After dinner, Tellis and Benthann vanished into their room, and after he helped Beryal—silently, his thoughts still on the girl in green and the power she had almost thrown through the glass at him—Cerryl crossed the courtyard to the rear gate, then walked toward the street. The girl—except she was a woman now—or her family had coins, but not so many, he suspected, as Muneat. Did anyone really need all those coins, all those silks?
Does anyone really need to master chaos? He laughed at his own question, softly, as he turned the corner onto the way of the lesser artisans.
In the twilight, he continued slowly down the way toward the square, feeling that another pair of eyes followed him. He did not look back, knowing that he would see no one, trying to ignore the prickling on the back of his neck and the continuing throbbing in his skull.
“Cerryl!” Pattera bounded out of the weaver’s door. “Where have you been these last eight-days?”
“Master Tellis has had a large commission from . . . a large commission, and I’ve had to do much of the regular copying as well as the chores.” Cerryl shrugged. “And he wants me to read the histories as well.” The apprentice didn’t have to counterfeit the yawn.
“You have dark pouches under your eyes. Oh, Cerryl . . .” Pattera glanced back at the light from the doorway. “I can walk down to the square with you. Where are you going?”
“I was just walking,” he admitted. “I have a headache.” Cerryl took a step toward the square.
“Your master makes you squint over those books too much.” Pattera began to match his steps.
“You have to study books if you want to be a scrivener.”
“Not all the time.”
“Most of the time.” He paused at the avenue while a small donkey cart plodded past. The woman on the seat, reeking of roast fowl, did not turn her head.
As he crossed the white pavement, Cerryl massaged his temples with his left hand, trying to loosen the tightness he felt.
“Not that way,” said Pattera. “Just stop. Sit on the bench there.”
He sat on the second stone bench in the square, the empty one, and let her strong fingers work through his shoulder blades and up into his neck, letting her loosen the tension there. The faint odor of damp wool clung to her arms, and he wondered if the acridness of iron-gall ink clung to him.
How could someone who smelled of ink even think about a woman with silk hangings and dresses?
Yet he did, and he knew he would, even as he felt guilty accepting Pattera’s ministrations while thinking of the blond in green.
XL
NOW . . . KEEP YOUR mind on the copying at hand,” said Tellis from the doorway. “No thoughts about your young friend the weaver. Not while you have a quill in your hand.” The master scrivener grinned.
Cerryl flushed. “Yes, ser.”
“When you become a true journeyman . . .” Tellis paused. “By then, you won’t listen. I didn’t, either, but I was lucky, and then unlucky. Elynnya was special.” He shook his head. “Just appreciate what you have while you have it, and don’t ask too many questions.” His voice turned more cheerful. “After I beat some sense into Arkos, I’ll do the same to Nivor, and then I’ll be at the tower for most of the rest of the day. The honored Sterol wants something copied that cannot leave there.” The scrivener lifted his hand and pointed at his apprentice. “I expect continued good progress on the copying—and keep the letter width the same.”
“Yes, ser.”
Tellis nodded and turned away.
His young friend the weaver? Pattera was nice enough, and attractive in a dusky fashion, and certainly enamored of Cerryl. That wasn’t enough. But what was? A girl with redblond hair whose father would scorn a mere scrivener’s apprentice? And there was the redhead who kept turning up in his dreams—unwanted. She was certainly some type of mage; attractive as she was physically, she made his skin creep. He hadn’t ever thought of a woman that way before.
A moment later, Cerryl heard the front door open, and the off-key bells of the refuse wagon, before Tellis closed the door behind him.
Cerryl scurried to the waste bin by the worktable. He lifted the heavy wooden container and lugged it outside, following Beryal, who had the kitchen bin in her arms.
They stood as the square-sided wagon rumbled along the way, at a pace not much faster than a walk. Two young guards in white uniforms flanked the hauler, their bored eyes flicking from the wagon bed to Beryal and then to Cerryl, dismissing each in turn.
Cerryl lifted the bin and dumped the contents—leather trimmings too small for anything, palimpsest scrapings, squeezed oak galls—over the side of the wagon, then stepped back.