Natural Ordermage

XCI

Sixday morning began as any other morning had over the past eightday at the duty desk, except that Rahl was paired with Carlyse, the older red-haired chaos mage-guard who sparred verbally with most of the men.

Her first words to Rahl were delivered softly and with a smile. “You were a pretty boy before Luba, weren’t you?”

Her words did not so much take him off guard as bring up the image of Deybri saying, “You’re too much of a pretty boy.”

When he didn’t answer immediately, Carlyse laughed, not mockingly. “You’ve had to live with that, haven’t you?”

Living with memories and thoughtless words was just a small unpleasantness in life. That Rahl knew, but he could still feel a torrent of rage that the words had stirred up. Had Puvort gone after him because he was good-looking? Had the magisters dismissed him because his looks had convinced them that he couldn’t learn or think?

“That’s the advantage of being a mage-guard, Rahl,” Carlyse went on conversationally. “Your looks don’t matter nearly so much. The uniform and what you accomplish do.” She glanced at what he had already written. “Good hand, too. Mind if I ask how you ended up as a mage-guard?”

“I was a clerk, and I saw something someone didn’t want me to, but I didn’t think they knew I’d seen it. I was wrong, and I woke up working in Luba, without any memories at first. The overseers discovered I could write and handle numbers, and they made me a checker. Then Taryl found me and told me I’d been dosed with something. He made me a mage-clerk and started training me.” Rahl shrugged.

“You were a mage, but you were a clerk?” Carlyse raised her finely drawn left eyebrow.

“I had limited abilities, and Recluce tossed me out because they said I wasn’t trainable. I got a job as a clerk here. I did register, of course. But Taryl discovered that Recluce hadn’t been training me right.”

“He’s good at that. He did something like that with Saelyt, and some others.” Carlyse looked up as Captain Gheryk neared the desk. “Nothing happening, ser.”

“That’s always good.” The captain paused. “Portmaster says we may be getting another Jeranyi ship. If you’d pass that along to the pier mages.”

“Yes, ser.”

Gheryk glanced at Rahl. “You finding your way around, Rahl?”

“Yes, ser.”

“Good.” With a warm smile and a nod, Gheryk turned and headed toward his study.

“Two Jeranyi ships here at the same time…that’s always more work.”

“Because the crews are disorderly?”

“Half of them act as if they don’t care if they live or die, so long as they get what they want right now. We end up flaming or sending one or two to Luba or the quarries nearly every single time they port.”

“Is that a lot worse than the ships from other lands?”

“They all have problems at times, but the Jeranyi make the others look like scared schoolchildren.” Carlyse stood. “Just hold the desk. You know enough. I want to tell Suvynt about the Jeranyi while he’s still at the pier gate. I won’t be long.”

While he sat alone at the duty desk, Rahl struggled to deal with the anger raised by Carlyse’s question. Why did everyone have expectations based on what they thought they saw?

“Ser…?”

Rahl looked up to see a youth, barely old enough to have the first hints of a beard, walking toward the duty desk. His accent was Hamorian, but not from a region Rahl recognized. “Yes? Can I help you?”

“I’m supposed to do something like get a bracelet that says…I don’t know.” The young man was trembling.

“Let’s start at the beginning,” Rahl said, extending his own order-senses and discovering the weak, but definite, hints of chaos, around the youth. “What’s your name? Were you born in Hamor?”

“Kiehyt, ser. I was born…ah…in Cienta. That’s near Heldya.”

“Who told you to come here, and why?”

“I was working in the bakery, I mean, we came to Swartheld ’cause my uncle has a bakery, and the drought burned out the old place…ground wasn’t that good anyway…”

Rahl listened politely.

“…and Uncle Jeahat, he couldn’t get the coals to light, and I just sort of looked at them, and they did, and he got scared and told me to come here and never come back there, and that if I didn’t, he’d tell the mage-guards, and you’d send me to the quarries.”

“No one is sending you to the quarries.” Rahl hoped that was so, because the youth didn’t look strong enough to lift a shovel, let alone massive stones. “We do need to…take care of some things, but you’ll have to wait a few moments for another mage-guard to help.”

Carlyse showed up within moments, looking from the youth to Rahl.

“Kiehyt. He’s a chaos type,” Rahl explained. “Not too strong yet, and he lit the oven coals in the bakery, and his uncle threatened him with the quarries and worse if he didn’t come here. That much reads true.”

Carlyse studied the youth, then nodded. “He’ll have to go to school in Diancyr. He’s older than most of them, but that’s not a problem.”

Kiehyt looked from Rahl to Carlyse and back to Rahl.

“You could be a type of mage,” Rahl said, “but you need to go to a special school.”

“I know my letters…I do. Don’t put me in gaol.”

“You need to learn more,” Rahl said.

“No one’s going to put you in gaol,” added Carlyse.

“Come with me, Kiehyt.” Carlyse’s voice was gentle. Then she looked at Rahl. “I’ll be with Saelyt beyond the undercaptain’s office if anything comes up.”

Rahl’s anger had been submerged by his concerns for the very frightened Kiehyt, but once the youth left with Carlyse, even more questions burned through his thoughts. Why did people just throw out people who were different? Or those who didn’t-or couldn’t-obey every word slavishly? Was there really that much difference between Puvort and the boy’s uncle?

He didn’t have answers to his questions, but he was far calmer when Carlyse returned, after completing arrangements for quartering the youth and having him sent south to Diancyr, a small town on the outskirts of Cigoerne where the mage-clerk school was located. After that, the rest of the morning and early afternoon went without incident. So far as he could tell, the duty mage-guard was basically a coordinator, backup, registry-receiver, and record-keeper combined, which explained to Rahl why the duty was rotated so that every mage-guard only stood duty-either day or night-only about once every two eightdays.

Rahl had noticed that he had not seen much of Undercaptain Craelyt, and it was a surprise when the undercaptain appeared at the duty desk in late afternoon with another mage-guard.

“Ser.” Rahl stood.

“Rahl, I thought you ought to meet Myala, since she’ll be the one you’ll be partnered with for the next few eightdays.” Craelyt offered a warm smile, stepping back and inclining his head to a wiry brunette with a sharpish nose and intense gray eyes. Chaos lurked behind moderate shields-chaos and controlled anger.

“I’m pleased to meet you,” Rahl offered. “Captain Gheryk had high praise for you. He also told me to listen to you.”

Myala nodded politely but not effusively. “I’ll meet you at the duty desk right after early breakfast on eightday.”

“I’ll be there.”

“It’s good to meet you.” She stepped back and glanced at Craelyt. “Thank you, Undercaptain. Now, if you’ll excuse me.”

“You’re excused, not that I have to, since you’re not on duty.” Craelyt smiled warmly once again, waiting until Myala had departed before turning back to Rahl. “She’s all to the point, Rahl, but a good mage-guard. She doesn’t stay around here much when she’s off duty, but that’s understandable, since she has two daughters and a consort who like to see her.”

Craelyt offered a parting nod and slipped away soundlessly.

Rahl sat and read the station manual again, then stood and stretched, then riffled through the duty log, reading some of the older entries.

“Rahl…you’re getting jittery.” Carlyse gestured. “Go inspect the piers. See if that other Jeranyi ship has come in yet. If it has, take a good look, and then tell Suvynt and come report to me.”

“I can do that.” He rose quickly.

“You don’t have to be that enthusiastic.” But she smiled.

Once outside the mage-guard station, Rahl stretched, then turned toward the piers. The afternoon was warm and muggy, as if the moisture dropped by the intermittent rains had never quite left.

Pier one was almost filled, if with smaller vessels, mainly from Austra and Nordla, and vendors and teamsters were everywhere, but matters were orderly. Rahl nodded to Hegyr, who was the roving pier mage, as they passed.

On pier two, there were fewer vessels, including the Wavecrest at the far end. Before Rahl reached the Jeranyi ship, he approached a wagon and team loaded with amphorae and barrels beside a comparatively large but four-masted and square-rigged Sarronnese ship. He could smell something pungent on the light breeze blowing off the harbor, something like vinegar.

“Friggin’ careless sow’s ass…idiot offspring of a gelded boar…” One of the teamsters was swearing and tossing heavy pieces of pottery into his wagon. He glanced up and broke off the stream of epithets. “Just upset, ser. Hoist crew dumped the amphora right on the stone…said it was our fault, left it for us to clean up.”

“What was in it?”

“Some kind of special vinegar.” The teamster’s eyes were watering.

Rahl could feel the stinging in his own eyes as well. “That’s unfortunate, but you’re doing a good job cleaning it up.” He nodded. That was one of the responsibilities of the teamsters. They could be fined-or worse-if they left garbage or refuse on the piers. So could a ship’s captain.

The teamster nodded, then went back to work, mumbling in a lower voice. “…good job…frigging good job him…”

Rahl was slightly annoyed, but he couldn’t blame the man. Besides, he was trying to think about where he’d smelled that before. Where had that been? He frowned.

Pickles! There had been barrels and barrels of Feyn River pickles in the warehouses at the Nylan Merchant Association, and they’d come off a Jeranyi vessel, and Daelyt had been evasive about why a Jeranyi vessel had been carrying so many barrels of something with as little value as pickles. That had bothered him then, and it bothered him even more with what Jyrolt and Gheryk had said-and what Dalya had said the other night. But how could he find out if that had been true?

He was still thinking about barrels of pickles when he finished his tour of the piers and returned to the duty desk.

“Anything of interest?” asked Carlyse.

“Nothing besides a few broken amphorae of special vinegar. The teamster had them mostly cleaned up when I got there. There’s still only the one Jeranyi ship at the piers.”

“That’s fine by me.”

Gheryk came by several times, but only nodded, and Rahl was more than happy to leave the duty desk when Carlyse was relieved. He was quick to make his way to the mess. His stomach was growling in protest.

Through the first part of the meal, he kept thinking about vinegar and pickles, and finally decided to ask what had been fretting at him.

“Caersyn,” Rahl began, “if we see something or remember it, or want to cross-check, is there any way to look at the manifests that are given to the tariff enumerators?”

For a moment, Caersyn’s face had no expression. “What do you mean?”

“Well…the enumerators don’t inspect every bale and barrel. What if we discover that a ship has been declaring, say, raw wool, but it’s only raw wool on the outside of the bale, and finished cloth on the inside. It might be a good idea to see how many times that ship has been declaring low-value things…”

“Oh…I see what you mean. I don’t know.” He turned. “Do you, Woralyt?”

The heavier graying mage-guard nodded. “We’ve had to do that occasionally. Not in a while, though. We can go over to the enumerators and ask to review manifests…but you have to do it on your own time, not duty time, and you can take notes, but you have to leave the manifest there.”

“I just wondered.”

“That’s how,” replied Woralyt.

Caersyn nodded in agreement and took a long swallow from his mug.

Rahl decided he had to look at some of the manifests of a year ago…as soon as he could. He also needed to keep practicing Taryl’s methods for expanding and improving his use of order-skills. He could sense that his shields were getting as close to what they had been, if not even stronger, and he was beginning to regain some of what he had lost, particularly in a deeper sensing of order and chaos; but he still only had the most general sense of weather and no sense at all of what lay beneath the surface of the ground. And he certainly couldn’t bind anything together with order.