with the control he had to enforce on himself, no-one else at Hall
Domaize would sign with Bitra.
Well,’ Chalkin went on, as if he were a reasonable man, what else does
one call it if you are not engaged in the lab ours which you are
contracted for?” lantine had to wonder if Chalkin knew how necessary it
was for him to earn the exact fee promised. Iantine had held no
conversations with anyone in the Hold; they were so sullen and
uncommunicative a group at their best – which was usually at mealtimes –
that he hoped he’d be spared them at their worst. He had steadfastly
refused to have a little game’ with cooks or guards, which accounted
for a good deal of the general animosity towards him. So how would
anyone know anything about his personal life or his reasons for working
here?
So, instead of already being on his way home with a satisfactory
contract fulfilled and the marks for the transfer fee heavy in hi
pouch, lantine spent his leisure’ time touching up the faces of
Chalkin’s ancestors in the main Hall murals.
Good practice for you, I’m sure,’ Chalkin had said, all too amiably, as
he made his daily inspection of this project. You’ll be better
equipped to do satisfactory portraits of this generation.” Pig faces,
all of them, with the ancestral bulbous nose, lantine noticed.
Oddly enough, one or two of the ancestresses had been very pretty girls,
far too young and attractive for the mean-mouthed men they had been
contracted to. Too bad the male genes dominated.
Of course, lantine had had to make up batches of the special paints
required for mural work, having initially had no idea that such would be
required. He also found his supplies of the oil paints drastically
reduced by the repeated unsatisfactory’ portraits. He had the choice
of sending back to Hall Domaize for additional supplies and paying
transport charges, plus having to wait for them to reach him – or
finding the raw materials and manufacturing the colours himself – which
was the better option.
How much?” he exclaimed in shock when the head cook told him what he’d
have to pay for the eggs and oil he needed to mix into his pigments.
Yiss, an’ that doan include cost of hiring the equipment,’ the cook
added, sniffing. The man had a perpetually running nose, sometimes
dripping down his upper lip. But not, Iantine devoutly hoped, into
whatever he was in the process of preparing.
I have to hire bowls and jars from you?” Iantine wondered how the cook
could have become infected with Chalkin’s greed.
Well, if I ain’t using em, and you is, you should pay for the use,
seems like.” He sniffed so deeply Iantine wondered there could be any
mucus left in his sinus cavities. Shoulda brought yer stuff with ye if
ye’d need it. Lord Holder sees you usin’ things from his kitchen and
one of us’ll be paying for it. Won’t be me!” And he sniffed again,
shrugging one dirty white shoulder as emphasis.
I came with adequate supplies and equipment for the work I was hired to
do,’ Iantine said, curbing an intense desire to shove the man’s face in
the thin soup he was stirring.
So?” lantine had walked, stiff-legged with fury, out of the kitchen.
He tried to tell himself that he was learning, the very hardest way, how
to deal with the client.
Finding the raw materials for his pigments had proved nearly as
difficult since it was, after all, coming on to deep winter here in the
Bitran hills. He discovered a hefty hunk of stone with a rounded end
that would do as a pestle, and then a hollowed-out rock that would act
as a mortar. He had found a whole hillside of the sabsab bush whose
roots produced a yellow colour; enough raw cobalt to get blue, and the
paw berry leaves that boiled up one of the finest pure reds with neither
tint nor tinge of orange or purple. With the greatest of luck he also
came across ochre mud. Rather than rent’ containers, he used chipped
crockery he unearthed from the midden heap. He did have to pay the