Cerryl sat on the edge of the porch, his boots on the top stone step, looking eastward, supposedly toward Lydiar. The more distant hills were fading into the early twilight.
“What do you do at the mill, Cerryl?” asked Erhana from the bench behind him.
“Whatever they need me to do. You saw me with the shovel and manure.” Cerryl’s hair was still damp, plastered against his skull, and his forearms itched, despite his washing in cold water before dinner. Without the nightly washing before dinner, he had discovered, his arms became covered with an ugly red rash, and after dealing with the stable, he’d definitely needed to wash up, almost all over.
“Da-Father-Siglinda says that I should say ‘Father.’ Father doesn’t let me in the mill. He let Brental in there when he was smaller than I am.”
“Brental will have to run the mill.”
“I wouldn’t want to.” Erhana lifted her head slightly-Cerryl could tell that without turning. “I’m going to have a wealthy consort and live in a fine house in Lydiar.” Her voice dropped slightly. “You didn’t say what you really do in the mill.”
“I sweep floors, stack the timbers, move things, clean the sawpit. Brental’s beginning to teach me about the oxen.” He paused, then asked, turning finally to look at the dark-haired girl, “What do you do with that lady in the parlor?”
“She be-she is not a lady. She’s Siglinda, and she gives me my lessons.” Erhana cocked her head and offered a superior smile. “I’m learning my letters.”
“Oh?”
“Letters are important for a lady.”
“I’d wager you don’t know them well enough to teach me.
“Why would you want to know letters? You’re always going to be working in the mill.”
“See?” Cerryl said with a grin. “You can’t do it.”
“I can, too.”
“You’ll have to prove it.” Cerryl looked disbelieving.
“I don’t have to prove anything to you.” Erhana sniffed.
“You don’t. That be right,” Cerryl said, grinning again.
“You couldn’t learn letters, anyway.”
“You don’t know that, not until you try and I can’t learn.” Cerryl smiled. “Of course, that might mean you couldn’t teach me, either. Your da, he says. .” Cerryl let the words trail off.
“He says what?” Erhana’s voice sharpened.
“Nothing. . nothing.”
“You’re. . nothing but a mill rat, Cerryl.”
Cerryl forced a shrug, intent on keeping any concern from his face. “If you really knew your letters, you could teach them to a mill rat. You’re just calling me names ’cause you can’t.”
“Cerryl. . you are. .” Erhana paused. “You are. .”
He stood. “If you’re that good, you can teach me letters. I be here every night after supper.”
“I don’t have to teach you anything.”
Cerryl forced a smile, then grinned before turning and walking down toward his cubby room.
“Cerryl. .”
He forced himself to keep walking.
XII
CERRYL RUBBED HIS forehead again, trying to massage away the dull ache from somewhere deep within his skull. The massage didn’t help, and he resumed restacking the flooring planks, ensuring that there were indeed ten in each pile, as Brental had instructed him-a dozen stacks of ten.
He paused, his eyes going to the half-open mill door and to the steady rain beyond, rain that had fallen from gray skies for the past two days. He looked back at the span-wide planks, his eyes watering. With a sigh, he counted the last stack again. Ten.
Why did the steady rain give him such a headache? Syodor had said it affected all the white mages. He could use his mirror fragments to pull up images-places like Fairhaven, the white city, and even the cows in the lower pasture. Did those things mean he was a mage-or could be? Or that the mages would kill him, as they had his father, if they discovered him?
He’d only been able to have a few sessions with Erhana and her copybooks, but already he could pick out some of the letters in his books, although the script was curved and more elaborate than that in hers. He could make out a handful of words, not enough to read anything. . not yet.
His fingers went to his belt pouch and tightened around the talisman-was that what it was? — that Syodor had given him. Had it been his father’s? Or had his father picked it up somewhere?
“. . afore midsummer, Dorban will be here for the seasoned oak-the big timbers for the shipyard. .” A good thirty cubits away, Dylert’s voice trailed off.
“He always complains,” said Brental, “but he comes back.”
Cerryl did not turn his head. He’d learned years earlier that his hearing was sharper than that of most folks. He’d also learned that he gained more information by not letting on.
“He hopes that we’ll lower the price if he complains enough. .”
Cerryl kept listening as he started in on the third pile.
“Oooo.” He stopped and carefully eased out the splinter. Although he tried to be careful, wood had splinters, some of them sharp enough to cut deeply if he was careless or if his mind wandered-as it just had.
Cerryl shook his head. Was Erhana right? That he’d spend the rest of his life in the mill, the way Rinfur was?
His lips tightened, but his eyes and attention went back to the hardwood planks.
Standing closer to the big blade of the saw itself, Dylert and Brental continued talking, but Cerryl shut out their words.
Outside the mill, the rain continued to fall, beating on the roof, on the stones, and inside Cerryl’s skull.
XIII
CERRYL HURRIED OUT of the mill and along the causeway, noting the bean plants in the garden on the hill, already calf-high in the midmorning light. He found it hard to believe that summer had slipped into Hrisbarg, almost without his knowledge.
The gray-haired Siglinda’s voice drifted down from the house porch toward the mill, clearly audible with the wheel and the saw silent. “No! He is going to the market. Read what is on the page. In any case, ‘be’ is not a verb cultured people use, except with the subjunctive.”
Cerryl half wondered what she meant, what the subjunctive was. He tried to hold on to the idea that he should use “is” instead of “be.” Still, he needed to find Dylert.
He slipped into the first lumber barn, then froze as he saw the two figures by the racks. He waited, listening, so still that he could feel himself blend into the white oak stacked on his left. In the racks across the narrow side aisle of the second lumber barn were the various-sized planks and timbers of first-quality black oak.
“I am most certain that the duke would confer his best wishes upon you for providing what I need at a most reasonable price,” said the small stocky man in the gray tunic. “His best wishes. .”
Dylert stood at the edge of the center aisle, gesturing toward the racked black oak cuts. “Fine talk, master cabinet maker,” said the millmaster with a gentle laugh, “but cutting lorken or black oak means sharpening the blade for darkness-near every log. Best wishes don’t pay for the work or the time. Nor the wear on the blade.”
“I’m not asking you to deliver, Dylert. I’m the one paying a wagon to carry it all back to Lydiar.”
“You haven’t much choice, Erastus. There’s no one in eastern Lydiar who’s taken care to preserve black oak and lorken. You want good lorken, you’ll come to me, or go a fair piece west of here.”
Erastus offered a shrug. “The duke has insisted on a black-oak-and-lorken chest. I had thought you might understand.”
“Let the duke pay for it, then,” answered Dylert.
“I’m already paying for the wagon. Three golds for the wood,” suggested the crafter.
In the shadows of the wood racks, Cerryl frowned. Erastus’s words felt wrong. Was that because he bargained?