Heritage of Cyador

LII

Two glasses later, Lerial surveys Jhosef’s personal study, with a pair of lancers standing guard in the doorway behind him. A windowed door that overlooks the lake to the east is flanked on each side by two wide windows, beyond which is a roofed terrace graced by a circular table and chairs. The table is covered with a brown-bordered linen cloth, tied down as indicated by the fact that the cloth does not move or flutter in the light breeze. The study floor is composed of the same glistening white and brown tiles that appear everywhere throughout the villa, although most of the study tiles are covered by a rich light brown carpet that has a border design of intertwined golden chains. The draperies, tied back with golden ropes, are of velvet the same shade as the rich brown of the carpet.

The north wall of the study consists of a fireplace flanked by goldenwood bookcases that extend only as high as the top of the fireplace mantel, a flat shelf that holds two small busts of Jhosef, one at each end. The entire mantel structure appears to have been sculpted out of a pale tan marble. The fire area is concealed by a decorative bronze screen featuring an image of the villa itself as seen from the east side of the lake. Each bookcase has four large shelves, but only the second shelf from the top contains books. The top of each bookcase and the other three shelves contain an assortment of ornate boxes, each one different from any other, and of a variety of materials and sizes, and include small golden boxes, oblong silver boxes, and even one formed of interlocking triangles of lapis lazuli.

The wide pedestal goldenwood desk set out from the south wall of the study has an inlaid border on the top that matches the carpet design. Bronze lamps on each side of the desktop have mirrors on the outer side, slightly tilted forward, presumably to focus the reflected light on the center of the desk to allow easier reading after dark. The chair pulled back from the desk is upholstered in the same padded brown leather as the two armchairs that face the fireplace.

Something about the study … Then Lerial realizes that he stands in the first study he can recall that does not have what amounts to a conference or plaques table within it.

He walks to the desk, admiring the workmanship of the inlay pattern, reflecting on all that he has viewed over the past two glasses, ranging from an extensive subterranean wine cellar in one outbuilding, to the three cells of a dungeon beneath the barracks building, adjoining an armory still containing a considerable assortment of well-maintained weapons. Both the barracks and dungeon have been recently occupied. Surrounding the villa are the varied gardens, several of which can be entered from a handful of the more than a score of luxurious chambers in the south wing of the villa. There is even a small locked chamber that serves as repository for chests of golds and silvers. Finding the key had not been that difficult. It had been one of three concealed in Jhosef’s wide leather belt.

Lerial, accompanied by Norstaan, had unlocked the strongbox chamber and viewed the three chests-one for golds, one for silvers, and one for coppers. He hadn’t counted the coins, just estimated, and that estimate suggested that the three small chests contained an amount equal to more than five thousand golds.

Thinking over the locked storeroom and all the furnishings, garments, paintings, and other artwork, not to mention the villa and grounds, Lerial shakes his head at the wealth embodied in Jhosef’s summer villa. Perhaps worth more golds than the value of not only the palace but of every merchanter’s dwelling and factorage in all Cigoerne … and he is not even the wealthiest factor in Afrit … and this is just a summer villa.

At the knock on the study door, Lerial turns. “Yes?”

Two lancers stand there. Between them is a round-faced and balding man of perhaps thirty-five years.

“The seneschal fled, ser. We have the assistant to the seneschal.”

“What’s your name?” asks Lerial.

“Baniel, ser, honored Lord.” The assistant seneschal’s bow almost prostrates him, and as he rises his eyes do not quite meet Lerial’s.

“Come in. We have a few matters to discuss, Baniel.”

The assistant seneschal steps into the study, stopping several yards short of Lerial.

“Was any other member of Merchanter Jhosef’s family here beside his son Oestyn?”

“No, ser.”

“Why not?”

“They do not come here. I do not know why. Kourast might know, but he fled with the merchanter’s personal guards.”

“Where was the heir staying while he was here?”

“In one of the guest chambers…”

“Was that the one with the iron-braced outside shutters and the door that could be barred only from outside?”

“Yes, ser.”

“How often is that chamber used?”

“I could not say, ser. It has not been used often in recent years, but how many times I could not say.”

“Were women housed there?”

“I know that happened once. The other times, I do not know. I do not know of any men who stayed there besides the heir.”

“Why not?”

“Kourast was in charge of the villa, ser. I was the assistant for the grounds.”

Lerial can sense no chaos or evasion with that statement. In fact, he has sensed little of that, except a trace when Baniel talked about not knowing whether those housed in the only barred guest chamber were women.

“What were your duties?”

“I was over those who worked in all of the outbuildings except for the spirits building, the guardhouse, and the gate buildings. The gardens and the orchards, and the grounds themselves. I had nothing to do with the merchanter’s grounds guards or personal guards. They reported to Oiden.”

“Was Oiden the chaos-mage?”

“Yes, ser.”

That doesn’t surprise Lerial, either.

Lerial’s questions last for another half glass before he asks, “Do you have any questions, Baniel?”

“Are you claiming the villa, honored Lord?” asks Baniel, his voice more obsequious than deferential.

“It’s not mine to claim. What happens to the villa and those in it is up to Duke Rhamuel. Your task is to maintain it for whoever will take possession. If anything is missing or damaged, beyond what has already occurred, everyone will suffer, especially you. Is that clear?”

Baniel swallows, not so much at the words, Lerial suspects, but at the tone in which Lerial has delivered them. “Yes, ser.”

“You may go. No one is to leave the grounds. That includes you. You are to relay my orders to the rest of the villa and grounds staff immediately.”

“Yes, ser.” Baniel’s bow is deep and obsequious.

“And your bows would be better if you weren’t so obviously excessively flattering,” Lerial adds dryly.

Baniel stiffens, then swallows again before asking, “By your leave, Lord Lerial?”

“You may go.”

Lerial watches as Baniel turns and leaves. He waits several moments, then follows, pausing beside the rankers. “Guard the study.” After those words to the pair of lancers, Lerial wraps a concealment around himself and follows the assistant seneschal.

“… wouldn’t want to be the seneschal,” murmurs one of the rankers.

Those words remind Lerial just how much more he is certain, the longer he is in Afrit, that he doesn’t want to be anyone or anything in the duchy. And yet every single day brings something that drags out your duty here.

Some fifty yards down the corridor toward the entry hall, Baniel turns into a narrower side hall and then descends the steps to the cellar level. Lerial continues to follow the assistant seneschal into a narrow hallway to a larger chamber. There, several women and an older man wait.

“Gather everyone you can find,” Baniel says in a voice that is firm but not overly loud.

Lerial eases against the wall beside the archway and waits almost a third of a glass as the servants’ hall fills.

Finally, Baniel steps forward and speaks. “I met with Lord Lerial. He is the second heir to the duchy of Cigoerne. He is an overcaptain in the Mirror Lancers and a great mage as well. He is the one who defeated the Heldyans and destroyed Merchanter Jhosef and his wizards. You all know how powerful Wizard Maastrik was. Lord Lerial’s orders are very simple. We are to remain and to carry on. No one is to leave the grounds. All of us will be punished if anything is damaged or missing.”

Baniel may not have known everything about what went on in the villa, Lerial observes, but the man knows more about Lerial himself than Lerial or the lancers had told him, and that suggests, if indirectly, that Jhosef had indeed been deeply involved in the events surrounding the Heldyan invasion.

“What if the armsmen take things?” asks a woman, older from her voice.

“You have not seen the Lord Lerial. He is not that old, but iron would bend sooner than him. His men will touch nothing.”

“There are Afritan Guards…”

“They have seen the overcaptain. They will likely touch nothing, either. If they remove anything, tell me. I will tell Lord Lerial.”

“What will happen after he leaves?”

“Duke Rhamuel will decide.”

“When a great Magi’i lord destroys Afritan merchanters…” says another voice, “everything we have known will change…”

Lerial certainly hopes so.

“We must leave the change to them,” declares Baniel. “Do what you always do, and do it well, and we will survive.”

Sometimes that is enough, reflects Lerial, and sometimes it’s not.

Other questions follow, but those deal with who will handle what duties, since some servitors fled with Seneschal Kourast before Lerial’s men sealed off the grounds. When it is clear that he will learn little more from listening and observing the servants with his order-senses, Lerial eases out of the lower chamber and makes his way back to the main level, where he drops the concealment.

By then, Strauxyn has gathered up those remaining merchanter guards who had not already been captured or fled. Although Lerial spends more than a glass questioning the five survivors, only one had accompanied the group that had attacked the Streamside and he cannot recall more than waiting outside the inn and then conveying the dead to the swamp and Mykel and Oestyn back to Jhosef’s villa.

In the end, Lerial and his men take over one wing of the villa and he sleeps in a modest guest room, if uneasily.