Shadows of Sanctuary978-0441806010 (24 page)

He swallowed. The last time he had seen Mistress Zorra was when she had accompanied her father to collect their rent, which was three months overdue. He tried to remember whether they had paid last month's rent on time.

'Oh, Master Lalo - you've no need to look so apprehensive!' Zorra blushed prettily. 'You should know that your credit is good with us after so many years

...'

After so much gossip about my new prosperity, you mean! he thought, but her smile was infectious, and after all she was not responsible for the stinginess of her sire. He grinned back at her, thinking that she was like a breath of spring in this summer-parched street. Like a nymph ...

'Perhaps you can help me to maintain my credit, mistress!' he replied. 'Would you like to be one of my models for the paintings in Molin Torchholder's Hall?'

How delightful it was to be the dispenser of largesse, thought Lalo as he watched Zorra dance away down the street. She had been painfully eager to break all previous engagements so that she could come to him the next day. Was that how Enas Yorl felt when he gave me my desire? he wondered, and wondered also (but only for a moment) why, in doing so, the sorcerer had laughed.

'But why can't I pose for you in Molin Torchholder's house?' Zorra pouted, glanced at Lalo to see if he was watching her take off her petticoat, and let the garment slip to the floor.

'If my patrons could detach their walls and sent them here for decoration, I doubt they would let even me in the door...' replied Lalo abstractedly, transferring paint from paintpots to palette in the precise order he always used. 'Besides, I'll need to make several studies from each model before I decide on the final design...'

Morning sunlight shone cheerfully on the clean-swept floor, cleared now of strangers' laundry, gleamed on Lalo's palette knife and glowed through the petals of the flowers he had given to Zorra to hold.

'That's right -' he said, draping a wisp of gauze around her hips and adjusting the angle of her arms. 'Hold the flowers as if you were offering them to the Goddess.' She twitched as he touched her, but his awareness of her flesh was already giving way to his perception other body as a form in space. 'Generally I would do only a quick sketch or two,' he explained, 'but this must be complete enough to give Lord Molin an idea of what the finished work will be like, so I'm using colour ...'

He stepped back, seeing the picture as he had visualized it-the fresh beauty of the girl in the sunlight with her bright hair flowing down her back and her arms filled with bright flowers. He picked up his brush and took a deep breath, focusing on what he saw.

His awareness of the murmur of conversation at the other end of the room, where Gilla and their middle daughter were preparing the noon meal, faded. He did not turn when one of his sons came in, was shushed by his mother and sent outdoors. The sounds slid past him as his mind stilled, as the tensions of the past days slipped away.

Now he was himself at last, serenely confident that his hand would obey his eye, that both would reflect the perceptions of his soul. And he knew that not the commissions, but this confidence in himself, was the true gift of Enas Yorl. Lalo dipped his brush in the paint and began to work. The bar of light had moved halfway across the floor when Zorra abruptly straightened and let her flowers fall to the floor.

'This had better be worth it!' she complained. 'My back hurts, and my arms are falling off.' She flexed her shoulders and bent back and forth to ease the strain.

Lalo blinked, trying to orient himself. 'No, not yet - it's not finished -' he began, but Zorra was already moving towards him.

'What do you mean, I can't look? It's my picture, isn't it?' She stopped short, staring. Lalo's eyes followed her gaze back to the picture, and appalled, he let the brush slip from his hand.

The face that looked at him from the easel had eyes narrowed with cupidity, lips drawn back in a predatory grin. The red hair flamed like a fox's brush, and somehow the rounded limbs had been distorted so that she looked as if she were about to spring. Lalo shuddered, looking from the girl to the picture and back again.

'You whoreson maggoty bastard, what have you done to me?' She rounded on him furiously, then turned back to the picture, snatched up his palette knife, and began to stab at the canvas. 'That's not me! That's hateful! You hate women, don't you? You hate my father, too, but just you wait! You'll be living with the Downwinders by the time he gets through with you!'

The floor shook as Gilla charged towards them. Lalo staggered back as she thrust between him and the half-naked girl, squeezed Zorra's wrist until the little knife clattered to the floor.

'Get dressed, you hussy! I'll have no such language where my children can hear!'

snapped Gilla, ignoring the fact that they heard far worse every time they went into the Bazaar.

'And you too, you bloated sow!' Zorra pulled away, began to struggle into her clothes. 'You're too gross for even Amoli to hire -I hope you end on the streets where you belong!' The door slammed behind her and they heard her clatter down the rickety stairs.

'I hope she breaks her neck. Her father still hasn't fixed those stairs,' said Gilla calmly.

Lalo bent stiffly to pick up his palette knife. 'She's right...' He took a step towards the mutilated picture. 'Damn him ...' he whispered. 'He tricked me - he knew that this would happen. May all the gods damn Enas Yorl!'

Gilla looked at the picture and began to laugh. 'No ... really,' she gasped,

'it's an excellent likeness. You only saw her pretty face. I know what she's been up to. Her fiance killed himself when she threw him over for that gorilla from the Prince's guard. The vixen is out for all she can get, which the picture makes abundantly clear. No wonder she hated it!'

Lalo slumped. 'But I've been betrayed ...'

'No. You got what you asked for, poor love. You have painted that wretched girl's soul!'

Lalo leaned on the splintery railing of the abandoned wharf, staring with unfocused eyes into the golden dazzle cast upon the waters by the setting sun as if by wishing hard enough he could become one with that beauty and forget his despair. I have only to climb over this flimsy barrier and let myself/all... He imagined the feel of the bitter waters closing over him, and the blessed release from pain.

Then he looked down, and shuddered, not entirely because of the cooling wind. The murky waters were littered with obscene gobbets that had once been part of living things - offal flushed down the gutters from the shambles of Sanctuary to the sea. Lalo's gorge rose at the thought of that water touching him. He turned away, sank down with his back against the wall of a shanty the fishermen sometimes used.

Like everything else I see, he thought, whatever seems fairest is sure to be most foul within!

A ship moved majestically across the harbour, passed the lighthouse and disappeared around the point. Lalo had thought of shipping out on such a vessel, but he was too unskilled for a sailor, too frail for a common hand. Even the solace of the taverns was denied to him. In the Green Grape they would congratulate him on the success that was impossible now, while the clients at the Vulgar Unicorn would try to rob him, and beat him senseless when they discovered his poverty. How could he ever explain, even to Cappen Varra, what had happened to him?

The planks on which he was sitting shook beneath a heavy tread. Gilla ... Lalo tensed, waiting for her accusations, but she only sighed, as if releasing pent hope, or fear.

'I hoped I'd find you here...' Grunting, she eased down beside him, unslung and handed him an earthenware pot with a narrow spout. 'Better drink this before it gets cold.'

He nodded, took a long swallow of fragrant herb tea laced with wine, then another, and set the pot down.

Gilla pulled her shawl around her, stretched out her legs and settled back against the wall. Two gulls swooped overhead, squabbling over a piece of flesh. A heavy swell set wavelets lapping against the pilings below them, then there was silence again.

In the shared stillness, warmed by the tea and by Gilla's body, something that had been wound tight within Lalo began to ease.

'Gilla ...' he said at last, 'what am I going to do?'

'The other two models failed?'

'They were worse than Zorra. Then I started the portrait of the Portmaster's wife... Fortunately I got the sketch away before she could see it. She looked like her lapdog!' He drank again.

'Poor Lalo.' Gilla shook her head. 'It's not your fault that all your unicorns turned out to be rhinoceroses!'

He remembered the old fable about the rhinoceros who looked into a magic mirror and saw there a unicorn, but it did not comfort him. 'Is everything beautiful only a mask for rottenness, or is it only that way in Sanctuary?' He burst out then, 'Oh Gilla, I've failed you and the children. We're ruined, don't you understand? I cannot even hope anymore!'

She turned a little, but did not touch him, as if she understood that any attempt at comfort would be more than he could bear.

'Lalo ...' she cleared her throat and started again. 'It's all right - we'll get by some way. And you haven't failed ... you haven't failed our dream! You made the right choice - don't I know that it was me and the children in the first place that kept you from what you were meant to do?

'Anyhow -' she tried to turn her emotion to laughter, 'if worst comes to worst I can model for you -just for you to get the basic lines of the figures, of course,' she added apologetically. 'After all these years I doubt I have any flaws that you don't already know...'

Lalo set down the teapot, turned and looked at her. In the light of the setting sun Gilla's face, into which the years had carved so many lines, was like a weathered image which some worshipper had gilded in an attempt to disguise its age. This bitter line for poverty endured, that, for the death of a child ... Could all the sorrows of a world have marked a goddess more?

He laid his hand on her arm, seeing the size of her body, but feeling the strength in it, and the flow of energy between them which had bound him to her, even more than her beauty, so many years ago. She sat still, accepting his touch, although he thought she would have been well-justified in turning away. Do I know you?

Gilla's eyes were closed, her head tipped back to rest against the wall in a rare moment of peace. The deepening light upon her face seemed now to come from within. Lalo's eyes blurred. / have been blind, he thought, blind, and a fool...

'Yes ...' he fought to steady his voice, knowing how he would paint her, where he would look for others to be his models now. His breath caught, and he reached out to her. She looked at him then, smiling questioningly, and received him into her embrace.

A hundred candles blazed in Molin Torchholder's Hall, set in silver candelabra wrought in the shape of torches upraised in clenched fists. Light shimmered in the gauzy silks of the ladies of Sanctuary, gleamed from the heavy brocades worn by their lords, flashed from each golden link of chain or faceted jewel as they moved across the floor, nearly eclipsing the splendour of the room. Lalo observed the scene from a vantage point of relative quiet beside a pillar, tolerated for his role in creating the murals whose completion the party was intended to celebrate. Everyone of wealth or status who craved the favour of the Empire was there, which these days amounted to most of the upper crust of Sanctuary, everyone wearing the same mask of complacent gaiety. But Lalo could not help wondering how, if he had painted this scene, those faces would have appeared..

Several merchants for whom Lalo had worked in the past had wangled invitations, although most of his former clients would have felt as out of place in this gathering as he did. He recognized a few friends, among them Cappen Varra, who having just finished a song, was now warily watching Lady Danlis, who was far too busy being charming to a banker from Ranke to notice him. Several other acquaintances from the Vulgar Unicorn had somehow managed to get hired as extra waiters and footmen. Lalo suspected that not all of the jewels that winked so brightly .tonight would leave the house in the hands of those who had brought them, but he did not feel compelled to point this out to anyone. He braced himself as he recognized Jordis the stonemason shouldering his way towards him through the glittering crowd.

'Well, Master Limner, now that you've finished serving the gods, you'll have a bit more time for men, eh?' Jordis smiled broadly. 'The space on my wall that's waiting for my picture is still bare...'

Lalo coughed deprecatingly. 'I'm afraid that in my concentration on heavenly things I've lost my touch for earthly excellence ...' The stonemason's expression told him how pompous that sounded, but it would be far better for everyone to think his head had been turned by his new prosperity than for them to guess the truth. The solution to his dilemma that had enabled him to complete the job for Lord Molin had forever barred him from Society portraiture.

'Heavenly things ... ah, yes...' Jordis's eyes had moved to one of the nymphs painted on the wall, whose limbs were supple and rounded, whose eyes shone with youth and merriment. 'If I could make a living gazing at such lovelies, I suppose I'd refuse to paint old men too!' He laughed suggestively. 'Where do you find them in this town, eh?'

Selling their bodies on the docks ...or their souls in the Bazaar ... slaving in your kitchen or scrubbing your floors... thought Lalo bitterly. This was not the first time this evening that he had been asked who his models were. The nymph at whom Jordis was now leering so eagerly was a crippled beggar girl whom he had probably passed in the street a dozen times. On another wall the whore Valira proudly presented a sheaf of grain to the Goddess, while her child tumbled like a cherub about her feet. And the Goddess they worshipped, who dominated all of the facile splendour in this room, was his Gilla, the rhinoceros who had been revealed as something greater than any unicorn. You have hearts but you do not feel... Lalo's eyes moved over the dazzle of apparel and ornament in which Lord Molin's guests had disguised themselves. You have eyes, but you do not see. He murmured something about an artist's perspective.