Imager ip-1

by L. E. Modesitt

  “Some High Holder trying to be too familiar?”

  “His son . . .”

  “Do I know the name?”

  “I don’t know.” She smiled, mischievously, and somehow sadly, all at once. “Alhyral D’Haestyr.”

  “His father is on the Council.”

  “Young Alhyral made that point . . . several times. I finally told him that his choice was between his father having no furniture and him not having me or his father having furniture and him not having me. Then he asked how I could possibly turn down the heir of a High Holder, especially one so supportive of merchants, crafters, and factors. I said that was the only option, because I was not raised to deal with High Holders, and he was not raised to deal with Pharsi women. He persisted, until I pointed out that Pharsi women don’t believe in sex without a binding commitment to marry, and that we also don’t believe in divorce, and that there are no unhappy Pharsi husbands. Some dead husbands and unfaithful fiances, but no unhappy ones.”

  I whistled softly. “And that was the polite version.”

  “I didn’t have to use the pistol.” She laughed, softly, warmly, then wrapped her arms around me. “I’m so glad you’re here.”

  I kissed her, and she returned the favor with ardor-but only for a few moments. “I don’t think I’d better be too disheveled when I meet your family.”

  She had a very good point, and I escorted her out to the waiting hack.

  The driver smiled, as if to say that now he understood why I’d paid him to wait.

  Once we were in the coach, I asked, “Have you heard about Madame D’Shendael?”

  “Grandmama said that she had one last source to go with what she got from Ailphens yesterday.”

  I didn’t press on that, because, if Seliora had known more, she would have told me.

  We arrived just before fifth glass, and Khethila was the one to open the door. Her eyes widened, but she didn’t gape.

  “Khethila, this is Seliora. Seliora, my sister Khethila.”

  “I’m so pleased to meet to you,” Khethila said.

  “And I, you,” replied Seliora warmly.

  “Please do come in. The formal parlor is to the right.” Khethila stepped back to the left.

  I let Seliora step through the open door first, then followed.

  “She’s gorgeous, Rhenn,” Khethila leaned forward and murmured in my ear as I turned to escort Seliora into the formal parlor. “I’ll tell Mother and Father that you’re here,” she added in a louder voice.

  Seliora and I barely stood in the parlor long enough for her to glance around the room before Mother and Father arrived, trailed by Khethila.

  “Seliora, these are my parents. Father, Mother, this is Seliora.”

  Seliora inclined her head demurely. “I’m honored to meet you both. Rhenn has said so much about you.”

  “Not too much, I trust,” replied Father.

  “Enough to know that you’re both exceptional. Anyone who has the understanding to let their son pursue art shows great perception.” Her words could have been artificial or glib, but Seliora offered them in full honesty and directness, in a way that could not be denied.

  “Please, do sit down,” Mother said, her eyes barely leaving Seliora for a moment. “Would you like Dhuensa, or red or white Cambrisio?”

  I glanced to Seliora.

  “The Dhuensa, if you please.”

  “For me, too,” I added.

  “I’d like the white Cambrisio, and your father would like the Dhuensa.” Mother looked to Khethila, and I understood that unspoken command. Mother wasn’t about to miss anything.

  “I’ll be right back,” Khethila said. “Don’t say anything too exciting.”

  I understood that as well, but I didn’t say a word until Seliora and I were seated on the formal loveseat. “Where’s Culthyn?”

  “Oh, he’s over at a friend’s for the evening,” Mother replied. “We didn’t want to inflict him on Seliora for her first dinner here.”

  That wording was either accepting or encouraging. The latter, I hoped.

  “He hasn’t gotten into too much trouble this week, has he?”

  “No more than normal.” Father’s words were dry. “He is learning how to handle accounts and seems to like it.”

  “That’s because Khethila’s the one teaching him, dear.” Mother smiled. “Seliora. That’s a beautiful name. Is it a family name?”

  “I was named after my grandmother’s grandmother. I’m told that was because she had black hair and black eyes, also. It means ‘daughter of the moon’ in old Pharsi.”

  “Do you have any brothers or sisters?”

  “Two brothers, one older, one younger.”

  At that moment, Khethila returned with a tray, quickly offering the goblets to each of us, and then taking the corner straight-backed chair.

  “Rhenn hasn’t said much about your family or what they do,” Father injected.

  Seliora glanced at me. “Rhenn can be very protective, I’ve already discovered. It’s an endearing quality. There’s no secret about what we do. My grandmother was the one who created the family business, and we’re all involved in it in some way or another. It’s NordEste Design.”

  For the most fleeting of moments, there was a deep silence.

  “The NordEste Design, on Nordroad?” Father asked.

  Seliora nodded.

  “Dear . . . I’m afraid I don’t know as much about this as the men. What is it exactly that you do?” Mother ventured.

  Seliora tilted her head, as if at a loss to describe her work. “I’m the one who picks the fabrics for all the upholstered pieces, and I sometimes negotiate with the mills. For custom fabrics, we have several powered looms, and I’m the one who oversees them. I also maintain and repair them. And I do the custom embroidery and fabric designs, and work them out and punch the jacquard cards.”

  “You don’t actually embroider?” asked Khethila.

  “No. We handle too many pieces to do it by hand. Well . . . there are some individual pieces we might have to have repaired by hand, when it wouldn’t make sense to set up the looms for such a small section of fabric. Then I’d hire that out to one of the seamstresses we can trust.”

  Khethila was working hard to conceal a broad smile.

  “How did you come to meet?”

  Seliora flashed a smile. “We have individual guild memberships, because of the way we’re set up. I met Rhenn at one of the Samedi dances, and one thing led to another. There were interruptions. He couldn’t leave Imagisle for a time, and I was gone for a month this past summer. We had to visit a number of textile manufactories.”

  “You must tell us a little about your family. . . .”

  “It is a rather large family. . . .” Seliora continued, gently, sometimes humorously, beginning with Grandmama Diestra and continuing down toward the youngest. “. . . and the twins, they’re Odelia’s younger sisters. Because I seemed so much older, they decided that I had to be their aunt, not their cousin . . .”

  The bell signifying dinner was ready rang.

  “This is most interesting, but we should repair to table.” Mother rose, moving to make sure she was the one guiding Seliora to the dining chamber, through the direct door from the formal parlor, the one that was so seldom used. “This way, dear.”

  Father followed, and Khethila lagged. So did I, knowing she had something to say.

  She did, although her words were barely a whisper. “Pharsi . . . and from a very wealthy family. Father won’t be able to say a word. How did you ever find her?”

  “I didn’t. She found me. Pharsi foresight, the same way Remaya found Rousel.”

  For a moment, that stopped her. “She really has it?”

  I nodded, adding in a lower voice, “Far more than Remaya or anyone I’ve heard of.”

  As soon as we had gathered around the table with Seliora at Father’s left and me at his right, and Mother on Seliora’s right, Mother spoke up.

  “Would you like t
o offer the blessing, Seliora, or would you prefer to have Rhenn do it?”

  “If you wouldn’t mind one from my family.”

  “That would be lovely.”

  We all bowed our heads.

  “For the grace that we all owe each other, for the bounty of the earth of which we are about to partake, for good faith among all, and mercies great and small. For all these we offer thanks and gratitude, both now and ever more, in the spirit of that which cannot be named or imaged . . .”

  “In peace and harmony,” we replied.

  “That was lovely. Thank you,” Mother said. “I thought a cool soup might be best for harvest, although it is rather late in harvest.”

  The cool soup was limed vichyssoise, and served as a backdrop while Seliora finished the Shelim family history, although in the Pharsi tradition, I knew, it really should have been called the Mama Diestra family history.

  After the vichyssoise, Nellica appeared with serving dishes . . . and more serving dishes, as well as two bread trays, but the main course was a veal regis, where the veal filets were split, filled with thin spicy ham and a pungent cheese, then quick-fried, slow-heated, and covered with a naranje cream sauce. Rich as it was, I knew I couldn’t eat that much of it.

  Seliora had small helpings of everything. I took only what appealed to me.

  “Rhenn, you didn’t try the glazed rice fritters . . . or the twice-baked yellow squash.”

  “That’s because I don’t have an interior large enough for everything here,” I protested.

  Mother turned to Seliora. “What do you think of the veal?”

  “It’s excellent. It’s your recipe?”

  “My mother’s, actually . . .”

  I listened, mostly.

  After we had finished eating the main course, Khethila rose from the table and nodded to Seliora. “Might I ask your assistance, Seliora?”

  Seliora smiled and eased from her chair. “I’d be pleased.”

  Once the two had left, Mother looked to me. “She is beautiful, Rhenn, truly beautiful in that way that only Pharsi women can be.”

  “She is.” I almost replied that she had saved my life, but decided that was information better left for later. “She’s also very modest, and very careful. I knew her for months before she ever revealed who she was.”

  “How did she manage that?” Father demanded.

  “Very simply. Because of the nature of what NordEste Design does, as she pointed out, they have to have guild members. Seliora is a member of the Woodworkers’ Guild, although she is actually a textile engineer and designer. Officially, on the guild rolls, she is an upholsterer. She came to the Guild Hall on Samedis, always with her older cousin. Odelia is most formidable.” I laughed. “In six months, I’ve had one dinner with her alone, and that was in a public place. Otherwise, there’s always been a member of her family within ten yards . . .”

  “As there should have been,” Mother replied. “I do approve of that, and of parents who care so for such a beautiful daughter.” She paused, as if to ask a question, then smiled. “You are fortunate.”

  “That she and her family would accept an imager calling on her? I am.” I wasn’t about to explain the reasons. It was far better to let her think what she did.

  Shortly, Seliora and Khethila returned, and dessert arrived.

  Small talk dominated dessert, apple tartlets, with a lemon glaze, followed by tea. After we finished, and a silence persisted for just a few moments, the kind of silence that everyone should recognize as a signal for farewells, and that too many do not, Mother cleared her throat, gently.

  “You must let Charlsyn take you two back to NordEste . . . or . . .” Mother stopped.

  “Everything is at NordEste,” Seliora replied. “The manufactory is on the street and lower level, and our family quarters are on the second and third levels.”

  “We’d be pleased to accept that offer.” I would have been stupid not to, for many reasons, including the fact that Mother and Father had to have paid Charlsyn extra to stay to take us, and not doing so would have merely wasted their coin and cost me.

  Once we were in the family coach on the way back to NordEste, I turned to Seliora. “You were magnificent.”

  She smiled ruefully. “I’m glad you think so. With all that food, I won’t be able to fit into anything I own. How did you manage growing up?”

  “You saw. I just didn’t eat everything. But I did miss it when I was with Master Caliostrus.” I didn’t say more, thinking of both of them . . . dead, even if it now appeared as though much of it wasn’t totally my fault. Instead, I asked, “What did Khethila want to know?”

  “Girl things.” Seliora smiled, mischievously. “She wanted to know if you were good to me. She also said that she’d never seen you so protective of anyone.”

  I let it drop at that. Seliora would have said more if I’d needed to know, and I didn’t want to waste my few moments alone with her.

  The embraces were in the coach . . . because even I realized that discretion was the better part of valor-at least so long as I was being forced to act as a lure for who knew what. But I did walk her to the door, and I extended my full shields to cover us both. I also obtained her permission to call on her on Solayi.

  After that, I had Charlsyn take me to Imagisle the long way, to the Bridge of Desires. I didn’t see anyone strange, and no one shot at me, but when I reached my quarters, I wasn’t sure whether not being shot at or having weathered the family inquisition was the greater relief.

  68

  The fashion of speech tells its truth, spells its

  falsehoods.

  The only thing that mattered much to me on Solayi was seeing Seliora, but I was again most careful with my shields and an eye on who and what might be around. The only thing at all odd was a covered wagon, similar to a tinker’s wagon, drawn up to a hitching post a block off the Bridge of Desires. I didn’t see anyone around it as the hack I’d hailed carried me past, but they couldn’t have been far, because the old gelding hitched to the wagon wasn’t that heavily tied. The wagon didn’t follow me, though, and there was no one nearby when I left the hack in front of Seliora’s.

  She answered the door, wearing trousers and a simple cream shirt. She still looked beautiful, and I told her so.

  “You just see what you want to see.”

  “Not so. Master Poincaryt told me that I was the most accurate and unflatteringly honest portraiturist he’d ever encountered and that I had the nasty habit of deflating egos.”

  “They’re not women.”

  I wasn’t going to win that argument. “They’re not you.” I put my arms around her.

  For a moment, she reciprocated. “I already have some Sanietra and fruit and biscuits set by on the east terrace.”

  So we climbed the steps. When we reached the terrace, I was happy to see that the chairs and table had been arranged so that we sat side by side, with smaller side tables flanking us. There were two glasses of Sanietra and thin breads with fruit slices on a small platter.

  I also got a far warmer welcome than I had in the main hall.

  After that, when we were properly seated, I asked, “The day after, what did you think of last night?”

  “Your parents are sweet. They don’t understand you, and they worry about you.”

  “They worry about the wrong things,” I pointed out, “and they’d worry themselves to death if they knew half of what’s happened to me.” Not to mention what hadn’t happened and might yet.

  She smiled. “I’m glad you don’t protect me that way.”

  That brought me up short. Why didn’t I? Because I knew Seliora was stronger? “I trust you to understand. Also . . . your family . . . your background . . . you all do understand the undercurrents. My father knows they’re there, and he does his best to avoid them, without overtly even acknowledging their existence.”

  She poured Sanietra for us, then said, “Grandmama found out some of what you asked about Madame D’Shendael.” />
  I waited.

  “She was the only child of High Holder Shendael and his wife Helenia. According to Ailphens, everyone was surprised that there was even one child, given all of Shendael’s young male friends . . .”

  I kept my nod to myself.

  “. . . the estate was really Helenia’s, but of course she had to marry to keep her status. Right after the daughter-that’s Madame D’Shendael-reached eighteen, Shendael was shot. Helenia was charged with the murder. Ailphens said that sections of the public records are missing, except for those dealing directly with Helenia’s execution.” Seliora looked to me.

  “What did Grandmama add?”

  She shook her head ruefully. “Shendael’s only male relative died on a hunting trip when his rifle exploded. That was actually right after the trial.”

  “How do you think Emanus managed it?” I asked.

  “Do you think he had anything to do with the senior Shendael’s murder?”

  “No, but I’d wager that he had that male relative killed so that no one could contest his daughter’s holding.” I’d also have wagered that Helenia hadn’t been the one to fire the shot that killed her husband, but that she’d accepted the blame to save her daughter, not that I’d ever find any proof of any of that.

  “That doesn’t explain why Emanus was killed,” Seliora pointed out. “If Madame D’Shendael were worried about her father . . .”

  “He gave up everything to protect her. It can’t be that.”

  “It has to be connected to her in some way.”

  We talked a bit more, agreeing on that, but we couldn’t think of how, at least not based on what we knew. Finally, Seliora lifted her glass and sipped, then asked, “What are you doing next week?”

  “Did I tell you that I have to stand duty, so to speak, at the Council’s Harvest Ball?”

  “When is that?”

  “Vendrei night. I’m also supposed to watch closely for trouble and be ready to dance with any woman in distress or who appears to have been deserted on the dance floor, so to speak.”