Scholar: A Novel in the Imager Portfolio (16 page)

When Quaeryt tried to look at the man closely, his eyes burned, and flashes of light that jabbed like needles pierced his eyes. He could also feel heat pouring off his forehead. “I wondered … why … who…”

“We didn’t have much choice. Some people just won’t be reasonable.”

Quaeryt’s legs felt weak and very unsteady. “I beg your pardon … I think … I need to sit down.”

“You need more than that, friend. Best you come with me. Oh … I’m Rhodyn.”

“This is … your holding?”

“Don’t know as it’s a holding. The lands have been in the family forever. We don’t even know how long.” The holder paused. “I’d not wish to be forward, but I could carry that bag for you.”

For a moment, Quaeryt thought about demurring, but the way he felt, he wasn’t going anywhere any time soon. “Thank you. It’s been a long hike.” He extended the canvas bag.

Rhodyn took it. “Heavy to be carrying across the Shallows Coast. This way.… We’ll go around to the side door and get you something to drink.… I think Darlinka’s still in the kitchen, but if she’s not, Raisa or Shaentyla will be.”

“You’re most kind.…”

“Nonsense. We don’t get many travelers here, even those that didn’t mean to be traveling our roads.…”

Quaeryt made it to the stained and oiled side door, with the polished brass lever handle. Then the sky fell, and hot rain and darkness swirled around him.

21

When Quaeryt woke, he was in a small chamber in a narrow bed. His head was a mass of fire, and his body ached all over. While flashes of light flickered across his eyes, he could see a dark-haired woman was blotting his forehead with a damp cloth. The coolness was welcome, neither chilling nor tepid.

“Where…”

“Hush … you’ve been fevered. You still are. You don’t need to talk. You need to rest. Just lean back and rest.”

Quaeryt had to strain to make out the colloquial Tellan. “But where…?”

“You’re in one of Master Rhodyn’s guest chambers, and before long you’ll be better.”

Fevered as he was, Quaeryt wondered about that. How … how had he gotten so ill?

“… not a normal fever for the croup you’ve got … or not one that’s all of nature … you’re better now…” The woman blotted his forehead again, with the coolness that relieved the heat that poured off his forehead.

“… thank you…”

“Not to be thanking me for what any good person should do … just close your eyes and rest…”

He tried to keep his eyes open, but they felt so heavy, and he was so tired. What had happened? There had to be more questions … if he could only remember what they were. If only … but he could not. All he could think of was that they were taking care of him, and for the moment, that was enough, and more than he could ask.

He let his eyes close.

Waves of heat and chill swept over him, and coughing spells that he half-remembered, as if in a daze or stupor where his body reacted. He thought he said words, but he could not remember what they were or what they meant.

The next time he remembered waking, he was alone in the small chamber, and his forehead was warm, but not burning the way it had been, and a light sheet of good cotton covered his body. He realized he’d been undressed down to his drawers, although he didn’t remember that ever happening. The light was low, as if just after sunset or before sunrise.

A younger woman, if older than Quaeryt himself, peered through the open door. “Oh … you’re awake. Let me tell the master.” With that, she was gone.

Quaeryt managed to prop himself up slightly on the single pillow before the gray-haired holder stepped into the chamber. Quaeryt mentally groped for his name. Rhodyn, that was it. “I am in your debt.…”

“Nonsense. Where would the world be if doing what one ought to do put people in debt?” asked Rhodyn in his accented Bovarian. He smiled openly and warmly. “How are you feeling?”

“Better … weak as a newborn lamb.”

“That’s not surprising. You’re an ill man, and not just from the croup you have. Darlinka thinks you were poisoned somehow, but you’ve sweated most of that out. For a day or two, we weren’t certain.”

A day or two? How long had he been out of his mind? And poisoned? The water from the old woman? He wanted to laugh, but he was afraid it would cause more coughing. And to think that he’d been worried about getting a flux from stream water.

“You’re also a bit more than you seem. You’re carrying a pouch with silvers and have hidden golds in your belt and a leather case sealed with wax. Looks like a dispatch case of the sort Telaryn officers carry. Your body bears scars of the kind that come from warfare, but there’s a tunic shirt of the kind only scholars wear.” The holder laughed. “You’re safe here. I’d not wish harm on any traveler, and not on one who walked through the Shallows Coast. Nor one who might be on Lord Bhayar’s affairs.” He paused. “I can’t say I believe your tale about losing a mount, unless you lost it with a ship. Your clothes were coated in salt.”

“You have me, sir.” Quaeryt’s voice came out hoarse and raspy. “The reavers were chasing me.” His eyes stopped focusing, and he had trouble making out the holder. “But … the rest…” He started coughing.

Rhodyn waited until the fit subsided, then handed him a mug from the small bedside table. “Watered lager. It helps.”

“Thank … you…” Quaeryt took a sip, then a small swallow before replacing the mug on the plain wooden table.

“… Rest, and we’ll hear the whole story when you’re better. Just know that you’re safe here.”

Quaeryt wasn’t sure he was safe anywhere, but he was so feverish and tired that he doubted he could have taken a handful of steps. Like it or not, he had to trust his keepers. Once again, his eyes closed without his wanting them to.

22

Although the feverishness subsided, it did not totally disappear over the next few days, and the same was true of the coughing. For all that, Rhodyn and his household were both patient and solicitous. They also fed Quaeryt well.

On Lundi afternoon, a week after he had collapsed literally on Rhodyn’s doorstep, Quaeryt sat on the covered porch on the northeast corner of the main house, from where he could see the ocean. The sky was silvered with the haze of high thin clouds, and not a vessel was in sight on the dull gray-blue waters. Across the table from him was Rhodyn’s wife Darlinka.

She waited for him to set down the beaker that was still half-filled with lager before she said, “You don’t like to talk about yourself, do you?” Her Tellan was clear and concise, the way he’d learned it. “You gave the bare-bones account of your escape from the reavers.”

The shorter explanation had been necessary, and he’d minimized his confrontation with the three reavers and the dog, just saying that he’d heard a dog in the distance and that he had run and pressed as much as he could until he’d had to deal with but one and had disabled him and then managed to make his way north and cross the Ayerne. “How many people are truly interested?” he replied in Tellan, smiled, then added, “There are some, but how many do you know who wish to know that much about another? How many of those want to know for the sake of knowing, and how many wish to learn in order to gain an advantage of some sort?”

“There are some, and they are worth knowing.”

“You and Rhodyn are among the first I’ve encountered in some time, and I find myself very fortunate that I have. Might I ask what enables you two to be so?”

“You might indeed, and I will even try to answer. Even if it is a way for you to avoid talking about yourself.” Her smile combined warmth and humor.

Quaeryt didn’t bother hiding his grin, but he didn’t say a word.

“Rhodyn was born here, but when he was young, his father sent him to school in Cloisonyt, just as we have sent Syndar and Lankyt to study in Tilbora. Back then, of course, going to school in Tilbora was not possible. He was as guarded as a young man as you are. Through an acquaintance of his father, he met a young woman who was so unguarded that she might have been prey to anyone. Together, they began to see the world as it was.” She smiled again.

“And you never stopped seeing it together?”

“There is a time to question, and a time to answer questions, Scholar Quaeryt. We were fortunate to learn that together.”

“It wasn’t easy for you two, was it?”

“Not so hard as you might think. Four eyes and two hearts who can trust each other are better than one.” After the slightest pause, she went on, calmly. “You’re not a man who trusts many, are you? It frets at you to be depending on the goodness of others.”

“And how did you notice that?” Quaeryt kept his voice light, still trying not to cough when he spoke.

“That’d be another thing.” The older woman smiled. “You answer with questions. You’d think that your parents named you knowing that.”

“They didn’t name me. If they did, I don’t know what that name might have been. They died in the Great Plague, and the scholars took me in. They gave me the name because I asked questions as soon as I could talk in their tongue.”

“That would explain much. You are a scholar, yet you were not wearing that garb.”

“No.” He offered a rueful smile. “When I disembarked from a ship in Nacliano, a harbor patroller tried to attack me because I was a scholar. I think he would have killed me if he could have. I had to dive into the harbor and hide under the piers … and avoid the patrollers. That caused me to miss the ship I planned to take, and that led me to take the vessel I did, and that resulted in getting caught in the storm and getting wrecked on something called the Namer’s Causeway.”

“You were the only one who escaped the reavers, Rhodyn said.”

“I don’t know that. The old reaver woman, the one I think might have poisoned me, said that two crewmen were found dead on the sands. There was no one else on the wreck when I left, but anyone else who might have survived could have left before I recovered enough to be aware of what had happened. After the worst of the storm hit and the ship struck the causeway, I never saw anyone else. I’d just tied myself to the ship to wait it out.” Quaeryt’s eyes drifted to the nearer mud-brick building, the one that he’d thought was a barn or some such, and wasn’t, but a long building with quarters for many of those who worked the holding. “Don’t your workers find this … lonely?”

“Some do, and they’re free to leave. Some of those return before long. Even with Rhodyn requiring training in arms for the men and boys, most like living here. We don’t have winters near so cold as Tilbora, and the women like the calmer life.”

“Do you have any daughters?”

“Just one. She lives some five milles north on the old stead.”

“From your family?” guessed Quaeryt.

“A crotchety uncle. It’s mostly orchard, and Caella always did well with trees. She has a knack with them, even taught her husband some.”

“She’s the oldest, then?”

“Except for Jorem. He’s a produce factor in Bhorael.”

Quaeryt tried to remember where Bhorael was, then nodded. “That’s just south of Tilbora, on the other side of the river, isn’t it?”

Darlinka nodded, then stood. “I need to see about supper and how Liexa is doing. You just stay right there. It won’t be long before Rhodyn comes in, and it’s a real pleasure for him to have someone not from around here to talk with.”

“I don’t know that I’ve been that entertaining … more like a burden…”

“Nonsense.” With that she was gone.

Quaeryt couldn’t help but smile. He did worry about the time it was taking him to recover, but his walks about the holding had convinced him that he needed a few more days to regain his strength. He also had to admit that he enjoyed talking to Rhodyn and Darlinka. It also made him wonder what he’d missed in growing up. But then, would his parents have been like the holder and his wife? He suspected few were, and even if he had sickened himself on more than one occasion trying to puzzle out imaging, would parents have helped … or turned him out, as some did when they found a child was an imager?

He didn’t have to wait long before the holder appeared. Rhodyn carried a large goblet of a red wine out to the shaded table and settled into one of the wooden armchairs across from Quaeryt.

“You look like you’ve had a long hard day.”

“Long and tedious, but not hard. We got in the last of the late cherries. I fear that those baskets will make better wine than anything else.” Rhodyn had insisted on speaking Bovarian, saying he needed the practice.

“There’s nothing wrong with cherry wine, is there?”

“Besides the fact that unless you make it perfectly, it doesn’t keep well, doesn’t sell well, and few people truly enjoy it? No.” Rhodyn’s voice was cheerfully sarcastic, but not bitter. “Darlinka and Caella like it, and it’s rare enough that when I send some to Jorem, he can sell it to a few people who like it. So it’s not all a loss. We do better with the honey, though. It keeps, and people like sweets.”

Quaeryt nodded and took a swallow of the lager.

“You haven’t said much about why you’re headed to Tilbora,” said Rhodyn conversationally.

“I haven’t. That’s true. Your wife says I avoid answering questions with questions, but I’m still going to ask a question first. How do you think the Tilborans feel about having so many of Lord Bhayar’s armsmen still in Tilbor more than ten years after the fighting stopped?”

“I’d imagine they wouldn’t like it. No one likes having armsmen too close at hand. If they aren’t kept busy they get into trouble, especially with the local girls, and that leads to more trouble with the local young men. If they are kept busy, and what they’re doing is makework, they get angry because they’re being kept from the local girls. If you allow them to marry the locals, then that causes a different kind of trouble.”

“So how do you keep the locals from rebelling without armsmen?”

“Buy goods from them. Hire them to fix everything that’s broken or to build things they need. I’d wager that’s cheaper than paying armsmen to do nothing.” Rhodyn laughed. “Besides, if things get repaired and they get new market squares or better piers or wider roads that they didn’t have before…”

“They might be happier.”

“Some people are never happy, except when they’re causing trouble. Those you have to get rid of, but in ways that others accept. There was one old fellow who used to get into fights every Samedi night. My sire stopped that. He paid him an extra two coppers to watch the flocks on Samedi night, and told his woman about it. She’d insist he work on Samedi night, and he found out that he had twice as many coins because he wasn’t drinking them, either.” The holder smiled. “He saved enough to lease a morgen of land in the hills, and his son has an apple orchard there.”