2
“Good night.” Quaeryt nodded to Voltyr as they stepped out of Amphora.
“Where are you headed? You said you had work to do.”
“I do. I don’t want to keep her waiting.”
“That’s not work,” protested Voltyr.
“With all that’s expected of me … it’s work.” With a wave, Quaeryt turned down the street, south from both Amphora and the Scholarium. Even though he and Voltyr had spent almost two glasses at the cafe, the sun was barely touching the tops of the shops and dwellings to the west.
Quaeryt had not been jesting about the work ahead of him. That was why, at Amphora, he had eaten a domchana, whose batter-fried crust was light but filling, although he felt that the fowl strips inside were tough and the peppers stringy. The tangy cheese helped, if not enough. The two lagers had also helped.
When he reached the harbor, he walked to the seawall that ran between the third and fourth piers. There he sat on the stone wall, in a spot almost exactly between the two piers and directly above one of the spots where silt and debris collected, enough so that it mounded close enough to the surface that the water actually broke over it in little wavelets. While the sun had not set, shadows were stealing across the entire harbor, leaving the topmasts of the tallest vessels in light while shading the lower masts and decks. Sailors were beginning to leave their ships and hurry in along the piers toward the cafes, taprooms, and taverns that filled the streets just north of the harbor.
As Quaeryt sat there, he concentrated on the image of a copper. One appeared on the stone beside his hand. He waited a time and concentrated again. A second appropriately dingy copper manifested itself. He managed seven more coppers before he felt light-headed, a sign that there was not that much left in the way of copper fragments and minute bits in the harbor basin and debris nearby.
He blotted his damp forehead with an old linen square, then eased the nine coppers into his wallet. He remained sitting on the seawall for over a glass, resting and enjoying the sunset … and absently recalling how long it had taken him to learn to focus and concentrate on every detail on each side of a copper … and how, once he’d mastered it, he’d left the Scholarium, thinking that he could get by as a sailor and not have to listen to grumpy scholars any longer.
He shook his head ruefully at the memory.
Then, in the fast-fading light, for twilight did not last long in Solis, he stood and stretched. He walked northward for several blocks before turning west, making his way among and around the sailors from the vessels tied up at the piers. Few paid any attention to him, their thoughts and doubtless their emotions elsewhere. Once Quaeryt left the harbor area, despite the warmth of the air, as the evening darkened into night, he pulled his cowl up. His white-blond hair, cut short as it was, still stood out too much in the darkness, and that could be a problem in the narrow streets.
He glanced to the western sky where the reddish half disc of Erion hung just above a low cloud. Artiema had not yet risen, and that was fine with him. He’d passed the area that held the better factorages, cafes, and crafters’ shops, and was headed into the oldest area of Solis, where sagging houses with crooked shutters or even boarded-up windows sat side by side with shells of dwellings and ruined buildings.
A block ahead were the ruins of an old smelter, little more than piles of rubble overgrown with thornweed and knifegrass. While it was slightly safer during the day, far too many people would have asked questions, and Quaeryt preferred to be the one asking, not the one having to answer.
He sensed the movement in the alley some yards away, and he stopped beside a wall that would keep anyone from coming up behind him. He just waited as the man in tattered grays and a long knife held at waist height edged toward him.
“What do you want?” Quaeryt let his voice quaver.
“Old father … I’m sure you’d be having some coins.” The man’s grin revealed more broken and blackened teeth than white or yellow ones.
“You’d not be wanting to bother me.”
“That I’d not once I’ve your coins.” The knife flashed toward Quaeryt’s gut.
The scholar darted back and imaged bread into the man’s windpipe and throat. Then he stepped back, glancing around. No one else emerged from the shadows of the alley as the thief flailed silently for quite some time, then grasped at his throat, before collapsing against the side of the lane. Once the man was dead, since he would have no further use for his coins, Quaeryt quickly examined his wallet. He found five coppers and a silver, which he transferred to his own wallet, before straightening and continuing down the dark lane toward the ruins of the old smelter.
He didn’t need to get too near, choosing to stand close to the section of wall that had once held a wagon gate. Not even the iron hinges remained, only holes in the crumbling bricks and mortar. From where he stood, he began to concentrate. First, he tried to image a silver. The first was easy, and so was the second. After a clear strain with the third, he paused and slipped the coins into his wallet, then blotted his forehead.
He waited in the shadows almost a quarter glass, checking the lane in both directions, before he resumed imaging. Eleven coppers later, he stopped and blotted his forehead again.
He was tired, but not exhausted. Metal imaging was far harder than the other imaging he’d tried. Imaging earth and soil into place was far easier. He’d learned that as a boy forced to garden, although he’d had to grub up his hands so that the scholars who appeared to check his efforts hadn’t learned how he’d kept the garden so free of weeds.
His wallet wasn’t sagging as he made his way back along the dim alley, giving the dead man a wide berth, but it was definitely heavy.
All in all, it had been a good night’s work. More coppers and silvers for his wallet, and one less thief to trouble people who didn’t need that sort of difficulty.
3
More than a half glass before seven on Mardi morning, Quaeryt reached the side gate of the palace. As he’d calculated, Jhoal was on duty.
“Pleasant morning to you,” offered Quaeryt with a smile. “For now.”
“Be as hot as an Antiagon’s balls by midmorning, scholar, maybe sooner.” The sentry’s Bovarian held the harshness of a Tellan native speaker.
“It’s still early Juyn, and harvest is hotter than summer. Wait until Agostos.”
“You’re not cheering me up,” replied the guard, glancing toward the tower on the southeast side corner of the wall and then using his sleeve to blot his forehead. “Got two more glasses before Dhuar relieves me.”
“The first watch is easier.”
“In summer.”
“Were you ever posted in Tilbor?” Quaeryt already knew the answer.
“We all were. Old Lord Chayar wouldn’t have any guards who hadn’t seen battle. Lord Bhayar’s the same.”
“He might have to change that before long, unless the Tilborans revolt or there’s another war.”
“Nah … they’re still fighting there. Stiff-necked bunch. Worse than they say the Bovarians are.”
“Don’t you think there are people like that everywhere? You must see it here.”
“More ’n you’d believe, scholar. More ’n you’d believe.”
“High Holders mostly?”
Jhoal shook his head. “They’re mannered folk. Might look down on you, but most don’t swell out of their britches.” After another furtive glance toward the tower, the guard scratched his neck, just below the bronze ceremonial helmet. “Most, anyway.”
