“Father would have been a great lord elsewhere.” Leyladin laughed. “Wertel will make him one yet, from all he does in Lydiar, over Father’s protestations.”
“Fairhaven is my home,” grumbled the trader. “Yet only the old overmage understands how what I do benefits her.”
“Kinowin?”
“Aye, but he’ll be gone in a handful of years, and then that spawn of Muneat’s dead brother will turn the city over to Muneat and Jiolt.”
“Anya?”
“That’s the one. She plays Jiolt like…” Layel shook his head in disgust. “Muneat sees through her, but he’s near on a score of years older than I am, and his boy Devo-well, he couldn’t count golds with his fingers.”
“Anya tried to play Jeslek.” Cerryl glanced across the table.
“And he’s dead,” Leyladin pointed out.
“Sterol uses her. I don’t think he’s taken in.”
“She’ll find a way to turn the Guild against him,” predicted Leyladin. “That’s why Jeslek was trying to make that smith in Diev your problem.”
“So is Sterol.” Cerryl nodded slowly. “I have to follow the smith with the glass and report every day.”
“She’s clever,” mused Leyladin. “If you don’t keep track, then you’ll be in trouble. If you do, and everyone knows it, then Sterol will have to do something.”
“I worry about that,” Cerryl admitted.
“We can’t do anything tonight. Not about Anya. How are Aliaria and Nierlia? I need to see them.” The green eyes danced. “They should meet Cerryl.”
“You’re going to be an aunt again. Nierlia says this one will be a girl and she’ll name her after you.”
The hint of darkness crossed the healer’s face, followed by a smile. “I’ll spoil her.”
“Not any more than Nierlia will,” suggested Layel. “Oh…and Aliaria’s oldest-I can never remember her name-Aliaria has her taking guitar lessons from some music master who claims he’s from Delapra…”
“…she doesn’t have any rhythm…”
“…Aliaria thinks it will improve her chances for a good consort…”
“…barely over a half-score years…”
Before Cerryl knew it, the small talk had drifted into silence. Layel stretched and yawned almost ostentatiously. “I think I’ll be leaving. I need to write a scroll to Wertel before the evening’s over so that it can go on the morning post coach.” He stood. “You might find the front room more comfortable, but you two are young, and you’ll find whatever suits you.”
Meridis appeared, as though she had been waiting. “Be best if I could clean all this before I have to burn every lamp in the place.”
Leyladin laughed. “We’re being directed.”
“No one directs you, Daughter!” called Layel from the door to his study.
The two mages-White and Black-stood and walked into the sitting room, where they paused. Meridis had arranged the roses in a crystal vase on the low table beneath the portrait of Leyladin’s mother.
“You don’t mind that they’re there?” the healer asked.
“No…why?”
“Mother loved roses. I haven’t been so good as I should.”
“Wherever you would like them.”
Leyladin touched his hand, and they crossed the entry hall into the darker front room, where not a single lamp was lit against the growing late-summer dusk. They sat on the long settee that faced the open windows, and the cooler evening breeze wafted around them.
“How is Estalin’s son?”
“He’s fine, for now. He’ll need healers all his life, at times. He’s not that strong.”
“I’m glad you could leave.”
“I don’t know as I could. I told Sedelos that there was nothing to be gained by my staying and that he could summon me were I needed. I knew you were coming home, and I wanted to see you.”
“Sterol is High Wizard now.”
“Anya is the one to watch.”
“I know.” Cerryl refrained from repeating Anya’s words about children.
“We can talk about the Guild tomorrow.” Leyladin paused. “Can you stay…here?”
“For now,” he said.
“I meant at night.”
“Yes.” He grinned in the dimness. “I’m glad you want me to.”
“You really can?”
“Kinowin almost ordered me to. He said my nights were free and he expected me not to waste them in the Halls.”
“He said more than that.”
Cerryl nodded. “He said a mage’s days were too short.”
Leyladin’s arms were around him. “They can’t be. They can’t be. You can’t be like Myral and Kinowin. You have to use more order and less chaos. You can’t leave me. I won’t let you.”
His eyes misted, and for a time he held her in the growing darkness of the front room.
“I meant it,” she finally whispered.
“I know. You’ll have to help.”
“Any help you need.”
He tightened his embrace, then brushed her lips with his.
“Bringing the flowers…that was sweet. Thank you.”
Silently Cerryl thanked Kinowin.
“And thank Kinowin for me, too.” Her dark green eyes danced, brighter than any lamp, as she reached for his hand to lead him to a silk-hung bedchamber-one he had but seen in a glass.
CXLII
CERRYL STEPPED INTO his quarters at the back of the rear Hall. He sniffed. The scent of trilia and sandalwood was faint but unmistakable. What had Anya been seeking?
He cast his senses across the small room, the space he used only for work in the days since Leyladin had returned from Lydiar, but could detect no concentration of chaos or even of order. He shook his head. Perhaps for the first time in his life, he truly had no secrets, and the redhead clearly thought he did.
He closed the door and sat at the desk, studying the screeing glass for a moment before concentrating on finding the smith and his vessel. When the silver mists cleared, the glass showed Dorrin’s ship anchored in a rough bay off a low and marshy point of land. Where?
Cerryl scratched the back of his head, then tried again.
It took Cerryl most of the remainder of the morning to discover that the Black ship lay off the southwestern tip of the isle of Recluce, nowhere near even a town. There were several tents and what looked to be several dwellings or structures under construction.
He tightened his lips. What exactly the ship’s movement meant he didn’t know, but Kinowin needed to know as well. Perhaps the overmage might have some ideas. If the smith and his followers were building a town or another port…
Cerryl pursed his lips, finding it hard to believe that the smith had done so much so quickly. Then, this Dorrin had helped destroy half the forces sent into Spidlar, killed Jeslek, built an engine that moved a ship against the wind, and escaped the blockade. What was building a town in a few days compared to that?
Letting the image fade, Cerryl massaged his neck and forehead before heading to see Kinowin. It was almost noon by the time he stepped into Kinowin’s room amid the gathering of purple hangings.
“You have a disturbed look.” Kinowin touched the purple blotch on his cheek, almost absently.
“The smith has moved his ship to the southern end of the accursed isle.”
“Away from Land’s End. Some might say that is well.”
“It lies at anchor in a small bay. There are tents on the land and the beginnings of buildings.”
“A town for him and his followers, you think?” Kinowin smiled faintly.
“I would guess so, but it is too early to tell.”
“Then it is too early for me to tell the High Wizard aught except that the ship has been moved. One should not disturb His Mightiness with mere speculation.”
Cerryl raised his eyebrows at the heavy irony in the overmage’s voice. “Speculation.”
“Ah, yes, speculation.” Kinowin made a sound halfway between a laugh and a snort, and for a moment he looked cadaverous. “I suggested to the High Wizard that this vessel might prove useful for trade, and he suggested that he had little time to worry about what might be when he was gathering a force to break the latest Duke of Hydlen to reign.”