anything but vivid, because all I could see were what looked to be a mille of large stone buildings, and over them to the right, huge hulking cranes rising on the far side of the structures. Nothing flashed. Nothing flared. Stones didn’t fall around me. Then the flash was gone.
I had to stop for a moment and check where I was, but I was still on Imagisle, with the River Aluse to my left, and the stone walk leading north to our house before me.
“Rhenn? Are you all right?” asked Seliora.
“I had a flash…but it was just a scene, some sort of endless manufactory. Nothing happened. No explosions, no fires, nothing like that.”
“Then…you saw it just before something could happen. Was it familiar?”
“No.” I shook my head. “I’ve never been there.”
“Maybe you need to go there.”
Seliora was probably right-except I had no idea where “there” might be.
Later that evening, after Seliora had sung Diestrya to sleep, we sat side by side on the settee in front of the stove in the family parlor.
“Rhenn…?”
I smiled and put my arm around her, but she sat up straight.
“I’ve been thinking.”
“About what?”
“Odelia and Kolasyn. It’s more than that.” She paused. “We were so close for so long. Even now, she’s so wary when we talk.”
“I know how close you were.” I laughed softly. “I couldn’t ever get to be alone with you except on the small terrace at NordEste Design.”
“It hurts. I didn’t do anything at all.”
“She knows that I couldn’t do more than I did. But what we know and what we feel aren’t always the same. I wouldn’t be surprised if she still feels that, if I’d done something more, Haerasyn would still be alive. She may believe that if you’d pressed me I might have changed things.”
“You’ve done more than anyone else. She knows that. She even said so.”
“That’s not the question, really, is it?” I asked gently.
“No. You’re right. What we know and what we feel, deep inside, aren’t the same. People are like that. Sometimes it’s the ones closest to you-especially the close friends and family-who hurt you the most. But…it’s so sad. It shouldn’t be that way.”
“No…it shouldn’t. But it is. It always is.”
“You’re thinking of your brother, aren’t you?”
“I did what I thought was right…and he paid for it, and he never even knew why.”
“It was all Johanyr’s fault…and everyone in his family paid. He got off the easiest.”
“And now no one even knows where he is, except that he’s likely stolen thousands of golds from his sister.”
“Why did he wait so long…if he could have done it all along?” asked Seliora.
“Maybe he couldn’t have. He can’t see well enough even to write a cheque or a fund transfer request, and no one else is missing from Mont D’Glace.”
“Will anyone ever find him?”
“Not unless whoever helped him betrays him, and if he managed it alone, he won’t be found if he doesn’t want to be.”
“That seems wrong.”
I didn’t say anything. I only knew I wouldn’t want to be almost blind and in hiding, even with two thousand in golds.
38
On Lundi, I compromised, doing the exercises and only running a bit more than a mille, and I returned to the house, feeling only reasonably uncomfortable. Once I got to my study at the Collegium, after reading the morning newsheets, which both reported the loss of more ships from the northern fleet, given my conversation with Frydryk on Vendrei and more research and thought over the weekend, I decided that a conversation with the good Councilor Glendyl was definitely in order. While Maitre Dyana had suggested that she and Rholyn would brief me, she hadn’t exactly forbidden me to meet with the Councilors. Implied, but not forbidden. So just before eighth glass on Lundi morning, I took a duty coach to the Council Chateau.
While all the obdurate guards were polite and apparently pleased to see me, Baratyn hurried out of his main floor study before I could make my way to the upper level.
“Maitre Rhennthyl…I didn’t expect you.”
I ignored the various implications. “I assume Glendyl is here.”
“Why…yes. Here’s been here since before seventh glass.”
“Good. I thought he and I might have a few things to talk over.”
“He met with Maitre Rholyn just yesterday.”
That didn’t make me any happier. But I smiled. “Then Glendyl shouldn’t be all that surprised to see me.”
“He isn’t expecting you?”
“He should be. Whether he is or not remains to be seen.”
“I’d best escort you, then,” Baratyn said. “Otherwise, he might think you’re not who you say you are and bolt the door or shoot at you.”
“He carries a pistol?”
“Two of them. He’s reputedly a very good shot. That wouldn’t hurt you, but the Collegium could look foolish.”
“He would look even more foolish,” I pointed out, “and that would be far worse for the Collegium.”
For a moment, Baratyn was silent. Then he nodded and turned toward the Grand Foyer. Since Glendyl’s study was on the southwest corner, taking the formal staircase was actually the fastest way there.
“Has anyone from the Naval Command been here to talk to Caartyl or Glendyl?” I asked as I walked alongside Baratyn.
“No. I have the feeling they’re waiting for Ramsael to take over the Executive Council.”
That Sea-Marshal Valeun would avoid Glendyl in the middle of an undeclared war with Ferrum said something, but what…that was another question. It also didn’t make sense, and that meant I didn’t know something. “Is that because they’re afraid that the full Council will undo anything Glendyl does right now?”
“I couldn’t say, Maitre Rhennthyl.”
“Or is it that Glendyl now has the power to ask penetrating questions if they press him?”
“That’s more likely.”
“About the conduct of the war or about the organization and structure of the Naval Command?”
“Glendyl wouldn’t second-guess fleet commanders.”
“So it’s likely that he thinks the Naval Command is overstaffed and inefficient.”
“There are more than a few high-paid marshals and senior commanders north of here, and, from the point of view of a factor who has to watch every copper, there might be some questions about their necessity.”
“Glendyl knows that summoning them to ask such questions would be perceived as too high-handed and would likely backfire because he won’t be in charge for that long, and they won’t come asking for anything because then he could ask those questions.”
“That would be my guess.”
I laughed. “It’s likely a very good guess.” I also suspected that Dichartyn had probably felt the same way, but those sorts of calculations weren’t something that anyone committed to paper, even in the Collegium. The problem was that assessments not committed to paper tended to get lost if the assessor died or vanished. And that was another bit of circumstantial evidence, not the kind I could ever bring before the Justiciary or the Council, but real
