The White Order

XXVII

AFTER HELPING RINFUR move the wagon and harness the team, Cerryl waved as the teamster eased the wagon out of the courtyard. Then he swallowed as Rinfur and the team disappeared behind the buildings of the side street leading to the square.

Finally, after a deep breath, he hoisted his pack and slipped into Fasse’s shop. The crafter stood to one side of the front door, surveying the street outside and the handful of passersby.

“Ser? Could you tell me the way to Tellis the scrivener?”

“What? Oh. .” Fasse half-turned. “That be right. Dylert be sending you there.” The crafter fingered his narrow ginger mustache, then lifted and dropped his angular shoulders. “Tellis? His place be across the square and four long blocks up the lesser artisans’ way.”

Cerryl wanted to ask Fasse who or what the lesser artisans were, but the cabinet maker’s continued glances toward the square were enough to discourage questions. “Thank you, ser. I appreciated the bed and the food. Very much.”

“Be nothing, young fellow. You be doing the same for another some day.” Fasse glanced toward the main avenue again. “Best you be off. I be awaitin’ a mage.” The crafter gestured toward the polished white oak chest that stood to his left.

Cerryl’s eyes took in the chest, waist high, and finished with something that glistened like fresh oil but was just as clearly not.

“Have to be varnished for them. All they touch. . they destroy in time. The varnish helps.” Fasse looked down the avenue to his right again.

“Thank you.” Cerryl nodded and shouldered his pack.

“High price for managing chaos. .” murmured the crafter.

Cerryl concealed a frown as he stepped through the open door and onto the raised stone sidewalk, still marveling at the very idea. In Hrisbarg, sometimes the shopkeepers put down boards during the rains, but pedestrians and horses shared the streets, and Cerryl knew to watch where he put his feet.

He waited for a two-horse wagon piled with baskets of potatoes to pass, and crossed the western part of the avenue. The farmer on the seat had never even glanced in his direction.

The sun was barely above the roofs to the east of the square, and long shadows lay across the white stone avenue and the sidewalk stones and curbings, and darkened the emerald grass. The slight coolness of the evening before had vanished, and neither grass nor stone bore the slightest trace of dew. Although the air was already warm, the oval shape of what Rinfur and Fasse had called a square was empty. A handful of people walked the sidewalks, mostly from the gates toward the center of Fairhaven, and the creaking of wagons and the clop of hoofs on the stones were the loudest sounds.

Cerryl almost felt as though his breathing were too loud in the hushed city. He straightened his shoulders and followed the white stone walk across the center of the empty square to the far side. There was a single street there-without a name or symbol. Was it the way of the lesser artisans?

With the slightest of shrugs, he crossed the empty eastern half of the avenue and started up the unnamed street. Cerryl glanced into the first shop, peering between vivid blue shutters drawn back open against bright white-plastered outside walls. A potter sat cross-legged, throwing a pot on a wheel powered by a foot pedal. Behind him was a low wooden shelf displaying an array of pots and crockery. The gray-haired man did not look up as Cerryl studied him.

Cerryl walked slowly eastward, along the lesser artisans’ way that was but the eastern side street away from the square-exactly across the square opposite the side street that adjoined the alley leading to the rear courtyard of Fasse’s shop.

The next shop was that of a weaver. Two girls, each younger than Cerryl, one brown haired, one redheaded, sat on the floor working backstrap looms. Behind them a man flicked the shuttle on a floor loom that filled half the small room. Skeins of colored yam-all colors of yam, except black-hung from pegs set into the wall just below the roof beams. The round-faced brown-haired girl grinned shyly at Cerryl, even while her fingers slipped the yam wound on the hand shuttle through the spread woolen yam.

Cerryl offered a grin in return.

“Mind the loom, Pattera,” came the comment from the weaver.

“Yes, ser,” murmured the girl, dropping her eyes from Cerryl.

Cerryl nodded and continued along the street. Pattera had been pretty enough, yet nothing to compare to the golden-haired girl he had seen but once in his screeing glass. Would he ever meet her? Or was she the daughter of some white mage who would treat him like the other whites had dealt with his father-or the fugitive at Dylert’s mill? He repressed a shiver. “Careful. . Cerryl,” he whispered to himself.

On the inside wall of the next shop were rows of small shelves filled with small wooden boxes and a large chest of many drawers, and a scent-many scents-that Cerryl didn’t recognize. Spices? Why so many? The heavy man who looked up from a wooden mortar and pestle on a polished table offered an enigmatic smile before looking back at the dried herbs before him.

So silent was the lesser artisans’ way that Cerryl could hear his own footsteps. Somehow, he had expected that Fairhaven would have been busier, even so early in the day.

The line of shops ended at another cross street, rather than at the alleyway he had expected. On the far corner was another shop, but this one sported a sign over the open door bearing an open book and a quill poised above it. Hoping that the sign referred to the scrivener’s, Cerryl crossed the street and eased into the shop, pausing just inside the open door to let his eyes adjust.

The front of the shop was a small area, less than four cubits square, with white-plastered walls and empty except for two stools and with a golden oak cabinet that was made up of a two-drawer chest with three attached bookshelves above the chest. The top shelf held a silver pitcher, and the second two were each largely filled with leather-bound volumes.

Even from the door, Cerryl could smell the tanned leather. He took another step into the front room and paused, scanning the two dozen or so books on the shelves before him, but aside from the different colors of leather, there were no identifying marks on the spines. Nor did any of the books bear the unseen but sensed whitish red of chaos that the three books in his own pack bore.

Two doors led from the front room-one on the right side, which was closed, and one on the left. After another moment, Cerryl stepped toward the door behind the left side of the chest, stopping in the doorway.

A single man bent over a table in the workroom, a space not much bigger than the front room. The far wall was filled, half with a huge doorless cabinet that contained shelves transformed into cubbies filled with rolled leathers, parchments, palimpsests, real glass jars, stoppered crockery vials, and other manner of items unfamiliar to Cerryl. On each side of the cabinet were racks, the one on the left holding an array of hand tools; the one on the right, green leathers cut into long strips perhaps two spans wide and more than two cubits in length. A writing desk was flush against the left wall, the worktable against the right. The scrivener was stitching something with a long needle that flashed in his fingers.

Cerryl waited until the man paused before speaking. “Master Tellis?”

Tellis straightened and turned, revealing a spare and surprisingly thin face above a more rotund frame. “Yes, young fellow? Are you here on an errand for your master?” The scrivener seemed to squint as he surveyed Cerryl.

“No, ser.” Cerryl stepped forward and extended the scroll. “Master Dylert sent me, ser.”

The briefest of frowns crossed Tellis’s face as the scrivener took the scroll. Cerryl waited, his eyes not leaving the scrivener, much as he wished to study the workroom.

Tellis read through the scroll, licking his lips, once, twice, as he neared the end. “Dylert says you’re a shirttail relative.”

“Yes, ser.”

“He also says you work hard, and that’d not be something he’d offer easily.” Tellis scratched the back of his head, absently disarraying the thick, brown-flecked hair. “Tell me about master Dylert. What does he look like, and what does he favor?”

“Master Dylert. .” Cerryl managed not to frown. “He is a fraction of a span taller than you are, ser, but tall as he is, he is a wiry man. His beard is black but shows silver. His eyes are brown. He always wanted the mill clean, and the planks and timbers stacked in the barns by their size and quality.” Cerryl shrugged. “His speech is hard, but he is fair.”

“And his household?”

“His consort, Dyella, she is warmer.” Cerryl smiled. “She often gave me extra food.”

“Spoken like a young fellow, thinking of the food. Go on.”

“She has brown hair. It’s thinner. Erhana favors her mother, excepting her face, and Brental-I don’t know. He is the sole one with red hair, so far as I know, but. . he was good to me as well.”

“Where are your people?”

“None are living. . now. My uncle. . he lived in Montgren.” Cerryl swallowed, fighting the burning in his eyes, wondering why the question had upset him.

“You lived with your uncle, then?”

“Yes, ser. Until I went to work for master Dylert.”

“You miss him, your uncle, I mean?”

Cerryl nodded, swallowing again. “My aunt, too.”

“Dylert. . a good judge of men, but far too good for his own good.” Tellis shook his head. “Ah. . well. . we have you to deal with. Not so as I really need an apprentice, you understand, but an extra pair of working hands. . that we can manage.”

“Yes, ser.” Cerryl kept his eyes on Tellis, his voice polite.

“A few matters, young fellow. .”

“Cerryl.”

“Important matters, if you intend to remain here.”

Cerryl nodded again, waiting, trying not to shift his weight from one leg to the other as the scrivener studied him again, trying to appear serious and attentive.

“Well, Cerryl. . you’ll learn as the days pass. But there are some things that don’t change. You’ll be pumping the water for all, and we’ll be getting to that. Water’s close here in Fairhaven, and this is a clean house. You look neat, but clean is better. I expect you to bathe leastwise every third day, and wash your hands and face every time before you work in the shop here. That’s after breakfast and after supper. Dirty hands, dirty sweat-they’ve ruined more books than fires or bugs. And you’ll need another set of clothes. I’ll provide that, but you wash them.”

Cerryl nodded. “Yes, ser.”

“Another matter. You’ll be spending some time with Arkos the tanner. You won’t be touching the binding till you understand the leather. That clear?”

Cerryl gave another nod.

“And the parchment, as well.”

“Yes, ser.” The youth just stood there, afraid that another nod would show him as agreeably dull.

“Your wages are a half copper an eight-day for the first five eight-days. If we’re both satisfied after that, a copper an eight-day for the rest of the first year. Then we’ll talk.” Tellis fingered his not-quite-pointed and clean-shaven chin, then pulled his hand away, almost disgustedly. “And after all my talk. .” His eyes went to the washstand in the corner. “You’ll have your own towel. . Cerryl, is it?”

“Cerryl. . yes. . ser.”

“And don’t wipe your face with your hands. Your sleeves, a clean rag, but not your hands.”

Cerryl found himself nodding again, against his better judgment.

“Now. . let’s see how well you listen. Tell me what I told you.”

Cerryl continued to meet the scrivener’s eyes as he responded. “You want my hands and face clean any time before I go to work. I’m not to wipe my face with my hands. I’m to bathe at least every third day. I must spend time with the tanner to learn about leather and parchment, and I’m the one who will pump water for the house and shop. And I start at a half-copper an eight-day.”

“A good memory, leastwise.” A slight smile flickered across the scrivener’s lips. “Follow me.” Tellis led the way back into the front room and then through the other door.

Behind the showroom was a narrow kitchen-with a small iron stove, half built into the wall, presided over by a slender woman whose back remained turned from the scrivener and Cerryl-and to the right of the kitchen, through an archway, Cerryl glimpsed a common room, with a trestle table, and a wall bench piled with pillows.

Tellis gestured to the thin, almost frayed-looking woman whose blond-and-gray hair was square cut in a thick thatch just below the bottom of her ears. “This is Beryal. She runs the household, she and her daughter Benthann.”

“No. I run the household. Benthann runs you.” As she turned slowly, Beryal’s pale blue eyes appraised Cerryl, and he felt as though she had looked right through him. “A new apprentice? About time. You need someone who listens to you.”

“That’s true enough.” Tellis laughed. “Beryal and Benthann are better at directing than listening.”

Cerryl nodded, wondering what sort of household Tellis really had.

“You need directing, master scrivener, at anything but scrivening.” Beryal’s cool eyes flicked back to Cerryl. “I ring the bell once for meals. Just once. Supper is true midday. Be noodles and quagroot today. . and dark bread. You get brew with dinner, water any other time, unless you want to buy something and share it” After a quick nod, she turned back to the stove and the heavy iron skillet in which something simmered.

Tellis gave a rueful smile and motioned for Cerryl to follow him through the kitchen, past Beryal, who did not look up. Cerryl could smell warming butter, a spice he couldn’t identify, and something that smelled good but unfamiliar.

Beyond the spare common room, Tellis stepped through the rear door and into a small stone-paved courtyard, empty except for the hand pump and catch basin in the right-hand corner. “We don’t use this much. It’s too hot in the summer, and too cool in the winter.” He gestured. There was a wooden gate in the middle of the back wall, between what looked to be two small rooms. “The supply storeroom-that’s the door on the left. The space on the right is yours. You can come and go as you please through the back gate. Works better that way.”

Cerryl glanced around the courtyard again. There was a third door on the right wall, and a narrow door near the common room door on the left.

Tellis followed his eyes. “Those are our rooms.”

The youth didn’t ask who “ours” included, or what room was whose, but nodded.

“Put your things in your room. Arrange it how you like and then come back to the workroom.”

“Yes, ser.”

Tellis nodded and left Cerryl standing in the empty courtyard, his pack on his shoulders. Cerryl crossed the courtyard, perhaps ten cubits square, and gingerly lifted the latch and opened the door.

He let his breath out slowly. The space was perhaps four cubits by five and contained a pallet bed-wider than the one he had used at Dylert’s-a washstand with pitcher and basin, and a narrow doorless wardrobe of plain and battered pine, plus a stool. The floor was stone, and the faintest film of white dust covered everything.

His nose itched, and he rubbed it, then set his pack on the foot of the pallet. He took another deep breath before opening the canvas flap and lifting out his jacket. He left his battered half-copy of Colors of White inside the pack-and his medallion from his father. He would need to find a hiding place for them, and soon.