older men in suits of a cut I did not recognize, and one empty, but the smaller table was fine with me.
“What would you like to drink?” asked the server.
I inclined my head to Seliora.
“Do you have a white Sanellio?”
The server nodded.
“Cambrisio, white,” I added.
The server left a slate on which the three specialties of the evening had been written in small script-Chicken Asseroiles, Pork Samedi, and Flank Steak Especial.
“Are any of these favorites of yours?” I asked.
“I think I’d like the chicken. You?”
“The steak. I’m partial to both mushrooms and parsley.”
When the two goblets of wine came, right after two couples were settled in at the table behind me, I ordered for us, adding a crab bisque as an appetizer and choosing the walnut and shaved apple and cheese salad. They were probably winter-kept apples, but it was worth a try.
After the server left, Seliora looked at me. “You don’t have to impress me.”
“I just wanted to have a good meal with you and enjoy it. That’s not something I get to do often.”
“If you do it often, you won’t be able to afford anything else.” But her words were said warmly.
I lifted my wine goblet. “To you and to a delightful evening.”
She lifted hers. “I’ll return that. To you . . . and the evening.”
The Cambrisio was good, but looking at Seliora was better.
“Why did you ask me to dance, that first time?” I asked.
“I wanted to. Rogaris told Odelia that you were too serious for me.”
“He didn’t know you well, then.”
“Do you?” A hint of mischief colored her words.
“No, but I know that there’s more to you than meets the eye . . . and I’m interested in learning more about you.”
For just a moment, her eyes flickered past me, looking outside.
“What is it?”
“Nothing. Someone going past, but he was looking this way.”
“Do you know him?”
She shook her head. “From what I saw, he’s not someone I’d wish to know.”
The server arrived with the salads. I took a bite, gingerly. “The salad is good, especially the cheese.”
A faint smile crossed Seliora’s lips, but she nodded, before saying, “It is.”
“Why did you smile?”
“Not that many men would worry about the salad. They’d either eat it or ignore it.”
I shrugged. I wasn’t about to say I’d wanted it to be good for her. “I enjoy a good meal.”
“You couldn’t have eaten that well at Master Caliostrus’s house.”
I hadn’t. “Why do you say that?”
“Last summer, I was with Odelia, and Ostrius was talking to her escort-the one before Kolasyn-about how he skipped as many meals as he could.”
“He could afford to. I couldn’t. It wasn’t that bad.”
“I like that about you.”
“What?”
“You’re not the complaining type. You do what’s necessary until you can make things better. That’s why you’ll do well as an imager.”
“Complaining doesn’t do any good,” I pointed out. “If the person you complain to is the kind who would listen, they’ve already done what they can, and anyone else either won’t listen, doesn’t care, or can’t do anything.”
“Most people aren’t that practical.”
I’d never thought of myself as that practical. How practical was trying to be a portraiturist when you came from a family of wool factors?
The server reappeared, took the empty salad plates, and placed the entrees in front of us. I cut into the flank steak, and then ate several bites, enjoying the combination of mushrooms, buttered parsley, and seasoned tender beef. “How is your chicken?”
“Very tender, and tasty. It reminds me of Aunt Aegina’s.”
“Odelia’s mother?”
“Yes. She’s a good cook, better than Mother. That might be because she enjoys it.”
“Your mother eats because she has to.”
“You noticed.”
“She has a certain . . . determination, like someone else, I suspect.”
Seliora flushed, just a touch. Then she stiffened and looked up and out the window. “That man . . . out there, in the dark brown cloak and a square beard. He’s walked past twice, and he’s looked at you.”
“At you, I’m most certain. You’re the one worth looking at.”
“You’re kind, but he wasn’t looking at me.”
If Seliora said the man wasn’t, then he wasn’t, but why would anyone be looking at me? From what I’d seen so far since I’d become an imager, no one gave imagers more than a passing glance-and that more to avoid us than anything else. “There’s not much I can do about it now.”
“I suppose not.”
“Enjoy your chicken.” I almost added that she should enjoy my looking at her, but that would have been too forward.
“And what else? You were about to add something.”
“The company, if you can.”
“I’m enjoying that very much.”
“I’m glad.”
After several more bites and another swallow of wine, I asked, “Do you like designing the patterns for the upholstery?”
“The designing I like very much.” Seliora’s smile turned wry. “Working with some clients is sometimes less enjoyable.”
I kept asking her questions through the remainder of dinner and through dessert-an apple cream custard- and the tea that followed.
Finally, as much as I’d enjoyed the dinner, both the food and the company, there were people waiting outside, and the server kept looking at us.
“I suppose we had better go. I wouldn’t want to be accused of keeping you out too late.”
“You would have been anyway, even if we’d left a glass ago,” she replied.
All in all, the dinner cost four silvers, counting what I left for the server.
We stepped out of the bistro and were walking toward the pair of hacks waiting for fares, when Seliora stiffened again, glanced to my right, and then tugged my arm.
“Over there,” she whispered. “It’s the same man.”
I turned my head and saw the glint in the bearded man’s hand, and then what looked to be a spark or flash. I was too slow in trying to throw up shields, and something smashed into my shoulder. Despite the pain, I was furious. I concentrated on imaging caustic into his eyes and inside his chest, around his heart, or where I thought his heart was.
There was a single shriek, and he pitched forward onto the pavement of the sidewalk.
I stood there dumbly for a moment.
Seliora looked at me. “You’re bleeding.”
Before I could speak, she’d started to open my waistcoat and shirt and had jammed something into the wound.
“You!” Her voice penetrated the night as she pointed toward the lead hacker of those waiting outside Felters. “We’re headed to the Bridge of Hopes. Now.”
