L. Modesitt Jr - Antiagon Fire

“Once the imagers are settled, they should wear gray.”

“Settled?” The Lord of Telaryn raised his eyebrows.

“On the isle of piers,” Quaeryt reminded Bhayar.

“Gray?” Bhayar frowned.

“The black of mourning mixed with the white of ice. Call it a reminder of what the excesses of imaging can do. The imagers will need that reminder. So will a few others.”

Bhayar looked at his sister. “He doesn’t give up, does he?”

“You wouldn’t be here, dear brother, if he were a man who did.”

Bhayar winced at the polite chill in Vaelora’s voice. “I can see I’m outnumbered.” He laughed softly. “The isle of piers and gray uniforms it is, but only after you and I-and Vaelora-are all agreed that matters are settled. Is that all?”

“For now,” said Quaeryt cheerfully.

“I fear I may hear that from you two for some time.”

“It was your idea that we wed,” said Vaelora sweetly.

“It was a good idea,” replied Bhayar, “but even the most beautiful rose has thorns, and the most useful knife can slice the user.” He walked toward the door. “Tell me what you expect from the Pharsi while we walk back to our quarters.”

“They will expect to be treated with respect, and most likely, as you pointed out, many of those on the High Council will be women. They will be leery of a strange Pharsi officer from Telaryn, but Vaelora will help…”

By the time they reached the landing leading up to their tower chamber, where they parted with Bhayar, Quaeryt felt he had offered more qualifications and generalizations and fewer concrete observations and expectations than he would have preferred. He said little more until he and Vaelora were alone in their sitting room.

“I was surprised that he actually accepted my suggestions about Myskyl and Skarpa. I’m even more surprised that he mentioned what he’d done at dinner.”

“Oh? How do you think he could admit you were right without actually saying so?”

“There is that. But I’ve never thought of myself as a great speaker.”

“You? After giving all those wonderful homilies?”

“Homilies are different from conversations at dinners involving matters of state where every word and expression is weighed and analyzed.”

“You remind me of Rholan,” said Vaelora.

“Me?”

“Wait a moment.” She walked to the table that held the small brown leatherbound volume and began to leaf through it. “Here. Just listen to this.”

Quaeryt listened.

“To hear Rholan converse, one would never have guessed at his power when he spoke to believers or to deliver a homily. Some years back, when Rholan was visiting the small hamlet of Korisynt on the lands of High Holder Klaertyn, the people gathered to hear Rholan, and they petitioned him to beg for flour from the High Holder, for drought and burning heat had scorched their fields. They had already been refused by Klaertyn, who claimed that he had no flour or grain to spare. Klaertyn heard that the people had gathered, and he rode down to the hamlet with a score of armsmen to disperse them. When they saw the High Holder, they once more begged for flour so that they could have bread, and again he said he had none.

“Then Rholan stepped forward and said to Klaertyn in that strangely powerful voice, ‘Tell your people that you have no grain for them, or no flour. Tell them, when this very day you have sold barrels of fine flour to the factors of Cloisonyt. Tell them that your armsmen did not see this.’ Klaertyn could not say such without branding himself a liar. So he made the best of it, and told the people of the hamlet that his steward would deliver barrels of flour on the morrow. And he did. But he never forgot, and, subsequently, when an outbreak of the Red Death struck Korisynt, leaving no family unscathed, and some with no survivors at all, High Holder Klaertyn removed the survivors, razed all the structures, and planted saplings, primarily oaks and goldenwoods, so that by the time of his grandsons, no one would know that such a town had ever existed, and already, as I write this, few remember, and some choristers believe that Rholan made up the entire incident.”

When Vaelora finished, she looked at her husband. “You see?”

“I’m not Rholan.”

“No … you could be more … if you let Bhayar claim much of the credit for what you do.”

Quaeryt decided to let her have the last word on that … because, much as it sometimes galled him, he knew she was right. So he put his arms around her and embraced her gently, holding her silently for a long, long time.

Sunlight poured in through the small leaded panes of the tower window on Vendrei morning barely after dawn. The diffused illumination turned the top of the ancient oak bedstead a dark gold, a gold Quaeryt had restored from the white to which his semiconscious imaging had turned everything around him after the battle. He still wasn’t certain that their chambers looked as they once had, although he had needed to re-image the finish of the stone walls and the floor more than once to meet Vaelora’s standards.

Quaeryt turned slightly, reaching for her, only to find that she already had moved to a sitting position in the wide bed and was propping another pillow behind her back.

Quaeryt smiled broadly at her.

“Not this morning, dearest. My back is aching, and I’m sore all over. No one mentioned that those sorts of things happened when you’re with child.”

“I wouldn’t know,” he admitted.

“Both Bhayar and Deucalon were eager to mention you are an imager, but neither mentioned that you had acted as a chorister? Bhayar even made sure that never came up.”

“You know exactly what that means, devious woman.”

“Me? Devious? How could you say that? I was the one who approached you in the beginning, was I not?”

“I stand corrected. Perhaps you’d prefer ‘deceptively direct,’ dear one?”

Vaelora laughed, that low husky sound that Quaeryt had always liked. “For all that you protest, dearest, you do have a way with words … and not just in delivering homilies.”

“I wish you were receptive to my other ways…” Quaeryt grinned, mock-lasciviously.

Vaelora arched both eyebrows. “What are your plans for the day?”

“I have to plan for the day?” When Vaelora only replied with a despairing look, Quaeryt finally answered her question. “I will rise, wash up, dress, eat breakfast, and proceed from there.”

“What about the nineteen glasses you’ve left out?”

“And when I finish, I’ll try to get seven solid glasses of sleep.”

“Dearest…”

Because that long-drawn out word was not an endearment, Quaeryt capitulated. “I need to meet with the imager undercaptains individually, especially Khalis and Lhandor. Skarpa and I also need to talk over the arrangements for travel for nine-odd regiments. If the day goes the way they usually do, I’ll discover more that I will have to deal with. Oh … and I may send imagers to repair an anomen.” He smiled as cheerfully as he could. “What about you?”

“Trying to get the estate seamstress to sew some riding clothes that will fit me in the months ahead.”

“In three days?”

“I can be persuasive, you’ve always said.”

“That you are, and you’ve persuaded me that it’s time to get up.” Quaeryt did not quite bound from the bed.

“Of course, dearest.”

Quaeryt didn’t bother hiding the wince, especially since Vaelora left the bed in a movement carrying hints of a flounce … and disapproval.

Washing up and dressing were accomplished with polite phrases.

Early as they were in getting to the small breakfast room that served only the three of them, Bhayar was getting up from the table when Quaeryt and Vaelora appeared.