“Glad we don’t have to supervise that.” Duarrl gestured toward the sewage workers. “Just provide the prisoners and a few guards.”
“Disciplinary duty?” asked Cerryl.
The lead patroller nodded. “Little things-not showing up for duty, the first time, or being late a couple of times.” He grinned at Cerryl. “The mages who supervise-they tell me that’s disciplinary duty, too.”
“So I’ve heard. I’ve not had to do refuse duty.”
“Well… let’s go.” Duarrl turned and motioned to the four patrollers.
Cerryl and Duarrl walked down the granite steps to the landing that held the grated bronze door covering the entrance to the sewer walkway. A second bronze grate covered the sewer tunnel itself, a grate that angled from the runnel top out over the stone lip where the sewage dropped into the twin channels that split and carried the sewage to the two settling ponds. Two hundred cubits to the west was another runnel and door.
Cerryl frowned as he studied the grated bronze door, then glanced at the stones of the extended walkway. He extended his senses to the gate, then turned to Duarrl. “Do you have a key? I turned mine in when I left sewer duty.”
Duarrl fumbled through the ring on his belt. “Here… I think that’s it.” He looked at the gate and then at Cerryl. “You think… ?” Cerryl smiled apologetically. “Someone’s opened the gate, and not too long ago. There’s blood on the stones and no chaos in the lock.”
“Fellows,” Duarrl turned, “we might have a problem here.” Cerryl turned the key and levered back the oversized grate door. He stood for a moment looking into the gloom. Behind him, four blades slid from their sheaths. After relocking the gate open, Cerryl squinted momentarily, then extended his order senses. Someone had been in the sewer tunnel recently-very recently.
At the end of the tunnel by the grate door, the walkway was wider than in the tunnels under the White City itself-nearly three cubits, almost wide enough for a cart, if a small one. At that thought, Cerryl looked down. Was there a trace of wheels in the slime?
“Ser? Ah… we can’t see in the dark.” Duarrl sounded apologetic. “If you’d wait a moment until I get a striker out…”
“I didn’t know the patrollers carried lamps.”
“Have to be two lamps with every patrol.”
“Just hold out the lamps, then.” Cerryl turned and waited for Reyll and Churk to extend their lamps. Hyjul and Saft stood back, as did Duarrl.
Whst! The tiny firebolt lit the first lamp wick. A second firebolt flared Churk’s lamp into light.
“That do?” asked Cerryl
“Ah… yes, ser.”
Cerryl could sense something, rubbish, a bundle, something, on the walkway perhaps thirty cubits ahead. As he walked, he began to gather chaos around him-not to him, as Jeslek might have done, but around him.
A scraping sound echoed down the wide tunnel, but not loud enough for a man. Cerryl could sense something on the walkway, and the sickening rotting odor was far worse than just sewage. The scraping had probably been rats.
“Let’s have a lamp. There’s nothing alive here.”
Churk’s small lamp was enough to reveal what Cerryl had feared.
Cerryl wanted to gag but swallowed silently. The corpse had been a man-he thought, although the stench was worse than that of the sewage that gurgled in the tunnel beside the walkway. The figure wore rags, but anything else-boots, belt, purse-had been stripped. His face and chest had been burned, so much that the features were a unrecognizable blackened mass.
“They forced him to open the lock,” opined Duarrl.
“There are traces of chaos,” Cerryl said. “Not a lot of blood. He probably died when the chaos exploded out of the lock.”
Duarrl bent down but did not touch the body. “There’s nothing on him. Not a thing.” He straightened, then looked at Cerryl. “Might as well get rid of it. Can’t see who it was. No sense in burying it.”
Cerryl swallowed, then let the chaos swell, before releasing it.
WHssst!
When the flare of light subsided, all that remained was drifting ash, and a single copper lying on fire-scoured stone.
“They missed a copper.” Duarrl snorted. “Churk… your turn, if you want it.”
The flaxen-haired Churk bent down gingerly.
“Careful…” Cerryl cautioned. “It will be hot.”
“Thank you, ser.” Churk set his blade aside and took out a leather glove and picked up the coin, then straightened. “Hot enough that there be no flux clinging to it.”
“No,” said Duarrl. “Let’s see if we find anything else ahead. Doubt that we will, but you never know.”
Churk walked ahead, lamp in one hand, shortsword in the other.
After nearly four hundred cubits, past one set of stairs to a locked overhead grate, Duarrl stopped. “Not going to find anything now. Let’s head back.”
As they turned and started back in single file, Cerryl glanced through the gloom at Duarrl. “What do you think they were smuggling? They used a cart-a small one-but it was heavy enough.”
“You could tell it was a cart?”
“There were traces… The wheels crushed some of the slime. That makes another form of chaos.”
Someone swallowed in the darkness.
“See why you don’t underestimate mages, fellows?” Duarrl laughed before looking toward Cerryl. “If they had a cart, had to be something heavy. Couldn’t be finished goods, like woven wool or the like. Take too long to get the smell of sewer out. Arms of some sort, I’d guess. Maybe oils or perfumes. Had to be something worth killing over. Though folks like that’d kill for a few silvers.”
Their steps echoed hollowly down the tunnel over the gurgle of the sewage as it pulsed toward the treatment ponds.
Once everyone was out, Cerryl took Duarrl’s key. “I’ll need one of these.”
“You’ll have it tomorrow, ser.”
“Good.” Cerryl locked the grated door closed, returned the key, then forced himself to gather an enormous bolt of chaos, forcing it into the heavy lock.
This time… there won’t be just one body.“ He kept his voice low enough so that only Duarrl could hear his words.
The lead patroller nodded.
To the west, the prisoners continued to fill the wagon with the sludge from the empty settling pond.
“We’ll need to watch this more often,” Duarrl said to Cerryl as they walked back to the sewer building-and the waiting horses.
Cerryl nodded. He had his own ideas. He doubted that the old entrance to the sewers off the Avenue-the one where he’d been attacked by brigands-had ever been sealed and he had to wonder why.
XXIX
Cerryl picked up the note that lay on his bed, looking at the handwriting on the folded parchment-parchment, not the cheap brown paper used by some merchants. “Cerryl,” he murmured as he read the single name on the outside. Then he smiled as he saw the green wax seal. He broke it and read quickly, smiling more broadly at the green ink.
… returned to Fairhaven last night, and Father and I would like to have you for dinner tonight. According to Myral, you have not been assigned evening duty with the Patrol yet, and so we are hoping to see you tonight…
The note was signed with a flowing green “L.” Cerryl folded it carefully, walked to his desk, and slipped it into the covered box that held his papers, including some few notes he had penned out on various subjects.
After washing up, he left his quarters and headed for the White Tower. The corridors were mostly empty, although he did pass the thin-faced apprentice Kiella in the fountain courtyard. “Good day, Kiella.”
“Good day, ser.” Her eyes did not meet Cerryl’s, and she stepped aside quickly to let him pass, even with the space afforded by the otherwise-empty courtyard.
Cerryl nodded to the ginger-bearded Redark as the two passed in the foyer of the main Hall. Redark inclined his head in return, although his pale green eyes bore a faintly puzzled expression, as
if he wondered who Cerryl might be.
Gostar-strangely, the only guard at the lower tower door, since there were usually two and a messenger-nodded as Cerryl reached the top of the steps from the foyer and approached him. “Good day, ser. You liking Patrol duty?”
“I’ve walked over most of the southeast part of Fairhaven,” Cerryl admitted.
“You met my brother?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t know you had a brother in the Patrol.”
“Name’s Lostar.”
“I don’t think so, but I haven’t met every patroller yet, and I don’t know all the names of those I have met,” Cerryl admitted. “I’m supposed to, but I haven’t gotten that far.”
“Looks like me.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.” Cerryl glanced toward the steps. “You know if Myral’s in?”
“Most times I wouldn’t, but he just walked up a bit ago. Alone.” Gostar grinned. “The High Wizard went somewhere in his coach. Didn’t look so happy, but he hasn’t lately. They say he’s been getting scrolls from Overmage Jeslek.”
“He’s raising more mountains in Gallos, I think.”
Gostar looked down. “Not one to say… don’t seem as natural-like, though, ser.”
“Neither chaos nor order taken to extremes is natural, Gostar. Sometimes necessary, but not natural.” Cerryl grinned. “That’s what Kinowin always says.” Not that Kinowin or Myral phrased it quite that way.
Gostar looked up as boots sounded on the stones. A second guard appeared, one Cerryl did not know.
“Gostar… Oh, sorry, ser.”
Cerryl smiled. “That’s all right.”
As the new Patrol mage headed up the stairs, he could pick up the first fragments of the conversation.
“… wish the messenger’d get back. Hate running up and down for all of them…”
“… go next time…”
“… which mage was that?”
“… named Cerryl… one of the real ones… say he was an orphan, sawmill brat… taught himself letters… made him a Patrol mage couple of eight-days ago…”
“… tough little bastard then?”
“… can hold his own, I’d say.”
Tough little bastard? Cerryl wasn’t at all sure about that, except maybe the “little” part.
Thrap! He rapped on Myral’s door, conscious that he wasn’t even winded from the steps. Maybe all the Patrol walking did have some benefits. “It’s Cerryl.”
‘Oh… you can come on in.“
Myral sat before the windows, half-shuttered, though the room was warm, sipping from a mug. Cider, Cerryl suspected, since that was almost all the older mage drank and the early apples had already been picked. Cerryl sat across the table from the half-bald, black-haired older mage.
What can I do for you, now that you’re in the Patrol?“ Myral took a sip from his mug.
“I was just thinking. Do you know if that smuggler’s entrance to the sewers was ever bricked up?”
A faint smile crossed Myral’s mouth. “You still worry about sewers?”
“We found a dead body at the end of the sewers, in the tunnel just up from the treatment ponds. He was killed from chaos burns, then dragged inside.”
“That’s what the chaos locks are for,” Myral said evenly, a hint of a smile behind his words. Abruptly the older mage coughed, several times, each cough more racking than the last.
Cerryl was on his feet before the attack subsided. “Are you all right?”
“No. But there’s little enough you or I can do.” Myral offered a wan smile. “The malady is age… age and chaos, as I have often told you.” He blotted his mouth and lips with the heavy gray cloth. “You were asking about the tunnel. It has not been bricked up, and it will not be. Oh, you may find a line of bricks before the door in the basement of the factor’s building adjoining it, but there will be another tunnel to it.” Cerryl nodded. He had thought as much.
“You do not look surprised, Cerryl. In ten years, you are the first merely to nod.” Myral chuckled. “You may yet vindicate Kinowin’s judgment.”
“Who uses the tunnel, and what would happen if I caught them?” He didn’t think it was wise to ask what Kinowin’s judgment had been. “A number of people doubtless use that door and tunnel, if infrequently, and I have no idea who they might be, though I tried for several years to determine just that. The only way to discover that would be to spend several do/en eight-days down there, and neither I nor the Guild had such time. As for catching them… those you caught would either be killed trying to escape or end up as road prisoners. There have been more than a score of such in the last few years.” Cerryl let himself lean back in the chair, waiting. As the silence drew out, Myral coughed once, then began to speak. “The sewers keep Fairhaven clean and mostly free of the flux. They also offer roads for those who do not wish to be seen-if they will pay the price. Of course, they don’t. They force some enemy or fool to open the grates. Now, what would happen if we bricked up that entrance?”
“They’d create another?”
“Precisely. And where might that be?” Cerryl shrugged. He didn’t know.
“Neither would I nor Sterol nor Kinowin nor Isork. Before long, we’d have masons in the sewers all the time. Actually, there are two such entrances to the sewer tunnels. The other one is in the northwest, on a secondary collector off the west main tunnel. We resist, even trap with chaos, any other attempts to breach the tunnels. Those we leave alone. It works better that way. There will always be smuggling and smugglers-so long as there are tariffs or taxes, or rules on goods. This way, only those with golds are successful-”
“Or those who carry goods on their bodies or in packs.”
Myral nodded.
“How much smuggling is necessary?”
“Smuggling is unnecessary and to be frowned upon,” Myral declaimed, spoiling the ponderous tone with a smile that followed his words.
“You mean we can’t stop it entirely? So we have to keep it limited to small quantities or those who have enough coins to exercise some degree of restraint?”
“I am not certain I could have said it quite so elegantly, young Cerryl. But, yes, that is the problem that has always faced the Guild.” Myral coughed once again, more than a gentle sound, but less than the spasms that had racked him before.
“So I should be cautious?” Cerryl glanced past Myral to the clouds that seemed to be building north of the city.
“Any time you deal with people who would kill others for mere coins, or for power that will vanish even before they do, I would proceed with great caution.”
The mention of power that vanished was enough for Cerryl.
Myral coughed once more, then again.
Noting the paleness of the older mage, Cerryl asked, “Can I get anything? Should I send a messenger for the healer?”
“No. She was here earlier. There is little more she could do this day.”
“Then you should lie down.” The younger mage rose. “I will not tire you more.”
“You tire me not. It is good to feel my advice and words are still worth heeding.” Myral took a deep wheezing breath. “Still… some rest might aid.”
Cerryl eased over to the heavyset older man and extended an arm.
Myral took it and levered himself from the chair. “Thank you.” He took several steps and lowered himself onto the edge of the single bed in the corner. “Time was… didn’t need an arm.”
“Thank you for your advice.” Cerryl wished he could do more, but he could sense that Myral just wished to be left alone. Cerryl closed the door, gently but firmly, and started down the stairs, passing one of the red-clad messengers at the first landing. The lad was headed up and gave Cerryl a tentative smile. Cerryl returned the smile.
On the way out of the tower, Cerryl nodded as he passed Gostar, The older guard nodded back but said nothing. Cerryl caught a few words between the two guards before he reached the bottom of the steps into the entry Hall.
“… le
astwise… recognizes that some of us… more than bodies with blades.”
“…ought to have more that didn’t come from coins…” Cerryl wondered about that as he crossed the entry Hall. Faltar had come from coins in a way, and so did Leyladin, and they were people who recognized that nonmages had worth and were people.
Once he was back in his room, Cerryl glanced out the window at the gathering clouds. While the land needed the rain, he hoped there weren’t too many thunderstorms. Those hurt more than the gentle rains, though either would give him a headache.
He took a deep breath as he took the slim volume from his bookcase and opened it. He could read some before he left for Leyladin’s house. He was fortunate enough that it would still be another season before he had afternoon duty. In the meantime, he really needed to reread On Peacekeeping. He’d hurried through it the first time, knowing he’d missed things. He tried to focus on the words.
… peacekeeping is based upon keeping harmony among people… yet people though they look similar may not react in the same fashion when confronted by a patroller… or especially a Patrol mage…
That was true enough. He’d felt that himself. He continued to read, nodding as he went over passages that he recognized in some fashion.
… no man may encroach upon the person or the property of another save with the express permission of the Council unless some person has been observed breaking the peace and flees… nor may any patroller enter the dwelling of any family, save as invited, or in pursuit of an observed peacebreaker or with the permission of the Council…
Cerryl frowned. Was that another reason why smugglers used the sewer runnels? He wanted to shake his head. Being a Patrol mage wasn’t turning out quite the way he had envisioned, and he’d barely begun. In fact, he hadn’t. He would still be walking around the southeast section for another two days. He forced his eyes back to the pages before him.
… a patroller or a Patrol mage who breaks the peace will be judged by the Council…
The book didn’t give any penalties for peacebreaking, and that meant, from what Isork had said, that once someone had been found guilty of breaking the peace, judgment was in Isork’s hands-or those of the Council. Cerryl shivered, despite the warmth of his room. He didn’t know that he had a better answer, but he also knew he’d rather not have his fate in the hands of Sterol, Jeslek, and Kinowin.
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