“Open the front shutters! You’d think. .” Tellis’s voice rasped from the front showroom.
Cerryl set the Measurement volume on the copy stand and hurried to comply.
Tellis dragged himself over to the workroom table and slumped onto the stool. After a moment, acting as though each movement caused great pain, he stood and shuffled to the chest, unlocking it and extracting something. Then he shuffled back to the table and looked morosely down at the faded green velvet wrapped around what appeared to be a thin volume.
“Is there anything I can do, ser?”
“Suppose you have to. Promised this. . I’d be doing this myself, but this flux. .” Tellis coughed, then held his forehead and closed his eyes for a moment.
“I can do it, ser,” Cerryl said, glancing at the green velvet.
“I know. Dependable, you are.” Tellis massaged his forehead once more, then looked up. “Master Muneat wanted this as soon as I finished it.” Cerryl stepped over to the worktable. A slim volume bound in green leather lay on a square of green velvet. He knew vaguely that Tellis had been working on the book, but it was one of those the scrivener kept to himself.
“Do not be opening it.”
“But what is it. . if I might ask, ser?”
“It is. . verse. . of a particular sort.” Tellis flushed.
“Oh. .”
“It’s called The Wondrous Tales of the Green Angel. And I don’t know why.” Tellis coughed, almost retching, drawing himself erect after a moment. “But Muneat, he wanted it. . and matters have been slower than I would have liked. . don’t turn down a pair of golds for a volume of less than fourscore sheets. .”
Two golds?
“I promised, and it needs be delivered.” Tellis looked at Cerryl. “You can deliver a volume, can you not?”
“Yes, ser. . ah. . where am I going?”
“Master Muneat’s. You know the houses past the exchange? Past the jewelers’ row?” Tellis tried to clear his throat.
“Yes, ser, just past the market square?”
“His is the first house on the far side, the very first one. There is a fountain with two birds in the courtyard before the front door. You go to the front door.” Tellis paused, then swallowed hard. “This must go only to the hand of master Muneat himself. He is short, not much taller than you are, and he has a wide white mustache, and he is mostly bald.”
“What-”
“You just tell whoever opens the door that you must deliver it to his hand, and his alone, and that you will wait-or return whenever he deems fit. You be most polite, but only to his hand-or return.”
“Yes, ser.”
“And wear your good tunic. Go get it on and return.”
When Cerryl returned, Tellis had wrapped the volume in the velvet, then tied the cloth with thin strips of vellum, so that none could see the volume. Cerryl picked it up, wishing he’d known of it. . just to see what such wondrous tales were. Green angels? He’d heard of the black angels of Westwind, but not green angels.
“You go straight there, and come straight back. You hear?”
“Yes, ser. Straight to master Muneat’s. The first house past the market square on the far side. A fountain with two birds.”
“Good. .”
Cerryl bowed again, then gingerly picked up the wrapped volume. Tellis did not move, and the apprentice slipped away and out through the showroom door.
The air on the street was cold, but the bright sun helped warm Cerryl as he walked down the way of lesser artisans toward the square. The shutters were still closed at the weaver’s, though he could hear the shuttling of the big loom when he passed.
Across the market square, Fasse’s door was ajar, and a wagon stood at the curb of the avenue, with a driver beside it. Some cabinet being picked up by whoever had commissioned it? Who had the coins for such-besides people like dukes and viscounts?
Cerryl turned down the avenue, past the inn, and the smell of fresh-baked bread, and past the ostlery beside it, and the faint scent of hay brought in from somewhere and stacked in bales beside the stable door. Hay? In very early spring? Or had it been stored somewhere all winter?
Three carriages were lined up by the grain exchange, with the drivers standing by the middle carriage.
“Morning, boy!” called the older driver at one side.
“Good morning, ser.” The sun felt good on Cerryl’s face, and he smiled as he hurried down the walk past the jewelers’ row-the ironbound doors yet closed. He did catch the odor of hot metal from the last shop before the market square. In the square itself, the many-colored carts filled the pavement, but only a handful of those interested in their wares had appeared.
Cerryl’s steps slowed as he passed the square. The first dwelling on the far side. . He paused at the open wrought-iron gate, looking into the open expanse of dark green grass, bordered by bushes that lined the inside of the wall, and split by the polished granite walk that led straight to a fountain-a fountain with a bird on each side of the jet of water that splashed into the basin. Two birds, Tellis had said.
Cerryl just looked at the front of the dwelling for a moment longer. The walk circled the fountain and led to a stonecolumned and roofed portico that sheltered a huge polished red oak door-bound in iron. He’d thought that the houses along the avenue had been little more than one level. He’d been wrong, but that had been because they were larger, far larger in breadth, than he had thought. While the dwelling before him appeared to be but one level, that one level was twice the height of most of the shops along the way of the lesser artisans.
The shutters were open to reveal real glass windows-at least a half score on each side of the entry portico, each window composed of dozens of diamond-shaped glass panes that glittered in the morning sun, casting a silvered reflection across the deep green grass that filled the space before the house-or small palace.
Beside the smooth stones of the granite walk were rectangular and raised flower beds, filled with dark green plants bearing delicate white flowers. The scents of flowers-different kinds, scents he’d never smelled-drifted around him in the still air of morning, yet he could see no flowers.
Finally, he squared his shoulders and stepped through the gate, walking slowly but firmly up the walk. Tellis had told him the front door, and that was where he was headed.
Several drops of water flecked his face as he passed the fountain, and he shifted the book to his left hand, away from the fountain.
Standing in the shadows of the portico, a tall space that made him feel very small, he lifted the heavy and brightly polished brass knocker, then let it drop.
Thrap! The hard impact on the knocker plate seemed to echo through the stillness. Cerryl waited.
A gray-haired man in a blue tunic and trousers opened the door. “Trade is at the side door.”
“Master Tellis told me to deliver this to master Muneat, to his own hand.”
“I’ll take it for him, boy.” The servitor smiled pleasantly.
“No, ser. Only to his hand. I can wait, if he would like. Or I can come back again.”
The man in green frowned. “Wait.” The door closed.
Cerryl shifted his weight from one foot to the other. The sun seemed to beat on his back, even the back of his legs.
Finally, the door reopened, and the green-clad servitor looked at Cerryl. “Master Tellis, you said?”
“Yes, ser. The scrivener.”
A faint smile cracked the thin lips. “I’m Shallis, and I’m not a ser. I’m the house seneschal.” He opened the door and stepped back. “You are to come in and wait here in the foyer.”
Cerryl eased inside. The foyer ceiling was high, twice as high as the showroom’s in Tellis’s shop, and polished dark wood planks stretched between the arching granite supports. The base of each pillar was a polished rose-tinged stone, so smooth that it shimmered in the light from the open door.