Chapter 2
Lady Varilka was glad to see Geriana's boys and was delighted with their news. As she said, one only had to look at her to see that she too was in the same interesting condition herself; and the boys congratulated her and promised to tell Geriana.
So far as the lady Holder knew, Niran had been heading for Crom's Minercraft Hall to paint Masterminer Nicat.
"Nicat? He doesn't know good art from bad!" said S'negen with more accuracy than tact.
"If he's employing Niran that's just as well!" said his brother dryly.
"I'll keep my tongue behind my teeth before I say anything I might regret" grinned B'kas, winking at Lady Varilka. She laughed.
"Well, I'm sure that the Masterminer will be happy enough" she said "And as Niran is incapable of dealing with the ingraining of years of dust it will be a kinder portrait than Rhaghe would have produced had he lived – he could exaggerate features just a little if he wasn't kept up to scratch to paint more of the personality as he saw it then was visible. I had to watch him like a wherry-kite not to let him turn my poor Eveny into a bit of a stuffed fish. He's not nearly as pompous as he tends to come across as to strangers."
S'negen opened his mouth and S'net stood hard on his foot.
S'negen sometimes had too clever a tongue for diplomacy for all that he could be diplomatic in the extreme when he was putting his mind to it.
oOoOo
Outside the Hold, S'negen said, aggrieved,
"I was only going to say that I was glad!"
"Well brother mine, I had fears of you saying 'he'd almost have to be' or even worse" said S'net.
S'negen grinned.
"I only thought it" he confessed.
oOoOo
The boy patiently grinding pigments on a rock outside the great Minehold had to be Boral, and his face was badly enough bruised from old and new bruises to carry quite a few colours of its own.
B'kas went and squatted down beside him; and the boy looked fearfully up at the dragonman.
"Your master appears to be rather too handy with his fists" said B'kas gently.
"I was slow, Green Rider" said Boral.
"The comment still stands" said B'kas. "Laddie, if a dragonman should happen to ask you your age, and you said 'old enough' he might well take that as old enough to go on Search."
"But I don't want to fly a dragon, sir, I want to paint!" said Boral with devastating honesty.
"Oh the laws of nature don't make the two mutually exclusive…. I'm an artist myself, a colourman mostly. And we've a fine Weyrartist who never hits her apprentices; and she's a better artist by far than Niran for Master Artist Agatta has praised her work."
The boy brightened.
"Truly?" he asked.
"Yes indeed. Now if you'd like a better apprenticeship, you let us steal you on Search, hmmm?"
Boral nodded.
"Do I come now?" he asked.
"No, laddie; we'll come in and wander about a bit, for the look of it; we might even take others genuinely on Search; the three of us have a good feel for it. Leave it to us" B'kas winked and tapped the side of his nose.
Boral nodded breathlessly!
How KIND the dragonman was!
oOoOo
Masterminer Nicat was always glad to see logicators of any kind even when they were bent on stealing his best an brightest apprentices, as he teased them!
"Why Master Nicat" said S'negen "It's why we steal the brightest and the best – because we know you'll continue to support their interest in their Craft to the convenience of the Weyr and the good, we hope, of the Craft too! B'lan and D'nor have been very helpful to us, a real asset."
Nicat beamed.
He had sent the young men, Journeyman and apprentice, because their sexual liaison had been likely to cause them problems in the Crafthall. That they had Impressed was an honour upon the Craft as well as peace of mind for their future wellbeing!
"Well, well, well, look around and take anyone you feel appropriate!" he boomed cheerfully.
The dragonmen proceeded to dine with the miners and looked over the youngest apprentices. They studiously avoided the girl who tried to flirt with each of them.
A couple of the boys were suitable; one agreed to come, the other declined: and that too was his Right, and to be respected.
S'negen looked at Boral, standing behind Niran's chair, serving him rather than eating for himself as though he were a drudge. And at least the drudges, working in the kitchen, often got a bite to eat first.
S'negen strolled over.
"Laddie, how old are you?" he asked casually.
"Old enough, sir!" said Boral with scarcely concealed excitement.
"What's happened to your face?" asked S'negen "Looks as if you were kicked by an ass."
Niran went purple.
"Boral, go to the room, you're not to talk to the dragonmen, you're too young" he said.
"The boy says he's old enough" said S'negen quietly, dangerously "And also I think I have some say to whom I choose to speak. Search always takes precedence. Why, surely it cannot be, artist, that you are the ass that kicked him?"
Niran scowled.
"I chastised him for bad behaviour! As any Master is entitled to do!" he said "It's none of your sharding business!"
"Laddie, would you like to be a candidate?" asked S'negen.
"Yes sir!" said Boral, promptly.
"Nonsense, boy!" Niran casually backhanded him.
"I think I've enough witnesses to see that this person hit a candidate" said S'negen.
His fist travelled a short, scientific trajectory into Niran's face, knocking him clean out of his chair and into temporary oblivion.
"Nice blow, dragonman; I've been wanting to do that myself for a long time" said a lean Journeyman Minecrafter.
S'negen grinned at him.
"Of course, I could only do so because he assaulted a weyrling under my protection" he said "I hope that's understood."
The Journeyman grinned.
"Understood and approved!" he said.
oOoOo
Boral was soon installed in the Weyr, sharing a cave with fellow apprentice Sessel, covered in numbweed and amazed at how much he was allowed to draw and paint for himself rather than being little more than a glorified drudge!
oOoOo
With four artists and a colourman, Geriana made the announcement that the caves given over to their use was now the Weyratelier, as suggested by Carlinna.
"Weyr WHAT, Journeyman?" demanded Boral, who had quickly bounced back to being a normal and cheeky little boy once he found out that his new apprenticeship was free of the abuses of the previous one.
"Atelier" said Carlinna "It's a word artists uses for their studios when there are several members or apprentices attached to them. It's what my old Master Fomitty called his studio" she explained.
"Why is at a Weyratelier when the Harpers have a Harperweyr?" asked Sessel.
"Because it sounds better this way round" said Geriana "We could be the Atelierweyr, but Carlinna and I discussed it thought that that sounded clumsy and Weyratelier sounded more harmonious."
"Heh" said S'negen "They'll call it the Artistweyr you know for laziness over learning a new word."
"Not if we throw the word around enough for them to get used to it" said B'kas serenely. "And it'll give High Reaches better credibility with other artists to run an Atelier, a craft word after all, rather than just having an Artistweyr. We're the Weyrartists of the Weyratelier."
"Fardles, that sounds like a Harper tongue-twister!" laughed S'negen.
"Don't, I beg you, suggest that to T'rin" groaned S'net "He'd tinker to make up a true tongue-twister!"
"Seconded in that plea!" said Carlinna quickly.
"Oh indeed!" agreed B'kas.
The little boys giggled!"
oOoOo
The Weyrartists invited the rest of the Weyrfolk to an exhibition of art to open the Atelier. Perhaps with more enthusiasm than wisdom, Carlinna produced a banner saying 'Welcome to the Weyratelier'; and the artists had to spend the rest of the exhibition trying to break the visiting Riders and support staff of referring to it as an 'Attleer' as well as explaining what the word meant.
"Well at least it means the new name ought to be memorable" Carlinna made excuse when B'kas threatened to poke her for having to correct the pronunciation of the name as he said umpteen squared times.
Much of the work in the exhibition would be going to the craftstall for the nurture of the orphans and cripples that the Weur sponsored; Carlinna and Geriana had decided to paint scenes of the Weyr and surrounding countryside with dragons in it, on the principle that people who could afford luxuries like paintings might like to suggest a Weyr connection thus.
They planned to be on a rota at the Gathers to draw graphite or charcoal sketch portraits to order at a mark a time; and expected to do very well with that.
H'llon pointed to one of the pictures, a small colour sketch by Carlinna of meadows and the weyr visible in the background.
"That'd mount nicely as the lid of a box, you know" he suggested. "And if you could paint directly onto wood with those oil colours, or onto the primed surface on the wood, I guess, decorative chests might sell where pictures might not, for people being able to claim them as useful items too."
"That's a thought" said Geriana "And panelled screens too; a lot of Hold caverns are pretty draughty and screens a necessity."
T'bor came over.
"Geriana, I really like that print" he pointed "The one of Northfork with the Runnerbeasts. If you did a selection of prints of major minor Holds – if you see what I mean – would people buy sets, do you think, bound in a book, to see where other people live, a kind of vicarious travelling?"
"Mmm" said Geriana "That's another good thought, Weyrleader. And I wager it would sell even better with a little bit of information about each – you know of the kind 'this is High Reaches Hold, seat of Lord Bargen and first conquest of the notorious Fax. The Hold is home to eleven thousand souls plus outlying cotholds to almost as many and has an extensive Weavercraft Hall and is known for its Runner racing and Winter Games at Gathers' just off the top of my head."
"Excellent!" approved T'bor "And such information of use to traders too."
"Plus a bit of biographical detail about Bargen himself and his family" put in Pilgra "Because people like to find out about how the other half live, marvel at their exploits, fecundity or whatever."
"Cynic" said T'bor.
"I doubt a marksman has ever lost money by underestimating the idle curiosity or poor taste of his clients" said Pilgra.
"It's a big project" said Geriana "We'll need metal and a load of etching acid from the Smithcrafters to produce good prints; it'll be easier than tying up the woodcrafters carving woodblocks."
"I've done some etching with Fomitty" said Carlinna "I actually listened because it was something so new."
"And that's why you'll be teaching me" said Geriana. "I know it can be done; and I've a vague idea how to do it, but I've never done it."
"It isn't hard, with the right tools" shrugged Carlinna "At least, not the basic skill; the hardest part is doing the design backwards. You'll soon pick it up."
"Sorted" said Geriana "That won't be on the stall for at least a Turn though."
"We Harpers could do our bit in researching and writing the stuff to go opposite the pictures" said T'rin.
"Don't get too clever" warned Pilgra "People might not like it!"
T'rin grinned.
Once the idea of immortalising Holds in picture and biography got about, those researching them would be welcome which would become a way for a Harper who was a logicator to poke about and check that all was well; and report back to the Masterharper as well as to T'lana. And who knew what little bits of evidence might be sketched by visiting artists too. It was an excellent cover for HIS work as well as a good potential earner for the orphan fund!
Y'lara too came up with another good idea of a saleable item.
"Seamen often carve scrimshaw items, Geri: the bones of big fish carve really well. But big bones from things like Grizzlies can have large flat plates cut from them and be made into boxes with silver to joint the edges. You could paint a scene on the lid of that as well as on wood or use poker work on either for a more subtle and hard wearing scene. You could also make oval boxes, little ones for herbs and spices, or even trinkets,,using the cross section of a big bone with a bottom glued in and a hinged lid. Reckon such little boxes would delight young girls and women."
Bone took paint very well; and with a scene of the Weyr and dragons on the lid and local flowers or flying dragons around the boxes they would be charming little trinket boxes and the artists hoped to persuade people to buy such as a little reminder of a day at the Gather! Scenes of racing too might not come amiss, and Geriana wondered about taking some plain trinket boxes to paint a winner on, so that those who had bet might want that as a memento!
oOoOo
Boral was a better technical artist than Sessel at this time; but as Geriana said, each had much to learn from the other. Sessel had been forbidden to draw at his own home, wasting resources as his seabred family had put it; and Geriana had every sympathy with that, having been allowed to draw only through her mother's good graces! Sessel's efforts were quite raw but showed powerful images of the boy's love of the sea; and he had been promised frequent trips to draw from life, with Geriana's three Dragonriding lovers at the Atelier's disposal! Neither little boy was as yet competent enough to produce work for sale, but they were proud to be allowed to mix colours and fetch and carry for their Journeyman and senior apprentice who WERE good enough!
