The Magic of Recluce - L. E. Modesitt [187]
The dark-haired lady opened it herself, and her eyes did not even flicker as she silently stepped back and let us enter. Krystal’s quarters were almost lavish for a professional soldier’s base, with two large rooms, a conference room with a large rectangular table and heavy wooden armchairs which opened into a covered and railed third floor balcony, and a bedroom/study, although I only glimpsed her more personal quarters as I stood in the conference room.
A large and sturdy oak beam stood behind the door from the main hallway to her quarters.
“The order-master, commander.”
“Thank you, Statcha. You may leave us.” Krystal wore green leather trousers, tighter than in Recluce, with a short jacket over a green leather tunic. The jacket was ornamental, not designed for battle, and bore gold braid across the left shoulder and matching four-pointed silver stars on the narrow lapels.
I could feel Statcha’s eyebrows rising.
Krystal laughed, although she had not yet even turned her eyes to me, and her laugh was more musical and more relaxed than I had heard it. “You know I have nothing physical to fear from one man. And an army could not save me from a chaos-master or an order-master put against me.”
All three men backed away, as if they had been lashed, yet her words had been gentle. As she talked, I let my feelings reach out to her blade—surprisingly, that same blade I had bought for her on a day that seemed almost part of another life—and found…that the unordered steel had assumed a rough order. As had Krystal. I shied away from reading her feelings, knowing I was afraid to find out how she felt.
Clunk.
“Lerris.” Those black eyes turned on me, damping the fire of instinctive command that I had suspected, but never seen. “You look older, wiser.”
“I doubt that I’m much of either.”
She smiled. “That alone says you’re both. It’s good to see you, although I didn’t doubt I would sometime.”
I raised my eyebrows.
“You don’t belong in Recluce, and sooner or later…” She shrugged, then looked squarely at me. “Why did you come?”
“I needed to find out about the autarch.”
“Then why did you ask for me?”
I admired the directness. She was still gentle, but the gentleness had been reinforced with steel.
“Because…” I took a deep breath, then shook my head. “I don’t know. It seemed the right thing to do, and I’m glad I did it. But I can’t tell you why.” My pulse seemed to race, as though I were somehow lying to myself, and that bothered me.
“You don’t like not being able to answer my question.”
I grinned, sort of. “You’re right. I don’t.”
Her eyes brushed past me, then centered back on my face. “Stories about you are circulating all across Candar—except no one knows who you are. When I heard about the blackstaffer who dared the deadlands, it had to be you. When I heard about the gray wizard’s apprentice who healed a slut in Jellico and disappeared in plain view…”
My stomach twisted a little. If Krystal knew…
“Were you the one who destroyed the white wizard near the Vale of Krecia?”
“That was an accident,” I admitted.
The sub-commander shook her head. “Still the same combination of confidence and modesty.”
“Modest?”
She ignored my protest, looking at the doorway, then back at the desk in the bedroom/study. “Will you stay?”
“No. Not for long, not if I’m to help you before it’s too late. To undo what I may have done.” At that moment, I wanted to stay, to watch her smile and hear the musical tone of her voice, but the order within me refused to lie to her or to me. “I’m not yet the order-master you called me, and I may never be. I haven’t finished what I must.”
She shook her head, and I realized that the long black hair was gone, that her hair, rather than being bound up with silver or gold cords, was scarcely longer than mine. “I would like you to stay for dinner.”
The words were not a request, simply a direct preference, but Krystal no longer had to ask for anything.
I thought. Leaving tonight