Imager's challenge

45

By the time I dragged myself out of bed on Mardi morning, I was more than ready to get on with the day, especially after a dream about a memorial service in an anomen, where I’d kept trying to ask who was being memorialized, and no one would answer me. They just looked away. I didn’t dream about the Temple of Puryon, exploding or otherwise, and the fact that I hadn’t bothered me.

I ate breakfast quickly and finished just as Ferlyn and Chassendri arrived. I stood and smiled. “I’m off.”

“Aren’t you the fortunate one,” said Chassendri cheerfully.

“Always,” I answered with a smile, heading out of the dining hall.

The second duty coach was waiting, the driver wearing a heavy gray jacket against the wind, although I wouldn’t have called it chill, merely brisk enough that I’d had to put on my imager’s visored cap a bit more firmly than usual. On the way to the station, I thought through how I’d need to approach the day. I wasn’t about to tell the captain anything.

Captain Harraf was standing outside his study when I entered the building, talking to Slausyl. Melyor was standing back and listening. I could only catch a few words.

“. . . come, and you stay clear . . . cordon area . . . no point . . . they shoot anyone . . .”

Both Slausyl and Melyor nodded.

I had no doubts that Harraf was warning them to avoid the conscription team. I half expected him to beckon to me or to Lyonyt after he dismissed the other pair of patrollers, but he pointedly avoided me and stepped back into his study without looking in our direction.

I turned to Lyonyt. “Did Captain Harraf mention anything about the conscription teams before I got here?”

“No, sir,” replied Lyonyt.

Fuast just looked puzzled.

“Let’s head out. I’ll go over it while we start the round.”

I actually waited until we were almost up to South Middle before I began to explain. “When the conscription teams come into an area, they don’t want anyone else around. All we can do is patrol the area of our round outside their cordon.” I was guessing a bit, but I thought I was fairly close to what Harraf had said to Melyor and Slausyl. “They come armed, and they will shoot. I’ve heard that some of them don’t much care who they shoot.”

Fuast swallowed audibly.

Lyonyt just nodded. He’d heard it before, and he didn’t look like I’d missed anything. I hoped not. Harraf’s “oversight” was anything but accidental.

During the first half round, the one where we did the perimeter of the round, we saw only women with children and a handful of men all roughly dressed, walking toward the avenue, most likely to where it and Quierca intersected. That was where builders and anyone who wanted a laborer could find one. When we reached the Avenue D’Artisans, on the return, close to two quints before eighth glass, I stepped up beside Lyonyt.

“If the conscription teams were hitting the taudis, they’d already be here. There’s some imager business that’s come up. I’ll be leaving you for a bit, but I should be back and rejoin you around second glass. It’s possible I may have to do this tomorrow as well.”

“Yes, sir.” Lyonyt didn’t even look puzzled, although his eyes never stopped moving.

I wasn’t sure they ever would, not until he was ashes.

I crossed the avenue and waited until they were a good block away before I hailed a hack to take me to NordEste Design. It was early enough that the direct route there wasn’t that crowded, with the only slowness occurring around the Guild Square, and the hack pulled up on Hagahl Lane just as the last bells of eighth glass were dying away.

For the first time since I had met Seliora, when I knocked, I had to wait for a time before someone came to the door-and that someone was Methyr. He was wearing faded and ragged trousers and a woolen shirt that had seen far better days.

“I’m sorry, Master Rhennthyl. I was cleaning the tiles on the terrace.”

“Up on the third level?”

“Yes, sir. It’s my turn.” He stepped back and let me enter, then shot the bolt. “If you’d come this way.” He walked up the stairs and through the second-level entry hall, leading me through the indirect corridors that led to the back stairs leading down to the courtyard.

Once we were in the courtyard, he said, “Seliora had to go with Mother and Father this morning. She said she hoped you wouldn’t mind. She should be here when you return, but if she isn’t, she asked if you’d mind grooming the mare and stalling her.”

“I can do that.”

We crossed the courtyard to where the mare was actually saddled and waiting, tied to a post in the rear courtyard outside the stable.

“Who saddled her? Seliora?”

“Yes, sir.”

“She didn’t have to do that,” I protested.

“She said it would be easier on you, and she wouldn’t worry as much.” Methyr looked away.

“If she’s not here . . .” I shook my head. I’d have to express my appreciation personally. I didn’t even dare write a note about it. “I do appreciate it, and I’ll tell her when I return.”

With that, I mounted and set out. Methyr watched until I was out of the courtyard and headed toward the Boulevard D’Este. I’d seen some mounted patrollers over the course of making patrol rounds, and Gulyart and the others had mentioned that there were mounted patrollers, used especially in riot situations. So I doubted that many people would take much notice of a Patrol rider headed along the Boulevard D’Este.

Once I reached the Plaza D’Nord, I added a concealment shield, the kind that blurred people’s vision. They’d see a rider and a mount, but the details would be fuzzy. But along the ride out toward Ryel’s estate, I passed only two wagons coming the other direction.

At the top of the rise south of the one that held the Ryel estate, I slowed the mare and studied the road and the estate itself. The road was empty, and the gates were closed. There was a flatter space, a semiswale next to the wall about a hundred yards up from the place where the stream flowed out from between the walls and into the large stone culvert under the road.

We started down toward the stream, and I could hear the rumble of a heavy wagon. It didn’t sound like a trap, but I wasn’t certain. I eased the mare to the right edge of the road and continued downhill. We’d almost reached the low ground between the two rises when I caught sight of a black wagon pulled by four drays coming slowly downhill, headed southward toward L’Excelsis.

Since the wagon wasn’t what I was seeking, I kept riding, if slowly, then eased the mare off to the side on the upslope, if a good hundred yards below where I really wanted to be in order not to get close to the wagon. The teamster frowned as he passed, probably because he couldn’t make us out too clearly. On the side of the wagon was a legend-“Kaenfyl amp; Sons, Fine Spirits.”

Would anyone in the spirits business claim that their wares were anything but fine?

Once the wagon passed out of sight beyond the rise to the south, I rode the mare uphill to the swale, then dismounted and tied to a stubby but sturdy short scrubby plant that looked to be half tree and half bush. Then I leaned against the wall to wait.

A quint passed before I heard something and raised full concealment shields.

Before long a private messenger, with the red and white sash, rode down the hill and toward L’Excelsis. Only a few moments passed before a coach followed, ornate in blue with gold-painted trim-some High Holder whose colors I didn’t know. But then, I really only knew Ryel’s colors, although I thought Councilor Suyrien’s were crimson and silver.

All in all, I waited for Alynat for more than two glasses, strengthening the concealment shields every time I heard the sounds of wagons or riders. More than a half score of wagons passed within a few yards of me and the mare, but no one even so much looked in our direction, and the mare didn’t so much as snort or whinny, for which I was grateful.

By the time I reached NordEste Design, it was two quints to second glass. There was no one in the courtyard, and I rode the mare right up to the stables and dismounted, then led her in and unsaddled her and groomed her. I just hoped I’d gotten the saddle on the right rack.

I was leaving the stable, crossing the courtyard when Shelim and Seliora drove into the courtyard with a panel wagon I hadn’t seen before. Both sides were painted with an identical design, an intertwined “N” and “E.”

Seliora jumped off the wagon as soon as Shelim brought it to a halt. “Rhenn!” Her face was filled with concern.

“At the moment, nothing’s happened, except I need to hurry to get back to Third District.” I paused. “Would it be all right to borrow the mare tomorrow?”

“As often as you need to.”

“Thank you.” I put my arms around her. “I appreciated your saddling the mare. You didn’t have to, but I do appreciate it.”

“You need all the help I can give.” Her arms went around me for a moment. Then she looked up and kissed me briefly. “You also need to wash up a bit. You smell too much like horse. Come along.”

I did feel cleaner and fresher after that-and after the slices of bread and cheese I wolfed down before I headed out to catch a hack back to the Third District. I had the hack drop me on the east side of the Plaza Sudeste. It was nearly two quints past two.

Guessing that Lyonyt was on Quierca, coming back toward the avenue, I headed south, but I’d only gone a block when an older woman, one who often had a cart with coal in it, called to me.

“Officer . . . you looking for Lyonyt, he just passed here heading for South Middle.”

“Thank you.”

I reversed directions and actually caught up with the two of them just short of Saelio.

“I was beginning to worry, sir,” offered Lyonyt.

I shook my head. “Everything, every little thing, takes longer than you think.”

The older patroller laughed.

“Any problems?” I asked.

“Not a one. Did see a few of Jadhyl’s fellows in the green. They looked worried.”

“They probably know something we don’t-like when the conscription team is arriving.” Everyone seemed to know, at least in general terms, except the Collegium and the Civic Patrol. I thought for a moment. Both the commander and Maitre Poincaryt had to know. They just chose not to tell anyone so that they could claim to the Navy that they hadn’t let anyone know. So the Tiempran priests knew more than we did, as did the taudischefs, and Captain Harraf, who could not say much besides telling some patrollers to be careful because he wasn’t supposed to know, either. Whether I cared much for him or not, there was definitely something wrong about that.

We walked down Saelio, but it was quiet, and so were each of the succeeding streets. A good glass and a half later, when we were headed back to the station, passing Dugalle on Quierca, I turned to Lyonyt. “The Tiempran Temple was still shuttered this morning. What about on the last round?”

“Locked up tighter than a High Holder’s daughter, sir. When do you think the scripties will be here?”

“I don’t know. Sometime in the next week, but whether that’s tomorrow or Jeudi or Vendrei, I don’t know. Probably not Solayi, but other than that?” All I could do was shrug.

When we returned to the station, I could see that the door to Captain Harraf’s study was closed, but whether he was meeting with someone or had left for the day, I couldn’t have said. I certainly wasn’t about to ask.

We signed the round sheet, and then I left. The wind had gotten warmer, springlike, even though it was late afternoon, and the hack ride back to Imagisle was uncomfortably warm. When I returned to my quarters, another note was under my door, asking me to see Master Dichartyn.

I hurried back across the quadrangle to the administration building, half hoping that he’d left for the day. I wasn’t that fortunate. His study door was open, and he was standing by the open window, almost as if he had been waiting for me.

“Rhennthyl, come in and close the door.”

I did.

“Maitre Dyana told me that you handled questions about the Autumn Ball with a surprising amount of finesse. Master Rholyn also remarked on your comments about the taudischef’s hearing. He said that he even baited you, but you were quite self-possessed.” He paused and looked directly at me. “Maitre Poincaryt and I would appreciate it if you would continue that practice.”

“I’m working on that, sir, and trying to follow the example that you both have set. Master Poincaryt made it clear that I should do so, and that I should not saddle you with anything that was not absolutely vital.” I paused, then asked, “Are you aware of any inquiries being made by High Holder Ryel about Johanyr’s health? Have any ever been made?”

“Don’t you think that’s an odd question, now?”

“No, sir. After my troubles with him, I asked how he was doing, but the way his sister dismissed him at the Ball brought that question to mind.”

Master Dichartyn frowned. “So far as I am aware, Ryel disinherited Johanyr once he became an imager and has had no contact with his son since. Other members of the family may have.”

And yet Ryel had declared me his enemy?

There was a moment of silence.

“Has anything vital come up today?” Master Dichartyn raised his eyebrows.

“Not vital, sir. Captain Harraf warned the patrollers who do the round in Youdh’s territory that if the conscription teams arrived, they were not to interfere or even patrol the area. He avoided giving us the same information. In fact, he ignored me altogether.”

“He’s being a very wise man in the stupidest way possible.” Dichartyn’s voice was dry.

“Sir?” I doubted he’d say more, but it was worth the attempt.

“He knows you know all about him. He also knows that people have bad things happen when they cross you, but it’s stupid to call attention to it by ignoring you and putting two more junior patrollers in possible danger because you’re with them. Some of the patrollers will notice. They’re not as dense as arrogant officers think. By the way, that goes for master imagers, too.”

The last was clearly directed at me. I just said, “Yes, sir. I ask the patrollers, and I listen.”

“I would hope so.” He smiled politely. “Is there anything else?”

“No, sir. Not that I know.”

“That’s all I had, Rhennthyl.” He paused. “Your young lady is quite beautiful. I hope you appreciate all she has to offer.”

“I feel that I do, sir.” More than I was about to admit to anyone.

He raised his eyebrows. “You don’t. I didn’t. No one as talented as you and as young as you does. You only think you do. Try to remember that.”

Strangely, his words were delivered kindly, not cuttingly, and with a hint of something I couldn’t identify. I also wondered when he’d seen Seliora. Or had he slipped into the studio and looked at the portrait? Then, we had walked through Imagisle several times.

“Yes, sir.” What else could I say?

He turned back toward the window, and I left. I was more than a little hungry, given that all I’d eaten since breakfast had been a few slices of bread and cheese.