As you are no doubt accustomed to hearing from me, the expo is a time of great excitement and nervousness for me. There are more nerves than usual, this particular time around. Vaterin, as I said in my last letter, is applying for a scholarship, and while the talents of her Muse are not in doubt, they have tied grades to sales of art this semester and there is no escaping that requirement…
Marble intertwined her fingers through Vaterin’s, as they stood before their respective pieces. It took a lot of doing, but we both finished our capstone pieces. Marble looked back with pride at what she was presenting. Most of it, anyway. They have to step into a smaller room, and there’s only the one sign, but… I almost hope, provided my grade can stand it, that nobody buys my candlelight painting. It’s so beautiful, and I’m so proud of it. Even if I did paint the brass statue with green paint. Brother Pitch even said he’d gladly use it for a lighting study. But the ones on display in the main hall are also quite nice. Vaterin squeezed her hand. She was admiring their work too. Vaterin had painted a lion with golden fur and a luminous copper mane, against a background of grays and what might have been blue sky peeking through. Marble’s own painting was of a grassland rich in color and vibrancy, with rocky outcroppings and the odd wind-blown tree, all on a grand scale captured by an unwieldy canvas.
“Shall we go look around at the other students’ works?” Vaterin asked.
Marble almost asked, Can your ego withstand it? What if someone is better? But she held her tongue. Not only was it unfair, it was uncharitable. Vaterin had worked very hard to overcome her insecurity, on multiple fronts. And if she did it to please me, well, that’s rather flattering. She had sent a letter to her family renouncing her claims to the family fortune, breaking off her engagement with the woman from the other merchant family, and declaring her intention to pursue studies indefinitely at the College or through a patron. She even has been painting without communing with her Muse of Painting. It’s amateurish, but shows promise. The Muse does not just enable, she teaches. I suspect Vaterin would do even better than she is currently were it for her stubborn insistence upon not painting portraits without her Muse yet. Marble sighed. I’m woolgathering. “Yes, let’s,” she replied. Vaterin smiled. Both of them had been introspective from the start, and time together had only heightened this, until their conversations lasted hours and contained minutes of actual dialogue.
They set out to see what other students had wrought. Felspar’s sculpture was their first stop, elaborate arches and curving planes… I don’t have the words. Felspar’s calculus. Evidently… Marble read the placard. A representation of the orbits of the moons of Jupitre. It looks… like the inside of a screw pump. A bitter memory. They had tried using screw pumps to drain their mines after the draconic tantrum that had flooded them. Vaterin evidently noticed her disquiet, because she was shortly tugging Marble towards another display. Rendered in charcoal was a mirror, reflecting a mirror, reflecting a glass orb, all of it reflecting Writing’s extended hand. There were several variations on this theme, as well as a few small clay sculptures of geometric shapes. What do they expect to get, when they let Felspar instruct someone? Marble thought with a wry smile. Vaterin caught her eye and tugged them, again, towards another exhibit, this one a set of watercolors.
Inevitably, they were drawn into conversation by the various noblewomen and the odd merchant attending the expo. Bright hues abounded, though in short supply the reds and purples of Vaterin’s own attire. She must have meant it when she said her family was devout, and had made peace with renting their estates from the Holy Church. I hope they don’t cut her off entirely. While it would be a cruelty to force her into a career and marriage she doesn’t desire, I think she loves and cares for them very much. Even since sending off her first letter I saw her scribing away each night while I worked on my candlelight study. “I’m sorry, you were saying, Lady Saltmarsh?” Marble addressed a finely-dressed noblewoman wearing a number of iron adornments the way most would wear bronze, silver, or gold. Clearly, she’s proud of her marsh’s bog iron production.
“Oh, just that there truly is an impressive collection of artworks on display this year. I hope the College continues whatever tradition inspired this.” A tradition of famine and drowned crops thanks to the pique of a dragon reputed to be pacific and calm. “Though I will have to find witnesses trading the next five years’ estate in some of my holdings for them. Still, it does make it rather more worth it to go to the trouble of a journey by boat to have such a plethora of options to choose from.”
“I hope you find many works meeting the approval of your eye, my Lady,” Vaterin said with a shallow but proper bow.
“And which artist are you, my dear?”
Vaterin stood just a little straighter as she replied, “Vaterin Lime, Lady Saltmarsh, I painted a number of portraits as well as some animal studies, and my capstone is a conception of a lion in the first of the seven Heavens.”
“Ah yes, I believe I saw that. Oh! You painted your fellow student. What an… interesting choice. But your lion. It was an intriguing work, you somehow ennobled a beast beyond even what my husband in his… enthusiasm hunted and brought back to be stuffed.” How unfortunate. She must not approve of nephilim, to willingly wed a man of such brutal passions.
“What did you think of the grassland it was meant to occupy?” Vaterin pressed.
“Grassland? I thought the background was left rather enigmatically blank.” That she didn’t notice my painting directly to the left is not a promising sign.
“It was to the immediate left.” There was an edge to Vaterin’s voice, her thoughts clearly mirroring Marble’s own.
“I am not an enthusiast of landscapes, so I suppose it must have… if you’ll excuse me, I think I see Baroness Rosequarry and I haven’t seen her in ages. Well, an Age, I suppose.” The noblewoman strode around Vaterin and Marble and hurried on her way.
“Not well done of you, was that?”
“Only because she noticed, and I lack the status to give a cut teeth. Let’s go see who bid on our paintings.”Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.
Returning, there were a number of overlapping scripts on the wall below their paintings. She may feel that her Muse of Painting doesn’t serve her well, but clearly it does—she does?—Marble intentionally set aside the issue of angelic gender. Because she got as many bids as I did. Maybe not as high, but then portraits are more a matter of the subject. She looked with a warm smile at Vaterin, who was doing the same thing as her; she was looking at her sweet’s bids before her own. They met at the middle, where Marble’s grassland met with Vaterin’s lion, and saw the bidding had been especially fierce. But the conclusion was—
“Different nobles?!”
“We have time, Vaterin. The expo goes on for hours yet.” But still, it is not heartening. Perhaps Lady Saltmarsh is more representative of the nobility than we thought, and there simply isn’t a matching appeal between portraiture and landscapes.
“We have to find patronage with the same noble, and the capstone piece is… let’s look at the signatures on the other pieces. Maybe my portrait of you, or of Father Sauer brought joy to the same noble as—your candlelight piece! We haven’t even looked at it! Come on, let’s go see if maybe—jot down the last two or three bidders and we’ll go look.” From her babbling, Vaterin was panicking. Marble could hardly judge, she was feeling a similar sickness herself.
Why wouldn’t someone look at the two pieces and want them both? Because they’re on separate canvases? Look at the potential in having both artists under the wing of your patronage! Except they don’t know we can work together, Lady Saltmarsh was unaware that the College changed the grading criteria. So since we didn’t combine our efforts, they probably assumed that we can’t work together, or even that we’re competitors. Artistic competition is boorish to nobles, they call it a sign of ill breeding and uninspired artwork. “We need to get parchment if we’re going to jot down names. Can we just commit them to memory? My candlelight piece is in a separate room and you have to close the door to see it properly. I don’t know how many people—but let’s look at the names here. And the highest bidder isn’t necessarily going to offer patronage, it’s more complicated than that. Oh Vaterin, we’ll figure it out. I know I’ll make the cut for a scholarship, I bet you will too. Look at the bids themselves. That’s going to be the biggest grading factor after number of pieces, and it looks like we sold all of our works.”
The two of them, given to silence in calm, flustered back and forth, comparing names and bids while running their mouths back and forth and over each other for several minutes before they ran into each other, bent at the waist, and both fell to the floor with aching noggins. Okay, we need to calm down. “Vaterin. Let’s just see what happens. We have…” Marble swallowed. “We have at least the rest of the semester.”
After the Expo, while the noblewomen and merchants feasted upon Lord-only-knew what, Father Sauer held court in the practice room. In turn, he called up the students and reported what pieces had sold, and for how much. “Grades are not yet finalized, as we plan to grade on a curve. However, there will be a baseline against the deficiency of our budget, so even though we had a remarkable bidding war on some pieces, a passing grade is not beyond the reach of most of you.” Vaterin, that was not directed at you, you are a fine artist, it was probably directed at… I don’t know, I’ve been paying attention to you and Writing and Felspar for the most part, but maybe the watercolorist? Or maybe Writing. They spent so much time on the one piece, the others might not have sold, and their sculpture might not have been great. I think Felspar complained that they spent most of their study time mooning after him. It sucks so sarxing much that they can’t announce the grades yet. I guess we can gather from what the bids were. That will be my job, Vaterin can’t do sums in her head. As Father Sauer read off the names, titles of pieces, and the student, Marble kept a running tally of the highest bids. To her surprise, she had gotten one of the highest for her candlelight still life. Vaterin’s and her own sales she recorded in full, she had done better than Vaterin but aside from the still life not by terribly much. I don’t know enough about how they’re grading us to say if Vaterin will get a scholarship. But it doesn’t look promising. I’ve had a few scares where I was feeling blocked and even a decent painting isn’t enough to get them to waive the fees. Which go to the dragon. If there were still a natural spring on Tourmaline Isle they wouldn’t need to charge fees, aside from the artificial spring and holding back storms the College was self-supporting. Dragons. What good are they, if they shielded the first humans only to bring strife to the next?
“What we can do is review who received offers of patronage, and so will find their grade to be of little consequence. I expect applause to all who received offers, regardless of personal rivalries.” Please let us have received overlapping offers. Even if it''s a mere Baroness, I will paint for her. I will paint for a merchant if only I can paint alongside Vaterin. This time, there was not a flurry of scratching out names, only a tense wait for Vaterin and herself to be announced. I know nobles sometimes keep collections of artists, surely one of them likes both landscapes and portraits. We could combine our talents! I could paint their estate while Vaterin painted over it the noble herself. It’s so unfortunate. Why did the dragon have to flood out the crops this year out of all the years to do it? Well, because Vaterin came. It is literally because she’s a spirit mage that the crops were flooded, but it’s also literally because she’s a spirit mage that she was able to come. She’s… I hate to admit it but her painting ability without divine inspiration just isn’t up to the standards of the College of the Art of the Divine. If only she had a few years to practice…! She perked up at her own name and jotted down the names of those who had bid for her talents. I never used to care about this. I reliably sold good works, I made the cut for a scholarship, and all in all I led a comfortable artistic existence. I have to bear in mind that even if we haven’t gotten matching offers, there’s still the hope of Vaterin getting a scholarship. She didn’t sell paintings for the most in property rights, but surely… I don’t know. There’s no way to know until—Father Sauer read off Vaterin’s name. Hurriedly, Marble jotted down each of the titles and merchants who had bid for patronizing her. She slumped back on her stool after reading the list through twice. At least we have until after the All Saviors’ Day feast. And the entire five days of the month of Ophiuchus. And then… I guess we’ll part ways. Marble steeled herself. I can practically feel Vaterin’s mind going. Mine is too. Maybe nobles from proximal spheres offered for us. We can consult an Atlas of Names from the library and see if any of the titles involved are nearby. We could write letters if any two of them are on the Loon route. It wouldn’t be the same as being there in person, but. I could scent my letters with attar of tulip. It would be silly, but I can just imagine Vaterin holding the envelope to her nose if I did.
“There wasn’t any overlap, was there,” Vaterin whispered. Marble shook her head. “Well, we can at least hope that I get a scholarship. Or maybe my parents will admire my dedication and…” she was grasping at straws, the rich and powerful rarely took well to being thwarted and they both knew this, but straws were all they had. The students around them were accustomed to their status as a couple and paid no mind as the two of them embraced and silent tears ran freely down their two faces.