The Magic of Recluce (31 page)

S
INCE WHAT
I had to do would further upset tradition in Fenard, I needed someone with a personal interest, and Brettel was the only one possible.

I kept telling myself that as Gairloch carried me out the north road to the mill-master's operation. Perhaps I had just picked the day because the sun was finally out, and the wind down, and the air so clean and clear that despite its bite on my face, I wanted to sing. I didn't. That would have been inflicting too much on poor Gairloch.

The thoughts of song died as I neared the mill and the gray stone warehouse.

“Lerris, what brings you here? Did you finish that chair?” His silver hair glinted despite the afternoon overcast, and his smile was welcoming.

“You gave me the order two days ago. Good chairs take some time.” I grinned right back at him, but I couldn't sustain the expression.

His eyes raked over me. “Come on into the parlor.”

“Would that be all right?”

“I'll be there shortly. I need to tell Arta about some cuts. If you want some redberry, Dalta will get it for you.”

He was off, his short legs propelling the big torso and broad shoulders toward the mill with a walk that would have been running for most men.

Wiping my forehead, I dismounted and tied Gairloch to the post, loosely. Although he needed no tying, there was no point in advertising either his training or my abilities. I wondered if the people at the Travelers' Rest had ensured that a mountain pony was always there at Felshar's Livery when dangergelders arrived, or whether it had been specially set up for me. Talryn, nursing a guilty conscience?

Although the afternoon was clouded, the dampness and heat, and the lack of any breeze at all, created the feeling of walking through a hot bath in winter clothes. My growing internal order-mastery let me handle cold, but heat was another question.

At the long one-story house beside the lumber warehouse, I lifted the brass knocker and let it fall.

A young woman opened the door.

I smiled in spite of myself. Seeing the eyes as blue as the sky after a rain, hair as bright as spun gold, skin more finely finished than the silk of white oak, and a figure like a temple statue, I could have cared less that she came to less than my shoulder.

“May I help you? The mill-master is in the main building…” Her voice was firm, yet smooth as a good finish on black oak.

Gathering myself back together, I nodded. “I'm Lerris, the journeyman for Destrin. Brettel asked me to wait for him in the parlor.” I paused. “Are you Dalta?”

“I'm Dalta.” She smiled politely, with a natural warmth that promised nothing while cheering the afternoon, and for some reason I thought of Krystal, though I could not have possibly said why.

“He mentioned redberry.”

“I'll take you to the parlor.”

She even provided me with a glass—a real glass tumbler—of redberry, and I sat in a chair probably made by Dorman, since it matched one I had seen in his plan book, and wondered what Brettel's consort looked like to have produced such a daughter.

Then I wondered about Deirdre, and whether what I was planning was fair. Recalling Talryn's acidic comments about fairness, I ended up shaking my head.

“You look like hell, Lerris…” Brettel carried another tumbler, but his steamed. The odor of spiced cider filled the room, mixing with the smell of burning wood from the hearth.

“That's about the way I feel.”

“You look like you want to ask for something out of the ordinary.”

I nodded.

“Don't tell me you want to marry Deirdre.”

“No. That would be wrong for both of us, but she's part of the problem.”

Brettel sipped, delicately for such a broad man, from the tumbler, waiting.

“You know Destrin's failing…” I began.

“He doesn't look well.”

“I can't maintain the business too much longer.”

“I can't say I'm surprised.” His face darkened.

“Hold it. I'm not walking off soon…but I need a favor, and not for me.”

He took another sip as his expression slipped back to neutrality. “Why are you asking me?”

I decided to blurt it all out. “I need to train an apprentice for Destrin. He has to understand or feel woods, and he has to be older than the normal apprentice, and I really want him to be suitable for Deirdre.”

“That's a big order. Who appointed you Destrin's keeper?”

“I guess I did. No one else was helping him. Now that I've made things profitable. I can't just leave it. But the time will come…” I shrugged again.

“Why can't you stay?”

“For now, I can. The time will come, probably before too long, when…”

“You're awfully mysterious, Lerris. Why should I do this?” The man was pressing, but he had been good to me, and I could tell he embodied order.

I looked around the parlor, let my senses expand. No one was within hearing distance. “What do you know about Recluce?”

Brettel just nodded, not even looking surprised. “There's always been something more about you. Are you helping Destrin?”

I knew what he meant. “As I can, but there's nothing anyone could do.”

“You'd do this for him?”

“He's a good man. Not a terribly good crafter, but a good man. And he fights each day because he feels he can offer Deirdre nothing.”

Brettel scratched his left ear, then took a long pull. “Do you have any ideas where such an unusual apprentice might be found?”

“How about the younger son of one of the woodlot owners or the farms where you log? You might have a feeling…”

“I might…does he have to be older?”

“No…but not too much younger…gentle at heart, but stubborn, if that's possible…” I closed my mouth, realizing I was revealing far too much.

“You worry about me?”

“A little,” I admitted.

“You should.” Then he smiled. “But I told you I was Deirdre's godfather, and whether you came from hell itself, something needs to be done. Let me think about it. There are a couple of youngsters that just might do.” He chuckled and added, “And their parents would believe we were doing them a favor.”

I finished the redberry while Brettel thought.

“I'll get back to you,” he told me while ushering me out.

An eight-day later Bostric arrived.

So did a commission for a red-oak chest for Dalta's dowry, with instructions to take my time and do it right…as if I ever would have done it any other way for Brettel.

Bostric was gangly, red-haired and freckled, initially as shy as a spooked quail, at least when I was around, and stubborn as a cornered buffalo. But he listened, and he could feel the woods. In his work on the woodlot, he'd even used a saw and tried his hand at carving. His figures of people and animals were artistically better than mine.

Destrin just humphed, between coughs and when he had the strength to do so, and Deirdre made larger portions of the ever-present barley soup. Boring it might be, but she smiled more, when she wasn't fussing over her papa, and that was about all I could expect.

I still sometimes dreamed about golden girls, and sometimes about a black-haired woman, and woke up sweating and worse. I wondered why I dreamed of Krystal, but had no answers. All the time, Bostric slept soundly in the pull-out pallet we had built for him in the shop.

B
RETTEL'S COMMISSION GAVE
me another idea. I decided to make two of the chests, keeping the pieces for the second red oak dower chest in the stable when I wasn't working on it. If I didn't do it, no one else would, and Destrin really never looked at what I was working on until it was close to completion.

He was usually wrapped up in his benches and plain tables and fighting out the coughing attacks. When he wasn't, he worried about Bostric or me.

“He's all right, Lerris. He's just not you.” If I heard them once, I heard those words a score of times as the winter drew out.

Bostric had more potential than Perlot's Grizzard, of that I was convinced, but he still didn't have the confidence, and only time would build that.

First, I made him work on breadboards, but only a few, mainly to give him confidence. The market for breadboards was limited, and designing and carving breadboards that didn't sell wasn't building confidence. I called them display pieces, and two actually sold, right from the window.

Then I talked to Wryson, who ran the dry goods store off the jewelers' street, and persuaded him to commission a storage chest, a simple piece but lined with cedar, to provide summer storage for woolens.

Doing it took twice as long, because I made Bostric do a lot of things I would have done.

“Why don't you do this, ser? I have to struggle, just getting the lines right.”

“So did I,” I snapped. “But will I always be here?”

“If you're not here, honored mastercrafter, how will I learn?” He said it in a respectful tone with a straight face. Only his eyes betrayed him.

“I'm not a mastercrafter. I'm just a journeyman woodcrafter.”

“I understand, ser.”

He gave me that hangdog look, and with his unruly red mop, freckles, and bushy eyebrows, resembled a sheepdog more than an apprentice. Then, maybe the two were similar. Sometimes it was hard to remember how frustrated and bored I had been, and how I would have liked to have said what I felt.

“But, honored journeyman, I still don't see what you want.”

I couldn't help grinning. “Sorry…you're right. It is hard to learn how to do.” I took the calipers once again and showed him what I wanted, then I watched and corrected him when necessary, trying not to laugh.

In the end, on that piece, everything worked out. Wryson was pleased, and placed an order for another chest, but not until early in the fall, when he would be getting his last shipment of finished woolens from Montgren.

Sometimes, it didn't work out so well—like the chair for Wessel. Bostric had trouble with the spooling, and that was my fault. He wasn't ready for it, and I had pushed too hard. We gave his effort, sturdy enough, to the Temple sisters, and I completed the second one myself. The bonus almost paid for the extra wood.

Deirdre turned out a matched cushion that made the piece even more spectacular, and I made a mental note to have her do more work like that in the future. She would be a real partner for Bostric.

After that, I suggested that Bostric try a bench to match the ones Destrin was making for the Horn Inn, perhaps the seediest drinkery in Fenard. At least, the breakage and Destrin's low prices had given him a steady, if poor, income.

Destrin had hummphed at my suggestion, coughed some more, but hadn't openly objected.

In the meantime, to try to upgrade Bostric's finishing skills, I had sketched out a child's table for him, scaling down a simple one from Dorman's incredible plan book. Once I had gone through it several times and explained the reasons for everything, Bostric finally nodded. I could sense the understanding.

The table turned out well, although it sat in the window for more than an eight-day before Wryson, the dry goods merchant, paid two silvers for it and a matching pair of armless chairs. I think that was because the weather had closed in, drifting snow over the roads toward Kyphros, and an expected shipment of Kyphros silverware had been delayed until after the holidays. So he needed a year-end present for his littlest.

I put my share into the hidden strongbox to go with the dower chest, and Bostric bought himself a pair of boots, barely used, but an improvement over his muckers.

Still…the table had been an experiment that almost hadn't sold, and that bothered me. We couldn't count on the weather to save us every time.

I rubbed my chin, then looked at the white oak I was working for a corner cabinet. White oak was so clean, but that meant that any mistake was there where no one could miss it, at least no one with a half-trained eye. Strangely, the same was true for black oak, but for the opposite reason. Everyone scrutinized it so closely that inevitably the flaws were discovered.

With a silent sigh, I looked over the boxes and the side table on the display stage and out into the mid-morning…gloomy as only a late-winter morning could be in Fenard.

Finally, I added another log to the hearth.

“I'll be back.”

Destrin hummphed, hunched himself into his sweater and looked at the square storage box on his bench.

Bostric, behind Destrin, raised his eyebrows at the box, then looked to me. I glared, and he sighed. Destrin wasn't always communicative, but Bostric was going to end up with everything, and the least he could do was accept Destrin's faults.

“Do take care, honored journeyman,” Bostric called. His voice was mock-plaintive.

I swallowed another grin and drew my cloak around me as I stepped into the chill on the street, making sure the door was closed behind me. My steps carried me toward the market square.

As I stepped onto the sidewalk beside the avenue, one of the few streets with an actual raised stone sidewalk separate from the road surface, I could sense a tension in the chill and damp air. Without even a hint of a breeze, the odor of wood smoke hung over Fenard, imparting an acrid edge to every breath.

A tinker pushed his cart listlessly toward the square. Behind him waddled a balding and white-haired man carrying a satchel. Neither looked up as I skirted them.

Overhead, the sun was lost behind the featureless gray clouds that appeared unmoving.

Clink…clink…clink
…At the sound of the coach on the stones behind me, I stepped toward the bricks of the shop walls.

…clink
…

A glimmer of golden wood caught my eye, just as the unsmelled odor of chaos gripped at my feelings, as the chaos-master's coach rolled slowly by, drawn by the two oversized white horses I had first seen on the road from Freetown the previous fall. Behind the coach were the same two guards on their matching chestnuts, and the same dead-faced coachman drove.

Outlined in the coach window was the profile of a woman, the veiled woman I had seen at the inn in Howlett. The coach rolled down the avenue before I really cast my senses at the passengers.

Crack!
The whiplash was metal, but I nearly cringed on the street from the force of the reaction, and from the immediate dull ache. Retreating behind the defenses Justen had taught me, I forced my steps to remain even as I continued toward the square.

“Geee-haw…” The mechanical voice of the driver echoed from the bricks and stones.

I did not rub my forehead, much as I wanted to, wondering at the fleeting impression I had received of three people within the coach. There had only been two, that I knew.

By the time I had passed by the square, with the rusted open market gates patrolled by the prefect's guards, and was farther toward the palace, I could see that the heavy iron gates of the palace had already closed.

I shook my head slowly, turning back toward Destrin's. Every time I acted without thinking, I exposed myself. Now Antonin would know that there was at least one order-master in Fenard. The contact had been so brief, and his response so automatic and contemptuous, that I hoped he would not recognize me as an outsider or from Recluce.

I hoped, but there wasn't much else I could do, except keep on woodworking and learning…and trying to think before I acted. And all of that without letting my boredom push me.

Overhead, the clouds remained gray, but the faintest hint of a breeze touched my cheeks.