Spy for the Portrait:
Short Story
A/N: I'm writing this for the "Love" competition on the Tamora Pierce Fans club on DeviantArt. But I'm not uploading it there until it's finished, so in the meantime any constructive comments would be awesome!
Story Synopsis: Regarding the unfortunate exploits of a young artist hired to paint the Wild Mage, and the subsequent suspicion of said sitter, culminating in a confusion of creative chaos. And, naturally, D/N. ;)
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People imagine the life of a court artist to be glamorous. Or at least, as Durban thought with a sigh, That's what I hoped! He'd pictured a life of glamorous ladies glittering with jewels, and noble knights who hid their strength behind courtly smiles. He'd imagined the way they would walk the halls, as casually elegant as the portraits that immortalised them. Durban had started his apprenticeship just a month ago, and in that month he had learned one thing:
He was very, very wrong.
He'd learned that much in the first day. Excited to be 'prentice-sworn to the famous Master Rain, weighed down with brushes and canvas and expectations, he'd been sent flying by a woman who was sprinting down the passageway, chased by a flock of starlings. The clatter of falling brushes sent her skidding to a halt, and before he could even react she'd picked up half his things, bundled them back into his arms with a breathless apology, and run off again. He hadn't even had time to ask her name, but his sharp painter's eye caught the colour of her hair and the apologetic laughter in her grey eyes. He described her to his new master when the man asked him for his first impressions of the palace.
"Ah yes, that'd be Mistress Sarrasri." Rain's eyes flickered- a motion which, on a lesser man, might have been described as rolling. Apparently he and the girl were well acquainted. Durban was about to make some pithy reply when the name sunk into his head, dousing the words like ice-water.
"Sarrasri?" he gasped, thinking of the stories his sisters had begged him for, "The wildmage?"
"Indeed."The master steepled his fingers so he could peer over them, his voice dry as he regarded his new protégée. "It is interesting that the first thing you noticed was a girl. Did the intricacies of the unorthodox Gallan architecture elude you?"
"No... I mean, I noticed it, but... I haven't heard legends about carved phoenixes. And they didn't trip over me in the hallway. Sir." Durban realised he was being impertinent and bit his tongue, but it was already too late. The wrinkled old painter's eyes sharpened, and the knot that had been in Durban's throat since he knocked on the office door turned into a lump of coal. As far as first impressions went, he'd probably made better. He was sent to the palace library with the assurance that there were perfectly interesting legends involving Gallan carvings, and that if he couldn't find them he could always return home to look for them there.
So it wasn't with a particularly warm heart that he began his work in the palace. His job was mostly to prime canvasses and block-paint walls ready for the master to add details to the murals there. The fumes from the pigments and oils made his head ache, and although the palace was never really under threat from the attacking Immortals the distant noises made his head hurt. He could never just daydream himself into the guise of a great artist, preparing his own canvas for another masterpiece- there was always a scream or a crash of metal to draw him back. True, his sisters had pleaded with him to watch the people around him, and write to them about the heroes of Tortall, but after Rain's warm welcome he found it better to keep his eyes to the task. The Giantkiller could have waltzed down the hallway with a tapestry rail and he wouldn't have cared.
He was perched on a ladder, dabbing grey paint onto a plaster wall with a soft cloth when a shrill whistle made him look down. He couldn't see anything. He sighed, thinking that one of the pages was playing a trick. They'd done it before, hiding his brushes or dumping mud in the rinse bucket, and he'd gotten used to it. Whistling was a new one, but...
...there, it happened again! He didn't make an obvious movement this time, but looked down out of the very edge of his eye. When he saw what was whistling at him he gasped and dropped the cloth, gripping at the ladder in surprise. Even from this angle it was clear that he was looking at a dragon. Its whistle had been cheerful, but it turned into a furious squawk when the dabbing rag fell on its upturned nose, soaking it in paint. Rolling onto its back like a puppy, the creature tore at the cloth until it fell in pieces around it on the floor, and then kicked at the ladder, muttering darkly to itself. It wasn't until the dragon started sniffing at one of the rags that Durban snapped to, and climbed down the ladder so quickly it nearly fell over.
"No- no, little dragon thing, don't eat that!" He said frantically. The dragon looked up once. The expression clearly said, You threw this thing at me, now it is mine. With a slightly smug shrug of the shoulders the creature sniffed one final time at a scrap, and swallowed it in a single gulp.
Durban grabbed the dragon, forgetting that such creatures have teeth for long enough to try to prise its jaws open. The dragon pulled away, shaking its head rapidly like a horse, and snapped at his fingers enough for a fair warning. The painter stared at the creature, almost in tears, wondering if turning it upside down and shaking it would make it spit the cloth up. He didn't want his career as a court artist to end with one poisoned dragon. He tried to go for the creature's jaws again, ignoring the warning hiss. Perhaps he could prise those teeth open with a paintbrush...?
"What are you doing?" A heavy weight crashed into the side of his head, sending him staggering back into the side of the ladder. This time it did fall over, the clattering sound echoing alongside the furious shout. When the stars cleared from his eyes his arms were empty, and a girl was glaring at him. She held the dragon easily, closely, and the reptilian eyes matched hers in ferociousness.
Durban realised he was a dead man painting. He held up his hands, dropping the brush. "Your dragon- it ate the cloth! It has to spit it out!"
The anger in the girl's eyes was replaced by bafflement in one swift blink. "What?" She asked flatly.
"I poisoned your dragon! It's eaten lead- you know, in the paint? I didn't mean to do it!"
"Idiot." It took Durban a few desperate breaths before he realised the woman wasn't speaking to him. The tone was too affectionate. He dared to look up, to see her scolding the dragon. "Have you been scaring painters again?"
The dragon made an apologetic peep and then looked around at Durban. If he didn't know better, he would have sworn the dratted thing was smirking at him. The woman put the dragon down and wiped her hands on her tunic, leaving trails of grey paint. She smiled crookedly, looking slightly embarrassed.
"I'm sorry. Kit can eat most anything. I think she likes the way people panic, so she lays in wait for new painters. She's played the same trick about five times on Master Rain; she kind of staggers around a corner retching dramatically, and then runs off before he can send someone to find me. I don't think she expected you to pick her up, though!"
"Next time I won't. Picking up dragons seems to give me a headache." Durban rubbed his head rather melodramatically and returned the awkward smile, waving away her stumbling apology. "It's nice to meet you again, Mistress Sarrasri. My name's Durban."
"Don't you have a surname? And have we met before?" Daine bit her lip and glanced down at the dragon, who was busy leaving deliberate paw prints across the floor. Durban nodded.
"You ran into me. We weren't formally introduced or anything. And my master says I don't deserve to have a surname until I can draw ten species of tree without reference. So I'm just Durban."
She laughed unexpectedly, and all of the awkwardness fled. "Well, I can't do that either! So I guess you should call me Daine." She grinned when he bowed formally and returned him the most awkward curtsey he'd ever seen in his life. It seemed impolite to ask the heroine of Pirate's Swoop if she was teasing him or genuinely ungraceful, so Durban bit the comment back. But when he looked down the dragon managed a more flowing movement than she had. The thought made him smile.
It took him nearly an hour to scrub the footprints out of the floorboards after the unusual pair left, but the menial task didn't bother him as much as it might have done before. There was something so unpretentious about both of them- as if one didn't know she was a dragon, and the other was completely unaware that people sang songs about her in taverns. He'd thought, based on their first meeting, that heroes must simply charge through the world if the normal people were paving stones beneath their feet. But if even the dragon could seem normal, then...
He was brought back to earth with a bump when Master Rain arrived to yell at him. Thanks to his daydreaming and slow scrubbing, hardly any of the wall had been primed ready to paint on. The master's voice hesitated for a moment when he spied a leftover paw print on the floor and guessed what had happened, but that didn't halt his tirade for more than a minute.
"In fact," he continued, with a sudden glint in his eye, "If you're getting distracted by the wildmage then perhaps your new task will be to your liking. How's your portrait work, young man? Needs practice, hmm?"
"Portraits?" Durban gaped at the man, almost shocked beyond words. Of course he could draw portraits- he'd had training before he'd won this prestigious apprenticeship, after all- but it was a fact of palace life that the trainee artists never, ever got to draw portraits until they'd proven themselves. For the first year it was strictly backgrounds: painting trees and skies and maybe the face of a peasant in a mural if they were very, very lucky. But Rain was nodding, that wicked glint still in his eye.
"Yes, a portrait. I think that you need practice. And it just so happens that I've received a commission for a portrait of our mutual, dragon-infested acquaintance. Naturally, you can't paint the final thing- you'd foul it up utterly, wouldn't you?" he waited for the obedient nod before he continued. "But some reference sketches would be good practice for you, and I'm sure I'd find one of them useful in some small way."
"Thank you, sir!" Durban wasn't sure if he was supposed to feel honoured or insulted. He knew exactly what the man was doing- making him do all the hard work, and preparing to take the credit- but somehow he didn't mind. It was eclipsed by the idea that somehow he could do something real. But the master wasn't finished yet. Waving away the thanks benevolently, he beckoned his apprentice closer.
"Now, there's a small catch, lad. Our very generous commissioner doesn't want the girl bothered by sittings or by being stared at by greasy-eared graduates. And I don't want her dragon getting wind that we're painting her and loitering in my studio like the lazy, paint-eating lizard it really is. So you're going to draw her, but- are you listening, boy? – You're not going to let her know that you're doing it. Got it?"
Durban stared at him. This close, he could see the whisker jumping on the man's cheek at every word. "How on earth do I do that? Sir."
The man made an expansive gesture and stepped back. "I don't care. I mean, if you do it wrong then obviously you'll never paint another portrait again. Ever. So I think this would be a good time to use some of your creativity."
"Thanks," the apprentice muttered drily as his master wandered amiably off.
So, here it was: a month since he'd arrived, and somehow he'd been roped into spying on a girl so that his master could earn some money, and, if he was very lucky, stop some paint from being eaten.
How heroic!
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