“How can it not benefit them?” asked Seliora.
My father cleared his throat, then looked at Remaya, who nodded. He cleared his throat again. “Spices are cheap in Otelyrn. They grow easily. The profit lies in transporting them to where they don’t grow-here. The traders don’t want to lose their vessels to the gunboats, and they-and traders like Remaya’s family-are the only ones who suffer.”
“Our cooking and food also suffers,” added my mother.
“So…Rhenn,” asked my father, “how is the Civic Patrol business?”
“About like the wool and spice businesses.” I tried to keep my tone light. “But we won’t solve it here, and I’d like to hear what Rheityr’s been up to lately.” I grinned. “Then, Seliora and I can talk about our wonderful daughter.”
Culthyn actually laughed.
After that, and through dinner, we talked about family and food, and children. Seliora and I-and a very sleepy Diestrya-left just after eighth glass.
The late nights all through the week took their toll on both Seliora and me, and we were asleep in our separate chambers in less than half a glass after Charlsyn dropped us off at the Collegium.
A dull rumbling shook me awake. But that was followed by another, and an explosion. The entire house shook. Even in the darkness, I could see stones falling around me-yet they hadn’t, not so far.
I ran from my sleeping chamber and across the main bedchamber. “Seliora!” I kept moving, snatching Diestrya from her small railed bed and hurrying back toward Seliora’s sleeping chamber, where I sat on the edge of the bed beside her, raising my shields. “Stay close to me.”
Seliora didn’t question me, but she wouldn’t have had time, because a gigantic unseen hammer slammed the north side of the house. Stones toppled into the house, with some fragments and chunks of masonry and stone and tiles sliding off and around my shields, even as all manner of rubble built up in the hallway and rolled into the bedchamber. Glass sprayed against the shields like grapeshot. The house, solidly built as it was, groaned and shifted.
I could sense something-two somethings, I thought-hurtling toward us, toward my shields and in a fit of anger, image-shifted them back to the point from where they had come. At that moment, my entire body felt like it had been squeezed in a vice. That feeling passed, but my eyes blurred, and I felt dizzy.
The house shifted again…and more rubble settled.
Then came the sound of another massive explosion, followed by others, right in a row, somewhere to the north.
At that moment, I was so exhausted I could barely move, and my whole body ached, but I knew I had to hold the shields to protect Seliora and Diestrya until we could get out of the house and the rubble around us. I closed my eyes and concentrated for a time longer.
After everything settled, I turned to Seliora. “I’m holding shields. I don’t know what will collapse. We’ll move to where we can get clothes and boots and then make our way out. I think the south side of the house isn’t as badly damaged.”
We just grabbed clothing and boots before making our way down the rubble-filled staircase, more like sliding down the balustrade, but the dwelling had been so solidly built that the main level was clear, if dusty.
My head was pounding, and my whole body ached. Donning the basic grays quickly in the front foyer was difficult, and my eyes kept blurring, from the dust, I supposed. When we finally stepped out of the house, I was struck by the diffuse light filling the northern sky, as if something were burning brightly on the River Aluse, and yet droplets of ice fell out of the sky.
Fire and ice? How could that be?
Yet that light, already fading, allowed me to see the devastation around me. Master Dichartyn’s house was rubble. So was Maitre Dyana’s, as was the larger dwelling that had been Maitre Poincaryt’s. I turned, and my entire body twinged, and a wave a blackness swept toward me, but receded, although I could feel that it had not retreated that far. Out of the smoky haze, I could see Maitre Dyana walking toward me, dressed in working grays.
Behind me, Seliora was saying something, but I couldn’t hear the words. I felt light-headed, and dizzy, and my entire body tingled, but I pushed that away. I had to know what had happened, what Maitre Dyana knew.
Maitre Dyana stopped in front of me, then said, “Sit down. Now!”
I almost made it before the blackness slammed me down.
26
The next time I woke up was with gray walls around me, but my eyes wouldn’t focus, and I couldn’t talk. Someone fed me something soft, and I drank something, and the blackness rose up again. That sort of thing must have happened for a while, because I thought I saw people around, but nothing made much sense.
Then, I finally swam out of that hazy blackness and could actually see, and feed myself, although my entire body remained a mass of soreness and aches. One of the obdurate attendants watched closely, then took the empty tray away. That I’d been watched by an ob all the time suggested I’d been in a bad way.
I took stock of my physical situation. From what I could see, there were purplish-yellow bruises on my arms and my upper chest, and probably on my thighs, from the way they felt. How had all that happened? I’d held my shields and even angled and slipped them the way Maitre Dyana had drilled into me years earlier. Or had it been when I’d imaged back the shells or bombs or what ever had been aimed at the Collegium?
Draffyd appeared, and his eyes were ringed with black. “How are you feeling?”
“Sore and aching all over,” I admitted. “But I can see without everything blurring.”
“Your eyes were so bloodshot that they were more red than white. You’re fortunate to be alive.” He paused. “You were imaging behind shields, weren’t you?”
“Ah…not exactly. I was imaging beyond them.”
His eyes widened, but he only nodded. “Maitre Dyana needs to see you, but I’ve asked her to be brief. You aren’t ready to do much right now.”
“Seliora?”
“She and Diestrya have been staying in one of the empty rooms here. You can see her after Maitre Dyana.”
Draffyd hadn’t been gone more than a tenth of a glass before Maitre Dyana walked in-without one of her colored scarves.
She looked tired, but her words were as crisp and cutting as ever. “Some finesse would have made it easier on you, Rhenn, not that finesse comes that easily in the middle of the night when someone is dropping shells on you and your family.”
I just looked at her. “The shields and the finesse were the easy part. Imaging those shells back to their firing points was what hurt.”
For the only time in the seven years I’d known her, Maitre Dyana didn’t seem to have words. She studied me. Finally, she said, “From all the ice on the river, I wondered about that. How did you manage it?”
“I don’t know what happened, but, yes, I imaged some shells, two, I think, back to their starting point.”
“You never saw them.”
“I can do that. I’ve always been able to. I’ve done it with bullets before. I never tried it with anything that big. Just ask Draffyd or…What happened to Master Dichartyn?”
“Unlike you or me, he had no warning. The first shells hit his dwelling, and then Maitre Poincaryt’s. Dichartyn still managed to shield Aelys and the children.”
Dichartyn? Dead? How…? I swallowed. “Maitre Poincaryt?” I paused. “Then, you’re the Maitre of the Collegium?”
“Apparently, you should be. No one else can image ten-stone shells back a half mille and explode a floating battery. That’s the sort of thing that only Maitre D’Images can do, and not all of them.” The tired irony vanished from her voice “No one could figure out why the barges that held the bombards would suddenly explode after a handful of rounds. There was enough powder and shells to reduce the entire Collegium to rubble.”