State of Sorrow (Untitled #1)(70)
The inn was different from Melisia’s – this building was four storeys tall, with black wooden struts studding the white walls, and tables outside. Luvian had reserved the two attic rooms for them, at the top of a crooked but private staircase, and a room on the floor below for the coachman.
Dain checked both Sorrow’s room and Luvian’s before she took up a position at the base of their stairs without being asked, and Sorrow shrugged and went to see what a Rhyllian bedroom looked like.
Before she could see her own, Luvian tapped her shoulder and beckoned her into his. It was small, and disappointingly unremarkable. A single bed slotted against the wall, a narrow wardrobe at the end of it. There was a bureau and chair opposite, and a door Sorrow assumed led to a bathroom. But it was clean, and bright, the window looking out on to the square below, swallows darting in and out under the eaves.
Sorrow watched as Luvian reached into one of his cases and pulled out a rolled canvas. She gasped when he unfurled it, using shoes, a hairbrush and a bottle of cologne Sorrow had no idea he wore to pin the corners to the golden wood floor.
This year’s portrait of Mael. He’d taken it from the Summer Palace.
“You stole it,” Sorrow accused. “How? When?”
“Hush. I’m about to say some very important things.” Luvian knelt down beside it. “Pay attention. So, I’m going to assume you know very little about art, given the state of the nation for, quite literally, your whole life?”
Sorrow nodded.
“Then allow me to educate you, Sorrow, dear. The Rhannish style of painting is to use small strokes to create a whole picture. Up close it makes no sense, but at a distance the image can be seen. But the Rhyllian style is long, continuous strokes. That’s one way we can be sure the artist really is Rhyllian. See?” He gestured at the painting and she saw what he meant.
“The paints themselves differ too. Rhannish paints are oil based. Whereas Rhyllian –” he brushed a finger along the painted hair of the portrait and held it up to her, so she could see the thin layer of brown dust there “– are clay based. And when clay dries, it leaves a thin layer of powder.”
“And here we are in the clay paint capital of Rhylla.” Sorrow remembered his words back in the North Marches, and Luvian beamed at her.
“Indeed. A place so prestigious, there is a Registry of Colours.”
“OK, now you’ve lost me,” Sorrow confessed.
In reply, Luvian drew a small knife from the pocket of his coat and began to scrape the dark paint from the birthmark on the portrait.
“What are you doing?” Sorrow watched in horrified fascination as he vandalized the painting.
He didn’t reply, continuing until he’d made a small pile of purplish flakes, which he carefully lifted on to the tip of the knife, before tapping them into the centre of a plain silk handkerchief.
“As I was saying, Rhylla takes art so seriously it keeps a Registry of Colours. The Rainbow Clay Mines mostly yield primary colours, which anyone can buy and sell, and mean very little, but every now and then, the pigments in the rocks mix and create pure, naturally occurring secondary and tertiary colours. Of course, that happens very rarely, so the artists buy primaries and mix their own. But they’re required to register the colours, and the paintings they used them on, with the Registry, so that art buyers can’t be cheated. See, an unscrupulous artist could claim the purple they used in your portrait was genuine pure colour from the mines, something they paid a fortune to procure, and therefore have to pass the cost on…”
“I get it,” Sorrow said. “So, we can take those scrapings to the registry and find out who registered them? And that will lead us to the artist, which will hopefully lead us closer to finding out who Mael is, or at least who commissioned the pictures.”
“Got it in one, Sorrow darling.”
A burst of pleasure shot through Sorrow at his approval. “How do you know so much about Rhyllian art?”
Luvian opened his mouth, then closed it. “It’s what I would have liked to do, if I could have. If the option had been there for me,” he said finally. “My grandfather was a great lover of art. He taught me.”
Sorrow had never seen Luvian look sad before. Angry, cheerful, arrogant and annoyed. But never sad. She realized it was the first time he’d ever revealed anything about himself. His time at university was “educational”, his family were “amicably estranged”. He never spoke of friends, save to say he wasn’t popular, nor of lovers or love interests, only focused on his work. All accounts from his time at university said the same. She’d assumed there was a tragic story there, some kind of falling out with his family, or maybe childhood shyness he’d only outgrown after university, because no one could accuse him of it now. To be honest, she’d stopped thinking about him as anything other than part of her, Irris and him, the team she hoped to win the election with. He’d slotted so seamlessly into Sorrow’s life, barely causing a ripple, that she’d almost forgotten he was still mostly a stranger to her.
He seemed to realize he’d let his mask slip as he forced brightness into his voice and continued. “So I used the gift of foresight to become a political maven, with the intent of seating a chancellor who will make it possible for me to indulge my hobbies. And on that note, we have work to do.”