Robert Asprin - Storm Season

The other Commissioners were looking at the painting now-the General, the Archpriest Arbalest, Zanderei the Provisioner and an undistinguished relative of the Emperor. Lalo listened to them commenting on its naive charm and primitive vigor and sighed.

"Indeed-" came a soft voice close to his ear. "What recognition can you expect in this city of thieves? In Ranke they would know how to appreciate you. ..."

Lalo jumped, hearing his own thoughts vocalized, and saw a slight man with clipped greying hair and a skin weathered brown, draped in dove-grey silk. Zanderei... after a moment his memory supplied the name, and for a moment he imagined he recognized amused understanding in the Commissioner's eyes. Then blandness masked them, and as Lalo opened his mouth to reply, Zanderei turned away.

A meek nonenity, Lalo had thought him when the Prince introduced the Commissioners to them all, and now Zanderei was a mouse once more. Lalo frowned, trying to understand.

A youthful eunuch, somewhat overaware of the splendor of his new purple satin and fringe, approached with a tray of pewter goblets. It was wine of Caronne, the whisper ran, cooled by snow that had been packed in sawdust all the way from the northern mountains whose possession was now being disputed so bitterly. The Commissioners took new goblets, and Coricidius motioned the slave away.

Lalo, whose cup was almost empty, looked after him longingly, but did not quite have the confidence to call him back again. I should have used myself as a mode] for the cowardly Ilsig King, he thought bitterly. Too many people here remember when I was drinking myself to death and Gilla took in laundry from the merchants' wives, and I am afraid they will laugh at me. ...

And yet he had painted the walls of the Temple of the Rankan gods, he had decorated this hall, and the Prince himself had complimented him. Why could he not be satisfied? Once my dream was to paint the truth beneath the skin, he thought then. What do I want now?

The air pulsed with polite conversation as rich merchants of Sanctuary pretended they were accustomed to such affairs, the Rankans tried to look as if they were enjoying this one, and the Prince and his officers uneasily enjoyed the Empire's belated recognition while wondering whether it was to their advantage.

Except for Coricidius-Lalo reminded himself. Rumor had it that the Vizier would stop at nothing to spend what remained of his old age back in the capital.

A wave of scent set Lalo to coughing, and he turned to confront Lord Raximander's beaming face.

"Why not return to the Capital with me?" the Commissioner said expansively. "A new talent! My wife would be so pleased."

Lalo smiled back, his vision expanding in images of marble columns and pavements of porphyry that far outshone the face-lifted splendors of Prince Kittycat's hall. Would Gilla like to live in a palace?

"But we need not waste the few weeks I have to spend here-"

Lalo's skin chilled as Lord Raximander went on.

"A picture of me, for instance-you could do that here in the palace as a small demonstration of your skill."

Before Raximander had finished, Lalo was shaking his head. "Someone must have misinformed you-I never do portraits!"

Some of the others, attention attracted by the raised voices, had drifted toward the mural again. Zanderei was watching with a faint smile.

Coricidius motioned towards the wall with a bony finger. "Who poses for all your pictures, then?"

Lalo twitched like a nervous horse, trying to find an answer that would not alienate them... Anything but the truth, which was that a sorcerer's spell had enabled-nay, compelled him, to portray the true nature of his sitters' souls. After a few disastrous attempts to paint Sanctuary's wealthy, Lalo had learned to choose his models from those among the poor who were still uncorrupted.

"My lord, that one was done from imagination," he said truthfully, for the Ilsig King had been inspired by his memories of fleeing through the Maze just ahead of local bullies when he was a boy. He did not tell them that he had got the Hell Hound Quag to boast of his feats on campaign while he posed for the figure of the Rankan Emperor.

One of the eunuch pages scurried towards them and Coricidius bent to hear his message. Released from his gaze, Lalo stepped backward with a sigh.

"You are too sensitive, Master Limner," Zan-derei said softly. "You must learn to accept what each day brings. In these times, ideals are an expensive luxury."

"Do you want a portrait too?" Lalo asked bitterly.

"Oh, I would not be worth the trouble-" Zan-derei smiled. "Besides, I know how I appear to the world."

Cymbals crashed, and as Lalo's startled pulse began to slow he realized that the other end of the room was flaring with the colored silks of the dancing girls. He should have expected it, having watched them rehearse almost every afternoon while he worked on the paintings here.

Such a commotion, he thought, for a few strangers who will make notes on Sanctuary as most artists make portraits-recording only the surface of reality and then will be gone.

Happily abandoning their conversations, the Commissioners let the purple-clad pages usher them to couches below the dais on which the Prince was already enthroned. The dancers, chosen from among the more talented of Kadakithis' lesser concubines, moved sinuously through the ornate topography of their dance, pausing only from time to time to detach a veil.

Trembling with reaction, Lalo drifted towards the row of pillars that supported the vaulted and domed ceiling. Someone had left a goblet on the marble bench, nearly full. Lalo took a long swallow, then made himself put it down again. His heart was pounding as loudly as the drums.

Why am I so afraid? he wondered, and then wondered how he could be anything else, in a town where footpads dogged your steps by day, and if you heard a scream after dark you ran not to help but to bar your door. It must be better in the Capital... there must be somewhere Gilla and I could live in safety.

He lifted the goblet once more, but the wine tasted sour and he set it back half-full. Coricidius would not care if he left the celebration now that he had exhibited both the pictures and their creator. Lalo wanted to go home.

He got to his feet and stepped around the pillar, then halted, startled as something in front of him seemed to move. After a moment he laughed, realizing that it was only his reflection in the polished marble that faced the wall. Dimly he could see the glitter of embroidery on his festival jerkin, and the sheen on his full breeches, but they could not disguise the stoop of his narrow shoulders or the way his belly had begun to round. Even the thinning of his ginger hair was somehow mirrored there. But through some quality of the dark marble or some trick of the light, Lalo's face was as shadowed as that of the Ilsig King.

Lalo worked his way around the outside of the Presence Hall to the side door. The corridor seemed quiet after the clamor of music and the wine-fueled babble of conversation, and the government offices that occupied the spaces between the Hall and the outside of the Palace were empty and dark. As he had expected, the side-door leading to the courtyard was bolted tight. With a sigh he went the other way, passed through the Hall of Justice that fronted the Palace as quickly as he could, and out through one of the great double doors that led onto the porch and broad stair.

Torches had been fixed in the pillars at the top and bottom of the stair, and their fitful light gleamed on the armour of the guards who stood at attention on each of the four wide steps, and glowed on the purple pennon tied to each spear, then rayed out across the inner courtyard in uneven ribbons of brightness and shadow, as if the soldiers had become part of the Palace architecture.