Imager

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  “No, sir.”

  “You should practice that skill with every person you meet, until it becomes second nature. If you do so, you will find that there are times when it has saved your life. If you do not, your life may well be that much shorter.”

  I couldn’t help frowning.

  “Rhennthyl … think of it this way. What distinguishes those who are successful from those who are not is what they know and how they apply that knowledge. Because the world is governed by men, should you not endeavor to learn as much as possible about men? If you study men with the same diligence as you have studied art and the texts with which Master Dichartyn has plied you and examined you, you will gain great knowledge about how best to apply all you know.” He smiled. “That is my homily for the day, but I would ask you to consider it.”

  Master Poincaryt was true to his word and did not offer a single other piece of advice, only thanking me for my diligence just before he departed and confirmed that he would be present the following Samedi at the same time.

  As I cleaned up the studio, I realized something about Master Poincaryt and his advice. He’d only given me one suggestion. Because he had offered nothing else, I was likely to remember that suggestion far more than if it had been buried among a wealth of ideas. What he said certainly made sense, and I could certainly practice during the slow times at the Chateau.

  After cleaning up the studio, I wandered back to my quarters before making my way to the dining hall for lunch. Once there, I spied Reynol.

  “Could I join you?”

  He looked to both sides—where both chairs were empty—then raised his eyebrows dramatically and grinned.

  “I think you made your point.” I settled into the chair on his left. “Have you seen Menyard lately?”

  “He’s out visiting some cousin today. That’s because he’s interested in her best friend. Whatever happened to the lady who saved your life?”

  “She’s been away and just got back. I’ll see her tomorrow.”

  “It must be nice to leave L’Excelsis in the summer.”

  “It was a mixed blessing. She was accompanying her grandmother and her brother.”

  “That could be a very mixed blessing.” Reynol passed a platter of cool fowl slices, and then one of rice fries.

  I poured some of the red wine. “Would you like some?”

  “Please.”

  “What do you think about what might happen in Caenen?” I asked.

  “Haven’t you seen the newsheets?”

  “Not today.”

  “The High Priest was leading some ritual meeting. He declared that we were whatever the Caenenan equivalent of the Namer was, when he dropped dead. Apparently, his heart stopped.”

  “Oh … I see.” I had a good idea how that happened. “What’s likely to happen next?”

  “We or Tiempre will be blamed.” Reynol shrugged, then added, “One would hope his successor would see the error of his predecessor’s ways. Sometimes they do, sometimes not.”

  “Has anyone heard from Kahlasa or Claustyn?”

  “We would have heard if something went wrong, unless it happened in the last few days.”

  “Oh?”

  “Their names would go up on the plaques of those lost in the line of duty. Those are the tablets on the wall to the right of the main entrance.”

  I’d seen the plaques, and the names, but I had thought of them more as memorials to much older imagers. Until that moment, it hadn’t really struck me that the names of those I knew near my own age might appear on the them. After a moment, I asked, “What about Jariola?”

  Reynol laughed. “The death of the High Priest of Caenen won’t matter to the Oligarch. He’s the kind that thinks nothing could possibly happen to him. Besides, it won’t. When their entire government is composed of a small number of people who think exactly the same way with the same interests and prejudices, what difference does it make to Solidar who’s nominally in charge? The Oligarch dies, and the next one acts just the same.”

  Again, I hadn’t thought of it in quite that way.

  In the end, we came to no real conclusions about what might happen. Afterward, I picked up copies of both newsheets and sat on a shaded bench in the quadrangle and read them. I didn’t learn much. After that, I watched the younger imagers walking back and forth and tried to practice what Master Poincaryt had suggested. It was far harder than it had sounded.

  At slightly before third glass, I crossed the Bridge of Hopes under a sky that held a high silvery haze that might have kept the day cooler, except that there was no breeze at all, and the air was still and sodden. Following Master Dichartyn’s instructions, I was holding full shields and hoping that I could do so for as long as necessary. Despite the warmth of the afternoon, the streets were crowded, and so were the sidewalks. I had to wait several moments before I could cross East River Road, weaving my way through carriages and wagons, and the occasional rider.

  The flower lady with the green and yellow umbrella was on the south side of the Boulevard D’Imagers, if a half block farther east, near the east entrance to the boulevard gardens. I saw no sign of the man who had been in the yellow vest—but there were scores of people moving along the broad walk bordering the gardens.

  “Fresh flowers … the best for you, sir.” She turned toward me.

  “How much are the daisies there?”

  “For you, sir, a mere three coppers.”

  I didn’t feel like haggling, but I did want to know a few things, and I tried to concentrate on observing the flower seller. “Last week you were talking to a man in a pale blue shirt and a yellow vest …”

  “I talk to those who buy or those who might. That’d be scores every day.” She smiled, but her eyes remained tense and worried, and her shoulders stiffened. “Last week? I’d find it hard to remember who I saw this morning.”

  I handed over the three coppers. “I just wondered because he’s a bravo. He could even be an assassin.”

  There was the faintest twitch at my words.

  “I see you do know him.”

  “No, sir. Not by name. Everyone knows him as the Ferran. He talks just like you and me. He’s been on the streets here longer ’n me, and that’s longer ’n I’d like to count.”

  “After all those years, no one knows more than that?”

  She shook her head. “Even the streetwalkers avoid him. They say one of ’em learned something about him, and she washed up against the barge piers downriver two days later.”

  “Then I won’t press you.” I took the daisies. “A good day to you.”

  As I turned away from her, stepping out from under the umbrella and into the direct sunlight, the faint crack and the sharp impact against my shields were nearly instantaneous. I was pushed around, back toward the cart. A second crack followed.

  The flower seller sprawled beside her cart, the dark redness of blood welling across the thin blouse. She shuddered several times, and was still. I managed to turn, but I saw absolutely nothing out of the ordinary—except a handful of people staring in my direction.

  Then, from behind the wall, Master Dichartyn and a civic patroller appeared and hurried toward me.

  “Are you all right, Rhennthyl?”

  “I’m fine.” I glanced down at the dead flower seller, then back at Master Dichartyn and the patroller. He was older, graying, and that definitely bothered me. “Did you see him? Whoever shot her?”

  Master Dichartyn shook his head. “He shot from the garden on the other side. He waited for an opening in the traffic.”

  “You were talking to her. Did she tell you anything?” That was the patroller.

  Before I said a word, I looked to Master Dichartyn. He nodded.

  “Not much. I asked about the man in the yellow vest. She only knew his street name, and she didn’t want to know more. People who discovered anything about him ended up dead. They called him the Ferran. She didn’t know why because he talked like everyone else.”

  The patroller l
ooked to Master Dichartyn. “Your man here has enemies with expensive tastes and wallets to match.” He glanced around the stone of the wide sidewalk, as if searching for something, then hurried westward where he picked up something. I had the feeling it was the bullet that had hit my shields.

  “You’re going to get a great deal of experience with shields, Rhennthyl.” Master Dichartyn kept his voice low.

  What he didn’t say was that, if I didn’t whenever I left Imagisle, I’d soon be dead. “Do you think this was … linked to Johanyr?” My voice was equally low.

  “No. This is something else. I don’t know what.”

  From his lack of expression, I could tell he didn’t like not knowing.

  The senior patroller returned. He looked at me, then at Dichartyn before holding up the bullet. The end was squashed at an angle.

  I didn’t say anything. Neither did Master Dichartyn.

  “Nasty business,” the patroller finally said, adding conversationally, “I don’t think anyone in headquarters would look into matters much if this Ferran were found dead.”

  “Possibly not,” replied Master Dichartyn, “but if he died now, whoever hired him would just hire someone else.”

  As we stood there, a Collegium duty coach pulled up. Master Dichartyn gestured. “It’s to take you to your parents’ house. There’s nothing more you can do here.”

  I didn’t argue.

  In the coach on the way to my parents’, I thought about what had just happened. Why was Master Dichartyn so convinced that the Ferran had not been hired by High Holder Ryel? Based on what I’d learned from Maitre Dyana, the likely answer was that the High Holder regarded mere murder as too kind, but there had to be other reasons. I just didn’t know what they were.

  When the driver took the South Middle Road, rather than staying on the Midroad, I started to worry, until he took Sangloire, and then the back lanes, ways to the house that I’d only seen Charlsyn use. That familiarity raised other questions, but there was no one to ask. The driver did wait after he pulled up outside the house, watching as I walked up onto the portico.

  Khethila opened the door before I even knocked. She rushed out and threw her arms around me. “Rhenn!”

  At that moment, I realized I’d left the flowers behind, but I managed to grin as I disentangled myself. “I did see you last Samedi, you know?”

  “It’s been a long week, a very long week. Come in!”

  I glanced back and saw the coach pulling away.

  Khethila followed my glance. “That’s no hack.”

  “No. I was fortunate to get a ride in a Collegium coach.”

  “I think I’ve seen one like that before,” mused Khethila, “but I don’t remember where.”

  “That’s possible.” I closed the door behind us and managed not to sigh as I released full shields, leaving only the anti-imager trigger shields in place.

  “The rear courtyard porch is cooler, and Father and Culthyn are already out there.”

  Since it was sheltered and walled, that was fine with me, and I followed her through the house. Father was sitting in the most shaded corner, looking over what appeared to be a ledger.

  Culthyn was sitting at the small table with a deck of plaques, playing at solitaire. He looked up after a moment.

  “How did you like Kherseilles?” I asked Culthyn, taking the other corner chair.

  “It was like any other place.” His tone conveyed boredom.

  “Did you do anything interesting?”

  “Not much.”

  I paused as Nellica appeared and placed a cool glass of some sort of white wine on the side table beside my chair.

  Father cleared his throat, loudly enough to catch Culthyn’s attention.

  “Well, Rousel did arrange for me to do sailing a couple of times. It was cooler on the water, and once we saw a sea sprite.”

  “They don’t usually get close to people.”

  “We were pretty far away.”

  “Not many people see them,” added Khethila. “You were fortunate.”

  “Fortunate indeed,” snorted Father. “You threaten them, and they’re worse than a necrimager.”

  “There haven’t been any necrimagers since the bad old times,” Culthyn asserted.

  “Not any known ones,” I said.

  Khethila glanced at me, surprised. “You aren’t saying there are some at the Collegium?”

  “Of course not.” Not that I knew, anyway. “What I meant was that just because someone hasn’t seen something doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist, especially when you’re talking about something like imaging life force into a dead or dying person. You can’t do that, anyway, but I suppose other things … are possible.” I realized that I’d almost revealed something I shouldn’t have, and I kept talking to change the subject. “People see things that they don’t understand, and they claim it’s caused by something, usually what they want to believe. There are cases where people have fallen into such a deep trance everyone thought they were dead. Then they wake up. I suspect all the old legends about necrimaging are based on misunderstandings like that.”

  Khethila raised her eyebrows, but did not question me.

  “You make it sound so dull.” Culthyn gathered together the deck of plaques laid out on the table and shuffled them, then began to deal them out into the six piles for solitaire once more.

  “Most things are,” Father offered dryly, “until you understand them even more fully.” He closed the ledger with a thump. “To an observant man, the figures in any business ledger can tell an interesting story.”

  I wouldn’t have gone that far, but he did have a point. I also had a glimmer of an idea why Khethila had said it had been a long week. Like Father, she could read behind the figures, but unlike Father, she had no real authority in the factorage.

  Mother appeared at the porch door. “Dinner is ready.”

  “I’m famished!” Leaving the plaques half dealt on the table, Culthyn bounded up and into the house, past Mother, who had stepped back as if to avoid a charging goat.

  “Famished?” I looked to Khethila.

  “He heard about what you said to Rousel years ago when he said he was starved.”

  “Famished is just as bad.” But I couldn’t stop smiling as we rose and followed, far more sedately.

  Once in the dining room, we waited for Father, who finally entered and placed his hands on the back of his armed chair. He looked to me, standing to the right. “Since it is in celebration of your birthday, belated as it may be, you should offer the blessing.”

  I nodded. “For the grace and warmth from above, for the bounty of the earth below. …”

  “In peace and harmony,” came the reply.

  “You still offer the artists’ blessing?” asked Culthyn. “You’re not an artist anymore.”

  “Actually, I’m still painting. Besides, there isn’t an imagers’ blessing.” I poured Father’s wine, then Mother’s, then my own, before sitting and then handing the carafe to Khethila.

  “You can’t paint, can you?” Culthyn looked surprised.

  “I can paint. I just can’t get paid for it. I’m actually doing a portrait of one of the senior imagers. That’s when I have time.”

  Kiesela carried in a platter with three fowl upon it. Each was halved, and the scent of orange and spices filled the air.

  “Naranje duck,” Mother announced. “Rhenn’s favorite, with cumin-cream rice.”

  I smiled.

  “Worth a small fortune now, cumin is,” Father announced.

  “Why?” asked Culthyn.

  “It comes from Caenen, mostly,” Father explained as he served half a duck to Mother and then to himself. “They still smuggle it in, but it costs more, and all the spice merchants raise the price even when they have large stocks.”

  “Couldn’t you get it from Remaya’s father?”

  Mother glared at Culthyn. “One does not take advantage of relatives, nor ask for special favors that will cost them. It’s unfair to
impose. Besides, it’s ill-mannered.”

  Culthyn squirmed in his chair.

  I took a bite of the duck. It was excellent, the orange and the bitters and the apple reduction all turning the meat succulent. The crispy skin was good, too.

  “This would be perfect,” Mother offered, “if Rousel and Remaya were here, and …” She deliberately left her sentence unfinished.

  “But I don’t,” I said, managing a smile, “and I won’t for a while, it’s likely.” I wasn’t about to mention Seliora, not yet, although I suspected it wouldn’t be long.

  “He’s still young, yet, Maelyna.”

  “Not for that long.” She glanced toward Khethila, but said nothing.

  Khethila flushed.

  “So … what did the Council do this week?” asked Father.

  I couldn’t help laughing.

  “It’s that amusing?”

  “No, sir. It’s just that my duties keep me from knowing, in most cases, what the Council is doing. What I find amusing is that I spend most of the day within twenty yards of the Council chamber, and I don’t know much more than when I spent the entire day at the Collegium.” I’d also laughed at Father’s valiant, but transparent, effort to get the subject away from whom Khethila and I might marry and when. But I did appreciate the attempt.

  “Just what is it that you do, dear?” asked Mother quickly. “I don’t believe you’ve ever said or written anything about it.”

  “We escort petitioners to see councilors. We help make sure people don’t intrude upon the councilors. Sometimes we carry messages from the councilors to other councilors or to their aides, and we do other things that I can’t mention.”

  “Are those scary and dangerous?” asked Culthyn.

  I laughed. “Usually they’re boring. Once or twice they could have been dangerous.”

  “Do you see factors petitioning the councilors?” asked Father. “Anyone I might know?”

  “It’s possible. I don’t know everyone you know. Councilor Etyenn is a cloth factor. I didn’t encounter him, but some of the regular messengers were jesting about the fact that he spends as little time as possible in L’Excelsis.”

  “That doesn’t surprise me,” Father replied. “He has the largest cloth warehouses in Solidar. It’s a wonder that he has any time to devote to the Council.”