Kushiel's Scion - Jacqueline Carey [188]
"Are you afraid?" Erytheia asked in amusement. She spread her paint-stained hands. "There is only Silvio and me here. You are quite safe."
Over at a long table, the apprentice Silvio was grinding pigment in a marble bowl, his head bowed in concentration. I thought about the cudgel in the dead man's fist. The marble pestle in Silvio's hand could easily deal a crushing blow. The apprentice was a small man, but doubtless his labors lent considerable strength to his arms and hands.
"I would prefer to wait for the patron," I said.
"Oh, she is coming," Erytheia said. "Later." Her eyes held a worldly gleam. "It was my understanding that she wished to consult with you in private about this commission. She will be disappointed if there is no preliminary rendering to discuss."
So, I thought, I had the choice between disarming and stripping naked for strangers, or earning Claudia's ire. I wondered if it were a test. If it was, I resolved to play the game.
"Your man said you paid well," I said.
"Half a denarius for every hour you sit for me," Erytheia said promptly. "And a bonus at the end if the patron is pleased."
"All right," I said. "What do you want me to do?"
Once I had stripped, she had me stand in a shaft of sunlight and walked all around me, studying me, for all the world like Claudia in her bedroom. Except it wasn't. I could feel the difference in her gaze; an artist's gaze, absorbed and dispassionate. I might have been a marble statue as far as Erytheia of Thrasos was concerned.
At length, she handed me a swathe of deep purple cloth bordered with gold and bade me sit in ornate, upholstered chair. There she took her time arranging me to her liking until I was slouched in a pose of pure indolence, one leg slung over the arm of the chair, the purple cloth draped artfully over my groin.
"Hold this." Erytheia plucked a bunch of grapes from a nearby bowl and handed them to me. "No, as though you were about to eat them." She studied me and frowned. "Too coy. Hold them lower. Let your hand go slack, as though you're about to drop them."
The grapes brushed against my bare chest, cool and silken. "Let me guess," I said. "Bacchus?"
"Hush." She placed a wreath of dried vine tendrils on my head. "That will do for now. We'll get fresh later."
With that, Erytheia began to work, sketching on a whitewashed panel with a piece of charcoal. She worked in silence and utter concentration, her gaze flickering between me and the panel. There was no sound in the atelier save the steady grinding of Silvio's pestle and the soft scratch of charcoal.
It was deadly boring.
The pose looked easy, but it wasn't, not really. After a while, I began to ache with immobility. The leg slung over the arm of the chair grew numb, and I yearned to lower the damned grapes. But every time I twitched a muscle, Erytheia made a disapproving sound deep in her throat.
So I held still and thought about Joscelin maintaining his vigil on the Longest Night. I thought about how I had offered my misery and vanity as penance to Blessed Elua, and the sense of mystery that had touched me.
Since then, I had been remiss.
Here in Tiberium, caught between scholarship and intrigue, I hadn't even prayed for guidance; not to Elua, not to any of his Companions. Nor had I offered honor to the gods of the place—the gods of Tiberium, stolen from ancient Hellas. And so, there in my chair, I offered up silent prayers.
"No, no, no!" Erytheia scolded me, breaking the long silence. "Not a rapt look, no!"
I grinned at her. "How is a god supposed to look?"
She clicked her tongue at me. "Iacchos! Drunk, drunk on wine and love and madness, but tender with it… not soft, but like a leopard with his prey. Think of something." She gestured with her charcoal. "Think of a woman you want."
Without warning, Phèdre's face surfaced in my mind. A thrill of horrified desire ran through me. I thrust the thought away with urgency, and tried to think of someone else, anyone else. Claudia