Chapter Five: Experimental Cookery
Authors Note: See if you can spot a reference to Jaden Ellisett, the heroine of the utterly brilliant A Road Less Travelled, which you all must read. (Once you've finished this, of course. *grin*) Jaden exists in this universe with the permission of A Girl Called Candice, who needs more minions, so, read her stuff!
No one ever knew quite what to make of the Middle City.
Wedged like an afterthought between the slums and the gentry, it was an odd combination of the pretentious and the unambitious. Those of the hard working breed who just wanted to provide for their unambitious, hard working wife and family--and those who longed for other people to do it for them. People who didn't know or care about anything besides their work and their own, reasonably comfortable, lives--and those who did know, and care--using crude imitation of airs, education, and graces to give themselves some twisted comfort. Often resulting in rather alarming identity crises.
But Numair Salmalìn, in a quiet way, liked the Middle City. Its eccentricities, its quirks, were both entertaining and interesting. It also lacked the dance of manners and diplomacy, the never ceasing whirl of words and cryptic messages, which was as common--and important--as breathing in the palace.
Thoughts on the Middle city, however, were not in the man's mind as he jostled his way through the crowded streets; politely but firmly refusing to by a bushel of Poor Man's Oranges (sold at a Rich Man's Prices.) No, his thoughts were a quarter of a mile behind him--in the chair near Daine's bed--and three streets ahead of him-- in Filigree Street. In bottom end of Filigree Street, where--nestled between the brewery and the apothecary--a small man of Tyan origin and formidable Carthaki business sense was currently staring at the remnants of his lunch.
It had been a good lunch, too.
Volney Rain passed a hand through his hair and surveyed the canvas in front of him. Reaching from dilapidated floor to leaky ceiling, it had been a costly thing. A costly thing, which now had delicate pattern of glutinous rice (with sesame oil) and slightly charred cloud-ear mushrooms with bok choi and honey-soy splattered across its surface. If the man had been even remotely religious he probably would've been thinking that even Shakith wouldn't be able See a way to turn a canvas covered in what had once been his lunch into a portrait of Lord Genlith's wife. As it was, Volney Rain simply thought that his attempt at a more complicated branch of cookery had ruined a new, expensive, canvas. And he had no chance in hell of ordering another one, then painting a Noble on it, within a week.
Although, you have to admit…the artisan took a step backwards. Yes, there was a noticeable and rather alarming resemblance to his subject in the thing. Maybe if I join this splotch here, mmph-hmph…Volney stopped, shaking his head. He liked breathing too much to present the Lady Venezia of Genlith a portrait drawn with even a hint of accuracy.
"Who or what is that, Rain?" A long, familiar shadow made its appearance on the wall, across the culinary Lady. "Venezia?"
"Mmph-hmph. I had just, mmph, finished making that observation, Numair." Volney turned around, an expression of deep chagrin upon his neat, dark features. "But, my friend, what you see before you was never meant to adorn a sheet of canvas. Mmph-hmph. Its purpose was to - mmph - fill my stomach.
"Well, whatever you were making to fill your stomach obviously desired to be elsewhere." Numair stepped into the little room, stooping slightly to accommodate his size. "Mithros and Mynoss! That really is the spitting image of her ladyship."
"Neither Mithros nor Mynoss had anything to do with it!" the artist snapped. "I left the fire unattended, is all. Mmph-hmph!"
"Whatever the case, do you have a chair buried somewhere under all these products of the artistic temperament? It's a pain in the back looking down at you."
"And, mmph-hmph, it's a pain in the neck looking up at you." Volney said tiredly, dragging out a chair. The Mage sat down, gratefully. He spread his hands.
"Rain, I've come to beg a favour off of you…"
"Of course! Why else you grace me with your lengthy presence, mmph-hmph?--"
"--Please, let me finish. You know how when I asked you whether you could paint a miniature of Daine without needing her to sit for you?
"Mmph-hmph."
"Well, could you do it now?
"It's already done." Volney gave a self-satisfied smile, his black eyes dancing behind their copper-framed glasses.
"I thought you were Giftless!" Numair stared incredulously at the elderly, miraculous, paint and soy streaked, wonderful little man in front of him.
"It doesn't take your sort of gift to paint the portrait of a friend, lad." Volney said quietly. "Mmph-hmph! Especially one who has prettiness and presence enough to make an old man like me wish I was a good deal younger."
Numair blushed. "Let's see it then," he said, gruffly. He felt a fool. He often did, when in the same room as this man.
Volney tetched wearily at him, and stood up. "Patience, Numair! Do you expect me to have the thing permanently on my person, mmph-hmph?"
I would. Numair thought to himself, though he gave his friend--who was tetching all the more and muttering something revolting in Tyranian--an apologetic half-smile as he bustled around the shop. Eventually, with a muffled cry of "Mmph-hmph!" Volney Rain held out a small, oval shaped canvas.
It was the most beautiful thing Numair had ever seen.
Every plain and rise of her face, the stubborn chin and small--almost childlike--curve of her cheek. The tiny scar at the corner of one blue-grey eye, given to her by a sky-blue dragonet a year before. The far off, almost sombre expression--as if she was thinking of something on another plain of existence. To which she, and only she, had the key to enter. The smoky brown curls, which fell, even in a painting, about her face as if tossed the wind. To Numair she was as wonderful as any divinity. He looked up, an expression of gratitude in his dark eyes so heartfelt as to be almost painful, at the artist who had painted her. The little main with the neatly brushed white hair and the neat, copper framed spectacles and the neat little face as brown and wrinkled as a walnut. The little man with the small, neat, childlike hands. The small, wonderful, neat hands--slightly spattered with age and paint--which had somehow created this small, wonderful image of his student. The small, neat little man with the sharp--glaring--black eyes and the educated voice. The educated voice, which was stating--loudly-- "that if he didn't stop gawping than he'd give his precious miniature the same treatment as Lady Venezia. (Mmph-hmph!)"
"I'm sorry, Volney." Numair said at last, passing his tongue over his suddenly dry lips. "It's just…just…how am I ever going to repay you, my friend? Name your price and you can have it. Except if it includes giving back this superlative work of yours, if it does... well, then I'll be heading for the hills."
Volney laughed, his own voice catching slightly in his throat. "No payment is necessary, Numair. Just think of it as your Midwinter gift a few weeks early. A gift for the two of you."
"Oh come on, Rain," Numair interjected, imploringly. "There must be something?"
"We-ell," Volney said thoughtfully, gazing intently at Lady Venezia, "Come to think of it, I could do with another canvas. Mmph-hmph" He gave a mock shudder. "I, hmph, don't fancy courting the Genlith's reaction if I bring this modern beauty in."
"Done!" Numair-- eyes aflame once again with that overwhelming expression of gratitude--leaned down and wordlessly gave the artists shoulder a hard squeeze, then--portrait tucked safely in his shirt--strode out of the room.
Volney Rain watched him go.
It was touching to see Numair Salmalìn, a man who had drifted from woman to woman over the years, falling in and out of love with them as frequently and methodically as the sun rose and fell, so obviously besotted with the girl with the grey-blue eyes and stubborn chin. The one who he had painted completely and faultlessly from memory. It wasn't as if Veralidaine Sarrasri was the most beautiful creature that he had ever painted, far from it. There had been many a remarkable woman (and many a remarkable man, if it came to it,) whom he considered far superior in looks to the girl. One in particular, he remembered. He hadn't seen that passionate and wilful young woman, with large hazel eyes that he preferred greatly over blue, since Carthak. Numair had loved her, too, for a time. Absently, Volney wondered where she was, and if she were happy.
Volney wasn't genius some seemed to think of him as, either. Like Daine, there were many superior to him.
"But, mmph-hmph," he ruminated, examining Lady Venezia once again. "If I can make even one being look at me the way the Salmalìn lad looked at me today… Well, I must be doing something right."