Imager

“The idea isn’t bad, sir, but it seems to me that one could have problems in defining what is good.”

“Oh?”

“Each person . . . well, most people . . . would tend to see good as what benefits them and evil as what does not. What benefits the High Holders most might not benefit the common folk nearly so much, and what benefits the factors-”

“All of that is true, without a doubt . . . but . . . what is the specific problem that this conflict engenders with the formal fundamentals of law itself?”

The term “formal fundamentals of law” jogged my memory. “Oh . . . one of the formal requirements of law is that the laws of the land must be impartial and apply equally to all, and if laws define good to benefit one group at the expense of another, they can’t be impartial.”

“Jurisprudence doesn’t discuss this, taking it as a given, but why must laws be impartial?”

I took a chance with my answer. “They don’t have to be, sir. That’s the ideal, but there are other countries that have lasted without impartial laws.”

Master Jhulian nodded and gave me a wry smile. “Master Dichartyn said that you might offer some . . . insights. Let me rephrase the question. Why must the laws in Solidar be as impartial as we can make them?”

“Because people are happier when the laws are fair and will obey them more readily?”

He just laughed. “People are probably less happy with impartial laws, but they will obey them because they see that others do not gain what they know are unfair advantages. Remember that each man perceives an advantage to himself as fair and deserved and any advantage to another as unfair and undeserved.” He smiled.

I didn’t like the expression because I suspected a difficult question was about to follow.

“With all the emphasis on fairness, why did the Council allow the High Holders to retain the right to low justice on their holdings outside any city or large town?”

I’d read about low justice, which basically referred to the process of dealing with petty theft, assault without weapons, criminal trespass when no other offense was involved-crimes like that-and I’d wondered why the High Holders had retained those rights and the ability to confine offenders for less than half a year or to apply corporal punishment within limits. Until I’d read the text, I hadn’t even realized that such rights existed. “I don’t know, sir.”

“Then guess.”

“Ah . . . because who else could enforce that on large holdings?”

“That’s partly true, but there is another reason. On whose side were the High Holders in the transition from rule by rex to the rule by the Council?”

“They supported the guilds and factors, didn’t they?” I paused. “Was that their price?”

“Whether it was their price, or whether the guilds and factors felt that that they could only push so far, it had to be something along those lines. Also, the guilds and the factors have always been more concerned about what happens in the cities and larger towns.”

That also made sense.

“Back to the essential questions of fairness, since we do operate largely in the cities. There is another reason why we as imagers have a great interest in assuring that the laws are fair and impartial. In point of fact, the penalties for imagers who break either the laws of Solidar or the rules of the Collegium are far stricter than any received by others. Why is this unfairness to our advantage? Or less to our disadvantage?”

I had no idea.

“When times are bad and things are going badly, people do not seek the causes. They seek someone to blame. Who do they blame? The first target is almost always the group that appears to be favored, that has more than they do, and whose numbers are small. Only if those in that group are powerful do they seek another group to blame, but even so their resentment and anger remain.” He looked to me.

“By subjecting ourselves to stricter rules and by not displaying overtly our prosperity and power, we attempt to avoid being a target?”

“As you will discover, anyone who attacks an imager is an enemy of the Collegium, and yet, as you will discover, while measures are taken to assure that such attackers or those who hired them do not survive, the Collegium seldom acts in a way so as to create an impression of might as an institution. Even so, while we occasionally are not successful in finding the attackers, we seldom fail in discovering those who hired them, although it may occasionally take years. Consequently, most attacks are not planned by those in L’Excelsis. But there are some.” He paused. “What does this mean in the context of the question I asked you?”

By the time I left Master Jhulian, there were so many thoughts flying through my head that nothing seemed quite as it had been. Equally disturbing were the two short papers he’d assigned, along with the reading. How was I going to prove or disprove that natural law was a contradiction in terms? Or that the second formal requirement of law-that laws must be knowable and understandable to all who are capable of understanding them-was in conflict with the first requirement?

And why did I need to know all that? Just to be a silent guard for the Council? That didn’t seem likely, but it also didn’t seem likely that I was being groomed to be a jurist or advocate for the Collegium either.

36

A true imager sees beyond the eyes and hears beyond the words.

On Mardi night at dinner, I was sitting with Kahlasa and Menyard, exhausted in both body and mind, because Clovyl had continued to increase the severity and intensity of my physical training, both in terms of exercise and running and in learning greater physical self-defense skills. In order to gain weaponless combat skills, I was now sparring with several other thirds, all of them older and more experienced. Not only was I exhausted and bruised, but that had come on top of another long morning with Master Jhulian.

“You look a little dazed, Rhenn,” Kahlasa said. “You haven’t said much this evening.”

“I’m sorry. It’s been a long day. I had my first session with Master Jhulian yesterday, and he gave me two essays and more than fifty pages of reading in the Jurisprudence book. Today, he criticized those essays and told me to rewrite them, and added another longer one, and forty pages more.” I wanted to take a long swallow of wine, but I only sipped. I had to work with Maitre Dyana later, and I didn’t want my senses or abilities wine-dimmed.

Menyard looked as blank as my mind felt, but Kahlasa nodded knowingly.

“And Clovyl has me doing a half glass of exercises and running six milles before we even get into everything he’s trying to teach me.”

That surprised Kahlasa. “They’re pushing you hard. That’s not good.”

“You’re telling me it doesn’t feel good? I hurt most of the time.” I finished my last bite of the crumb pudding.

She shook her head. “You’re not the only one. They’re stepping up training on several levels, and they’re cutting short return leaves for field imagers. That suggests troubles ahead.”

“The newsheets reported that emissaries from the High Priest of Caenen and from the Oligarch of Jariola were meeting in Caena last week,” Menyard interjected. “The Abiertans have been refitting some of their merchanters with heavy weapons, and bought several old cruisers from Ferrum that they’re also refitting.”

“Tiempre and Stakanar have signed a pact for mutual defense,” added Kahlasa.

“Do any of them really think they’ll end up gaining anything?” I’d read about all the pacts and the arming and rearming. Tiempre and Stakanar bordered Caenen, and both worried about the High Priest and his efforts to spread the gospel of Duality. My thought was that the gospel was merely a front to get his people to support a war of expansion, but maybe I’d been too steeped in the more practical religious approach of the Nameless. Then the Otelyrnan League, composed of the smaller nations on the continent of Otelyrn, had agreed to allow the Tiempran