The Towers of the Sunset - L. E. Modesitt [182]
The clouds to the east have begun to part, revealing clean, blue-green sky, almost as crystal as that viewed from the Roof of the World. Creslin swallows and continues uphill.
The holding is empty. He supposes that Aldonya and Lynnya are buying yet more fish for dinner and that Megaera is at the glassworks.
Once in the study, Creslin opens one of the bottles and pours the contents into four tumblers. After studying the first tumbler, he concentrates. Half of the liquid vanishes, and there is a small puddle on the stone floor.
“Oh . . . clean that up later,” he mumbles. He sniffs the remainder of the liquid in the tumbler. “Not that much different.” With even the smallest of sips, his eyes water at the sour bite of the distilled green-juice wine. “Whuuu . . .”
He tries again, with the second tumbler, and with the third and fourth. Then he walks out of the study and into the sunlight on the terrace. Some of the stones are still damp from the night’s mists, but the heat of the early fall sun promises to dry them before long.
A raw alcoholic beverage he does have, but not one that most would drink, let alone pay for. Where does he go now? Aging is almost a function of chaos, not of order.
Below the terrace, the waves sweep across the beach at the base of the cliff, polishing the sands with their ceaseless ebb and flow.
Polishing? Creslin walks swiftly back into the study, where he concentrates on both order-distilling and polishing.
He pours the liquid from the tumblers back into the bottle. Perhaps two thirds of the bottle is filled with a translucent green fluid.
He resaddles Vola, and the single bottle goes back into a saddlebag, to be taken to the keep. Along the way, he makes several quick stops, arranging for a meeting.
Later, in the early afternoon, Shierra, Lydya, Megaera, Klerris, and Hyel sit around the table in the keep.
“You wanted us here,” Megaera says. For what. . . best-beloved?
Creslin pours a small quantity from the bottle into several goblets and presses a goblet upon each. “Just taste this . . . carefully.”
Megaera raises an eyebrow at her husband. Hyel frowns. Shierra looks from Hyel to Megaera. Lydya keeps her mouth still, but her eyes twinkle, while Klerris lifts his goblet without comment.
“. . . strong.”
“Pretty good . . . tangy.”
“Smooth and bitter . . .”
“Decent brandy . . .”
“What is it?”
Creslin waits until the five have finished. “Polished green-juice brandy.”
“I suspected so.” Lydya nods.
“What have you got in mind?” Hyel asks.
“The other day there was something Gossel said,” Creslin muses. “He was explaining that smugglers trade only certain things, like weapons, jewels, and distilled spirits. Then he sort of half-muttered that the green juice ought to make a decent brandy. So I tried it.”
“Do you think we could make money on it?” Lydya asks.
“I don’t know. But there are a lot of berries on the western cliffs. They grow anywhere, and it wouldn’t take much effort to find out. The glassworks already makes some bottles. Would a colored one be much trouble?” He looks at Megaera.
“No. But would anyone buy it?”
Hyel laughs. “It’s better than most of the good stuff out there. But you’d have to make a lot.”
“Anyone mind if I try?”
“Hardly,” Megaera finally says. “It is order-based and constructive.”
Creslin swallows the implied reprimand.
“Is that all? asks Shierra.
“That’s all.”
Creslin watches for a moment as they look at each other, then turns and leaves, walking slowly down the stairs to the main floor, and out toward the stable.
Megaera catches up with him. “I’m sorry.”
“It was stupid. I just thought it was a good idea.”
“It is. It’s simply that . . . I mean, how can we produce enough?”
“I should have thought about that. Fine. Say I can come up with a hundred bottles before winter, and that’s a lot. Assume that they’re good enough to fetch a silver apiece-even a gold. That’s what? A hundred golds. What will the bottles cost? And everything else. A hundred golds would be nice, but they certainly won’t solve our problems.” Creslin eases the saddle