5.Death of Chaos
XXXVIII
I WAS STRETCHED out in my own bed, with my back propped up with pillows against the headboard, reading and trying to recover from the carriage trip home the day before. Despite Justen's approval, it had hurt, and tired me. Even my eyes had gone back to hurting; so I'd slept most of the time since.
Then Tamra marched in. “So how's the cripple? Feeling sorry for yourself?” Tamra wore the blue scarf that matched her eyes. She plopped into the wooden armchair, her back to the window.
Outside, I could see the blue sky and the scattered trees waving in the wind. Even the clouds were moving fast. “No. Just sore all over.” I set down The Basis of Order and took a half-deep breath and closed my eyes for a second. That helped. My chest and ribs still ached with really deep breaths.
“You think you'll be up before long?”
“I don't know how long. Justen says the ribs are mostly healed, and the arm's coming along. It's the leg.” I wasn't about to mention the eyes or the sometimes fading hearing. I figured they'd get better with rest.
“Justen's your uncle. He's too nice to you.” Tamra smiled brightly and shifted her weight in the chair.
“He was nice to you when you needed it.”
“I think you'll look good in gray,” Tamra announced as if she were telling me about the weather. “If you'll ever get off your ass, anyway.”
“Gray? I've never worn gray, and I never will.” Even as I said the words, I wanted to take them back. “Never” is a dangerous word, especially for me. So I changed the subject. “Some wizard you are,” I snapped back. “You just criticize. What can you really do?”
Those blue eyes turned the color of slate, and the whole room darkened, and the shutters banged, and a cold winter wind whipped across me and ripped at the coverlet.
I swallowed. Tamra had definitely learned something from Justen. “All right. You can throw the winds around. What do you want?”
“First, I want some respect. You, and all men, seem to think that if I don't parade my power, I don't have it. Second, I want you to show some real strength. Are you going to throw away everything you've learned because you're stubborn? Are you going to lie in that bed until someone begs you to get out of it? Is the poor little order-master so beaten up...”
I sat up, despite the pain in my leg and arm, and swung my good leg around and sort of dragged the other. I had to hold on to the headboard for a moment.
“Not bad. Justen didn't think you had enough strength for that. But he's a softie.” Tamra grinned, and it reminded me of Gerlis.
“You really are the red bitch.” The words came out between waves of white pain.
“Now, if you do that more often, you'll be up and around a lot sooner.” She looked at me. “You really did get beaten up, didn't you?”
I had to lean back against the pillows before I fell over. “You really did get into trouble with Antonin, didn't you?”
“Good!” Tamra was all businesslike. “Kasee needs to throw more of a scare into Berfir's envoy. He'll be here in another eight-day, and you should be moving around by then. That type always needs reminding. That's why you're going to wear grays to the audience.”
“I don't wear gray. I wear brown.”
“You want to let Krystal down? Or all the troopers who died? You want this envoy to walk all over Kasee?”
“No one walks all over the autarch.”
“That's not what I meant. She doesn't have that much of an army, and any envoy who comes here will know it. What does she have? She's got me and you and Krystal and a good small bunch of mercenaries. So you have to be there and look impressive, and browns don't look impressive.”
“How am I even going to get them on?”
“Rissa says you'll have to put buttons in place of the seams on the left trouser leg, but that's no problem. You'll have to do that anyway.”
“Fine. I'll go to the meeting, the audience... whatever. I'll wear browns. And someone can wheel me in on a cart. I'll really look impressive.”
“I'll get another staff made. You'll hobble in before the envoy gets there, and you'll stand there with that staff and look most impressive in grays.”
“I'll wear grays the day Justen shows up for this meeting.”
“Good. He's coming. Three of us will have to be enough. I brought the gray leathers and some gray cloth. Rissa said she'd make the trousers and shirt, and you'll pay her.”
“I already pay her.”
“Pay her more. You got more golds from Kasee.”
“Ha! If I don't get back to work soon, we'll all be starving.” It wasn't true, not yet, but Tamra made me angry.
“Then you'd better work harder on healing yourself, hadn't you?” Tamra stood up. “I'll have Rissa start right away. She'll have to measure you, and don't throw some sort of fit.”
She gave me a last smile and was gone.
I glanced at The Basis of Order. Finally, I picked it up and started to read, not that the words made all that much sense.
“... the order of the earth is the order of order within and around chaos, and he who can order the earth can order the world, would he bear the weight of the sorrow he would cause...”
Sorrow? Every sort of order seemed to result in sorrow for someone? How come there wasn't a book for chaos-masters that warned them about sorrow? Was that because they didn't care? Did all order-masters really care?
Too many questions, and I finally put down the book and dozed.
It was late when Krystal came in, well past dark, but she walked into the bedroom with her jacket and blade still in place.
“How are you doing?”
I sat up, and again managed to turn and dangle my legs, good and bad, over the side of the bed, except the splinted left one really didn't dangle but sort of stuck out and hurt. “Getting better.”
“That's good.” She touched my cheek and gave me a quick kiss.
“How are you doing?”
“It could be worse. Yelena sent us some recruits from Ruzor. A couple actually look pretty decent. They're from Southwind. They still have most of the ancient military traditions-not so good as Westwind was, but close, and we can use that.”
“A couple? That's good?”
Krystal pulled the chair close to me and sat down with a deep breath, then answered. “We're getting interest, and that's good. I understand there's an entire squad coming from Spidlar. The traders are cutting back again.” She sighed again. “The idiots. Didn't they learn from the time of Dorrin? Of course not. It's just a matter of coins.”
“Tamra was here today.”
“She said she'd stopped to see you.”
“Did she tell you about her idea for impressing Berfir's envoy?”
“She's still rather abrupt, isn't she?” Krystal's laugh contained a rueful note.
“She always will be.”
“What do you think?” asked my consort.
“She's probably right.” I shrugged, if carefully. “Kasee doesn't have that big an army, and someone like Berfir is more impressed with a show of some kind of force.”
“I think so. Can you do it?”
“I'll have to, won't I?”
“You're getting better.”
“Long day?” I fought dizziness for a moment.
“Very.”
From the higher position on the bed, I could reach down. So I stroked her cheek and kneaded her too-tight shoulder muscles. After a little bit, I had to use just my left hand. The right arm hurt too much for me to keep it up.
Krystal just dropped her head forward and enjoyed the neck and shoulder massage, and so did I.