The White Order (The Saga of Recluce #8)(45)

Beryal stepped off the stone sidewalk and into the avenue around a squat woman balancing a basket of folded laundry on her head. Cerryl followed, glancing down the avenue ahead. Another wagon was headed their way, but a good hundred paces away. He stepped back onto the sidewalk beside Beryal, still marveling at how many wagons rolled up and down the avenue.

Tellis, the son of a mage? He pushed the thought away.

The next block, past a cross street narrower than the way of the lesser artisans, held small stores-none seemingly more than ten cubits wide, and all with iron-banded doors left open. Cerryl peered around Beryal at one of the doors, getting a glimpse of a man working at a battered desk or table, and a sense of metals glittering.

“The jewelers' row,” Beryal said. “Silversmiths, goldsmiths, those who cut and polish gems.”

A whole row of such? Cerryl shook his head.

“Nearly ten eight-days, and you've not been here?”

“I've been along the avenue, but always in the evening when the doors were bolted, and I wondered why.”

“Now you know. Even in Fairhaven, cold iron is the best protection for gold and silver and gems.” Beryal chuckled. “Though fewer try to break that iron here.”

“What happens to those they catch?”

“The road.” The woman shrugged. “It's almost always the road, except for those that offend the mages. Most of them don't get that far, they say. I wouldn't know ... don't want to know.” A shiver followed the shrug.

Beryal didn't say more, and Cerryl didn't ask, but he understood the shiver, especially after what he'd already seen ... and heard.

After the jewelry row came the houses behind low whitened granite walls, each with a gate for pedestrians and one for horses and carriages. All the horse gates were open.

The avenue widened, forming another circle around a bare, stone-paved expanse. Every peddler and merchant in the square hawked from a cart-red carts, green carts, blue carts, green-and-gold carts.

“No dawdling.” Beryal walked briskly past the pair of white-uniformed guards who surveyed the paved stone expanse and the circle of carts drawn up upon it. Cerryl forced himself not to look at the I guards but to keep his eyes on the carts and the handfuls of people surrounding them.

“Ser, would you have sea emeralds... or the flame rubies from Southwind?”

Cerryl shook his head, wrinkling his nose at the oppressive scent of the cloth thrust practically under his nose and stepping back, bumping ,into a square-faced woman, who glared at him.

“My pardon,” he said quickly and turning.

“Oil soaps, smooth as a bairn's cheek...”

“Elixirs! Get your elixirs here... the best in tinctures of the sea.. .”

The apprentice dodged two thin women who bustled toward Beryal and him as if to separate them, then eased closer to Beryal.

“Where ... ?” murmured Beryal to herself, rather than to Cerryl, as ' she strode past a blue-and-cream cart piled high with baskets and into a clearer space in the middle of the circular square.

Cerryl followed, glad to get an uncrowded breath.

A flash of golden-red hair by a green cart caught Cerryl's eye, and he forced himself to turn slowly, so slowly he felt as though he were barely moving. The golden-red hair belonged to an older woman-one a good decade older than the girl Cerryl had seen but once in the screeing glass and never dared to seek again. The reddish blonde-haired woman walked briskly away from a cart where roasted fowl turned on a spit, fowl placed there so recently that the skin was still dun and far from golden, and no savory odor filled the square.

Cerryl glanced sideways at Beryal, who seemed not to have noticed his momentary interest.

“There.” Beryal walked swiftly toward the red cart and a white-haired woman wrapped in a blue woolen shawl.

“Spices, the finest spices ... spices from Austra, fennelseed and seristar from far Hamor...” The seller stopped as Beryal stepped up to the cart. “Your pleasure, lady? Perhaps some seristar? Or sweetmint leaves?”

“I might be thinking of peppercorns,” began Beryal. “Were they not too dear.”

“The best in peppercorns are those from Sarronnyn, and you are most fortunate, for those I have.”

“I cannot taste the difference. Have you any from Hydlen?”

“They are poorer. See.” The white-haired woman fumbled with the Pouches on the cart shelf, then extended both hands. “The dark and round ones-those are from Sarronnyn. The wizened ones . .. from Hydlen.”

“Plump peppercorns oft be soft.”

“These are round and firm. See.” The seller placed one in Beryal's palm.

Cerryl eased away from the two and toward the gold-and-green cart adjoining the spice peddler's space. Several knives and daggers were laid out on a cheap cotton velvet cloth of green.

“Be wanting a short blade, young ser?” The man by the cart was built like a barrel and wore only a tunic in the chill sunlight. Blackened teeth marked his too-friendly smile.

Cerryl pretended to study the blades, then shook his head.

“Bronze blades, white-metal blades, iron blades, steel blades-whatever please you,” persisted the seller.

“They look good,” Cerryl said politely, “too good for a poor apprentice.”

“This one”-the big man pointed to a dark iron blade less than a span long-“good for eating, cutting in the shop, takes an edge with ease. Only a silver, just a silver.”