Ordermaster

XLIII

A single bronze lamp illuminated the study, spilling amber-gold light over the ledger in front of Kharl. In the quiet of the night, his fingers brushed his short and square-cut brown beard as he perused the entries and figures set out in black ink on the pages before him. Speltar’s figures went back more than a decade. They were neat, and the entries clear-just another of the steward’s many virtues.

When his eyes reached the bottom of the last column, he nodded and closed the ledger. For a time, he sat behind the antique desk. Then he stood and took a last look at the closed account book he had been studying for the last glass.

By any rendering he could imagine, he was well-off. Not wealthy, for the coins necessary to operate Cantyl were not insignificant, but over the past ten years, the lands, the vineyard, and the sawmill had produced an annual income above expenses of almost two hundred golds. He didn’t have many of those golds. They’d gone to Lord Estloch, but the strongbox in the cellar counting room now held almost seven hundred golds-one hundred remaining from the previous wine sales and the timber loaded on the Seastag from the time when Kharl had first come to Cantyl, the hundred remaining from the hundred and fifty Kharl had received initially from Lord Ghrant, and the most recent five hundred.

Even with the year’s timbering and planting costs ahead, and the wages for the retainers and the sawmill, there would have been some golds remaining out of the original hundred, and that was without sales of the aged red wine scheduled for the fall, and the payment for the timber consignment being readied for midsummer.

The new forest produced far less in golds, showing a profit of twenty to thirty golds a year after costs. That suggested another reason why Ghrant had been happy to settle the forestlands on Kharl. Chyhat, while a good forester, had not been the best of stewards and had been happy to relinquish those duties to Speltar, especially after Kharl had explained that hisstipend would not be reduced. Speltar had recommended building several roads, closing the ancient sawmill in the new forest, improving the Cantyl sawmill, and adding another drying barn. Those changes were likely to run close to a hundred golds, including the costs of building several cots for the sawmill workers to be moved from the old sawmill to the one at Cantyl. Despite Glyan’s fears, they would actually save some golds through Kharl’s barrels. Kharl also hoped that, with the better barrels and changes in the toasting, Glyan could improve the red wine enough that they could get a better price in Valmurl, one equal to what the Rhynn received already.

He moved around the desk and stood at the window, looking out into the darkness, out at the hillside leading down to the thin black line that was the narrow pier where, little more than a season before, he had stepped off the Seastag to become ser Kharl. His eyes, with a night sight sharpened by order-magery, took in the small, nearly enclosed bay, its entrance less than a kay in width. The water was black and calm on the early-summer night, with a silverlike sheen he suspected only he-or another mage-could have seen.

For reasons he could not fully explain, Meyena’s visit had nagged at him. Yet she and her aunt had been pleasant, certainly not pushy, and the amount of redberry that they had brought had been closer to five bushels. With that, Adelya had been pleased.

“You should eat some in the morning. Plenty for juice, too. It keeps off the summer fevers,” she had told him more than once.

He had tried the juice, but it was almost too sweet for him. The appleand-redberry pie had been more to his liking.

Meyena was less than ten years older than Arthal, he had discovered.

His lips tightened. How could he ever have foreseen that his actions in saving Lord Ghrant would have led to Arthal’s death? Was that the cruelty of the Balance-or just his own terrible misfortune? If Arthal had stuck with Kharl, it wouldn’t have happened. Jeka would have said that. Kharl knew that from the way Jeka had talked about her own mother. He’d seen the love, the pain, and the devotion in that gamine face. Yet Jeka was also practical-and honest-even after the years on the streets of Brysta.

Had his efforts to place her as a weaver with Gharan worked out? That had been the best he had been able to manage, and he wished he could have done more. Without her guidance, when he’d had to flee from Egen,he doubted that he would have survived long enough to have caught the Seastag. In a way, he owed everything he had to three people-Jenevra, the dead blackstaffer, Jeka, and Hagen.

He’d done his best to repay Hagen, although he doubted he had done near enough, but there would never be a way to repay Jenevra, and he doubted that he would be headed back to Brysta anytime soon. Not with Lord Ghrant needing him, and not with Lord West and Egen still in power in Brysta.

So why did Kharl feel so restless? Because he’d righted wrongs-or tried to-for everyone but himself and those he had loved? But how much had he loved them? Or was it as the druids of Naclos had told him-that he could not decide his future without facing his past and the land where it had occurred?

He turned back to the desk, gently blowing out the lamp, before walking up to his bedchamber in the dark.

Tomorrow, he would begin work on a simple chest for young Heldya. Adelya had hinted that every young woman needed a dower chest, and while it would be more than several years before the young woman was consorted, it was something he could do.

In the dimness of the staircase, he laughed. That was a problem he could address.