Scholar: A Novel in the Imager Portfolio (2 page)

“Good day, scholar,” offered the taller soldier of the two at the gate in accented Bovarian.

“The same to you. I don’t envy you in this heat.”

“Some of the mist from the gardens drifts down here. It’s better than the main gate, let me tell you.”

“I can imagine.” Quaeryt smiled and stepped out onto the wide stone sidewalk below the wall, a sidewalk that bordered the north side of the stone-paved avenue.

Across the avenue to the south and below the palace were the public gardens, open to those suitably attired, according to the judgment of the palace guards stationed at the two entrances. There weren’t that many fountains there, and the cooler venues would already be taken. He turned right and started back toward the hill to the west, close to a vingt away, that held the Scholarium Solum … and the Scholars’ House.

The one-legged beggar boy was a good two blocks west of the palace grounds. Beggars weren’t allowed any closer.

Quaeryt flipped a copper to the beggar boy. “That’s from Lord Bhayar.” His words were in common Tellan.

The beggar frowned.

The scholar flipped a second copper. “And that’s from me, but you wouldn’t have either without your lord.”

The beggar looked at the coppers. “Could you a gotten ’em any dirtier, lord scholar?”

“Complaints, yet? Next time I might try.” Privately, Quaeryt was pleased. It was easier to image a shiny copper than a worn and grubby one, not that anyone would have cared about coppers, but coppers added up to silvers, and silvers to golds, and few would think that a scholar who had dirty coppers was actually imaging them.

The scholar studied the avenue ahead of him, taking in the pair of youthful cutpurses, seemingly playing at bones, on the far side of the flower vendor, and the drunken lout who lurched out of the tavern. His appearance was timed too well and he was just a tad too tipsy. Quaeryt imaged a patch of fish oil onto the heels and soles of his polished boots, just before the fellow reached him.

The man’s heels slipped from under him, and the slam-thief flailed before hitting the stones of the sidewalk. “Friggin’ … sow-slut…”

Obviously, the would-be grabber was having a slow day. Otherwise, he wouldn’t even have bothered with a scholar … unless he knew who Quaeryt was. That could be a problem.

“Do you need help?” Quaeryt asked, expecting the usual knife.

As the man tried to scramble to his feet and the knife appeared, Quaeryt imaged out a sliver of steel, and the useless blade separated from the hilt, and haft and blade clunked on the stones—just as the thief’s boots slid out from under him again and he crashed face-first onto the sidewalk. He moaned, but didn’t move for a moment, and Quaeryt skirted his prone figure, stepping into the avenue and barely avoiding a carriage before regaining the sidewalk. He’d gotten a good look. He just hoped he didn’t have to deal with the thief again. That was one problem with using imaging to create accidents. Some people didn’t learn. They just blamed their bad luck and went on doing stupid or dangerous things.

Although Quaeryt walked at a good pace, he didn’t strain, and he was only sweating moderately when he reached the point where the avenue passed in front of the hill on which the so-called Scholarium Solum was set. The Scholars’ House was halfway down the hill on the west side. Quaeryt glanced up the hill to the dark red brick building that held the Scholarium Solum as he walked past it to the winding walk up to the Scholars’ House, no longer bothering to hide the slight limp he’d always had.

The brick steps of the front entry had shifted slightly over time, and Quaeryt had to take care as he climbed them onto the front porch because his bad leg had a tendency to drag. The wide-roofed porches that encircled the Scholars’ House were designed to pick up the sea breezes, but since the sea breezes brought red flies in the day and mosquitoes at twilight, not to mention all the less than savory smells of the harbor, few scholars ventured out onto the porches once the sun dropped behind the warehouses and factorages to the west.

Quaeryt made his way to the east porch, the most shaded one in the afternoon.

There a younger man in a grayish purple shirt and trousers looked up from his wooden straight-backed chair. “It’s a hot walk from the palace. I still don’t see why Lord Bhayar doesn’t offer you quarters.” Voltyr spoke in Bovarian, as did all scholars, at least with each other and in dealing with the palace and other high officials. He was several years younger than Quaeryt, how many Quaeryt didn’t know exactly. He’d never asked.

“Would you want to live in the palace, Voltyr?” asked Quaeryt as he settled into the chair across from the younger man.

“No. You know that. You’re a scholar. Scholars’ Houses are the only place for imagers, and they’re not even half-safe in some cities, even here at times. Do you know what it was like when my parents discovered I could image a copper?”

“I imagine they were upset and pleased all at once.” Quaeryt had heard enough that when he’d done his first imaging—after hearing about imagers from old Scholar Geis, he’d tried to image a cake, and it had tasted like mud—he’d done it alone. But then, all his imaging had been in secret and painfully discovered by trial and error when the scholars who raised him were not around.

“They were just upset. In a month, I was here, being told not to image until I was older … but no one could help me. They just told me to be careful.”

“There aren’t that many imagers. What about Uhlyn?”

“The only thing he ever said was not to image large things and not to try imaging anything out of metal until I had a beard and then to begin with small items.” Voltyr laughed harshly. “He was so careful about his imaging, but look what happened to him, even with Bhayar’s protection.”

“He wasn’t careful about other things. He flaunted being an imager.” Even as Quaeryt spoke, he understood how many people feared imagers and their seemingly wondrous ability to visualize something and then have it appear. What so few wanted to understand was how painfully few imagers there were or how much skill and strength and concentration it took to image the smallest of objects, and how most imagers could do little beyond that. But … those who could … they were feared and shunned, and often the target of anyone who knew their abilities.

“Oh … and it’s all right for merchants and High Holders to flaunt what they are, but not imagers? Even scholars can flaunt their knowledge.”

“Not without risk,” returned Quaeryt. “People don’t like to be reminded of what they don’t know. That’s why Scholars’ Houses are also the safest place for scholars. Good scholars ask questions. Questions upset rulers and those who fawn on them.”

“Scholars in favor can gather in golds,” pointed out Voltyr.

“Golds aren’t much use to a headless man.”

“Don’t ask questions.”

“What’s the point of being a scholar, then?”

“How about the good life … or the best life possible for someone who wasn’t born a High Holder?”

“High Holders are captive to their wealth.”

“Quaeryt … I’d like to be held captive like that.”

The scholar laughed, then sat there for several moments before asking, “What do you know about Tilbor?”

“Most of it is cold. The people are rude and crude, and they don’t like strangers. They don’t like scholars and imagers, except that they like Telaryn soldiers even less. They like to fight a lot, except when they’re drinking, and they do a lot of that in the winter because it’s too cold to do anything else. Even Antiagon Fire wouldn’t warm Noira in midwinter.” The imager frowned. “Why are you asking?”

“I’m thinking of going there.”

“Why, for the sake of the Nameless?”

“To learn about it, to try to resolve something for Lord Bhayar. Besides, I’ve been seen at the palace too much in the past few seasons. That’s getting to be a problem.”

“That’s a problem half the High Holders in Telaryn would like to have.”

“They only think they want that problem. They don’t know Bhayar.”

Voltyr frowned. “He’s not that arbitrary or cruel. Certainly not like his father, is he?”

“He’s generally very fair. Most High Holders aren’t. But neither forgets
anything
.”

“Oh…”

Quaeryt stood. “Do you want to go down to Amphora later? I have a few spare coppers.”

“How could I refuse such an invitation?”

“You can’t,” laughed the scholar. “Half past fifth glass? I have work to do later.”

“You’re paying.”

With a last smile, Quaeryt turned and walked toward the north porch, hoping the nook by the north chimney wall would be vacant. Both Bhayar’s and Voltyr’s comments about imagers had played into the half-formed idea in his thoughts. Why, indeed, did imagers have to move and act with such care? Could he do anything about that? Or, at least, about his own position?

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 café, 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 cafés, 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, cafés, 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.