Read Online Children of Earth and Sky by Guy Gavriel Kay - Free Book Online Page B

Signore Villani.
I
am wonderful in this! I would keep it by me all my life and look at it when I’m old. But . . . Pero, it has to be destroyed. You know this. He would kill us both.”
    There was a look in her eyes as she turned from the canvas to him, one he hadn’t yet seen. He’d have liked to capture this, too. He heard an unexpected tenderness in her voice. She had never been tender, not with him. It was as if she saw him, suddenly, as young.
    She’d kissed him that day, on the mouth again, but only lightly, as if saddened by the world, then she’d sent him away.
    She told her husband, on his return from the family salt mine concession at Megarium across the narrow sea, that the painting had not pleased her and she’d destroyed it. She instructed him to pay the young man, nonetheless, since he had done his best, and sometimes a woman’s needs were difficult to address. She’d smiled, saying that, made Citrani laugh knowingly.
    The boy had simply been too inexperienced, evidently. It was no one’s fault. Citrani commissioned someone else. He painted, by report, a perfectly acceptable portrait of the contessa.
    The entire escapade, Pero understood, had been an example of his inadequacy with regard to such people. Yes, make love to a beautiful woman if she offered herself. Experience that world. Pray for forgiveness after, if you were inclined. But don’t be lost toyour art. Don’t
show
her to everyone as she had been in the prelude or the aftermath of lovemaking. (It would have been interesting to know which of these people would have said the image was.) What was the
reason
to take such a risk?
    There was no reason, except . . . except he didn’t think any woman had ever been painted with that look in her eyes, and he’d wanted to see if he could.
    You could die for wanting to see some things, Pero Villani thought.
    No one knew what he’d achieved, no one would ever know, no one had even looked at it. Well, she had. She’d already been turning to gaze at herself on canvas again as he’d left the room that day. The story was simply that young Villani’s work hadn’t pleased the contessa. So good for a young artist’s career, that was! He hadn’t had a commission since.
    It was likely he’d spend his life binding books. Or doing backgrounds of sea or hills for some shrewder artist’s portraits, while dreaming of painting a soldier’s properly rendered arm, or Blessed Victims, martyred variously, in procession across a sanctuary wall, or . . .
    Or, his life could end tonight, Pero thought.
    He wasn’t running yet, but he was walking faster. You learned, in Seressa, to be alert after dark, and young men abroad in pursuit of prostitutes or wine at night had reason to become skilled at distinguishing the casual footfall of another night person from what might be someone following you.
    No one would be following him with benign intent. Not at this hour. There were few lights here, only stray lanterns on canal boats in the distance. It was windy. He could hear water slap against stones to his left.
    He had a cloak against the chill, and a short sword, since he wasn’t a fool. Well, he might be a fool, since he was alone at night in a too-quiet district where he wasn’t known. That was theproblem with a place of work being so far from where he laid his head at night.
    Villani was no stranger to prostitutes or wine shops, but of late it had been the excitement of those anatomy pages keeping him out after darkfall. He would finish whatever work Alviso gave him, then stay and study (burn a lamp, pay for the oil) and lock up and go home. Sometimes more oil used there, and a truly late night, as he sketched in his small room by the tanneries. You never really got used to the smell. You lived with it, if you were poor.
    His father had had a good house—other side of the Great Canal, beyond the market.