Imager’s Intrigue Read online

  In the darkness, I was climbing out of a pile of stone and rubble, under the cold grayish-red light of Erion, dust and ashes sifted around me. Then, as suddenly as it had come, before I could make out more details, the image was gone.

  It wasn’t a daydream, but a Pharsi foresight flash. Seliora had flashes more often than did I, but I’d had one or two, enough to recognize it for what it was, but not enough to be able to seize on key details. For me, unlike Seliora, they tended to foreshadow troubles. Seliora had seen us being married as a foresight flash, as Remaya had seen being married to Rousel, and my dear wife had known I’d become a Patrol officer before I did—except that she’d only seen me standing amid patrollers, not knowing what it foreshadowed. That was unfortunately often the case when it came to understanding foresight flashes.

  “What is it?” she asked. “You looked stunned.”

  “A flash.”

  She nodded slowly. “Should you tell me?”

  “I don’t think so.” That was another problem with the flashes. Often, Seliora and her family had discovered, trying to change circumstances only made matters worse. The best strategy was to plan for what might happen in the unglimpsed moments that followed a flash.

  But…surrounded by stones and rubble? I managed to keep from shivering as I began to undress for bed.

  8

  Solayi dawned bright and clear, but it could have been cloudy and raining, for all I cared, because Diestrya slept a whole glass later than usual, giving Seliora and me time to sleep and be together, and because I had the entire day off, an occurrence that was all too rare.

  When we did get up, Seliora and I fixed breakfast and lingered over it, since Klysia was off from Samedi morning until dinner on Solayi. Diestrya was happy enough that we weren’t going anywhere that she just scurried around the breakfast room, not getting into too much trouble, only occasionally asking for attention, while we read the newsheets and talked over tea.

  There was little enough truly new in either Tableta or Veritum. War still loomed in Cloisera, but had not actually broken out, perhaps because of an early heavy snowstorm, and the Council had dispatched a flotilla to join and reinforce the northern fleet, along with a communiqué that stressed Solidar’s “vigilant” neutrality. Religious upheaval in Caenen had settled down, but a new prophet of some sort was stirring up trouble in Gyarl, and the Tiemprans were reinforcing their border. And…there was a brief story in both newsheets about the stronger elveweed.

  “The newsheets both mention the new kind of elveweed,” Seliora said, setting down her tea, and glancing toward the lower cabinet where Diestrya was pulling out a stack of baking tins. “I don’t recall them ever saying anything about taudis-drugs before.”

  “The last sentence in Tableta says why. It’s not just a taudis problem. Some of the more adventurous young people are smoking it now.”

  “Like Haerasyn.” Seliora shook her head sadly. “I’m sorry about last night…”

  “It isn’t your fault. It really isn’t even Odelia’s. Kolasyn wants to save his brother, and his brother doesn’t really want to be saved.”

  “Do you really think that?”

  “No. I should have said that the feelings created by the elveweed are stronger than the understanding that the weed will eventually kill him. Death will happen sometime; he doesn’t see it as immediate. The intense pleasure is now.”

  Seliora shivered, although the breakfast room was not cold. “I’d hate to feel like that.”

  I just nodded. I’d already seen too many elvers, changed into shadows of what they once had been, because they thought that it couldn’t happen to them. I might have been wrong, but I thought that the best defense against something like elveweed was the full understanding that it could happen to anyone. Anyone at all, and that was reason enough never to try it.

  The rest of the day was blessedly unscheduled, and Seliora and I particularly enjoyed the quiet during Diestrya’s afternoon nap before we all had an early supper. We left our daughter with Klysia and took our time walking to the south end of Imagisle and the anomen, arriving just as the junior imagers who formed the choir began to sing the choral invocation, a piece I didn’t recognize. Seliora and I took our places standing near the side and rear of several of the other masters and their families. Maitre Dyana nodded to us, as did Aelys. Master Dichartyn was studying the faces of the choir members. Maitre Poincaryt and his wife stood beyond the Dichartyns and their daughters.

  When the choir finished, Chorister Isola stepped forward. She had been at the anomen since before I had first come to the Collegium, but her voice was by far the most melodious of all the choristers I had heard in my lifetime, even in the wordless ululating invocation. She finished the invocation with the formal text.

  “We are gathered here together this evening in the spirit of the Nameless and in affirmation of the quest for goodness and mercy in all that we do.”

  The opening hymn was “Not to Name.” As usual, I barely sang, because I was well aware of just how badly I did sing. Seliora sang well. After that was the confession.

  “We do not name You, for naming is a presumption, and we would not presume upon the creator of all that was, is, and will be. We do not pray to You, nor ask favors or recognition from You, for requesting such asks You to favor us over others who are also Your creations. Rather we confess that we always risk the sins of pride and presumption and that the very names we bear symbolize those sins, for we too often strive to arrogate our names and ourselves above others, to insist that our petty plans and arid achievements have meaning beyond those whom we love or over whom we have influence and power. Let us never forget that we are less than nothing against Your nameless magnificence and that all that we are is a gift to be cherished and treasured, and that we must also respect and cherish the gifts of others, in celebration of You who cannot be named or known, only respected and worshipped.”

  “In peace and harmony,” was the chorus.

  Then came the offertory baskets, followed by Isola’s ascension to the pulpit for the homily. “Good evening.”

  “Good evening,” came the reply.

  “And it is a good evening, for under the Nameless all evenings are good, even those that seem less than perfect…”

  Isola smiled and held silent for a moment before she continued. “We are all children of the Nameless, but like children we still cling to familiar names. Isn’t it easy to refer to the Nameless? Isn’t it comfortable? But who calls that entity we call the Nameless the ‘Unnamable’? Or the ‘One Too Great to be Described by a Name’? Or even the ‘One Beyond Naming’? Isn’t a casual reference to the Nameless the same as naming? As equating a comfortable pair of syllables to a being of such magnificence that a name is meaningless…?”

  From there Isola went on to suggest how the ease of naming the Nameless applied to everything else in life, so that we did not see what lay behind or beyond the names and how that so often led to a lack of understanding. The true sin of naming was not so much the use of names but the use of names in a manner that denied or obliterated the reality that the name represented.

  As with all her homilies, it made me think, even if I still questioned whether there really was a Nameless, and if there happened to be, whether the Nameless, so powerful and magnificent, could have cared in the slightest what I thought or did.

  After the service, Seliora and I hurried to get back to the house…and our daughter, who was doubtless restive, because it was pushing her bedtime.

  “I always like Isola’s homilies,” said Seliora, shivering under a thin cloak, because the evening had turned chill and blustery since we had entered the anomen.

  “Why?”

  “Because they relate to real life as well as to the Nameless. They would make sense even without the Nameless.”

  I could certainly agree with that.

  9

  The best thing about the next few days was that nothing horrible occurred. We did receive a note from Mother on Lundi ask
ing us to come to dinner on Vendrei evening, explaining that Nellica could watch both Diestrya and Rheityr. Seliora penned a gracious acceptance, and I sent it by messenger the first thing Mardi morning. The remainder of Mardi continued without untoward events, except that there was another elver death, with the unclothed body left in an alley off Dugalle. Seliora noted that Odelia was avoiding her, as we both had thought was likely, and that neither Betara nor Mama Diestra had learned anything more about where the stronger elveweed was being sold.

  A light and chill drizzle on Meredi morning made exercising and running considerably less pleasant, and Diestrya cranky about wearing a small slicker that was a shade too large for her. I dropped them off at NordEste Design without any more protests from my daughter, read the newsheets and learned little, and left the duty coach without event at the station.

  Alsoran and I talked over possible changes in several patroller rounds, and then Zellyn came hurrying into the station and found me as I was taking a quick look at the reports from the night before. A single look at his face told me that the comparative uneventfulness that had been so welcome on Lundi and Mardi was about to end.

  “Captain, we’ve got a problem over on Geusynor Lane. It’s a little lane across Saenhelyn where a lot of factors live.”

  “I know where it is.” I should have. It was less than three long blocks from where my parents lived and where I’d grown up. Usually, we had few problems on the north—the northeast really—side of Saenhelyn. “We’ll take a hack.”

  “Yes, sir.” Zellyn had been the first patroller I’d done rounds with, and he still had the weathered and reddish face he’d had then. Both his brush mustache and bushy eyebrows were now totally silver, and his pale brown eyes looked sadder with each passing year—not surprisingly for a patroller as good-hearted as he was.

  “Lyonyt, if you’d tell the Lieutenant where I am?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Zellyn and I walked out of the station. There were no hacks in sight, and we walked up to South Middle. Once there, I flagged a hack, but looked to Zellyn.

  “Geusynor Lane, a block and a half off Saenhelyn.”

  “We can go that, sir.”

  Once we were inside the coach, I turned. “Tell me what you know.”

  “Dhean and I were patrolling Geusynor. We only hit it every third round or so, but you never know, when we heard someone scream. So we ran down to this house. It’s not a chateau, but it’s some house, sir. The carriage gate and the front walk gate are closed, but we can see a woman on the carriage way, and she’s shaking, and there’s a body on the stones. We go in, and the body is a schoolgirl, it looks like, and the woman who screamed is her mother.”

  “Who is she?” I knew one or two people on Geusynor, or I had, years back. I supposed most of them still lived there.

  “Her name is Rauchelle D’Roulet, and her husband is a factor.”

  “Roulet D’Factorius?” I hadn’t heard of him.

  “She said he deals in musical instruments, and manufactures pianofortes.”

  A factor dealing in musical instruments? I’d never heard of one, but that didn’t mean such a factorage didn’t exist. “What happened to the girl?”

  “It looks like one of those elveweed deaths, sir.” Zellyn shook his head. “Pleasant-looking girl, too. She would have been, that is, if her face wasn’t so twisted up. Looked like she was running for help or something when it hit her.”

  I was the first out when the hack came to a stop. “How much?” I asked the hacker.

  “Be three, sir.”

  I handed him four coppers. “Thank you.”

  “My pleasure, sir.”

  We walked toward the front gate, partly open, and through it I could see Dhean standing on the side porch and the top of a woman’s head, as if she were sitting on a bench or chair with a low back. Zellyn’s description of the house showed his own background, and my response to his description, when I saw the place, betrayed mine. The dwelling was slightly smaller than my parents’, with a mansard roof and slate tiles that had to have been wired in place, given the angle. The walls were mortar over brick, in a provincial style, and the trim was a pale yellow. The carriage house was in the old style, barely large enough for a single coach, with a rear stable.

  A white woolen blanket, likely Tilboran prime wool, covered the body lying at the foot of the steps up to the side porch. I bent over and took a corner of the blanket, pulling it back to see the girl’s face and upper body. Her face, contorted into a rictus of pain and shock, was narrow and triangular above thin shoulders. She’d only been wearing a filmy white cotton night-dress. I guessed her age at fifteen or sixteen. I eased the blanket back over her.

  Zellyn let me go up the steps to the covered porch first. He followed silently.

  The woman who rose from the wicker chair with the faded oilcloth cushion was angular, her face similar to that of the dead girl. The mother was the kind who was so nervous she looked like she was always on the verge of shaking all over. Her hair was tinted a shade of henna-blonde unbecoming to someone with white chalky skin, and the redness of her eyes and the blotchy appearance of her face only accentuated the clash between skin and hair.

  “Madame D’Roulet, I’m Patrol Captain Rhennthyl.” I inclined my head.

  She gave me a second look, then a third, before she spoke. “Oh…you’re the imager. Chenkyr and Maelyna’s son. I’m glad it’s you.”

  That could have meant many things, but I just nodded, then asked, “Can you tell me how this happened?”

  “I don’t know. Jessya didn’t feel well at breakfast, and she stayed home from school. I heard her moving around upstairs, and then she ran down the stairs…and the porch door opened. I didn’t hear anything after that. For a moment, I thought she had run onto the porch because she needed air. I started to follow her, but then I smelled something burning, and I ran upstairs. There was this funny pipe lying there, and it had charred the carpet. It’s a very good carpet, a Mantean Forssya. Her whole room smelled like bitter weeds had burned.”

  “Have you ever smelled that before?”

  “I…I don’t think so.”

  I let the lie pass. She’d smelled that odor before, but not often, and probably not strongly. “Then what did you do?”

  “I ran downstairs and out onto the porch. That was when I saw her…lying there…”

  The patrollers in Third District had found a number of dead elvers outside, some of them nude, and I’d thought that was because their bodies had been stripped and robbed, but it sounded like what ever the weed did to some people led to them feeling hot and needing air.

  “Where did she go to school?”

  “Jainsyn’s School for Girls.”

  I nodded. My sister Khethila called the fashionable school “Jayne’s Sins.”

  I spent a quarter-glass going over what Madame D’Roulet had seen and done, but it was clear enough that, while she might have suspected her daughter was doing something, she hadn’t any real idea what. It was also clear that she hadn’t tried all that hard to find out because she had no idea where Jessya had gotten the elveweed, except that it was probably from school friends.

  As I was getting ready to leave, Madame D’Roulet cleared her throat. “What will you do now?”

  “There’s not much more we can do for her. We’ll keep looking for dealers and runners, and we’ll report her death.”

  “You won’t have to take…her, will you? I wouldn’t want anyone to see her…like this.”

  “No.” There wasn’t any point in that. “You can make what ever arrangements you like.”

  “Jessya is such a good girl…” Her eyes drifted past me to the blanket-covered figure on the drive.

  I didn’t point out that the past tense was more appropriate to the dead schoolgirl, and that any schoolgirl who had access to elveweed couldn’t have been all that good…unless she was truly naïve and had gone along with bad company, but I had my doubts about that. “Sometimes, it’s the inno
cent who get hurt the most, Madame. They really don’t understand the dangers, and they think nothing bad will happen to them.”

  “Why can’t…you stop…things like this?”

  “We try very hard. But the people who sell it make a great deal of golds from doing so, and they go to great lengths to avoid us. Those who buy from them also avoid us, and I don’t think anyone would want the Patrol intruding into every home and every business continually, trying to root out dealers. Most crimes are solved because people either come to the Patrol and tell us, or because they’re willing to answer our questions. Most who buy, sell, or use elveweed don’t do either.”

  “There must be something…”

  “We keep looking, Madame.” What else could I say to a distracted mother who didn’t seem to fully realize that her daughter was dead? Especially since there was so little we could really do. “Is there someone who can help you?”

  “My sister Neldya…she’s inside. She sent a messenger to Roulet.” She shook her head. “It doesn’t seem real.”

  “Officer?” came a quiet voice from my left. “If you’re through…Rauchelle might need some tea.”

  I turned to see a smallish gray-haired woman standing in the porch doorway. “We’re through. Would you like the patrollers to carry Jessya inside?”

  “If you would.”

  I glanced to Zellyn, and he and Dhean went down the steps to the drive, wrapped the blanket around the body, and then carried it back onto the porch and inside. The ease with which they handled her suggested she’d weighed even less than I’d thought.

  When the two returned, we walked back along Geusynor toward Saenhelyn Road.

  “She’d been smoking for a while, sir,” offered Zellyn. “Elvers get thin like that.”

  “Her mother didn’t notice?” asked Dhean. “The smell alone…”

  “Most factors and their families have never smelled elveweed.” Certainly, I never had until I found myself as a Civic Patrol Liaison. “I’ll have to visit the school.”