The Magic of Recluce - L. E. Modesitt [140]
“You must really like cold baths…” Bostric had observed with a straight face in his oh-so-respectful tone.
“Next time you can join me,” I had told him, but it had only stopped the banter for a while, until I was back working in dry clothes.
Recalling Bostric’s teasing, and glad that spring had finally come, I studied the chairs in the window—drawn especially to the sitting-room chair on the right. That design I had never seen, not even in Uncle Sardit’s sketchbooks. The curves of the legs were understated, minimal, yet made the chair seem more delicate than it was.
“You!”
I looked up at the gruff voice.
A thin man, not much older than I was, a thin film of sawdust stuck to the sweat on his forehead and wearing a tattered gray shirt under his leather apron, glared at me.
I returned the look evenly. “Yes?”
“Are you—”
“Invite him in, Grizzard,” added a raspy voice from within the shop.
Grizzard looked puzzled, and I just stepped around him. Directly inside the shop were three chairs, elegant in the Hamorian style, but a trace too heavy in the legs and squared cross-braces. Between them was a low table, the kind whose use I had never figured out except as a place on which clutter collected.
While all the pieces were good, they were clearly high-class rejects, too expensive for the tradesman, and not quite good enough for the gentry. Probably Grizzard’s work, rather than Perlot’s. Somehow, Perlot never would have let a poor piece get that far.
Reddish coals glittered in the corner hearth, with a warmth I could feel even from the doorway. Perlot stepped around a bench and toward me.
I nodded.
“So we meet again, Lerris, or should I say craft-master Lerris?” Perlot stopped behind the chairs, next to the half-wall that separated the small waiting area from the workshop.
I bowed to the mastercrafter, and I meant it. His work was good, some of it, like the chair in the window, not only as good technically as Uncle Sardit’s, but possibly even more inspired. “I was admiring the sitting-room chair. It’s possibly the best piece I’ve seen like that.”
The narrow craggy face creased as he frowned, and the craft-master closed his mouth. Then he wiped his hands on the underside of his apron. “Mean that, don’t you?”
I nodded again.
“Grizzard, stop standing there like a dolt. You still haven’t finished the detailing on the chest.”
“Yes, ser.” Grizzard scurried around us, the puzzle lines still graven in his forehead.
“Would you sit down?”
“Only for a moment, ser.” I eased into the chair toward which Perlot had gestured, and he sat down across from me.
“Like to set things straight, young fellow…”
“There’s nothing to set straight, mastercrafter. You didn’t know me, and you had never seen my work. I could have been a wood-grifter from Freetown or Spidlar—”
Perlot motioned me to silence, and I stopped.
“You’re not. I’ve looked at your work. It’s better than any journeyman’s here in Fenard, and it’s getting better. Some is mastercraft level, like the chair you did for Wessel.”
I must have lifted my eyebrows.
Perlot smiled. “He asked me for my opinion. I told him that he stole it from Destrin, and that it was the best single piece in his house, including the dining-room set I did last year.”
“You flatter us.”
“No. I don’t flatter. It’s not Destrin, poor soul. It’s you. What do you intend to do? Take over Destrin’s shop, and his daughter, and put him out to pasture?” The question was idly phrased, but the dark eyes hung on me.
I shook my head slowly. “Sometimes I wish that I could. It would be simpler that way. But that would not be fair nor right. In too many ways, I am still a journeyman, with more than a little left to learn.”
Grizzard was trying to listen and concentrate on the detailing, and both efforts were suffering.
This time Perlot nodded. “Bostric won’t ever be in your class.”
“He will be a good craftsman, given time and training.”
“He might be.” The mastercrafter