The White Order(166)

“. . . still looks like a bravo . . .”

“. . . you figured out the materials, yet, Byum?”

“. . . get to it . . . You know that . . .”

“. . . figures out everything but the important stuff . . .”

A single serving girl—portly—stepped out from the kitchen and looked at Cerryl. “Breakfast don’t come with the room.”

“How much for some bread and cheese and ale?”

“Three.”

Cerryl nodded and sat down at the same table where he’d eaten the night before.

A scrawny white-bearded man shuffled in and sat down at the round table in the corner, not looking at Cerryl or the other three. The older man waited, head down, until the heavyset blond brought him a mug. He slurped it slowly, holding it with trembling hands.

Thump. “Bread and cheese, dark ale.” The blond’s voice was hard, as if she wished she didn’t have to serve him.

Cerryl handed over the three coppers. The serving girl vanished through the door to the kitchen. The three men continued talking in their low voices as he ate a half-loaf of the day-old rye bread and some hard white cheese, washing both down with ale. When he had finished, more quickly than was polite, but in character for a bravo, the headache had begun to fade. Did using chaos too much take extra food?

He swallowed the last of the ale, rose, and headed back up to his room, where he used the chamber pot and set it by the door. Then he donned the too-large cloak before picking up his pack and bedroll.

The bed in the room adjoining his was creaking once more as he passed.

Exactly what type of inn had he chosen? He shrugged. At least it wasn’t the kind where everyone looked cross-eyed at strangers. Maybe he’d been lucky in that respect.

Out in the dusty courtyard, the stable boy looked at Cerryl and his pack and bedroll. “You not coming back, ser?”

“Would you leave your gear there all day?”

The dark-haired boy grinned. “I’ll get your mount. The chestnut, right?”

“That’s the one.” Cerryl glanced back toward the inn but didn’t see Prytyk, which was just as well. A thin line of smoke rose from the chimney, and the smell of something baking drifted into his nostrils, a scent far more pleasant than his stale breakfast or the smell of the streets. Overhead, puffy white clouds, with barely a touch of gray, dotted the green-blue sky.

The stable boy had brushed the chestnut. That was clear enough from the sheen of the horse’s coat. “I gave him some grain. Not supposed to . . .” The boy glanced toward the stable, then over Cerryl’s shoulder toward the inn door.

Cerryl smiled and slipped the youth another copper he couldn’t afford.

“Thank you, ser.” A pause followed. “Some say you’re a bravo . . .”

“You wonder if that’s true?” Cerryl smiled as he began to strap his pack and bedroll on the chestnut, unwilling to leave them behind, even for the day. “I can’t give you an answer you’d believe. If I am, then I won’t say I am, and if I’m not, I won’t say I am.” He laughed, pleased at his answer.

“I don’t think you are.”

“Probably not in the way you mean.” The mage swung up into the saddle, half-amazed that he’d finally gotten somewhat graceful at mounting the big horse. “Tonight.”

“Yes, ser.”

Cerryl hoped he didn’t have to stay another night, but he had no idea of what to expect in Fenard—or if he could even get close to the prefect. Or if the prefect even happened to be in Fenard.

The Golden Bowl looked even more dingy in the morning light, yellow plaster walls grayed and chipped, roof tiles cracked, with some missing. One shutter beside the front door hung tilted from a single bracket. Cerryl held in a shiver, noting that it was probably a good thing he hadn’t been able to see the place well the night before.

He guided the chestnut out onto the narrow street and west, toward the main avenue, through the sour odors of a city with too many open sewers. There, even in the early morning, a line of carts trundled to his right, north, in the direction he hoped led to the central square or what passed for such.

He’d only ridden a block or so when he had to guide the chestnut around a cart that had collapsed, one wheel snapped in half, the cart tilted, and baskets of potatoes half-emptied into the cart bed—and into the street, and even the open sewer ditch.

A half-dozen urchins were scooping up the tubers into their ragged shirts, then scuttling down the alley. Cerryl swallowed as he watched one scoop two potatoes out of the filth.

“Out ! Leave a poor farmer alone!” The carter lifted a staff, and the urchins suddenly vanished.