“Do you have a need of a senior enumerator, Lady Merchanter?” Lorn smiles, but he finds his heart is beating faster than it should.
“I have …” Ryalth looks up, and her mouth drops open. “You came,” she whispers. “You really did.”
Lorn can sense that no one is that near or listening. “I arrived last night … my parents expected me to spend some time there … so I came as soon as I could.” He forces himself to cut off the explanation of why he did not want them suspicious of his immediate departure. “As soon as I could.”
Ryalth quietly closes the ledger. “You still are trying to protect me, aren’t you?”
“You seem to be able to take care of yourself.” He smiles. “And you’ve protected me in so many ways. I never would have thought about scrolls going through Fyrad, or been able to set that up.”
“That was easy.” She pauses. “It was not difficult.”
“Your enumerator?”
“Eileyt is still at the harbor, checking the accounts of the latest venture with the Jekseng clan. Dyes from Brysta-their green is better than anything on this side of the Eastern Ocean.”
“Does Ryalor House have ventures with everyone?” Lorn shakes his head.
“It’s better that way. Each thinks we’re too small to stand alone, and that way I can spread the risks.” Ryalth stands.
Lorn wishes to hold her, but his hand merely brushes hers. They both stiffen.
“I think I’d better close up,” she smiles wryly. “I’m not going to finish reviewing these.” She lifts the ledger, then slips it into the leather case she has pulled from beneath the desk.
Lorn watches as Ryalth extracts a wallet from the desk, then slips a lock bar in place and padlocks the bar. “It won’t stop a Clan thief, but to break it will make enough noise that everyone will know, and they frown on that.” She lays the thin and long leather wallet-almost a narrow pouch-on the desk top and fingers the golds inside into a position toallow her to fold it in half. She slips the folded wallet into the slots in the back of the heavy and overlarge blue leather belt she wears.
After Ryalth closes and locks the doors, the two walk briskly down the steps and out through the covered hall. A few heads turn at Ryalth’s red hair, see the enumerator’s garb, and turn back.
“Another enumerator … has three …”
“ … trades everything … but not a lot … doesn’t lose much …”
“You should be so good, Tymyk.”
“Everyone knows you,” Lorn observes.
“I’ve made it a point,” she says. “I’ve helped those I could, and cheated no one.”
“The good and fair lady trader.”
“Not always good.”
The bleakness in her voice surprises Lorn, and he says nothing as they cross the open plaza outside the hall.
“You were right, when we first dealt with cotton and oil.” She turns her head, and the deep blue eyes fix his amber ones. “I learned that again, the hard way. I find I have to remember that, but I don’t like it.”
Lorn nods, though her words send a cold knife down his spine.
They walk silently eastward along the Road of Benevolent Commerce, past a row of arymids with furled gray winter leaves, their trunks pale gray in the afternoon light.
“How long will you be here?” she asks quietly.
“Almost five eightdays. I get six, but that has to include travel from Isahl and then to Geliendra. That’s my next post.”
“And you sought me out within a day? Are there not scores of healers and women from high lancer families vying for your attention?”
“I wasn’t interested.” Lorn cannot quite keep his tone disinterested. “I would have sought you last night, but my family was watching. Someone has also been following me with a screeing glass, not always my father. I didn’t come fromthe house, directly. I stopped to see Myryan and then changed in her garden arbor after she left for the infirmary.”
“I would have liked to have seen that.” Ryalth’s lips quirk.
“I’m sure you would.” Lorn laughs gently.
They pass the Fourth Harbor Way-the east one, although the ways are not distinguished on the placards by whether they are east or west of the harbor center.
“How is Myryan?” Ryalth asks after a time.
“I don’t know. She seems healthy, but she’s … more resigned than happy. The only time she seemed joyful was when she talked of the house and of her garden.”
“Isn’t that good?”
“I’m glad she has the house,” Lorn says. “I can’t imagine her living with Ciesrt’s parents. He’s the second highest of the Magi’i. Kharl, Ciesrt’s father, I mean.”
“That must be quite an honor for Myryan to be his consort.” Ryalth’s voice is even, hiding emotions.
“She didn’t want it, and I tried to talk father out of it before I left. He waited to consort her, but he didn’t change his mind.” Lorn takes a deep breath. “I think Myryan would have been better without the honor.”
“You’d do almost anything for those you love.”
“Almost,” Lorn temporizes, again wondering if he should have killed Kharl before the Lector knew Lorn was a threat.
“More than that, I think.” Ryalth’s voice is calm, slightly distant. “Your father knows that.” After a barely imperceptible pause, she adds, “Don’t you think?”
“Father? I think he doesn’t know quite what to think. I’m not the Magi’i son he wanted, and I’m not exactly the lancer officer he suggested I could be.”
“You survived and made captain,” she points out.
“I’m … effective,” Lorn says. “Not glorious.” His eyes flick to the next Way, where a tinker’s cart is tied before a smaller house, and where the maroon garbed tradesman pedals a foot-grinder and sharpens knives, deftly handling one, then another.
She nods, her lips quirking momentarily. “Maybe that’s why you’re a good trader.”
“I’m not a trader. You’re far better than I could ever be.”
“You can see what will change,” she corrects him. “I know what to do when you tell me what will happen.”
“We make a good team.” He smiles, happy to be walking beside her, as they pass the tinker’s cart.
“You’ve never said that before.”
“I haven’t? I’ve thought it enough.”
“There’s much you think and don’t share, Lorn.”
He cannot but catch the edge of wistfulness behind the facade of the experienced merchanter, a wistfulness he doubts most would perceive. “I’m sorry.” And he is, yet he knows that every word in many places they both frequent may carry to the wrong ears.
Ryalth points to the structure on the lower side of the Road of Benevolent Commerce, although she points upward. “I took chambers on the third level. The end stairs.”
Lorn follows her through the archway in the wall and then through the simple shared formal garden-little more than trimmed dwarf cedar, two short flower beds turned under for the winter, and time-polished stone benches placed in areas shaded by the handful of feathering conifers.
“These came vacant. They only cost three golds a season more, and the balcony is more private,” Ryalth explains, starting up the outside stone steps. “It seemed worth it. They’re larger, and the breeze is better in the summer.”
“And colder in the winter?”
“I haven’t noticed.” She smiles as she stops in front of the last door off the covered walkway on the third level.
“Better view up here,” Lorn says.
“It is.”
The key clicks in the lock, and she opens the door, waiting for Lorn to enter. He waits for her to enter. Both smile, albeit nervously.
He finally shakes his head and steps inside, past the narrow interior privacy screen. Then he turns, taking in her face and the deep blue eyes that he has recalled on so many nights.
Ryalth closes the door. She steps past the screen, andLorn’s arms go around her, but not so quickly as hers encircle him.
The key clanks on the floor. Neither reaches for it as their lips meet.