Imager

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  Of course, we would be more than delighted to meet her over dinner here at the house, and, if you have no objections, we would suggest next Samedi, the twenty-eighth, at fifth glass.

  Khethila was pleased that you stopped by the factorage, as am I. It never hurts to have a male relative of such import appear. Upon reading your letter, which I did share with her, she mentioned that you had declined an invitation to dine with her, and that the reasons for that demurral were obvious in light of your letter. Like your father and me, she looks forward to meeting Mistress Seliora D’Shelim.

  The implications were clear enough. While I knew Seliora was certainly up to the not-so-silent inquisition, I wasn’t certain that I would be.

  The only other notable aspect of Jeudi was my meeting with Maitre Dyana. She was as composed, as direct, and as contemptuous of foolishness and thoughtless questions as ever, as when I offered a question as to why there was such sudden urgency in my learning about poisons.

  “Why indeed? Dear boy, please think. You have shields as strong as any imager, and stronger than most. They could be far more effective if you would practice finesse as well, but you are young, and finesse is seldom appreciated by the young and strong, not until they have been defeated by old age and treachery, both of which are far more effective than thoughtless youth and strength.”

  She’d as much as admitted that, were I careful, my shields would protect me against direct attacks. “That suggests that I will be placed in situations where I will be vulnerable to such treachery.”

  “Brilliant. Positively brilliant. Now … might we continue?” Without waiting for a response, she pointed to the goblets lined up on the conference table of the chamber where she had instructed me before. “What you need to do is image the tiniest bit of the wine or whatever you suspect onto a test paper strip and watch. The paper strips are treated. If it’s a cyanotic poison … the strip will turn green, if joraban, a maroon …”

  I could see a problem there.

  “Yes?”

  “If there’s joraba in red wine …”

  “You don’t need to worry about that. You can only put joraba in clear liquids. Its nature is such that it tends to change the colors of anything. But …” She shrugged. “… that does mean you need to be aware of the proper colors of various wines. That is one reason why High Holders are such experts on vintages. Those who are not often suffer strange and fatal maladies …”

  I had no doubt that the coming sessions with Maitre Dyana would be even more painful.

  63

  Rain, shadows, and sunlight all conceal and reveal, just in different fashions.

  Vendrei was without incident, excepting for another long evening session with Maitre Dyana. So was early Samedi morning, except that we had to run through a heavy rain, and my exercise clothes were sodden by the time I returned to my quarters. Even so, I managed to get to breakfast, eat, and arrive at my makeshift studio with enough time to get my paints set up and even get in a little work on the background of the portrait before Master Poincaryt arrived punctually at the first bell of eighth glass.

  Recalling his “homily” about observation, I watched as he entered the studio, noting how, without seeming to, he surveyed me and the entire space of the converted workroom before taking his seat. I could see that might also be a good habit to form.

  As he sat down, he smiled. “Yes … I do. Most covert imagers learn that early, if they survive.”

  “I’m still working on what you suggested, sir.”

  “You’re still young enough that such intensity can be taken for interest. As you get older, you will have to learn observation with circumspection, but by then, you should be able to pick up on what you see and sense almost without thinking about it.” He laughed. “Among the High Holders, observation is played as a game, if one with very high stakes. The one who can learn the most while revealing the least is usually the winner.”

  In that sense, I’d just lost … but I’d learned in doing so. “If you would turn your head to the left, just a touch, sir?”

  I painted for a solid glass, a little tentatively at first, because I hadn’t been working with the brushes all that much, but I could feel the touch come back before long. I managed to get most of the area around his forehead and eyes, as well as finish the nose, and get the shape of the jaw set with the underlying base.

  As the first of the nine bells rang, Master Poincaryt rose. “I hope you will pardon me, Rhennthyl, but I do have a meeting with High Councilor Suyrien and Councilor Rholyn.”

  “Yes, sir. I trust it will go well.”

  “One never has a meeting without knowing exactly how it will go and how to assure that it does.” He smiled warmly. “Otherwise, what is the point?”

  After he left, I thought about his parting words. He’d as much as said that he would be controlling the meeting between Rholyn, the councilor who represented the Collegium on the Council, and High Councilor Suyrien, the High Holder who chaired the executive committee of the Council, and who, in effect, spoke for the Council and all of Solidar. That also suggested that such a meeting was necessary, and that, at the least, there was not total agreement between Suyrien and the Collegium. I had no doubts there would be agreement when the meeting ended.

  I spent almost another full glass working on the portrait, because I felt I needed to do so, but as I cleaned up, I realized another aspect of the Collegium. Master Poincaryt had come from the covert branch now headed by Master Dichartyn, and that suggested to me that Master Dichartyn might well be being prepared to become Master Poincaryt’s successor.

  The Collegium was almost completely deserted by noon, and I ate with Reynol, who complained about having to deal with “great complexities” in the Collegium accounts, making things balance so that everything appeared in its proper place when the accounts were presented to the Council.

  “To the Council?” I took a mouthful of saoras, thin strips of goose fried in spice oil, then covered with cheese and baked in a puff pastry.

  “Absolutely. We provide services to the Council, for which we are paid. The armory has contracts with the Navy, that sort of thing. Even the … well … let us just say that almost every part of the Collegium provides goods or services to someone, and we receive an annual payment from the Council for resolution.”

  “Does that mean resolution of the imager problem, by training them, and keeping them from being a problem, so to speak?”

  “It’s not spelled out anywhere, and it dates back centuries. That’s all I know. Some things account clerks don’t ask about.” Reynol did smile.

  I sipped the wine, a slightly bitter white plonk I couldn’t identify. “Why do you think other lands don’t have something like the Collegium?”

  “Why would they want them? Half of them don’t want imagers because their religion or faith or what have you says we’re evil and unnatural. The others either tolerate them with restrictions or quietly force them out or kill them because they don’t fit.”

  I had to think about that. “You mean because absolute rule, like in Caenen, can be turned upside down with imagers who can kill tyrants without ever being detected?”

  “Right. But even outside influence worries those in power. In Jariola, there are really only forty-five members of the oligarchy. That’s hereditary. What if an imager went around killing, over time, those members with a given view? That could change things, and they don’t want change. In Ferrum, they believe in using machines and foreign contract workers to keep wages and costs low. That reduces the power of the guilds—they really don’t have them the way we do—and increases the power of the factors. They don’t even have anything like High Holders, only the wealthiest of merchants. A Collegium in Ferrum would certainly reduce the power of the merchanters.”

  “So, for different reasons, neither Ferrum nor Jariola cares for imagers. What about Tiempre?”

  “They’re crazy. They have this idea that any talent that only a few people have is the mark of Bius, the
black demon, because Puryon, their oh-so-just god, bestows the potential for every true believer to have the same abilities as any other, if in differing levels, if they only believe. So all imagers are demons.”

  “How can they believe that? People are different.”

  Reynol just laughed. I had to as well.

  After lunch, I found a shaded bench on the eastern side of Imagisle on the north end where there was a slight breeze off the water and sat down to try to think.

  What had I discovered about those trying to kill me, and how had I discovered what I had? In the simplest sense, I had observed and talked to people. The problem now was that I had few enough people left with whom I could talk that I had not already contacted. But it could be that I’d been looking at the problem in the wrong way. A number of junior imagers had been killed over the past half year, and none of them had angered High Holder Ryel or taudischef Artazt. Some had been killed even before I’d entered the Collegium, and there were killings still happening, if intermittently. Why? Just because someone didn’t like imagers?

  For a time, I just sat there, looking at the river, but I didn’t come up with any sort of answer. Yet … there was something. I just couldn’t see what it was.

  Because I had a very strong feeling that trying to run down Elphens or other portraiturists wasn’t going to tell me any more, I finally returned to my quarters and read, mostly from On Art and Society. I didn’t know that I agreed with much of what I read. Juniae D’Shendael’s commentary did spark speculation, particularly her assertion that the reason there were virtually no women artists was because, historically, no one wanted to invest in training a woman when she had a fifty percent chance of dying in childbirth, and being surrounded by males, she would likely have a hundred percent chance of becoming pregnant. After having a child, she’d be able to devote less time to art and would require more food, especially if nursing.

  I’d have to caution Khethila about not quoting too liberally from that volume.

  At half past four, I was in a hack headed for Nordroad and Hagahl Lane. I had slipped a set of poison testing strips inside my waistcoat, not that I expected to be poisoned, but for practice. A very light drizzle had begun to fall, and I wished that I had an umbrella, not for me, but for Seliora.

  I arrived almost a quarter glass early, but, seemingly as always, Bhenyt opened the door.

  “Master Rhennthyl, please come in.”

  “Are you the permanent doorman?” I asked jokingly.

  “I like to see who’s coming, and, besides, Mother says it’s a way to meet people.” He smiled. “Aunt Seliora gives me things, too.”

  Bhenyt carefully slid the lock and the bolt in place, and then we walked up the steps, where he took his leave.

  I waited for a time in the main-level entry hall, taking in the paintings set at intervals, as well as the hangings. I had the feeling about one of them, an elaborate geometric design of silver and dark gray on a rich green. It was far newer than the others. I didn’t recognize any of the paintings, all of them landscapes or city scenes, although I thought one of the scenes looked like it might have been painted by Elphens or his former master—except it was signed by someone called Arhenyt, who from the style might have been Rhenius’s father.

  Although I heard no steps, I sensed someone and turned to see Seliora entering the main hall from the archway leading to the stairs. She wore a black dress with a brilliant filmy green vest, trimmed in silver, with a silvery scarf.

  “Do you all move so quietly?” I grinned.

  “No. Shomyr and Father shake the stairs and the floor.” Seliora gave me a warm embrace and a gentle but quick kiss before stepping back. “Have your parents returned?”

  “I received a reply from Mother late on Jeudi, and a letter to you wouldn’t have gotten here much before I did.”

  Seliora raised her eyebrows. “And?”

  “Because we’re being honest, you can read her response.” I handed her the envelope.

  She extracted the letter, slowly reading it. Then she looked up and smiled, enigmatically.

  I wasn’t about to ask what lay behind the expression. I knew. I also knew that Mother was in for something she had never encountered, not even with Remaya, who was a house cat compared to Seliora’s mountain cougar.

  “You’re smiling,” Seliora said.

  “I think I’ll enjoy observing next weekend.”

  “You can be evil, Rhenn. I’ll be as charming as I know how.”

  “And you say I’m evil?”

  That got me another enigmatic sidelong glance. “Where might we be going to dine?”

  “I’d thought that the Promenade might be good.”

  “Could we try Terraza?”

  “It’s better, I take it?” I’d never heard of it.

  “It is. You also don’t pay for what you don’t get.”

  “Odelia and Kolasyn?”

  “I thought we could meet them there.”

  I just offered a shrug and a grin.

  As we headed down the steps to the door, Seliora gestured. “In the closet at the bottom of the stairs, there are several umbrellas.”

  After finding the closet, I took a large navy blue umbrella and then held it over Seliora as she used a brass key to lock the door behind us. We had to wait a bit to hail a hack, and for that I was glad for the umbrella, not so much for me as for Seliora.

  If it had not have been for the misting rain—and the exposure—Terraza would have been almost close enough to walk, only about a mille, just around the corner on a narrow lane off the Boulevard D’Este, not all that far from Master Kocteault’s, I realized, when we got out of the coach-for-hire.

  Not only that, but Odelia and Kolasyn already had a table, a circular one in the far corner, perhaps the best in the restaurant. The woman who guided us there only glanced at me perfunctorily, after admiring, if most covertly, what Seliora wore.

  Terraza itself was a good three times the size of Lapinina, but only half that of Felters. The walls were a simple and clean white plaster, with brick pillars showing, and the floor was a clean dark gray tile. All the tables had white cloths, and the wall lamps were of antique brass, frequent enough so that it wasn’t gloomy, but warm in feeling.

  Odelia smiled as I seated Seliora, then murmured just loud enough for us to hear. “That was quite an entrance. Everyone kept looking at you two.”

  “They were looking at Seliora,” I pointed out, “not me.”

  “Any time a beautiful woman appears, escorted by a tall, muscular, and impressive-looking imager, people will look,” Kolasyn replied.

  “That’s no reason,” I said with a laugh.

  “For some people, it is,” replied Odelia.

  A serving girl appeared with two bottles of wine, one red and one white.

  “I ordered their house wines,” Odelia explained. “They’re good.”

  I managed not to laugh. Odelia and Seliora were definitely better off not being High Holders, not from what I’d heard about the way High Holders treated their wives and daughters.

  I decided on the red wine, although I couldn’t have said why. It was light, like a Dhuensa, but had a stronger and fruitier taste, yet I liked it. I lifted the glass to Odelia. “You were right. This is good.”

  She smiled, and her eyes flicked to Seliora.

  This time, I did laugh as I turned to my partner. “You told her what to order?”

  “I just suggested.” Her voice was low and demure, and I could see the mischievous grin struggling to appear.

  “Have you ordered everyone’s dinner as well?” My tone was light because I was actually enjoying the banter, and I could barely keep from laughing again.

  “You’re right,” interjected Odelia. “He does have a sense of humor.”

  The serving girl appeared. “The special tonight is lamb tournedos, with mint yogurt, blue glacian potatoes, and spice-steamed summer beans. …” She went on to list more entrees than I could remember fully, which was fine, becaus
e I wanted the lamb.

  Once she was finished, I nodded to Seliora.

  “The greens and fowl with the Cambrisan reduction.”

  “The roast mushrooms and the duck confit,” added Odelia.

  “The same for me,” said Kolasyn.

  “Greens and the lamb special … pink, not red,” I said.

  After she left, there was a moment of silence. I looked to Kolasyn, perhaps because he had said so little and I so much. “You were talking about reasons why people do things. Do people really have reasons?” As I talked, I slipped out one of the testing strips, holding it well below the edge of the table, and concentrated on imaging the tiniest drop of wine from Seliora’s narrow goblet.

  He smiled, then shrugged. “I think so. With people, there’s a reason for everything. The trick is to figure out the reason. Sometimes, they don’t even know it themselves, but if you can discover it, then you have an advantage.”

  “Are you sure that everyone has a reason?” asked Seliora, her voice carrying genuine interest. “Besides just having to act?”

  I imaged another drop of wine, this time from my goblet.

  “If they didn’t have some reason,” Kolasyn replied, “no one would do anything. Maybe they’re hungry, or tired … or just don’t want to leave a decision to their wife …”

  I did grin at that.

  I also got a very gentle elbow in the ribs.

  The testing strip showed nothing abnormal in either Seliora’s wine or mine.

  At that point the first course arrived.

  Between the food and the conversation, light as it was, everyone seemed to enjoy the dinner. I also tested the wine and the sparkling water that Odelia had asked for.

  Then, just as the server set the lemon tart that was my dessert before me, Seliora glanced toward the frosted-glass door of Terraza. That was the second time she’d done that, I realized. I leaned toward her and asked in a murmur, “Someone out there?”