Magi'i of Cyador (5 page)

"Don't remind me."

"My sisters would like that kind of choice," Lorn says softly.

"Why would they need it? They're protected women."

Lorn smiles faintly, deciding against arguing. "If we take this Aljak's cotton... If we take it, did you arrange for a cart?"

"Sormet has the next warehouse... he'll let us use his hand cart and charge me a silver for storage until I can sell it, if it's less than a season." Ryalth grins. "The oils... he got a silver for an eightday. So he'll be happy."

"If the cotton's good."

"Some of it will be good," predicts Ryalth.

The two swing to the left and around a two-horse wagon that lumbers uphill. The wagon bed is covered, as required in Cyad, but the covering does not totally block the acrid odor of dyes carried in the small demicasks.

"Green dye," Lorn murmurs.

"You'd think you'd been born a merchanter, sometimes, and then... other times." Ryalth shakes her head.

"That's why we work together."

Ryalth laughs. "No... we work together because you want to sleep with me, and it's the only way you think I'll keep seeing you."

Lorn smiles, slightly more than faintly. "Well... you're still seeing me, and you have a lot more golds."

"Alyet says you'll leave me once you become a full Magus."

"More likely that you'll leave me," he counters, laughing again. "I'm too young for you. You've told me that more than once."

Ryalth turns again, this time along the Road of the Second Quay, which is the second street back from the stone piers where the trading vessels tie up.

Although the road is spotless, for it could not be otherwise in Cyad, an air of disuse permeates the road that appears narrower than it is, running as it does between the high and largely windowless warehouses of gray stone. The acrid scent of ancient, chaos-carved stone drifts up and around Lorn, a scent that he has discovered few others discern.

"His place is on the next corner, away from the harbor."

"Are any of these used any more?" Lorn gestures to the warehouse to his right.

"Most of them are empty. Aljak probably doesn't pay a gold an eight-day to rent the space. It belongs to the Jekseng clan, but they only have two ocean traders and a coaster left." She adds wryly, "I wish I had just two ocean traders and a coaster left."

"Is that it?" Lorn nods toward the half-opened timbered door framed by weathered granite that had faded into a whitened and dingy gray shade more attractive from the hillside above than from where he viewed it.

"Yes." Ryalth squares her shoulders, her hand brushing her belt wallet as she steps toward the open door.

Lorn follows Ryalth through the opening created by a heavy wooden sliding door being rolled back perhaps five cubits. He enters the warehouse a step behind her, his posture conveying that he is indeed her lackey-or hired enumerator. His chaos senses flick across the racked items, stopping for a moment on the barrels of seed oil stacked in a cube to the left of the doorway. He does not nod, but his eyes sparkle, as he takes in the other items-a pallet of dark timbers; five tall amphorae, one slightly cracked, with darkness seeping from the crack; a stack of what appear to be bales of wool; another set of nine curved canisters, half again as large as the amphorae....

"Ah... the lady merchanter from the House of the Lesser Traders." Aljak steps out of the gloom at the rear of the cavernous structure toward the comparatively small groupings of goods just beyond the open warehouse door.

Lorn focuses on the heavy-set but massively broad trader with the oiled curly black hair and the bush-like beard. Heavy bronze bands girdle overlarge wrists.

"Trader Aljak." Ryalth inclines her head. "Sormet said you might have some cotton... some good Hamorian cotton."

"That I do. That I do, lady merchanter. Aljak has what others lack." The big trader offers a rolling belly laugh that echoes falsely through the big warehouse, then turns and walks a good fifteen cubits before pointing at five bolts of off-white cloth, each hung on a rack above the stone floor of the warehouse. "Here ye be. Five full-length bolts of Hamorian first rate cotton, thread count guaranteed tighter than sixscore to the span, ready to bleach and dye. Twenty-five for the lot or seven and a half for each bolt, and I pick the bolts."

Ryalth nods, then moves forward.

Aljak steps back, his eyes flickering toward the darker section of the warehouse to the east.

Lorn sees the other two men, nearly as big as the trader, with blades, iron blades, in the scabbards at their belts. His eyes flick back to the barrels of seed oil, then to Ryalth. As Ryalth examines each bolt of cotton, Lorn studies each with his chaos senses.

After looking at the last bolt, Ryalth straightens and steps toward Lorn.

He steps forward and murmurs, "The first two, the ones closest to the door, are garment class cotton, close to it. The other three are leavings or burlap or something wrapped in the good cotton."

"He's asking five golds a bolt, if we take all of them."

"What's a bale of garment class run?"

"Bales are for raw cotton. Bolts are finished. I could sell it at ten a bolt to Guvell." She frowns. "Maybe fifteen if it's really good."

The two burly men, each topping Lorn by a head, appear just behind the trader.

"What say you, merchanter?"

"Offer him eight for the first two bolts," Lorn suggests, noting the short timber leaning against an empty rack. He does not let his eyes even register its presence as he bends toward Ryalth. "Tell him we'd love to buy his cotton, but that it's far more than we need."

"We'll take the first two bolts for eight golds total," Ryalth offers firmly.

"Eight golds for that which will bring twenty, or perchance thirty. Ah... my friends... Well... perhaps you don't wish to buy my cotton after all. Sooner or later, you will. You merchanters won't have the golds to keep buying shimmercloth from the Hamorians, not with the barbarians pushing at your borders." Aljak and the two guards ease forward. Each guard bears a heavy club, besides the blades in the scabbards. Aljak has a coil of velvet rope in his left hand, and the teeth that his smile reveals are crooked and yellow.

Lorn hides a frown, his attention on Ryalth-and the two thugs.

"And lady merchanter... perhaps you would like to spend some time with a real man, not a girlish enumerator." Aljak laughs harshly. "To seal a bargain, shall we say."

"When I tell you, dash toward the oil barrels... all right?" Lorn murmurs to Ryalth.

"You won't pay me twenty-five? How about twenty-five just to leave here?" Aljak laughs again, and the two guards step away from him, as if to flank Lorn and Ryalth.

"Now!" Lorn says.

As Ryalth bolts for the oil barrels, the student magus concentrates- hoping he can pull chaos from enough places-then flings the firebolt into Aljak.

Hsssttt!

"Aeeeeiiii Dung-devil..." Aljak's words are cut off.

The two guards freeze as they see the pillar of fire. Lorn uses the interval to cast two more firebolts. Hssst.' Hssst!

The other two figures writhe, screaming, momentarily, before they topple into charred heaps.

Lorn scans the rest of the warehouse, but the space is empty, as he expected. Aljak had not wanted witnesses. So far the student magus cannot sense the unseen presence of someone scanning the warehouse with a chaos glass. That is good, since he has used chaos in ways reserved but to upper-level mages. He wipes his damp forehead, ignoring the sudden headache. "Ryalth, I need some help."

Ryalth's eyes are wide as she steps away from the oil barrels. "What... what... did you do?"

"A small firelance, like the emperor's guards have," Lorn lies. "I'm not supposed to have one, and it would be best if you didn't mention it." He steps toward the small table behind the last stack of goods, nodding as he sees the small chest on the table. His fingers and his chaos senses deftly work a thin stick, and the lock clicks. He opens the chest and nods.

"Who... who would I tell?" asks Ryalth, looking over her shoulder toward the door as she hurries toward the young magus.

Lorn picks up a two-cubit length of greenish cloth from the samples on the table. Then, after pocketing perhaps fifty golds, he wraps the small strongbox in the cloth and hands it to Ryalth. "Here. It's yours."

"What?" Ryalth steps away, not taking the wrapped chest. "Aljak's family will be looking for anyone with more golds... they'll know it's stolen."

"Maybe not." He glances at the three charred figures. "Take it, please."

"What?" She reluctantly accepts the cloth-wrapped and heavy oblong.

"Come on." He tugs her toward the warehouse door, then gestures. "Stand right inside the door. Be ready to run. Tell me if anyone's watching."

Ryalth raises her fine reddish eyebrows.

"Please." Lorn follows her, but halts a dozen paces beyond the rack oil barrels, his eyes on the redhead in blue.

When she reaches the timbered door, she glances out, and then back at Lorn. "There's no one near. Some people at the cross-street up the way, though. They're coming this way."

"They're not near now?"

"No."

Backing toward the door where Ryalth waits, Lorn concentrates on summoning chaos right into the middle of one of the center barrels of oil, ignoring the headache that builds even more.

Whhhooossshhh! The wall of flame is so sudden and massive that he stumbles out the door, dragging Ryalth with him.

Turning toward the figures less than a hundred cubits north, who have already turned toward the warehouse, and gesturing toward the blaze, Lorn yells. "Fire! Fire in the warehouse!"

"Fire! Fire!" Ryalth's voice adds to the clamor.

The heads of three others at the corner turn.

From a narrow doorway across the road, a tall man runs toward them. "It's the clan warehouse! You! What caused it?"

"Oils, I think. We were talking about cotton, and all of a sudden there were flames everywhere." Lorn glances at Ryalth. "Excuse me, ser. I think she's a bit faint."

"Who are you?" demands the trader, studying the two young people in blue. "What clan?"

"I'm an enumerator." Another whoosh of flame flares from the warehouse, and the merchanter looks at the flames, then back at the two. Ryalth leans, almost dramatically, on Lorn's shoulder. The trader dashes past them toward the flaming section of the warehouse, gesturing toward the three men who have piled out the opposing warehouse as well. "We've got to get the water on the next building. Don't let another one go."

Lorn takes Ryalth's arm. "Let's get out of here. Don't drop that."

They hurry back along the road until they reach the Second Harbor Way and turn uphill.

Ryalth glances back toward the increasing pillar of smoke. "Did you have to do that? That could burn a whole block."

"It won't. The roof's slate, and there's nothing to burn but the oils. Maybe whatever was in the amphorae." Lorn pulls Ryalth to the side of the Way as a the fire brigade wagon careens past. "Aljak was ready to kill both of us. That's why no one else was there-except he would have spent longer with you." He offers a crooked smile as they walk swiftly uphill and then eastward along the Lower Hill Road away from the warehouses. "Not that I fault his taste."

"You're frightening sometimes, Lorn."

"Me? I'm just a student." He grins disarmingly.

"That's hard to believe at times." Without stopping, Ryalth looks down at the wrapped cloth. "This is heavy."

"You've got your five hundred golds, more or less."

"I can't take all that."

"You have to. I took what I dared. If I had more, my family would find out in days, if not sooner."

At the corner of the Second Harbor Way and the Road of Benevolent Commerce, the unofficial border to the merchanter quarter, they stop under a tall feathering conifer, shielded from above by the spreading dark green branches and by the afternoon mist. Lorn is breathing heavily, but the worst of his headache has faded. He stands there silently for a moment, thinking. Abruptly, he turns to Ryalth. "Do you have any scent? A vial of what you use?"

The redhead frowns. "Why?"

"Just dab some on me."

She fumbles in her belt wallet, her arm still around the cloth-covered strongbox. "You know that the City Watch wouldn't be pleased with this."

"They don't care about scent," Lorn jokes.

"They care about people setting fires," she whispers as she dabs some of the scent oil on his wrist.

"Better fires than outland traders assaulting Cyadoran merchanters," he counters, adding, "More of the scent."

"More? What's on you will cover any scent of smoke." Her eyebrows lift. "You want your family to know you've been with someone?"

"It's better than having them ask what I've really been doing," he points out. "Remember, when you live in a Magi'i family, questions are dangerous."

"People say that... is it true?"

"Only a handful of Magi'i can truthread, but the Lectors can, and my father is a Lector." Lorn gestures. "Dab more on my skin, my neck," he suggests, "as much as you can spare."

"You already reek." She wrinkles her nose.

"Fine. Then, they'll all be ready to condemn me."

"And me," Ryalth points out.

"They don't know you, and they'd have to know your name to ask a decent question."

She shakes her head, then glances along the road. "I think I'm glad I'm not from the Magi'i."

Lorn straightens the blue tunic. "You said I could always retreat to my mighty house."

"It sounds as bad as an inbred clan house."

"It's not that bad. My sisters are nice. So are my parents."

"I'm sure they are." Ryalth pauses, then adds, "I'll save your share of the coins."

He shakes his head. "They're yours. I took some, but you took most of the risks," he exaggerates.

She frowns, but says nothing.

"I'll need some favors before everything's done. Call the coins advance payment." He smiles broadly.

"I can't afford favors that expensive."

"I won't ask for anything that big." He leans forward and touches the line of her cheek. "Use them to get yourself free." Then he squeezes her hand and steps from under the conifer, hurrying uphill.