Colors of Chaos

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.