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.
'If you want a room decorated, I'll be happy to serve you, but I do not think that I will be doing portraits any more.' Ever since he had learned to see Gilla, his sight had been changing. Now, when he was not painting, he could often see the truth behind the faces men showed the world. He added politely, 'I trust that your work is going well?'
'Eh? My work - oh yes, but there's not much left for a stonemason now! What remains will require a different sort of craft...' His chuckle held a hint of complicity.
Lalo felt himself flushing, realizing that Jordis assumed he had been fishing for information about the new temple - the greatest decoration job that Sanctuary had ever known. Wasn't I? he wondered. Is it unworthy to want my goddess to adorn something more worthy than this jumped-up engineer's/easting hall?