The Magic of Recluce (32 page)

P
ERLOT'S
C
RAFTING—
THAT
was what the ornately-carved sign read. The chiseled letters, old temple-style script, were painted black. A pale hard-finish coat that did not carry the gold overtones of most varnishes let the warm red-oak tones shine through.

As the morning mist beaded on my cloak, I tied Gairloch to the post in front of the shop. The winter had dragged out longer than usual, and when spring had come, the rains and the cold had mixed, like in the downpour that flooded the stable because I had neglected to clean the drainage gutters outside Gairloch's stall. Cleaning muck, and hay, and ice chunks, with the rain sheeting across my neck and back—that had been a real joy, and cleaning myself afterwards hadn't been much more fun.

“You must really like cold baths…” Bostric had observed with a straight face in his oh-so-respectful tone.

“Next time you can join me,” I had told him, but it had only stopped the banter for a while, until I was back working in dry clothes.

Recalling Bostric's teasing, and glad that spring had finally come, I studied the chairs in the window—drawn especially to the sitting-room chair on the right. That design I had never seen, not even in Uncle Sardit's sketchbooks. The curves of the legs were understated, minimal, yet made the chair seem more delicate than it was.

“You!”

I looked up at the gruff voice.

A thin man, not much older than I was, a thin film of sawdust stuck to the sweat on his forehead and wearing a tattered gray shirt under his leather apron, glared at me.

I returned the look evenly. “Yes?”

“Are you—”

“Invite him in, Grizzard,” added a raspy voice from within the shop.

Grizzard looked puzzled, and I just stepped around him. Directly inside the shop were three chairs, elegant in the Hamorian style, but a trace too heavy in the legs and squared cross-braces. Between them was a low table, the kind whose use I had never figured out except as a place on which clutter collected.

While all the pieces were good, they were clearly high-class rejects, too expensive for the tradesman, and not quite good enough for the gentry. Probably Grizzard's work, rather than Perlot's. Somehow, Perlot never would have let a poor piece get that far.

Reddish coals glittered in the corner hearth, with a warmth I could feel even from the doorway. Perlot stepped around a bench and toward me.

I nodded.

“So we meet again, Lerris, or should I say craft-master Lerris?” Perlot stopped behind the chairs, next to the half-wall that separated the small waiting area from the workshop.

I bowed to the mastercrafter, and I meant it. His work was good, some of it, like the chair in the window, not only as good technically as Uncle Sardit's, but possibly even more inspired. “I was admiring the sitting-room chair. It's possibly the best piece I've seen like that.”

The narrow craggy face creased as he frowned, and the craft-master closed his mouth. Then he wiped his hands on the underside of his apron. “Mean that, don't you?”

I nodded again.

“Grizzard, stop standing there like a dolt. You still haven't finished the detailing on the chest.”

“Yes, ser.” Grizzard scurried around us, the puzzle lines still graven in his forehead.

“Would you sit down?”

“Only for a moment, ser.” I eased into the chair toward which Perlot had gestured, and he sat down across from me.

“Like to set things straight, young fellow…”

“There's nothing to set straight, mastercrafter. You didn't know me, and you had never seen my work. I could have been a wood-grifter from Freetown or Spidlar—”

Perlot motioned me to silence, and I stopped.

“You're not. I've looked at your work. It's better than any journeyman's here in Fenard, and it's getting better. Some is mastercraft level, like the chair you did for Wessel.”

I must have lifted my eyebrows.

Perlot smiled. “He asked me for my opinion. I told him that he stole it from Destrin, and that it was the best single piece in his house, including the dining-room set I did last year.”

“You flatter us.”

“No. I don't flatter. It's not Destrin, poor soul. It's you. What do you intend to do? Take over Destrin's shop, and his daughter, and put him out to pasture?” The question was idly phrased, but the dark eyes hung on me.

I shook my head slowly. “Sometimes I wish that I could. It would be simpler that way. But that would not be fair nor right. In too many ways, I am still a journeyman, with more than a little left to learn.”

Grizzard was trying to listen and concentrate on the detailing, and both efforts were suffering.

This time Perlot nodded. “Bostric won't ever be in your class.”

“He will be a good craftsman, given time and training.”

“He might be.” The mastercrafter smiled. “Don't sell yourself short, young fellow. You've changed a lot in the time since you came. Besides, there's a difference between the quality of your cabinets and the quality of your soul.” He laughed. “Poor Destrin. First-class soul, but…” Perlot shrugged.

“I don't think you can craft good wood without order in your soul,” I added.

“Nor do I, boy. But an orderly soul doesn't guarantee good work. Having an orderly soul and being an order-master are two different propositions.” He stood up. “What will you do about that chair in the window?”

“Nothing. It's your design.” I grinned. “Now…if I can find something as good—and different…”

“You mean that, don't you?”

I nodded.

“Give Destrin my best, Lerris. Do what you can while you're here.” He stood up abruptly.

With that dismissal, I also stood, but did take the time for a last look at the chair before stepping out into the spring warmth.

Gairloch waited patiently, as always.

Wheeee…eeee
…

“I know. You don't get enough exercise, but I try, and one of these days, we'll take a longer trip. Just be glad that you're not hauling wood for the mills. You could belong to a carrier and not to a poor and impoverished woodcrafter.”

Gairloch didn't seem impressed. So I patted him on the shoulder after I mounted. He didn't flatter me, honest beast.

Perlot's comments about Bostric bothered me. While I wished I could avoid it, before long I would have to talk to Brettel. Destrin continued to fail, and nothing I could do would help but prolong his failing.

T
EEEL…LEEELL…
A
N
unfamiliar bird warbles from beyond the olive groves.

Sccuuuffff
…Soft steps cross the graveled courtyard leading to the cavalry stables.

A single torch flickers in the holder by the stable door, where a tired youngster wearing the greens of the autarch snores softly.

As the steps pause, a woman with long dark unbound hair looks down at the youngster. She wears a peasant dress, yet carries a bulging field pack whose straps press into the lithe muscles of her shoulders.

After a sad nod, she eases around the sentry and into the darkness of the stable, counting the stalls until she reaches the third.

Whuffllll
…

“…Easy…easy…”

In the darkness, the dark-haired woman eases the pack off her shoulders and lifts the two soft leather bags, and the heavy powder within each, out of the field pack she has carried from the engineering barracks. Next she checks the empty set of saddlebags before placing one bag of powder in each saddlebag, carefully fastening the clasps. The map she leaves tucked inside the waistband of the skirt.

She walks through the darkness to the end of the stable, where she eases the field pack into a corner. While it will certainly be discovered in a day or two, how and why it was placed there will not matter. Her squad will be leaving to face the Freetown rebels in the morning.

Her steps, even more silently, carry her back out past her mount and past the still-snoring stable guard. In time, she slips into her own room, where she lights a single candle, ignoring the woman on the occupied narrow cot. She rips off the peasant blouse and skirt and immerses herself in the tub of chill water she drew after the evening meal.

“At this time of night, Krystal?” asks a sleepy-eyed blond woman, sitting up and swinging her legs onto the floor.

“Never…again…no matter
what
.”

“What?”

“It doesn't matter.” The dark-haired woman jabs a hand toward her own cot. “See those scissors?”

“Yes. Why?”

“Would you get them?”

“You're not…”

“I am. Like I said, never again, not even for the best of causes.” She has dried herself and is pulling on bleached and faded undergarments.

“You aren't making sense.”

“I am. For the first time, I am.” Her lips quirk into a genuine smile as the long black tresses fall away.

W
ITH THE FLOWERS
in the street boxes in bloom, and a brisk breeze from the north, the walk along the avenue was pleasant enough, even if I felt Bostric was always about to lurch into me. His feet always threatened not to follow his body—or the street ahead.

Destrin was back in the shop muttering over a simple box—just a box for Murran, the wagon-master who carried spices and silver along the north-south road from Fenard through Kyphros and all the way to Horgland on the South Sea. He would probably still be muttering and coughing when we returned.

No single street in Fenard bore a sign, but everyone named them—the avenue, the street of jewelers, the north road. I'd learned the names of many just by listening, but as for the side streets, the alleys, I doubted anyone who hadn't spent a lifetime in Fenard or a great deal of time loitering would ever know all the names.

The names changed. I overheard Deirdre and Bostric talking about when the grocers' lane had been the place of old inns. But the avenue was the avenue, the only really straight and perfectly-maintained street in Fenard. That might have had something to do with the fact that it ran from the prefect's palace past the market square and straight to the south gate.

Because the day was pleasant, and because I wasn't in the mood for doing detail work on the writing desk, not with Destrin in good enough health, temporarily anyway, and because Deirdre was sniffling and sneezing from the early flowers blooming, I had volunteered to wander past the market square to see if the cloth merchants from Horgland had arrived.

Bostric, of course, was happy not to be in the shop, caught between Destrin's complaints and my demands.

“We're actually taking a walk, honored journeyman?”

“Bostric. Enough is enough—unless you want to stay with the honored shop owner and feed the fire.”

“While feeding the fire would be a great honor…”

“Bostric…”

“I'd prefer the walk.”

Sometimes, I could see why Brettel had been able to find Bostric so quickly. His humor wasn't exactly subtle, yet I had the feeling there was more depth there, hidden behind the obvious and respectful disrespect.

Clink…clink
…

I nudged the apprentice, and we stepped toward the shop fronts as the single post-rider trotted toward the palace.

“Wonder what news he brings?”

“He doesn't look happy. Perhaps the autarch…” He broke off as a soldier in the dark leathers of the prefect neared.

The soldier, shorter and squatter than either of us, his eyes fixed beyond the street, plunged straight at us, as if we did not exist.

I could sense an emptiness there, no aura at all, except for a faint white kernel deep within.

“What—” Bostric looked at me. “What was that?”

I thought I knew, but only shook my head. “He had somewhere to go. He's going to get there without taking a single turn.”

No one else on the street—not the man in blue silks and leather with the long sword, nor the peddler woman with the sack, nor the urchin with the missing tooth and red hair—not one even seemed to notice the rigidity of the man's mission as they stepped or scurried aside.

Across the street, between two gray stone houses, there were two boxes of early-blooming red flowers flanking a narrow street, where with an almost furtive look the man in the blue silk shirt and dark-gray leather vest stepped out of sight.

“What street is that?” I asked Bostric.

“What street…” he mumbled in return.

“That alley over there, between the flowers. You seem to know all the streets.”

“That's no proper street.” He was flushing.

“No proper street?” I teased him, a little glad to have him on the defensive.

“Not a proper street…” His words were dogged, and he didn't even look in my direction.

“What do you mean?” I glanced toward the red flowers and the narrow alley—whose contents were lost in the shadows.

“All right. I'll show you. You'll see.” Turning suddenly and stretching his long legs into nearly a run, he crossed the avenue so sharply I was hard-pressed to keep up with him.

We were both past the flowers before I had much of a chance to look around, or to react to the fragrances, a dozen or more different odors—roses, nightfires, lilies, and others I could not recognize, so many that my senses reeled.

Narrow the way was, not much more than half a rod wide, and short, not more than a dozen houses on each side before curving to the right and ending in a wall that seemed to separate the street from the market square. The polished marble stones were spotless and bore no trace of horses or coaches.

My eyes strayed up to a balcony not much above my head. There stood a woman, how old I could not say, though she was red-haired and older than I, wearing only a thin cotton shift so sheer that I could see every line of her body and even the dark nipples of her breasts.

“…two young gents…”

I swallowed. No wonder Bostric had flushed.

He didn't look at me, but his steps flagged, and he halted. “Here. The street of…ladies…”

“Street of harlots, young fellow…we know what we are.”

I didn't see the woman whose hard voice made the statement, since my eyes, in turning from the redhead on the balcony, had fallen across a blond woman wearing nothing but a robe, unbelted enough to show small high breasts quite fully and that she was a blond in all aspects, and that those aspects were all well-formed.

I think I forgot to breathe; my eyes blurred, and in shaking my head I looked down the way where a brunette, wearing only a filmy skirt, was drawing the man in blue silk inside a doorway.

In the open and unglassed window of a house closer than where the brunette had enticed the dandy lounged another semi-clothed woman, this one with impossibly-formed breasts, also uncovered, and with the tiniest of waists.

“Your pleasure here, young fellows…two or more, if you wish…” That voice came from the left, where my eyes flickered almost despite themselves, alighting on the low balcony opposite the redhead. This one was black-haired, with long flowing tresses that swirled over the creamy skin of her otherwise uncovered breasts and shoulders.

I swallowed again, feeling my trousers suddenly far too tight, as I viewed that hair across the impossibly beckoning breasts of the raven-haired harlot.

Bostric…he wasn't as silent as I was…his breath so loud that it penetrated my daze…partly.

“…one of the woodcrafters…I think…”

The identification was so whispery I almost missed it, but the words sent a chill across my neck, enough of a chill that I sent my feelings toward the black-haired wench.

“Ohhh.” The heavy and squat woman beneath the illusion radiated not only chaos, but a coiled illness deep within, like an ooze-green serpent. My senses shifted to the redhead above and caught not only her scrawny leanness, but the long knife along one hip, and the vacant smile. What my eyes saw, my senses refuted. My guts twisted, and I had to re-swallow bile and whatever else remained from breakfast.

Underfoot, the polished marble turned into rutted and cracked stone and clay, littered with certain items from the interiors of sheep, as well as other items. The odor of flowers was overlaid with other, less desirable odors.

Bostric stood like a statue until I jabbed him in the ribs and took him by the elbow.

We both stumbled out into the avenue, though he merely looked dazed. If I looked the way I felt, morning fog would have looked more substantial.

“See…” Bostric said. “See…”

I said nothing, just forced my feet to carry me toward the market square, breathing deeply and trying to get the odor of rotten roses out of my nostrils and my memory. Shaking my head and squinting, and asking myself who had recognized me…and why.

I shivered, and reached out again, this time to Bostric, recognizing the slender thread of suggestion planted upon him.

While it would have been the effort of an instant to snap that thread, despite the ugliness of that tie, I could not. So I infused Bostric with some additional order and let him shake himself free.

“Wheee…ewww…”

“Yes,” I added. “Let's see about that cloth.”

“Cloth? You can think about cloth after that?”

“It's a great deal safer.” I tried to keep my tone wry.

“Safer?” Bostric's eyes flashed in my direction. “Lerris…?”

I knew what he was thinking. “Yes.” My voice was tired. “I do like women. Healthy, young, and unmagicked women.”

“Unmagicked?”

I ignored his last question as we walked past another half-living guard stationed by the gate to the market square. The coldness surrounding him was hard to ignore, but I did, letting my eyes search for the bright-colored banner that Deirdre had described.

Looking for cloth merchants was easier than speculating on the magic behind the Street of Harlots.

Even past the empty fountain, halfway across the paving stones of the square, past the potters' stalls, past the split-wood baskets from the farms, past the red-and-gold patterned blankets displayed by a twisted little man, there were no colored banners nor cloth merchants.

Bostric shivered as we passed Mathilde, older but still blond, if plump, and bulging out of unwashed brown trousers and a tattered and open cloth coat. The flowers in her pots were already wilting within from the chaos contained in her blood. No evil there, just honest disorder.

For all Bostric's shivers, I would have bedded a dozen Mathildes sooner than any of the ladies on the Street of Harlots. The deeper I looked at Fenard, the less I liked it. But would that have been true in any place where I stayed long enough to really look?

I didn't know.

What I knew for certain was that the cloth merchants hadn't arrived, and that I had no intentions of going anywhere near that narrow street again.