Imager

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  “Has it?”

  “Not yet, but I’ve only been working on the ledgers for the last two weeks. Rousel thinks it’s a good idea that I know more about business.”

  “So does your Father,” added Mother.

  “How are things going with Rousel?” I asked quickly.

  “He and Remaya are doing well.” Mother smiled briefly. “He writes occasionally.”

  Khethila shifted her weight in her chair, ever so slightly.

  “And how is the wool factoring going in Kherseilles?” I looked to Khethila.

  “I couldn’t say, because so far I’m only doing the ledgers for the factorage here, and not the master ledger that merges both accounts.”

  Mother looked sharply at Khethila, who smiled pleasantly.

  In short, matters weren’t going quite so well in Kherseilles, but Khethila wasn’t about to say or was guessing from what she’d seen so far, and Mother wasn’t about to say anything negative about Rousel … or allow anyone else to.

  “Do you know what you’ll be doing as an imager?” Mother asked. “Can you tell us?”

  “They say I may have some duties working for the Council, but very minor ones at first. No one’s given me any details, but I have had to learn all the Council procedures.”

  “Your father would be very pleased if you became a Council advisor.”

  “That’s not going to happen any time soon,” I replied with a laugh. “How is Aunt Ilena?”

  “As stubborn as ever. I’m thinking of visiting her in Juyn, on the way to Kherseilles …”

  From that point on, I just asked questions and listened. Although I stayed almost to the fourth glass of the afternoon, neither Father nor Culthyn appeared, and I took my leave. The late afternoon remained pleasant, and while it was more than two milles, I walked the entire distance to the Guild Square, taking my time.

  Because I didn’t see anyone I knew around the square, I made my way to Lapinina. When I stepped into the bistro, the couple at the table nearest the door looked away. Rogaris and Sagaryn sat at a round table for four, and I stepped toward it.

  “How are you two coming?”

  Sagaryn’s eyes widened as they took in the gray waistcoat, shirt, and trousers. “Is that you, Rhenn?”

  “The same.”

  “You’re … an imager?”

  I nodded. “Might I join you?”

  “Oh … yes …” Rogaris said hastily.

  Sagaryn nodded, a trace reluctantly, but I eased into the seat across from them.

  Staela appeared. “What would you like, sir?”

  I looked up at her. “I’m still Rhenn, Staela.”

  Her expression didn’t change at all. “Yes, sir.”

  “Just a glass of the Cambrisio white, if you have it.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “We don’t see imagers up here very often,” Rogaris offered.

  “You’re the first,” added Sagaryn, taking a swallow of dark beer.

  “I’m probably the only portraiturist who’s ended up an imager.”

  “That well could be.”

  “How are you two doing?”

  Rogaris glanced at Sagaryn, who remained stone-faced. “The same as always.”

  “Have you heard anything about Madame Caliostrus?”

  “She’s all right. He had some sort of assurance annuity or something … some patron paid for it, and the masons’ guild is rebuilding the place.”

  “Lucky at that,” added Sagaryn. “You know anything about it?”

  “No.” I shook my head. “He never talked coins with me—except to explain why he’d docked my pay”

  Staela reappeared with a glass of amber-white wine, which she placed before me with far greater care than she ever had when I’d been a journeyman. “Your Cambrisio, sir. It’s four.”

  Almost as soon as I’d put a silver on the table she scooped it up and had six coppers back before me. Then she was gone. I took a sip of the wine. It was cool, and not that bad, but I realized that what I’d been drinking at dinner at the dining hall was just as good.

  “How is Master Jacquerl treating you?” I asked Rogaris.

  “Nothing’s changed.” He sipped the dark red wine.

  “And you?” I turned to Sagaryn.

  “The same as always.”

  Neither spoke for a time. Nor did I. Then I looked to Rogaris. “How is Aemalye?”

  “She’s fine.”

  “Are you still planning to get married a year from this Agostos?”

  “Something like that.”

  After a few more questions, I smiled and stood, leaving most of the Cambrisio. “It was good to see you both. Take care of yourselves.”

  “You, too,” replied Rogaris.

  Sagaryn only nodded.

  It was just past the fifth glass as I stepped out of Lapinina, wondering why I had come at all, when a voice called from behind me.

  “Rhenn!”

  I turned.

  There stood Seliora, beside a taller, red-haired woman. This time Seliora was wearing a rich green skirt with a black blouse and a matching green jacket. She smiled at me.

  “Seliora.” I couldn’t help but smile back, especially after the coolness of Sagaryn and Rogaris.

  She took another step toward me, and another, stopping almost close enough that I could have reached out to embrace her. I thought about it, but didn’t.

  “I’m glad to see you,” she began, her words warm. “You just disappeared, and no one heard anything. I heard that you couldn’t find a position. I worried about you.”

  I was glad someone worried, but I didn’t want to say that. “I couldn’t leave Imagisle for quite some time,” I explained, adding, “You know that’s where I went?”

  “I can see that. The gray looks good on you. I thought …”

  “You thought what?” I looked at her. “Foretelling?”

  She flushed, but kept her eyes on me. “I saw you in gray a long time ago. I didn’t know what it meant. Sometimes … it’s like that.”

  I didn’t want to press her, and my smile turned wry. “It was either become a wool merchant or try to become an imager.”

  She tilted her head, and her eyes sparkled, almost impishly. “I couldn’t see you as a wool merchant. I think you weren’t meant to be one. Are you an imager yet?”

  “If they accept you, you’re an imager right away. You’re just a very low imager who’s restricted to the isle until you learn more.”

  “I don’t imagine you’ll stay lowly that long.”

  “I’ve been advanced since I’ve been there.” I could say that much without being boastful.

  “I’m not surprised.” She smiled, tentatively. “Will you come to the dance with me?”

  “I’d be pleased to … if you don’t mind being escorted by an imager.”

  “Rhenn …” She shook her head.

  “I’m sorry. I went in to Lapinina to talk to Rogaris and Sagaryn, and they barely said a dozen words. Staela kept calling me ‘sir,’ as if I’d never been in her bistro, and I’ve been coming there for almost five years.”

  “I’m not them.” She smiled once more.

  “I’m very glad.”

  “Oh … Rhenn …” She turned and gestured to the tall redhead. “This is my big cousin Odelia.”

  “I’m pleased to meet you.” I inclined my head to Odelia. She was definitely tall, within a few digits of me, not heavy, but muscular. Was everyone in Seliora’s family muscular?

  Odelia smiled back politely. “I’ve never met an imager.”

  “Three months ago,” I replied, “neither had I.”

  Seliora looked at me, and I offered her my arm. “Shall we proceed?”

  “You sound so formal.”

  “It comes with the gray.”

  She giggled—a sound so totally false that I knew she was jesting—and I laughed.

  “That’s much better.”

  Odelia stepped up on my left. I would have offered my other arm, but that
didn’t feel right, and she didn’t seem to mind as we made our way across the pavement to the Guild Hall. In the west Artiema was about to set. I wondered if were just coincidence, or if the silvered moon happened to be a patroness of Seliora or Odelia. But that too was silly.

  The guard who stood inside the hall looked at my grays, and then at Seliora and Odelia, then resolutely turned his head.

  “You see,” I murmured.

  “It doesn’t matter. You’re with us, and we’re still guild members.”

  “I paid my fees for the first half of the year,” I added with a smile. “Doesn’t that still make me a guild member?” I didn’t think Guildmaster Reayalt would agree, but he wasn’t anywhere around, and, besides, Seliora was quite correct. She could bring anyone she pleased, although there were usually few outsiders.

  The musicians were getting ready to play, and Odelia nodded to Seliora and slipped away.

  “Kolasyn is over there with his friends,” Seliora said, “but he won’t be long.”

  “Odelia gets her way?”

  “We all do.” She offered that charming but mischievous smile. “You’ll see.”

  By “all” I assumed she meant all the women in her family, but that wasn’t something I was going to ask. Maybe meeting her again under Artiema wasn’t exactly a coincidence, although that was just a superstition.

  The music started, and I placed my right hand gently on the small of her back and took her right hand in my left. We began to dance. Seliora was a far better dancer than I was, even though Father had insisted that I learn the basics—even providing a dancing maitre, Madame D’Reingel—my last year in grammaire.

  When the musicians paused, so did we.

  “You dance better now,” she observed.

  “I don’t know why. I haven’t danced since the last time we were here.”

  “Did you think of me?”

  “Yes. More than a few times.” That was certainly true.

  She offered a false pout. “You tell all the girls that.”

  “Only you,” I replied, immediately wishing I hadn’t phrased it quite that way.

  “You only lie to me?” She flashed the mischievous smile.

  “No. You’re just the only one I thought of—except women I’m related to, like Mother and Khethila.”

  “I don’t know as I’d like to be considered a sister.”

  I just groaned. “I can’t say anything right, can I?”

  “At least you recognize that.” This time she laughed, softly, but not cruelly.

  The music started up again, and I decided that silence was the better part of valor. We swirled out into the double handful of couples dancing.

  “You’re stronger, too,” she said, after I twirled and lifted her, then set her back on the floor.

  “That’s part of the training,” I admitted.

  “It suits you.”

  “What have you been doing, besides designing and embroidering and needlepointing chair fabric designs?”

  “We don’t do the needlepoint by hand. We have several looms, including a small jacquard loom, but I have to punch out the cards once I work out the design. I’m also the one who keeps it running. Father isn’t all that mechanically inclined.”

  “How tight can you get the weave?”

  She looked up at with another smile. “How tight do you want it?”

  I almost flushed at her words. “I guess I recall more of wool than I thought, or enough for you to pull it right over my eyes.”

  She squeezed my fingers, just slightly.

  We danced and talked until the musicians stopped playing for the evening. Then, I let go of her hand, reluctantly, I realized.

  “Do you think I could persuade you to come next month?” she murmured.

  “You could. I have Samedi afternoons and nights and Solayi afternoons off.” I realized I didn’t want to wait a month to see her again. “I’ve heard there’s a new bistro called Felters …”

  “It’s quite good, Kaelyn said. I haven’t been there.”

  “Next Samedi?” After I asked, I realized I was supposed to go to my parents’ for their dinner, but I knew I’d far rather spend the evening with Seliora.

  “I’d love to, but Father is taking us to see his sister.”

  “The seventh, then?”

  “I’d like that very much…”

  “At fifth glass at your place?”

  “That would be good.” A twinkle in her eyes accompanied the next words. “My parents will expect to meet you.”

  “I’d be pleased.” I wondered if they would be, though. I didn’t know if all Pharsi families were as accepting as Remaya’s family had been of Rousel.

  I did end up spending silvers—on a hack to drive her and Odelia back to the large building on the corner of Hagahl Lane and Nordroad that was clearly home and business to her and her family, and then to take me back to the east side of the Bridge of Hopes.

  I was still smiling when I walked into my quarters.

  35

  Law is necessary because, without it, no one willingly reins in self-interest.

  Throughout the day on Solayi, as I struggled through the pages of Jurisprudence, my thoughts kept drifting back to Samedi. Why had Sagaryn and Rogaris been so distant? We’d been friendly for years, and I certainly hadn’t changed that much. Yet they’d been edgy and uncomfortable, as if they were suddenly afraid. Was their reaction one of the reasons why Master Dichartyn had said that I needed to see L’Excelsis again? But … Master Dichartyn had said that I projected what I felt, and I’d only felt friendly to them. Did that mean that they were so afraid that it didn’t matter that I was friendly? Yet Seliora had seemed happy for me, and Odelia had been more than pleasant.

  The dining hall was nearly deserted at the noon meal, but I did see Reynol, and we ate together and talked pleasantly before I headed back to my room and the heavy pages of Jurisprudence.

  By the time I rubbed my eyes and collapsed into bed on Solayi night, I thought I understood most of what I’d read, but I wasn’t so certain when I woke after a night filled with dreams of advocates and jurists uttering phrases that had no meaning at all to me.

  On Lundi, after breakfast, and after half a glass spent reviewing the assignments in Jurisprudence, I left my quarters and headed across the quadrangle, wondering what Master Jhulian would be like in person.

  Two seconds—Whaltar and one I didn’t know—were walking toward me.

  “Good morning,” I offered.

  “Good morning, sir,” returned Whaltar. The other secondus murmured the same.

  I could hear a few low words after they passed.

  “He’s the one … took Diazt down …”

  “… was always friendly to me,” said Whaltar. “Never pushed his way around.”

  “… good to know … helps to have friends like that …”

  Friends like what?

  I only waited something less than a quint of a glass before Master Jhulian opened his study door and beckoned for me to enter. His study was almost identical to that of Master Dichartyn, save that he had two chairs set before his desk. I took the one closer to the window.

  Master Jhulian was more slender than I had thought, and his hair was almost white-blond, but I had only seen him from a distance, either in the dining hall or at the hearing for Floryn.

  “Rhennthyl,” he began after closing the study door, walking to the window, gazing out, and then settling himself behind his desk on a chair covered by a wide and worn gray cushion, “Master Dichartyn has told me about you. He states that you are relatively direct and generally honest. I will attempt to be both with you.” He cleared his throat before continuing. “I would prefer that you ask me about those things you do not understand. Otherwise, you will waste my time and yours because I will assume that, if you have no questions, you will know the material.” He smiled politely, waiting for me to reply.

  “Yes, sir. I will try to ask such questions, but some of what is in the text is so co
mplex that … well … even though I’ve read all of it several times, I’m not sure that I understand enough to ask a question.”

  “That is a fair statement, Rhennthyl, and if… if you tell me where you had trouble, even if you cannot articulate exactly what you do not understand, that is acceptable. Please begin by explaining what jurisprudence is and why it is of particular import to Solidar and the Collegium.”

  “Jurisprudence is the study of the law itself, in terms of both its precedents in case law and in terms of the philosophical basis behind both laws enacted by the Council and those derived through the example of case law.”

  “Close enough. What roots of traditional jurisprudence, indeed of law itself, did the establishment of the Juristic Courts of Solidar deny?”

  I actually knew that. “Many scholars outside of Solidar claimed that the law historically had four basic roots—eternal, natural, human, and divine. Because the Nameless does not distinguish by appellation”—those words were not mine, but from the text—“but by function, the first judges of the Juristic Courts divided all legal precedents and existing codes into two basic categories, those of human and natural …” I went on explaining.

  “What is the problem with the idea that laws are to promote good and restrain evil?”

  I didn’t see a problem with that idea, and yet Master Jhulian was suggesting that there was. I had to think. “The idea isn’t bad, sir, but it seems to me that one could have problems in defining what is good.”

  “Oh?”

  “Each person … well, most people … would tend to see good as what benefits them and evil as what does not. What benefits the High Holders most might not benefit the common folk nearly so much, and what benefits the factors—”

  “All of that is true, without a doubt … but … what is the specific problem that this conflict engenders with the formal fundamentals of law itself?”

  The term “formal fundamentals of law” jogged my memory. “Oh … one of the formal requirements of law is that the laws of the land must be impartial and apply equally to all, and if laws define good to benefit one group at the expense of another, they can’t be impartial.”