The only exit to the foyer was the polished oak staircase behind Odelia, and she turned and gestured toward it. “Everyone’s waiting upstairs.”
“Then I’ll let you lead me.” I added, “Who’s everyone?”
“Besides Seliora? Uncle Shelim and Aunt Betara, of course, and there’s Hanahra and Hestya-they’re the twins, my sisters-and Methyr, Seliora’s younger brother. Bhenyt’s off somewhere. Then, there’s my mother. You’ll recognize her.”
“She’s Aegina?”
Odelia nodded, adding, “And there’s Shomyr. He’s Seliora’s older brother, and he very much wants to meet you.”
I found myself squaring my shoulders as I followed Odelia up the steps.
The staircase, ample as it was, with its carved balustrades and shimmering brass fixtures, opened at the top into a large foyer or entry hall, a space a good eight yards wide and ten deep. The walls were paneled in light golden oak, and the floor was an intricate parquet, mostly covered with a lush carpet of deep maroon, with a border of intertwined golden chains and brilliant green leafy vines. Set around the foyer were various chairs and settees of dark wood, upholstered in various fabric designs. At the far end was a pianoforte.
The group standing in a rough circle at the edge of the carpet, beside a long settee, all turned as Odelia announced, “Rhennthyl D’Imagisle.”
I had barely picked out Seliora, in a crimson dress with a black jacket, when a broad-shouldered, black- bearded young man a half head shorter than I was stepped forward. “I’m Shomyr. I’m Seliora’s brother, and she’s said so little about you that I wanted to meet you.”
Said so little?
“Now, now, Shomyr, you’ll have confused him totally.” A dark-haired and wiry woman in green silk trousers and a matching jacket, who could easily have been Seliora’s older sister, moved toward us. “The less my daughter says to us, generally the more she’s interested, and the less we know.” Her smile was identical to Seliora’s.
I inclined my head. “I’m very pleased to meet you, Madame D’Shelim.”
“Betara, please. Please. We’re not that formal here.”
They could have fooled me, given the furnishings in that grand upper entrance hall.
Seliora eased forward and around the others. She took my arm gently, as if to suggest a certain restrained possessiveness. “Rhenn is very talented. He’s an outstanding portraiturist as well as an imager, and his family owns Alusine Wool.”
“Ah . . . you’re Chenkyr’s boy, then?” asked Shelim.
“He’s my father. My brother Rousel runs the factorage in Kherseilles.” Even as I explained, I wondered how Seliora had known. I’d never said more than my father was a wool factor, and there were more than a few in L’Excelsis, and even more throughout Solidar.
“How did you get to be an imager?” The question came from the single boy in the group, standing beside the red-haired twins, who looked to be two or three years younger than Khethila.
“Methyr,” someone murmured.
“When I discovered I could image, I walked across the Bridge of Hopes and told the imagers. They tested me and decided I was an imager.”
“It couldn’t have been that simple,” suggested Shomyr.
I managed a short laugh. “It was just that simple. Everything that came after that wasn’t at all that easy. They didn’t let me leave Imagisle for over a month.”
“Are there are any girls?” asked one of the twins.
“Some. One of the maitres I’ve been studying with is a woman, and there are others.”
“Can imagers marry?” That was Odelia, and the question was delivered with a grin.
I could feel Seliora stiffen just slightly, and I had a definite sense that the question hadn’t pleased her. “They can. That’s if anyone wants to marry them.”
That brought smiles to several faces, including to the face of the older and taller redheaded woman who had to be Odelia’s mother.
“Generally, they usually live on Imagisle after they’re married,” I added.
“What exactly do imagers do?” pressed Shomyr.
“Whatever our duties are.” I paused for a moment. “I’ve worked at certain things, but right now I’m being trained for a position at the Council Chateau.”
“With the Council?” asked Shelim.
“I haven’t been given all the details, but young as I am, I suspect it’s far more like working for them.” I tried to keep my tone wry.
“Do imagers make lots of coins?” asked Methyr.
“More than journeymen, and a great deal less than your father makes.”
At that, Betara nodded slightly, and there was a quick set of glances between Seliora’s parents. Before anyone else could ask another question, Betara spoke up. “Rhenn came here to take Seliora to dinner, not to see all of us. I think we’d best let them go.”
Seliora gave her mother a quick glance that I wasn’t about to try to decipher, then turned. Since she was still holding my arm, we turned and moved toward the steps, and then down them.
More surprising, there was a hack waiting outside, and a youngster standing on the steps. He grinned at Seliora.
“Thank you, Bhenyt,” she said.
“My pleasure,” he replied, nodding to us both.
“Felters, sir?” asked the hacker.
“If you would,” I replied, looking at Seliora.
“Bhenyt is Odelia’s younger brother,” she replied, taking my hand as she stepped up into the coach. “I just thought it might be nice not to wait for a coach. You were very gallant,” she added.
“Thank you.” Had I had any real choice?
Once we were settled in the coach and moving south on Nordroad, I turned to her. I couldn’t help but notice that, despite the similarity in colors to what she had worn the night we had truly danced for the first time, the dress and the jacket looked fresh-and had probably just been tailored and delivered. “How did you know who my father was?”
She laughed. “I didn’t. Mama was the one who wanted to know about your family. She had you investigated as soon as Odelia admitted I’d spent all of last Samedi with you.”
“Is Odelia your guardian?”
“We’re close, but she likes you.”
“You know I’m not likely to ask for money or anything else from my parents. So why do they matter?”
“The money doesn’t matter, even to Mama. She was impressed that you made journeyman and then became an imager. She says that you come from solid stock.” Seliora squeezed my hand. “I could tell that.”
“How could you know that from a meeting a journeyman artist a few times?”
“You were always neat, clean, and with short hair and no beard, and after I saw the study you painted, I could tell you had talent to go with that ambition. I worried that you had too much ambition for a portraiturist.”
“Too much ambition?”
“I didn’t say that right.” She tilted her head slightly. “Too much honesty for a portraiturist with that much ambition.”
A faint scent of flowers emanated from her, not too much, a light scent.
Before that long, the coach stopped, we stepped out, and I paid and tipped the hacker.
Felters was ensconced in what had been a graystone row house on the south side of the lane that angled off East River Road. The oversized lamps that flanked the door were already lit, although the sun had not quite set.
The harried-looking server who greeted us looked at Seliora, then at me.
I did my best to mentally press friendliness upon her. “For two, please.”
“Ah . . . this way.”
We ended up at a small window table, crowded between two much larger tables, one occupied by three
