Imager (22 page)

Too often friends fall away when one rises.

For the first time since I’d left my parents after the fire, I had more than a few coins, and that meant I could take a hack out to visit my parents on Samedi. Since Master Dichartyn was gone, I could also leave Imagisle earlier than on most Samedis. Even so, because I enjoyed taking my time, it was past the ninth glass when I walked across the Bridge of Hopes. The sun warmed the air, heralding late spring, and there was just enough of a breeze for comfort, and not enough to blow away the fragrances from the spring flowers blooming in the narrow gardens flanking the Boulevard D’Imagers. There weren’t many coaches for hire, but I found one and arrived at my parents’ house just before noon. I could only hope that someone happened to be there, because I hadn’t known I’d be able to come in time to dispatch a note and receive a reply.

Nellica’s eyes widened when she opened the door and beheld me in all my subdued imager glory.

“Is anyone here, Nellica?”

“Your sister and Madame Chenkyr, sir.” Her eyes avoided mine.

“If you’d tell them I’m here.”

“Yes, sir. If you’d come in, sir.” Nellica ushered me into the foyer and hurried off.

In moments Khethila appeared, wearing a severe green that made her face look far too pale. “Rhenn! You don’t have to wait in the foyer. You’re still family. Come into the parlor.”

“Are you still reading Madame D’Shendael?” I offered teasingly as I followed her.

“Father disapproves,” she said strongly, before glancing around and lowering her voice. “I have her treatise on
Civic Virtue
.”

“I wasn’t aware that there was such a thing.” I tried to keep the irony out of my voice.

“Neither is she. She claims those who profess a civic virtue are cloaking their self-interest in morality.”

“She doesn’t believe in virtue?” I kept my voice pleasantly curious.

“She espouses virtue as an individual value.”

“So we abandon virtue whenever we’re with others?”

“Rhenn!” Definite exasperation colored her voice. “That’s not it at all. Virtue or morality cannot be practiced by a group, but only by an individual. Each individual is different from every other individual, but a group pressures each individual to be the same. Otherwise, there is no group. The same is true of a society. The values of the strongest or most persuasive become the values of the group. The larger the group, the fewer the values those in the group share. In time, groups become mobs.”

“I think your logic is lacking there.”

“She says it better than I do.”

I hadn’t read Madame D’Shendael, but Khethila’s interpretation suggested that Master Dichartyn and Madame D’Shendael had considered the same questions and possibly shared some of the same views. Logically, that shouldn’t have surprised me . . . but it did.

At that moment, Mother bustled out of the kitchen. “Rhenn! What a pleasant surprise. We were about to have a small lunch in the breakfast room. You will join us, won’t you?”

“I hoped so.” I offered a grin.

Mother studied me. “You’ve lost weight.”

“A little.” I hadn’t, not really, but Clovyl’s exercises and running had turned any softness I’d once had into muscle.

“Aren’t they feeding you enough?”

“They’re feeding me very well, Mother.” I started in the direction of the breakfast room, hoping to forestall any more detailed interrogation.

“He looks stronger,” suggested Khethila.

“Laborers need to be strong, not imagers.”

“Imaging does require strength, more than one might think.” I stepped from the back hallway into the breakfast room, where Nellica had added another place to the table. Even with the two wall lamps lit, the breakfast room was gloomy, because the windows were on the east wall and allowed no sunlight past late morning. Lunch had been clearly informal, with the plates set on green place mats, rather than on one of the linen tablecloths used for guests—or family when one or more men were present. “Where’s Culthyn?”

“He’s with Father,” Kethilia replied. “Father says he needs to learn the business.”

“That’s why we’re having leftover fowl in pastry,” Mother added from behind me. “Neither your Father nor Culthyn cares much for it.”

Since I’d always liked fowl in crust and sauce, I had no objections. Then, as I turned, I saw my chess study, mounted in a far more ornate frame, on the always-shaded south wall. For a moment, I just looked. It was every bit as good as I remembered, if not better.

“It goes well there,” Mother said.

What I realized as well, and what she had not said, was that it was placed so that she could see it from her customary place at the table. It was behind where my father sat.

“It does,” I finally said. “Thank you for reframing it.”

Mother looked puzzled. “That was the way it arrived.”

“Oh.” Who had had reframed it, and why? It had been in a simple black frame for the competition, as was required, so that no painting had an advantage. “I must have forgotten.”

Khethila gave me a sideways glance, as if to suggest that wasn’t something I’d forget. She was right, but what else could I have said?

Once she was seated, Mother looked at me. “You could have sent a note, saying you would be coming.”

“I honestly didn’t know that I would have this afternoon free until it was too late.”

Mother just raised her eyebrows.

“I was given more training, and while it was going on, I couldn’t leave Imagisle. I finished it more quickly than I’d been told it would take. This is the first time I’ve left the Collegium since I had dinner with you the last time.”

“Even if you didn’t let us know, it was good of you to come here first. You’ll stay for dinner, won’t you?” asked Mother.

“Not tonight.” I could have, but it was the fourth Samedi of the month. I hadn’t seen any of my friends since I’d become an imager, and it was a certainty that some of them would either be at Lapinina or at the Guild Hall later in the afternoon. “I’ll be more free from now on, since I won’t be spending quite so much time in training.”

“Your father will be disappointed.”

“I can stay for a while after we eat.”

“He said he’d be later today.”

“Does the extra time off mean that you got advanced again?” asked Khethila.

I smiled. “I did get nicer quarters—two rooms to myself, a sitting room or study, and a sleeping chamber.”

“Perhaps everything is turning out for the best,” said Mother brightly. “But your father will be sorry to have missed you.”

“I think you’ve mentioned that before,” I said dryly.

“Rhenn . . . I know you two do not see the world in the same way, but that does not mean that he doesn’t care for you.”

“I know.” I still had the feeling he’d care for me more had I chosen to become a wool factor, but I wasn’t about to say that. I turned to Khethila. “What are you going to do now?”

“I’m learning to be an assistant clerk for Father, the one who makes all the daily ledger entries.”

There was a hint of a frown from Mother. “Until she finds a proper young man, anyway.”

“What happened to Armynd?”

Khethila laughed. “He discovered I was reading Madame D’Shendael. He didn’t put it quite that way, but when he said that it was clear we had interests too different for harmony, that was what he meant.”

Mother frowned, if briefly, and I knew she’d hoped for the match, as much for Khethila’s comfort as anything.

I managed a pleasant smile, although what had already happened confirmed that anyone Khethila felt interested in would not be someone for whom my parents would care much. “Do you find working at the factorage interesting?”

“You just have to be careful and thorough,” my sister replied. “What’s interesting is the way in which certain number patterns show up in the accounts. I’m studying Astrarth’s
Theory of Numbers
on my own, and seeing if any of what he postulates shows up.”

“Has it?”

“Not yet, but I’ve only been working on the ledgers for the last two weeks. Rousel thinks it’s a good idea that I know more about business.”

“So does your Father,” added Mother.

“How are things going with Rousel?” I asked quickly.

“He and Remaya are doing well.” Mother smiled briefly. “He writes occasionally.”

Khethila shifted her weight in her chair, ever so slightly.

“And how is the wool factoring going in Kherseilles?” I looked to Khethila.

“I couldn’t say, because so far I’m only doing the ledgers for the factorage here, and not the master ledger that merges both accounts.”

Mother looked sharply at Khethila, who smiled pleasantly.

In short, matters weren’t going quite so well in Kherseilles, but Khethila wasn’t about to say or was guessing from what she’d seen so far, and Mother wasn’t about to say anything negative about Rousel . . . or allow anyone else to.

“Do you know what you’ll be doing as an imager?” Mother asked. “Can you tell us?”

“They say I may have some duties working for the Council, but very minor ones at first. No one’s given me any details, but I have had to learn all the Council procedures.”

“Your father would be very pleased if you became a Council advisor.”

“That’s not going to happen any time soon,” I replied with a laugh. “How is Aunt Ilena?”

“As stubborn as ever. I’m thinking of visiting her in Juyn, on the way to Kherseilles . . .”

From that point on, I just asked questions and listened. Although I stayed almost to the fourth glass of the afternoon, neither Father nor Culthyn appeared, and I took my leave. The late afternoon remained pleasant, and while it was more than two milles, I walked the entire distance to the Guild Square, taking my time.

Because I didn’t see anyone I knew around the square, I made my way to Lapinina. When I stepped into the bistro, the couple at the table nearest the door looked away. Rogaris and Sagaryn sat at a round table for four, and I stepped toward it.

“How are you two coming?”

Sagaryn’s eyes widened as they took in the gray waistcoat, shirt, and trousers. “Is that you, Rhenn?”

“The same.”

“You’re . . . an imager?”

I nodded. “Might I join you?”

“Oh . . . yes . . .” Rogaris said hastily.

Sagaryn nodded, a trace reluctantly, but I eased into the seat across from them.

Staela appeared. “What would you like, sir?”

I looked up at her. “I’m still Rhenn, Staela.”

Her expression didn’t change at all. “Yes, sir.”

“Just a glass of the Cambrisio white, if you have it.”

“Yes, sir.”

“We don’t see imagers up here very often,” Rogaris offered.

“You’re the first,” added Sagaryn, taking a swallow of dark beer.

“I’m probably the only portraiturist who’s ended up an imager.”

“That well could be.”

“How are you two doing?”

Rogaris glanced at Sagaryn, who remained stone-faced. “The same as always.”

“Have you heard anything about Madame Caliostrus?”

“She’s all right. He had some sort of assurance annuity or something . . . some patron paid for it, and the masons’ guild is rebuilding the place.”

“Lucky at that,” added Sagaryn. “You know anything about it?”

“No.” I shook my head. “He never talked coins with me—except to explain why he’d docked my pay”

Staela reappeared with a glass of amber-white wine, which she placed before me with far greater care than she ever had when I’d been a journeyman. “Your Cambrisio, sir. It’s four.”

Almost as soon as I’d put a silver on the table she scooped it up and had six coppers back before me. Then she was gone. I took a sip of the wine. It was cool, and not that bad, but I realized that what I’d been drinking at dinner at the dining hall was just as good.

“How is Master Jacquerl treating you?” I asked Rogaris.

“Nothing’s changed.” He sipped the dark red wine.

“And you?” I turned to Sagaryn.

“The same as always.”

Neither spoke for a time. Nor did I. Then I looked to Rogaris. “How is Aemalye?”

“She’s fine.”

“Are you still planning to get married a year from this Agostos?”

“Something like that.”

After a few more questions, I smiled and stood, leaving most of the Cambrisio. “It was good to see you both. Take care of yourselves.”

“You, too,” replied Rogaris.

Sagaryn only nodded.

It was just past the fifth glass as I stepped out of Lapinina, wondering why I had come at all, when a voice called from behind me.

“Rhenn!”

I turned.

There stood Seliora, beside a taller, red-haired woman. This time Seliora was wearing a rich green skirt with a black blouse and a matching green jacket. She smiled at me.

“Seliora.” I couldn’t help but smile back, especially after the coolness of Sagaryn and Rogaris.

She took another step toward me, and another, stopping almost close enough that I could have reached out to embrace her. I thought about it, but didn’t.

“I’m glad to see you,” she began, her words warm. “You just disappeared, and no one heard anything. I heard that you couldn’t find a position. I worried about you.”

I was glad someone worried, but I didn’t want to say that. “I couldn’t leave Imagisle for quite some time,” I explained, adding, “You know that’s where I went?”