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Through the first part of the meal, he kept thinking about vinegar and
pickles, and finally decided to ask what had been fretting at him.
 Caersyn, Rahl began,  if we see something or remember it, or want to
cross-check, is there any way to look at the manifests that are given to the
tariff enumerators?
For a moment, Caersyn s face had no expression.  What do you mean?
 Well& the enumerators don t inspect every bale and barrel. What  if we
discover that a ship has been declaring, say, raw wool, but it s only raw wool
on the outside of the bale, and finished cloth on the inside. It might be a
good idea to see how many times that ship has been declaring low-value
things& 
 Oh& I see what you mean. I don t know. He turned.  Do you, Woralyt?
The heavier graying mage-guard nodded.  We ve had to do that occasionally. Not
in a while, though. We can go over to the enumerators and ask to review
manifests& but you have to do it on your own time, not duty time, and you can
take notes, but you have to leave the manifest there.
 I just wondered.
 That s how, replied Woralyt.
Caersyn nodded in agreement and took a long swallow from his mug.
Rahl decided he had to look at some of the manifests of a year ago& as soon as
he could. He also needed to keep practicing Taryl s methods for expanding and
improving his use of order-skills. He could sense that his shields were
getting as close to what they had been, if not even stronger, and he was
beginning to regain some of what he had lost, particularly in a deeper sensing
of Order and chaos; but he still only had the most general sense of weather
and no sense at all of what lay beneath the surface of the ground. And he
certainly couldn t bind anything together with order.
XCII
A s with all mage-guards, Rahl had one day an eightday for his own use, and
that was sevenday. After breakfast, he immediately headed to the building
adjacent to the mage-guard station the one that housed the tariff enumerators.
The staff enumerator behind the counter that he still remembered was pleasant
enough.
 What can I do for you, ser?
 I need to look at the cargo off-load declarations for all the Jeranyi vessels
for last fall.
 You ll have to go through quite a few. We file them by day by ship name.
Rahl nodded.  That will be fine. ;  Ah& I have to put your name and a reason
on the form.
 I m Rahl, and I think some factors may have been accepting mislabeled bulk
goods. Rahl smiled politely.  Is that enough? ;
 Yes,-ser. If you d come this way?
Rahl followed the enumerator clerk down the corridor to a dimly lit chamber at
the back of the building. File chests were stacked neatly in five rows, each
row five chests high, and more than twenty long.
 The nearest chests here are the most recent. The ones more than five years
old are sent to Cigoeme. Let s see& last fall should be about here. The clerk
paused.  Let me or whoever s on the desk know when you leave.
 Twill, thank you.
Even with his knowledge of manifests and declarations, it took Rahl most of
the morning to find what he sought. Three Jeranyi ships had delivered Feyn
River pickles to the Nylan Merchant Association in the fall of the previous
year. One had been the Wavecrest, the other two had been the Stormruler and
the Dawnbreaker. Each had delivered ten barrels. He wrote down the ships,
quantities, dates, and consignees on a sheet of paper he d taken earlier from
the duty desk.
The number of barrels bothered Rahl. No one shipped that few barrels of
something like pickles thousands of kays on an outland hull.
Then he returned to the desk.  Thank you.
 Did you find what you were looking for, ser?
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 I found the information. It may-not be as helpful as I d hoped, but thank
you. Rahl made his way back to his quarters, where he tucked his notes into
his copy of the Manual, before heading out for the afternoon.
High hazy clouds suggested that the afternoon would be hot and muggy, and he [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]