Were you ever? “Why do you say that?” Cerryl took his stained white jacket from the peg on the coat holder and slipped it on.
“The bit with the wine goblet. You didn’t even hesitate. Or the blunt question about supplies.” Anya smiled. “You intrigue me more than ever, Cerryl.”
Cerryl returned Anya’s smile with one equally bright and false. “You flatter me. You are the intriguing one.”
“Oh, stop flattering each other.” Fydel snorted. “You’re both false as tin trinkets. And as useful.”
“Cerryl will be very useful to you, Fydel,” Anya answered with a softer smile. “You’ll be free to pursue any blues you can find while he’s worried about masons, and bricks, and planks-and piers and peacekeeping.”
Cerryl wished it were going to be that simple, but he had his doubts, strong ones.
Fydel snorted a second time. “The winter will be long, even with what must be done.”
“You two will manage.” Anya offered a last smile.
Cerryl inclined his head to the redhead, then to Fydel, before leading the way out into the clear and cold afternoon. Despite the brisk wind, the miasma of death still hung over the city.
Cerryl swung into the gelding’s saddle, wondering how he could accomplish all that Jeslek had laid upon him. Does he want you to fail? Again? The brown-haired mage nodded, his eyes somewhere beyond the street as he rode back toward his quarters.
CVII
CERRYL LOOKED AT the blank scroll on the corner desk, then at the darkness that lay beyond the shuttered windows. The house he had taken was quiet, and even in the adjoining dwellings he suspected most lancers were sleeping, except for those on guard duty.
SSsss…The oil lamp hissed momentarily, then sputtered and hissed again. He glanced at it, wondering if the reservoir were empty, but the hissing died, and the yellow glow from the mantel continued to fall across the empty dun expanse of the parchment.
The White mage suppressed a yawn. It seemed like he ran from dawn until after dusk…dealing with so many things he’d never thought of, not only supplies and fodder, but tools, smithies for weapons, and even nails or bolts. How did you replace planks without some fasteners, especially when the only substitute was treenails, and they didn’t work that well for barely skilled lancers and peasants?
He rubbed his forehead and looked down again.
For only the second time in almost three seasons, he could send Leyladin a message that would reach her, if he finished it before morning, when a messenger and lancer guards left for Fairhaven. Yet he hadn’t the faintest idea where to begin. Or rather, he had so much to say.
Finally, he began to write, smiling as he scripted the first line.
My dearest Leyladin…
After that, the words got easier, enough so that before long he was reaching for a second sheet. Then the words got slower, and he had to turn and trim the lamp wick twice before he signed the bottom of the second sheet and laid it aside to dry.
After rubbing his forehead, sitting in the quiet of the study, ignoring the changing of the two lancer guards outside the front door, he picked up the first sheet, and his eyes skipped over the lines as he reread what he had written:
…have good quarters here, although I am troubled by how I came by them. It was not my doing, not exactly…so long since we have had a true roof overhead…yet I always thought of you…as you must know from my earlier message and from my glimpses through the glass…tried not to intrude…but I have missed you…more than I ever would have known…
He shook his head. That wasn’t quite true. Even before he had really met her, she had been important to him. What drew you to her…and her to you? Order and chaos? The need for some sort of balance?
After a moment, he continued to reread his words:
…Elparta lies in our hands, and I am supposed to return it to a semblance of prosperity, but there are few masons and few woodworkers among the lancers and almost no crafters at all among the wretched souls who survived the place’s fall…I found one mason’s apprentice with a crushed hand and an old fellow who’d been a carpenter once…little enough that I know, but it is more than many of the men I must direct…
…already we have had some light snow, and the winter promises to be cold indeed. I shudder to think what it must be like along the shores of the Northern Ocean…
…I have no idea when we will be returning to Fairhaven. It could be well into next year, if not longer…
Longer? Momentarily he wanted to pound the desk-or something. Yet nothing had happened exactly as he wished. Even getting to know Leyladin had taken far longer than he had ever thought possible.
…however long that may be, you know what I feel and how strongly, and no words will convey what you have felt, and I would not try to reduce such to letters upon parchment…
Besides, unlike Leyladin, you don’t know who will be reading what you write. She-or Layel-had effectively owned the guard who had delivered her scroll to him, a scroll he still kept with his possessions, a scroll whose green-inked sentences he still read and reread.
After another yawn, he rolled the scroll and, after heating the sealing wax over the top of the oil lamp, sealed it and laid it on the desk to be sent with the next dispatches to Jeslek in Fairhaven. Then he blew out the lamp and turned toward the stairs. Tomorrow would come-cold and all too soon.
CVIII
CERRYL WALKED FROM the covered porch of his dwelling out into the light and cold rain and along the brick walkway to the masonry house beyond the courtyard wall of his dwelling. There a handful of lancers milled around a wagon drawn by a single bony horse.
The rain-small drops that felt partly frozen-carried a slightly sour odor, or perhaps the moisture drew the scent of recent pillaging and death out of the ground. Cerryl frowned as he heard the mutters.
“Tools…supposed to use these?”
“Worse ’n road duty…”
“It’s the mage!” called a voice.
The lancers stepped back, and Hiser rode forward and reined up beside the wagon horse. “We got some tools in the wagon there, ser. And some shutters, at the back. Shutters-need to replace the ones on this side of the dwellings here, all of them. Some fool ripped ’em off the brackets so hard that the wood splintered.”
“It was rotten,” Ferek added as he rode up and joined Hiser. “Half the town is rotten. Too much rain. Rains every day here.”
“I sent men to get shutters from buildings that were too damaged for anyone to use,” Hiser explained.
Cerryl glanced at the two men standing nearest the side of the wagon.
“The ones we got, they need to be cut down,” said a burly lancer. “Got a saw here that might do.”
Cerryl studied the saw, then shook his head. “That won’t do, not if we can find a better one. It’s a ripping saw. We need one with finer teeth, about half that big.”
“Ripping saw?” Ferek’s mouth opened.
Hiser grinned, then wiped the expression away.
“A ripping saw rough-cuts planks, going with the grain rather than across it. Use those teeth on those shutters,” Cerryl winced, “and you’ll rip the wood up almost as bad as the ones you can’t use.” He stepped toward the wagon, rummaging through the indiscriminate piles of hammers, adzes, pry bars, mallets, and, in the corner, several other saws. He pulled out one, a smaller saw. “See? The teeth are smaller, finer, and closer together. Use this to shorten those shutter frames.”
It would have been faster to do it himself, but he was one person. If they would just use the crosscut finish saw or knew what tools to use, without his looking over someone’s shoulder all the time, more would get done. He couldn’t do the work they were supposed to do. It wouldn’t leave him time for what he had to do.