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Before long, you will doubtless have to choose between accuracy and perception . . . if you have not already done so.”
    “Sir.” I just inclined my head politely. There was little I could or should have said, not given my position.
    He smiled again, as if he had made a jest, then turned and left the studio. For a moment, I just stood with the chill wind of the coming winter gusting past me.

755 A.L.

    Those who would judge a work of art reveal more of themselves than of the artist under their scrutiny or of his work.

    For some reason, Samedi mornings in Ianus seemed colder than other winter mornings. The ceramic stove in the center of the studio did radiate warmth, but the windowpanes sucked that heat out of the room. The corner windows and those at the other end of the studio were covered with thick hangings, but not the others, because I needed as much light as I could get in order to paint the girl seated on the chair.
    “Mistress Thelya . . . if you would please keep looking toward the vase on that table . . . that’s it.”
    Her governess refrained from uttering a word.
    “Yes, Master Rhennthyl.”
    I didn’t correct her this time. There wasn’t any point to it. Mistress Thelya D’Scheorzyl was all of nine years old. She was sweet and had the manners of a much older girl, thankfully, and the attention span of a gnat, not-so-thankfully. She stroked the cat in her arms gently. The cat had yellow-green eyes and a long silky white coat with tortoiseshell accents. Given that Thelya’s mother had insisted that her daughter be painted in a silver-gray dress, I’d had to find a blue-gray-shaded pillow on which the cat could rest in order to get enough contrast between the cat’s coat, Thelya’s pale complexion, and the dress. Even so, I’d had to change the shade of the pillow in the portrait to get those colors and contrasts so that they enhanced her prettiness rather than clashed with it. I still worried about the eyes . . . there was something there I didn’t have quite the way it should be.
    “You’ll make Remsi look good, won’t you?”
    “You and Remsi will look good together,” I replied, working on Thelya’s jawline.
    In some ways, depicting her cat, the rather languorous Remsi, was the easiest part of the commission, because Remsi was almost totally white with the exception of tortoiseshell paws, tail, and ears.
    The jawline still wasn’t quite the way I wanted it. I looked to Thelya, fixing the side of her face in my mind, then at the canvas, and the brushstrokes. The oils on the canvas shimmered, then shifted, ever so slightly. The brushstrokes were still mine, but the jawline was cleaner—and right. I’d only been able to do that recently, but I knew what I was doing bordered on imaging. Yet it was only with oils, and it was cleaner and faster than scraping and repainting and certainly better than overpainting. For all that, I wasn’t about to try it often, only when I had a very clear image in my mind—and definitely not when Master Caliostrus was around.
    I worked to get the rest of the left side of her face finished before the ten bells of noon chimed—and managed to do so as well as finish the cat’s face as well, setting down the brush just as the first bell rang.
    “Can I see?” asked Thelya, scampering off the chair, but still holding the cat.
    “We still need two more sittings,” I said to the governess.
    “Then . . . next Mardi afternoon, at the third glass of the afternoon, and next Samedi, at the ninth glass of morning.” She nodded brusquely.
    Thelya scurried past me to look at the canvas. “That’s Remsi! It looks just like her.”
    I forbore to mention that was the point of a portrait and just smiled.
    Once I saw them off, I put in another glass of work on details for the portrait that did not require their presence. I used what little of the oils I had left on a small work, a still life, which I could not do for hire or sale, but only for open exhibit at the annual