“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?”
“I can see that. The gray looks good on you. I thought . . .”
“You thought what?” I looked at her. “Foretelling?”
She flushed, but kept her eyes on me. “I saw you in gray a long time ago. I didn’t know what it meant. Sometimes . . . it’s like that.”
I didn’t want to press her, and my smile turned wry. “It was either become a wool merchant or try to become an imager.”
She tilted her head, and her eyes sparkled, almost impishly. “I couldn’t see you as a wool merchant. I think you weren’t meant to be one. Are you an imager yet?”
“If they accept you, you’re an imager right away. You’re just a very low imager who’s restricted to the isle until you learn more.”
“I don’t imagine you’ll stay lowly that long.”
“I’ve been advanced since I’ve been there.” I could say that much without being boastful.
“I’m not surprised.” She smiled, tentatively. “Will you come to the dance with me?”
“I’d be pleased to . . . if you don’t mind being escorted by an imager.”
“Rhenn . . .” She shook her head.
“I’m sorry. I went in to Lapinina to talk to Rogaris and Sagaryn, and they barely said a dozen words. Staela kept calling me ‘sir,’ as if I’d never been in her bistro, and I’ve been coming there for almost five years.”
“I’m not them.” She smiled once more.
“I’m very glad.”
“Oh . . . Rhenn . . .” She turned and gestured to the tall redhead. “This is my big cousin Odelia.”
“I’m pleased to meet you.” I inclined my head to Odelia. She was definitely tall, within a few digits of me, not heavy, but muscular. Was everyone in Seliora’s family muscular?
Odelia smiled back politely. “I’ve never met an imager.”
“Three months ago,” I replied, “neither had I.”
Seliora looked at me, and I offered her my arm. “Shall we proceed?”
“You sound so formal.”
“It comes with the gray.”
She giggled-a sound so totally false that I knew she was jesting-and I laughed.
“That’s much better.”
Odelia stepped up on my left. I would have offered my other arm, but that didn’t feel right, and she didn’t seem to mind as we made our way across the pavement to the Guild Hall. In the west Artiema was about to set. I wondered if were just coincidence, or if the silvered moon happened to be a patroness of Seliora or Odelia. But that too was silly.
The guard who stood inside the hall looked at my grays, and then at Seliora and Odelia, then resolutely turned his head.
“You see,” I murmured.
“It doesn’t matter. You’re with us, and we’re still guild members.”
“I paid my fees for the first half of the year,” I added with a smile. “Doesn’t that still make me a guild member?” I didn’t think Guildmaster Reayalt would agree, but he wasn’t anywhere around, and, besides, Seliora was quite correct. She could bring anyone she pleased, although there were usually few outsiders.
The musicians were getting ready to play, and Odelia nodded to Seliora and slipped away.
“Kolasyn is over there with his friends,” Seliora said, “but he won’t be long.”
“Odelia gets her way?”
“We all do.” She offered that charming but mischievous smile. “You’ll see.”
By “all” I assumed she meant all the women in her family, but that wasn’t something I was going to ask. Maybe meeting her again under Artiema wasn’t exactly a coincidence, although that was just a superstition.
The music started, and I placed my right hand gently on the small of her back and took her right hand in my left. We began to dance. Seliora was a far better dancer than I was, even though Father had insisted that I learn the basics-even providing a dancing maitre, Madame D’Reingel-my last year in grammaire.
When the musicians paused, so did we.
“You dance better now,” she observed.
“I don’t know why. I haven’t danced since the last time we were here.”
“Did you think of me?”
“Yes. More than a few times.” That was certainly true.
She offered a false pout. “You tell all the girls that.”
“Only you,” I replied, immediately wishing I hadn’t phrased it quite that way.
“You only lie to me?” She flashed the mischievous smile.
