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  On Lundi morning, when I made my way to Master Dichartyn’s study, the door was open.

  “You can come in, Rhenn.”

  I eased inside and closed the door, taking my seat opposite him.

  He leaned back and fingered his chin. “How many people are there in Solidar?”

  There had to be millions, but I didn’t recall the exact figure. “Forty million?”

  “The last enumeration showed around fifty million. How many are in L’Excelsis?”

  “There were over two million in 750 A.L.”

  “How many imagers do you think there are here at the Collegium and in L’Excelsis?”

  “If I’ve counted correctly, there are somewhere over two hundred and forty, sir.”

  “Add another fifty or so, and that’s close enough. It doesn’t include those who can image just a tiny bit and haven’t been discovered, or those who have never discovered their talent, but most people with the ability get found out sooner or later. Later is seldom better, and very few survive. Let us just say that there are five hundred imagers in all of Solidar. What is that ratio?”

  “One hundred thousand to one, sir.”

  “Now . . . does that tell you why caution is necessary in every imager action?”

  “Yes, sir.” It also told me that Floryn’s greatest failing was telling anyone anything.

  “What else should it tell you?”

  What else could there be? “There can’t be very many in the rest of the world, either.”

  “Why not?”

  I’d had a moment to think. “If there were, we’d know about it. The Collegium seeks out imagers. If you can only find five hundred in Solidar, and we have more people than other countries . . .”

  “You’re making several assumptions. What are they, and are they correct?”

  “It would be hard to hide imagers in other lands, but if you could find out so much about me, how could they hide imagers from you?”

  “That assumes we would be allowed to look. While places like the Abierto Isles are open enough, and so is Stakanar, Ferrum and Jariola don’t like snoopy outsiders and have rather unpleasant habits of making them disappear. The Tiemprans ban imaging and imagers, and the same is true of Caenen. You’re also making assumptions about people. What are they?”

  “Oh . . . that people are the same everywhere.”

  “Are they? If they are, what makes them that way?”

  “Sir . . . I know I haven’t traveled far, but I have seen people who have come from many places, and they all seem to love or hate, or want to be better . . . and I think we’re all born with similar general abilities and wants.”

  “Is imaging something people are born with, or something learned?”

  I was definitely unsure what Master Dichartyn sought . . . or why. “I don’t know, sir, but I would say it’s something people are either born with or not, but that they have to learn whether they have it and how to use that ability.” I paused. “Does it have anything to do with . . . I mean there seem to be more men who are imagers.”

  “That’s true, and women imagers almost always come from families where an older brother has the talent. Why that’s so, we don’t know, but there are traits that work that way. Very few women are bald, compared to men. But . . . back to the question at hand. If the imaging skill can arise in any people, why are there more practicing imagers in Solidar than in the rest of the world? If you can tell me that, it will provide the rest of the answer to the first question I asked and that you did not answer completely.”

  I had to think for several moments. Exactly what had I failed to answer?

  “I’ll give you a hint. Why are most bulls gelded and why is the Cyella Ruby valuable?”

  After a moment, I answered. “Imagers are scarce but more plentiful in Solidar because we provide valuable and rare services and people are more willing to have imagers around so long as there aren’t too many of us?”

  Master Dichartyn nodded. “We have created an institution that not only fulfills needs, but also has established a reputation for being trustworthy in carrying out those duties for Solidar and for the Council. Without unique services, we have no value, and without trust, our value cannot be relied upon. And if there were too many of us, then no one would trust us. Because the Oligarch of Jariola can trust no one, what we do is either not done there, or done in a more costly fashion, and any imager is either executed or exiled. In Ferrum, they use machines and exile imagers because they cannot quantify how to value trust.”

  Abruptly, he looked up. “We have not gone over your philosophy readings, but I need to meet with the other masters.” He paused. “The Puryon believers of Tiempre have faith in an omnipotent, beneficent, and just god. Write me a logical proof of why this is either so or why it cannot be so. Have it ready for me in the morning. That should provide some practical application of what you’ve been studying.”

  “Yes, sir.” How was I going to prove that logically? And why was a philosophical proof a practical application?

  “We’ll meet outside the dining hall after lunch today, and I’ll take you to your work assignment from there.” He stood.

  So did I, scooping up the unopened books and hurrying out of his study before him.

  I had almost two and a half glasses before lunch, but, as I crossed the quadrangle under the first truly warm sunlight in days, I had no idea how I was going to prove or disprove the statement Master Dichartyn had given me.

  “Where are you going so early?” called Johanyr from the stone walk intersecting the one where I walked. He was also a secondus, about my age, I thought, with short-cut curly brown hair and massively broad shoulders, as if he were better suited to be a stonemason or the like. We’d talked briefly over meals, and I had the feeling I’d seen him somewhere before, but I couldn’t recall where.

  “Master Dichartyn had a meeting with the other masters, but he gave me a logical proof to figure out, and I have to have it all written out by tomorrow.”

  “Some of the seconds are asking if you’re trying to make third before summer and master in a year.” He laughed, but the sound was hard. “You don’t spend much time with the others, except at meals.”

  What he was saying was a warning . . . of some sort. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be standoffish.” I gestured toward a bench some five yards away. “Do you have a moment?”

  “More than that. I didn’t even get to see Master Ghaend this morning. They’re all upset about something.” He tilted his head, looking at me speculatively. “Master Dichartyn is the only other Maitre D’Esprit besides Master Poincaryt. Did he say anything to you . . . anything at all?”

  “He never does,” I answered as we walked slowly toward the gray granite bench. “He just asks question after question. This morning, he stopped in the middle of a question and said he had a meeting with the other masters, then told me my assignment and just about threw me out.” That wasn’t quite true, but I doubted anyone could have mistaken his abruptness.

  “So he was worried?”

  “I think so. He’s never been quite that abrupt before.” I stopped by the bench, gesturing. “We might as well sit down.”

  “Might as well. You were saying . . .?”

  “I don’t talk about it much, but I was a journeyman portraiturist. I was even getting my own commissions, and I was thinking it wouldn’t be too long before I could become a master, a junior master, and open my own studio. Then I imaged a little part of a portrait, just a little part, except it was green, and one thing led to another . . . and the girl I was interested in married my brother, and, all of a sudden, I can’t be anything but an imager.”

  “Green? Why green?”

  “Green pigment, true green, is almost as expensive as liquid silver. They don’t let journeymen use it often, and only when a master is watching, and I wasn’t a master yet.”

  “You were close to being a master portraiturist?” Johanyr’s face softened slightly, but still bore a trace of incredulity.


  “Several masters said I was good enough. I’d spent five years as an apprentice, and three as a journeyman.” I shrugged. “I don’t mean to be standoffish, but the change has taken some getting used to. When I started as a prime, I was five or six years older than most of the others. We didn’t talk about the same things.”

  “I can see that.” He nodded.

  “I’m just trying as hard as I can just to catch up. There’s so much I still don’t know.”

  “Sarcovyt says that you’re good at imaging things.”

  I managed a laugh. “How would I know? I know I’m good enough to be a second, but since I made second, I’ve never seen anyone else image anything. Before that, I never saw anyone but a prime even try. Master Dichartyn says that’s for my own protection.”

  “It sounds like he’s trying to get you caught up with where the rest of us are.”

  What Johanyr said made sense. “That’s what I’m guessing. I really don’t mean to be unfriendly . . . it’s just been hard.” That much was certainly true.

  “None of us knew,” he pointed out.

  I tried to look embarrassed. “It’s not something . . .” I shrugged. “It’s my fault, but . . .”

  That got a sympathetic nod . . . of sorts. “We usually get together for a while in the evening, a half glass before the eighth glass, down in the common room. You might try it.”

  “I didn’t even know . . . I mean, I’ve seen the common room, but only in the day . . .”

  His laugh at my confusion was genuine, and when we parted, I felt that I’d managed to avoid, for the moment, another pitfall. But I was going to have to be very careful until I could figure out how to develop protections of the sort that Master Dichartyn had mentioned.

  I still also had to figure out and then write up the proof for Master Dichartyn.

  When I got back to my room, it took me more than a glass, and several drafts to write what I did. At lunch I made a point of sitting across from Johanyr and Diazt and making a special effort to be friendly. I felt that they were warmer, but I didn’t know, not for certain.

  After I left the table, Master Dichartyn was already in the hallway outside the dining hall.

  “We’re headed to the materials section of the workshops. You’ve already figured out some aspects of substitution. Now you’ll get a chance to learn another and put it to work.” He turned and strode quickly down the corridor and out through the doors, moving as quickly as I’d ever seen him.

  As we walked, he said, “The materials for the workshops come over the Bridge of Stones. That’s where the name comes from. All the workshops have outside and inside entrances, and each workroom is lead-lined. That is so that no imager can affect the work of another. That is particularly important for some . . . efforts.”

  I was beginning to sweat by the time we reached the large gray structure a hundred yards north of the quadrangle. The building held the various workshops, not that I’d been in more than a handful of them. The door where we entered was on the main level on the west side of the building, beside a raised loading dock, behind which was a set of sliding warehouse doors. They were closed.

  As we stepped into the workshop, a space not much larger than ten yards by fifteen, I could see that the length of the room was filled with barrels, four lines of them, stacked on top of each other three deep. Four small topless wooden crates were set on a workbench a yard or so from the nearest line of barrels. That was it-except for the older imager in somewhat dingy gray who hurried through the door at the other side of the workshop.

  “Grandisyn, this is Rhennthyl. He’s the new imager second I told you about.” Master Dichartyn turned to me. “This is Grandisyn. He’s a senior imager tertius. He knows more about imaging materials than most masters. I will leave you in his hands.” With that, he hurried away.

  “You’re fortunate to have him as a preceptor,” Grandisyn said. “Fortunate, but he’ll make you work and think and then some.”

  “I have noticed that, sir.”

  “Just Grandisyn, Rhennthyl.”

  “Rhenn, please. When people use my full name, I always wonder just what I did wrong.”

  He laughed. “I can see that. My papa did the same.” After a moment, he began to explain. “Your task will not be easy at first, but it is simple. All you have to do is image some of these aluminum bars.” Grandisyn lifted a bar of a silvery metal out of the wooden crate on the right end, which had three of the small ingots in it, the only crate that did, then pointed to the barrels lined up along the wall. “It should be easier if you concentrate on imaging from the barrels. They’re filled with high-grade bauxite. Master Dichartyn said you might have to work at figuring it out, but that you could do it. Take your time.” He gave me a smile, then hastened off.

  I was still holding the small aluminum bar, possibly worth several hundred gold crowns, and I was supposed to image more of them? In a way, from what I’d read, it made sense. Refining it was costly, and that made it very valuable, but why weren’t we refining gold? Or platinum?

  I wasn’t quite sure what I was doing, but I concentrated on the image of the bar, the shining light metal, right on the workbench, and tried to visualize a vague link between the barrels and the bar I was attempting to image into existence.

  A series of dull clanks followed.

  Not only did I have a bar, somewhat larger than the one I’d been shown, but there was a line of aluminum fragments on the stone floor running spiderweb-fashion toward the barrels.

  Obviously, my vague link needed to be far less direct.

  I kept trying, and by the end of the fourth glass, I was exhausted, and my head was pounding. But there was a wooden box filled with the metal ingots, some of which had been refashioned from all the loose fragments I’d created before I’d figured out how to image without creating patterns of aluminum running from the barrels. Yet, in the end, refashioning from the fragments had been far easier.

  I finally just sat down on the stool that had been tucked away under the bench. I was just too tired to do more. When I’d first imaged that small part of the Factorius Masgayl’s portrait, I had had no idea how exhausting imaging would turn out to be.

  Before long, Grandisyn walked in and crossed the floor to the wooden crate. He looked at the crate, and then at me. “Hmmmm. We may have to find other things for you. I’ll be talking to Master Dichartyn. You look done in. Go get some rest.”

  I didn’t need any more encouragement.

  Back in my room, I slept for more than a glass and then had to hurry to the dining hall for dinner, where I ended up at the bottom of the table among several thirds I didn’t know, but I did my best to be cheerful.

  After dinner I went back to my room and read some more, but I was careful to make my way down to the common room about a half glass before eight. The common room was in the lower level on the north end of the building, little more than a narrow space some fifteen yards long and seven wide with tables and benches spaced irregularly. The wall lamps were infrequent and wicked down to minimal light, so that the impression was of gloom. I found Johanyr and several others in a corner, with chairs pulled around a newishlooking table of a design centuries old. It should have been battered, but wasn’t. It took me several moments to realize why.

  “Rhenn . . . pull up a chair.” That was Diazt. “We were talking about what’s got the masters all stirred up.”

  I lifted a chair and set it between Johanyr and Shannyr, then sat down. My feet hurt, and I still had a trace of a headache.

  “Only half the masters were at dinner, and neither Master Dichartyn nor Master Poincaryt was there,” said a short muscular secondus.

  “They usually aren’t,” Shannyr said. No one looked in his direction.

  “The newsheets said a Caenenan shore battery fired on one of our merchanters.”

  “Why would they do that?” asked Shannyr. “Merchanters don’t carry cannon.”

  “What would that have to do with the Collegium?” I in
quired.

  Diazt laughed. “The Collegium has something to do with everything in Solidar.”

  “Master Dichartyn’s your preceptor, isn’t he?” asked Johanyr.

  “Yes, but he didn’t say anything, except he cut my session short this morning, and then let Grandisyn tell me what to do in the workrooms. He left in a hurry.”

  “They were all like that today.”

  “Did he let anything slip, even indirectly?” pressed Johanyr.

  “The only thing he said was that both Ferrum and Jariola had nasty habits in making snoopy strangers disappear.”

  “I told you it couldn’t be just Caenen!” declared Shannyr.

  “Does the Council have any problems with the Oligarch there?” I asked.

  “There’s not a country in the world that doesn’t have problems with the Oligarch,” someone else said. I couldn’t tell who with the quietness of the words and the dimness.

  “There’s not a country in all of Terahnar that doesn’t have problems with Solidar,” replied Johanyr.

  “Because of imaging?” I suggested. “We don’t have that many imagers.”

  “No one else has anywhere near as many.”

  “You can’t have many imagers if you kill most of them as children,” added Shannyr.

  Diazt cleared his throat. “We still don’t really know what has them worried. It has to be something important to have all the masters meeting twice in one day.”

  “It can’t be just firing on a merchanter,” said Diazt.

  In the end, no one added anything, and I had to wonder who knew what, if anything. Still, I’d been there, and I had the feeling that I’d better drop in at least a few times a week.

  26

  To every man, his cause is the one most just.

  On Mardi morning, I spent a glass outside Master Dichartyn’s study reading Practical Philosophy because it was so boring that it seemed better to read it when I couldn’t do much else. At those times when my eyes threatened to cross, I spent a few moments with the newsheet-Tableta-but there was nothing of great interest, except for the massive avalanche near Mont D’Image and the speculation that somehow the imager Collegium there had been involved. Also, according to the captain of the Aegis, a Caenenan gunboat had fired on his ship, but missed.