The White Order (The Saga of Recluce #8)(51)
Across the market square, Fasse's door was ajar, and a wagon stood at the curb of the avenue, with a driver beside it. Some cabinet being picked up by whoever had commissioned it? Who had the coins for such-besides people like dukes and viscounts?
Cerryl turned down the avenue, past the inn, and the smell of fresh-baked bread, and past the ostlery beside it, and the faint scent of hay brought in from somewhere and stacked in bales beside the stable door. Hay? In very early spring? Or had it been stored somewhere all winter?
Three carriages were lined up by the grain exchange, with the drivers standing by the middle carriage.
“Morning, boy!” called the older driver at one side.
“Good morning, ser.” The sun felt good on Cerryl's face, and he smiled as he hurried down the walk past the jewelers' row-the iron-bound doors yet closed. He did catch the odor of hot metal from the last shop before the market square. In the square itself, the many-colored carts filled the pavement, but only a handful of those interested in their wares had appeared.
Cerryl's steps slowed as he passed the square. The first dwelling on the far side ... He paused at the open wrought-iron gate, looking into the open expanse of dark green grass, bordered by bushes that lined the inside of the wall, and split by the polished granite walk that led straight to a fountain-a fountain with a bird on each side of the jet of water that splashed into the basin. Two birds, Tellis had said.
Cerryl just looked at the front of the dwelling for a moment longer. The walk circled the fountain and led to a stone-columned and roofed portico that sheltered a huge polished red oak door-bound in iron. He'd thought that the houses along the avenue had been little more than one level. He'd been wrong, but that had been because they were larger, far larger in breadth, than he had thought. While the dwelling before him appeared to be but one level, that one level was twice the height of most of the shops along the way of the lesser artisans.
The shutters were open to reveal real glass windows-at least a half score on each side of the entry portico, each window composed of dozens of diamond-shaped glass panes that glittered in the morning sun, casting a silvered reflection across the deep green grass that filled the space before the house-or small palace.
Beside the smooth stones of the granite walk were rectangular and raised flower beds, filled with dark green plants bearing delicate white flowers. The scents of flowers-different kinds, scents he'd never smelled-drifted around him in the still air of morning, yet he could see no flowers.
Finally, he squared his shoulders and stepped through the gate, walking slowly but firmly up the walk. Tellis had told him the front door, and that was where he was headed.
Several drops of water flecked his face as he passed the fountain, and he shifted the book to his left hand, away from the fountain.
Standing in the shadows of the portico, a tall space that made him feel very small, he lifted the heavy and brightly polished brass knocker, then let it drop.
Thrap! The hard impact on the knocker plate seemed to echo through the stillness. Cerryl waited.
A gray-haired man in a blue tunic and trousers opened the door. “Trade is at the side door.”
“Master Tellis told me to deliver this to master Muneat, to his own hand.”
“'Til take it for him, boy.” The servitor smiled pleasantly. “No, ser. Only to his hand. I can wait, if he would like. Or I can come back again.”
The man in green frowned. “Wait.” The door closed.
Cerryl shifted his weight from one foot to the other. The sun seemed to beat on his back, even the back of his legs.
Finally, the door reopened, and the green-clad servitor looked at Cerryl. “Master Tellis, you said?”
“Yes, ser. The scrivener.”
A faint smile cracked the thin lips. “I'm Shallis, and I'm not a ser I'm the house seneschal.” He opened the door and stepped back. “You are to come in and wait here in the foyer.”
Cerryl eased inside. The foyer ceiling was high, twice as high as the showroom's in Tellis's shop, and polished dark wood planks stretched between the arching granite supports. The base of each pillar was a polished rose-tinged stone, so smooth that it shimmered in the light from the open door.
“You may sit on the bench there.” Shallis closed the door and pointed to a white oak bench with a low back, set slightly away from the waist-high polished rose marble wainscotting. His eyes went to Cerryl's boots. Then he nodded. “Master Muneat will be here when it suits him.”
“Thank you.” Cerryl didn't know what else to say. He sat on the front edge of the bench as Shallis stepped through the archway into the house proper.
Cerryl's eyes followed the seneschal, taking in what he could see of the hallway beyond the foyer, a hallway that was larger than the large common room in Tellis's house, even larger than the kitchen and eating area in Dylert's house.
The sole archway he could see from the bench was draped in blue, a fabric that dropped in fine folds that shimmered in the indirect light from the windows Cerryl could not see. The hallway floor beyond the foyer arch was polished marble, set in interlocking squares, so smooth and so clean that Cerryl would have feared to walk on it.
A gilt-framed portrait hung on the wall, but Cerryl could not see much except that the figure was a white-haired man in a white shirt, and with a blue short jacket of some sort and dark trousers. The portrait was flanked by two lamps set in bronze wall sconces, polished to a fine sheen. Even the lamp mantels glistened.