The White Order (The Saga of Recluce #8)(4)

“Poor enough to take the brewer's youngest daughter's charity, are we?”

“Should I have let her pour it out?”

“No. Waste be worse than charity.” Syodor laughed, not quite harshly.

“Don't be so hard on yourself,” Nail said softly, slipping a pair of biscuits from the tin onto the chipped earthenware. “All know you work hard.”

“Much good it did me when they closed the mines.”

“It did you good. Who else has a patent to grub the tailings?” Syodor shrugged, then grinned. “No man has a better consort. No man.”

“You'll not be turning my head, either.” Nail set the large tin bowl filled with steaming root stew before Syodor, then turned back to the cookpot and filled a smaller bowl with the wooden ladle. “Cerryl, here you go. You want more, let me know.”

“Thank you, Aunt Nail.” Cerryl offered a smile. “No brew for you, thanks or no,” Nail replied with her own knowing smile. She took the smallest of the tin bowls and filled it, setting it on the table. Then she slipped onto the bench beside Cerryl.

Cerryl took the biscuit and nibbled one corner, then took a mouthful of stew with the wooden spoon he'd carved himself. Another corner of biscuit followed the stew.

“Hot... and filling. Brew's not too bitter, either.” Syodor smiled at Nail.

“Been a long day for you. Some brew might set well.” Nail smiled. “There's enough for a night or two more.”

“You be not having any, I'd wager.”

“Not to my taste.”

Though Nail smiled, Cerryl could sense the lie, the same kind of lie Nail always told when she gave something special to him or to Syodor and took none herself.

“Dylert, he said he needs a boy at the mill,” Syodor said slowly to Nail, but his eyes crossed the table to where Cerryl sat on the bench beside her. “Wants a serious boy. Cerryl's serious enough. That be certain, I told him.”

“Sawmill be a dangerous place for a boy,” answered Nail.

“Mines were a dangerous place for a boy,” Syodor said. “I was younger than Cerryl is, back then.”

“You were stronger,” Nail pointed out.

“I'm stronger than I look,” Cerryl said quietly. His gray eyes flashed, almost like a jungle cat's, with a light of their own.

“Be no doubt of that, lad. You look like a strong wind would carry you all the way to Lydiar.”

“He's not even half-grown,” protested Nail.

“Got to grow up sometime. We'll not be here till the death of chaos.” The former miner looked intently at his consort.

“Syodor! No talk like such around the boy.” Nail made the sign of looped order.

“Chaos is, Nail.” Syodor took a deep breath. “I see it all the time. Watch the tunnels crumble. Watch the folks sneak around mumbling about who courts darkness. Or who knows which white mage.”

Cerryl's eyes slipped toward his pallet and the hidden book he could not read.

“You know, Cerryl, the mines here, they're older than places like Fairhaven...”

Nail's mouth tightened, but she only cleared her throat, if loudly.

“Older than the trees on the hills,” Syodor added quickly. “When my grandda was a boy, the duke sent folk here, and they mined the old tailings piles, and then they dumped all the leftovers and the slag from their furnaces into the piles we got now.”

“Furnaces?” asked Cerryl, mumbling through the last of his second biscuit. “What happened to them?”

“The duke took the iron fixings back, and the bricks, well...” The gnarled man laughed. “See the hearth-that's got some of the bricks. So's the west wall. Good bricks they were, 'cept some broke easy 'cause they got too hot in the furnaces.”

“Bricks, they got too hot?” asked the youth.

“Anything can get too hot, if there's enough fire or chaos put to it. Too much chaos can break anything.”

“Anyone, too,” added Nail quietly.

“That, too.” Syodor sipped the last of the brew from his mug. “Ah ... miss this the most from the days when I had two coppers a day from the mines. Now what have I... a patent to grub that any new duke can say be worthless.”

Nail nodded in the dimness of harvest twilight.

“Shandreth, I saw him this morning,” Syodor said after a time. “Said he'd be needing hands for the vines in an eight-day. Said you were one of the best, Nail.”

“Two coppers for all that work?” she asked.

“Three, he said.” Syodor laughed. “I told him four, and he said you were worth four, but not a copper more, or he'd be coinless 'fore the grapes were pressed.”

“Four ... that be a help, and I could put it away for the cold times.”

“Aye ... the cold times always come.” Syodor glanced at Cerryl, his jaw set and his face bleak. “Remember that, lad. There always be the cold times.”

For some reason, Cerryl shivered at the words.

“These be not the cold times, lad.” Syodor forced a smile. “Warm it is here, and with a good meal in our bellies.”

Cerryl offered his own forced smile.





White Order