Magi'i of Cyador

XLV

A RAW WINTER wind whips off the Great Western Ocean and across the city of Cyad, bringing a chill that belies the bright mid-morning sun set in the cloudless green-blue sky. Wearing but his winter white uniform, trimmed in green, and white leather gloves, and without the sabre, Lorn walksquickly eastward on the walkway of the Road of Perpetual Light, stepping past the First Score Way. The carry-bag in his left hand is gray-something that could be carried by a lancer, a tradesman, or a merchanter. In it is the set of blue shimmercloth enumerator garments.

The dwelling where Jerial has directed Lorn is still farther to the east, almost out of the city. Lorn hurries, because he wishes to arrive at mid-morning-when Ciesrt will be at his tasks in the Quarter of the Magi’i.

When he reaches the Twenty-Third Way, Lorn pauses, readjusting the white dress officer’s cap, as he mentally reviews the description provided by Jerial and compares it to the dwellings to his right. The two-story dwelling is of green glazed brick, with a blue tile roof, set in a slight hollow between two larger dwellings, blocked partly from the cooling ocean breezes. The privacy screen is of blue and green tiles, with a time-faded inset golden lily in its center.

He steps up to the ledge on the left side of the privacy screen and pulls on the green silken cord to ring the bell.

After a long moment, he hears steps, and the viewing shutter is unslit.

“Lorn!” Myryan rushes out the door and around the screen. She hugs her brother tightly and buries her head against his chest. “You’re here! You came!”

He has to drop the carry-bag to return the embrace.

After the initial exclamation and hug, almost as suddenly, Myryan steps back and looks down. “I suppose consorted healers aren’t supposed to do that.” Her smile is partly sheepish, partly something Lorn cannot identify. “But you were out fighting the barbarians, and you came back safely, and you are my brother.”

Lorn is conscious of just how thin and frail she appears, tall as she is, even in the loose-fitting healer greens. He can sense no chaos about her, no sickness … yet there is something. Around her is the faint scent of trilia and erhenflower, a combination much gentler than erhenflower alone, and not as overpoweringly sweet as trilia alone.

“You must come in.” She bends as if to pick up his bag.

“I’ve got it.” Lorn is quicker and has it in hand before she half-starts the movement.

“Same old Lorn. Do you let anyone do anything for you?”

“Sometimes.”

“Ha! Tell me when.” She doesn’t wait for an answer, but walks around the ceramic privacy screen and through the still open front door.

Lorn follows with his carry-bag.

Beyond the front door is a small tile-floored foyer scarcely four cubits square with arches leading in three directions. Myryan leads Lorn to the left, into a chamber perhaps ten cubits long and six wide. The walls have been freshly plastered and painted in a green-tinted, off-white color, and the floor tiles recently regrouted.

Three narrow and shuttered windows grace the outside front wall, their lower sills two cubits above the polished but worn green ceramic tile floor. A narrow set of shelves stands between the left end of the windows and the corner, bare except for a single sculpted sunstone statuette of a magus looking up at a single step. In the other window corner is a waist-high circular table holding an oil lamp that had once been in Myryan’s chambers. Facing the window is a settee upholstered in faded blue. To its left stands another table, of darker wood, holding a blue glass lamp. To its right, between the settee and the window table, is a straight-backed oak chair. The last piece of furniture in the room is a low padded stool set before the middle window.

Myryan steps to the windows, and one after the other, opens the shutters to let in the light. She turns and gestures around the small room. “This will have to do. We only have the one sitting room, and no portico.” She stands by the padded stool and faces the settee.

Lorn sets down the bag and takes the straight-backed white oak chair that, from its patina, is probably older than either of them.

Myryan settles onto the stool. “When did you get back?”

“Last night.” He smiles crookedly. “Jerial suggested that my arriving late in the evening at your door might not havebeen well-received. So I came this morning.” He does not mention that their parents had offered no guidance, except indirectly through Jerial.

“Jerial never cared that much for Ciesrt.” Myryan smiles wanly.

“She didn’t offer any judgments.”

“Does she need to?” Myryan’s tone of voice is wry, much like their mother’s can be.

“Jerial does things her own way,” Lorn answers.

“She always has. I don’t see that changing.”

“How are you doing?”

“I’m still working as a healer.” Her amber eyes sparkle for a moment. “And trying to turn this place into something respectable. All the walls were dark blue.”

“With large gold lilies painted on them?”

“Small faded yellow lilies. Everywhere.” Myryan laughs.

“It was the best we could do. Ciesrt didn’t want us to live with our parents, and I didn’t want to live with his. So …”

“Junior second level adepts don’t make that much.”

“You’re kind, Lorn. Third level. He says he’ll make lower second this summer when the Lectors review all the thirds.”

Lorn considers the dwelling-modest by the standards of where they grew up, but far from modest even compared to Ryalth’s quarters … assuming Ryalth has not found larger accommodations suited to the success of Ryalor House.

Myryan follows his eyes. “We had help. Kharl’elth and father … and someone else.”

“Someone else?” Lorn does frown.

Myryan shrugs, almost helplessly. “I thought it might have been you. Like the healer pin. There was a deposit made in an account at the Exchange in my name … as much as father and Kharl promised. I told Ciesrt that it came from mother’s family. He just nodded.”

Lorn could see Ciesrt nodding, accepting what he could not understand, and passing through life without considering anything beyond the Quarter of the Magi’i. “You have no idea?”

Myryan shakes her head. “I kept the golds for almost aseason, but there was never any hint of anything from anyone. Finally … well … I found the house. Tyrsal helped me, posed as a relative. We’ve only been here a season.”

“You’re happier here.”

Myryan smiles. “Much happier. I’ve done some work outside, but I can’t wait to start on the garden. The soil’s good, and I can grow some of the better herbs, I think. And Jerial commissioned a bed and armoire for us. I don’t know how she did …”

Lorn raises his eyebrows.

“Well … she didn’t have to …”

“She made you promise not to tell, right?”

Myryan nods. “You won’t, will you?”

“Chaos-light, no. What does Ciesrt think about all this?”

“He’s pleased we have our own dwelling. None of the other thirds do.”

“I’m glad you do.”

“What about you?” she asks.

“I have a little less than five eightdays before I have to leave and report to Geliendra. You’ll have time to fill me in.” He smiles. “On everything. Almost everything,” he quickly adds.

“Geliendra?” She frowns. “Be careful. The Magi’i are doing something there. I overheard Kharl … but he stopped when he saw Ciesrt and me.”

“He is the Kharl’elth, and still the Second Magus?”

“Very powerful, and he makes sure the family knows it.” Myryan’s mouth crinkles into an ironic smile. “He spends all his time in the Palace. That’s the way Ciesrt talks about it.”

“Did you hear any more about Geliendra?”

“I didn’t hear much. I wouldn’t have heard that, but I’m not that comfortable when we go there, and …” She offers an embarrassed smile this time.

“You used your chaos-order senses?”

She nods, then adds, “All I heard was something about the importance of the trial period, and the interest of the Emperor. It was at a gathering, and he was talking to anotherof the Magi’i. It wasn’t Chyenfel, but we were never introduced-I wasn’t. Kharl took Ciesrt and introduced him.” Myryan’s face hardens slightly. “Since I wasn’t introduced, I didn’t ask who he was. I wish I had.”

“It doesn’t matter.” Lorn means it. The information’s value is in the content and the speaker, not the listener.

Myryan brushes back a strand of curly black hair and shifts her weight on the padded stool. “Sometimes, when I’m there, I feel more like a settee or a table than a person.”

“At Ciesrt’s parents’ dwelling?”

“They want us to have children, and she’s always asking me when she can expect a grandchild.” Myryan’s lips twist. “I tell her that it’s in the hands of chaos. It is, but not the way she thinks.”

“Jerial?”

Myryan nods. “She knows a lot. Sometimes that’s helpful, and she didn’t even ask why.”

“Does Ciesrt suspect?”

Myryan laughs gently. “He’s order-blind, like Vernt. Maybe that’s why they get along so well.”

“I didn’t know they had become friends,” Lorn says easily.

“Friends? I don’t know. When they talk, they understand each other, but they don’t go out of their way.” The healer lifts her shoulders, then drops them. “That’s with anyone-both of them are like that.”

“Vernt asked a question or two at dinner last night,” Lorn says.

“He probably had to force himself to do that.”

“Ciesrt … does he talk much? To you, I mean?”

“He tells me everything he can about his day, and about how many firewagon cells he charged, and why the cells on the bigger firewagons are different, and how important what he and the others do is for Cyad.” She laughs softly. “I listen. He means well, and, in his own way, he does want me to be happy.”

“I’m glad for that.” Lorn turns in the chair.

“That chair is hard. You could sit on the settee.”

He grins and stands, stretching. “I’m still a little stiff fromthe travel. Not used to sitting in a firewagon for days.”

“You … the man who could outwait anyone?”

“Only if I have a reason,” he points out. “Otherwise, I have trouble sitting still.”

“That I find hard to believe, my dear brother.”

Lorn rolls his eyes.

“I won’t ask about other … matters.” Myryan stands. “The kitchen isn’t much, but I need to eat something, and so do you.” She uncoils herself from the stool, standing as tall as Lorn, and motions for him to follow.

The kitchen has also been replastered and smells fresh and clean, despite the age of the dwelling. Somehow, the spare setting suits Myryan, Lom reflects, watching her extract a wedge of cheese from the watercooler.

Deftly, his sister slices the hard cheese into finger-sized wedges, yet Lorn can sense her reluctance with the knife, and her relief when she wipes it clean and replaces it in the wooden holder quickly.

“The knife bothers you.”

“Most healers have trouble with knives, even cupridium ones, but they’re not as bad as the iron ones.”

“The iron-”

“It’s not the iron. I can hold iron, any kind of iron, and it doesn’t bother me.”

Lorn frowns. “I’d think … this can’t be new.”

Myryan laughs. “New? It’s been a problem since the firstborn. The Magi’i don’t mention it because we’re just healers, not wielders of chaos.”

Lorn holds in the wince he feels.

“Take some of the cheese. You’re pale. I’m a healer, and I can sense it.” Myryan breaks off a chunk of the slightly stale bread and thrusts that at him as well.

“I didn’t come to take food.”

“I know. You came, and I’m glad.” Myryan chews the bread and cheese before speaking. “Is this all right? I like bread and cheese. Ciesrt doesn’t. He wants a hot breakfast and dinner. So I have the cheese at mid-day.”

“Bread and cheese like this are fine,” Lorn reassures her.“They’re not at all like what lancers get, even lancer officers. I didn’t say much about food last night, but I think anything in Cyad would taste wonderful. This is better cheese.” He raises his eyebrows. “What kind?”

“It’s from the east, someplace called Worrak, I think.”

“And the eastern barbarians actually make good cheese?”

“They’re not all like those in the north,” Myryan counters.

“No matter what father says?” Lorn smiles.

“Oh …” She pauses. “Father is beginning to look old. Didn’t you see it? Sometimes, I wonder.”

“His hair is white, not silver. But it will happen to us all,” Lorn says.

“But it’s so sudden. Last year, it was silver.”

Lorn frowns.

“There’s nothing I can do. Mother’s doing what she can. I hope she doesn’t try too hard.”

“Too hard?”

“She’s a healer, not just a mother. If she puts too much into helping father, then …” Myryan looks at Lorn.

“It could hurt her.”

“It could. It will.” Myryan wraps the cheese and replaces it in the cooler, then puts the bread in the keeper. She looks at the sandglass on the pedestal. “I don’t want to go … but I’d better … they expect me.”

“I’ll keep stopping by.”

“I hope so. You are my brother.” Her smile warms him, but it fades too quickly as she continues, “I won’t ask about other things, Lorn. I hope you work them out, but I shouldn’t know. We have dinner at least once a week with Ciesrt’s parents.”

He nods, understanding too well. “Thank you. I hope so, too.”

“I’m going to have to leave for the infirmary. Is there anything I can do before I go?”

Lorn wants to laugh. Anything she can do? He is the one who should have acted.

“Lorn …” Myryan’s amber eyes catch Lorn’s. “You did what you could. It’s better this way. I can accept Ciesrt.”

Accept. Lorn does not like the word.

“Would you mind if I just sat for a while in the garden?” he finally asks. “I need some quiet. I’ll leave from there.”

“You could stay here.”

“I think I’d like the garden.” Lorn does not wish to risk being seen in a glass within her walls without her present, for several reasons.

“If that’s what you’d like.” She smiles once more. “You’ve always needed some time apart from others. I’m glad that hasn’t changed.”

“I don’t always want that distance, Myryan.” He steps forward and hugs her. “I just can’t change things. Not now.”

She returns the hug, then steps back, and he wonders if he has changed so much that she must hang onto a few old mannerisms to assure herself that he remains the Lorn she knew.

After reclaiming the carry-bag and waving from the garden gate as Myryan walks out to the Road of Perpetual Light, Lorn steps back into the garden, finding the arbor.

Myryan may guess what he is doing, but she does not know, and one arbor is much like another in a screeing glass.

Some time after he senses that she is far enough eastward of the house that she cannot sense anything he may do, he steps into the corner of the arbor where the gray winter leaves of the grape are thick and will shield him from any eyes that may peer from the adjoining dwellings that rise above the blocks of the gray stone walls that enclose the rear garden of Myryan’s dwelling.

Once he has changed into the blues and boots that he had carried in the bag, he stretches, then readjusts the tunic. The blues feel strange on him … as if he had outgrown them. He checks the fit, and the tailoring is perfect. With a snort, he smiles.

He emerges from the arbor as a senior enumerator, carry-bag in hand, and walks through the outside garden gate, carefully latching it behind him, and then heads along the Road of Perpetual Light, westward back toward the center of Cyad.

At the Fifteenth Way, long before he can be seen from hisparents’ dwelling, he turns and walks southward to the Road of Benevolent Commerce. Bag still in hand, he follows it toward and then into the Merchanter section.

With the sun higher in the clear blue-green sky, the wind has softened and warmed, and more folk fill the walkways that flank the road. A wagon drawn by a single horse passes. Lorn notes the legend painted in yellow upon the green wagon sideboard: Tarfak House, Spices.

Perhaps Ryalor House should investigate spices. He smiles lopsidedly and continues walking, his steps quick and precise. As he passes the Empty Quarter coffee house, he can see that it appears more empty than three years earlier, and that the awning that once sheltered outside tables has been removed. So have the tables. Is there that little coffee left that it is too expensive for junior merchanters?

At the Third Harbor Way, he steps behind an empty wagon drawn by a pair of mules and crosses to the white stone walkway on the far side, where he turns harborward and walks down the gentle incline to the lower merchanters’ plaza. Three carts remain under their traditional green and white striped awnings as Lorn strides around them to the northwest corner of the plaza, his destination the squatlooking white building of the Clanless Traders, where Ryalth has continued to maintain the small office of Ryalor House.

Once inside the squared open archway and off the relatively uncrowded plaza, Lorn finds himself at the edge of a swirl of figures in blue, as well as a few in red, white, or green. Seemingly without much notice, Lorn eases through and around the small groups of traders and hagglers and hangers-on and makes his way to the stairs at the rear of the high-arched hall. He glances up at the three stories of balconies and hopes that Ryalth has not moved her trading office too far.

She has not moved it at all-it remains the same twodoored area at the back of the third level, well into the northeast corner. Sitting at the small corner desk, she studies a ledger, her head down, and as he slips toward her Lorn can see that she has cut her hair far shorter than he recalls.

“Do you have a need of a senior enumerator, Lady Merchanter?” Lorn smiles, but he finds his heart is beating faster than it should.

“I have …” Ryalth looks up, and her mouth drops open. “You came,” she whispers. “You really did.”

Lorn can sense that no one is that near or listening. “I arrived last night … my parents expected me to spend some time there … so I came as soon as I could.” He forces himself to cut off the explanation of why he did not want them suspicious of his immediate departure. “As soon as I could.”

Ryalth quietly closes the ledger. “You still are trying to protect me, aren’t you?”

“You seem to be able to take care of yourself.” He smiles. “And you’ve protected me in so many ways. I never would have thought about scrolls going through Fyrad, or been able to set that up.”

“That was easy.” She pauses. “It was not difficult.”

“Your enumerator?”

“Eileyt is still at the harbor, checking the accounts of the latest venture with the Jekseng clan. Dyes from Brysta-their green is better than anything on this side of the Eastern Ocean.”

“Does Ryalor House have ventures with everyone?” Lorn shakes his head.

“It’s better that way. Each thinks we’re too small to stand alone, and that way I can spread the risks.” Ryalth stands.

Lorn wishes to hold her, but his hand merely brushes hers. They both stiffen.

“I think I’d better close up,” she smiles wryly. “I’m not going to finish reviewing these.” She lifts the ledger, then slips it into the leather case she has pulled from beneath the desk.

Lorn watches as Ryalth extracts a wallet from the desk, then slips a lock bar in place and padlocks the bar. “It won’t stop a Clan thief, but to break it will make enough noise that everyone will know, and they frown on that.” She lays the thin and long leather wallet-almost a narrow pouch-on the desk top and fingers the golds inside into a position toallow her to fold it in half. She slips the folded wallet into the slots in the back of the heavy and overlarge blue leather belt she wears.

After Ryalth closes and locks the doors, the two walk briskly down the steps and out through the covered hall. A few heads turn at Ryalth’s red hair, see the enumerator’s garb, and turn back.

“Another enumerator … has three …”

“ … trades everything … but not a lot … doesn’t lose much …”

“You should be so good, Tymyk.”

“Everyone knows you,” Lorn observes.

“I’ve made it a point,” she says. “I’ve helped those I could, and cheated no one.”

“The good and fair lady trader.”

“Not always good.”

The bleakness in her voice surprises Lorn, and he says nothing as they cross the open plaza outside the hall.

“You were right, when we first dealt with cotton and oil.” She turns her head, and the deep blue eyes fix his amber ones. “I learned that again, the hard way. I find I have to remember that, but I don’t like it.”

Lorn nods, though her words send a cold knife down his spine.

They walk silently eastward along the Road of Benevolent Commerce, past a row of arymids with furled gray winter leaves, their trunks pale gray in the afternoon light.

“How long will you be here?” she asks quietly.

“Almost five eightdays. I get six, but that has to include travel from Isahl and then to Geliendra. That’s my next post.”

“And you sought me out within a day? Are there not scores of healers and women from high lancer families vying for your attention?”

“I wasn’t interested.” Lorn cannot quite keep his tone disinterested. “I would have sought you last night, but my family was watching. Someone has also been following me with a screeing glass, not always my father. I didn’t come fromthe house, directly. I stopped to see Myryan and then changed in her garden arbor after she left for the infirmary.”

“I would have liked to have seen that.” Ryalth’s lips quirk.

“I’m sure you would.” Lorn laughs gently.

They pass the Fourth Harbor Way-the east one, although the ways are not distinguished on the placards by whether they are east or west of the harbor center.

“How is Myryan?” Ryalth asks after a time.

“I don’t know. She seems healthy, but she’s … more resigned than happy. The only time she seemed joyful was when she talked of the house and of her garden.”

“Isn’t that good?”

“I’m glad she has the house,” Lorn says. “I can’t imagine her living with Ciesrt’s parents. He’s the second highest of the Magi’i. Kharl, Ciesrt’s father, I mean.”

“That must be quite an honor for Myryan to be his consort.” Ryalth’s voice is even, hiding emotions.

“She didn’t want it, and I tried to talk father out of it before I left. He waited to consort her, but he didn’t change his mind.” Lorn takes a deep breath. “I think Myryan would have been better without the honor.”

“You’d do almost anything for those you love.”

“Almost,” Lorn temporizes, again wondering if he should have killed Kharl before the Lector knew Lorn was a threat.

“More than that, I think.” Ryalth’s voice is calm, slightly distant. “Your father knows that.” After a barely imperceptible pause, she adds, “Don’t you think?”

“Father? I think he doesn’t know quite what to think. I’m not the Magi’i son he wanted, and I’m not exactly the lancer officer he suggested I could be.”

“You survived and made captain,” she points out.

“I’m … effective,” Lorn says. “Not glorious.” His eyes flick to the next Way, where a tinker’s cart is tied before a smaller house, and where the maroon garbed tradesman pedals a foot-grinder and sharpens knives, deftly handling one, then another.

She nods, her lips quirking momentarily. “Maybe that’s why you’re a good trader.”

“I’m not a trader. You’re far better than I could ever be.”

“You can see what will change,” she corrects him. “I know what to do when you tell me what will happen.”

“We make a good team.” He smiles, happy to be walking beside her, as they pass the tinker’s cart.

“You’ve never said that before.”

“I haven’t? I’ve thought it enough.”

“There’s much you think and don’t share, Lorn.”

He cannot but catch the edge of wistfulness behind the facade of the experienced merchanter, a wistfulness he doubts most would perceive. “I’m sorry.” And he is, yet he knows that every word in many places they both frequent may carry to the wrong ears.

Ryalth points to the structure on the lower side of the Road of Benevolent Commerce, although she points upward. “I took chambers on the third level. The end stairs.”

Lorn follows her through the archway in the wall and then through the simple shared formal garden-little more than trimmed dwarf cedar, two short flower beds turned under for the winter, and time-polished stone benches placed in areas shaded by the handful of feathering conifers.

“These came vacant. They only cost three golds a season more, and the balcony is more private,” Ryalth explains, starting up the outside stone steps. “It seemed worth it. They’re larger, and the breeze is better in the summer.”

“And colder in the winter?”

“I haven’t noticed.” She smiles as she stops in front of the last door off the covered walkway on the third level.

“Better view up here,” Lorn says.

“It is.”

The key clicks in the lock, and she opens the door, waiting for Lorn to enter. He waits for her to enter. Both smile, albeit nervously.

He finally shakes his head and steps inside, past the narrow interior privacy screen. Then he turns, taking in her face and the deep blue eyes that he has recalled on so many nights.

Ryalth closes the door. She steps past the screen, andLorn’s arms go around her, but not so quickly as hers encircle him.

The key clanks on the floor. Neither reaches for it as their lips meet.