Imager's Challenge

by Jr. L. E. Modesitt

  Dear Rhenn,

  I am so pleased that your mother wants us for dinner. I hope that you have already accepted. I look forward to seeing you on Samedi.

  The closing read, “With love.”

  I took a deep breath. I hadn’t really expected anything else, but . . . I also knew I wasn’t necessarily that good at predicting how women might react. Then I hurried back to my quarters and dashed off a quick note to Mother to confirm that we would be there, rushed to the reception hall, because Beleart could post the note from there for me, and hurried to the duty coach.

  All in all, I made it to the station just before seventh glass, but not before Alsoran.

  “Good morning, Master Rhennthyl.”

  “Good morning.” I glanced back toward the study doors of the captain and the lieutenant, but didn’t see either. “Has anything happened?”

  “According to the duty desk, it was real quiet in the taudis last night.”

  That didn’t surprise me. At least some of the toughs had been elsewhere. “Let’s hope it continues that way until you get to Fifth District.”

  Alsoran smiled and turned toward the door. “I wouldn’t be arguing against that.”

  “I didn’t think you would.”

  The first and outer round was as quiet as the night before had been reported. Then, halfway through the second round, we heard screams and found an elver trying to batter his way into a dwelling that wasn’t his. It took both of us to subdue him and keep him restrained until the pickup wagon carted him off.

  After that, there were more people on the streets and lanes, and two times when older women reported grab-and-runs. We couldn’t find either youth.

  Lunch came, and we ate, and then went back to walking the round.

  In midafternoon, I happened to ask Alsoran how he’d worked out the way he’d developed of patrolling the round.

  He grinned. “Just did.”

  “You must have put some thought into the order.”

  “All things have an order. That’s true. My papa told me that time after time when I was little. You do things in the wrong order, and you run into trouble. If you try and it doesn’t work, maybe you forgot to do something first. He was a great one for doing it step-by-step.” Alsoran laughed. “Sometimes that works, and sometimes it doesn’t. It’s always worth trying.”

  I nodded slowly. That didn’t seem to be my problem.

  “The thing I learned here on the Patrol is that sometimes you do the opposite.”

  “The opposite?” I had an idea what he meant, but I wanted to see if I did.

  “You put in too many steps.” He shook his head. “Take elvers who’ve gone crazed. The procedures say that we’re supposed to tell them to halt and that we’re patrollers. There’s no elver who’s overweeded that’ll hear anything. You try to talk to them, and before you can say three words, they’re either running from you or at you. You have to know what steps to skip.”

  As we finished the last round of the day, Alsoran’s words kept echoing in my thoughts. That could have been because Master Dichartyn—all the maitres, really—had pressed so hard on me the need to proceed logically, to go through all the steps, one by one. There were more than a few problems with that. First, any logical progression would lead back to me. Second, no matter how hard I searched, I would never have the kind of absolute proof that Maitres Jhulian and Dichartyn had kept stressing. But . . . that worked two ways. And it meant that I never should have asked for the pay schedule.

  It also meant that there was little point in following Mardoyt until I made another set of preparations. So I just took a hack back to Imagisle.

  As I sat in my quarters before dinner, I continued to think about Mardoyt. I knew that he was changing charges, even eliminating the records of any charges in some cases, or sending back notes that the charges had been dropped. He was also connected to taudis-toughs and a taudischef, most likely Youdh, and those toughs had tried to kill me. Twice—through imaging and shooting at me. Equally important, I hadn’t done anything to threaten anyone. I’d only followed Mardoyt.

  I also had to wonder if imaging had been used to topple the pile of granite that had left me without shields for almost a week. If that were so, it suggested most strongly that both Harraf and Mardoyt were linked to Youdh, but in the case of Harraf, I had less information. I certainly couldn’t call it proof.

  At dinner, I ended up sitting between Chorister Isola and Quaelyn.

  “How is your pattern analysis going?” I asked Quaelyn, after we had served ourselves from the platters brought out by the servers. I hoped he might reveal something of interest.

  “There are always patterns.” He smiled. “Sometimes we can read them, and sometimes we can’t.”

  “Do you analyze patterns that affect the Ferrans?”

  “I have, but there’s little point in that now.”

  “When we’re at war?”

  He shrugged. “Their response will be to build as many weapons, ships, and landcruisers as they can and train as many soldiers and sailors as possible. Ours will be to deny them effective use of all that matériel. Because we control the sea after last week’s battles, they will turn their fury against the Jariolans on land. The Jariolans will let them attack until they are overextended, and until winter is at its height, when the steam engines of the landcruisers have a tendency to freeze up, and they will counterattack. That is what the patterns indicate.”

  “People aren’t patterns,” Isola pointed out.

  “No, honored chorister. People are patterns. We could not function without routines, schedules, and habits, and the confluence of these create patterns in every society. Success in war is being able to maintain your vital patterns and to deploy others the enemy cannot replicate or counter while anticipating and disrupting all his patterns.” Quaelyn shrugged. “Those words make it sound far simpler than the strategies and tactics necessary to do so, but in the simplest terms, that is what war is all about.” He smiled at Isola. “One of the patterns that few recognize is that of titles and naming, but I would judge that you as a chorister would see that.”

  I recognized that titles formed a pattern in any society, but what did that have to do with war? I didn’t ask, but I might as well have, because Isola read the inquiry in my expression.

  “You have to remember, Rhenn, that names and titles are like chains. Some few people wear them like fine light jewelry links that can be snapped in an instant, but for most the links are heavy enough to bind them within the confines and expectations that their name and title impose on them. The more traditional or formal a society is, the stronger those links, and both the Ferrans and the Jariolans are like that.”

  I frowned. “And we aren’t?”

  “The Council is, and much of Solidar is. The Collegium, or those who lead and direct it, is not . . . and yet is. Think about your training.”

  While I was thinking, she went on.

  “This is also true in families. Names come with expectations. Parents don’t say that the eldest child should be especially responsible, but the way in which they act effectively adds that expectation to the child’s name, perhaps every time that the child hears his name.”

  I hadn’t thought of it in quite that fashion. Then, I was more interested in the implications of what she and Quaelyn had been discussing . . . and how it related to me.

  There was a silence. A thought had occurred to me. “You know so much about this . . . but you’re here in L’Excelsis . . .” I looked to Quaelyn.

  He laughed. “I’m an analyst of patterns, not a military commander.” After a pause, he cleared his throat and added, in an almost embarrassed tone, “Every year, I teach a course at the staff college in pattern recognition and analysis. That’s for senior officers.”

  “Oh . . . I didn’t know.”

  “There’s no reason you should have,” he said gently.

  It was just another example of something else that the Collegium did that appeared nowhere in writing
.

  After dinner, I did not return to my quarters, but instead walked to the south end of Imagisle, past the anomen, to the west side, where a stand of ancient oaks formed almost a second barrier between the grounds and the River Aluse. I had an idea, but as I was discovering, not all ideas translated into practice in the way I had envisioned.

  I walked up and down the line of oaks, under the all too faint light of Artiema, only half full. Erion was full, but already low in the western sky, his grayish red light far less helpful, although it gave a sinister look to the abandoned and partly burned-out old mill across the river. I looked away from the mill, concentrating on the trees. The second oak from the north end had several large branches near the top that appeared to be dead.

  After studying them more closely, I set to work, beginning near the branch tip, and imaging out a section of wood. The branch wavered, but did not break.

  I imaged out a bit more of the dead wood. Nothing happened.

  Another attempt brought a cracking, and then the branch broke, but only hung.

  After wiping my forehead, I took a deep breath. Like everything else, making my idea into a practical device was going to take more work and skill than I’d thought. But I kept at it for more than a glass before I finally learned how to make the heavy wood fall in the general, and then the specific area where I tried to direct it.

  Vendrei was misty, with intermittent rain, and a damp chill that suggested a bitter late autumn, although winter proper was a bit more than a month away. I slipped several times on the four-mille run, but Dartazn slipped more, and I managed to finish closer to him than usual. Master Dichartyn wasn’t there for either the exercises or the run, and I wondered when he would be returning to Imagisle . . . and where he had been.

  After a cold shower and a shave that left my face blue, it took two full mugs of steaming tea at breakfast to lift the chill from my body, but I got to the duty coach early enough that I arrived on time for my last day of rounds with Alsoran. I even had to wait for him.

  He was smiling when he walked into the station.

  I couldn’t help smiling back. “Good morning. Ready to head out?”

  “Why wouldn’t I be?”

  I shrugged, and we left the station and started off up Fuosta.

  “Will you miss any part of Third District, do you think?” I asked.

  “I’ll miss some of the patrollers. Lyonyt was always good to do rounds with, and Zellyn’s a good fellow. Some of the others, too. But they say that Captain Telleryn runs a good station.” He smiled. “Jotenyr told me I’d eat a lot better out in Fifth District, and that he sees a lot more pretty women.”

  “That sounds promising.”

  “Have to admit I could stand better food than the bistros on this round.”

  With that I could definitely agree.

  As was usually the case in the earlier part of the morning, we didn’t see any taudis-toughs on the first two rounds, and only sniffed a hint of elveweed when we were two blocks or so past the Temple of Puryon on the first leg of the first round.

  Youdh’s territory, I thought.

  “Have you heard anything about the scripties, Master Rhennthyl?”

  “All I know is that they’ve started somewhere in L’Excelsis, but I don’t know much more than that, except it’s west of the river.”

  “They usually start in one of the taudis. That’d be Caniffe, most likely.”

  “Then where?”

  Alsoran shook his head. “Might do the nicer districts in the west or go straight for the hellhole. Can’t ever tell, and that’s the way they like it. They just move in and cordon off something like a ten-block square and move from house to house. We have to charge and send to gaol anyone who tries to attack them—if they don’t shoot ’em first.”

  I hadn’t heard that aspect of the conscription teams. I’d only seen them twice, when they’d visited our house when I was something like eleven and then again when I’d been an apprentice for Master Caliostrus, just before I made journeyman. “I didn’t see a cordon when they’ve been through before.”

  “They don’t use full force in some parts of the city, just in the trade and taudis quarters.”

  We kept walking and watching, but the second round ended without incident. By the second round, we’d both removed our cloaks because the sun beat down more like summer, and the air was getting hotter and steamier by the moment.

  “You never know what to expect this time of year.” Alsoran blotted his forehead. “You wear a summer uniform, and you freeze. You put on the heavier wool, and you roast.”

  By the third round, the usual toughs were beginning to appear, but all of them either ignored us or provided Alsoran with a quick nod. Clearly Jadhyl and Deyalt didn’t want trouble with the Patrol, or with Alsoran. Somewhere near the end of that round, I realized that I’d never seen the tough who’d drawn a knife on me nearly two weeks earlier.

  I insisted on buying Alsoran his lunch at Parmiens, one of the better bistros on the avenue section of the round, as a sort of promotion and transfer present. He tried to object.

  “Promotions don’t come every day, or even every year,” I pointed out. “And, this way, if no one else says anything, you can tell your wife that someone noticed. Besides, it’s Vendrei, and we deserve a good meal.”

  In the end, he capitulated.

  Not only was Alsoran pleased, but I didn’t have gut-aches for the rest of the afternoon, something that had occurred more than I would have preferred when we had eaten in some of his “favorite” places.

  When we walked up the walk to the station at the end of the last round of the day, I stopped just outside and clasped Alsoran’s hand. “I do wish you well in Fifth District.”

  “I’d be wishing you well, too, Master Rhennthyl. If you don’t mind my saying so, with some more experience, you’d be a good Patrol captain. You settle things down, somehow. Zellyn said the same thing.”

  Settle things down? It seemed to me that I was always being forced to stir things up.

  Once we entered the station, Captain Harraf, whom I hadn’t seen in days, beckoned to Alsoran, then smiled at me before escorting Alsoran into his study and closing the door.

  After I left Third District station, just after fourth glass, I took a hack to the Avenue D’Artisans and had the driver drop me off midway between the two points where Mardoyt had left the hack when I’d trailed him. Then I made my way westward to Saelio, moving in from the north under concealment shields. With the sun getting lower in the west, and the shadows from the old dwellings and oak trees, no one seemed to look in my direction as I took my time getting into position two houses away from Mardoyt’s duplex. His daughter was playing with dolls on the porch, then disappeared inside when someone called her as the shadows merged with twilight.

  As I continued to wait, not exactly comfortably, I studied the old oaks, picking out several as possibilities, and testing them gently. The twilight deepened into night, past the time when other men, and some women, returned to their houses. Twice, I had to ease out of people’s way, but they either didn’t see me through my shields, or if they caught a hint of something, they really didn’t want to look in my direction.

  In time, the lights on the lower level of the house were snuffed out, except for a single lamp that remained lit in the front hall, barely visible through the large window behind the porch. I kept waiting, until close to midnight, or perhaps past it.

  It was a long, long walk back to Imagisle, since there were no hacks about, and my feet ached by the time I opened the door to my quarters. I almost stepped on the note that had been slipped under my door, but bent over and picked it up. Then I closed the door and imaged the desk lamp into flame before opening the envelope and reading the single line.

  I’d like to see you.

  Under the five words was the initial D.

  I couldn’t say that I was surprised.

  I was so tired on Vendrei night that it took me a moment to realize that my old
charred armoire had been replaced, but my clothes had been merely laid out on my bed. That meant I had to put them away before I went to sleep. Before breakfast on Samedi morning, I immediately stopped by Master Dichartyn’s study. He wasn’t there, and I left word with the duty prime—Olseort—that I’d been by to see him. After breakfast I stopped by once more, but unsurprisingly he wasn’t there.

  So I headed out to my studio, where I fired up the stove to take the chill off, prepared for Master Rholyn’s sitting, and then began to work on the background—which didn’t require his presence. Several times, I glanced outside, where the morning sun was warming the damp ground and grass and fog was rising into a clear pale blue sky.

  Right around half past seven, while I was finishing up the foreground at the bottom of Master Rholyn’s portrait, Master Dichartyn walked into the studio.

  “Rhennthyl . . . I thought I might find you here. You’re so very predictable. Dutiful, too, for the most part.”

  I smiled my polite smile, the one Maitre Dyana had called almost supercilious or some such. “Yes, sir. I do try.”

  “You’re also trying.” He sighed. Loudly. “You asked for a pay schedule for the civic patrollers. Fortunately, you asked Master Schorzat. What would have happened if you had asked the Patrol commander or subcommander?”

  “I realized I shouldn’t have—”

  “Of course, you shouldn’t have. And it’s all well and good to be contrite after Master Schorzat pointed out the problems.” He didn’t raise his voice. “Sometimes, you offer such promise, and then . . .”