

  “Anya tried to play Jeslek.” Cerryl glanced across the table. “And he’s dead,” Leyladin pointed out. “Sterol uses her. I don’t think he’s taken in.”

  “She’ll find a way to turn the Guild against him,” predicted Leyladin. “That’s why Jeslek was trying to make that smith in Diev your problem.”

  “So is Sterol.” Cerryl nodded slowly. “I have to follow the smith with the glass and report every day.”

  “She’s clever,” mused Leyladin. “If you don’t keep track, then you’ll be in trouble. If you do, and everyone knows it, then Sterol will have to do something.”

  “I worry about that,” Cerryl admitted. “We can’t do anything tonight. Not about Anya. How are Aliaria and Nierlia? I need to see them.” The green eyes danced. “They should meet Cerryl.”

  “You’re going to be an aunt again. Nierlia says this one will be a girl and she’ll name her after you.”

  The hint of darkness crossed the healer’s face, followed by a smile. “I’ll spoil her.”

  “Not any more than Nierlia will,” suggested Layel. “Oh… and Aliaria’s oldest-I can never remember her name-Aliaria has her taking guitar lessons from some music master who claims he’s from Delapra…”

  “… she doesn’t have any rhythm…”

  “… Aliaria thinks it will improve her chances for a good consort…”

  “… barely over a half-score years…”

  Before Cerryl knew it, the small talk had drifted into silence. Layel stretched and yawned almost ostentatiously. “I think I’ll be leaving. I need to write a scroll to Wertel before the evening’s over so that it can go on the morning post coach.” He stood. “You might find the front room more comfortable, but you two are young, and you’ll find whatever suits you.”

  Meridis appeared, as though she had been waiting. “Be best if I could clean all this before I have to burn every lamp in the place.”

  Leyladin laughed. “We’re being directed.”

  “No one directs you, Daughter!” called Layel from the door to his study.

  The two mages-White and Black-stood and walked into the sitting room, where they paused. Meridis had arranged the roses in a crystal vase on the low table beneath the portrait of Leyladin’s mother.

  “You don’t mind that they’re there?” the healer asked.

  “No… why?”

  “Mother loved roses. I haven’t been so good as I should.”

  “Wherever you would like them.”

  Leyladin touched his hand, and they crossed the entry hall into the darker front room, where not a single lamp was lit against the growing late-summer dusk. They sat on the long settee that faced the open windows, and the cooler evening breeze wafted around them.

  “How is Estalin’s son?”

  “He’s fine, for now. He’ll need healers all his life, at times. He’s not that strong.”

  “I’m glad you could leave.”

  “I don’t know as I could. I told Sedelos that there was nothing to be gained by my staying and that he could summon me were I needed. I knew you were coming home, and I wanted to see you.”

  “Sterol is High Wizard now.”

  “Anya is the one to watch.”

  “I know.” Cerryl refrained from repeating Anya’s words about children.

  “We can talk about the Guild tomorrow.” Leyladin paused. “Can you stay… here?”

  “For now,” he said.

  “I meant at night.”

  “Yes.” He grinned in the dimness. “I’m glad you want me to.”

  “You really can?”

  “Kinowin almost ordered me to. He said my nights were free and he expected me not to waste them in the Halls.”

  “He said more than that.”

  Cerryl nodded. “He said a mage’s days were too short.”

  Leyladin’s arms were around him. “They can’t be. They can’t be You can’t be like Myral and Kinowin. You have to use more order and less chaos. You can’t leave me. I won’t let you.”

  His eyes misted, and for a time he held her in the growing darkness of the front room.

  “I meant it,” she finally whispered.

  “I know. You’ll have to help.”

  “Any help you need.”

  He tightened his embrace, then brushed her lips with his.

  “Bringing the flowers… that was sweet. Thank you.”

  Silently Cerryl thanked Kinowin.

  “And thank Kinowin for me, too.” Her dark green eyes danced, brighter than any lamp, as she reached for his hand to lead him to a silk-hung bedchamber-one he had but seen in a glass.

  CXLII

  Cerryl stepped into his quarters at the back of the rear Hall. He sniffed. The scent of trilia and sandalwood was faint but unmistakable. What had Anya been seeking?

  He cast his senses across the small room, the space he used only for work in the days since Leyladin had returned from Lydiar, but could detect no concentration of chaos or even of order. He shook his head. Perhaps for the first time in his life, he truly had no secrets, and the redhead clearly thought he did.

  He closed the door and sat at the desk, studying the screeing glass for a moment before concentrating on finding the smith and his vessel. When the silver mists cleared, the glass showed Dorrin’s ship anchored in a rough bay off a low and marshy point of land. Where?

  Cerryl scratched the back of his head, then tried again.

  It took Cerryl most of the remainder of the morning to discover that the Black ship lay off the southwestern tip of the isle of Recluce, nowhere near even a town. There were several tents and what looked to be several dwellings or structures under construction.

  He tightened his lips. What exactly the ship’s movement meant he didn’t know, but Kinowin needed to know as well. Perhaps the overmage might have some ideas. If the smith and his followers were building a town or another port…

  Cerryl pursed his head, finding it hard to believe that the smith had done so much so quickly. Then, this Dorrin had helped destroy half the forces sent into Spidlar, killed Jeslek, built an engine that moved a ship against the wind, and escaped the blockade. What was building a town in a few days compared to that?

  Letting the image fade, Cerryl massaged his neck and forehead before heading to see Kinowin. It was almost noon by the time he stepped into Kinowin’s room amid the gathering of purple hangings.

  “You have a disturbed look.” Kinowin touched the purple blotch on his cheek, almost absently.

  “The smith has moved his ship to the southern end of the accursed isle.”

  “Away from Land’s End. Some might say that is well.”

  “It lies at anchor in a small bay. There are tents on the land and the beginnings of buildings.�
�

  “A town for him and his followers, you think?” Kinowin smiled faintly.

  “I would guess so, but it is too early to tell.”

  “Then it is too early for me to tell the High Wizard aught except that the ship has been moved. One should not disturb His Mightiness with mere speculation.”

  Cerryl raised his eyebrows at the heavy irony in the overmage’s voice. “Speculation.”

  “Ah, yes, speculation.” Kinowin made a sound halfway between a laugh and a snort, and for a moment he looked cadaverous. “I suggested to the High Wizard that this vessel might prove useful for trade, and he suggested that he had little time to worry about what might be when he was gathering a force to break the latest Duke of Hydlen to rein.”

  “The latest?” How many have there been in the last few years?

  “Another cousin. Afabar, I believe. He is from Asula, one of the ancient towns that claims the purest line of descent. He also has the support of the traders of Worrak, Pyrdya, and Renklaar. There are few traders of coins outside of those cities.”

  “He refuses-the new duke-to pay tariffs?”

  “He has not said anything-by messenger, by scroll, or in any other fashion. Fairhaven does not exist for him. You recall Derka?” Kinowin leaned back in the chair.

  “He went back to Hydolar.”

  “The Council made him mage adviser, but he declined and vanished-quickly-and they sent Elsinot.”

  “The new duke killed him somehow?”

  “How did you guess?”

  “Mountain cats don’t lose their claws,” Cerryl said dryly.

  “So Sterol does not wish to deal with mere speculation at the moment.” Kinowin’s mouth quirked. “I will tell him that the ship moved and that you will watch closely. I will also tell him you are out inspecting the gates this afternoon. I suggest you do so, and that after you do, you make your presence known to one of the gate mages.”

  Cerryl nodded. “I should give Sterol no excuses and no offense.”

  “Not until you must.”

  “Also… Anya’s been in my quarters when I’ve been gone.”

  “That surprises me even less than the movement of the smith’s vessel.”

  “I should ignore her but leave nothing that I would not wish Sterol to see?”