Imager’s Intrigue

I took a last swallow of tea that had cooled to lukewarm. I couldn’t help but think about what had happened across L’Excelsis and the other larger cities in Solidar-explosions, riots, mobs, Civic Patrol officers being shot, the attack on the Collegium.

“Well?” persisted my dear wife.

“I surrender to your most reasonable proposition.”

“Good. You watch Diestrya while I wash up, and I will while you get dressed.”

I did clean up the dishes and the kitchen as I kept an eye on our not-quite-wayward daughter, but even that minimal effort took three times as long as it should have, because three-year-olds have insatiable curiosity, usually involving items such as coal scuttles, hot stoves, or grimy pokers followed immediately by dashes toward white table linens.

Once again, I was reminded why Seliora wanted to keep working as a design engineer for NordEste Design and not spend every waking moment with Diestrya. While Seliora didn’t dawdle in getting dressed, she also didn’t rush. But she did give me a grateful smile when she relieved me, and I carried the kettle of warm wash water up to the bathroom.

When I came back downstairs, wearing older, heavier, and more comfortable imager grays, Diestrya was peering out the window of the family parlor, entranced by the flow of water across the outside of the panes. Pleased with her absorption and hoping it would last, I settled onto the settee beside Seliora.

“You’re still thoughtful,” she observed.

“I’ve been thinking about yesterday. The hacker knew who we were. He was waiting. But…if they knew so much…?”

“Do you think they knew you weren’t up to full strength?”

“They might have guessed, but I think it was designed so that whoever came up with it couldn’t lose. They either killed me, or they got killed. If they got me, that weakens both the Civic Patrol and the Collegium. If they get killed, there’s no track back to who hired them, and they were using the kind of weapons that certainly would lead to one of those outcomes.”

“If Cydarth is involved,” mused Seliora, “he might want you to survive. Then he could suggest how strange it was that you are always surviving.”

“Another way of undermining me and the Collegium?”

“Well…if you get killed, he’s rid of you. If you don’t, he undermines your effectiveness by suggesting your survival is the result of something sinister.”

“My patrollers know differently.”

“They do, Rhenn. Who cares what they think, especially in the Council or in the Collegium?”

She had a point there. Even if I wouldn’t be returning as captain, those sorts of rumors wouldn’t help me, and especially not the Collegium. “There’s another aspect to all this. The more I discover, the more complications I find. The gunners on the barges were set up the same way. If they were successful, they’d have just ridden the barges downriver. By daylight, they’d have been fifteen to twenty milles downstream. At some point in deeper water, they could have scuttled them, and no one would have been the wiser, not any time soon.” The level of experience of the gunners still bothered me. That was one reason why I hadn’t mentioned that aspect of the matter to anyone, especially to Sea-Marshal Geuffryt.

“That took planning.”

“All of it took planning…and for years. But so many things happened. I can’t believe that any one group-even the head of Ferran spies or what ever they’re called-could have organized it all and kept it hidden and all on track.”

“Then they weren’t all done by the same people.” Seliora’s tone was matter-of-fact as she got up and intercepted Diestrya before she reached the coal scuttle.

Yet it couldn’t be coincidence that everything had happened at once. Or had the Ferrans merely analyzed the problems Solidar faced and woven their plot or plots inside problem areas we already had and hadn’t resolved? That was more likely, but why hadn’t Dichartyn or Poincaryt discovered that? Then again, if their actions didn’t involve deaths…or if the deaths happened years before…

I didn’t like those implications any more than the idea of coincidence.

Was I just trying to fit odd circumstances and a few Ferran-implemented acts into a grand scheme that didn’t even exist?

“Rhenn…what are you thinking? You have the strangest look on your face.”

“I’m trying to make sense of things that may not make any sense at all.”

“Things always make sense if you look at their patterns and not yours.”

I understood what she meant. Too often, I tried to impose what I thought should be the order or pattern of things, rather than seeing what was.

“That’s the engineer’s way of thinking,” Seliora went on. “When you design things, whether it’s a card reader for a loom or a design for fabric, you get in the habit of assuming that everyone designs the way you do, or that there’s just one designer, like the Nameless, that arranges everything.”

“But people aren’t like that,” I said with a laugh.

“You need to let your mind rest,” she said. “Sometimes that’s more useful than worrying it to death, especially when you’re as tired as you are.”

She was right about that, as she was with many things.

Given the cold and sleet, we didn’t go anywhere all day, not even to services at the anomen. We stayed home and enjoyed the warmth of the family parlor.

32

Seliora was right about my not pushing myself, and she’d never said anything about the less than perfect image-repairing by the Collegium of the furniture damaged by the attack…although I had managed to re-image her bed back into a better shape, at least the posters and headboard. Imaging just didn’t match crafting, unless the imaging was done by a master-crafter. By Lundi morning, I felt far better, at least until I stepped outside the house and again smelled the acrid odor of smoke and coughed at the bitterness in the air. I didn’t feel much better when I reached my study at the Collegium and began to read the newsheets.

Both Veritum and Tableta reported on a pitched battle between the Solidaran Northern Fleet and two smaller Ferran fleets. While the initial reports were sketchy, all three fleets suffered heavy losses, with possibly as many as a third of our vessels either destroyed or rendered incapable of further fighting. The Ferrans had been unable to break the blockade, but the implication was clear that, unless the Northern Fleet obtained reinforcements, another such battle, with similar results, would destroy the blockade.

I thought about Geuffryt’s observations on the shortcomings of our fleet, then made my way to Schorzat’s study, but he wasn’t there. Would Kahlasa know? She might. I walked two doors down to her study and knocked.

“It’s Rhenn.”

“Come on in.”

She had a stack of reports in front of her, but pushed them aside. “You have questions about something?” Her smile was sympathetic.

“How could I not? I know about Council security and Civic Patrol security and not a lot more.”

“Whereas I know little about either of those,” she quipped back.

“You read the newsheets about the Northern Fleet?”

She nodded. “If you believe them, and I do, it was the kind of victory that’s hardly better than a defeat.”

“I’ve heard that the Naval Command has been requesting capital ships for years and that the Council has yet to act on the request. What do you know about that?”

“I know that’s true.”

“Suyrien is the head of the Executive Council, and he owns the largest shipworks in Solidar…yet he couldn’t