Imager’s Intrigue Read Online Free PDF Page A

helped ease the boy—now a youth and a promising imager secundus—into the routine and discipline of the Collegium. Horazt had a worried look on his face.
    What concerned me more than his expression was that he was looking for me. Horazt was the most secretive of the three taudischefs in Third District, and I’d been fortunate that he’d had a problem with Shault, or I’d probably never would have been able to work with him.
    “What is it?” I asked, pleasantly, but without smiling.
    “Elveweed, Master Rhennthyl. The latest batches have something different…It’s not good.”
    “Is it poisoned? Is it from some place besides Caenen?”
    “The carriers claim it as good as the best Caenenan green.”
    “As good as? Where is it coming from?”
    “It’s not from Caenen. It’s too fresh, but they say we can’t get any other.” Horazt glanced toward the taudis wall, not quite meeting my eyes. “Three long-timers had half a pipe and went screamer. They weren’t the type. Deyalt had that happen twice this week. Doesn’t look any different. Doesn’t smell that way. I’ve tried to warn all the runners, but they won’t go against their dealers. Since you took over, none of them ever come here, and I don’t know where their safe houses are. Not now. I’ve warned the users I know, but most of ‘em won’t listen or don’t care. I thought you might want to let your patrollers know.”
    Bad elveweed on top of everything else. “Thank you. I will let them know. There are two things you might like to know…” I went on to tell him about the smash-and-grab and the explosion.
    He just nodded.
    I headed back to the station, where I spent the rest of the afternoon occupied with more of the usual duties of a captain—some of which included interrogating two of the taudis-dwellers picked up for assault, revising the patrol schedules for the next two weeks to take into account the promotion/transfer of Charkisyn to Fourth District when we wouldn’t get a replacement for three weeks, checking the charging reports against our arrest records, and accompanying Gervayn on part of his round. I mentioned what Horazt had said about the elveweed to Alsoran and told Lyonyt to put a caution in the duty book for all patrollers. Beyond the worry about elver deaths, there was something about it that nagged at me. For one thing, there were only a few areas of Solidar where elveweed would even grow—unless someone was growing it under glass, and that was far more costly than harvesting it in the wild from the jungles of Otelyrn and shipping it half the world away.
    The duty coach arrived at half-past fourth glass and proceeded to NordEste Design where I got out and walked to the door, shields in place, and then walked back with Seliora and Diestrya. I carried our daughter. Once we were back at the duty coach stop on Imagisle, Seliora carried Diestrya to the house, while I hurried south to the Collegium Quadrangle and then across it to the administrative building on the east side. Master Dichartyn was in his study, as he usually was between the fifth and sixth glass of the afternoon. I slipped into the chair in front of his writing desk.
    “So…what can you tell me about the explosion?” He set down the sheets of paper he’d been reading and lifted his dark gray eyebrows.
    “I’m supposed to get a full report from Jacquet tomorrow on the details, but it was a bomb with a defined blast pattern, and someone pinned a note on one Broussard D’Factorius after the blast. The note was ostensibly from ‘Workers for Justice,’ but otherwise unsigned…” I went on to tell him what else I knew.
    “Broussard’s a rather undistinguished factor except for two things,” mused Dichartyn. “He’s essentially a freeholder, as well as a factor, with close to enough lands to qualify as a High Holder, but he’s rejected any approaches along those lines. He’s also come afoul of a High Holder named Haebyn. Haebyn has been a fierce