Imager (5 page)

755 A.L.

Those who would judge a work of art reveal more of themselves than of the artist under their scrutiny or of his work.

For some reason, Samedi mornings in Ianus seemed colder than other winter mornings. The ceramic stove in the center of the studio did radiate warmth, but the windowpanes sucked that heat out of the room. The corner windows and those at the other end of the studio were covered with thick hangings, but not the others, because I needed as much light as I could get in order to paint the girl seated on the chair.

“Mistress Thelya . . . if you would please keep looking toward the vase on that table . . . that’s it.”

Her governess refrained from uttering a word.

“Yes, Master Rhennthyl.”

I didn’t correct her this time. There wasn’t any point to it. Mistress Thelya D’Scheorzyl was all of nine years old. She was sweet and had the manners of a much older girl, thankfully, and the attention span of a gnat, not-so-thankfully. She stroked the cat in her arms gently. The cat had yellow-green eyes and a long silky white coat with tortoiseshell accents. Given that Thelya’s mother had insisted that her daughter be painted in a silver-gray dress, I’d had to find a blue-gray-shaded pillow on which the cat could rest in order to get enough contrast between the cat’s coat, Thelya’s pale complexion, and the dress. Even so, I’d had to change the shade of the pillow in the portrait to get those colors and contrasts so that they enhanced her prettiness rather than clashed with it. I still worried about the eyes . . . there was something there I didn’t have quite the way it should be.

“You’ll make Remsi look good, won’t you?”

“You and Remsi will look good together,” I replied, working on Thelya’s jawline.

In some ways, depicting her cat, the rather languorous Remsi, was the easiest part of the commission, because Remsi was almost totally white with the exception of tortoiseshell paws, tail, and ears.

The jawline still wasn’t quite the way I wanted it. I looked to Thelya, fixing the side of her face in my mind, then at the canvas, and the brushstrokes. The oils on the canvas shimmered, then shifted, ever so slightly. The brushstrokes were still mine, but the jawline was cleaner—and right. I’d only been able to do that recently, but I knew what I was doing bordered on imaging. Yet it was only with oils, and it was cleaner and faster than scraping and repainting and certainly better than overpainting. For all that, I wasn’t about to try it often, only when I had a very clear image in my mind—and definitely not when Master Caliostrus was around.

I worked to get the rest of the left side of her face finished before the ten bells of noon chimed—and managed to do so as well as finish the cat’s face as well, setting down the brush just as the first bell rang.

“Can I see?” asked Thelya, scampering off the chair, but still holding the cat.

“We still need two more sittings,” I said to the governess.

“Then . . . next Mardi afternoon, at the third glass of the afternoon, and next Samedi, at the ninth glass of morning.” She nodded brusquely.

Thelya scurried past me to look at the canvas. “That’s Remsi! It looks just like her.”

I forbore to mention that was the point of a portrait and just smiled.

Once I saw them off, I put in another glass of work on details for the portrait that did not require their presence. I used what little of the oils I had left on a small work, a still life, which I could not do for hire or sale, but only for open exhibit at the annual festival—the only venue where an artist could exhibit or sell out of his discipline—although it would be next year’s festival, since the final judging on this year’s submissions would be later in the evening.

Not more than a quarter of a glass had passed, just after I’d finished cleaning the fine-tipped brush that was my own, when Master Caliostrus entered the studio. “Don’t forget to bank the stove before you leave. I’ll not be using the studio this afternoon. Nor will Ostrius.”

Of course, the most honored heir and junior master wouldn’t be working on a Samedi afternoon. “I’ll take care of it, sir.”

“When will you finish the Mistress Scheorzyl portrait, Rhennthyl?”

“Two more sittings and then a few days of fine work after that, Master Caliostrus. She’ll be here on Mardi and next Samedi.”

“I suppose the delay can’t be helped.”

“Her parents have limited the sittings to once a week, and no more than a glass a time.”

He extended a thin cloth bag. “Factor Masgayl finally paid for the portrait, and here’s your share, Rhennthyl. Go out and celebrate.”

I eased the coins from the bag—eight silvers. I just looked at Caliostrus.

“Half of the fee goes to the master outright. You know that. Then there are the costs for the framing and canvas, not to mention the pigments and oils. There was that one brush you forgot to clean, and replacing it was two silvers.”

“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.” All I could do was nod and agree. Masgayl Factorius had paid five golds for the portrait I’d done, and out of that I’d gotten eight silvers. Not only that, but I knew he’d paid Caliostrus on Lundi, and Caliostrus had waited almost a week to pay me. Charging me for the brush was mostly fair. Mostly. I’d mislaid it when Caliostrus had dragged me away from cleaning for some chore he’d thought important and I couldn’t even recall. And it had been an old brush. It seemed to me that after painting portraits for close to three years, while still doing almost all the chores for the studio, I ought to be receiving more than one part in five of the commission, especially since I received nothing else except room, board, and training.

Both Factor Masgayl and Factor Scheorzyl had come seeking my work, not that of Master Caliostrus. Yet . . . even though I did my best to save my coins, I certainly did not have enough to open my own studio—and that did not include the ten golds necessary for the bond to be posted with the Artists’ Guild, not to mention Master Caliostrus’s recommendation and the concurrence of the Portraiture Guild.

“Don’t forget the stove, Rhennthyl,” Caliostrus added before he left, climbing the steps up to the family quarters.

After finishing my cleanup and washing up, later on Samedi afternoon I made my way down toward the Festival Hall, walking out Brayer Lane to North Middle and then southwest on the Midroad.

I stopped at Lapinina. I did deserve a bit of a treat. It was little more than a tiny bistro, tucked between a coppersmith’s on one side and a cooper’s on the other, on the southeast side of Guild Square, between Midroad and Sudroad, just a little place with three windows and a half score of tiny tables. But they knew me.

A trace of rime ice clung to the outer doorframe, but when I opened the door and stepped inside, careful to close it quickly, the warmth and smells of cooking—garlic, baked bread, roasted fowl—enfolded me. All the tables were taken. They usually were.

“Rhenn! Over here!” At the smallest of the tables, squeezed in beside the brick casement separating two windows, sat Rogaris. No one else had such an elegant black spade beard, especially not another journeyman artist, but I supposed that came from working in the studio of Jacquerl, one of the most esteemed of portraiturists in L’Excelsis.

The table where Rogaris sat was so small that on the side across from him was only a stool. It was empty, and I eased onto it. “Thank you.”

“You’ve done the same for me more than a few times.” He grinned, then raised his mug. I could see the faint steam of the hot spiced wine.

“What will you have, Rhenn?” asked Staela, the wife of Ruscol, who owned Lapinina.

“The special fried ham croissant and the better spiced hot wine.”

“That’ll be half a silver.”

I extracted the five coppers from my wallet and handed them over—and she was gone.

“What are you doing here?” I asked.

“Getting warm. I was over at the exhibit. I saw your study. You didn’t enter a portrait?”

I shook my head. “I wanted to try something else.” I saw no point in painting a portrait for which I would likely not get paid. It was better to try something else and stretch my abilities.

Staela reappeared and set the hot wine on the table in passing. I cupped my hands around the mug, letting the heat warm chill fingers, before I took a first sip. Then I held it at chin level and let the warmth coming from the mug caress my face.

“Cold out there, even for mid-Ianus,” observed Rogaris.

“Cold enough,” I admitted. “Are you going back over to the Festival Hall?”

Rogaris shook his head. “Master Jacquerl said there wasn’t much point in my entering any studies this year.” He smiled. “Besides, Aemalye has the night off, and the governess’s quarters to herself.” He stood a last swallow from his mug, then set it on the table.

“That sounds promising.”

“Most promising. We’re saving for the bond to open my own studio, and we’ll wed once I make master, a year from this coming Agostos.” Rogaris stood. “Until later, Rhenn, and best of fortune this evening.”

“Thank you.” I slipped around the table and took the narrow chair, just before Staela returned with the chipped brown crockery platter on which was my croissant, along with three fat rice-fries drizzled with balsamic vinegar.

“Eat hearty,” offered Staela as she hurried away.

I took a small bite. I wasn’t in any hurry. The judging results wouldn’t be announced until the sixth glass, and the bells of the fifth glass hadn’t yet rung. I couldn’t help but think about Rogaris. He was less than three years older than I was. I couldn’t conceive of being married soon, not after growing up with Rousel, and then Khethila and Culthyn.

I savored the golden-brown fried ham croissant, alternating with bites from the crunchy fried sticky rice. Then I sat at the tiny table and sipped the warm winter wine, enjoying the melded taste of wine and spices—cinnamon, cloves, and shaeric.

Eventually, I finally finished the last of the winter wine, as much because Staela kept glaring at me as because I was in any haste, and rose, leaving a copper for her and making my way back out into the cold and across the tightly set paving stones of the avenue to the square itself. Festival Hall dominated the Guild Square. Properly speaking, they were the Artisans’ Festival Hall and the Artisans’ Guild Square. Each of the four main artisans’ guilds had a wing of the building, and in the center was the Festival Hall proper. The north wing was the province of the masons’, stonemasons’, and sculptors’ guilds; the west wing was that of the cabinetmakers’ and woodcrafters’ guilds; the south wing belonged to the various representative artists’ guilds, including the portraiturists’ guild; and the east wing was that of the glassblowers’ and various metalcrafters’ guilds.

The guild wings were closed and locked, and I entered the hall through the door between the east and the south wing, nodding at the guard in gray just inside. The four huge ceramic stoves—one for each wing, so to speak—kept my breath from steaming, but the cavernous space was cold enough that I wasn’t about to loosen my jacket.

The display works were hung by guild, and I walked to where mine had been placed, on the far left end of those submitted, one of three—out of nineteen—that didn’t have a portrait component. My painting—a study, really—depicted a chessboard seen from an angle. In addition to the pieces still in play, one could see two goblets of wine, one on each end of the board. The goblet at the end with the fewest pieces taken off the board was more than half full and held a dark red wine, a claret almost as black as the pieces beside it. On the white end of the board, the goblet held but a trace of white wine, a grisio, in my mind. The white imager had been laid on its side, signifying resignation, because in three moves, black would have won by checkmate.

As I stepped back, someone coughed, politely, and I turned.

A tall figure, wearing a solid dark green woolen coat and scuffed but sturdy brown boots, looked at me. His face was thin, accentuated by a wispy white goatee and high cheekbones. His eyes looked to be watery gray in the fading light that sifted through the high clerestory windows. Only half the brass wall lanterns had been lit, but the lamplighter was making his way around the outer walls of the hall. “Ah . . . you’d be Rhennthyl, young Caliostrus’s journeyman.”

“I’m Rhenn.” Young Caliostrus? He was older than my own father, if not by much.

“Good work there. It won’t win, though.”

“Why do you say that?” I had my own ideas, but I wanted to hear what the old artisan might offer—if he was an artisan at all.

“It’s understated. Symbolic, too, and the symbol is the one that no one wants to face.”

“Defeat? A setback? The favor of the Namer?” Like it or not, we all faced setbacks, sooner or later.

“No . . . being forced to resign in the face of superior ability. Don’t you know that’s the greatest fear of any artist? It’s not the fear of death, but the fear of being forced to admit someone else is better. The mark of the Namer is nothing compared to that.” The old artisan laughed. “You’ll see, young fellow. That you will.” Then he turned and walked away.

I couldn’t say that I disagreed with his words, but why had he even bothered to speak to me? And who was he?