The White Order

XLII

IN THE EARLY afternoon, Cerryl sat at the trestle table, chewing on the fresh-baked bread that Beryal had left. He had sliced several small chunks of cheese from the yellow brick.

“Tellis won’t be home until well after the taverns are shuttered,” Beryal had said with a snort right after Tellis had left in the early morning. “As for my daughter, she can cook, if she wishes. The bread and cheese are for you. I’m off to see Assurala-my mother’s sister’s daughter. She lives in Ghuarl-that’s this side of Weevett.” With that, Beryal had marched out the front door, even before Cerryl had been able to ask how she was getting there.

So he had kept copying until his fingers were numb before returning to the common room for something to eat. . and drink. With a good afternoon’s work, he might finish the remainder of the herbal text yet before evening.

A slight breeze drifted in from the courtyard, through the door and shutters he’d opened before he sat down. On the barely moving air came the scent of roses and other flowers, though there were none in the courtyard. Tellis didn’t believe in such fripperies.

The courtyard was quiet, and the door to the bedroom Tellis and Benthann shared was closed, although the shutters beside the door were open.

Cerryl used his left hand to rub his stiff neck. If only Tellis hadn’t taken Colors of White with him. He tried to shrug the stiffness out of his neck and shoulders. With more time, maybe he could have made more sense out of the book.

Finally, he stood and put the cheese into the cool chest and the bread in the big bread box on top of the pantry cabinet in the kitchen. Then he walked out into the courtyard to wash at the pump. The day was warm enough, and that way he wouldn’t have to empty the basin and refill the pitcher in the common room.

As Cerryl stepped into the sun, he realized that the day had become hot, not just warm, as the light seemed to cascade around him like a rain of warmth, of fire. He paused and tried to sense the light, to feel it.

After a long moment, he swallowed. The light was so much like chaos fire. . and yet different. For a time, he just bathed in the light, letting his perceptions weave with it.

Then he shook his head and walked to the pump. He washed quickly and straightened up as he heard a door open, looking to the rear gate first. No one was there.

“You were almost glowing-when you stood in the middle of the stones there.” Benthann stood in the shade by the door to her-and Tellis’s room.

Cerryl shook his hands dry and tried to avoid looking at the blond, who leaned against the wall by the door.

“You did, you know? A golden youth.” Her face clouded for an instant. “And you don’t even know. Neither does your little weaver girl.”

Cerryl waited, not certain what to say.

“You’re the only one here,” observed the blond. “Mother went off to prattle on with cousin Assurala.” Her voice rose from a husky purr into a shriller parody. “Life was so much better, Assurala, oh, yes, it was, back when the young folk listened.” Benthann grinned, more girlishly than Cerryl had ever seen.

He nodded, trying not to look directly at Benthann and the thin shirt that left little to the imagination. “I need to get back to work.”

“I suppose you feel that need.” She smiled again and turned toward the common room door, walking in front of Cerryl. As she stepped from the shade of the eaves and into the sunlight, Cerryl swallowed. Her shirt was like mist in the full sun, and she wore nothing under it. Nothing.

Cerryl let her go into the main part of the house and waited several moments before he followed and opened the door.

Benthann stood by the table, her back to him, when she spoke. “I wondered if you’d come in.”

“I have to finish the copying.”

“I’m a true bitch,” said Benthann, turning and stretching so that the mist-thin fabric outlined every curve. “I know it. Tellis knows it. My mother certainly does.”

“You. . you’ve been. . fair to me.”

“You mean I’ve mocked you less than I’ve mocked the others?” A crooked smile crossed her lips. “You must wonder.”

“Wonder?” Cerryl felt stupid, as though each word were less intelligent than the last.

“Wonder why Tellis puts up with me. Would you like to see why Tellis puts up with me?” The blond unfastened two of the buttons on the thin shirt that left little to the imagination.

Much as he would have, Cerryl shook his head with a slow smile. “You’re far too rich for me, Benthann.”

“You’re like the others. You’re a coward.” Yet her words were not biting, and her tongue ran across the full lips, sensuously.

“It’s not always bad to be a coward,” observed Cerryl, stifling the urge to swallow and managing somehow to maintain an even tone. “Especially if you recognize those times and what you are.”

“You don’t have to be a coward.” She stepped toward him.

Cerryl could smell the roses, and something else, something that beckoned. He just stood there, barely able to keep from lurching toward her, just as he had wanted to lurch back into Muneat’s small palace, or summon the image of the woman in green again and again.

“There’s no one else here.”

“I’m here,” he finally said, all too hoarsely.

Surprisingly, Benthann smiled. “You’re smarter than they were.” She stepped back.

Cerryl shook his head. “I’m not that smart. I just watch and learn from others.” He wondered if he’d been all that wise to back away. He swallowed again.

“Hard, isn’t it?” Benthann smiled more gently. “I mean, when a woman says she wants you-a pretty woman.”

“You are pretty.” That was true and safe.

“I am. I know that, for what it’s worth. Pretty and good at selling my body. You wonder why my mother puts up with me?” Benthann laughed. “I saved us both. I climbed into Tellis’s bed, and I don’t regret it. He was grieving, and he needed something.”

“His consort?” ventured Cerryl.

“And his son. Barely older than you, and he fled to the black isle.” Benthann smiled crookedly. “I knew Vieral; that’s how I found Tellis. It was better that than working off your debts and dying on the white road because your father gambled and drank his tavern away.”

Cerryl wanted to shake his head. . or something, but he listened, and his eyes strayed back to the thin shirt, and the curved figure beneath.

“Sex is the only power a woman has in Fairhaven. Remember that. Even if she has a strong room full of coins, or, light forbid, she’s a mage, sex is the only real power a woman has.” She smiled brightly. “But I like you, Cerryl. You look at me like I’m real.”

“You are real.” His voice was hoarse.

His words brought a headshake. “I’m not. Everything is a pantomime. Oh, I’m mostly honest with myself, but no matter what I try or see, it’s all the same. Sex is all a woman really has.”

Cerryl struggled for words before he spoke. “What about those women devils, the ones who used twin blades?”

“Westwind? They’re all dead, aren’t they?” Benthann stretched again.

Cerryl could see her nipples through the thin white fabric of her shirt, and he forced himself to think about the differences in the shape of the letter tok in Temple and old tongue.

“A woman who has to defend herself with a blade doesn’t know her real power.” Her fingers played with the shirt again, and Cerryl caught a glimpse of a darker nipple against creamy skin. “Nor one who has to use coins to buy her men.”

He swallowed silently.

“Let me show you.” She leaned toward him, and her lips brushed his cheek. “I could. . and I like you. You haven’t grinned that awful smile or panted all over place.”

He could feel his trousers tightening. “I believe you. You don’t have to show me anything.”

Benthann fingered the fourth button on the thin shirt, and leaned toward him.

This time Cerryl did swallow.

“I’m much prettier than that weaver girl.”

“Yes,” Cerryl said hoarsely. “Yes, you are.”

He couldn’t move as she took one last step and brushed his lips with hers, his chest with hers. She stepped back quickly. “Like all of them, you’re a liar. But you’re a sweet liar, and you try to do what’s right.” She offered a too-bright smile. “I won’t make both of us liars.”

Cerryl swallowed, still swimming in the fog of roses and unknown flowers that ebbed and flowed around him.

Benthann half-slumped against the trestle table. “I am a bitch. I told you that”

He shook his head.

“The white mages are the same, you know?”

Cerryl could feel the look of bewilderment cross his face before he could control it.

“They’re men. They like sex. No matter what they say, that’s all a woman offers them.”

“Women offer more than that,” protested Cerryl.

“You’re young, Cerryl. See if you feel that way ten years from now. Even five.” Benthann gave a hard short laugh. “It works the other way, too. The only thing a man offers a woman, really, is power. Coins are power. Don’t forget that. Sex for power, power for sex, that’s the way the world works. Tellis had the power to save us, and I give him sex for that, and sometimes he’s gentle.”

Cerryl let the appalled expression fill his face.

“I could love you just for that look. Tellis is pretty good to me, but he’s still randy beneath that proper exterior. Who would think it of the most proper scrivener?”

His apprentice would have, especially after thinking of the green angel book, but he didn’t think voicing such an opinion would have been exactly wise-not at that moment. “We don’t see everything, no matter how hard we look.”

“Some folks don’t want to see things.”

“I can see that.” Cerryl took a half-step toward the kitchen.

Benthann smiled lazily. “Still worried?”

“Yes.” Cerryl took another step.

“You should be.” She paused, then added, “You know, Cerryl, I could have gotten you between the blankets, if I’d really wanted to.”

“I know,” Cerryl admitted, slipping slowly toward the door to the front room. “I know.”

“You’re too nice. You didn’t pretend to listen. You really listened.”

“Next time, I might not be so nice,” he answered, his hand on the doorway to the showroom.

“I’ll remember that.”

Cerryl smiled, almost sadly, knowing there wouldn’t be a next time, knowing Benthann knew that as well. Neither could afford a next time.