“But their bodies have to heal by themselves,” Lorn finishes.
Myryan waits.
“How do you bind or wrap the order to someone?” he finally inquires.
Myryan laughs. “I asked Kyrysmal the same thing. People have chaos and order within them. You have to work with that.”
“Show me.”
“Are you sure? They say that the Magi’i shouldn’t work with both.” Myryan looks intently at her older brother.
“I’m not going to be a magus,” Lorn replies. “Before yearend, I’ll be a lancer, and healing will help.”
“You’re going to give up on magery?” Myryan’s eyes flick toward the closed door, as if to make sure that Lorn’s wordsdo not leave the room. “What will father say?”
“He already knows, but he’s hoping that it won’t come to that.”
“But why? Father says you do well at your studies and that no one learns things better than you do.”
“I don’t like being confined between walls of granite. That much chaos … presses in on me.” Lorn shrugs helplessly. “I can’t hide that. Lector Hyrist would have thrown me out a long time ago if father weren’t a Lector and if my studies weren’t so good. The Magi’i want people who eat, think, breathe, and sleep chaos transfers and manipulation. Like Vernt … or father.”
“All right.” Myryan sighs as she swings her legs around and stands. “Give me your hand. If you had a slash there that wasn’t healing it would be red and maybe puffy … really, you wouldn’t need healing. You could-”
“Cut it open and drain it, and wash it with clear winter brandy or something.” Lorn smiles. “I know.” He stands and extends his hand. As she steps closer, he can smell the clean scent of frysya. “But if I were going to lose it …?”
“I’d reach out and gather free order … like this.”
Lorn’s senses follow hers as the unseen but still real darkness forms above his left hand. He tries to replicate her ordergathering. After a moment, a smaller, more diffuse, block of darkness appears beside hers.
“Oh … you should have been a healer.”
“Men aren’t healers-not in Cyador,” he points out.
“Like women aren’t Magi’i,” she replies.
Near-identical ironic smiles appear on each sibling’s face.
“How do you bind it or move it?”
“You take the affinity within your body ….”
Lorn’s eyes and senses are fully intent, his amber eyes both searching and hard as he concentrates on his sister’s demonstration of order healing.
X
TWO FIGURES STAND on the westernmost balcony of the Palace of Light, enjoying the comfortable breeze that heralds the beginning of the cool but moderate winter in Cyad. Below them, the green and white awnings on the small plaza to the west and north of the harbor piers ripple with a gust of wind coming off the Great Western Ocean, enough of a gust that the rippling is visible nearly a kay away on the Palace balcony.
“Someone used chaos to create the fire in the warehouse district,” First Magus Chyenfel says to the Majer-Commander of Lancers.
“Was there any damage beyond the one warehouse?” inquires Rynst.
“No. The damage was confined to the western end. It had been rented to an outland trader by the Jekseng clan.”
“Outsiders, again. Everywhere, from the barbarians to the traders, we have difficulties with outsiders.” After a pause, Rynst ventures quietly, “Some had mentioned seed-oil burning.”
“It was-but you cannot get that heavy oil to burn with a striker-or even a fallen candle or lamp.” Chyenfel smiles ironically, his sungold eyes flashing.
“Cammabark?”
“There wasn’t any sign of an explosion, and there were bodies and bones there. The dead men didn’t try to run.”
“The fire was to cover their murder, then. Anyone important?”
The High Lector and First Magus shakes his head. “No. The bodies seem to be those of the man renting the warehouse-a most unsavory Hamorian thought to be a smuggler-and his two bodyguards.”
“How unfortunate. How very unfortunate.” Rynst lifts hiseyebrows. “Then we cannot suspect the Hand of the Emperor?”
“No … not in a dispute between traders, not unless it is far more than it seems to be. But then, you know that.” Chyenfel smiles lazily. “You would like to know who the Hand is, would you not?”
“Many would.”
“True,” muses Chyenfel. His face hardens. “Perhaps, just perhaps, the most unfortunate demise of this Aljak may put an end to a string of recent disappearances among the merchanters.”
“You do think it was retribution?” Rynst turns so that the afternoon sun falls full on his back, bright if cold in the green-blue sky, and so that he can watch both the First Magus more closely and the harbor.
“It probably was, but we don’t know who killed Aljak.” Chyenfel offers a theatrical shrug. “Unhappily, the man comes from a prominent Hamorian trading family. They have threatened a ten percent increase in the cost of Hamorian goods … or so Bluoyal tells me.”
“They cannot make that stick, not when the Austrans will bring the same goods for a five percent increase. Then, the Hamorians, should they want the trade, would have to go back to the old prices.”
“That is true, and even Bluoyal would agree. Yet … there is one thing.”
“Oh?” offers the Majer-Commander warily.
“There was a trace of chaos beneath all the charred goods and ashes.”
“You have assured me that all your Magi’i would not do such.”
Chyenfel nods. “I have already spoken with every magus. All are innocent. None are hiding anything.”
“Does that mean a wild chaos wielder? Or that one of your Magi’i can evade the truthreading?”
“Even those few skilled at truthreading cannot evade another’s reading. Since no Magi’i are involved, it means the chaos was directed in another fashion. There was no spray.That I could tell even after the fire, and wild types do not have that kind of control.”
“So … a former Magi’i?”
“Those who have such talents are weeded out early-they are dead or in the lancers on the frontier.” Chyenfel fingers his smooth chin. “And we follow those who hold chaos with the glasses until they can no longer do so or until they die. None have been detected in Cyad in seasons, if not years.”
“You have the impossible, then, and that is less than satisfactory, especially in these times.”
“It could have been a small firelance-as your guards for the Emperor carry,” suggests Chyenfel almost idly.
“I would be most pleased to accompany you as you question each of them.” Rynst smiles tightly.
“I thought you would be.” Chyenfel returns the smile.
XI
TWO FIGURES IN blue sit on a carved wooden bench that overlooks the harbor of Cyad. Below the low hill, a half-dozen ships are tied at the white piers. Cargo carts roll along the granite wharves, carts filled with the wool brought from Analeria, cotton from Hamor across the Eastern Ocean, tin ingots from Austra, and other goods from wherever the tallmasted ships sail. A single white-hulled fireship is moored at the lancer pier.
The redheaded woman shivers in the cool breeze. “Lorn?” Ryalth pauses. “Aren’t you cold?”
“Me? No.”
“I am.” She eases next to him, so that their sides touch. “You’re warm, like a banked fire, or the sun.”
“I’d rather not talk about fires.”
“I have a gift for you.” Ryalth’s voice is soft.
“You don’t have to give me anything,” Lorn insists, as he turns. “The coins and the strongbox are for you. I told you that. Don’t spend them on me.”
“It’s not that kind of gift. It’s something I’ve had for a long time.”
Lorn raises his eyebrows. “You don’t have to do anything like that for me. You know that.”