Usha cast an eye on the leaden sky then glanced at Dezra who wore her doubts about their mission plainly on her face.
“This is going to turn out to be no kind of day to be buying things like sacks of powders for your pigments and dyes and all the other stuff you need.”
“That doesn’t mean we can’t order them and have them delivered when the weather is of a mind to cooperate,” Usha said.
It didn’t. The only thing that would prevent that would be the unavailability of such things as wood for an easel and palette, martin fur for brushes, and all the components needed to make paint—an arcana not as dangerous as any a mage might practice, but certainly as complex. Much depended on being able to find what Usha needed, what she’d gambled their dwindling resources on finding. If she lost the gamble, she’d be going to Aline with a begging hand, and Usha was determined she wouldn’t do that. She’d taken care of herself before. Times were harder now, but her willingness to take a chance was no less keen.
And so, yesterday Usha had sat in conference with Dez and a very willing Rusty to learn where she could find such things as lime, azurite, and red porphyry. And where should she go to get good blades for scraping, a mortar and pestle for grinding? Who had the finest walnut to make a palette? There was more—linen, canvas, easel, two kinds of oils ... her list of supplies was longer than her arm, and her list of possible suppliers a good deal shorter. Usha would not be daunted, but that night counted out the all the money she and Dezra had (not much, and becoming scarce). In the morning, she told the innkeeper she’d be pleased to pay for their room by waiting tables.
“I’ve pitched in at the Inn of the Last Home when Caramon needed help.”
She’d shot Dez a narrow and meaningful glance that resulted in Dezra offering to work behind the bar.
For a moment Usha thought he’d take her up on it, the look of sudden delight that crossed his round face spoke clearly of how much he’d enjoy spending the day working with a woman whose beauty still left him stammering and sighing. But in the end, he told her he’d have none of it, saying he’d rent the room to them on a monthly basis with the rent not due until month’s end, nearly four weeks away. For his trouble, as he said, he’d tack a small surcharge to the rent. For the sake of being able to husband their resources for a while by not having to pay on a shorter term basis, Usha and Dezra accepted the offer and went out to look for the parts and pieces of a studio and the myriad ingredients of paints.
They walked for a time in silence. In the streets around the Ivy, they encountered the obvious evidence of Sir Radulf’s occupation. A dragon in the sky flew lazy circles, at the major intersections knights made themselves evident, and upon the encircling wall others of Sir Radulf’s men stood watching inward and outward. Now and then from a tavern the rough sound of soldiers’ voices spilled out. Usha noticed more people on the streets than since their abortive attempt to leave Haven. Haven coped, but no one relaxed. Men and women looked over their shoulders, children seemed subdued, and when people laughed their laughter sounded forced and shrill.
On a narrow lane, where the air still carried the smell of week-old burning, Usha stopped, looked up the street and down, then pointed north and to the other side where a simple sign hung above a door proclaiming it a carpenter’s shop.
Dez hopped across a trickling gutter while Usha, mindful of her skirts, went farther to step carefully along a plank laid as a make-shift bridge. As they walked they caught the clean scent of sawdust and freshly planed wood drifting beneath the darker odor of smoke.
“We start here,” she said. Suddenly she laughed, anticipating the delights of setting up her studio and preparing to work again. She had not a single commission or even the promise of one, but still her heart lifted and her blood seemed to sing differently in her veins. “And by the time the day’s over, Dez, we’ll have made a good start at getting me a studio.”
They made the rounds of the merchants’ quarter, those narrow and winding streets that bordered the market square. They visited mageware shops for much of what would be needed for the paints, for the resources of field and forest and earth were sometimes used by both mages and painters, though for very different purposes. They spent an hour with a woman who made brushes, and though her brushes were themselves too expensive, she was willing to sell them a bundle half the size of her small fist of long, soft hairs from a marten’s pelt. They found a palette, a dwarf who would sell them the oils Usha needed, and finally they stopped at the shop of Pryce Davil, Purveyor of Pigments and Dyes.
“But—” Dez said.
“Oh, we’re not here to buy pigments or dyes. I’ve heard all day that here is where we’ll find the best canvas and linen. They say the owner is a young widow. Her husband left his business to her in trust for their daughter.”
In the shop of Elenya, the widow of Pryce Davil, Purveyor of Pigments and Dyes, Usha met an enthusiast. There, Dezra reluctantly garnered an education on the suitability of linen or canvas, the making of the perfect mixture of the primer called pa’ressa—what Dez at once began to call “that awful smelling goo you smear all over a nice fresh canvas”—and seven different ways to see red.
“Well, it isn’t goo,” piped a voice from the doorway leading out to a garden. Dez looked around to see a small girl frowning very seriously. “It’s pa’ressa. Mother mixes it all the time, and real artists know that it comes from a secret recipe that elves made up a long time ago.”
“Does she? And does it smell awful all the time?”
Scrunching her nose, the girl nodded. “It smells terrible.”
The child’s mother looked up as though to shoo the girl away, but Usha said, “I think I’ve ordered all the canvas I need for now, and I only want enough linen to use for miniatures.” She winked at the little girl. “And she’s no trouble.”
“None at all,” Dez agreed. She looked out the back door and saw that the sky had made no decision about rain. To Elenya she said, “If you like, I’ll come and work out the numbers with you, and then we can talk about when to have it all sent to the Ivy.”
“My name’s Gussie,” said the girl, after he mother and Dezra left.
“I’ll bet Gussie is short for Altheguslina,” Usha said.
Gussie’s eyes went wide. “It is! How did you know?”
“That’s a Qualinesti name, and I know a few. How is it your mother gave you an Elvish name?”
Gussie shrugged. “She didn’t, my da did. He liked them, the elves. But he died.”
“Yes, I’m sorry. He left you with a very nice name, though. Do you know who Altheguslina was?”
Gussie nodded. “An elf lady who liked rabbits.”
That was the short of it. The long of it was that Altheguslina had been an elf-mage who, in distant times, changed a small army of advancing goblins into a springing leap of rabbits. It seemed the child’s father hadn’t gone into that much detail about legendary elf-maiden Altheguslina of Lealnost who was not a very good student of magic, but who did recall one spell in time to save her little village.
“I had a bunny once,” Gussie said. “But he died, too. Like my da. A dog ate the bunny. My da got sick.”
Usha held out a hand, and the child came shyly closer. “I’m sorry,” she said, “about the bunny and your father. I know it must make you very sad.”
Gussie shrugged, but she tucked in her lower lip. “How do you know?”
“Well, I know.” Usha picked up the girl and set her on the counter where she and Elenya had been drawing up a list.
“Did your da die?”
Usha’s throat tightened around an old grief she didn’t often allow herself to remember. Her father had died, and her mother, too, soon after her birth. She’d been taken into the care of the mysterious Irda, and she hadn’t learned even that much about herself until she was a young woman. The great pain of not knowing her kin was something she’d let no one see but the husband who now seemed to be tiptoeing out of her life.