"Oh, I'm just a pleasure-giri, a hysterical bit of fluff! Of course you don't believe me!" Joia began to cry in earnest now and Wedemir gallantly offered her his military scarf when her wisp of a handkerchief failed. She accepted it with an automatic flutter of her lashes, but Lalo did not think she really saw.
"I have been certificated as an exorcist by the Mageguild," said Darios stiffly. "I would be willing to conduct a purification of your chambers tomorrow if you desire."
Joia opened her eyes at the polysyllables and Valira's lips twitched.
"Well, Joia, at least he is taking you seriously," the older girl replied. "Why don't we let him try?"
"Now on this panel," said Molin Torchholder, "I want you to paint a design of crossed swords and spears on the border of Lady Daphne's gown."
"Hakiem didn't mention that detail," said Lalo, looking from the design he had already roughed in on the plaster to the drawing again. He pulled his straw hat forward to shade his eyes. It was another in the string of very hot days that had been baking Sanctuary, and sunlight blazed back from the white wall with a painful glare. He supposed that he should be grateful he was not working on the new walls outside the city, as had been at first proposed. It was the newly resurfaced wall around the palace that Torchholder had decided should display Lalo's skill.
"Hakiem isn't paying you," said the priest. He stepped back from the wall, and the servant who held the broad parasol moved with him. That was a good idea, thought Lalo. They had already put up hoardings to protect the unfinished work from curious eyes. Maybe he could get a portable canvas sunshade as well. Torchholder turned. "I was there too, remember. Are you doubting me?"
The limner frowned. He had sketched from the storyteller's descriptions without thinking, and as Hakiem spoke he had seen, as if the images were flowing directly from the old man's memory through his fingers onto the page. Those scenes had felt right. What Lord Torchholder was telling him now did not. And this was not the first time.
The picture of Prince Kadakithis's first entrance into the city showed a rising sun haloing him with gold. But the prince had actually arrived through the north gate. Along with most of the rest of the population, Lalo had been there to see him ride in. He had made the change in the picture, but it had rubbed him the wrong way- Like this. Now he began to wonder about the devices he had been told to paint on the parade shields of the prince's guards. Unimportant details, he had thought them, but what if they were something more? He shivered a little despite the heat of the sun. Danos's warnings were beginning to make more sense to him now.
"If I'm going to make a change in the design, I want to know what it means-"
"What it means?19 Torchholder stared at him. "Why should it have to mean something?"
"In that case, I think it would be more aesthetic to give her gown a pattern of eagles with outstretched wings. In gold, since she comes of noble kin."
The priest's gaze sharpened. "Limner, you presume! You are only a tool in my hand, and you will do as I say!"
"No." Lalo held out his paintbrush, then laid it down. "This is a tool. It has no choice but to do my will- But though you can put me down and hire another painter, you cannot force me to work for you. And there is no other artist in Sanctuary who can do what you really hired me for, is there, Torchholder? There is no one else in the Empire, perhaps in the world ..."
The silence stretched out between them. Beyond the hoardings he could hear a beggar cursing two soldiers with demon-haunted sleep as they ordered him to move on, the whining song of the water seller, a distant scream-all the normal sounds of a Sanctuary summer day. Finally the priest grimaced and looked away.
"Don't argue with me, limner," he said. "Don't meddle with things you don't understand."
Lalo started home down the Wideway as dusk began to shade the streets and the sea breeze lent a welcome coolness to the air. In the end he had agreed to paint the gown as Torchholder had ordered it-for now. It had occurred to the limner that Gilla was a crony of Glisselrand, and the prima donna of Feltheryn's company seemed to be on good terms with the people at Land's End. If he wanted to know what Daphne had really worn that day, he could ask. But the priest had a point. Even Darios must agree that there was no use in standing up for a principle he did not understand.
He felt exhausted. He wondered how Darios's day had gone-Lalo's lips twitched as he visualized his apprentice trying to maintain his dignity in the Aphrodisia House. He would have to keep a straight face tonight when he asked him how the exorcism had gone.
"Lalo ..." The croak of a call came from close behind him.
Lalo stopped short in the street, then whirled, hand going to the hilt of his dagger as someone stumbled into him.
"Cappen Varra!" Lalo stared. "Where in Shalpa's name have you sprung from? It's been years!"
"You recognized me!" The minstrel straightened, pushing back the hood of the extremely tattered cloak that covered disreputable breeches and a tunic scarcely less worn.
"Of course-" the limner began, then flushed, realizing which kind of sight he had been using, for such a getup was inconceivable garb for the dapper musician he had known. Only the battered harp case was the same. "But this is no place to stand talking. You look thirsty, man, and here's the Unicorn-let me buy you some beer!"
"I'm not going to tell you where I've been," said the harper when they were settled in a back booth with two big tankards of brew. It was early yet for the Unicorn; except for two guardsmen they had the place to themselves, and a slatternly girl was still wiping down the bar.
"You don't want to know, and I don't want to remember. Not sure it's safe to tell you anyway." For a moment the minstrel's fingers closed over the silver amulet at his neck and his gaze went inward. "All I'll say is that when I walked through the gates this place really did look like a sanctuary."
Lalo stared. "Well, it's true that things here have finally settled down. Trade's reviving, too."
"Your trade is prospering, I can see!" Cappen Varra surveyed Lalo's smock-stained now with paint and perspiration, but good linen, and new. "You never used to offer to pay for the beer!"
Lalo took a long draft and grimaced, wondering whether this batch was a little off or he was losing his taste for the stuff.
"A lot of things are different now, including me," he agreed. He looked at his old friend, wondering if here was someone who might understand.
"You haven't-made- anything else, have you?" whispered Cappen Varra. Involuntarily they both looked at the blank wall where once Lalo had drawn the accumulated evil of the Vulgar Unicorn and breathed into it a soul.
"No. I wear a mask over my mouth when I paint these days so tHat I won't breathe life into anything by chance," said Lalo. "But I've learned to do a few other things. Sometimes it's hard to tell the difference between imagination, or art, and what's real!"
"I understand-" The harper held out his tankard to be refilled. "I nearly got lynched once when I sang a story I thought I'd made up and it turned out to be true."
"How can that happen?" exclaimed Lalo. "When I paint, or you sing, are we spying on reality without knowing it, no more to be blamed than a mirror going down the road that reflects both the sky and the mire- or are we shaping it somehow?"
"Do the stars or the cards create our futures, or does the person who reads them define what will be?" echoed Cappen Varra. The beer had put the sparkle back into his eyes. "That's a question for the Mageguild, not for me!"
"Not the Mageguild!" Lalo shuddered. "They'd look for a way to sell it. I only ever met one mage who cared for magic more than money. He was the Imperial Magelord, and he taught me how to seek truth in my painting. But that was years ago. He's probably dead by now."
"Got a theory-" said Cappen Varra, whose tankard had just been refilled for the third time. "Reality's not solid. 'S like clay, but most people don't have th' strength to mold it, or know how. The gods can. Mages can shape it with their spells, 'n' artists, sometimes-" he gazed at Lalo owlishly over the rim of his tankard, and the limner realized abruptly that after Cappen Varra's privations, even the Vulgar Unicorn's sour beer had been too much for him. And evening was coming on. The limner could not possibly leave his old friend alone and incapable in this part of town.