Colors of Chaos

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  As he took the thin book, Cerryl wondered about why he would be given a section where the most things happened but said nothing.

  “You wonder why the southeast?” Another crooked smile crossed Isork’s lips. “That’s where the low trades are, the poorer folk. More fights, but they respect the Patrol. They haven’t got coins. Up in the northwest… well… best not to have a Patrol mage in a section where he has to deal with slick traders until he’s got some experience under his belt.”

  “Do Patrol mages walk the streets all the time?” Cerryl couldn’t recall ever seeing a mage with the patrols.

  “No. Once you know your section, you’ll be staying in your little room, just like I stay here. That way, your patrols can find you. You’ll have ten patrols of four men reporting to you-except you’re really there to back them up and protect them. Don’t forget it. You’ll have a set of guards, like here-and a messenger to find me in real trouble. Or to find you on the nights when you have the call.”

  “The call?”

  “Oh… guess I forgot that. When you get the afternoon duty-that’s really from midafternoon until midevening-you also have call. That means the messenger has to know where you’re sleeping… or eating… wherever you are. Most nights nothing happens after midevening, but you’d best be where you say you are.” Isork laughed. “In the Patrol, no one cares where that is or who you’re with-just so long as the messenger can find you quick. Means you don’t leave the city, and it’s better if you’re close to your section. Most mages just show the messenger their quarters, and that’s where they are.”

  Cerryl nodded, feeling as though he were doing that far too often.

  “One other thing… and I’ll wager Kinowin didn’t mention it. You get another gold an eight-day-and you’ll earn every copper.” Isork rose. “Tomorrow here at dawn.”

  “Yes, ser.”

  “You call me, Huroan, the overmages, and the High Wizard ‘ser.’ No one else in the Guild. And you call every person you meet on duty ‘ser.’ Strange world, isn’t it?” The crooked smile faded. “Tomorrow.”

  Cerryl kept his face emotionless as he left the Patrol building and walked slowly toward the Wizards’ Square. Once he was well away from the building, he opened the book and read the front page-“On Peacekeeping.”

  Another book like Myral’s on sewage? Or philosophy like Colors of White? Or did it really have firm rules? Did the Guild have a manual for everything?

  He closed the book and took a deep breath.

  XXVII

  Duarrl was a head taller than Cerryl and half again as broad, cleanshaven with brown and gray hair and thin eyebrows that joined over his nose. Despite a bulk that threatened to burst out of the white tunic and crimson belt of a patroller, his face was long and narrow. He and Cerryl stood beside each other in Isork’s office, while Isork stood behind the desk that contained little beside the quill and inkstand and another pile of paper and scrolls.

  “Duarrl, this is Mage Cerryl,” Isork began. “He’s a bit young. Kinowin says he’s talented. He killed those smugglers in the sewer last fall, the ones that had iron blades and shields.”

  Duarrl offered a minimal head bow. “Good. Mage who can’t handle iron’s not much use to the Patrol.”

  “He’s also been in a full battle in Gallos-killed close to a score of purple lancers.”

  “Never liked those folk much,” Duarrl grunted.

  “I told you-he’ll be taking the mornings from Fylker. Move him to the afternoon so Huroan and I aren’t down there all the time.”

  “Be good.” Duarrl smiled. “That way all of us can find you.”

  Isork spread a parchment map on the desk. “Like a sewer map. I’m sure you’re familiar with those.”

  Cerryl nodded, then bent over, noting that red lines split the city in quarters. The north-south line was effectively the Avenue, and the east and west line ran outward from the Wizards’ Square in each direction.

  “You will have to find another inn to eat at.” Isork grinned. “Least while you’re on duty. The Golden Ram is just across the Avenue, but it’s out of your section. Here’s the section Patrol building.” He pointed.

  From what Cerryl could see, it was perhaps two blocks south and five blocks east of where Arkos the tanner had his shop.

  “Your section has most of the tanners, some tinsmiths and coppersmiths, and some of about everything else except for big houses of wealthy factors. You should get to know it like the back of your forearm. Wouldn’t hurt to spend some time screeing it as well. Use your glass before you have to.” Isork turned to Duarrl. “Anything you’d like to add?”

  “Well…like as a lot of hotheads in the southeast section… we try to yell first, give ‘em a moment to understand we’re Patrol. Makes it easier on all of us.”

  “They respect the Patrol, but it takes a moment for them to realize that they could be in trouble?” asked Cerryl.

  “Right as light, ser. And, the boys, well… no sense in slicing up someone or forcing you to ash ‘em, not if it not be needed.”

  In short, look and think before you start throwing firebolts. Cerryl nodded.

  “Cerryl… a word while Duarrl talks to the Patrol.” Isork cleared his throat and glanced at Duarrl. “Might tell ‘em about him… what you think necessary.”

  “Yes, ser.” Duarrl straightened.

  Isork rolled up the map. As Duarrl closed the door, the Patrol chief offered a smile. “Not much to say. The reason you’re here is so he can tell the patrollers what I told him to tell them. About you. They need to know that you’ve faced an iron blade and been in battle. Makes them feel better. Wouldn’t be quite so necessary if…”

  “If I looked more like you or Kinowin?”

  Isork nodded. “True you faced down Jeslek?” The Patrol chief offered a wry smile. “It’s not known to many… but I have talked to Kinowin.”

  After a momentary hesitation, Cerryl nodded. “I’d rather it not be known… unless you think it important.”

  “No one here but me needs to know that.” Isork stood. “There was one other thing I didn’t mention. Shouldn’t be a problem, though, seeing you were a scrivener. The Patrol mage is the one who writes down the daily report. You have to finish that before you leave your shift and send it here by messenger. You don’t start writing until you take over the morning duty, though. Next two eight-days, I want you learning everything you can about the southeast section-every inn, every spirit shop, every stable, and every warehouse. Any sewer tunnel you don’t know.”

  “Yes, ser.”

  After a moment, Isork cocked his head to the side. “Let’s go meet this morning’s Patrol group. I don’t expect you to remember all the names at once, but make an effort. Patrol mage is supposed to know every patroller by name and face.”

  “Ah… eight score?”

  “About nine score, with the wagon drivers and everyone. We should have ten score, but…” Isork shrugged. “It’s hard to get patrollers, too.”

  Cerryl opened the door, then waited for Isork to step around the desk. Duarrl and four men stood in a loose row in the entry hall. The four patrollers straightened slightly as Isork and Cerryl approached. Isork’s eyes rested on each of the white-uniformed men in turn before he spoke.

  “This is Mage Cerryl. Duarrl’s told you some about him, I’m sure. I’ll tell you one more thing. He was raised in the mines and worked his way out of a sawmill.” Isork nodded to Duarrl.

  “Here they be, ser.” Duarrl pointed to a tall and thin man with dark red hair and the faint trace of a scar above his left eyebrow. “Reyll.”

  “Noyr.” The next patroller was squat, even shorter than Cerryl, but twice as broad, and his hair was jet-black, his eyes equally black.

  “Churk.” Churk offered a broad smile with his mouth, but the blue eyes remained distant under the short flax-gold hair.

  “Praytt.” After meeting Cerryl’s eyes, the last patroller’s green eyes flicked from side to side, as if he had to study ever
ything around him all the time.

  “All right, once we cross the Avenue, we’ll do it like a sweep, except this is so Mage Cerryl knows what a sweep’s like, and also so you don’t forget.” Duarrl grinned at the four patrollers. “First four blocks, Noyr and Praytt… you be in front of us. Reyll-the left alleyway, Churk, the right.” He nodded sharply, and the four started for the doorway.

  Isork looked at Cerryl and then at Duarrl. Cerryl understood-listen to Duarrl and try not to do anything stupid. Cerryl followed Duarrl out to the Avenue, out into a day that was already gusty, with a hint of chill, forecasting the cooler days of late fall after harvest. The six waited for a lumber wagon to rumble past before crossing the divided pavement of the Avenue. On the other side, Reyll and Churk eased away from the other four.

  Cerryl had walked through some of the area east and south of the square on the last part of his sewer duty, but he’d walked through it, not studied it. So he tried to take in all the details poured forth by Duarrl.

  “Vuyult-sells baskets and chairs, things woven from withies. Also sells withies themselves to the traders from Kyphros…

  “There… the long warehouse with the gray timbers… used to belong to Hefkek… till he got bigger than his trouser… sold it to some brothers from Biehl… They grind all sorts of stuff… make pigments… Traders take ‘em everywhere…

  “…Bavann… says they’re all his daughters and cousins.” Duarrl snorted. “Always different daughters and cousins, and they’ve stayed young, and his beard’s gone from black to gray. Doesn’t make trouble, though, and we’re here to keep the peace, not to judge what folk do behind doors and walls…”

  Cerryl had to nod at that, though he wondered at times if some of the mages didn’t cross that line. After all, he hadn’t exactly made any trouble, yet the Guild had sought him out and would have sent him to the road crew or killed him if he hadn’t been acceptable to the Guild.

  Duarrl stopped at the edge of a small square with a fountain. The water spurted out of a time-worn marble vase taller than a man. “They say this be the old square, the center of Fairhaven before the first Whites fled from the Westhorns.” An apologetic smile crossed the patroller’s thin face. “Not that I’d be knowing that, you understand, ser, but that be what the folk say.”

  “It could be true,” Cerryl said. “I wouldn’t know. That’s the sort of thing no one would have a reason to lie about.” He glanced around the near-empty square. An old man sat on the sunny side of the fountain basin, covered with a patched gray blanket, his eyes closed. Beside him rested a yellow dog with pointed ears, whose nose twitched as it surveyed the pavement.

  A woman struggled down the narrow street to the east of the fountain, bent under a load of willow rods, while a cart pulled by a small donkey creaked past her and toward the square. On the far side, two boys, not even to Cerryl’s chest, tossed a ball back and forth

  “Good folk here,” observed Duarrl. “Mostly from the countryside. Stay in the houses along the square for a time. Then they go back to the country or make enough coins to move north.”

  A black stone structure, almost cubical, stood at the far side of the square. Because it had been initially obscured by the fountain, Cerryl hadn’t really seen it. The stones were dark gray, and the side of the wall that Cerryl saw was polished smooth-except in a handful of places where something had struck the stone and left a grayish gouge and radiating cracks.

  “What’s that?”

  “Oh… that be a lodging house for laborers come from the country. Messil-he’s Praytt’s cousin or some such-runs it.”

  “That black stone?”

  “Aye… said it was a Black Temple years and years back, long before Fairhaven looked as it did. Folks say at first no one could move the stones. A shame to waste it, Messil claims, saving only outsiders’d sleep there. Still, he runs a quiet lodging house.”

  A Black Temple in Fairhaven-they were scarce enough anywhere, and to find what had been one in the White City? Cerryl let his senses range over the building, finding only faint traces of the order that had once reinforced all the stones, but no more order than reinforced the stones and masonry of the Great White Highway.

  “It probably was,” Cerryl reflected.

  “You know any of this part of the city, ser?” Duarrl asked deferentially.

  “Not much south of Arkos’s tannery-I’ve been in the potter’s place. Lwelter’s, I think.”

  “Old Lwelter died last season,” Duarrl said.

  “I met his son, but I don’t remember his name.”

  “Flait be the one who has the shop now.”

  Cerryl nodded. “He wasn’t exactly pleased when I appeared at his door.”

  “Begging your pardon, ser, but more than a few would rather not see the pure White at their door, much as they prefer the city itself.”

  “I was one of them,” Cerryl confessed with a laugh. “I preferred not to encounter mages.”

  “You did not expect to be a mage?”

  “No. I thought it impossible for a poor boy.”

  Duarrl nodded, then pointed ahead to a signboard hung out over the street, bearing the black outline of an oversized pot above a fire. “There be The Black Pot. Fansner’s the keep. I’d not eat there. Good folk, but the fare…” He shook his head.

  “Where would be a good place to eat?”

  “The Broken Blade. Turgot has a good stew,” mused Duarrl. “Then the bakery down the way there, Jeloran’s. No signboard, but you can smell it. Nothing like The Ram or Furenk’s. Sometimes, The Blue Heron be not too bad.”

  Cerryl watched as Reyll slipped out of yet another alleyway and shook his head.

  “Alleys are clean today. Not always like that. Betimes, you be ashing rubbish and things may not be rubbish.”

  The mage nodded. Tossing rubbish in the streets or alleys was considered breaking the peace, because it could catch fire or harbor flux.

  Duarrl pointed down the narrow street to the south. “Where the tin smugglers live. Second and third houses.”

  Cerryl’s eyes followed the lead patroller’s gesture, picking out the pale blue and pink plaster-fronted brick houses. “You let them live there?”

  “Ser, we all know they smuggle tin in, but they don’t use wagons, and the laws don’t say anything about goods folk carry on themselves. ‘Sides, how would the coppersmiths make their bronze-the little shops? They’d not be able to buy tin from the factors. A factor like Muneat, he won’t sell tin in less than five stone lots. Chorast likewise.”

  “What else gets smuggled in like that?”

  “Most anything, I’d guess, but so long as it’s in small lots, and they don’t use the sewers or break the peace…” Duarrl shrugged.

  Cerryl kept listening, all too aware of how right Kinowin had been, of how little he truly knew about Fairhaven.

  XXVIII

  After nearly an eight-day of walking the southeast quarter of Fairhaven, Cerryl was gaining an appreciation of just how much he hadn’t known about the city-as well as very sore feet. So he was pleased to be able to ride the big chestnut out beyond the southernmost part of Fairhaven to where the sewers ended-at the southeastern side of Fairhaven, beyond and to the east of the southern gates.

  A single white granite building stood on the edge of the plateau that marked the end of Fairhaven and overlooked the ponds and fountains. Cerryl tied his mount to one of the stone hitching blocks on the shaded east side of the stone building that was mostly warehouse.

  Duarrl and Cerryl walked another fifty cubits south, to where they could survey what lay below. The four patrollers had dismounted but remained in the shade beside their tethered mounts.

  “The other problem we get is the sewer outfalls. Have to check those regular-like. Isork thought you ought to be along. Otherwise he’d have to come, seeing as there’s always the possibility of smugglers or some such.”

  “I found that out. I ran into smugglers-or brigands-when I was on sewer duty.” Cerryl nodded. “Isor
k mentioned that, I think.”

  Duarrl laughed. “For a little mage, you been a lot of dirty places- mines, sawmills, sewers battles.”

  “I did spend a little time with a scrivener,” Cerryl admitted. “That’s where the Guild found me.”

  “Doesn’t that beat all…” Duarrl shook his head. For a moment Cerryl looked down across the tiered ponds and the fountains that sprayed foul water into the air to be cleansed by the chaos of the sun. A hint of ancient chaos seeped from beneath the granite that walled the slope-a hint that suggested the hillside was far from completely natural.

  The sewage flowed directly from the two main tunnels into four settling ponds. The pond on the west end was empty of water, and a dozen prisoners shoveled the settled mix of offal, sludge, and other solids into handcarts, which were pulled by ropes to the side where the contents were loaded into a larger wagon. The solids were carted off to a dry gorge to the northeast of the city on eastern side of the hills where runoff would only seep into the higher grasslands southwest of Lydiar. Cerryl studied the group but didn’t see any sign of Lyasa. Perhaps she was not on duty yet or somewhere else in the vast sewer collection system. His eyes drifted downhill.

  From the settling ponds the water flowed into channels that spread the sewer water into thin sheets that flowed down the flattened sloping granite inclines, exposed to the chaos of the sun, to be collected into another set of ponds that fed the lower fountains. Those fountains, in turn, flung the water into the air in fine sprays where the pure chaos of the sun would destroy much of the remaining unnatural chaos in the water.

  The lowest tier of ponds remained covered mostly with water lilies, and the cleansed water flowed over the granite lips on the south side of the ponds and into another granite channel that led to the Haven River. Although Cerryl would not have wished to drink the cleansed water, Myral had often assured him that it was far cleaner than the water used for drinking in any other city in Candar. That reminded Cerryl to chaos-clean water from anywhere else in Candar or drink ale or wine.