“That’s clear enough.” Fydel rolled his eyes, then fingered his beard momentarily. “We’re all here to do the bidding of Anya and the High Wizard.”
“Just the High Wizard, I think,” corrected Eliasar. The arms mage turned to Cerryl. “Too bad you won’t be staying. Your experience in Elparta and with the Patrol would be most helpful.”
Cerryl shrugged. “Jeslek needs someone to…” He never finished the sentence because he really wasn’t sure exactly what Jeslek wanted of him.
“To do the dangerous mage work,” Leyladin filled in.
“All magery is dangerous, Lady Leyladin,” said Eliasar dryly. “Even healing, as you have discovered.”
“Around Jeslek, of course it is.” Fydel shook his head. “I need to talk to the captains.”
“We need to talk first, Fydel.” Eliasar’s voice was cold. “Now.” He glanced at Syandar. “You stay.”
Fydel’s lips tightened, but he merely answered, “We do need to agree on which forces should go and which should stay.”
Cerryl and Leyladin nodded to the other three and slipped from the dining hall. Once into the main foyer, they headed for the door to the courtyard and then walked through the small rear gate from the grand mansion overlooking the harbor and down the paved lane. Cerryl glanced back, and the dark slate roof tiles glittered above the wall almost like shining water in the rays of the summer sun. “It’s more than twice as big as your father’s house.”
“Most traders’ houses elsewhere are. Those of the powerful factors, anyway.”
A faint and cooler breeze, bearing the scent of sea and harbor refuse, greeted them as they reached the back side of the harbor seawall.
Cerryl blotted his forehead on his sleeve. “Cooler here.”
“Let’s walk out that way.” Leyladin pointed toward the breakwater that angled out into the harbor perhaps a kay northward.
Cerryl took her hand as they turned. “Why is it that nothing turns out quite the way you thought it would, even when it does?” He scanned the area, but the seawall was empty, except for the lancers on guard near the piers.
She laughed, gently, humorously. “Because you know more than when you first hoped for something.”
“I suppose so. I always thought that being a White mage would solve all my problems.”
“Now you have more problems?”
“It’s not that,” mused Cerryl, fingering his chin with his free hand. “Viental and Rinfur and I-back when I was a mill boy-we worried about whether we’d have warm clothes for the winter and enough to eat and, sometimes, whether we might get hurt, but we didn’t want to think much about that. Now, I have more than enough to eat, clothes I couldn’t have dreamed of, and a beautiful woman I wouldn’t have dared to look at-and I still worry. I probably worry more.”
“That’s because you can do more about your life.”
“Can I? Or do we just think we can?” Cerryl cleared his throat, then squeezed Leyladin’s hand. “I used to think so, but what can even the High Wizard do? If he didn’t fight this war, or something like it, no one would pay tariffs in a year or so, and the Guild would have a bigger war or problem.”
“You really think so?”
“Jeslek created mountains upon mountains-and I still had to kill the old prefect of Gallos. He-we-took down two Towers of Hydolar and killed one, maybe two dukes, and the Hydlenese are still grudging their obligations.”
“You’re just saying that everyone is bound by the world and the bounds are less obvious but just as real when you have wealth or power?”
“Something like that.” Cerryl stopped under the shadow of some kind of oak, almost more a tall bush than a tree, that had grown out of the jumble of rocks at the inshore end of the breakwater.
“There’s one good thing about when we talk,” offered Leyladin, looking toward him.
“There are several good things.” Cerryl grinned.
Her green eyes danced for a moment. “No one thinks we’re talking seriously.”
“Who says we are? Or that we have to keep talking that way?”
“I do,” she answered firmly.
Cerryl gave a long and dramatic sigh. “About what?”
“You have that tone, ser mage. The one that asks if we can get through with your philosophizing and my trivial questions and get on with lust.” Leyladin’s red-blonde eyebrows arched.
Cerryl choked, then coughed his throat clear.
“Jeslek’s not the same,” she offered, pursing her lips for a moment.
“I know, but I don’t know how, except there’s more chaos around him all the time.”
“So long as Anya’s there,” suggested the healer.
“Besides Anya. And he was definitely but politely ordering Anya around, more than he used to do.”
“He doesn’t trust her. I wouldn’t. She used to sleep with Sterol, and maybe she still does when she can.”
“Is he still in the White Tower? Sterol, I mean?”
“He’s biding his time,” Leyladin said. “He hasn’t given up hope of reclaiming the amulet, no matter what he says.”
“About Jeslek…. I won’t be able to ask you once you go. So what should I do?”
“Do what he asks, so long as it’s not dangerous to you, and wait. And never be alone with Anya. Not without lancers or someone around.”
“I already learned that.”
“See that it stays learned.”
“I will.” He paused, then took both her hands in his. “Now…can we enjoy a little tiny bit of lust?” he asked plaintively.
Leyladin laughed. “A tiny bit.”
“That’s all I ask.”
“That’s all you ask to begin with,” she corrected, but her face turned to him, and their lips met under the shifting shadows of the young oak.
CXXXIII
ON THE FLAT beside the river, lancers were striking the silk tent shared by Jeslek and Anya and rolling the silk walls into bundles. On the shady side of the pine tree, on the softer needles where he had laid out his bedroll, Cerryl concentrated on the glass.
When the silver mists parted, more reluctantly than normal, Cerryl beheld a ship, a strange vessel moored in a channel or quay area beside a shipwright’s works. The sense of black iron infused the ship-the same feeling that Cerryl had gotten from the wagon the smith had driven to Kleth before the last battle. Between the road traps and the battle, Fairhaven had suffered greatly from the smith’s devices, and now the ship was another creation of worry.
Cerryl let the image fade, then fingered his chin. He was glad, in a way he could not explain, that Leyladin was on her way back to Lydiar-on one of the White ships that had patrolled the Northern Ocean and sealed off any flight by the Spidlarian traders, or those who had waited until the last moment, anyway.
Finally, he made his way downhill to where Jeslek stood in the morning sunlight.
“You look troubled, Cerryl,” Jeslek observed. “More troubled than you have, and you have looked troubled of late.” A raw smile appeared and vanished.
“I have been using my glass, as you requested, ser. The smith is doing something with a ship-and it involves order and black iron.” Cerryl shrugged. “What he does I cannot determine, but the black iron he brought to Kleth cost us dearly.”
“I recall.” The High Wizard nodded. “I appreciate your diligence, and as we near Diev, Anya and I will consider what we might best do.”
“There is even more order and black iron in that vessel,” Cerryl persisted. “I cannot tell what it may be, as it is in a ship on the water, but I like it little.”
“One ship cannot make that much difference,” said Jeslek with an indulgent smile. “We will deal with it. Besides, if he does flee, the blockade ships will capture his vessel-or sink it.”
“If they do not,” added Anya, “then he is gone and will trouble us and Spidlar no more.” Her pale eyes fixed on Cerryl. “Best you make ready to ride. We have many kays to cover.”
Cerryl ignored her order and turned to Jeslek. “I will see what I can discover in the days ahead.” He nodded, then turned away.