Imager's Challenge (Imager Portfolio, #2)

by L.E. Modesitt Jr.

had

wherever possible, let the patrollers have the credit for what happens. If matters go badly, and it is your fault, take the blame. Take all of it. Do you understand?” “Yes, sir.” What that meant was that matters had better not go badly where I was involved.

marinated and crisped lamb, and various dishes appeared, beginning with individual salads of wild greens. Then came rice fries, sliced and boiled new potatoes in butter and mint, asparagus under lemon cream, and, of course, dark spicy gravy.

“The reason societies have laws, as well as unspoken rules and traditions, is to balance the costs and prices of the actions of individuals. In general, most individuals do not wish to pay the price of their actions, or not the full price.”

“If those who decide the rules and the prices have nothing at stake, they will adopt rules and laws that will take from those who have and give to themselves, and they will pay little or no price at all.

“Does he have an extensive family?” Maitre Dyana smiled wryly. “No High Holder survives an extensive family, and no extensive family survives a High Holder.

“As I told you when I first worked with you, technique is everything. Not power, but technique. That applies to covert actions and to High Holders.”

“one thousand and forty-one High Holdings,

Be most careful with Lieutenant Mardoyt or Captain Harraf. Neither is even honestly corrupt.” “‘Honestly corrupt’?” “They don’t stay bought,”

red-spice goat curry over rice, and I used every bit of the rice, flatbread, and lager to try to keep the food from burning my mouth.

“Politics,” I suggested, “and the fact that there are far too many people who want more than they contribute. Or who would rather take from others than build or make it themselves.”

“You’re talented enough that you’ll end up in more tight places than most could imagine. Master Dichartyn doesn’t hesitate to use talent.”

“Sometimes, those who hold power merely find a way to keep holding power in a new fashion with new patterns. Usually, some fail to change, and they can be most bitter and dangerous. Those who gain power, such as the factors and the manufacturers, often adapt the mannerisms of the old elite, and the same control of power.

Offering an apology for a necessary act was hypocrisy, but not apologizing for a rude approach to the necessary was unforgivable.

“The fowl with brown mushrooms and grass rice, with the blanched vegetables on the side. It comes with a small plate of greens.”

a full salad with fresh fall apple slivers, toasted almond fragments, and a crumbly bluish cheese.

The fowl had been pounded thin and tender, breaded in some sort of savory crumbs I didn’t recognize, cooked quickly at high heat while only browning the covering, and then served with some sort of thickened wine sauce with sautéed mushrooms. The side vegetables—beans and carrot strips—were still crisp, yet both warm and tender.

“You don’t much care for the equalifiers, I take it?” “They’re like the stones lining the river, in the shallow water near the edge. You step in, and they’re so slippery that you’re in up to your neck ’fore you know it.”

“I heard Chefaryl say that the going rate’s three golds to kill a minor, ten golds for a major, five golds to drop a major to a minor.

you implied there was a trade-off between accountability and authority.”

Some people only understand force. It’s best to avoid those altogether…if you can.” “Because, in the end, you have to use force to stop them?” I asked. She nodded.

batter-fried lamb and onion croissant and the rice fries with the balsamic vinegar.

“Most people don’t respond to information by itself. They tend to dismiss it if it doesn’t fit their opinions, or ignore it in favor of those facts presented by someone who is more powerful.”

Nor did Seliora have either an olive complexion or the dark-honeyed look of many Pharsi women, yet her skin held the faintest trace of a bronze-gold. I’d have called it goddess-gold,

“You learn failure with details is expensive in crafting.”

“When you don’t pay, you don’t know what something’s worth. You only think you do, and you make mistakes. That’s why I feel sorry for your brother. He may never learn the worth of what he has.”

“The special tonight,” said Taelia, “is capon marinated in walnut oil and naranje, with special spices, then grilled and served in Father’s special naranje cream sauce.

greens topped with crumbled cheese and walnuts.

wine, which held a hint of cinnamon and butter,

People are patterns. We could not function without routines, schedules, and habits, and the confluence of these create patterns in every society. Success in war is being able to maintain your vital patterns and to deploy others the enemy cannot replicate or counter while anticipating and disrupting all his patterns.”

Painting a woman’s neck is difficult. It was for me, anyway, because of the changing curves and the muscles and because unless the neck is correct, the face always seems wrong. In that sense, the neck is part of the face.

“High Holders don’t believe in mercy or fairness. Their honor is based on power. Nothing else. I understand that.

folded fried flatbread filled with lamb and mint with a cucumber sauce.

He shook his head once more. “Rhennthyl…you could be such an asset to the Collegium, if we all survive your learning process.”

“What we do, I believe, madame, is not all that we are, nor all that we could be. Reading opens one’s eyes to the possibilities.”

dinner specials was game hen stuffed with plums and hazelnuts, with a plum sauce, and I had that. Seliora chose a mushroom, fowl, and rice casserole in a cream sauce.

Dealing with people, even mobs, takes a different set of skills.”

“No matter what you do, when great power is applied, people get hurt. Even when you’re right, people will get hurt.

People aren’t logical. They just use logic as needed to justify what they already believe.

“You will win.” Seliora took my hands. “You must destroy those who would kill your family…and us…but no more.”

pastry crescents filled with spiced ground lamb or cheese, cheese and sausage slices, grape leaves stuffed with rice and lamb, and beef baolas.

Very few people really want better ways to do things. They want easier ways, and seldom is better easier. Better also means change, and no matter what they say, people resist change.

I’d always feel that loss…and the lesson that came with it, one that Dichartyn had hammered at me from the beginning, but which I hadn’t felt. Everyone around a powerful imager paid when the imager failed to see or to anticipate what he should have.