Scion of Cyador

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  CXLVIII

  In the late evening, with but a single lamp lit, Lorn sits at the study desk, squinting at the chaos-glass, and drawing out the rooms in Tasjan’s dwelling on sheets of paper beside the glass. With each image, he draws what he needs to know, then checks what he has drawn, and finally lets the image fade. Then he closes his eyes and rubs his neck before he calls forth the next image from the glass.

  The lower levels of Tasjan’s dwelling have no windows that are not barred, and all the doors are iron-bound, bolted, and guarded at all times. The outside guards, and those that patrol the gardens and porticoes, wear green. Those inside wear blue.

  Lorn looks at what he has drawn, shifting from sheet to sheet.

  Tasjan’s private study opens onto a balcony, and that balcony can be reached easily enough by climbing up a stepped chimney from the second-level portico. There are two guard posts along the portico flanking the upper gardens, but if the guards see no one…

  All Lorn has to do is figure out how to get to the second-level portico.

  With a deep breath, he looks down at the glass yet another time.

  A dozen or more glimpses of Tasjan’s dwelling, and he thinks he has a way. If he can climb a particular tree. If he can hold his blur shield long enough. If it works.

  He shakes his head and puts away the glass, ignoring the burning in his eyes, and the headache that seems as though someone is trying to cleave his skull with a very dull and heavy ax. Then he turns down the wick and puts out the single lamp in the study.

  He walks quietly along the upper corridor to the bedchamber, where he slides the iron bolt shut.

  “You were using the glass late,” Ryalth says sleepily.

  “Later than I would have liked. I was studying Tasjan’s dwelling and how he enters and leaves it.” Lorn sits on the end of the bed and pulls off his boots, then stands and begins to disrobe.

  “Will you check Kerial?” she murmurs.

  “I will.” After he pulls off his undertunic, he steps to the small bed and glances down, listening as much as looking. The small figure breathes evenly, regularly. Lorn smiles and steps away to hang his clothes in the armoire, then returns and slides under the covers next to his sleepy redhead.

  “He’s fine.”

  “Good.” She snuggles against him and seems to relax.

  Lorn slips one arm around her, enjoying her closeness. But he stares through the darkness, and it is some time before he finally drops into sleep.

  CXLIX

  In the late afternoon, almost upon returning from Mirror Lancer Court, Lorn pulls the merchanter blues-those normally worn by a senior enumerator-from the back of the armoire. Then come the blue boots, stiff, but usable.

  “It might yet be wiser to wait,” Ryalth says from the doorway, before stepping into the bedchamber.

  “No… it would be safer for me to wait, but what if Tasjan does not dine at Ayadar next eightday… or the eightday after, then what? Rynst has indicated that, in no more than three eightdays, they will decide when the Mirror Lancers will leave Cyad, and that it is likely to be immediately. Then who will oppose Tasjan and the greensuits? If I wait until then, there will be no lancers, and then how could I oppose Tasjan, knowing that Sasyk would leave even more blood across all the sunstones?”

  “So you will act sooner, rather than later, for fewer will suspect you now?”

  “Most expect less action before decisions are made-especially in Cyad, where acting wrongly and early can be most dangerous.” Lorn offers a crooked smile.

  Ryalth nods. “How will you do this?”

  “With the blurring shield I showed you.” Lorn sits on the edge of the bed and pulls off his white lancer boots. “And some tree-climbing…”

  “Will he not sense it?”

  “I think not. That is why only the upper-level adepts are taught such, because it is an aversion, not the use of order to bend the chaos of light away from one. Use of much order or chaos creates a disruption that any sensitive to chaos or order may sense. This uses less chaos than that from the sun during the heat of the day.”

  Ryalth frowns. “Will you wait until it is full dark?”

  “No. I leave shortly-in merchanter blue.” He smiles. “These Jerial had made for me years ago still fit well enough.” The cream-and-green uniform comes off next, to be hung in the armoire, and Lorn pulls on the blue trousers, then the tunic.

  “You would have the merchanters torn by strife?”

  “They already are,” Lorn points out dryly as he sits to pull on the blue leather boots. “Tasjan is trying to overthrow Vyanat. Blouyal was using his position to gain unfair advantage for his house. Vyel wanted to kill you to take over Ryalor House. I suspect other problems have occurred with Kysan House, from what you have said, and Denys, you said, schemes to redeem Bluyet House.” He pauses. “My plan is to have it clear that one of Sasyk’s guards murdered Tasjan. I do not want the cream-and-green seen near Tasjan’s.”

  “See that you do that.” She nods slowly. “Still… I do not like that you must act so quickly.”

  “I like it not that I should have to act at all. Yet… I can sense far more is taking place than I know.”

  “That is always so,” Ryalth responds.

  Lorn holds a frown. She is not telling all she knows. “What else should I know?”

  Ryalth shrugs, almost helplessly. “I fear that Sasyk holds more power in the Dyjani House than any realize, but that I do not know. Like you, I can feel currents beneath the surface of a harbor that seems calm. Yet I can see nothing.”

  “As can I. And if we wait until we can…”

  “Then it may be too late,” Ryalth concludes.

  Lorn nods, then stands. “Best I be going.” He fastens the Brystan sabre to his blue belt. While most enumerators do not wear blades, some do, and there is no standard for what type of blade they wear, save that it can be worn off a belt.

  “Be most careful, my love.”

  “I intend such. Since I will not follow Alyiakal… I must be most careful so that you can support me when I am stipended off as an old, old majer.”

  “Were it to happen so, that would be only fair. You have made possible all that is Ryalor House.” She smiles, then leans forward and embraces him, brushing his cheek with her lips. “Be most careful.”

  “I will.”

  They walk down the stairs and out onto the veranda. With a single backward glance, Lorn walks from the veranda, past the fountain, and out the gate, locking it behind him. His blues should not be remarked, for most know that the dwelling belongs to a trader.

  In the twilight, Lorn walks westward down the lane and then up the Fifth Harbor Way. At the next corner, he turns westward once more until he reaches the Eighth Harbor Way, although, like all ways and roads outside of the central trading quarter of Cyad, it is unmarked.

  Tasjan’s dwelling occupies a small block of its own, and at the first level, the building walls are blank stone and offer no windows or entrance except for the carriage gate and a service door, and both are guarded inside and out. There are no other guards outside the dwelling. The tall trees-Lorn has no idea what they are-grow outside the walls and arch over the upper-level porticos. They are still shedding second-year leaves and turning the first-year leaves gray for winter, but all those on the main ways have been trimmed of lower branches.

  Lorn continues westward on the unnamed lane at the back of the dwelling until he reaches the gnarled tree that stands perhaps fifty cubits east of the west corner. He thinks the tree is a lorken, whose dark wood resists most axes and all but the sharpest saws. The tree is far shorter than the others, and its topmost branches barely reach the top of the second-level portico columns. Those short branches are sturdy, and the remaining leaves barely move despite the cold wind blowing northward off the harbor.

  Lorn eases the blurring shield around himself. He has to jump to grasp the lowermost branch, and then levers himself into the tree. His scabbard slams against his leg, hard enoug
h that it will probably leave a bruise, and he sits on the branch in the fading light, catching his breath for a moment.

  Then he begins to climb, testing each branch. The wind that rustles the branches of the taller trees will help, both in disguising any movement of the leaves of the lorken, and in concealing any sounds he may make.

  When he stands as high as he can safely go, he is three cubits from the stone railing. To reach the railing will take a leap-one that must be successful or he will fall close to twenty cubits onto hard stone. He extends his chaos-senses, and listens closely, as well. A single guard walks past. Once the man is more than fifteen cubits away, still pacing eastward, Lorn takes a deep breath, then leaps.

  Again he must lever himself up and over the railing, and he stands in the shadows of the portico pillars, catching his breath, while he waits for the return of the single guard in green who patrols the corner post of the second-level covered portico that encloses the garden

  As the man passes, Lorn steps out, and using his chaos-enhanced Brystan blade, takes a single cut. There is little more than a muted cry, a gurgle, and the sound of a body falling on pebbles.

  Lorn wipes his blade on the green tunic of the dead guard, then eases the shortsword from the man’s scabbard. He glances around, letting his chaos-senses scan the area, but no one is near.

  He concentrates, and chaos flares across the body. All that remain are some coins, some iron nails, and a few metal studs. Using his kerchief to protect his fingers from the lingering heat, Lorn scoops up the items and tosses them out and over the railing. The faint clink of the coins on the stones below cannot even be heard.

  The use of chaos leaves him with a headache-not as bad as some, but one that is more than a mere dull ache. He slips the shortsword through his belt and eases his way along the railing and past one pillar and then another until he reaches the east side of the garden. Then, concealed by his blur-shield, he waits until the next green-clad guard passes before he climbs onto the railing and lifts himself onto the brick step of the chimney. He makes his way up the three huge stepped sides of the chimney.

  Tasjan should still be dining. Above him, the study windows are dark yet. While using the blur-shield, Lorn could still follow the trader, anywhere in the dwelling, until he has an opportunity-but the study would be best.

  There are three windows. He can reach two from where he stands. The first is shut firmly. The second is closed, but there is a crack there. Slowly, with the back edge of the shortsword, Lorn wiggles it wider, and then wider, until he can pull it open.

  Then he jumps and grabs the sill, and slowly drags himself up and into the empty study. He closes the window, slowly and gently, then makes his way to a corner behind the carved desk, a corner where the built-in bookshelves meet.

  While there is a temptation to look at the papers and folders on the desk, Lorn refrains and merely stands in the corner. He lets the blur-shield down while he waits. There is little sense in using the effort when none are around to see him.

  He waits for some time-so long that he has begun to debate whether he should strike out with his chaos-senses and try to locate Tasjan. Then, he reflects, waiting in another’s dwelling to murder someone may well slow time.

  The sound of steps, and a click, alerts Lorn, and he cloaks himself in aversion and waits.

  The door opens, and dim light from the corridor oozes into the study. A slender figure stands in the door, looking across the study. With the door still open, Tasjan takes the striker from his belt, and clicks it, once, twice, before light creeps from the lamp set in the sconce beside the doorway.

  Tasjan glances around the study, once, then again. His brow furrows, and he looks almost directly at Lorn, but his eyes pass by the lancer in blue.

  Finally, the merchanter closes the door and slides the bolt. He steps toward the table desk.

  Lorn moves from the corner, and with the borrowed blade, slashes across the left side of the merchanter’s unprotected neck.

  Tasjan barely has the time to look surprised.

  Lorn manages to grab part of the merchanter’s tunic and swings the body so that it falls onto the carpet, rather than into the desk or the chair before it. Then he lowers the shortsword with the green leather grip to the carpet beside the dead merchanter.

  Standing quickly, he slides the window back open. Then, regathering the blur-shield back around him, he slides out, lowering himself down to the first ledge. He leaves the window wide open. Slowly, in the growing twilight, he makes his way down the stepped sections of the chimney to the portico roof. There he freezes, blur-shield around him.

  Two guards have stopped on the far side of the railing, and are talking.

  “You see Wyst?”

  “No. You’re on his post. Thought he got the flux or something.”

  “…just disappeared… Gyan’s asking all the guards… be not happy…”

  “…something up… don’t know what… calling in the guards off the ships…”

  “Double guards at the Plaza building, too.”

  “Sasyk whipped someone in the second squad… doesn’t do that ‘less he’s frettin’.”

  “Look up there… he’s at it again. Light still on in the study.”

  “Not that warm… he’s got the window open…”

  “Where he sits these days, it’s warm enough.” The first guard laughs.

  “Funny, though. Cold out here, and it’ll be colder ‘afore Vansyn comes on relief. Give anything to be inside and warm, and he’s inside and warm, and trying to get cooler.”

  “Life is like that, friend. Better keep moving. Don’t want to get on Cyan’s bad side.”

  “Nor Sasyk’s.”

  The two part and walk back along their separate posts, away from the corner. Lorn slips from the deeper shadows and with one hand holding the stone rail, he leaps across the emptiness, and slides through greenery, finally managing to clutch a branch. He can feel the scratches on his hands and on his neck. He keeps clutching the branch, letting stretched muscles rest, and breathing deeply.

  Even after he reaches the base of the tree, he holds the blurring shield until he is two blocks away, despite the pain in his eyes that has grown into sharp daggers jabbing into his skull, intensifying the headache he already suffers. He uses a kerchief from his belt wallet to blot the blood from the scratches on his neck.

  It feels as though every eye is on him as he walks back down Eighth Harbor Way West, yet the streets are almost empty, and, so far as he can tell, neither eyes nor screeing glasses are upon him.

  As he turns onto the narrow way that holds their dwelling, he can sense the chill of a chaos-glass. There is little he can do but continue walking, and the feeling passes even before he reaches the iron gate.

  He can but wonder what magus was screeing him-wonder and hope. At least he was not observed by a glass while near Tasjan’s dwelling.

  He double-checks the locking on the iron gate before he makes his way along the marble walk toward the veranda. “Ser?” calls a voice. “It’s me, Pheryk. I’m back.”

  “The lady asked me to watch for you, and to let the geese out of the pen once you returned.”

  “Thank you. You can do that. I’m not going out again. It’s been a long day.”

  “Good night, ser ”

  “Good night.” Lorn opens the veranda door, then slides the bolt behind him and steps down into the foyer. “Is that you, Lorn?”

  “It’s me.”

  Ryalth waits in the sitting room, a goblet of Alafraan in her hand, a second goblet on the table. Lorn looks at the goblet.

  “I thought you might need it. You look like it was harder than you planned.”

  “You didn’t ask how it went.”

  “I could tell that when you entered. There’s a coldness about you. It was there after Shevelt, but I didn’t recognize it as such then. You’ve got some cuts, and your eyes are watering. Are any…”

  “No… the cuts are from a lorken tree I was climbing.
I got them climbing down. They’re just scratches.” Lorn takes up the goblet. “Thank you.”

  “And you used enough chaos that your head is splitting and your eyes water?”

  “That, too.” He sits on the front edge of the chair across from Ryalth, who leans forward on the settee. “It’s all a mess.” After the smallest sip of Alafraan, he adds, “Tasjan blackmails Vyel to kill you. He releases papers so that all would believe Vyanat murdered his own brother to save himself, when Vyanat had killed his brother to show he would not countenance favoritism and ill-doing by his brother. Now I act so that Tasjan cannot create a cause…”

  “…and Sasyk will use it as such in some way?”

  “Possibly,” Lorn admits. “Or someone else.”

  “Did you leave something to tie the death to Sasyk?”

  “A green-wrapped blade and an open window-and one guard is missing.”

  Ryalth nods. “That will suffice.” Her blue eyes are as sad and hard as Lorn’s amber orbs.

  They each take another sip of the Alafraan.

  CL

  The blond and broad-shouldered first-level adept magus steps into the study in the private dwelling. He bows to the older magus who stands by the window, looking down across Cyad itself at the gray winter waters of the harbor.

  “You suggested we talk before dinner, ser?” asks the tall and blond first-level adept.

  “It would be opportune,” answers Kharl as he turns. “How is Ceyla?”

  “Your daughter is in good health, and talks with your consort in the sitting room.” Rustyl smiles politely.

  “A magnificent harbor, is it not?” Kharl gestures to the scene framed in the window. “It is a pity that, unless some action is taken soon, it will fall to the outlanders, and within your life, Rustyl, perhaps sooner.”

  “The First Magus has suggested such can be averted if the Magi’i gain greater control of Cyad.”

  “It is rather late for Chyenfel to think of such,” Kharl snorts. “He is the one who buried the chaos-towers of the Accursed Forest in the mists of time, and now we have too few towers to power the firewagons, or to charge the firelances of the Mirror Lancers when we need them most. We have no tow-wagons on the Great Canal, and soon will have no fireships.”