some High Holder matters that affected the Collegium, and some of them weren’t pleased with the way I was involved. Your father felt that I’d done the best I could, given the situation. He was always fair-minded that way.”
“Yes, he was.”
“Did he ever mention Glendyl being pressured by Haebyn?”
“The only thing I can recall along those lines was when he said Glendyl didn’t understand that Solidar wasn’t Ferrum, and that he’d have to learn to deal with Haebyn and the others.”
I asked a few more questions, and when it was clear that I wasn’t learning any more, I stood and thanked him, profusely, and then departed.
By the time I got back to Imagisle and my study, it was second glass.
Schorzat appeared before I had my winter cloak off and hung up.
“Rhenn, after we talked about Geuffryt last week, I got to thinking. I remembered that Maitre Poincaryt had mentioned something about him, and I dug out my notes. It’s not much, but I thought you’d like to know. This was two years ago, at a reception here in L’Excelsis. Maitre Poincaryt didn’t say where, even when I asked him. Geuffryt was talking to the top Sea-Marshal-Valeun. He only said a few words before Valeun glared at him.” Schorzat smiled.
“They must have been interesting words.”
“Geuffryt said something to the effect that he was tired of High Holder control and stupidity because they didn’t understand either war or economics, and that the Collegium didn’t help matters. Valeun said maybe three words. Geuffryt turned pale and left the reception right then.”
“I didn’t see anything about that in the files.”
“Maitre Poincaryt mentioned it to me when Maitre Dichartyn was out of town on an inspection trip. I told Maitre Dichartyn, but I didn’t give him a written report.”
“I appreciate your tracking that down. Thank you. Have you or Kahlasa found out anything about barges?”
“We probably won’t get a report on them until Lundi.”
When Schorzat left, I thought about what he’d told me. By themselves, Geuffryt’s words meant little, but I had the feeling there well might be more.
I left my study a bit early so that I could ride out with the duty coach to pick up Seliora and have the driver drop all three of us at my parents’ house for a dinner that was more obligation than anything else.
Seliora looked tired when I collected them. So I carried Diestrya to the coach and played with her. Seliora closed her eyes. She might have been dozing, or just resting.
Mother was the one who opened the door, and her eyes went straight to me. “Your face-what happened to you?” she demanded.
“A few stones,” I replied.
My mother immediately looked to Seliora. “A few?”
“Quite a few. He got bruised protecting us. He couldn’t leave Imagisle until a few days ago.”
“Let them get in the house, Maelyna,” groused Father from the rear of the foyer.
Once we were in the family parlor, where Culthyn waited, Father looked at me. “That was a Collegium coach, and the word is that some senior imagers were killed in the attack on the Collegium.”
“I have a new position at the Collegium,” I admitted. “I’m no longer a Civic Patrol captain.”
“Did you get promoted?” interjected Culthyn.
“Yes. I’m a Maitre D’Esprit now.”
“Do you get paid more?”
“I do. Enough.” I managed a laugh. “We’re here for dinner, not an interrogation.”
“Are you sure you’re all right?” asked Mother.
“I’m fine,” I insisted. Thankfully, Seliora didn’t comment on my slight exaggeration.
While I answered Father’s and Culthyn’s questions about the state of L’Excelsis, Solidar, and the Collegium, Mother slipped away. She returned shortly with a tray of beverages. I was given hot spiced wine-apparently my bruises removed my choice.
Rather than keep answering, or avoiding answering, I took a sip of the wine, then looked at Father and said, “I’ve been hearing that some of the factors aren’t exactly pleased with the High Holders after what’s happened here in Solidar and in the war with Ferrum.”
My father laughed. “There’s no such thing as a happy factor. If times are bad, he worries that they’ll get worse. If they’re good, he worries that they won’t last.”
“What do you think about Councilor Glendyl?”
Father snorted. “He just thinks he’s a factor. He’s wealthier than most High Holders, and he acts worse than they do. The High Holders provide lodging to their tenants and workers. Glendyl pays his workers but a pittance more and provides nothing, and complains about that.”
“Councilor Caartyl has hinted at that,” I offered.
“He’s almost as bad,” Father went on after a swallow of his Dhuensa. “To hear him talk, you’d think that everything produced by hand was a work of high art. The artisans just want to keep things comfortable for themselves, like the spinners and the carders did in my father’s time. There’s a place for solid goods everyone can buy, and a place for art, but most people don’t want to pay for art when they buy work-day garments or potatoes. Caartyl thinks the factors should pay higher taxes so everyone can have art…the Navy isn’t much better…some of those Sea-Marshals aren’t beyond scuttling their own ships if it would get them a new battlecruiser, and Glendyl would probably sell them the tools to do it….”
I just sipped and listened.
37
On Samedi morning, I did do nearly the full version of Clovyl’s exercises, as well as the run, which I hadn’t done before, and the resultant tiredness convinced me, more than Seliora’s insistence, that I had a ways to go before I was fully recovered. I didn’t tell her that. Then, the way she looked at me when I returned to the house, I didn’t have to.
So I was careful over the weekend, although I did spend more than a few glasses in my Collegium study going over reports-and maps-and older reports buried in the bottom drawers of the two cases. I also spent time taking care of Diestrya so that my very tired wife got some rest as well, and during the one time when they both were sleeping, I checked over the repairs that the imagers had made to the rest of the furniture-adequate, but I wouldn’t have wanted Shomyr or Shelim to have seen it.
On Solayi, we attended services at the anomen, and one part of Isola’s homily had Seliora quietly nodding. I agreed as well, even if I didn’t nod.
“…the Nameless is neither young nor old, but eternal and everlasting. The Nameless is neither finite nor infinite, but stands beyond our measurements. Nor is the Nameless man or woman…These descriptions of the attributes of the Nameless have been set forth for centuries. Then, why is it that people think of the Nameless as a powerful male figure? Could not the Nameless be powerful and female? Or powerful and both male and female? Or powerful without gender?
“For all that is said, we bring our own concepts to the anomen, and because the Nameless is powerful and because in our world men are powerful, all too many assume that the Nameless must, in some fashion, resemble a powerful man. Why? Is not a lightning bolt powerful? Are not the storms of the ocean powerful? Are not the rays of the summer sun filled with power and heat? But who of sound mind and common sense would assert that lightning, storms, or the sun are a man of power?”
Isola went on to assert that the Nameless, by definition, was beyond mere human labels and descriptions. That might well have been true, but it didn’t stop people from labeling and describing what they had never seen or never might-or describing badly what they had seen.
As we walked back to the house, under the pale reddish light of a full Erion, an image flashed in front of me…or in my mind, but it was so vivid I knew it was another Pharsi farsight flash. Yet, in some ways, it was
