When I got to my rooms, I realized that it was only a quint until noon. So I headed back out and across the quadrangle to the dining hall.
Ferlyn and Chassendri cornered me even before I reached the masters’ table, and I ended up sitting between them. We were early enough that the servers had only brought out the carafes of wine and the teapots.
“How did you know he was an imager?” asked Ferlyn.
“I didn’t. As I said at the hearing, I only knew that there was an imager. He kept himself concealed as one of the toughs. I mean, he presented himself in public as one of the taudischef’s toughs, not as the taudischef, and he always used imaging, from what I could tell, when no one else was around or when no one else could see what he was doing.”
“That sounds rather clever,” observed Chassendri.
“Why was he gagged?” I asked, trying to avoid questions I didn’t want to answer. I wanted a glass of wine, or more, but I didn’t dare, not with the rest of the day to come, and I settled for a mug of tea. It wasn’t all that warm outside, anyway.
“Why? You were there . . . Oh . . . you weren’t, were you?” replied Ferlyn.
“I was in the witness chamber.”
“He called Master Dichartyn a ball-less bull and said that the Collegium was a creation of the Namer and worshipped Bius-”
“Bius?” questioned Chassendri.
“The black demon who opposes Puryon,” I explained. “That’s the god of the Tiemprans and some of the Gyarlese.” That also confirmed for me that Youdh had indeed been close to the priests of Puryon. Most taudis-toughs wouldn’t have known or cared who or what Bius was. “Then what?”
“Then Master Jhulian cautioned him, and he said that since they were going to kill him, what did it matter? They gagged him after that.”
“How did you think of using shields like that to escape the wagon?”
“I don’t know, except I knew that the wagon had to go someplace, and that we’d be squeezed too thin if I tried to use shields between the wagon and the side walls.”
“How did he learn to be an imager . . . ?”
I tried to answer or deflect the questions, either with careful words or by retreating into eating the gravied pork chops and rice fries, but I was more tired after lunch than I’d been before I’d eaten.
When I left the dining hall, I saw Shault waiting in the corridor outside. After a single quick glance at me, he didn’t look at me again, but he didn’t move, either.
I walked over to him. “Shault?”
“Yes, sir?” His eyes avoided mine.
“Horazt isn’t an imager, and he hasn’t done anything to upset the Collegium. The Collegium doesn’t have anything against taudischefs if they don’t create trouble for us. Horazt hasn’t done that, and he certainly hasn’t tried to attack any patrollers. He’s helped me several times.”
The boy looked up, finally.
“I know you worry, but you don’t have to worry about that.” I paused. “How is your mother?”
“She’s fine, sir.” He glanced to one side. “I need to meet Master Ghaend soon, sir.”
“I won’t keep you, then.”
“Yes, sir.” He swallowed, then murmured, “Thank you.” He hurried away without looking back.
I’d always wondered about Horazt and Shault, but now I knew.
41
Given what likely faced me that evening, when I finished eating lunch in the dining hall, I returned to my quarters to think and plan. After thinking and re-thinking for almost four glasses, and trying not to think about Rousel and what I feared was inevitable, and then hurrying over to the dining hall and eating dinner quickly, I returned to my rooms and dressed carefully in the black formal attire I’d received earlier. I was careful to slip some poison imaging detection strips inside my jacket and to place the silver imager’s pin on the left breast of the formal black jacket. As with the Harvest Ball, the Council’s Autumn Ball began officially at eighth glass, which was why I had to meet Master Dichartyn at half past seven.
I did arrive at the duty coach stop before he did, if only by a few moments. Already, the evening was promising to be chill and windy, but clear. There were two coaches waiting, and Master Dichartyn gestured to the first one. “Baratyn and the others can take the second.”
After holding the door for him, I climbed up into the coach and closed the door.
Once we had pulled away, he looked at me. “You know that High Holder Ryel will be there tonight?”
“I’d thought he would be.”
“Nothing must happen to him this evening.”
“I had not planned on anything, sir, except dancing with his daughter, should she be here.”
“She is on the guest list, as is Madame D’Shendael. Madame D’Shendael has requested that you invite her to dance with you, for some reason.”
“I expressed sympathy at the loss of her father, without ever overtly connecting them.” I didn’t ask how Master Dichartyn had come to receive that request. He would have told me if he’d wanted me to know, and I was tired of begging for scraps of information and being refused.
“If you would be so discreet with other matters . . .”
“I intend to be the soul of discretion this evening, sir, but I will continue to keep my eyes and abilities ready for any other troublemakers.”
He laughed. “Was that intentional?”
“Me, sir?” I smiled innocently. “I’m merely the son of a factor who has much to learn about High Holders and their society and comings and goings.” That was totally true, in more ways than the words conveyed.
“Rhennthyl . . . when you talk like that, I must confess to a certain concern.”
He should have a concern, I thought, but not tonight, at least not on my account. “I understand my position with regard to High Holder Ryel and the Collegium, sir.”
He nodded, but I could sense a certain skepticism.
Once the coach arrived at the curb of the ring road around Council Hill, opposite the side door used by imagers, I followed Master Dichartyn through the side gate and past the guard and up the narrow steps, inside the Council Chateau and past a second guard.
“Good evening, maitres.”
“Good evening,” replied Master Dichartyn.
I echoed his salutation.
We walked along the lower corridor that led to the foot of the grand staircase. When we reached the ceremonial guards, standing just forward of the two statues of winged angelicas rising from the pedestals that formed the bottom of the rose marble balustrade, I smiled. I couldn’t help but recall my comments to my father the first time I’d seen the winged figures with their impossibly small wings and equally impossibly large individual feathers.
Master Dichartyn didn’t pause but began to climb the stairs. I walked beside him.
“You don’t have any fixed station tonight, not that such has hindered you before,” he said dryly. “If you see trouble, try to handle it quietly . . . please.”
“Yes, sir.”
We stood by the archway into the great receiving hall, waiting.
The first carriage arrived in the drive usually restricted to councilors at a quint before eighth glass, followed within moments by another, for almost none wanted to be the first to arrive. Another quint passed before figures appeared in the main floor grand foyer and began to pass the ceremonial guards and ascend the grand staircase, slowly and deliberately, taking far more time than necessary on the grand staircase.
Master Dichartyn nodded to me, and we retreated into the hall proper.
“Councilor Alucion D’Artisan and Madame D’Alucion!” The deep voice announcing the first arrival boomed from the same small balding man who had announced arrivals at the last Ball and whose name I still did not know. He stood at the left side of the center archway into the great receiving hall. Behind him, inside the hall, were the three councilors on the Executive Council, who formed a receiving line of sorts.
Baratyn stood against the east wall of the hall, past the councilors, while Dartazn and Martyl were along the west wall.