The White Order(50)

“If he did . . .” Beryal laughed and lowered her voice to almost a whisper, “no wonder that he cared little for the white mages.”

“Is it that bad?”

“It is nothing to talk about.” Beryal shook her head. “Especially not where others can hear. Or Tellis.”

“Tellis?”

“Aye, Tellis.” Beryal lowered her voice. “His father was a white mage, save he knows not whom.”

“What?” blurted Cerryl, wondering why Dylert had sent him to Tellis, repressing a shiver.

“The mages, they cannot love a mage woman.” Beryal shrugged. “She would not survive the birth. Most times, anyway, they say. The children of the mages, for they have women but not honest consorts, they are raised in the pink house off the wizards’ square. They call it a creche. Some become mages. Some do not. Those who have not the talent, they are apprenticed into the better trades. Tellis is a scrivener.”

Cerryl forced a nod. “That . . . I did not know.”

“I had thought not. Best you do, and say little.” Beryal seemed to walk a shade faster.

Cerryl stretched his own legs to keep up.

The artisans’ shops around the square gave way to a line of larger structures—an ostlery, then a long building without a sign of any sort, although two carriages waited by the mounting blocks outside the arched doorway.

Cerryl glanced across the avenue at the building, his view blocked for a moment by a wagon laden with long bundles wrapped in cloth that was headed in the same direction as he and Beryal. The rumble of the ironbound wheels on the whitened granite of the paving stones sounded almost like distant thunder.

“The grain factors’ exchange,” Beryal explained, lifting her voice above the sound of the wagons. A second wagon—its high sides painted bright blue and drawn by a single horse—followed the first.

What did grain factors do? Cerryl wondered. “How do they exchange grain there? There aren’t any wagons or silos.”

Beryal laughed. “They exchange pieces of parchment. Each piece of parchment has on it a statement of how much grain the factor will sell—something like that. Tellis explained it once.”

Cerryl nodded, understanding that such trading made more sense than carting grain from place to place. “Are there other exchanges? For other things?”

“I’m sure there are. Tellis has talked of them, but I’ve forgotten where most of them are. There’s an exchange for cattle somewhere on a square south of the wizards’ tower. I remember that because it’s near where they sell flowers from Hydlen.”

Beryal stepped off the stone sidewalk and into the avenue around a squat woman balancing a basket of folded laundry on her head. Cerryl followed, glancing down the avenue ahead. Another wagon was headed their way, but a good hundred paces away. He stepped back onto the sidewalk beside Beryal, still marveling at how many wagons rolled up and down the avenue.

Tellis, the son of a mage? He pushed the thought away.

The next block, past a cross street narrower than the way of the lesser artisans, held small stores—none seemingly more than ten cubits wide, and all with iron-banded doors left open. Cerryl peered around Beryal at one of the doors, getting a glimpse of a man working at a battered desk or table, and a sense of metals glittering.

“The jewelers’ row,” Beryal said. “Silversmiths, goldsmiths, those who cut and polish gems.”

A whole row of such? Cerryl shook his head.

“Nearly ten eight-days, and you’ve not been here?”

“I’ve been along the avenue, but always in the evening when the doors were bolted, and I wondered why.”

“Now you know. Even in Fairhaven, cold iron is the best protection for gold and silver and gems.” Beryal chuckled. “Though fewer try to break that iron here.”

“What happens to those they catch?”

“The road.” The woman shrugged. “It’s almost always the road, except for those that offend the mages. Most of them don’t get that far, they say. I wouldn’t know . . . don’t want to know.” A shiver followed the shrug.

Beryal didn’t say more, and Cerryl didn’t ask, but he understood the shiver, especially after what he’d already seen . . . and heard.

After the jewelry row came the houses behind low whitened granite walls, each with a gate for pedestrians and one for horses and carriages. All the horse gates were open.

The avenue widened, forming another circle around a bare, stone-paved expanse. Every peddler and merchant in the square hawked from a cart—red carts, green carts, blue carts, green-and-gold carts.

“No dawdling.” Beryal walked briskly past the pair of white-uniformed guards who surveyed the paved stone expanse and the circle of carts drawn up upon it. Cerryl forced himself not to look at the guards but to keep his eyes on the carts and the handfuls of people surrounding them.