5.Death of Chaos
CXXIII
KRYSTAL AND I left the guest quarters while the others were still washing up that morning. The Council guest quarters-two stories with paneled rooms, and most amenities-were on the grounds of the Brotherhood's establishment. When I had first come to Nylan to prepare for my dangergeld, I'd never really questioned who and what belonged to whom. It had seemed rather useless since I was leaving Recluce.
While Krystal stopped to adjust her scabbard, I spent a moment letting my senses drop into the rocks beneath and to the north of the port, trying to locate the iron that supposedly lay beneath Recluce.
It wasn't hard, and the jolt ran through me like cold water.
Grrrrrrr!
“Oh... I felt that.”
“Sorry. I was trying to seek out order sources.”
“That was obvious,” she said.
“I said I was sorry,” I snapped back.
“I think you need to eat,” suggested my consort, and she was right, even if she needed nourishment as much as I did.
Early as it was, dock workers and sailors were on the streets of the lower harbor. A horse-drawn wagon creaked down the center of the street toward the public pier where a single Sarronnese trader lay tied up.
“I am hungry,” I confessed. “Something must be open early.”
“I hope so.” Krystal's stomach growled, almost as mine did. “Why did you want to leave so early?”
I shrugged. “My father said we had to meet the Council at noon, and after that... I just don't know. I wanted to spend some time here with you.”
A porter with a hand truck jumped off the wagon that had stopped in front of the dry-goods store, and we slowed for a moment, then dodged around him. A shadow fell across the street, then passed, cast by a small and fast-moving cloud. Out in the harbor small whitecaps tipped the short, choppy waves.
The strangest feeling swept over me. All the buildings, solid black stone and all, somehow seemed lopsided, as if they were tilting toward me and about to fall. I blinked several times, trying to rein in the sense of order-chaos imbalance. Krystal gripped my hand, and we looked at each other.
“Do you feel that?” I asked.
“Like everything is off balance?”
I nodded.
“Maybe we can eat there-and sit down.” Krystal pointed to the sign with a black waterspout.
The public room was empty, but a single serving girl smiled and pointed to a corner table. As I walked past the first tables, I saw an antique Capture board lying on the empty corner table. There were boards as old in the chest at my parents', but, outside of a few games with Aunt Elisabet as a child, I'd never played.
I waved to the serving girl in a red cap, and she scurried over.
“Do you have any fresh bread and heavy conserves?” asked Krystal. “And some hot cider?”
“Might as we could manage that. And you?” the server asked me.
“I'd like the same, but with sausage.”
“That'll be five, ser.”
The serving woman returned with two steaming mugs, setting them down in turn with muted thumps on the dark wood table. Krystal took the mug, sniffing it and letting the steam surround her face before taking a sip.
A steaming loaf of orangish bread and a cherry conserve arrived before either of us had taken more than a sip of the cider.
“Be a moment more for the sausage, ser.”
“Fine.” I turned to Krystal. “Go ahead. The bread's warm.”
“You can have some of that, too,” she pointed out.
So she did, and I did, and the sausage and another loaf of the orange bread arrived as we were finishing her loaf.
Then I dug into the sausage, a huge, dark, and spicy cylinder. “Are you sure you wouldn't like a bite?” I mumbled.
Krystal finished a mouthful of bread and conserve. “A bite. Just a bite.”
When we looked up at each other from the empty plates, I grinned at Krystal. “You weren't that hungry?”
She laughed.
I left six coppers on the table, and we walked out into the sunlight.
“Where are we going?”
“Where we've been before.” I tugged her hand, and she followed me until we came to the harbor. I looked up and down until I saw the supply store, the one with its name in three scripts-Temple, Nordlan, and Hamorian. Then I started walking.
I could sense Krystal's amusement by the time we sat on the harbor wall by the fourth pier and opposite the store. The pier was empty, but the last time we had been seated there, I recalled, there had been a single small sloop tied up. Krystal's hair had been long and tied up with silver cords, and I had just bought her the blade she still wore.
“We were sitting here, and I asked, 'What will you do?' And you didn't answer me. Then, right over there a boy and a girl ran, and she was carrying some model of his, but she gave it back.”
Krystal smiled. “You said that they were like us, but you didn't know why.”
“And you didn't agree.”
“I didn't say that,” she said. “I didn't say anything. I was afraid to agree or disagree.”
“Now?” I asked.
“I think you were right. We're still here, and we still don't know what will happen.”
“Except that we're going to meet with the Council.”
“Are you worried? You don't feel that way,” she mused.
“Not about the Council. If they had to request that we return, that's really an admission that we don't have anything to fear from them. Hamor, now that's another story.” I felt a chill, and shivered, not sure whether it was my chill or Krystal's. I looked into her black eyes.
“Mine,” she admitted, taking my hand again. “I still worry about the Council. I don't think they're honest, at least not with themselves.”
I just waited.
“They sent out Isolde. You remember her?”
I remembered Isolde, and her blade, and the way in which she had dismembered Duke Halloric's champion-and the fact that the Duke had been assassinated shortly thereafter.
“Then they killed the Hamorian regents, and destroyed some ships with the invisible black ships. And they didn't want us on those ships, even if it meant the difference in whether we could help. How long have they been playing this hidden game?” The fingers of Krystal's right hand tightened around the corner of the wall where we sat.
“Ever since Justen destroyed Frven, I think. Before that, Recluce paraded its power.”
“I don't like sneaks.”
There was that. Somehow the straightforward honesty of people like Creslin and Dorrin and Justen had been lost. Or maybe it had always been that way, and the straightforward people had always been few. Was that why my father had founded the Institute?
I frowned. Had dealing with power made me more cautious? Was that the inevitable road to corruption? Was I losing my own directness?
“Don't. Please don't.” Krystal squeezed my hand.
For a while, we sat on the wall and watched the people come and go, but no young dangergelders walked our way, and no children with model boats, and the light wind brought only the smells of the shops and the harbor, not of the past.
And beneath even Recluce, I could sense the unrest, the growling growth of the chaos I knew I must harness before long.
Krystal tightened her lips, and squeezed my hand.
When we finally walked back uphill away from the harbor, it almost seemed as if we had left another part of our younger selves behind.