"If I'm going to make a change in the design, I want to know what it means-"
"What it means?19 Torchholder stared at him. "Why should it have to mean something?"
"In that case, I think it would be more aesthetic to give her gown a pattern of eagles with outstretched wings. In gold, since she comes of noble kin."
The priest's gaze sharpened. "Limner, you presume! You are only a tool in my hand, and you will do as I say!"
"No." Lalo held out his paintbrush, then laid it down. "This is a tool. It has no choice but to do my will- But though you can put me down and hire another painter, you cannot force me to work for you. And there is no other artist in Sanctuary who can do what you really hired me for, is there, Torchholder? There is no one else in the Empire, perhaps in the world ..."
The silence stretched out between them. Beyond the hoardings he could hear a beggar cursing two soldiers with demon-haunted sleep as they ordered him to move on, the whining song of the water seller, a distant scream-all the normal sounds of a Sanctuary summer day. Finally the priest grimaced and looked away.
"Don't argue with me, limner," he said. "Don't meddle with things you don't understand."
Lalo started home down the Wideway as dusk began to shade the streets and the sea breeze lent a welcome coolness to the air. In the end he had agreed to paint the gown as Torchholder had ordered it-for now. It had occurred to the limner that Gilla was a crony of Glisselrand, and the prima donna of Feltheryn's company seemed to be on good terms with the people at Land's End. If he wanted to know what Daphne had really worn that day, he could ask. But the priest had a point. Even Darios must agree that there was no use in standing up for a principle he did not understand.
He felt exhausted. He wondered how Darios's day had gone-Lalo's lips twitched as he visualized his apprentice trying to maintain his dignity in the Aphrodisia House. He would have to keep a straight face tonight when he asked him how the exorcism had gone.
"Lalo ..." The croak of a call came from close behind him.
Lalo stopped short in the street, then whirled, hand going to the hilt of his dagger as someone stumbled into him.
"Cappen Varra!" Lalo stared. "Where in Shalpa's name have you sprung from? It's been years!"
"You recognized me!" The minstrel straightened, pushing back the hood of the extremely tattered cloak that covered disreputable breeches and a tunic scarcely less worn.
"Of course-" the limner began, then flushed, realizing which kind of sight he had been using, for such a getup was inconceivable garb for the dapper musician he had known. Only the battered harp case was the same. "But this is no place to stand talking. You look thirsty, man, and here's the Unicorn-let me buy you some beer!"
"I'm not going to tell you where I've been," said the harper when they were settled in a back booth with two big tankards of brew. It was early yet for the Unicorn; except for two guardsmen they had the place to themselves, and a slatternly girl was still wiping down the bar.
"You don't want to know, and I don't want to remember. Not sure it's safe to tell you anyway." For a moment the minstrel's fingers closed over the silver amulet at his neck and his gaze went inward. "All I'll say is that when I walked through the gates this place really did look like a sanctuary."
Lalo stared. "Well, it's true that things here have finally settled down. Trade's reviving, too."
"Your trade is prospering, I can see!" Cappen Varra surveyed Lalo's smock-stained now with paint and perspiration, but good linen, and new. "You never used to offer to pay for the beer!"
Lalo took a long draft and grimaced, wondering whether this batch was a little off or he was losing his taste for the stuff.
"A lot of things are different now, including me," he agreed. He looked at his old friend, wondering if here was someone who might understand.
"You haven't-made- anything else, have you?" whispered Cappen Varra. Involuntarily they both looked at the blank wall where once Lalo had drawn the accumulated evil of the Vulgar Unicorn and breathed into it a soul.
"No. I wear a mask over my mouth when I paint these days so tHat I won't breathe life into anything by chance," said Lalo. "But I've learned to do a few other things. Sometimes it's hard to tell the difference between imagination, or art, and what's real!"
"I understand-" The harper held out his tankard to be refilled. "I nearly got lynched once when I sang a story I thought I'd made up and it turned out to be true."
"How can that happen?" exclaimed Lalo. "When I paint, or you sing, are we spying on reality without knowing it, no more to be blamed than a mirror going down the road that reflects both the sky and the mire- or are we shaping it somehow?"
"Do the stars or the cards create our futures, or does the person who reads them define what will be?" echoed Cappen Varra. The beer had put the sparkle back into his eyes. "That's a question for the Mageguild, not for me!"
"Not the Mageguild!" Lalo shuddered. "They'd look for a way to sell it. I only ever met one mage who cared for magic more than money. He was the Imperial Magelord, and he taught me how to seek truth in my painting. But that was years ago. He's probably dead by now."
"Got a theory-" said Cappen Varra, whose tankard had just been refilled for the third time. "Reality's not solid. 'S like clay, but most people don't have th' strength to mold it, or know how. The gods can. Mages can shape it with their spells, 'n' artists, sometimes-" he gazed at Lalo owlishly over the rim of his tankard, and the limner realized abruptly that after Cappen Varra's privations, even the Vulgar Unicorn's sour beer had been too much for him. And evening was coming on. The limner could not possibly leave his old friend alone and incapable in this part of town.
"Gilla will have dinner ready by now-" he said briskly. "Why don't you come along home with me?"
Cappen Varra grinned. "Think I'm drunk? Maybe so. Easier this way. I know about changing things, see-I sang a door open to th'other world, sang up a crowd o' demons to kill the folks who'd captured me. Killed everybody. Just like th' Black Unicorn-" His eyes filled with tears. "Even th' children!"
Lalo cast a swift look at the wall. As the lamps were lit he seemed to see that demonic form still shadowed there. But he had banished it! And after that they had scraped down and replastered the wall!
"Come on! We're getting out of here!" He tossed some coins on the table and grasped his friend's arm. Why had he started asking these questions? The concept of an unalterable fate was bad enough, but the idea of a malleable reality at the mercy of anyone who could master it terrified him.
"Were the girls at the Aphrodisia House very beautiful?" Latilla stared into Darios's face earnestly.
"Yes, of course." The young man blushed, and Lalo hid a smile. "But some of them were very silly as well."
"And so are you," said Gilla repressively. "Eat your supper, Tilla, and let the poor boy tell his tale."
The color faded from Darios's face and he turned to Lalo again. "I wish you had been with me, sir. It was hard enough to do the exorcism with them all chattering around me like magpies, but I managed to complete the ceremony. 1 don't know if it will do any good, though. Each dream I heard from one girl seemed to inspire the next to tell of something even more terrible. By the time I got through, the girls were all hysterical."