Fydel’s fingers tapped the polished wood of the conference table, once, before Anya raised her eyebrows. “We can begin.” Jeslek smiled.
“I am at your command.” Cerryl returned the smile, then reached for the decanter and half-filled the remaining goblet. While he did not need the wine, the gesture was important, and he took a sip of the wine, an amber vintage, unlike that he had been offered when he had first arrived, but one also verging on turning to vinegar. Too much chaos around Jeslek.
The slightest hint of a smile touched the corners of Anya’s mouth, while Fydel tapped the table once more.
“You will do your own commanding soon.” Jeslek glanced from Fydel to Cerryl, then back at Fydel.
Anya kept her eyes averted from both Cerryl and the square-bearded mage.
“I’ve written it down and sent it to Kinowin and Redark,” Jeslek said with a smile. “Fydel, you are to defend Elparta and to take the fight to the Spidlarians, as necessary. Cerryl, you are to work at rebuilding Elparta, and you are to keep the peace. You may conscript locals as necessary for building and rebuilding.”
Cerryl nodded. That was an option he didn’t like, but he also doubted that he would find all that many carpenters and masons in the lancers-and fewer still who would admit to such skills.
“If it appears that the renegade Black commander-this Brede-is preparing for a massive attack, Fydel, you will summon me immediately.” Jeslek’s eyes flashed. “Is that clear?”
“Yes, High Wizard.” The timbre of Fydel’s voice verged on that of boredom.
“In like terms, Cerryl, you are to rebuild Elparta so that it can serve as our staging base for next year’s attack. The river piers must be rebuilt, and enough housing for 50-score lancers and 250-score levies.”
Cerryl nodded. Two hundred fifty score? “What about supplies? And coins?”
“You will have 1,000 golds, as will Fydel. You will have to raise provisions and supplies locally. The Guild will continue to pay the lancers, but their pay will be held, as normal, until they return to Fairhaven.”
Cerryl held in a wince. The held pay was not going to go over well with the lancers, and that would mean trouble with peacekeeping and the locals.
“The men need some coins,” Fydel finally said in a low voice. “Use your golds as you wish.” Jeslek shrugged. “I am releasing all the levies except the levied lancers from Hydlen. I will be taking ten score with me. That leaves you with twenty-five score.” His eyes fixed on Fydel and hardened.
They lost fifteen score lancers in taking Elparta? Cerryl pursed his lips. Fifteen score? This Brede is better than anyone will admit.
“As you command, High Wizard,” Fydel responded politely.
“I am going to raise the coins and the armsmen necessary to take the rest of Spidlar in the spring. Personally.” Jeslek’s sun-gold eyes did not glitter but seemed cold and flat, like a serpent’s. “Anya will be assisting me in this winter’s preparations.”
Anya still refrained from looking directly at either Fydel or Cerryl.
“You may all go.” With a lazy smile, Jeslek stood. “You each have much to accomplish in the days before Anya and I depart.”
Cerryl took a last small swallow of the wine he had barely tasted, then stood quickly, before the other two.
Jeslek remained standing by the table. The lancer subofficer closed the door after the three left the library.
Outside, Anya stepped up beside Cerryl as he walked along the hall and into the foyer. The scent of trilia and sandalwood accompanied her, as always. “You’re no longer ‘young Cerryl.’ ”
Were you ever? “Why do you say that?” Cerryl took his stained white jacket from the peg on the coat holder and slipped it on.
“The bit with the wine goblet. You didn’t even hesitate. Or the blunt question about supplies.” Anya smiled. “You intrigue me more than ever, Cerryl.”
Cerryl returned Anya’s smile with one equally bright and false. “You flatter me. You are the intriguing one.”
“Oh, stop flattering each other.” Fydel snorted. “You’re both false as tin trinkets. And as useful.”
“Cerryl will be very useful to you, Fydel,” Anya answered with a softer smile. “You’ll be free to pursue any blues you can find while he’s worried about masons, and bricks, and planks-and piers and peacekeeping.”
Cerryl wished it were going to be that simple, but he had his doubts, strong ones.
Fydel snorted a second time. “The winter will be long, even with what must be done.”
“You two will manage.” Anya offered a last smile.
Cerryl inclined his head to the redhead, then to Fydel, before lead-ing the way out into the clear and cold afternoon. Despite the brisk wind, the miasma of death still hung over the city.
Cerryl swung into the gelding’s saddle, wondering how he could accomplish all that Jeslek had laid upon him. Does he want you to fail? Again? The brown-haired mage nodded, his eyes somewhere beyond the street as he rode back toward his quarters.
CVII
Cerryl looked at the blank scroll on the corner desk, then at the darkness that lay beyond the shuttered windows. The house he had taken was quiet, and even in the adjoining dwellings he suspected most lancers were sleeping, except for those on guard duty.
SSsss… The oil lamp hissed momentarily, then sputtered and hissed again. He glanced at it, wondering if the reservoir were empty, but the hissing died, and the yellow glow from the mantel continued to fall across the empty dun expanse of the parchment.
The White mage suppressed a yawn. It seemed like he ran from dawn until after dusk… dealing with so many things he’d never thought of, not only supplies and fodder, but tools, smithies for weapons, and even nails or bolts. How did you replace planks without some fasteners, especially when the only substitute was treenails, and they didn’t work that well for barely skilled lancers and peasants?
He rubbed his forehead and looked down again.
For only the second time in almost three seasons, he could send Leyladin a message that would reach her, if he finished it before morning, when a messenger and lancer guards left for Fairhaven. Yet he hadn’t the faintest idea where to begin. Or rather, he had so much to say.
Finally, he began to write, smiling as he scripted the first line.
My dearest Leyladin…
After that, the words got easier, enough so that before long he was reaching for a second sheet. Then the words got slower, and he had to turn and trim the lamp wick twice before he signed the bottom of the second sheet and laid it aside to dry.
After rubbing his forehead, sitting in the quiet of the study, ignoring the changing of the two lancer guards outside the front door, he picked up the first sheet, and his eyes skipped over the lines as he reread what he had written:
…have good quarters here, although I am troubled by how I came by them. It was not my doing, not exactly… so long since We have had a true roof overhead… yet I always thought of you… as you must know from my earlier message and from my glimpses through the glass… tried not to intrude…but I have missed you… more than I ever would have known…
He shook his head. That wasn’t quite true. Even before he had really met her, she had been important to him. What drew you to her…and her to you? Order and chaos? The need for some sort of balance?
After a moment, he continued to reread his words:
…Elparta lies in our hands, and I am supposed to return it to a semblance of prosperity, but there are few masons and few woodworkers among the lancers and almost no crafters at all among the wretched souls who survived the place’s fall… I found one mason’s apprentice with a crushed hand and an old fellow who’d been a carpenter once… little enough that I know, but it is more than many of the men I must direct…
… already we have had some light snow, and the winter promises to be cold indeed. I shudder to think what it must be like along the shores of the Northern Ocean…
… I have no idea when we will be returning to Fairhaven. It could be well into next year, if not longer…
Longer? Momentarily he wanted to pound the desk-or something. Yet nothing had happened exactly as he wished. Even getting to know Leyladin had taken far longer than he had ever thought possible.
… however long that may be, you know what I feel and how strongly, and no words will convey what you have felt, and I would not try to reduce such to letters upon parchment…
Besides, unlike Leyladin, you don’t know who will be reading what you write. She-or Layel-had effectively owned the guard who had delivered her scroll to him, a scroll he still kept with his possessions, a scroll whose green-inked sentences he still read and reread.
After another yawn, he rolled the scroll and, after heating the sealing wax over the top of the oil lamp, sealed it and laid it on the desk to be sent with the next dispatches to Jeslek in Fairhaven. Then he blew out the lamp and turned toward the stairs. Tomorrow would come-cold and all too soon.
CVIII
Cerryl walked from the covered porch of his dwelling out into the light and cold rain and along the brick walkway to the masonry house beyond the courtyard wall of his dwelling. There a handful of lancers milled around a wagon drawn by a single bony horse.
The rain - small drops that felt partly frozen - carried a slightly sour odor, or perhaps the moisture drew the scent of recent pillaging and death out of the ground. Cerryl frowned as he heard the mutters.
“Tools… supposed to use these?”
“Worse ‘n road duty…”
“It’s the mage!” called a voice.
The lancers stepped back, and Hiser rode forward and reined up beside the wagon horse. “We got some tools in the wagon there, ser. And some shutters, at the back. Shutters - need to replace the ones on this side of the dwellings here, all of them. Some fool ripped ‘em off the brackets so hard that the wood splintered.”
“It was rotten,” Ferek added as he rode up and joined Hiser. “Half the town is rotten. Too much rain. Rains every day here.”
“I sent men to get shutters from buildings that were too damaged for anyone to use,” Hiser explained.
Cerryl glanced at the two men standing nearest the side of the wagon.
“The ones we got, they need to be cut down,” said a burly lancer. “Got a saw here that might do.”
Cerryl studied the saw, then shook his head. “That won’t do, not if we can find a better one. It’s a ripping saw. We need one with finer teeth, about half that big.”
“Ripping saw?” Ferek’s mouth opened.
Hiser grinned, then wiped the expression away.
“A ripping saw rough-cuts planks, going with the grain rather than across it. Use those teeth on those shutters,” Cerryl winced, “and you’ll rip the wood up almost as bad as the ones you can’t use.” He stepped toward the wagon, rummaging through the indiscriminate piles of hammers, adzes, pry bars, mallets, and, in the corner, several other saws.
He pulled out one, a smaller saw. “See? The teeth are smaller, finer, and closer together. Use this to shorten those shutter frames.” It would have been faster to do it himself, but he was one person. If they would just use the crosscut finish saw or knew what tools to use, without his looking over someone’s shoulder all the time, more would get done. He couldn’t do the work they were supposed to do. It wouldn’t leave him time for what he had to do.
“You heard the commander,” snapped Ferek.
“Lancers be not crafters,” mumbled a lancer near the rear of the wagon. “Didn’t ride to Spidlar to do no sawing.”
“You didn’t?” asked Cerryl, flicking the smallest flash of chaos fire past the complainer.
“Sorry, ser!” The lancer stiffened.
Cerryl wanted to shake his head. How many are like that? Unwilling to do things if they think it would make others think less of them?
“Make sure the roof gets patched, too,” Cerryl reminded Ferek before turning to Riser. “You bring a squad and come with me to the river piers. I’ll be riding out in a bit. Those need work, if we want supplies from Gallos.”
“Yes, ser.”
Cerryl walked back to his quarters, then to the stable, where he saddled the gelding. He needed to inspect the river piers more closely, to see what needed to be done to get them ready to handle the barges once spring came. Or now? From what he could tell, they didn’t have enough provisions for more than a few eight-days. He didn’t want to have to raid the countryside if there were any other way.
He patted the gelding’s neck, led him out into the courtyard and mounted, then rode out through the carriage gate. The sound of hammers, and a saw, echoed from the lancers’ dwelling. Cerryl permitted himself a tight smile.
“Ready, ser,” offered Hiser as he rode up with a squad of lancers.
Cerryl nodded and turned his mount.
“Men are not happy about fixing up Elpartan houses.”
“Right now, who else can?” Cerryl snorted, letting his voice carry. “It rains most of every day, it seems, and we’ve driven off most of the able-bodied locals. Those who might be hiding nearby we won’t find, and winter’s coming. We’re in this war because Spidlar and the traders don’t pay their tariffs. So where are we going to get the coins to bring in laborers-or crafters?”
“Couldn’t the High Wizard order some here?”
“How? The prefect of Gallos or the viscount will find some way to avoid doing it or send us people who are worse than our lancers and cost the Guild coins we don’t have. If we bring crafters from Fairhaven, how could we not pay them? If we don’t, they’ll disappear, and they won’t flee back to Fairhaven, and then we won’t have crafters, and neither will the folk at home.”
Hiser gave Cerryl a strange look but only nodded.
Cerryl understood the expression. The subofficer wondered why the High Wizard had even started the war.
“That’s why the High Wizard didn’t want to use chaos on Elparta, Cerryl offered. And why you’re stuck trying to put it back together. Maybe Anya was right. Maybe it was better to use a lot of force quickly. He forced a long, slow breath. And maybe there’s never any good answer.