The Magic of Recluce - L. E. Modesitt [160]
He did, and I thought about the armed men. Clearly, Jirrle had known something about it, but whether he had just known or actually put them after me was another question. The fact that all their swords had felt the same told me that they were the prefect’s men.
I was running out of time, but so far, no one apparently wanted to move directly. That forebearance wouldn’t last, and I would still have to watch for the assassins.
LIV
I DID NOT sleep well that evening, even after setting and checking the wards. I tossed on the narrow pallet, sweating as I pondered what I knew. The “J” on the tax levy had to have been Jirrle. Jirrle was some sort of advisor to the prefect, and Jirrle did not particularly care for me.
Then, to make me even more uneasy, in the night skies, thunder raged. Not the thunder of honest clouds striving among themselves, nor the man-made thunder of gunpowder blasting. Not even the illusory thunder of the wind created by chaos-masters bent on enhancing the fears of an already too-ignorant population. Thunder such as this had I heard only once before, on the plains of Certis, when the ice storms and the blizzard had done their worst to destroy me.
So I tossed and sweated, and, on the other side of my curtain, Bostric snored—loudly, and without any sense of rhythm.
In the end, I did sleep, and without dreams that I remembered, which was probably for the best, since I woke with a start just before dawn. I was soaked in sweat, though the night had been cool for summer, even for a long summer that was drawing to a close.
After using the facilities off the alley, little more than an outhouse that drained into a covered sewer, and washing in cool water drawn from the covered tank in the back, I felt closer to human. Some fruit and a biscuit from the tray Deirdre brought down helped more.
We could have eaten upstairs, but in the mornings I never bothered, since I liked to get started early, especially in the warm weather.
“Why…oh, why am I apprenticed to a master who loves mornings…?” Bostric looked worse than I felt, but the words were merely a ritual he intoned every morning. He splashed his way through a sketchy wash, then wolfed down what I had left on the tray.
“They’re all talking about you…” he mumbled.
“Oh…?” I was checking the chest against the sketches and the plan book.
“Jirrle thinks you’re from Recluce…”
I swallowed a cold lump in my guts, saying nothing.
“…Deryl thinks you want Deirdre and the shop, and Grizzard doesn’t see anything remarkable in you and wonders why anyone is making such a fuss.”
Shrugging, I took a last sip of the redberry and set the mug aside.
“Jirrle also told Deryl that the chairs for the sub-prefect were going to cause trouble…but he wouldn’t say why.”
Trouble? Chairs causing trouble? Then I shivered, recalling the reaction of my own staff to chaos. Once again, in pushing too hard, I hadn’t thought through the consequences. And the chairs had been black oak.
“Are you all right?”
I shook my head. “I’m…fine. I just realized I had forgotten something.” Although I knew I needed to talk to Brettel and I had finished the dower chest for Dalta, I had held off on delivering it, perhaps because we had received so much from Brettel. I didn’t want to impose so soon again on the mill-master, whether he was Deirdre’s godfather or not. In addition, Bostric was not quite ready. But now I would have to watch every corner for the Duke’s assassins…
Despite what I had seen, except for Jirrle, nothing pointed toward me, yet I felt some greater force was rushing from beyond my perceptions straight for me. Or was I just imagining things, believing I could sense what I could not understand? The world of order and thoughts just made life more confusing, not less.
Already, summer was coming to a close. The grasses were browning, and the hand of the long hot summer pressed down upon Fenard like an open stove. With the heat, the varnishes gave off more fumes, even in the late mornings.
Although I tried to do the finish work while Destrin took the rests that grew fractionally longer