Imager

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  “How could you know that from a meeting a journeyman artist a few times?”

  “You were always neat, clean, and with short hair and no beard, and after I saw the study you painted, I could tell you had talent to go with that ambition. I worried that you had too much ambition for a portraiturist.”

  “Too much ambition?”

  “I didn’t say that right.” She tilted her head slightly. “Too much honesty for a portraiturist with that much ambition.”

  A faint scent of flowers emanated from her, not too much, a light scent.

  Before that long, the coach stopped, we stepped out, and I paid and tipped the hacker.

  Felters was ensconced in what had been a graystone row house on the south side of the lane that angled off East River Road. The oversized lamps that flanked the door were already lit, although the sun had not quite set.

  The harried-looking server who greeted us looked at Seliora, then at me.

  I did my best to mentally press friendliness upon her. “For two, please.”

  “Ah … this way.”

  We ended up at a small window table, crowded between two much larger tables, one occupied by three older men in suits of a cut I did not recognize, and one empty, but the smaller table was fine with me.

  “What would you like to drink?” asked the server.

  I inclined my head to Seliora.

  “Do you have a white Sanellio?”

  The server nodded.

  “Cambrisio, white,” I added.

  The server left a slate on which the three specialties of the evening had been written in small script—Chicken Asseroiles, Pork Samedi, and Flank Steak Especial.

  “Are any of these favorites of yours?” I asked.

  “I think I’d like the chicken. You?”

  “The steak. I’m partial to both mushrooms and parsley.”

  When the two goblets of wine came, right after two couples were settled in at the table behind me, I ordered for us, adding a crab bisque as an appetizer and choosing the walnut and shaved apple and cheese salad. They were probably winter-kept apples, but it was worth a try.

  After the server left, Seliora looked at me. “You don’t have to impress me.”

  “I just wanted to have a good meal with you and enjoy it. That’s not something I get to do often.”

  “If you do it often, you won’t be able to afford anything else.” But her words were said warmly.

  I lifted my wine goblet. “To you and to a delightful evening.”

  She lifted hers. “I’ll return that. To you … and the evening.”

  The Cambrisio was good, but looking at Seliora was better.

  “Why did you ask me to dance, that first time?” I asked.

  “I wanted to. Rogaris told Odelia that you were too serious for me.”

  “He didn’t know you well, then.”

  “Do you?” A hint of mischief colored her words.

  “No, but I know that there’s more to you than meets the eye … and I’m interested in learning more about you.”

  For just a moment, her eyes flickered past me, looking outside.

  “What is it?”

  “Nothing. Someone going past, but he was looking this way.”

  “Do you know him?”

  She shook her head. “From what I saw, he’s not someone I’d wish to know.”

  The server arrived with the salads. I took a bite, gingerly. “The salad is good, especially the cheese.”

  A faint smile crossed Seliora’s lips, but she nodded, before saying, “It is.”

  “Why did you smile?”

  “Not that many men would worry about the salad. They’d either eat it or ignore it.”

  I shrugged. I wasn’t about to say I’d wanted it to be good for her. “I enjoy a good meal.”

  “You couldn’t have eaten that well at Master Caliostrus’s house.”

  I hadn’t. “Why do you say that?”

  “Last summer, I was with Odelia, and Ostrius was talking to her escort—the one before Kolasyn—about how he skipped as many meals as he could.”

  “He could afford to. I couldn’t. It wasn’t that bad.”

  “I like that about you.”

  “What?”

  “You’re not the complaining type. You do what’s necessary until you can make things better. That’s why you’ll do well as an imager.”

  “Complaining doesn’t do any good,” I pointed out. “If the person you complain to is the kind who would listen, they’ve already done what they can, and anyone else either won’t listen, doesn’t care, or can’t do anything.”

  “Most people aren’t that practical.”

  I’d never thought of myself as that practical. How practical was trying to be a portraiturist when you came from a family of wool factors?

  The server reappeared, took the empty salad plates, and placed the entrees in front of us. I cut into the flank steak, and then ate several bites, enjoying the combination of mushrooms, buttered parsley, and seasoned tender beef. “How is your chicken?”

  “Very tender, and tasty. It reminds me of Aunt Aegina’s.”

  “Odelia’s mother?”

  “Yes. She’s a good cook, better than Mother. That might be because she enjoys it.”

  “Your mother eats because she has to.”

  “You noticed.”

  “She has a certain … determination, like someone else, I suspect.”

  Seliora flushed, just a touch. Then she stiffened and looked up and out the window. “That man … out there, in the dark brown cloak and a square beard. He’s walked past twice, and he’s looked at you.”

  “At you, I’m most certain. You’re the one worth looking at.”

  “You’re kind, but he wasn’t looking at me.”

  If Seliora said the man wasn’t, then he wasn’t, but why would anyone be looking at me? From what I’d seen so far since I’d become an imager, no one gave imagers more than a passing glance—and that more to avoid us than anything else. “There’s not much I can do about it now.”

  “I suppose not.”

  “Enjoy your chicken.” I almost added that she should enjoy my looking at her, but that would have been too forward.

  “And what else? You were about to add something.”

  “The company, if you can.”

  “I’m enjoying that very much.”

  “I’m glad.”

  After several more bites and another swallow of wine, I asked, “Do you like designing the patterns for the upholstery?”

  “The designing I like very much.” Seliora’s smile turned wry. “Working with some clients is sometimes less enjoyable.”

  I kept asking her questions through the remainder of dinner and through dessert—an apple cream custard—and the tea that followed.

  Finally, as much as I’d enjoyed the dinner, both the food and the company, there were people waiting outside, and the server kept looking at us.

  “I suppose we had better go. I wouldn’t want to be accused of keeping you out too late.”

  “You would have been anyway, even if we’d left a glass ago,” she replied.

  All in all, the dinner cost four silvers, counting what I left for the server.

  We stepped out of the bistro and were walking toward the pair of hacks waiting for fares, when Seliora stiffened again, glanced to my right, and then tugged my arm.

  “Over there,” she whispered. “It’s the same man.”

  I turned my head and saw the glint in the bearded man’s hand, and then what looked to be a spark or flash. I was too slow in trying to throw up shields, and something smashed into my shoulder. Despite the pain, I was furious. I concentrated on imaging caustic into his eyes and inside his chest, around his heart, or where I thought his heart was.

  There was a single shriek, and he pitched forward onto the pavement of the sidewalk.

  I stood there dumbly for a moment.

  Seliora looked at me. “You’re bleeding.”

  Before
I could speak, she’d started to open my waistcoat and shirt and had jammed something into the wound.

  “You!” Her voice penetrated the night as she pointed toward the lead hacker of those waiting outside Felters. “We’re headed to the Bridge of Hopes. Now.”

  “But … that’s …”

  “Someone’s shot an imager. Do you want the imagers after you?”

  Getting into the coach wasn’t too hard. I didn’t even need Seliora’s help.

  Once we sat down on the hard seat of the coach, she resumed pressing the handkerchief against and into the wound. “You’re still bleeding too much. I can’t stop it all.” She turned her head and yelled, “Faster!”

  I tried to image something like a shield around the wound.

  “Whatever you’re doing, Rhenn, keep doing it. The bleeding’s almost stopped.” She didn’t lessen the pressure on my shoulder, though. To keep the pressure on the wound, she had to be very close to me, and if it hadn’t have been for the pain—and the fear—I would have enjoyed that closeness a great deal more.

  The ride toward the bridge seemed to take a long time, and no time at all, in a strange way, but before that long the hacker called down, “I’m not supposed to cross the bridge, Mistress!”

  “Cross it!”

  “But …”

  A small pistol appeared in her gloved hand, and she leaned out the open coach window, pointing the pistol. “Cross it.”

  The clatter of hoofs on stone was almost reassuring.

  “Where should he go?” asked Seliora

  I was having trouble thinking, and maintaining the shield over the wound, but it had to be the infirmary. Someone was always there. “The right … lane after we cross the bridge. The second building, and the first door, the one … staff and a green leaf on the door.”

  Seliora shouted the directions to the driver, then turned back to me. “Hold on. Keep doing that.”

  Then, the hacker brought the coach to a stop.

  “Hold this in place, Rhenn.” She pressed my hand against the wadded handkerchief and the warm dampness, then pushed open the coach door and darted out, snapping something at the hacker.

  I kept trying to stay awake and alert, trying to push back the encroaching darkness, as I heard doors opening and voices, but then … darkness was all there was.

  … except a darkened twilight that I was carried through …

  The room where I woke, if becoming vaguely aware of one’s surroundings meant awakening, was small and gray, and I lay on a hard and narrow bed or pallet. I had a vague recollection of being carried somewhere, and then someone standing over me, and pains shooting through my shoulder.

  Seliora was standing there beside the bed. So was someone else, but she was closer.

  “You’re here …” My voice was barely a whisper.

  “I’m here. Where else would I be?” She reached out and squeezed my fingers—the ones on the hand of my uninjured side.

  “Thank you.” I had to squint to see the figure behind her. “Master …?”

  “Draffyd,” he supplied. “I took care of the wound, but you’ll have to lie still for a time. You won’t have a choice. You’re strapped to the bed, but that’s so that you don’t do anything to rip open the stitches and reopen the wound. Please don’t try to move against the restraints. Later, we’ll remove them, but for the next few glasses, you’ll need to be still.”

  I didn’t like that at all, but there were both dull and sharp pains in my shoulder and chest, and both felt like I’d been run over by a draft horse with spiked shoes.

  Master Draffyd turned to Seliora. “You cannot stay here for the evening.”

  She just looked at him as if to ask why not.

  “In Rhennthyl’s case, it wouldn’t be safe for either of you. There are imager reasons why this is so.”

  She turned her head back to me.

  I had to think for a moment before I realized why. Who knew what I’d do in my sleep? Or in a delirium. “He’s right … wish you could stay … but …”

  “We’ll send you back home in a Collegium carriage. You’ll be quite safe,” added Master Draffyd. “We’re very thankful you were there, and both the Collegium and Rhenn owe you a great deal.”

  “What about Rhenn?”

  “He’ll recover. You got him here while he still had enough blood. If he were going to die, he’d already be dead. He’ll be very weak for a few days, but he’ll recover. You stay with him while I send for the carriage.” Master Draffyd nodded to Seliora, then slipped out of the room.

  She moved closer. “That man outside Felters … I knew he was after you.”

  “I … won’t dispute you … again.”

  “You killed him, didn’t you?”

  I started to nod, but even that hurt. “Yes. I think so … anyway … tried to disable him … Hurt too much …”

  She bent over and brushed my forehead with her lips. She was so close I could see the redness in her eyes. She still looked lovely.

  “… be all right …”

  “I expect it. Now … you be quiet. You don’t need to talk. Save your strength.” She squeezed my fingers again as she straightened, but she did not let go of them, not until Master Draffyd returned.

  “The carriage will be outside in a few moments.”

  “So soon?” she asked.

  “There’s always one ready, at any glass.”

  I hadn’t known that, not that it would have made any difference. The hacker had gotten us to Imagisle as fast as anyone could have. “The hacker …?”

  “I had him paid,” said Master Draffyd. “The Collegium paid, actually. We also gave him a goodwill token. It’s worth a gold when he renews his medallion.” He paused. “I hear the carriage outside. It’s rather late, Mistress D’Shelim, and I’m certain your family has been worried.”

  “They will understand.” Seliora bent over and kissed me, gently, but on the lips. “Take good care of yourself.” Then she stepped away.

  After she left the room, Master Draffyd stepped closer. He held a small vial. “I’m going to give you something to deepen your sleep a little. You’ll have to open your mouth.”

  I did, and he poured close to a cupful into me. Despite a mint-like scent that wasn’t unpleasant, the liquid itself tasted like acidic peppermint laced with cheap plonk, and I couldn’t help but grimace.

  “It tastes terrible. I remember. You don’t forget.“ He stoppered the vial and slipped it into a pocket of his waistcoat, then looked back at me. “You wouldn’t be alive without the young woman, you know?”

  “Nor … without you, either.”

  “That’s true, but she had the presence of mind to get you here. How did she know?”

  “I gave her directions.” I realized that I was a little stronger. Not much, but a trace.

  He frowned. “You were awake?”

  “Until after we crossed the bridge and got to the infirmary door. I was holding a shield tight against the wound … until the end when I got too light-headed to concentrate.”

  “In that case, it did take both of you. She said so, but … it’s still amazing.”

  That irritated me, weak as I was. “If Seliora said so … it’s true.”

  “No. I’m certain she told the truth. I meant your holding a shield against a wound like that. Most wouldn’t think of that.”

  I wouldn’t have thought of it without Seliora’s suggestion, but I wasn’t going to tell Master Draffyd that. “You imaged the bullet out, didn’t you, and then imaged some sort of dressing or patch in there.”

  “It’s more complicated than that, but something like that.” He paused. “What about the man who shot you?”

  “He’s dead, I think. I imaged caustic into his eyes and chest … inside his chest, near the heart. That was hard. He screamed and dropped over.” I could feel my eyes trying to close.

  “You need to rest. Don’t worry. Someone will be watching.”

  I was worried, but that didn’t stop my eyes from clo
sing.

  39

  No one survives in the world without wounds; the lucky and the determined are unfortunate enough to survive more of them.

  When I woke on Solayi, barely after dawn, with gray light seeping into the gray room, I ached all over, and my head was pounding. I’d barely opened my eyes when an obdurate in a plain black uniform appeared, holding a tall glass filled with clear liquid.

  “Master Draffyd said you are to drink all of this.” He held it to my lips.

  I drank. So far as I could tell or taste, the liquid was just water, but water with no taste whatsoever. Water or not, in less than a quarter glass, the worst of the pounding in my head had subsided to a dull ache. That was a mixed blessing, because I was still strapped in place, and most uncomfortable, as well as able to think about it.

  Before all that long, thankfully, Master Draffyd appeared. “I’m going to remove your restraints, but please don’t move until I tell you to.”

  “Yes, sir.” I would have agreed to anything to get clear of the straps.

  I forced myself to look down as he changed the dressing. There were two wounds, less than four digits apart. The area around each was bruised. Both were sutured with wide stitches.

  “So far, so good. You’ll have some interesting scars there, Rhennthyl.”

  Whatever he used to clean the area stung. Then his face tightened in concentration, and I could feel stinging in my chest, then stabbing pain that slowly subsided.

  “You were carrying some shields, weren’t you?”

  “Just ones with triggers against imaging. I tried to raise full shields, but I was too slow.”

  He nodded. “The shields you did have saved your life. Those bullets would have gone right through you, and the exit wounds would have bled even more.”

  “I wouldn’t be alive if we hadn’t come here.”

  “No, but please don’t test your luck again.”

  I had no intention of that—except I hadn’t been testing anything.

  “Obern will be here and help you clean up and get into a set of dry sleepwear and get you some clean bedding. Just lie here quietly for at least a glass. After that, you can move, but only slowly and carefully and not often. And don’t use the arm on your wounded side. Not at all. You’ll get something to eat in a while.”