Nameless.” Baelthm chuckled in his deep voice. “Long as I live, they’ll be doing fairly well, and if I don’t … well … there’s the death golds. What is it, four golds for an undercaptain?”
Quaeryt knew the death gold payment was two golds for a ranker, if he had a wife, none otherwise, but for an officer, he’d never asked, but Baelthm’s comment reminded him that he needed to check to see that the proper payment request had been lodged for Akoryt. Rather than answer Baelthm directly, he only said, “It could happen, but it’s best not to dwell on it.”
“You’d be right about that, sir.”
“Have there been any other imagers in your family?”
“None that I know of. I wonder at times if my youngest might not be growing in that direction.”
“How old is he?”
“He’s but four.” Baelthm added immediately, “I did not wed young. Few women in Cheva would willingly wed an imager, especially one with a Pharsi grandmother. But Rashyl … her sweetness was a boon and well worth waiting for.”
“What sort of lacework does she do?”
Baelthm beamed. “Any kind that needs doing.” The broad smile faded. “At times, the ladies wanted more from her than the masons did from me.”
“Was your father an imager?”
“Who could say? I don’t remember much of him. He was a boatman on the river. He died when I could barely walk. Drowned, my mother said. She never spoke much of him, and the way she didn’t, I didn’t ask much. Not after she said that he was a boatman and that was all I needed to know.”
Quaeryt nodded and waited.
“Not that it’d be good to dwell on it, sir, but you did say something about how things might be better for us after the campaign…”
“After the war is settled, one way or another,” Quaeryt affirmed. “Lord Bhayar has agreed not to forget the imagers, and he has always kept his word on such matters.”
“And you being an imager, then, and wed to his sister…” Baelthm raised his eyebrows.
Quaeryt nodded.
“What about families, sir?”
“I’d like them to be able to join you.”
“Be good to think that I might not have to return to Cheva. The whole province…” The oldest undercaptain shook his head.
“The folk of Piedryn haven’t been as charitable as they might have been to imagers…”
“Those words, sir, are all too charitable for the folk of Piedryn.”
Quaeryt wasn’t about to point out that those words applied to all too many people in Lydar and that was one reason why he was risking so much for Bhayar. “That may be, but we do what we can do.”
Quaeryt talked for another quint before he felt he’d spent enough time with the older imager and sent Baelthm back to the undercaptains. But before summoning another undercaptain to talk with, Quaeryt turned to Zhelan. “I know it’s late, and I should have realized it earlier, but the death payments for Akoryt?”
“You had much to do, sir. I took care of it when we had time in Ralaes, then sent it off after we took Villerive. Be a few weeks before his wife receives those golds, and she’ll grieve again.” Zhelan added quietly, “It’s five golds for an undercaptain.”
“Thank you.”
Desyrk was the next undercaptain Quaeryt gestured to ride beside him.
The blond undercaptain looked quizzically at Quaeryt. “Sir?”
“You’d told me you were a potter before you became an undercaptain. You avoided talking much about it, and I didn’t press … then. Why didn’t you want to say more?”
“Just didn’t.”
“I need to know more now.” Quaeryt image-projected a hint of warmth and curiosity.
“Might I ask why, sir?”
“The more I know about you, now that your imaging has improved, the more I can try to put you where you’re the most effective,” replied Quaeryt. “Did you like being a potter?”
“Well enough.”
“How much imaging did you do to help in forming or throwing pots?”
“Couldn’t have been any kind of potter without it.” Desyrk paused, then went on. “My pots’d sag. Didn’t have my brother’s touch. He was even better than our da.”
“Your father was a master potter, then?”
“Hardly! We made pots and jugs for the poorer folk north of Thuyl. They were strong and solid, and they didn’t leak. Other than that…” He shook his head.
“Was anyone else in your family an imager?”
“Not that I know. Until my brother caught me imaging a pot, even my folks didn’t know. He was the one who told Bhayar’s men. Even kept the gold, the miserable whelp.”
“Why did he turn you in?”
“He didn’t know how come I could form pots as good as they were. He’d see ’em sagging and lumpy, and I’d image ’em better before we put them in the kiln … when no one was looking. But he kept watching closer and closer, and he caught me. Said I wasn’t doing it right. Said a potter had to work the clay, not just image it. I told him it was work one way or the other. He didn’t want to hear it. Da didn’t believe it, and Jorj went and told the local constable or whatever, and they put me on an old mule and sent me to Solis and then to Ferravyl.” Desyrk shrugged. “You know the rest.”
“You never married.”
“Couldn’t raise the bride price. Pots don’t bring a lot.”
“What do you think about being an imager?”
“It’s not great, sir. A lot better than being a potter in Thuyla, though.”
Quaeryt continued to ask questions and listen as they rode westward along the well-paved road that led to Variana.
68
Over the remainder of Solayi and all of Lundi, there were absolutely no signs of any Bovarian forces, reinforcing Quaeryt’s-and Skarpa’s-belief that Rex Kharst was amassing forces near Variana. Yet Quaeryt couldn’t dismiss the possibility that the Bovarians might attack at any point. While he rode and waited for that possibility, he spent time talking to each of the imager undercaptains. From some of them, such as Threkhyl and Horan, he learned little unexpected, only more detail about what they had initially told him. Quaeryt had already known that Threkhyl had been a small holder outside a small village northeast of Piedryn, far enough from the larger towns that no one noticed that he almost never bought tools or plows or saws or spades or that in even the worst of times his family somehow had enough to eat-until a local cooper tried to woo and marry his daughter. Threkhyl had turned the fellow down, and in weeks, Threkhyl had been rounded up by Bhayar’s men, with a pair of golds going to the cooper and the daughter who was likely now his wife.
Quaeryt could see how that had happened, or that a trapping rival had turned in Horan, since neither undercaptain was versed in subtlety.
Smaethyl was the essential loner, in some ways the closest to Quaeryt and in others totally foreign, as when he had observed, “I’d say that the Nameless doesn’t want anyone to have any glory, and most lords and High Holders don’t want anyone else to have many golds. That doesn’t leave much for most folks.”
It wasn’t that Quaeryt disagreed with Smaethyl’s observation, but the almost fatalistic attitude behind the words chilled him.
The three Pharsi undercaptains came from different towns, yet shared many similarities, all from their Pharsi heritage, the most notable being their quiet pragmatism.
Shaelyt, his words capturing the spirit of that practicality, had simply said, “Erion and the Nameless watch,
