Imager's Intrigue: The Third Book of the Imager Portfolio (8 page)

“The greener or fresher elveweed is appearing all over L’Excelsis,” Diestra finally said. “It’s stronger than the dried weed from Caenen and Tiempre. One of my contacts said it was like the weed that came from Stakanar years back, before the Stakanarans rooted it all out.”

“They’re still getting the dried weed in Rivages and Touryl,” Betara added.

“That means the supply of the stronger weed is limited,” I mused.

“They can charge more in L’Excelsis,” Diestra said dryly. “It’s a question of golds.”

“Can you find out if any other city is getting the fresh weed?” I asked.

“You have an idea?”

“I have several,” I temporized. “More information might help.”

“There is one other matter,” offered Diestra.

I tried not to stiffen. Whenever Mama Diestra brought up something, it was important.

“Several Pharsi families in Solis, Kherseilles, Estisle, and Westisle have had their eldest sons killed over the past month. The men were all married and had children.” She looked to me.

“Do you have any idea how many?”

“We know of fourteen.”

“I haven’t heard about that. It sounds like the killers don’t understand Pharsi ways. Someone who’s not Pharsi is trying to make trouble.”

“That’s what we think, but…it hasn’t happened here.”

“Because I’m a Patrol Captain?”

“Can you think of another reason?” countered Diestra.

“The Collegium and the Council are here.”

“There are smaller collegia in both Estisle and Westisle,” Betara said.

“Every city you named is a port,” I pointed out. “L’Excelsis isn’t.”

Betara and Diestra exchanged glances. Clearly, they hadn’t thought about that. I hadn’t either. The idea had just popped into my head.

“Do you know if any of the families have businesses or factorages that supply the Navy? Or deal with grain?”

“We’ll have to see.” Diestra picked up the deck of plaques and shuffled them, then began to lay out a pattern of cards on the felt surface of the table.

The three of us rose and left the chamber.

“I need to check on dinner.” Betara hurried down the stairs ahead of Seliora and me.

As we walked down the last few steps and then moved from the staircase to the main hall, Odelia appeared. “You were talking about elveweed with Grandmama?”

“We were,” I said. “There seems to be a stronger version that’s causing deaths.”

“Can’t you do something about it, Rhenn?”

I could sense a tightness behind her words.

“I’ve suggested to the taudischefs in my district that they warn people against using it.”

“Suggested? Warned?”

Seliora shot a glance at Odelia that I wouldn’t have wanted to receive.

Odelia ignored it and stared at me.

“Odelia…I have slightly fewer than four hundred patrollers assigned to Third District. Third District comprises roughly four square milles. It’s the eastern quarter of the old city of L’Excelsis, plus the newer areas to the north. If the blocks were regular, and they’re not, but it’s close enough to calculate that there are somewhere over 1,000 blocks in Third District. At any one time, I have no more than 150 patrollers on the streets. That’s one patroller for every seven or eight blocks. Now, we know we don’t have to patrol some areas heavily, and we don’t. But even in the taudis, which is heavily patrolled, especially in the late afternoon and evening, we can’t do better than having a patroller for every third or fourth block on average at any one time. I have managed to keep the dealers out of Third District, but I can’t catch all their runners, and runners are a penny a score. We brought in two this afternoon, one dead.”

“With all that explaining, I’m surprised you have time to catch anyone.” Her tone was scathing.

“We catch people because the people come to us and tell us, and because the taudischefs let me know things. We also catch people because we vary patrol times and routes, so that common criminals don’t know when a patroller might be around. We also catch people because many aren’t too bright. The elveweed dealers are not common. They’re traders in illegal goods, and those who survive are anything but stupid. That’s why they don’t get anywhere near me, and I can’t patrol everyone else’s districts, either practically or legally.” I paused, then asked, “What do you suggest that I do, Odelia?”

“Stop the trade. It kills people.”

“How? I can find the taudis-kids the dealers use as runners. I can put them in work houses or send them to the Navy as coal loaders. And if I catch them twice, they can die after working themselves to death on the road gangs before they’re thirty. And the day after I send each one away, there’s another one in his place. The dealers haven’t even entered Third District in years. These days, we’ve got fewer elvers and no dealers there, but your family and I can’t build paper mills and woodworks in every taudis in L’Excelsis, and there aren’t enough imagers around to do what I do—and even if there were, the people in the city wouldn’t accept that many imagers in the Civic Patrol.”

“My…how eloquent you are. It doesn’t change things. People still die, and more are dying.”

“Odelia,” I said slowly, deliberately, “I know Kolasyn’s brother is an elver. I know you’re both worried. But he’s the one who chooses to smoke it. No one put a blade to his throat and told him to.”

“People shouldn’t be tempted like that. Not by something that changes the way they think after smoking it once or twice.”

I really wanted to tell Odelia that she couldn’t save Haerasyn from himself. “The world is filled with temptations that lead to great danger, Odelia. Neither you nor I can prevent even a small fraction of them. You and Kolasyn do what you can. I do what I can.”

“That’s easy for you to say…”

“Odelia.” Seliora’s voice cut like an ice knife.

The redhead closed her mouth, but I could sense the rage, and that angered me. Odelia wanted to blame everyone except Haerasyn.

“Don’t ever do that again.” I could feel my own cold steel fury slam into Odelia, for all that I did not raise my voice or move.

Odelia stepped back involuntarily, shrinking away, even though she was nearly my height. “I’m sorry. I’m very sorry.” She backed away, then ran up the stairs.

Seliora smiled sadly at me and shook her head. “We’ll talk later.”

I understood, and we walked back to rejoin the group gathered near the pianoforte.

Dinner was delicious, and, in the Pharsi tradition, no one talked about business or about troubles, but about the good things in life. Odelia’s place at the table was empty, and poor Kolasyn just looked bewildered.

Sometime after eighth glass, Bhenyt went out and hailed a hack for us, as he often did, and we left.

“Odelia thinks you can do anything, and that you didn’t really want to help Haerasyn,” Seliora offered in the darkness of the cab as we headed down the Boulevard D’Ouest.

“I may be a powerful imager, but that doesn’t mean I can save people from their own weaknesses and stupidity. I have enough trouble trying not to do stupid things myself.”

“She won’t ever approach you again,” Seliora said. “She’ll avoid you for months. It could be longer.”

“I tried to be polite, but when she looked at you like that…”

“Every bit of you that is the Pharsi heritage that your mother denies came forward. It joined with the part that is imager, and for that moment, dearest, you were truly terrible. Odelia is strong, but no one could have stood against that.”

“You could have.”

She shook her head. “Why do you think Iryela begged you to be a friend?”

“She asked…”

“For a High Holder, what she did was equivalent to groveling. It was bearable to her because she knew you respected her, and because you saved her life, but she knows you could destroy everything she has. She saw what Odelia just saw. Grandmama sensed that in you from the beginning. Why do you think you’ve been able to turn Third District around.”

“It’s not turned that far—”

“Rhenn.”

“I’d like to think good ideas, and some golds from your family, have helped change things.”

“Exactly. They helped. But the real difference is that the taudischefs don’t want to cross you, and the patrollers feel more secure. Even the conscription teams are very well-mannered in your district, and they aren’t in most.”

“Yes, dear.” I wasn’t about to argue with her.

She still mock-slapped me, her fingers barely touching my cheek.

I would have liked to have held her, but Diestrya was dozing in my lap, and the last thing I wanted to do was to wake a sleeping three-year-old.

Once we got home, we immediately went upstairs and put our daughter to bed, although she never quite woke up. I waited and watched her for a bit, to make sure that she slipped into a deeper sleep. She was sleeping easily when I finally walked back into the main bedchamber to talk to Seliora. At that moment, an image flashed before me.

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.

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.