Colors of Chaos (Saga of Recluce)

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  Hiser scratched his head. “Can’t say as it makes sense to me. Some folk won’t go out at night. Sooner or later mages like you will find out.”

  Cerryl shrugged. “I’m going to try something. In some of the places, I know where they’ve hidden their goods. We’re going to make them buy and sell in the light of day.”

  Hiser raised his eyebrows.

  “The usual way—the one I’m so adept at. Trade and pay tariffs or lose your goods and your life.” Cerryl snorted.

  “Will this do any good, ser?”

  “It can’t do any less than doing nothing,” suggested Cerryl. “It won’t be enough, but we’re working on the next step. We’ll need two companies this morning. We’ll surround each shop so that no one can escape, and then Lyasa and I—and a half-score lancers—will present the alternatives.” He nodded at the lancer captain. “If you would get the companies ready?”

  “Yes, ser.” Hiser smiled. “They’d like to see something happen.”

  “Good.” Let’s hope it happens the way you think it will.

  After the study door closed behind the departing captain, Lyasa looked at Cerryl.

  He gestured to the chair. “We have a few other things to talk about.”

  “You don’t think this morning’s work will solve everything?” Lyasa sat down.

  “No. Would you help me?”

  The black-haired mage smiled warmly. “Just for asking, rather than ordering, I’d be happy to. What do you want?”

  “After we finish today, I want you to use your screeing glass—you can use it, right?” His eyes flicked to the window at the sound of hoofs in the courtyard outside. “I want you to track several merchants and let me know if a group of them is meeting somewhere. Whenever you find that out, find me, and let me know right then.”

  “That doesn’t sound impossible.”

  “Not quite. If you’re like me, you’ll have to spend some time riding or even calling on them to get to know them.”

  “You have to do that?”

  “Unless it’s someone like the smith who radiates so much order that it doesn’t matter.” Or Leyladin, who you found with a glass before you knew who she was. “Or Jeslek, I suppose, though I never tried. That didn’t seem wise.”

  “Or Anya?”

  Cerryl shuddered. “I never wanted to know.”

  “You’re still too honorable about some things.”

  “What I’m planning here isn’t totally honorable.”

  “They didn’t give you much choice. Neither will Sterol, but that wasn’t what I meant.”

  “I know.” Cerryl turned from the window and lifted the top sheet of crude brown paper. “We’d better get ready. Can you track these people?” He extended the list.

  Lyasa took it. “I can try.”

  “Thank you.”

  They left the study and took the side door to the courtyard where Hiser and the lancer companies were forming up.

  “You do one thing that Jeslek and Sterol didn’t understand.” Lyasa stopped by the mount being held for her.

  “Oh?”

  “You don’t rush into things, but once you decide, you act.”

  Then why do you feel like you’re rushing? “Sometimes, there’s little choice and waiting can only make things worse.” Cerryl swung up into the saddle. “It’s still hard to know those times.”

  “You’re doing fine.”

  Maybe…

  By the time the column entered the harbor square, Cerryl could sense the eyes on him, Lyasa, and the lancers. He felt as though silent messages had crossed all of Spidlaria, which they probably had. As they reined up before the chandlery, Cerryl turned in the saddle. “Hiser?”

  “Ser?”

  “Remember, I want the chandlery surrounded. I want no one to escape, but unless someone flees or attacks, I want no one hurt.”

  “Yes, ser.” Hiser turned. “Blades and lances ready!”

  The chandler opened the barred door even before Cerryl and the lancers set foot on the narrow front porch.

  “Ser…we have nothing.” The chandler stepped back and gestured to the empty shelves of the store. “The war took most of what we had, and the lack of trade has taken the rest.”

  “Chandler, I don’t like lying. I know you care little for Fairhaven, but you will respect her. Follow me.” Cerryl gestured to the lancers, then to the chandler.

  “Ser…where…?”

  “To find some goods you can sell.” Cerryl let a grim smile cross his face as the chandler and his consort exchanged glances. “To the back room there.”

  “Ah…yes, ser.”

  The back room had more shelves and was as bare as the front had been.

  “Open that.” Cerryl pointed to the inside cellar door in the small back room of the chandlery.

  “That is but for the cellar, and bare it is, as you will see.”

  “I’d like to see that.” Cerryl turned to the lancers. “Half with me. The others make sure no one leaves.” He followed the chandler and his consort down the creaky wooden stairs.

  “You see, ser?” The man gestured to the bare clay-floored room, where only the small table remained from Cerryl’s night visit.

  Cerryl walked straight to the wall, removed the oblong stone, and fumbled for a moment before pulling the lever. The narrow door swung open.

  The chandler paled.

  “So…you had no goods to sell, chandler?”

  “None so as I’d tell you…White thieves…”

  Cerryl let chaos appear on his fingertip, then grow into a sword of flame. He let the slightest touch of chaos flash toward the outside door, leaving a blackened slash in the wood. “I could do that to you. I won’t. Believe it or not, I’m not going to take your goods. I’m not even going to take a single coin out of that strongbox you have here.” Cerryl smiled. “I’m not going to kill anyone. I will say one thing. If you do not put those goods back on the shelves upstairs within two days—all of them—then…then you will answer to me. And I will have to find someone else who will sell goods during the daytime and not under the cover of darkness.”

  “…kill me…” The murmur was nearly inaudible.

  “You are not the first who has been discovered, and you will not be the last. Spidlar was a land of traders, and it will be again. You can be one of those, or you can choose not to be.”

  Cerryl walked up the steps and out the front door to where Lyasa and Hiser and the bulk of the lancers waited, mounted and stationed in groups around the building. With a smile, he mounted. “Leave a half-score here. I don’t want anyone coming with a wagon and carting off all the goods. If people come and buy, that’s fine.”

  While Hiser talked to the subofficer of the detachment that was to remain, Cerryl glanced at Lyasa. “They won’t do anything for a time—to see what happens.”

  “Would you?” Her eyebrows arched.

  “I wouldn’t. But I know White mages hate being crossed.”

  She laughed softly, and Cerryl had to grin—until he thought of how many more shops lay ahead of them.

  When Hiser eased his mount back toward the mages, Cerryl said quietly, “Now…the wool factor’s place—Joseffal’s.” Behind him, he could hear a few murmured comments from the lancers.

  “Tough little bastard…”

  “Blues’ll find out…knows everything.”

  Not nearly a tenth part of what you need to know…if that. He forced himself to keep the smile in place as he urged the gelding forward.

  CLII

  IN THE LATE-AFTERNOON light, Cerryl stood just inside the study door and studied the pile of scrolls and lists. He knew it hadn’t grown, but he hadn’t decreased it much, either. Finally, he settled behind the desk. After four days, he’d barely finished his initial round of publicly “discovering” goods, and his legs ached. So did his head, and from what he could tell, no goods had appeared on any shelves.

  So…do you start executing people? He took a deep breath.

  Before long, he
needed to meet with Lyasa and talk over what he could do next without destroying whole cities the way Jeslek had. You’re beginning to understand why he did, though. Destroying things is a lot easier than getting cooperation. But destruction didn’t raise tariff coins, at least not after what you grubbed from the ruins. He took another deep breath and let it out as someone knocked on the door. “Yes?”

  The door opened, and the sandy-haired Kalesin peered in. “This arrived from the High Wizard, ser.” Kalesin bowed slightly as he extended the scroll.

  “Thank you.” Cerryl paused. “How are you coming on that compendium of shops and traders?”

  “Ah…another day or so, ser, I would say. It’s hard to find out about some of the shops that are closed.”

  “Keep working.”

  The door closed, and Cerryl studied the scroll, opened and resealed, from what he could tell, probably by his good and faithful assistant Kalesin. With a twist of his lips, he broke the chaos-mended seal and began to read:

  While you have been in Spidlar but a few eight-days, we must reemphasize the need for coins with which to repay the costs of the campaign so unwisely undertaken by our predecessor. We direct you to consider some form of local tariff or surtax, as you see necessary…

  In short, send coins—lots of coins—and Sterol isn’t that particular how you obtain them.

  Cerryl wanted to snort. Bleeding the beaten land to death wouldn’t solve the problems Fairhaven faced, as if Sterol or any of those in the Halls really cared. Except Leyladin…or Kinowin. He looked at the words and set the scroll on the desk, closing his eyes for a moment.

  Lyasa burst into the study, breathing hard. “Five of them—Menertal, Zyleral, Tillum, Sirle, and Helak—are meeting in the back room of that public house off the main square.”

  “Now?” Cerryl stood, almost losing his balance before turning and glancing toward the courtyard. “I’d better get there.”

  “You—you’re the arms mage.”

  “Who else can do it? Besides, I have no intention of letting them see me.”

  “At least, let Hiser bring a troop somewhere close.”

  Cerryl had to admit that made sense. “Can you find him? Or some lancer subofficer you trust? Have him waiting in the corner of the square closest to the public house.”

  “I can get Suzdyal’s company there first.”

  “Fine.” Cerryl opened the study door and brushed past his guards and out into the courtyard.

  As Lyasa headed toward her mount, Cerryl walked along the narrow passage from the courtyard to the lower street, lifting the shield that caused people’s eyes to shift away from him. Once on the lower street, he forced himself to move quickly, but deliberately, so that he’d not be winded when he reached the square and the public house. What do you hope from this?

  “An improvement,” he answered in a murmur, suspecting that was unlikely. But you have to try.

  The weathered signboard outside the public house bore the image of a brown boar with oversized yellow tusks and smaller letters beneath in Temple tongue—“The Brown Boar.”

  The White mage took another deep breath and stepped through the open door. A few eyes glanced toward the door but slid away from the eye-blurring shield. Cerryl tried not to swallow as he caught a glimpse of mail beneath a stained shirt and several daggers almost lengthy enough to be shortswords. The near half-score of men in leathers who sat around the tables in the main room were anything but indulgers.

  This isn’t sensible…Then life wasn’t sensible. The blur shield around him, Cerryl edged across the floor toward the two doors in the rear. A few men glanced in his direction, and one burly man frowned, then blinked.

  A serving girl walked around Cerryl without realizing she had.

  “…don’t like this. Whites got lancers everywhere…”

  “They don’t want to fight.” The speaker laughed. “Figure they fought enough already…”

  The front room was filled with the odor of smoke, cooked fat, spilled ale, and unwashed bodies. Cerryl began to muster chaos as he moved slowly but deliberately toward the back—keeping away from the tables that held the disguised armsmen.

  The door to the back room was closed. Cerryl raised a full light shield and settled into the darkness, letting his senses tell him about the room beyond the door. Five men sat at the table in the rear room of the inn, and a single guard stood on the other side of the door.

  With a wry smile, the mage opened the door and stepped inside—unseen even as all eyes turned to the door—and then around the guard.

  “What…?”

  “Probably blew open. There’s no one there.”

  “Make sure it’s latched, Dignyr.”

  Clunk! The guard shut the door, and Cerryl slipped into the corner, deciding to remain in darkness and to listen for a bit.

  “This latest thing of his—telling them to sell or lose everything—some folk won’t hold with us, Menertal. You can’t ask them to.”

  “We can ask what’s necessary. If the Whites can’t get coins, they’ll lose.”

  “Not before destroying Spidlar.”

  “Why don’t your…‘friends’ kill this one like the last? There aren’t that many mages outside of Fairhaven?”

  “This one is harder to get to than the old one. His lancers respect him. And he never tells anyone when he’ll be going somewhere.”

  “Anyone can be killed…”

  Cerryl continued to listen.

  “We have to do some of this ourselves.”

  “The hard part.”

  Cerryl took a deep breath and began to muster as much chaos as he could draw around his shields.

  “Look in the corner!”

  Whst! Whst! Whst!…Chaos flared across the room, in six quick flashes that centered on the guard first, then the traders around the table. The chaos flashed so quickly that there was not a single scream or exclamation.

  Cerryl felt the world twist around him, and for a time he just leaned against the wall gasping. When he looked up, his shields down, in the center of the room remained a drifting pile of white ash.

  He walked heavily to the door and gently unlatched it, raising his blur screen as he stepped aside and let the door swing open. The pounding in his head bit through his skull like a disintegrating sawmill blade. He gritted his teeth and waited.

  “What happened?” One of the armsmen in the main room bolted to the open door. “Everything’s gone!”

  After the first rush to the door, Cerryl waited and eventually slipped through an opening, ignoring the exclamations from the disguised armsmen. Trying to hold his guts and the blur shield together, he walked slowly back along the main street and around the corner to where Lyasa and the lancers waited. He dropped the shield with relief, ignoring the few gasps.

  The lancer subofficer reined up beside Lyasa was a dark-haired and hard-faced woman—one of the few women subofficers in the lancers, Cerryl suspected. Beside Lyasa was Cerryl’s mount.

  “You’re all right?” asked the black-haired mage.

  “I’m fine.” Sort of…He swung up heavily into the saddle, trying to ignore the weakness in his legs, the pounding in his head, and the faint queasiness in his guts.

  “This is Subofficer Suzdyal. Mage Cerryl.” Lyasa raised her eyebrows. “Now what?”

  “They ought to have arms ready,” Cerryl said.

  “What did you do?”

  “Arms ready!” snapped Suzdyal. Blades and white-bronze lances glittered in the late-afternoon sun of the fading summer.

  “Let’s just say that the plotters all vanished.”

  “All five?”

  Cerryl offered a twisted smile. “That’s my one skill—removing people who are difficulties. I have to use it too much.”

  “I wish more leaders did,” said Suzdyal dryly. “You expecting a riot or something?”

  “No. Let’s ride down the side street to the public house.”

  As the formed-up lancers approached the public house, several
of the disguised armsmen stopped on the street.

  “Armsmen, all right,” said Suzdyal. “Locals’d run and get cut down from behind. What’d you want us to do with them?”

  Cerryl looked at Lyasa, then looked at the five men standing before the sign of The Brown Boar. He raised his voice. “Let them go, unless they cause trouble. If they do, kill them.”

  One of the leather-clad armsmen started to open his mouth. The man next to him elbowed him in the gut and spoke. “He meant nothing, ser mage. We’ll be going peaceably.”

  “Good. Spidlar is going to stay peaceful, and people are going to start trading again—out in the open. Those who think otherwise won’t be around long.” Cerryl offered an icy smile but kept his eyes fixed on the men until they slowly began to walk down the street away from the lancers.

  Every so often one or another would glance back over a shoulder.

  Cerryl kept scanning the area, for anything that might cause problems, with both senses and sight, but could find nothing.

  When the shadowed street stood empty, silent, Suzdyal gave Cerryl a quick look. “They’ll tell the others.”

  “And?” Cerryl finally wiped the dampness off his forehead.

  “There won’t be so many eager the next time some fop flashes silvers before them.”

  Cerryl hoped not. “I think we can head back.”

  Suzdyal and Lyasa nodded.

  CLIII

  WITH SUZDYAL’S LANCERS behind him and Lyasa beside him, Cerryl rode slowly around the square, glancing at the handful of people who moved from shop to shop. Three or four buildings remained shuttered, but most were open, despite the air of sullenness, almost of shock.

  The day was cooler than the hot late-summer days that had preceded it, with high hazy clouds and a warmish wind out of the south that brought a dryness to the city. Spidlaria wasn’t as bustling as it doubtless had been once, but people were going through the motions of buying and selling. Sooner or later, because sneaking around was exhausting, most would return to normal—except that there wasn’t enough trade.

  “They’re doing what you wanted,” Lyasa said, her voice dry. “They don’t like it much.”