“That’s true enough. Father even agreed to a fixed-price contract for the first fast battlecruiser. We would have lost tens of thousands of golds on it, and the Council still wouldn’t agree.”
That was something I hadn’t known. “Who was the most opposed to the contract?”
“Councilor Glendyl, in spite of all he said in public.” A touch of bitterness shaded his words.
“Wouldn’t he have supplied all the engines and boilers?”
“He had a contract with father, splitting the profits.”
“And he would have shared in the losses?”
Frydryk shook his head. “He would have broken even. Father would have taken the losses.” He paused. “Just on the first ship. That was so the Council could see how much better it was.”
“What did Glendyl say?”
“He said that he’d be Namer-cursed if he’d forgo a profit because the Council was too stupid to do what was right. He told father that he and the other High Holders either had to change the way Solidar was governed or that the realities of modern technology would take care of it, one way or another.”
“That sounds like a threat of sorts.”
“Father just laughed afterwards. He said that Glendyl understood golds, but not people, and that was why he accomplished so little in the Council.”
“Whereas Caartyl understands people, but not golds?”
“I suppose you could put it that way.”
“Have you ever spent much time with either Glendyl or Caartyl?”
“No. I’ve exchanged pleasantries. That’s about it.”
“Did your father ever deal with Sea-Marshal Geuffryt?”
“I don’t know. He never mentioned that name.”
“Juniae D’Shendael?”
Frydryk raised his eyebrows. “It wasn’t a good idea even to mention her name around father.”
From what I’d heard, I wasn’t surprised.
Abruptly, he looked at me, then frowned.
“What is it?” I asked.
“I hesitate to say this, but…. Rhenn, do you know how many High Holders aren’t…how should I put it…extraordinarily effusive when your name is mentioned?”
I managed a wry smile. “Besides you, Kandryl, Alynkya, and Iryela…I’d be amazed if any were even politely effusive.”
“Father alluded to matters…”
“Your father was a thoughtful High Holder, especially in considering the interests of all the people of Solidar. Intelligent as most High Holders are, few approach his breadth of understanding.” I was probably overstating the case, but, if Suyrien hadn’t told his sons, except indirectly, how Kandryl had come to be Ryel D’Alte, I wasn’t about to. In such matters, I trusted Suyrien’s judgment about other High Holders. Unhappily, it meant that the Collegium would have more High Holder resentments to deal with because I was more visible and more senior.
I didn’t want to press Frydryk, nor to answer his implied question, and I replied by saying, “There were some High Holder matters that affected the Collegium, and some of them weren’t pleased with the way I was involved. Your father felt that I’d done the best I could, given the situation. He was always fair-minded that way.”
“Yes, he was.”
“Did he ever mention Glendyl being pressured by Haebyn?”
“The only thing I can recall along those lines was when he said Glendyl didn’t understand that Solidar wasn’t Ferrum, and that he’d have to learn to deal with Haebyn and the others.”
I asked a few more questions, and when it was clear that I wasn’t learning any more, I stood and thanked him, profusely, and then departed.
By the time I got back to Imagisle and my study, it was second glass.
Schorzat appeared before I had my winter cloak off and hung up.
“Rhenn, after we talked about Geuffryt last week, I got to thinking. I remembered that Maitre Poincaryt had mentioned something about him, and I dug out my notes. It’s not much, but I thought you’d like to know. This was two years ago, at a reception here in L’Excelsis. Maitre Poincaryt didn’t say where, even when I asked him. Geuffryt was talking to the top Sea-Marshal-Valeun. He only said a few words before Valeun glared at him.” Schorzat smiled.
“They must have been interesting words.”
“Geuffryt said something to the effect that he was tired of High Holder control and stupidity because they didn’t understand either war or economics, and that the Collegium didn’t help matters. Valeun said maybe three words. Geuffryt turned pale and left the reception right then.”
“I didn’t see anything about that in the files.”
“Maitre Poincaryt mentioned it to me when Maitre Dichartyn was out of town on an inspection trip. I told Maitre Dichartyn, but I didn’t give him a written report.”
“I appreciate your tracking that down. Thank you. Have you or Kahlasa found out anything about barges?”
“We probably won’t get a report on them until Lundi.”
When Schorzat left, I thought about what he’d told me. By themselves, Geuffryt’s words meant little, but I had the feeling there well might be more.
I left my study a bit early so that I could ride out with the duty coach to pick up Seliora and have the driver drop all three of us at my parents’ house for a dinner that was more obligation than anything else.
Seliora looked tired when I collected them. So I carried Diestrya to the coach and played with her. Seliora closed her eyes. She might have been dozing, or just resting.
Mother was the one who opened the door, and her eyes went straight to me. “Your face-what happened to you?” she demanded.
“A few stones,” I replied.
My mother immediately looked to Seliora. “A few?”
“Quite a few. He got bruised protecting us. He couldn’t leave Imagisle until a few days ago.”
“Let them get in the house, Maelyna,” groused Father from the rear of the foyer.
Once we were in the family parlor, where Culthyn waited, Father looked at me. “That was a Collegium coach, and the word is that some senior imagers were killed in the attack on the Collegium.”
“I have a new position at the Collegium,” I admitted. “I’m no longer a Civic Patrol captain.”
“Did you get promoted?” interjected Culthyn.
“Yes. I’m a Maitre D’Esprit now.”
“Do you get paid more?”
“I do. Enough.” I managed a laugh. “We’re here for dinner, not an interrogation.”
“Are you sure you’re all right?” asked Mother.
“I’m fine,” I insisted. Thankfully, Seliora didn’t comment on my slight exaggeration.
While I answered Father’s and Culthyn’s questions about the state of L’Excelsis, Solidar, and the Collegium, Mother slipped away. She returned shortly with a tray of beverages. I was given hot spiced wine-apparently my bruises removed my choice.
Rather than keep answering, or avoiding answering, I took a sip of the wine, then looked at Father and said, “I’ve been hearing that some of the factors aren’t exactly pleased with the High Holders after what’s happened here in Solidar and in the war with Ferrum.”
My father laughed. “There’s no such thing as a happy factor. If times are bad, he worries that they’ll get worse. If they’re good, he worries that they won’t last.”
“What do you think about Councilor Glendyl?”
Father snorted. “He just thinks he’s a factor. He’s wealthier than most High Holders, and he acts worse than they do. The High Holders provide lodging to their tenants and workers. Glendyl pays his workers but a pittance more and provides nothing, and complains about that.”
“Councilor Caartyl has hinted at that,” I offered.
“He’s almost as bad,” Father went on after a swallow of his Dhuensa. “To hear him talk, you’d think that everything produced by hand was a work of high art. The artisans just want to keep things comfortable for themselves, like the spinners and the carders did in my father’s t
ime. There’s a place for solid goods everyone can buy, and a place for art, but most people don’t want to pay for art when they buy work-day garments or potatoes. Caartyl thinks the factors should pay higher taxes so everyone can have art…the Navy isn’t much better…some of those Sea-Marshals aren’t beyond scuttling their own ships if it would get them a new battlecruiser, and Glendyl would probably sell them the tools to do it….”
I just sipped and listened.
37
On Samedi morning, I did do nearly the full version of Clovyl’s exercises, as well as the run, which I hadn’t done before, and the resultant tiredness convinced me, more than Seliora’s insistence, that I had a ways to go before I was fully recovered. I didn’t tell her that. Then, the way she looked at me when I returned to the house, I didn’t have to.
So I was careful over the weekend, although I did spend more than a few glasses in my Collegium study going over reports-and maps-and older reports buried in the bottom drawers of the two cases. I also spent time taking care of Diestrya so that my very tired wife got some rest as well, and during the one time when they both were sleeping, I checked over the repairs that the imagers had made to the rest of the furniture-adequate, but I wouldn’t have wanted Shomyr or Shelim to have seen it.
On Solayi, we attended services at the anomen, and one part of Isola’s homily had Seliora quietly nodding. I agreed as well, even if I didn’t nod.
“…the Nameless is neither young nor old, but eternal and everlasting. The Nameless is neither finite nor infinite, but stands beyond our measurements. Nor is the Nameless man or woman…These descriptions of the attributes of the Nameless have been set forth for centuries. Then, why is it that people think of the Nameless as a powerful male figure? Could not the Nameless be powerful and female? Or powerful and both male and female? Or powerful without gender?
“For all that is said, we bring our own concepts to the anomen, and because the Nameless is powerful and because in our world men are powerful, all too many assume that the Nameless must, in some fashion, resemble a powerful man. Why? Is not a lightning bolt powerful? Are not the storms of the ocean powerful? Are not the rays of the summer sun filled with power and heat? But who of sound mind and common sense would assert that lightning, storms, or the sun are a man of power?”
Isola went on to assert that the Nameless, by definition, was beyond mere human labels and descriptions. That might well have been true, but it didn’t stop people from labeling and describing what they had never seen or never might-or describing badly what they had seen.
As we walked back to the house, under the pale reddish light of a full Erion, an image flashed in front of me…or in my mind, but it was so vivid I knew it was another Pharsi farsight flash. Yet, in some ways, it was anything but vivid, because all I could see were what looked to be a mille of large stone buildings, and over them to the right, huge hulking cranes rising on the far side of the structures. Nothing flashed. Nothing flared. Stones didn’t fall around me. Then the flash was gone.
I had to stop for a moment and check where I was, but I was still on Imagisle, with the River Aluse to my left, and the stone walk leading north to our house before me.
“Rhenn? Are you all right?” asked Seliora.
“I had a flash…but it was just a scene, some sort of endless manufactory. Nothing happened. No explosions, no fires, nothing like that.”
“Then…you saw it just before something could happen. Was it familiar?”
“No.” I shook my head. “I’ve never been there.”
“Maybe you need to go there.”
Seliora was probably right-except I had no idea where “there” might be.
Later that evening, after Seliora had sung Diestrya to sleep, we sat side by side on the settee in front of the stove in the family parlor.
“Rhenn…?”
I smiled and put my arm around her, but she sat up straight.
“I’ve been thinking.”
“About what?”
“Odelia and Kolasyn. It’s more than that.” She paused. “We were so close for so long. Even now, she’s so wary when we talk.”
“I know how close you were.” I laughed softly. “I couldn’t ever get to be alone with you except on the small terrace at NordEste Design.”
“It hurts. I didn’t do anything at all.”
“She knows that I couldn’t do more than I did. But what we know and what we feel aren’t always the same. I wouldn’t be surprised if she still feels that, if I’d done something more, Haerasyn would still be alive. She may believe that if you’d pressed me I might have changed things.”
“You’ve done more than anyone else. She knows that. She even said so.”
“That’s not the question, really, is it?” I asked gently.
“No. You’re right. What we know and what we feel, deep inside, aren’t the same. People are like that. Sometimes it’s the ones closest to you-especially the close friends and family-who hurt you the most. But…it’s so sad. It shouldn’t be that way.”
“No…it shouldn’t. But it is. It always is.”
“You’re thinking of your brother, aren’t you?”
“I did what I thought was right…and he paid for it, and he never even knew why.”
“It was all Johanyr’s fault…and everyone in his family paid. He got off the easiest.”
“And now no one even knows where he is, except that he’s likely stolen thousands of golds from his sister.”
“Why did he wait so long…if he could have done it all along?” asked Seliora.
“Maybe he couldn’t have. He can’t see well enough even to write a cheque or a fund transfer request, and no one else is missing from Mont D’Glace.”
“Will anyone ever find him?”
“Not unless whoever helped him betrays him, and if he managed it alone, he won’t be found if he doesn’t want to be.”
“That seems wrong.”
I didn’t say anything. I only knew I wouldn’t want to be almost blind and in hiding, even with two thousand in golds.
38
On Lundi, I compromised, doing the exercises and only running a bit more than a mille, and I returned to the house, feeling only reasonably uncomfortable. Once I got to my study at the Collegium, after reading the morning newsheets, which both reported the loss of more ships from the northern fleet, given my conversation with Frydryk on Vendrei and more research and thought over the weekend, I decided that a conversation with the good Councilor Glendyl was definitely in order. While Maitre Dyana had suggested that she and Rholyn would brief me, she hadn’t exactly forbidden me to meet with the Councilors. Implied, but not forbidden. So just before eighth glass on Lundi morning, I took a duty coach to the Council Chateau.
While all the obdurate guards were polite and apparently pleased to see me, Baratyn hurried out of his main floor study before I could make my way to the upper level.
“Maitre Rhennthyl…I didn’t expect you.”
I ignored the various implications. “I assume Glendyl is here.”
“Why…yes. Here’s been here since before seventh glass.”
“Good. I thought he and I might have a few things to talk over.”
“He met with Maitre Rholyn just yesterday.”
That didn’t make me any happier. But I smiled. “Then Glendyl shouldn’t be all that surprised to see me.”
“He isn’t expecting you?”
“He should be. Whether he is or not remains to be seen.”
“I’d best escort you, then,” Baratyn said. “Otherwise, he might think you’re not who you say you are and bolt the door or shoot at you.”
“He carries a pistol?”
“Two of them. He’s reputedly a very good shot. That wouldn’t hurt you, but the Collegium could look foolish.”
“He would look even more foolish,” I pointed out, “and that would be far worse for the Collegium.”
For a moment, Baratyn was silent. Then he nodded and turned toward the Grand Foye
r. Since Glendyl’s study was on the southwest corner, taking the formal staircase was actually the fastest way there.
“Has anyone from the Naval Command been here to talk to Caartyl or Glendyl?” I asked as I walked alongside Baratyn.
“No. I have the feeling they’re waiting for Ramsael to take over the Executive Council.”
That Sea-Marshal Valeun would avoid Glendyl in the middle of an undeclared war with Ferrum said something, but what…that was another question. It also didn’t make sense, and that meant I didn’t know something. “Is that because they’re afraid that the full Council will undo anything Glendyl does right now?”
“I couldn’t say, Maitre Rhennthyl.”
“Or is it that Glendyl now has the power to ask penetrating questions if they press him?”
“That’s more likely.”
“About the conduct of the war or about the organization and structure of the Naval Command?”
“Glendyl wouldn’t second-guess fleet commanders.”
“So it’s likely that he thinks the Naval Command is overstaffed and inefficient.”
“There are more than a few high-paid marshals and senior commanders north of here, and, from the point of view of a factor who has to watch every copper, there might be some questions about their necessity.”
“Glendyl knows that summoning them to ask such questions would be perceived as too high-handed and would likely backfire because he won’t be in charge for that long, and they won’t come asking for anything because then he could ask those questions.”
“That would be my guess.”
I laughed. “It’s likely a very good guess.” I also suspected that Dichartyn had probably felt the same way, but those sorts of calculations weren’t something that anyone committed to paper, even in the Collegium. The problem was that assessments not committed to paper tended to get lost if the assessor died or vanished. And that was another bit of circumstantial evidence, not the kind I could ever bring before the Justiciary or the Council, but real enough.
When we reached the dark wooden door on the southwest corner, Baratyn rapped on it smartly. “Councilor, it’s Baratyn. Maitre Rhennthyl is here from the Collegium to see you.”
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