Scholar

12

Quaeryt sat alone in the public room of the Tankard on Mardi morning, finishing off what the serving girl had called a ham-fry-stale bread wrapped around a slice of cheese and a slice of ham and dipped in egg batter, and then fried until it was deep brown. For a breakfast, accompanied by a lager, it was adequate.

“You seen any scholars, swamp lily?” boomed a deep nasal voice from outside the public room.

“And if I had?”

“You’d tell me. If I find you’ve put up one, I’ll close you down.”

“You try it, and not even your Namer-damned uncle will save you. And that’s if you have better fortune with the next scholar than you did with the first.”

Abruptly, a crashing sound followed.

“I’m so sorry … swamp lily. Accidents do happen. Just remember that.” A cruel laugh followed the cynical words.

Quaeryt recognized the voice, and the cruelty behind it. He forced himself to finish the ham-fry and the last of the lager-and he left a copper for the serving girl.

When he did leave the public room, he paused for only an instant to glance back toward the writing stand. The gray lady was carefully picking up pieces of blue ceramic, although the silver vase appeared untouched. He concealed a wince and quickly headed toward the stairs. The patroller had destroyed a vase that was worth perhaps a hundred golds to a collector, one of beauty that could never be replaced.

Once in the small third-floor room, he folded those now-dry garments he wasn’t wearing and eased them into the canvas bag, along with the razor, strop, and soap. Then he made his way back down to the main level. The gray lady, the broken vase, and the silver one were nowhere in sight when he left the Tankard.

He walked toward the harbor and the piers with the gait, if limping, of a man who had a destination and a purpose, watching for patrollers, and then picked the third pier, because that was the one without any green uniforms in sight. Unfortunately, there were also no new ships ported there. Using his concealment shield-and transport wagons rolling onto the piers-to get past the patrollers watching the base of the other two piers, he checked the other ships in port, but the three new arrivals were headed south and east.

With no immediate transport in sight, he slipped off the pier, past a pair of patrollers, neither of whom happened to be the nasal-voiced one. In fact, Quaeryt hadn’t encountered the obnoxious and overbearing one since he’d overheard him at the inn.

The incident with the vase bothered Quaeryt, in some ways far more than the attempt by the nasal-voiced patroller to assault Quaeryt. Was that because the patroller was abusing those whom he was charged to protect? Or because he would destroy an ancient object of beauty without a second thought as a means to pursue a personal agenda?

Since there weren’t any ships going in the direction he needed to travel, his next priority was to find a place where he could image some coppers, somewhere that had copper wastes or scraps in an old building or the ground around it. With that preparation, he’d found that imaging coppers was not too difficult. Sometimes he could manage silvers. The one time he’d tried golds, he’d nearly died, and he wasn’t about to try that again.

Once he was well clear of the harborfront and the piers, he turned south, toward where the Acliano River ran northwest from the south side of the harbor, thinking that there might be some locations suitable for his imaging somewhere along the riverfront. Usually, there were some places that handled metals, or at least a ruined building or two. He kept to the streets that were better traveled, and by late morning he was walking northwest along the riverside road. While many of the buildings had seen better days, almost all were still in use, from a factorage dealing in oils to a lumber and timber yard, both with their own small river docks for unloading barges, to a newer stone building where loaders were rolling barrels off a barge.

He walked almost a mille before finally coming to a ruined and roofless structure surrounded by a palisade fence with gaps here and there, if mostly too small for him to slip through. The large square chimneys suggested it had been some sort of metalworking facility, although they were but half the height they once had likely been, and the space between the remaining walls was filled with grasses and weeds, mostly tan and dried from the heat of a long summer. He kept walking, nodding to a teamster guiding a wagon pulled by four dray horses, until he saw a wider gap in the fence.

Just to be on the safe side, he stepped behind a twisted oak in front of the battered palisade fence and raised a concealment screen. Only then did he move toward the gap in the fence. Once through, he surveyed the ruins and the hint of a path toward the nearest chimney.

He took several steps. His trousers brushed the tinder-dry weeds, and they crackled.

“Someone’s coming! Run!” The voice was low, but high-pitched, like a child’s.

He didn’t see whoever had raised the alarm, only the swaying of high grasses and weeds between the tumbled-down foundation walls before him.

Quaeryt stopped and waited, listening, but the children had apparently hurried between the walls and hidden downhill, possibly under the sagging wharf whose end barely protruded over the muddy water of the river. He stepped into another set of shadows beside a section of stone and yellow-brick wall that remained and released the concealment shield. He tried imaging a copper, and one appeared in his hand.

Nodding, he continued until he had fourteen in his wallet, and he was beginning to sweat profusely. Then he wiped his forehead and stood in the shade until he was cooler. Only then did he raise the concealment shield and retrace his steps through the fallen stone, weeds, and grass and back through the fence. He stood behind the oak once more, waiting until no wagons or pedestrians were nearby before releasing the concealment and stepping out onto the edge of the road to continue his walk.

At the next street heading north, he crossed the road, waiting for a coach and then hurrying across to avoid a collier’s wagon. After covering less than twenty yards, he could see that the street he traveled was one catering to cloth factors of various sorts.

He still wondered about the one patroller’s fixation on and hatred of scholars. Would someone at the local Scholars’ House be able to shed some light on that?

After walking another block, he saw an older man adjusting the shutters on the side windows of a small shop that looked to be a lace factorage. When he neared the graying and stout factor, he stopped and waited for the other to finish.

“What can I do for you?” The man did not smile.

“Pardon me,” Quaeryt began. “Could you tell me the way to the Scholars’ House here in Nacliano?”

The factor frowned, and his eyes narrowed. “You’re a stranger here, aren’t you?”

“From Solis.”

“A word of advice. Don’t be asking about scholars here in Nacliano. You want to know why, just walk some three blocks north and two west, and that’ll tell you.” The factor nodded brusquely, turned, and left Quaeryt standing outside the shop.

The scholar managed not to gape. He’d traveled much of Telaryn over the years, and he’d never gotten that kind of answer.

Five blocks farther on, he understood better the factor’s words. What had been the Scholars’ House was a blackened ruin, and clearly had been for at least several years. The only thing that identified it as such was the cracked granite plaque-stone, only half of which remained, with only the chiseled letters SCHOLAR left. Scavengers had taken everything except the core of the walls and timbers so blackened that they were useless.

Quaeryt noticed something else as well-an abandoned anomen across the street, but the anomen had not been gutted and salvaged the way the Scholars’ House had, perhaps because there was at least some respect for a place of worship of the Nameless, even if it had been the anomen of the scholars. For a time, he stood in the shade cast by the tinsmith’s shop and watched the various passersby. To a person, not a one looked at either the anomen or the ruined Scholars’ House, as if neither existed.

Lord Bhayar could be skeptical of both choristers and scholars, but Quaeryt knew that Bhayar would have been displeased with both the patroller and the apparent public hatred of scholars, if only because such public hatred too often led to unrest and dissatisfaction with the ruler.

Quaeryt turned back toward the harbor-and in the direction of the Tankard, he hoped. He needed to listen and watch-and think-while he waited for a ship.