The White Order(40)

Cerryl’s eyes took in the chest, waist high, and finished with something that glistened like fresh oil but was just as clearly not.

“Have to be varnished for them. All they touch . . . they destroy in time. The varnish helps.” Fasse looked down the avenue to his right again.

“Thank you.” Cerryl nodded and shouldered his pack.

“High price for managing chaos . . .” murmured the crafter.

Cerryl concealed a frown as he stepped through the open door and onto the raised stone sidewalk, still marveling at the very idea. In Hrisbarg, sometimes the shopkeepers put down boards during the rains, but pedestrians and horses shared the streets, and Cerryl knew to watch where he put his feet.

He waited for a two-horse wagon piled with baskets of potatoes to pass, and crossed the western part of the avenue. The farmer on the seat had never even glanced in his direction.

The sun was barely above the roofs to the east of the square, and long shadows lay across the white stone avenue and the sidewalk stones and curbings, and darkened the emerald grass. The slight coolness of the evening before had vanished, and neither grass nor stone bore the slightest trace of dew. Although the air was already warm, the oval shape of what Rinfur and Fasse had called a square was empty. A handful of people walked the sidewalks, mostly from the gates toward the center of Fairhaven, and the creaking of wagons and the clop of hoofs on the stones were the loudest sounds.

Cerryl almost felt as though his breathing were too loud in the hushed city. He straightened his shoulders and followed the white stone walk across the center of the empty square to the far side. There was a single street there—without a name or symbol. Was it the way of the lesser artisans?

With the slightest of shrugs, he crossed the empty eastern half of the avenue and started up the unnamed street. Cerryl glanced into the first shop, peering between vivid blue shutters drawn back open against bright white-plastered outside walls. A potter sat cross-legged, throwing a pot on a wheel powered by a foot pedal. Behind him was a low wooden shelf displaying an array of pots and crockery. The gray-haired man did not look up as Cerryl studied him.

Cerryl walked slowly eastward, along the lesser artisans’ way that was but the eastern side street away from the square—exactly across the square opposite the side street that adjoined the alley leading to the rear courtyard of Fasse’s shop.

The next shop was that of a weaver. Two girls, each younger than Cerryl, one brown haired, one redheaded, sat on the floor working backstrap looms. Behind them a man flicked the shuttle on a floor loom that filled half the small room. Skeins of colored yam—all colors of yam, except black—hung from pegs set into the wall just below the roof beams. The round-faced brown-haired girl grinned shyly at Cerryl, even while her fingers slipped the yam wound on the hand shuttle through the spread woolen yam.

Cerryl offered a grin in return.

“Mind the loom, Pattera,” came the comment from the weaver.

“Yes, ser,” murmured the girl, dropping her eyes from Cerryl.

Cerryl nodded and continued along the street. Pattera had been pretty enough, yet nothing to compare to the golden-haired girl he had seen but once in his screeing glass. Would he ever meet her? Or was she the daughter of some white mage who would treat him like the other whites had dealt with his father—or the fugitive at Dylert’s mill? He repressed a shiver. “Careful . . . Cerryl,” he whispered to himself.

On the inside wall of the next shop were rows of small shelves filled with small wooden boxes and a large chest of many drawers, and a scent—many scents—that Cerryl didn’t recognize. Spices? Why so many? The heavy man who looked up from a wooden mortar and pestle on a polished table offered an enigmatic smile before looking back at the dried herbs before him.

So silent was the lesser artisans’ way that Cerryl could hear his own footsteps. Somehow, he had expected that Fairhaven would have been busier, even so early in the day.

The line of shops ended at another cross street, rather than at the alleyway he had expected. On the far corner was another shop, but this one sported a sign over the open door bearing an open book and a quill poised above it. Hoping that the sign referred to the scrivener’s, Cerryl crossed the street and eased into the shop, pausing just inside the open door to let his eyes adjust.

The front of the shop was a small area, less than four cubits square, with white-plastered walls and empty except for two stools and with a golden oak cabinet that was made up of a two-drawer chest with three attached bookshelves above the chest. The top shelf held a silver pitcher, and the second two were each largely filled with leather-bound volumes.