Free Imager by L. E. Modesitt

have tried so hard, but I kept looking at her eyes, and they needed to be more intense, and the zinc green, even with a glaze . . .”
    “You did what you could, Rhennthyl, and I’m certain Madame Scheorzyl will be pleased with the portrait.” Caliostrus paused. “I’m glad that you didn’t try to use verdigris. The effect would have faded in a few years, even with a glaze.”
    “I’d thought so, sir.”
    “Even without that little bit of imagers’ green, you could have heightened the effect with a little yellow ochre there . . . and there.” His stubby forefinger pointed.
    “I still could . . . and should, then, sir.”
    He nodded.
    “Thank you.”
    “I still have a few skills you haven’t picked up yet, Rhennthyl.”
    “More than a few, sir.”
    “You’ll be finished by Meredi, ready for framing?”
    “Yes, sir.”
    His eyes did linger on the portrait for a time before he turned. “You’ll bank the coals?”
    “Once I’m done, yes, sir.”
    “Good.”
    I did take his suggestions about the ochre yellow, and it took almost a glass to get it right. By then I was ready to leave. I did have enough coppers to go to Lapinina, and who knew, there might even be a pretty face there.

755 A.L.

    Happiness cannot be pursued through art, nor art
through happiness.

    The younger unmarried crafters and artisans got together in the Guild Hall the next to the last Samedi of every month, the twenty-eighth of the month. It wasn’t anything organized by the guilds, exactly, but they did let us use a corner of the hall without a charge, even for the two guards. There were musicians, and we’d pass a hat for them, and everyone usually had a good time—or at least a time away from the worries of the week.
    That Fevier Samedi, I was standing by the outer wall of the hall, talking with Rogaris and Dolemis, while we shared a bottle of Fystian, a white vintage perhaps a half step above plonk. Rogaris held the bottle, as always, no matter who had bought it—me, in this case.
    “. . . you think this Caenenan thing will lead to war?” Dolemis kept looking past us at Yvette, as she swirled past in the arms of someone I didn’t know. Yvette had been his girl for years—until she’d suggested formalizing the arrangement.
    “What Caenenan thing?” asked Rogaris, taking a swig of the Fystian.
    “The Caenenan envoy threatened that they’d kill any of our people who blasphemed their god or goddess or duality or whatever,” I said. “That was weeks ago.”
    “No . . . they did,” Dolemis explained. “It was in the newsheets this afternoon. Some clerk in the embassy in Caena burst out laughing at one of their religious processions, and their armites lopped off his head on the spot. The Council is debating the matter.”
    “Cut off his head for laughing?” asked Rogaris. “You can’t be serious.”
    “What do you expect from people who are arrogant enough to name their god?” I had more than a little scorn for people who thought a god cared whether they ate certain foods on certain days or who believed that people would be blessed or cursed or live forever or be tortured for eternity if they didn’t follow a set of rules laid down by some dead prophet or another. If there happened to be an all-powerful and almighty deity—and I had my doubts—he or she or it or whatever wasn’t about to care about who followed what dogma.
    “Everyone’s not like us,” Rogaris said. “Most of them are stupider, and that’s not giving us Solidarans much credit.”
    “You think the Council will send imagers?” asked Dolemis.
    How would I know that? I didn’t even know what an imager could really do in a war, except I knew no one much wanted a strong one against them—but there hadn’t ever been that many war imagers, not from what I’d read in the histories, not since Rex Regis, when his unknown imager had done strange things with walls. I had no idea if there were any at the Collegium Imago now. I supposed that wasn’t