Kushiel's Scion (68 page)
There was no seal and no signature this time; not even a set of initials. It didn't matter. I recognized Claudia Fulvia's hand. She wrote with the same bold assurance with which she made love, stark lines of ink etched on the blank parchment, staking claim to it. The mere sight of it roused memories that made me shudder.
I sighed and tucked the note into my purse.
"May I ask?" Eamonn inquired.
"No," I said. "Better you don't."
Chapter Thirty-Nine
When I returned to the insula that evening, I told Gilot about the slain man. He listened without comment and gave me a long, sober look when I had finished. For the first time since we'd left Terre d'Ange, I felt the difference in our ages.
"Wandering the streets alone, at night," he said quietly. "I don't have to tell you how foolish that was, do I?"
I was abashed. "No. No, you don't. Gilot… do you suppose it's a coincidence?"
"Two dead men in a handful of days?" He frowned. "In a city the size of Tiberium, it may well be. Still, I don't like it. I'll see if I can have a word with the captain of the city cohort when you're otherwise occupied."
"My thanks," I said. "As it happens, I have an engagement on the morrow."
"And what might that be?" Gilot inquired.
I told him, and he laughed.
In the late afternoon of the following day, I presented myself at the atelier of Erytheia of Thrasos. It was easy to obtain directions; it seemed she was indeed well-known in the city of Tiberium. Since the note had not specified, out of some perverse impulse, I had chosen the worst time of day, when the heat was at its most stifling and most shops closed their doors. Only the baths were open at this hour. I knocked on the closed door of the atelier, then stood on the stoop, sweat trickling from my hairline.
"This is madness," Gilot muttered behind me.
"Like as not," I agreed.
Eventually, the door opened. The artist's apprentice regarded me with round-eyed surprise. "You came!"
"I came," I said. "Am I welcome?"
"Oh, yes." The voice came from within the atelier, rich and resonant, speaking Caerdicci with the trace of a Hellene accent. Its owner came into view. A woman of late middle years, with strong features and streaks of grey in her black hair. "Iacchos!" she breathed, lifting paint-stained fingers to touch my face. "You are welcome." I flinched, and she took a step backward, gesturing. "Come," she said. "Enter."
"I'll wait," Gilot muttered.
"There is no need," the woman said. "I will send Silvio to accompany him."
Gilot cocked a brow at me.
"Go," I said softly. "You can take care of the matter we discussed."
"Fear not, loyal manservant." The Hellene woman—Erytheia of Thrasos, I presumed—smiled. "I have no desire to have the D'Angeline ambassador on my doorstep, asking questions. Your young lord will be restored to you in short order. I only ask leave to make use of his face in the pursuit of art."
Gilot rolled his eyes. I was not sure which he liked least; leaving me, or being called my loyal manservant. He went, though.
Erytheia's fingers lighted on my arm. "Come," she said. "And see."
I must own, I was startled by her work. There were three paintings in the atelier in varying stages of doneness, and all of them were good. Very good.
She watched my reaction with a wry eye. "You are surprised."
"Impressed, my lady." I stood before the largest, which depicted the abduction of Europa. The bull looked so lifelike, I imagined I could feel the heat of his snorting breath. The churning waves were almost translucent, capped with frothing foam. The expression on Europa's face was fixed between ecstasy and terror.
"I studied in many places when I was young," Erytheia said. "Including Terre d'Ange, where I learned much about fixing pigments and the interplay of color." She lifted her hand to the panel, almost touching the bull's flank. It was coal-black, and yet it gleamed. "But," she said, "D'Angelines proved reluctant to commission a Hellene artist."
"We can be that way," I said, although I was growing weary of the accusation of D'Angeline snobbery. "Not all of us."
"So you are willing to model for me?" Erytheia asked.
"For this particular patron, yes." I paused. "Is she here?"
"No," she said shortly. "Take off your clothes."
Suddenly, sending Gilot away seemed like a bad idea. I doubted that one of the most famous artists in Tiberium intended me harm, but then again, I hadn't expected to find a knife at my throat the last time a woman said those words to me.
"Are you afraid?" Erytheia asked in amusement. She spread her paint-stained hands. "There is only Silvio and me here. You are quite safe."
Over at a long table, the apprentice Silvio was grinding pigment in a marble bowl, his head bowed in concentration. I thought about the cudgel in the dead man's fist. The marble pestle in Silvio's hand could easily deal a crushing blow. The apprentice was a small man, but doubtless his labors lent considerable strength to his arms and hands.
"I would prefer to wait for the patron," I said.
"Oh, she is coming," Erytheia said. "Later." Her eyes held a worldly gleam. "It was my understanding that she wished to consult with you in private about this commission. She will be disappointed if there is no preliminary rendering to discuss."
So, I thought, I had the choice between disarming and stripping naked for strangers, or earning Claudia's ire. I wondered if it were a test. If it was, I resolved to play the game.
"Your man said you paid well," I said.
"Half a denarius for every hour you sit for me," Erytheia said promptly. "And a bonus at the end if the patron is pleased."
"All right," I said. "What do you want me to do?"
Once I had stripped, she had me stand in a shaft of sunlight and walked all around me, studying me, for all the world like Claudia in her bedroom. Except it wasn't. I could feel the difference in her gaze; an artist's gaze, absorbed and dispassionate. I might have been a marble statue as far as Erytheia of Thrasos was concerned.
At length, she handed me a swathe of deep purple cloth bordered with gold and bade me sit in ornate, upholstered chair. There she took her time arranging me to her liking until I was slouched in a pose of pure indolence, one leg slung over the arm of the chair, the purple cloth draped artfully over my groin.
"Hold this." Erytheia plucked a bunch of grapes from a nearby bowl and handed them to me. "No, as though you were about to eat them." She studied me and frowned. "Too coy. Hold them lower. Let your hand go slack, as though you're about to drop them."
The grapes brushed against my bare chest, cool and silken. "Let me guess," I said. "Bacchus?"
"Hush." She placed a wreath of dried vine tendrils on my head. "That will do for now. We'll get fresh later."
With that, Erytheia began to work, sketching on a whitewashed panel with a piece of charcoal. She worked in silence and utter concentration, her gaze flickering between me and the panel. There was no sound in the atelier save the steady grinding of Silvio's pestle and the soft scratch of charcoal.
It was deadly boring.
The pose looked easy, but it wasn't, not really. After a while, I began to ache with immobility. The leg slung over the arm of the chair grew numb, and I yearned to lower the damned grapes. But every time I twitched a muscle, Erytheia made a disapproving sound deep in her throat.
So I held still and thought about Joscelin maintaining his vigil on the Longest Night. I thought about how I had offered my misery and vanity as penance to Blessed Elua, and the sense of mystery that had touched me.
Since then, I had been remiss.
Here in Tiberium, caught between scholarship and intrigue, I hadn't even prayed for guidance; not to Elua, not to any of his Companions. Nor had I offered honor to the gods of the place—the gods of Tiberium, stolen from ancient Hellas. And so, there in my chair, I offered up silent prayers.
"No, no, no!" Erytheia scolded me, breaking the long silence. "Not a rapt look, no!"
I grinned at her. "How is a god supposed to look?"
She clicked her tongue at me. "Iacchos! Drunk, drunk on wine and love and madness, but tender with it… not soft, but like a leopard with his prey. Think of something." She gestured with her charcoal. "Think of a woman you want."
Without warning, Phèdre's face surfaced in my mind. A thrill of horrified desire ran through me. I thrust the thought away with urgency, and tried to think of someone else, anyone else. Claudia Fulvia. No, there was madness there, but there was nothing tender about it. And surely there was no love. I wasn't even sure there was liking.
I thought about Sidonie.
After our parting, I had done my best to push her out of my thoughts, and what I had accomplished on my own, Claudia Fulvia had completed. But I thought about her now. The way she had stood, fearless, as I clutched her shoulders. Her dark Cruithne eyes set in a D'Angeline face. The spark of unfulfilled passion between us. On the surface, she was all cool composure, but there was somewhat wilder and deeper beneath it. Somewhat I longed to taste.
Do you forget that Kusheline blood flows in the veins of House L'Envers?
Oh, I had forgotten. But I remembered it then, and now.
"Better," Erytheia said. "Much better."
And so I lolled in my chair and thought about Sidonie and forgot the passage of time, until Silvio went to answer a knock at the door, and Claudia Fulvia entered. She glanced at me and her generous lips curved in a smile, and I stopped thinking about Sidonie altogether.
"Well!" Claudia said brightly. "Let's see what we have here."
My body creaked with protest as I stood, and my numb right leg nearly buckled under me. I put down the grapes, wrapped the purple cloth around my waist, and went to peer over Claudia's shoulder as she contemplated the rough sketch. Erytheia waited, her face filled with confident pride.
It is a strange thing, to see oneself captured in charcoal. The pose was everything Erytheia wanted, lounging and indolent. And yet there was tension in it, too. In a few bold lines, she had captured an expression at odds with the seeming ease of my body.
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