Starlight (part 10 of 14)

Writers: Yvonne
Date Posted: 17th September 2007

Characters: Larstad, Harrit
Description: Larstad follows Harrit out under the stars
Location: Amber Hills Hold
Date: month 5, day 26 of Turn 4

"I hope that I'm not interrupting your evening, Journeyman," the Steward said. He bobbed his head and wrung his hands nervously in Larstad's doorway. "If I am, I can be on my way. The last thing I want to do is interrupt our detective while he's thinking!"

Larstad managed a smile - something about the man's wheedling irritated him. Perhaps it was the fact that he wheedled at all; it was a tone of voice that was unbefitting a man in a position of power. Or perhaps it was the fact that the paunchy Steward probably had sweaty palms. The Smith detested people with moist palms. "No, sir. I was thinking of turning in early this evening. I didn't sleep overly well last night."

"Oh? May I enquire as to why? Perhaps I can fix it."

**Because someone nearly killed me and I spent the night passed out naked in an empty bathtub.** "Oh... you know. The first night in a new place is always unnerving. I slept like the dead but I don't feel as if I slept a wink."

The Steward looked relieved. "Oh.. well. I had thought you might have heard something in the night. Noises - it can be noisy in this part of the Hold. And we did get a new bed ticking - is it fine? I could have it switched--"

"No, it's fine." "Oh. Well, good good, then! Er..." Harrit peered around Larstad's shoulders at the empty room beyond. "I don't suppose... well, you were planning on turning in early, so I ought to just leave you be..."

The Smith suppressed a sigh. "Yes?"

"Well... you're a Smith, but I don't know what your specialty is...?"

"I'm a man of many interests, Steward. I prefer to know a little about many things, and know a few things fairly well, but I have no desire to narrow my focus enough to gain a Mastery anywhere."

"Ah. Do you know much about Starsmithing?"

An amateur astronomer, then. Larstad briefly thought of the telescope he'd built on a commission a few months before, and of the short conversation he'd had with Amber Hill's Steward who'd come across him testing it in the middle of the night. It was meant as a gift for a young girl; had she ever used it to look up at the moons? "A know a little," he admitted grudgingly.

"And telescopes?"

"I've built a few in my time, although I do not have the skill to grind the lenses myself."

Harrit beamed and revealed the existence of a second pudgy chin lurking beneath the first. "Oh, this is a most excellent revelation!
Perhaps I could recruit you this evening for a short while? I recently bought a telescope but I cannot focus it properly."

Larstad hesitated. Did he really want to wander out into the night with wobbly, whinging Harrit? "...I could do that."

"Excellent! Perhaps I could meet you outside the front gates in, oh, a quarter candlemark?"

"I will be there." Larstad inclined his head as the Steward bowed and then scurried off to fetch his telescope. It was a good opportunity to speak with the Steward without scaring the other man off, he told himself. He could ask him how he could afford a telescope when the Brandymaster and his apprentice couldn't afford new clothes. There was klah over the fire, and Larstad dawdled putting on his coat and finding his scuffed boots. He wished again for a clock instead of a candle to tell the time - the candle had gone out in a draft and he ended up being slightly late meeting Harrit. The Steward grinned broadly as Larstad pushed one half of the wide, brass-faced double doors open and stepped outside. "I'm so glad to see you, Larstad. I thought you'd forgotten! Oh- may I call you Larstad?"

"Only if I can call you Harrit." Larstad took a deep breath of the evening air. It filled his lungs sweetly and smelled faintly of tilled earth and hay. The sun had set and the land that the Holding overlooked was bathed in indigo shadows, but here and there the steady light of a glow through a cot window glimmered in the dark. If he walked to the edge, it would look as if he was suspended in the sky...

"Please do. Nothing would make me happier. Brrr!" Harrit drew his coat's collar a little tighter around his neck. It was made of a thick, fine wool, Larstad noticed, dyed black. "Winter's coming soon.
You can feel it in the air. Can't you?"

"I can, indeed. It's beautiful out." "I suppose. I prefer the warmth of a fire and a stone roof above my head - especially in the last few Turns! Follow me - if we go around the Hold a little we'll be away from the lights so that we can see better." Harrit picked up a thin chest with a handle and began walking. Their boots crunched on the gravel and sounded like dragons gnashing their teeth. "Did you journey a great deal?"

"I did. I enjoy being on the road, although, like you, I'm learning to like a warm bed and a fireplace. I'm not as young as I once was!"

"You must have had many adventures," Harrit said, the admiration palpable in his voice. "I cannot imagine traveling so much. I enjoy my creature comforts."

The Smith shrugged. "They are exactly that - comforts. You get used to going without them, and I know I appreciated the simplicity. It's somehow comforting to know that your life can be packed into two suitcases, and that you can survive easily without the fripperies that Holdlife inspires."

"Oh... I'm not sure I'd call a feather pillow and a good bottle of wine fripperies, my friend. I even bought a new coat - this coat, in fact-" Harrit held his arms out for Larstad to examine the wool - "to make sure that I won't feel the cold any more than I absolutely have to." The 'my friend' grated on Larstad's nerves, but he allowed Harrit to continue without correcting him. "Thorril is sending me off on a trade mission to Opal Cove in the next little while, and I'm quite nervous about leaving. I have four bags packed already for a three day trip! I've never left Amber Hills. Did you know that?"

"No, I didn't."

"I'm to travel a'dragonback. I've never flown on a dragon before."
Harrit shook his head, and the lights from the windows glinted off his bald pate. "I'm not sure that I'll like it. I don't have a head for heights... and the thought of /between/ is the worst of it!"

Larstad smiled in the dark. "Oh, it's not as bad as all that."

"Really? What's it like?"

The Smith thought for a moment. What _was_ /between/ like? "It's like... nothing," he said finally. "Like being swallowed whole by the dark in the middle of winter."

"Oh." Harrit said dejectedly. "I don't think I'll like it much. Oh...
well. Here we are!"

As they talked, Harrit had led Larstad around the side of the Hold and onto a small, rocky rise. Behind them lay the Hold; Larstad could almost feel a palpable thickening in the air at his back as it met the stone walls. Before them the ground sloped away until it tumbled at the cliff into farmland and vineyards. Harrit held out the telescope case. "You'd better set it up, and I'll watch. Maybe that's my problem."

"Fair enough." Larstad lay the case on the ground and flipped open the latch. The telescope was a simple affair of brass and wood, with a minimum number of lenses. A Junior Journeyman's work, and not all that far off from what he had built. Larstad admired telescopes for their workmanship but didn't have the passion for Starsmithing to build a truly great one. It took him moments to screw the body together and set up a tripod, which he aimed at Beilor. "Well? Is it a good telescope, or is it broken?" Harrit asked. He'd been standing by and the silence had obviously chafed at him. Even now he was wringing his hands anxiously. "It's new, you know. I'd really hate for it to have broken already."

"It's fine," Larstad said, putting his eye to the eyepiece. Beilor jumped out of the sky at him and showed its pockmarked face in excruciating detail. "The focus is slightly off, but your Smith can fix that for you. Where was it built?"

"The Smith Hall. I had it special ordered for my nephew's birthday. I gave him my old one."

**How charitable of you,** Larstad thought. "It may have gotten misaligned while it was being transported."

"Can you fix it, Larstad? Our Smith, he's an Ironsmith and has no interest in glass and telescopes. He laughed me right out of his Smithy when I asked him! The cheek." Harrit puffed out his cheeks in annoyance. "Not until you've caught our thief, mind you. Do you have any idea who did it yet?"

"Not at all." Harrit was the ingrating sort... "Help me out. If you were thinking of stealing the brandy, how would you do it?"

"Me?" Harrit looked surprised. "I'm sure I have no idea!"

"Just try."

The Steward sighed and stuck his hands into his pockets. "Oh my, oh my... well... I'm not sure. I guess I'd steal a key."

"From who?"

"Merton, I guess. He's old and less likely to notice someone stealing it. And then... I guess I'd move it to a nearby hidey-hole, and then come back for it the next night and move it a little further away, and do the same on consecutive nights until it was where I wanted it to be. Don't you think? I think that whomever this thief is- and I have my suspicions- did exactly that."

"Mmm." Larstad swung the telescope around to where the Red Star winked balefully near the horizon. "Who do you suspect?"

"I thought that you were the one who was supposed to be solving our mystery!" Harrit chuckled, then looked through the eyepiece as Larstad stepped away from the telescope. "Brrr. I hate that thing."

"I think we all do," Larstad said dryly.

"Well... it's a well known fact that Gavrin and Thorril don't see eye to eye," Harrit said slowly. He stole a glance out of the corner of his eye to see if Larstad was listening before he continued. "Gavrin doesn't think that Thorril does enough for the Hold, and he thinks that he's more important than he is. Did you know that he was caught stealing six turns ago?"

"No! Really?" "Really!" Harrit leaned in close. "He was just the cooper, then. It was right after Ravelon died and before Merton had chosen a new Apprentice, and Gavrin was skimming profits from his coopery. The cheek! Thorril fined him, naturally, and had him whipped, but once a thief, always a thief. I'll bet you a mark that he did it."

"Really." Larstad stared up at the sky, thinking hard. "He'd been skimming profits from Thorril for almost a turn before I caught him. And I wouldn't have, either, only we'd been having some difficulties with the books and I had to do some investigating. And there he was - as blatant as the nose on your face! He's still paying off those fines, you know. I think that was why Merton took him on as an Apprentice - the old man's a bleeding heart for a sob story."

"So it seems." No wonder Gavrin's clothing was so shabby - especially if he had a wife and small child to support as well. The Hold provided most things for those who lived there, but not much beyond the necessities for life. The Smith suddenly yawned. "It's been an enlightening evening, Harrit, but I wasn't kidding when I said that I needed an early night tonight. Please excuse me - I'm exhausted."

"Of course. How thoughtless of me to keep you up so late, and for such a trivial thing." Harrit inclined his head to the Smith. "I'll pack up my telescope and turn in shortly, myself. But... I hope that you found some worth in our chat tonight?"

"I most certainly did," Larstad said. He nodded to the Steward and then began feeling his way down the darkened path toward the front doors with only Beilor's light to guide his feet. **You've given me a lot to think about.**

Last updated on the September 17th 2007

Welcome to Triad Weyrs!

Starlight (part 10 of 14)