“Ser…we have nothing.” The chandler stepped back and gestured to the empty shelves of the store. “The war took most of what we had, and the lack of trade has taken the rest.”
“Chandler, I don’t like lying. I know you care little for Fairhaven, but you will respect her. Follow me.” Cerryl gestured to the lancers, then to the chandler.
“Ser…where…?”
“To find some goods you can sell.” Cerryl let a grim smile cross his face as the chandler and his consort exchanged glances. “To the back room there.”
“Ah…yes, ser.”
The back room had more shelves and was as bare as the front had been.
“Open that.” Cerryl pointed to the inside cellar door in the small back room of the chandlery.
“That is but for the cellar, and bare it is, as you will see.”
“I’d like to see that.” Cerryl turned to the lancers. “Half with me. The others make sure no one leaves.” He followed the chandler and his consort down the creaky wooden stairs.
“You see, ser?” The man gestured to the bare clay-floored room, where only the small table remained from Cerryl’s night visit.
Cerryl walked straight to the wall, removed the oblong stone, and fumbled for a moment before pulling the lever. The narrow door swung open.
The chandler paled.
“So…you had no goods to sell, chandler?”
“None so as I’d tell you…White thieves…”
Cerryl let chaos appear on his fingertip, then grow into a sword of flame. He let the slightest touch of chaos flash toward the outside door, leaving a blackened slash in the wood. “I could do that to you. I won’t. Believe it or not, I’m not going to take your goods. I’m not even going to take a single coin out of that strongbox you have here.” Cerryl smiled. “I’m not going to kill anyone. I will say one thing. If you do not put those goods back on the shelves upstairs within two days-all of them-then…then you will answer to me. And I will have to find someone else who will sell goods during the daytime and not under the cover of darkness.”
“…kill me…” The murmur was nearly inaudible.
“You are not the first who has been discovered, and you will not be the last. Spidlar was a land of traders, and it will be again. You can be one of those, or you can choose not to be.”
Cerryl walked up the steps and out the front door to where Lyasa and Hiser and the bulk of the lancers waited, mounted and stationed in groups around the building. With a smile, he mounted. “Leave a half-score here. I don’t want anyone coming with a wagon and carting off all the goods. If people come and buy, that’s fine.”
While Hiser talked to the subofficer of the detachment that was to remain, Cerryl glanced at Lyasa. “They won’t do anything for a time-to see what happens.”
“Would you?” Her eyebrows arched.
“I wouldn’t. But I know White mages hate being crossed.”
She laughed softly, and Cerryl had to grin-until he thought of how many more shops lay ahead of them.
When Hiser eased his mount back toward the mages, Cerryl said quietly, “Now…the wool factor’s place-Joseffal’s.” Behind him, he could hear a few murmured comments from the lancers.
“Tough little bastard…”
“Blues’ll find out…knows everything.”
Not nearly a tenth part of what you need to know…if that. He forced himself to keep the smile in place as he urged the gelding forward.
CLII
IN THE LATE-AFTERNOON light, Cerryl stood just inside the study door and studied the pile of scrolls and lists. He knew it hadn’t grown, but he hadn’t decreased it much, either. Finally, he settled behind the desk. After four days, he’d barely finished his initial round of publicly “discovering” goods, and his legs ached. So did his head, and from what he could tell, no goods had appeared on any shelves.
So…do you start executing people? He took a deep breath.
Before long, he needed to meet with Lyasa and talk over what he could do next without destroying whole cities the way Jeslek had. You’re beginning to understand why he did, though. Destroying things is a lot easier than getting cooperation. But destruction didn’t raise tariff coins, at least not after what you grubbed from the ruins. He took another deep breath and let it out as someone knocked on the door. “Yes?”
The door opened, and the sandy-haired Kalesin peered in. “This arrived from the High Wizard, ser.” Kalesin bowed slightly as he extended the scroll.
“Thank you.” Cerryl paused. “How are you coming on that compendium of shops and traders?”
“Ah…another day or so, ser, I would say. It’s hard to find out about some of the shops that are closed.”
“Keep working.”
The door closed, and Cerryl studied the scroll, opened and resealed, from what he could tell, probably by his good and faithful assistant Kalesin. With a twist of his lips, he broke the chaos-mended seal and began to read:
While you have been in Spidlar but a few eight-days, we must reemphasize the need for coins with which to repay the costs of the campaign so unwisely undertaken by our predecessor. We direct you to consider some form of local tariff or surtax, as you see necessary…
In short, send coins-lots of coins-and Sterol isn’t that particular how you obtain them.
Cerryl wanted to snort. Bleeding the beaten land to death wouldn’t solve the problems Fairhaven faced, as if Sterol or any of those in the Halls really cared. Except Leyladin…or Kinowin. He looked at the words and set the scroll on the desk, closing his eyes for a moment.
Lyasa burst into the study, breathing hard. “Five of them-Menertal, Zyleral, Tillum, Sirle, and Helak-are meeting in the back room of that public house off the main square.”
“Now?” Cerryl stood, almost losing his balance before turning and glancing toward the courtyard. “I’d better get there.”
“You-you’re the arms mage.”
“Who else can do it? Besides, I have no intention of letting them see me.”
“At least, let Hiser bring a troop somewhere close.”
Cerryl had to admit that made sense. “Can you find him? Or some lancer subofficer you trust? Have him waiting in the corner of the square closest to the public house.”
“I can get Suzdyal’s company there first.”
“Fine.” Cerryl opened the study door and brushed past his guards and out into the courtyard.
As Lyasa headed toward her mount, Cerryl walked along the narrow passage from the courtyard to the lower street, lifting the shield that caused people’s eyes to shift away from him. Once on the lower street, he forced himself to move quickly, but deliberately, so that he’d not be winded when he reached the square and the public house. What do you hope from this?
“An improvement,” he answered in a murmur, suspecting that was unlikely. But you have to try.
The weathered signboard outside the public house bore the image of a brown boar with oversized yellow tusks and smaller letters beneath in Temple tongue-“The Brown Boar.”
The White mage took another deep breath and stepped through the open door. A few eyes glanced toward the door but slid away from the eye-blurring shield. Cerryl tried not to swallow as he caught a glimpse of mail beneath a stained shirt and several daggers almost lengthy enough to be shortswords. The near half-score of men in leathers who sat around the tables in the main room were anything but indulgers.
This isn’t sensible…Then life wasn’t sensible. The blur shield around him, Cerryl edged across the floor toward the two doors in the rear. A few men glanced in his direction, and one burly man frowned, then blinked.
A serving girl walked around Cerryl without realizing she had.
“…don’t like this. Whites got lancers everywhere…”
“They don’t want to fight.” The speaker laughed. “Figure they fought enough already…”