I wished I could have stayed at the table and listened longer, but I had to get to the studio and get set up for Master Rholyn’s sitting. So I finally excused myself and made my way through the still-chill air in the quadrangle north to the workshop building that held the studio.
As I went through setting up and deciding which paints to mix, my breath did not quite steam in the chill air of the studio. If Master Poincaryt wanted me to keep painting portraits in the winter months I’d need some heat in the space. Even oils congealed if they got too cold.
Master Rholyn arrived as the bells rang out the glass.
“Rhenn . . . good morning, chill as it is.” He paused. “Do you want me standing or sitting?”
“Sitting for the moment.” I walked over and studied his face, trying to fix the coloration and shading before I went back to my palette and finished mixing the shade I wanted.
“I noticed you dancing with Madame D’Shendael at the Council’s Harvest Ball.” Master Rholyn smiled.
“She asked me to dance, sir. It caught me quite off guard.” That was true enough.
“Did she say why?” The tone of his words suggested he already knew the answer.
“No, sir. She just said that she required a partner. If you would stand, now, sir, and take that position with your foot on the crate?”
He rose, more awkwardly than I had remembered, but that might have been because the grace and eloquence of his speech colored my memory. “This way?”
“Please turn your head a bit toward me. Good.” I eased the tip of the brush into the oils I’d mixed.
“Madame D’Shendael is quite intelligent, Rhennthyl. She never does anything without a reason. Did her words hint at any such purpose?”
“She talked only briefly, about art, and how little it was respected.”
Rholyn nodded almost sagely. “She believes in art, but that is not all.”
I said nothing, but continued to work on getting the set of his nose and eyes precisely.
“Did she speak of the Council?”
“No, sir, except that she told me that I was an imager, and that it was a silly fiction of the Council that I couldn’t even admit it.”
“A silly fiction? She would use such a term. You know that she does not approve of the current fashion of selecting councilors?”
“Master Dichartyn mentioned such, sir. He said she would prefer that some councilors be chosen by a form of popular voting.”
“As if the populace as a whole would ever choose wisely.”
I concentrated on the canvas before me.
“What do you think, Rhenn?”
I didn’t want to say what I thought. “It seems to me that the present way of selecting councilors provides a balance among artisans, factors, and High Holders. No one group or individual has control.”
“Balance of power . . . yes . . . there is a balance of power, and it is necessary, because those in the Council are far less honorable than those who lead the Collegium. Throughout our history, we’ve been fortunate that the imagers appointed to senior positions and to the Council by the senior maitre of the Collegium have proven themselves honorable and worthy types.” He paused. “I’d best stop talking and let you paint.” He smiled warmly.
Master Rholyn was as good as his word and said little after that. As a result, I got a good start on his face, especially around the eyes. Some portraiturists concentrate on the shape of the head and face first, and sometimes I had, but with Master Rholyn, there was a difference in the set of his nose, eyes, and eyebrows that I needed to address first.
I had to clean up the studio in a rush and then make my way to the infirmary to see Master Draffyd. I had to wait in the anteroom for almost a quint before he appeared. The smooth gray stone walls made the space seem even colder than it was, but the anteroom was far better than being in the cold gray individual rooms where I’d already spent too much time recuperating.
Draffyd strolled in with a pleasant smile. “Good morning, Rhenn. This way, please.”
I followed him into a small chamber off the anteroom where I removed my waistcoat, scarf-cravat, shirt, and undershirt.
“Does anything hurt?”
“Not any longer,” I admitted.
“What was the last thing to stop hurting, and when did it stop?”
“My ribs . . . on the right side. Here.” I pointed. “Maybe a week ago.”
He poked, prodded, thumped, and pressed and asked more questions before he finally announced, “You look good, and everything feels to have healed. Clovyl and Master Dichartyn have been asking when you’d be ready to handle more hand-to-hand combat training. You can start on Lundi, but no full-body throws. Make sure that you tell Clovyl that. He can be too enthusiastic. Those will have to wait another few weeks.”
“I’ll tell him.” I didn’t want to spend any more time healing. Close to a third of the last year I’d been recovering from wounds and injuries of some sort.
That left me with time for a leisurely stroll back across the quadrangle to the dining hall, where I was the only master there. I ate quickly and went back to my chambers. There I spent some time reading and reviewing court procedures. They were so tedious that I ended up dozing in my chair, and I had to hurry to get ready to leave for Seliora’s. I took a hack on the east side of the Bridge of Hopes . . . and no one shot at me.
The hack dropped me off outside Seliora’s door at half past four, but that was by design, although I’d originally thought to be there somewhat earlier.
Once more, Odelia opened the door, rather than her younger brother Bhenyt. “You seem to be making a habit of this, Rhenn,” she observed warmly.
“Coming here, or arriving early?”
“Both.”
“Actually, I had hoped to speak with Grandmama Diestra for a few moments.”
“I can ask her.”
“With Seliora,” I added.
“I’ll ask them both.”
We walked up the steps to the main second-level foyer, where she left me, heading up to the third level, and I walked around looking to see if there were any new chairs or upholstery designs. There weren’t.
Bhenyt was the one who came bounding down the side stairs and skidding out into the foyer. “Grandmama says you’re to meet her in the small plaques room upstairs, Master Rhenn.”
“I haven’t been there. If you’d lead the way.”
He grinned and turned. I had to walk quickly to catch up with him, but we reached the top of the narrower side staircase almost together. The small sitting room was almost directly across the smaller upper hallway from the archway from the staircase foyer. The stained oak door was open, and I stepped inside. The curtains were drawn back from the single long and narrow window, and pale white light formed an oblong on the Coharan patterned carpet.
Grandmama Diestra sat in an upholstered straight-backed chair at a small table on which was laid out a complicated form of solitaire. The three other chairs around the table were vacant. She wore a black jacket over a black sweater. Her steel-gray hair-looking almost silver above the black garments-was cut neatly at midneck level. She turned over the plaque she had in her hand and smiled, ruefully, before setting it facedown on the dark blue felt. Her black eyes focused on me.
“Sometimes, you play the plaques, and sometimes they play you.”
I wasn’t quite certain how to respond to that and had barely inclined my head to Diestra when Seliora stepped through the doorway behind me, closing the door firmly. She smiled, but it wasn’t the happiest of smiles. The crimson and black of her wool jacket was becoming, but it also made her look stern when the smile vanished, and her black eyes met mine.