“What do you suggest that I do, Odelia?”
“Stop the trade. It kills people.”
“How? I can find the taudis-kids the dealers use as runners. I can put them in work houses or send them to the Navy as coal loaders. And if I catch them twice, they can die after working themselves to death on the road gangs before they’re thirty. And the day after I send each one away, there’s another one in his place. The dealers haven’t even entered Third District in years. These days, we’ve got fewer elvers and no dealers there, but your family and I can’t build paper mills and woodworks in every taudis in L’Excelsis, and there aren’t enough imagers around to do what I do-and even if there were, the people in the city wouldn’t accept that many imagers in the Civic Patrol.”
“My…how eloquent you are. It doesn’t change things. People still die, and more are dying.”
“Odelia,” I said slowly, deliberately, “I know Kolasyn’s brother is an elver. I know you’re both worried. But he’s the one who chooses to smoke it. No one put a blade to his throat and told him to.”
“People shouldn’t be tempted like that. Not by something that changes the way they think after smoking it once or twice.”
I really wanted to tell Odelia that she couldn’t save Haerasyn from himself. “The world is filled with temptations that lead to great danger, Odelia. Neither you nor I can prevent even a small fraction of them. You and Kolasyn do what you can. I do what I can.”
“That’s easy for you to say…”
“Odelia.” Seliora’s voice cut like an ice knife.
The redhead closed her mouth, but I could sense the rage, and that angered me. Odelia wanted to blame everyone except Haerasyn.
“Don’t ever do that again.” I could feel my own cold steel fury slam into Odelia, for all that I did not raise my voice or move.
Odelia stepped back involuntarily, shrinking away, even though she was nearly my height. “I’m sorry. I’m very sorry.” She backed away, then ran up the stairs.
Seliora smiled sadly at me and shook her head. “We’ll talk later.”
I understood, and we walked back to rejoin the group gathered near the pianoforte.
Dinner was delicious, and, in the Pharsi tradition, no one talked about business or about troubles, but about the good things in life. Odelia’s place at the table was empty, and poor Kolasyn just looked bewildered.
Sometime after eighth glass, Bhenyt went out and hailed a hack for us, as he often did, and we left.
“Odelia thinks you can do anything, and that you didn’t really want to help Haerasyn,” Seliora offered in the darkness of the cab as we headed down the Boulevard D’Ouest.
“I may be a powerful imager, but that doesn’t mean I can save people from their own weaknesses and stupidity. I have enough trouble trying not to do stupid things myself.”
“She won’t ever approach you again,” Seliora said. “She’ll avoid you for months. It could be longer.”
“I tried to be polite, but when she looked at you like that…”
“Every bit of you that is the Pharsi heritage that your mother denies came forward. It joined with the part that is imager, and for that moment, dearest, you were truly terrible. Odelia is strong, but no one could have stood against that.”
“You could have.”
She shook her head. “Why do you think Iryela begged you to be a friend?”
“She asked…”
“For a High Holder, what she did was equivalent to groveling. It was bearable to her because she knew you respected her, and because you saved her life, but she knows you could destroy everything she has. She saw what Odelia just saw. Grandmama sensed that in you from the beginning. Why do you think you’ve been able to turn Third District around.”
“It’s not turned that far-”
“Rhenn.”
“I’d like to think good ideas, and some golds from your family, have helped change things.”
“Exactly. They helped. But the real difference is that the taudischefs don’t want to cross you, and the patrollers feel more secure. Even the conscription teams are very well-mannered in your district, and they aren’t in most.”
“Yes, dear.” I wasn’t about to argue with her.
She still mock-slapped me, her fingers barely touching my cheek.
I would have liked to have held her, but Diestrya was dozing in my lap, and the last thing I wanted to do was to wake a sleeping three-year-old.
Once we got home, we immediately went upstairs and put our daughter to bed, although she never quite woke up. I waited and watched her for a bit, to make sure that she slipped into a deeper sleep. She was sleeping easily when I finally walked back into the main bedchamber to talk to Seliora. At that moment, an image flashed before me.
In the darkness, I was climbing out of a pile of stone and rubble, under the cold grayish-red light of Erion, dust and ashes sifted around me. Then, as suddenly as it had come, before I could make out more details, the image was gone.
It wasn’t a daydream, but a Pharsi foresight flash. Seliora had flashes more often than did I, but I’d had one or two, enough to recognize it for what it was, but not enough to be able to seize on key details. For me, unlike Seliora, they tended to foreshadow troubles. Seliora had seen us being married as a foresight flash, as Remaya had seen being married to Rousel, and my dear wife had known I’d become a Patrol officer before I did-except that she’d only seen me standing amid patrollers, not knowing what it foreshadowed. That was unfortunately often the case when it came to understanding foresight flashes.
“What is it?” she asked. “You looked stunned.”
“A flash.”
She nodded slowly. “Should you tell me?”
“I don’t think so.” That was another problem with the flashes. Often, Seliora and her family had discovered, trying to change circumstances only made matters worse. The best strategy was to plan for what might happen in the unglimpsed moments that followed a flash.
But…surrounded by stones and rubble? I managed to keep from shivering as I began to undress for bed.
8
Solayi dawned bright and clear, but it could have been cloudy and raining, for all I cared, because Diestrya slept a whole glass later than usual, giving Seliora and me time to sleep and be together, and because I had the entire day off, an occurrence that was all too rare.
When we did get up, Seliora and I fixed breakfast and lingered over it, since Klysia was off from Samedi morning until dinner on Solayi. Diestrya was happy enough that we weren’t going anywhere that she just scurried around the breakfast room, not getting into too much trouble, only occasionally asking for attention, while we read the newsheets and talked over tea.
There was little enough truly new in either
“The newsheets both mention the new kind of elveweed,” Seliora said, setting down her tea, and glancing toward the lower cabinet where Diestrya was pulling out a stack of baking tins. “I don’t recall them ever saying anything about taudis-drugs before.”
“The last sentence in
