Irona 700 (23 page)

“No, ma'am. I remember everything I see.”

The Geographical Section might be interested in Veer Machin.

“Well, sit over there. I'm going to be interviewing some clerks. I prefer that you do not interrupt.”

Soon she forgot all about him. Only when all the interviews were over and she was due to leave for a meeting of the Customs Board did she realize that he was still sitting there, hands on knees, staring stonily at her.

“Anything more? Seen all you need?”

“All I need to start, ma'am. But I need for you to sit for me when I do the waxing itself.”

Oh, did he? “And how long does that take?”

“About six or seven sessions, ma'am. An hour or so each. You'll get tired if it's longer.”

She almost laughed in his face. But it was a comely, honest, well-meaning face that did not deserve to be laughed in. She had expected a laborer, like a tiler or a bricklayer, but he didn't really look like one. He didn't look at her the way an artisan would.

“Have you any idea …” Of course he didn't. She couldn't possibly waste that much time just to put her face on the Palace wall. But if he could do his waxing sitting in that same corner and she could continue her own work at the same time, doing nonconfidential things … “Talk to my aides, and they'll find you a corner—”

“It has to be at my place, ma'am. I have waxes and colors and boards and easels … I'd fill your office and turn it into a … midden …” His voice tailed away uncertainly.

Irona was giving him her look for crushing admirals.

“And where is your place?”

“Corner of Gutter Road and Suicide, ma'am.”

That was surprisingly close to Sebrat House, not down among the docks and slums. “How on earth can you afford to live there?”

“Selling portraits, ma'am.”

Come to think of it, Veer Machin did not speak like a laborer. He spoke like people who lived on the Mountain; the First had recommended him. Irona was suddenly intrigued.

“Suppose I stop by for an hour this evening on my way home? I may not—”

He beamed. “That would be splendid, ma'am!”

She had meant to say that she could not promise more than two or at the most three sittings. … Well, she would see what his place looked like and what sort of portraits he produced.

The Machin residence appeared to be on the flat roof of a six-story building, but the ground was very close to vertical there, and the entrance was at the rear, a gate at the top of a single flight of stairs. As a Seven, Irona had to tolerate an official escort from the Palace guard wherever she went, which made her personal guards furious and surly—another problem to sort out. The chief guard inspected the premises before he would let her enter, and then he wanted to post men inside with her. Irona smote him with thunder and lightning. He and his men could wait on the steps if they wanted to; her chair could return in an hour. Then she stalked up the stairs and shut the gate firmly behind her.

She was in a small yard with whitewashed walls, three of the four sides overhung by projecting roofs. A door and a single window opposite the gate led into a shed, which could not possibly contain more than one small room. The ground was almost invisible under jars, boxes, wood shavings, work benches, stacks of panels, easels, braziers, sacks, bottles, and other miscellaneous clutter. Machin must work outdoors as much as he could, which in Benign would be most of the year. As she entered, he was adjusting a large easel. He spun around and tried to kneel without finishing what he was doing. The easel collapsed, knocking over another, and dislodging a stack of wooden panels. He finished sitting among the ruins, looking dismayed.

Irona had put in a long hard day, but the big man's expression was so pathetic that she laughed aloud. Scrambling to his feet, he sent a jar flying off a table. It shattered in an explosion of red powder. He looked at her doubtfully, then suddenly grinned, reassured.

“My mother used to tell me I'd never make a juggler, ma'am.”

“I can't think why you'd want to. Show me … show me this!” She picked her way through the chaos to one of the sheltering overhangs. The First himself was sitting there in his red robes, three-quarter length. His eyes watched her approach and he looked ready to speak. Irona had not known there could be portraits like that. Compared to this, the portraits in the Treaty Hall were daubs.

She turned to the artist, who was waiting anxiously for her reaction.

“Did First Knipry tell you to let me see this?”

He nodded, looking as shy as a small boy.

She said, “And did he come here to pose for it?”

Another nod.

“He's a sly old devil. Now, where do you want me to sit?”

“Oh, here, ma'am!” Machin grabbed up a chair. The back came off in his hand, and his elbow knocked over another easel.

So it began. Irona stopped by every evening on her way home, as close to the same sun height as possible. She sat on a very hard stool and stared at the same swallows' nest under the eaves. He talked while he worked. She talked, too, smiled when he asked her to, and often when he didn't, for he had a dry, self-deprecating humor. It was a wonderfully relaxing break in the day, as long as she didn't think about the child at home, waiting on his mother's return.

Machin had strange ideas about the social gulf between a dauber and a Seven. During the second session, he suddenly said, “Stop talking.”

Indeed?
She stopped, mostly because she was speechless.

“And don't look at me like that!” he barked. “You want to sneer at the Treaty Hall for the next thousand years?”

He refused to let her see his work. He worked in encaustic, spreading colored wax with a spatula. Encaustic was never impressive until it was finished, he said. It was lumpy and ugly, but at the end he would smooth it out with a hot iron, and then it would be complete. But he seemed to be working on more than one panel, often discarding one halfway through a sitting and grabbing up another.

The six or seven sittings stretched into nine, then ten. And one evening he stopped work altogether to stare straight at her with an expression of extreme frustration.

“What's wrong?” she asked.

“What the shit did you do to Vlyplatin Lavice?”

What?
Irona drew a deep breath. …

“That's it!” he yelled. “Hold that! Yes, yes!” Like a madman, he began slashing and scraping at her portrait, sending shreds and curls of wax flying everywhere.

“What are you doing?” For a moment she thought he had gone crazy. She sprang from the stool and ran to him. She was far too late. The portrait had vanished, reduced to a faint and lumpy ghost.

But Machin was leering triumphantly down at her. “You never were the grinning jackanapes I was trying to paint. Putting spotty boys and giggling girls at ease in your office? ‘Do please relax and tell me why you want to work for the Republic. …' But Governor Irona 700 about to send me to the gallows? That's the Irona I needed to see!”

“What do you know about Vlyplatin?”

“Nothing. Just public gossip and I don't care if I never know. I wanted to make the lioness roar, that's all.” That lopsided, boyish grin again. … “For a moment there, I really thought you were going to have my head.”

“You are crazy!”

He shrugged. “Probably. Do you ever wear jewelry?”

“Never.”

“Why not?”

“Only my collar, which the goddess gave me. I own nothing else in the world, not even the clothes on my back.”

He nodded. “That's good. I'll paint that in, too.” He hurled the panel across the yard and picked up a fresh one. “Now we start over.”

Every morning—or almost every morning, because a Seven had many duties—Irona met after breakfast with Daun Bukit and Sazen Hostin to plan her day and other days ahead. They were a good team, those two, a matched pair of opposites: Daun as honest and straightforward as a javelin, Sazen as ugly and devious as a spider.

One of Sazen's task was to keep track of the votes coming up in the next week or so. One day he said, “Election of a Seven. Taulevu 666's term is ending.”

Ah! Irona thought for a moment. “When we get to the Palace, would you ask Chosen Ledacos to drop by my office sometime? At his convenience, of course.”

Daun looked appalled. “You're not thinking of voting for that rodent, are you?”

Sazen chuckled. “Of course she is. After three losses, he will never get elected to the Seven. But she'll offer to nominate him, and in their present mood, the Seventy will certainly give her whatever she wants. He still has a stable of fifteen or twenty clients, and this way he'll have to tell them to follow her lead or he'll be seen as a monstrous ingrate. Combining his clients and hers will let her run the Empire for the next two years.”

“Sazen,” Irona grumbled, “you are too fornicating sneaky for your own good.”

Before she even left Sebrat House, though, Irona had to receive Velny Lavice, who was waiting outside the study door. She was clearly in great distress. Perched on the edge of the stool, she had great trouble getting to the point, gabbling about trivialities, while all the time her hands clawed at the lace apron that was the formal symbol of her housekeeper status.

Eventually Irona had to prompt her. “Is this about Puchuldiza again?” Her protégée was more trouble than a whole shipload of trogs.

Velny nodded, biting her lip. “She's been upsetting, I mean asking … Hayk and now Sopoetan. …”

Sopoetan was a footman. “Who's Hayk?”

“The new garden slave, ma'am. He didn't feel he could refuse her, and now he's terrified what you may do to him.”

“I shall do nothing to him. Praise him for telling you, but instruct him that if she tries it again, he must report it to you right away. Did Sopoetan 'fess up too?”

“Um … when I asked him, ma'am. He looked so guilty.”

Velny sighed. She had an empire to run and that was easier than handling a stupid, spoiled, oversexed child.

“Where is she now?”

“Still in bed, I believe.”

“Then I will go and see her myself,” Irona said. “I shall need a bucket of cold water and a stout leather belt.”

An hour or so later, at the Palace, Ledacos 692 entered Irona's office with his chin high and a smile that could have been waxed on his face by Veer Machin.

“Goddess bless, Your Honor! Purple suits you. You look lovelier than ever.” His eyes flickered around the big room appraisingly.

Irona offered him a chair, which he accepted, and wine, which he declined. Then he asked what he might do for her.

Grovel was one possibility.
Vly, I am doing this for you.

“Taulevu 666's term is ending in a few days.”

Ledacos's smile vanished. He had known perfectly well why she sent for him. “And you are gathering votes for … ?”

“I am willing to nominate you.”

He scowled. She had been his client and was now offering to be his patron. “You cheated me last time, so why should I trust you now?”

“Don't be childish, '92. I did not cheat you; I was drafted without prior warning. But I promised to nominate you then, and I am willing to stand by my promise now.”

“You have the seat in your gift, don't you? You have the Seventy eating out of your hand.”

“Probably, but it won't last long. I suspect that they'll give me a chance to bring an ally on board to keep me company, just this once. Soon there'll be a new leader to follow over the cliff.”

“Two baby Sevens at the same time? The old guard will—”

“The old guard will not dare provoke an open split between the old and the young, because then their power will inevitably start to dwindle. I can deliver enough votes. Do I ask my clients to cast them for you or Dilivost 678?”

Ledacos looked as if he had just bitten into a maggoty samosa. He must know, as she did, that a candidate rejected three times would almost certainly never succeed. This was his last and only chance to make the inner circle.

“All right. Yes, I want to wear purple, even if I must accept it as Irona's gift. Now can we celebrate our reconciliation by going to bed together?”

“No. I find hairy men too ticklish.”

He left without a word of thanks.

She hoped that Vly would have approved. She would give Ledacos his heart's desire and make it worthless to him, because it had been a gift from her.

Days like that one seemed never-ending. More and more Irona found she was counting the hours until she could go to sit for Veer Machin.

His father was senior designer in the Republic's shipyards. Not surprisingly, his paternal grandfather had been a Chosen. Veer was the Vlyplatin Lavice story one generation on, son of a child who had been educated with the gentry but left without inheritance. Irona probed gently: unmarried, no children, casual affairs that never lasted long. He owned a slave, he explained, who boarded with a family downstairs, brought up meals for him, and kept his room tidy. Irona did not ask the slave's gender.

Veer was incredibly clumsy. Anything that could fall over would do so as soon as he entered the room. He was, Irona decided, so intent on looking at the world that he became a disembodied point of view.

It was easy for a Seven to learn that Machin was probably the only portraitist in the Empire who could earn more than an artisan's meager wages. Now he had caught the attention and patronage of the First himself, but he still wasn't rich, and probably never would be. He seemed to want little more than his art. Music, perhaps. He spoke lovingly of music, of the temple choir and the rare free concerts he could attend. The really worthwhile performances were privately sponsored, admittance by invitation only.

Irona also enjoyed music, when she could find the time. So the seed was sown. By showing favor to Nis Poul Dvure, she had created a problem. Now other rich families were clamoring for her attention, but she no longer had Vly to be the escort that social convention required. She could buy herself a male animal, like Trodelat's Jamarko, but the prospect sickened her. She could pick up some cultivated idle rich boy, but his relatives would swarm on her like ants, wanting preferment. So why not Veer? His manners were passable, and he had his own career, which she could neither make nor break. Recommending his art was not going to cheat the Republic of anything, not like granting building contracts to a gigolo's cousins.