“He said that it was almost a shame you hadn’t been a chorister, but that he’d seen you were destined for greater deeds.”
Quaeryt winced. “I fear he thinks I’m another Rholan.”
“Would that be so bad, dearest?”
“For a man who doesn’t know whether there even is a Nameless, it would be.” Quaeryt shook his head.
“You’re too hard on yourself.”
“Not in that.”
Vaelora shook her head.
Shortly, Yullyd reappeared with the letter. “Sir?”
“Thank you.” Quaeryt read it, then nodded, took the pen from the scholar princeps, and signed the missive. “Very good, Yullyd.”
“Thank you, sir.”
After the ink dried, helped by Quaeryt’s holding the paper near the stove, he folded the sheet and slipped it into the inside pocket of his jacket.
In less than a quint, they were on the road back to the Telaryn Palace, riding directly into the wind, which seemed to be slightly stronger than on the way to the scholarium.
“Are you still glad to be accompanying me?” asked Quaeryt dryly.
“Yes. It was good to get out.”
“What did you think of the scholarium?”
“Everyone was most polite,” observed Vaelora.
“You might have noticed all the deference was to you, my dear lady. Quite manifestly obvious, I would say.”
“That might have been, but the respect was for you. Master Scholar Nalakyn looked somewhat chastened when he bid us good day.”
“He was reluctant to take on another paying student because the boy is an imager.” Quaeryt snorted. “As if the boy will not have enough problems. An education will help.”
“It helps some, dearest. Others it is wasted on.”
“True. But if he’s one of those, he goes back to his father. He deserves the chance. What he makes of it is up to him. Did Chaerila ever write or say anything about the Autarch’s imagers?”
“Not to me.” Vaelora frowned in concentration. After a moment, she said, “I remember, though, something that Aelina said. Chaerila complained in a letter to her that she was almost a prisoner in the palace, but at least she wasn’t walled up in a compound with metal behind the walls, the way the Autarch’s imagers were.” She paused. “What are you going to do?”
“Write up a set of rules. Then you’ll read them and tell me what to change and improve?”
“You aren’t asking me.” A mischievous smile appeared. “Isn’t that a form of disrespect?”
“I respect your judgment and intelligence so much that I know you’d want these rules to be as good as we can make them.”
Vaelora laughed.
Quaeryt smiled happily-until the next gust of bitter wind whipped around and through him, and he shivered almost uncontrollably.
3
Another storm had buffeted Tilbora beginning on Samedi, and Quaeryt and Vaelora had remained within the palace walls. While the snowfall stopped by early on Solayi, the rankers of the regiment were still clearing snow in midafternoon, and Quaeryt was in his official study struggling with the draft rules he had promised Nalakyn and Yullyd.
He glanced up as the study door opened wide.
“What are you working on, dearest?” Vaelora asked as she stepped from the anteroom into the study.
“Rules for young imagers at the scholarium.”
“Why didn’t you have Nalakyn or Yullyd write them up and then just review them?”
Quaeryt had told her why earlier, but he didn’t comment on that. Vaelora never asked a question, he’d discovered, without a purpose. “He’d write them, and they’d sound wonderful and mean nothing. Then Yullyd would rewrite them, and the poor youths would feel that they were in prison, and that would make their schooling worthless.” His breath did not quite steam in the cold air of the study. “I thought you were practicing with Eluisa. That’s why I came here. I’d already started work on this on Vendrei.”
Vaelora walked around the desk to stand at his shoulder and read down the document. Then she smiled. “From those rules, one might think you had lived among imagers for your entire life…” She did not quite finish the sentence, but left the words hanging.
“I did spend several years at the scholarium, with Voltyr and, for a time, with Uhlyn, you might recall.”
She looked down at the document and began to read, picking out a phrase from the middle of the sheet. “Imager scholars must not, under any circumstances, attempt to image metals. While there is always the temptation to image coins, the effort to image silvers and golds has often proved to cause great illness or death, even to older imagers.…”
Quaeryt nodded. “That’s true.”
“I don’t doubt it’s true, dearest.” She smiled again, warmly. “What I have some doubts about is how you might happen to know that.”
“I told you…”
“Dearest … I know that you would never tell me something that is not true or based in truth. I also know that, upon occasion, you have”-she paused-“been less than forthcoming about the details of certain events.”
Quaeryt repressed a sigh. He’d known that, sooner or later, Vaelora would learn enough to suspect his imaging abilities. Perhaps she had all along and had waited for what seemed the proper time to discuss the matter. Still … he wanted to know what she knew, because it was likely Bhayar also knew at least some of what she had learned … and might have even learned it from him. “Such as?”
“One of the reaver captives-before he was executed-kept talking about the man who walked out of the storm and survived enough poison to kill two men, and then left three corpses and a dog-and none bore a single mark.”
“I almost died from that poison. If it hadn’t have been for Rhodyn and his wife-”
“Then there was the fact of how often you ate at various tavernas in Solis. Not expensive tavernas, but even the least expensive meals totaled far more than the stipend that Bhayar gave you. You are most honest, and no one ever slipped you coin, but you never seemed to run out. You usually paid in coppers. Very dirty coppers, not shiny ones.”
Quaeryt could see that someone, most likely Bhayar, had been very thorough … and where she was headed, but he merely nodded. “Scholars seldom have more than coppers.”
“Then there was the report about how you removed a crossbow quarrel from your own chest. Alone. A man who weighed fifteen stone couldn’t do that. The captain surgeon couldn’t believe you did it from the depth of the wound, especially without ripping your flesh to shreds. You’re strong, dearest, but you’re not that strong.”
“Maybe I didn’t report it right.”
She shook her head. “One thing I do know is that what you say is close to the truth. Always.”
“I try.”
“Then there are all the reports about how you managed to save men and officers and how so many rebels seemed to strike at you and miss.”
“They didn’t miss enough,” Quaeryt pointed out. “You saw that.”
She moved behind the chair, reached down and massaged his shoulders, gently. “I didn’t tell my brother all of that.”
“But … how?”
