Imager

16

For the next few glasses, I felt like all I did was walk from one gray building to another, or from one part of a building to another, guided by Gherard, rather than Petryn or Master Dichartyn. In the process, I gathered three sets of gray garments, five sets of paler gray undergarments, black boots, imaged to fit my feet by a graying imager, as well as a stack of five bound books. I also got a heavy gray wool cloak for cold weather and a pair of gloves. One set of garments I donned immediately, and the other sets and the books were deposited in the narrow armoire in the stark gray room on the second floor of the building that housed imagers of the primus and secondus levels.

“For now,” Gherard told me, as he guided me back toward the first building, which I’d learned was the administrative building, “you’re a primus, but once you know the basics about the Collegium, they’ll probably make you a secondus.”

“You don’t have to serve a mandatory apprenticeship?”

He shook his head. “It’s all by ability. There are some imagers primus who are over sixty. It’s all they’ll ever be.” He frowned. “There are some masters in their late twenties, but no one’s ever attained a rank above Maitre D’Structure before around forty, and there are only two Maitres D’Esprit.”

I must have looked blank.

“There are three levels of regular imagers-primus, secondus, and tertius-and four master levels: Maitre D’Aspect, Maitre D’Structure, Maitre D’Esprit, and Maitre D’Image. Most imagers in the Collegium are either imagers secondus or tertius. Right now, I think there are perhaps fifteen Maitres D’Aspect, but there might be more.”

The number didn’t surprise me. There were only about that many master portraiturists in L’Excelsis. But with so few, I had to wonder why he didn’t know the exact number.

“I hope you read well and quickly, because you’re starting late, and you have a lot to learn. You’ll have to learn basic chemistry, something about metals, and how living things-trees and people, mostly-work, and all sorts of things about combustion, but that’s mostly for self-protection. Master Dichartyn will explain everything in more detail, including your duties.”

He didn’t say much more after that, but just escorted me back to the same room where I’d begun and left me there, where I sat for a time before Master Dicharytn appeared.

I immediately rose. “Sir.”

He waved me back to the seat I had taken. “You have garments, quarters, and books now, I take it?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Do you have anything personal that you would like to bring? You can have personal items like quilts, pillows, bedclothing, paintings or wall hangings, small rugs. No clothing, except nightwear, and no personal jewelry.”

“No, sir. Most of my personal things were destroyed.” And I certainly wasn’t about to ask my parents for anything.

Master Dichartyn nodded. “Now . . . let me go over some very basic rules. First, until you are told otherwise, and only by a master, you are not to leave Imagisle. Usually, this restriction lasts anywhere from one to three months, depending on how fast you learn a number of things. Second, after we finish today, you are to take the map I will give you, and you will spend the rest of the day learning where every chamber and building on the isle is. Do not enter any room where the door is closed. . . .

“The dining hall serves breakfast from the sixth glass of the morning, a midday meal between noon and the first glass of the afternoon, and dinner at the sixth glass of the afternoon. Seating is roughly by position. There is a table for imagers primus, one for imagers secondus and tertius, and a third for maitres . . .”

I listened as intently as I could while he outlined the regimen of Imagisle. It certainly didn’t seem any worse than being an apprentice.

“As for your duties . . . they’re very simple. For now, you’re to do what I tell you to do. I’ve given you your instructions for today. Tomorrow, at the seventh glass of the morning you are to appear and wait outside my study-it’s two doors down on the left-until I summon you. I suggest you bring the volume on the structure of the Collegium and the responsibilities of an imager and read it, in case you have to wait. For the next several weeks, your duties will center on learning everything in the books you were given.” Master Dichartyn smiled wryly. “I do have a simple question for you. Did you tell anyone you were coming here?”

“Why, sir?” The question made me wary.

“Because about half of the would-be imagers don’t tell anyone, and then the civic patrollers contact us to see if you’re here. It’s much simpler if you just write a note or two to those who might worry, one way or another. In your case, I’d presume, to your parents, since you no longer serve a master portraiturist. There should be some blank stationery in the armoire in your chamber, as well as a pen and ink. If you’ll bring the notes back to me this afternoon, I’ll have them dispatched immediately, and your parents won’t have to worry too long. Oh . . . and you do get a stipend. It’s not much, only a silver a week, but we do feed and clothe you. Once you learn the basics of the Collegium and pass a proficiency test, or the equivalent, most of which you’ve already demonstrated the ability to do, you’ll become a beginning imager secondus, and that’s worth two silvers a week. Stipends go up in accordance with your position and how long you’ve been with the Collegium. So does the amount of space allocated to you.”

A silver a week wasn’t grand, but it wasn’t absolute poverty, either, and the position already sounded better than attempting to be a wool factor under my father and Rousel.

“There are several other basics. First, we expect daily bathing and frequent laundering of your garments. This is for both safety and sanitary reasons, the rationale for which will become clear before long, I trust. The bathing is your responsibility; the laundering we have arranged, so long as you place your dirty garments in the proper place. There are two barbers in the building with the dining hall, and we expect short hair, as you may have noticed . . .”

When he finally finished what seemed a thorough overview of what was expected of me, he stopped. The smile vanished.

I waited, worried about what might come next.

“A word of caution, Rhennthyl. Imaging goes far beyond merely creating objects, and it can be dangerous,” Master Dichartyn said. “That is why I must ask you not to attempt any more imaging except under supervision of a master or at his or her direction. Most people have no concept of what we do, and we try not to let them know. That is one reason why some imagers primus leave by the Bridge of Stones.”

All guilds had secrets, or at least their practitioners did. Master Caliostrus had ways of combining waxes, oils, and pigments that he had sworn others did not know, and revealing such secrets could cost an apprentice or a journeyman his position, not to mention a stiff flogging. But . . . death? I tried not to swallow. I failed.

Master Dichartyn offered a crooked smile. “One advantage of dealing with someone older is that you understand fully the implications of what I’m telling you. Let me explain. We are not cruel, and contrary to what people may say, we do not arbitrarily or otherwise kill young imagers. Very few imagers face disciplinary hearings. Most who leave by the Bridge of Stones do so because they made a mistake in imaging. You have been a journeyman portraiturist. What will happen if you mix paraffin, oils, and waxes over a very hot flame-without care?”

“You’ll get a fire.” I wasn’t about to mention possible explosions.

“Or worse.” He nodded. “Now . . . what would happen if an imager attempted to image all three right on a stove or in a fire?”

I winced.

“Exactly.” He paused. “Now, that’s really not a good example, but it should give you an idea of what can happen. There are many substances that should not be combined in imaging, and that is why you need to study the books you received and follow instructions most carefully-especially as you become more experienced.”

I couldn’t help but frown in puzzlement at his last words.

“In imaging,” he explained, “the more you learn to do, the closer you are to great danger, from many sources. You may not understand this now, but for your own safety, please believe me until you understand why it is so.”

There was no mistaking the earnestness or the direct concern in his words, but I did wish that he had not used the paraffin example, because it suggested that he had at least a suspicion that my imaging had led to Master Caliostrus’s death. Yet . . . if he believed that, why would they accept me even as a beginning imager?

Abruptly, he stood. “That is all for now.” He extended a folded paper, the map, I presumed. “Before you explore, please write those notes and bring them back. Knock on my door, once, then wait.”

“Yes, sir.”

He nodded, then turned and left me holding the map.

I walked slowly back to my new quarters, and I managed it without looking at the map. There I settled down at the table desk.

Writing the letter to my parents was hard, but better than having to tell them in person what I planned before I knew whether the Collegium would accept me. If I’d been rejected, what could I have said? Besides, then Father would have come up with another of his sermons on what was foreordained and how it was clear I was not meant to be a painter or an imager and how I shouldn’t have tried to escape my calling as a wool factor. Still I spent so much time trying to get the words just right that there was less than a half glass left before noon by the time I handed the letter to Master Dichartyn.

“You spent some time on it. Good. I’ll have it delivered this afternoon. Oh . . . you also have a letter box in the rear corridor outside the dining hall, next to the boxes that hold the newsheets. You don’t have to pay for them, but you are expected to read them-regularly. By this evening, your letter box should have your initials on it-IP-RH. That’s your position followed by the first two initials of your name. If someone else has those initials, you might have three or four letters following your position.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Master Dichartyn just nodded. “Tomorrow morning. Here.” Then he turned and closed the door to his study.

With the map in hand, I began to navigate my way to the dining hall. I had gotten up early and eaten nothing except some bread I’d pilfered from the kitchen on the way out. The dining hall was within a larger building at the west side of the quadrangle behind the administration building where I’d first entered the Collegium. It was not nearly so large as I had imagined, and it held but three tables, a small table set crosswise across the hall, and two longer tables parallel to each other and perpendicular to the smaller table. There was no one at the short table when I entered the hall just before the bells struck noon, but a number of younger imagers stood around the table on the right.

I eased toward a redheaded young man. “Is this the table for the imagers primus?”

“For us lowly primes, it is. You’re new, aren’t you?”

“About as new as one can be,” I admitted. “I crossed the bridge this morning.”

“I’m Etyen.”

“Rhenn, or formally, Rhennthyl.” As I stood there, I realized that several of the figures were young women. I also saw two older women coming through the arched doorway, one of them gray-haired, and walking toward the adjoining table, and a third, also gray, moving toward the masters’ table with a white-haired man. I must have stared because Etyen spoke again.

“There aren’t that many women imagers, but Maitre Dyana is a Maitre D’Structure. She’s old, though.”

“How old?”

“She must be forty-some . . . or even older.”

Somehow, I didn’t think of someone my mother’s age as old, but Etyen couldn’t have been much more that fifteen, and he must have come to Imagisle right out of a grammaire.

“Where did you come from?” I asked.

“From Asseroiles.”

Asseroiles was more than three hundred milles to the northwest. “Are all the imagers in Solidar here at the Collegium?”

“Oh, no, but most of them are. There are three other Collegia. There’s Mont D’Image to the north . . . well, it’s actually northwest of Asseroiles, somewhere off the Nord Pass through the Glaces, and Westisle outside the harbor of Liantiago, and Estisle near Nacliano.”

That did not seem like many imagers, not for a land the size of Solidar, stretching close to three thousand milles from coast to coast. How had the Council kept it all together before the steam engines of the ironway had made land transportation faster than horse and wagons?

“Rhenn here is new,” Etyen announced.

Several of the primes looked at me. Most didn’t, and people sat down as they came in without any blessing. I thought that odd.

“What room are you in?” asked Etyen.

“Fourteen, second level, south wing.”

Someone nodded.

“. . . Corsarius’s room . . .”

Several primes looked hard at the fresh-faced youth who had murmured the words.

“What happened to him?” I asked.

“Bridge of Stones,” replied Etyen in a low voice, adding even more quietly, “We don’t talk about it.”

Not talk about it? When someone died?

“You didn’t come here straight from the grammaire?” asked the prime across the table from me. “Oh, I’m Lieryns.”

“No. I’ve been an apprentice and a journeyman portraiturist. I didn’t realize I could image until a little while ago.”

“Sometimes, it’s like that.” Etyen nodded. “But I always knew.”

“You always know everything,” murmured someone.

There were low laughs from more than a few primes, and as I looked down the table, I was relieved to see that there were a few who looked as old as I was, if not older.

“You were a journeyman. You actually painted real portraits, then,” observed Lieryns.

“Some,” I replied, looking at the large bowl of rice being passed down the table. Behind it followed some sort of dish in sauce. “Mostly of girls and cats.”

“Cats?”

“My master said I had a talent for painting cats, and I don’t think he liked dealing with girls and cats. I did do one portrait of a factorius.”

At that point, the rice arrived, and I served myself a solid helping, as well as of the tomato-sauced fowl chunks that followed. If the lunch fare was any indication, I was going to be better fed than I had been by Madame Caliostrus.

Sometime later, after several mouthfuls of food, and some swallows of a fair red plonk, I took another look around the table before speaking. “I haven’t had a chance to read anything. What do we do, besides study?”

“Whatever we can,” replied Lieryns. “I’m helping Master Schorzat in the chemistry laboratory, but mostly I image little things out of glass for his experiments.”

“I thought there was a counselor-advocate to the Council named something like that.”

“That’s his brother,” someone said. “Scheorzyl. Master Schorzat said his father wanted everyone to know the two were brothers.”

My eyes went to Etyen. “And you?”

“I’m still working on making shapes with metals. They’re harder.”

I couldn’t say that I learned all that much at lunch, but everyone was certainly friendly. Afterward, I left the dining hall and, map once more in hand, began to explore and try to memorize where everything was. No one seemed in the slightest interested as I wandered all over Imagisle and the buildings of the Collegium that Lundi afternoon. I still worried about why no one talked about it when someone died.