“I am. You are more perceptive than I would be.”
“Although you have black hair, your skin is fair, and your eyes are blue. Likewise, you are taller and broader across the shoulders than most men. Those traits are more likely in men from the northern reaches. You will find that you are taller than most men in Hamor. That may not be to your advantage outside of your trading house.”
“I am among the taller men in Recluce, but there are many who are as large or larger.”
“Size is not everything, young Rahl. Neither is strength.”
Rahl nodded. He’d heard that often enough. “Can you tell me about Hamor?”
“I could, but then you would not see it through your eyes.” She smiled.
He could sense concern, calculation, and a hint of cruelty behind the words. He also could see Galsyn appear from the port hatchway, looking around.
The woman caught his look and half turned. “I see that the purser is looking for you. Perhaps we will talk later.”
“I would appreciate that, lady.” Rahl inclined his head.
She did not say more as Rahl eased around her and crossed the width of the deck toward the purser.
“Ser?”
“Oh, Rahl…I wasn’t looking for you. Have you seen the third?”
“No, ser.” He paused, then asked, “Ser, who is the Hamorian lady?”
“I’m not certain she’s properly a lady.” Galsyn laughed. “Her name is Valdra Elamira, but I think the Elamira isn’t really a name.”
It meant something like “of great wonder,” Rahl thought, but he only said, “She’s traveling with a consort, although he looks younger.”
“He’s a combination of bodyguard and lover. The captain says that she is the mistress of a number of brothels in Swartheld and in Cigoerne. She is quite wealthy.”
Rahl managed neither to flush nor groan.
“She’s had her eye on you.” Galsyn grinned. “It might be fun. A bit older, but most attractive.”
“I think I’d worry about the bodyguard,” Rahl demurred. He was good with his truncheon, but against a true bravo?
“Wouldn’t hurt to talk to her and be polite,” Galsyn pointed out.
“I was, and I will be.”
“None of my business, Rahl…but what did you do to get posted to Swartheld?”
How could he answer that without revealing too much? After a moment, he smiled ruefully. “I made some mistakes that I shouldn’t have. Things that they felt I could have avoided if I’d just thought things out. I’d rather not say what.”
Galsyn laughed. “Sooner or later, that’s true for all of us. Sometimes, the best we can do is survive our mistakes.”
“Was that how you got here?”
“That’s why I never got further than the Diev. It’s not a bad life as a purser. I get to see places I’d never see otherwise. I’ve got enough coins for what I need. I’ve got a decent cabin and a full belly, and I work for a good captain. One thing about Merchant Association ships…not a bad captain in the lot. Some are better than others, but the worst are better than the best from some places.”
“Like Jerans?” guessed Rahl.
“Or Biehl…or Hydlen.” Galsyn surveyed the deck. “Don’t see Carthold. I’ll get back to you later.”
“Yes, ser.”
After Galsyn turned and headed aft, Rahl glanced around the forward deck, but apparently Valdra had returned to her cabin or climbed the ladder to the bridge deck and moved aft far enough that he could not see her. Even before Galsyn had told him about her, Rahl had been a bit on edge.
He decided to find a quiet spot and force himself to study The Basis of Order. He might learn something new, although he doubted it.
XXXVII
After more than two eightdays, Rahl was more than a little tired of life at sea. The Hamorian lady Valdra had quietly avoided Rahl, as if she had measured him and found him wanting, and that nagged at him. He wasn’t that interested in her, but he didn’t like being enticed and dismissed. Especially by a brothel mistress, or whatever the proper term might be.
The days had gotten so long that Rahl even looked forward to copying and filling out forms for Galsyn. When he was not doing that, sleeping, or practicing with Mienfryd, if he couldn’t find someone to talk to, he forced himself to read through The Basis of Order page by page. Mostly, it was slow going, and boring, because he could either do what was mentioned, or, no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t. Mostly, he couldn’t. At least of the skills he understood.
He’d also tried to find the passages that Aleasya had said Zastryl had wanted him to read. He only found three, and one had some nonsense about not truly mastering the staff order until casting it aside. Another said that a staff could be infused with order, and the third said that a staff was only a pale reflection of its wielder. Rahl had to wonder what Zastryl had had in mind, but at least the wording of those passages had been clear.
There were more than a few passages whose ideas he didn’t understand at all. One remained in his mind.
When snow falls, the flakes do not fall in a precise pattern, each flake only so far from another. Nor are the flakes of one snowfall like unto another, yet once it is fallen, one snowflake clings to another in a pattern that coats all, and one can mold snow into forms. If one melts that snow, it becomes water and only has the structure of what confines it. In the winter, one can freeze that water and sculpt it into any shape. One can also boil water and turn it into a chaotic mist. Thus, water can be ordered or not. So is water of order or of chaos?
The obvious point was that in some circumstances water was chaotic and in others ordered. But what determined those circumstances? Just how hot or cold it was? Somehow, Rahl couldn’t believe that just heating something made it chaotic. Black iron was the most ordered of all metals, and it was created by great heat.
As he stood in the shaded area just aft of the starboard paddle-wheel assembly in the early afternoon, he tried to dismiss the paragraph, but he knew it was always somewhere in the back of his mind. Finally, he turned and made his way up the ladder to the bridge. Sometimes, the captain would talk to him.
At the top of the ladder in a space of sunlight falling between the full sails, he wiped the sweat from his forehead with a square of cloth. Within the last four days, the air had gotten far warmer, the sun more intense, and even the spray from the bow had lost its chill. The heavy long-sleeved gray tunic had become uncomfortably warm, and Rahl usually wore the lighter clerk’s summer tunic.
The captain stood on the covered but open bridge, to the left of the helm. Rahl stopped at the edge of the bridge, waiting for either an invitation or a dismissal.
“You picked a good time to come up, Rahl.” Liedra pointed ahead, just off the port bow. “If you look hard there, you can see Hamor.”
Rahl followed her gesture, staring out over the gentle swells that barely seemed to move the light blue waters. A thin line of white was visible just above the blue. Farther east, but north of the white, was a line of smoke.
“The white line’s the cliffs to the west of Swartheld,” the captain explained. “Before long, we’ll be swinging to a more easterly heading to avoid Heartbreak Reef. Don’t ever want to come into Swartheld in a storm or the dark. There’s a lighthouse there, but ship breakers will use fires to copy it, get unwary captains to drive onto the reef.”
“There’s smoke over there, ser.”
“I’d guess it’s a Hamorian warship. Might be one of their new iron-hulled cruisers. Nasty beasts with iron cannon. All that iron means a mage has to get really close to touch off the powder, and they don’t let anyone they don’t know get close. Cannon make more sense on a ship. It’s harder to use order-or chaos-forces at sea.”
Rahl nodded, although he hadn’t noticed much difference with what he could do with order.
He stood by Liedra for a time as the smoke drew nearer, and a dark-hulled vessel without rigging appeared, moving north of the Diev. He squinted. “There’s an iron box just aft of the bow, and two in the rear.”