Robert Asprin - Shadow Of Sanctuary

'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.