“It’s not one of them. They wouldn’t...” Frederica paused as if choosing her words carefully. “They’ve got better things to do with their time than try to mess with me, and they know that the second Master De Luca finds out who did this they’re out of the studio.”
“I’m honestly curious now,” Leanarda had noticed Frederica’s hesitancy, “you have some reason for trusting Vittoria, Carlo, and Niccolo, and if you don’t want to tell any of us that’s fine. Just ask yourself how strong that reason is, Frederica. Whatever you think is stopping them from turning on you, is it more important to them than staying garzoni?”
“You’re trying to manipulate me, but it’s pathetic,” Frederica scoffed, “you don’t know anything, so you don’t know how transparent you sound.” Frederica turned and threw the broken bird into the crate beneath her desk. “I will be telling De Luca you did this.”
“You don’t know it was me!” Leanarda protested as Frederica turned her back. “Even if you’re oh-so-trustful of those three, it could’ve been someone else-”
“Who? Mella?” Frederica didn’t turn around, “she wouldn’t have the spine to use my knives without permission, let alone do that. If it was Mella, you told her to. And stupid as this plan is, Lorenzo’s too stupid to come up with it. No offense, Lorenzo.”
“Hmm?” Lorenzo looked up from the set of three discs he had been fiddling with. “I’m sorry, I wasn’t paying attention. What are we talking about?”
“So Elena is among your list of trusted friends and allies then?” Leanarda challenged, her eyes narrowing.
“Elena is too naive to be this nasty, and too mousy to be this aggressive.”
“Hey-” Elena was grateful that Frederica didn’t think her capable of ruining the bird, but she wasn’t quite sure she liked the reasons. Frederica spoke right over her protests.
“More importantly, Elena understands that the ART. COMES. FIRST.” Frederica’s shoulders shook with emotion, but her voice was quiet when she continued. “Sure, Elena is a know-nothing annoying little puke, just like the rest of you. And sure, she probably hates me just as much as the rest of you too. But she made these,” Frederica held up one of her new knives with the lilium designs, “because she respects the art. She knows that whatever other little games you all want to play, the art comes first. She knows that however she might feel about me, the art comes first. That makes her worth a thousand of you.”
Elena turned back to her desk, more to avoid Leanarda’s gaze than to continue with her work. It was hard to dissect the emotions she was feeling towards Frederica at the moment. On the one hand, she shouldn’t be surprised that Frederica didn’t much care for her. On the other, it did sound like she almost...respected her? Surely that was better, or perhaps nearly as good... Elena shook her head, trying to sort out the new information.
“Meis auditaque, Frederica, don’t make the provisionals feel so welcome, they’ll get too comfortable,” Niccolo muttered, resuming running his knife along the edge of a small stone.
“Do I look like I give a Storm’s tingle about making them feel welcome?” Frederica gestured to the crate of scraps where she’d thrown the bird, “maybe next time they won’t damage my craft.”
“As you’ve all decided to talk about us as if we aren’t here anyway, I’m going for a walk.” Leanarda stood and set her brush down carefully, “Mella, Lorenzo, would you like to join me?” The fact that she hadn’t invited Elena was obviously intentional, but Leanarda’s feelings for her hadn’t been in question for a while. Leanarda and Mella neither liked nor respected her.
“Hmm? Ah, no thank you, I’m quite busy with this,” Lorenzo said, and Mella and Leanarda departed without another word. The workshop was once again quiet but for the scraping of Niccolo’s knife on his whetstone. Elena suddenly wondered if she should buy a small chest for her projects, one she could lock up at night. If it was true that Leanarda was the saboteur, Elena’s work was probably fairly high on the list of targets.
“You figured out what I needed in a knife just by looking, Elena,” Frederica broke the silence again, abruptly, “can you do that with other stuff?”
“I...I’m not sure,” Elena was caught off guard by the seemingly random question.
“I’m buying a block of maple today. It’s important, and you could help.”
“But I don’t know anything about wood.”
“You said you didn’t know anything about carving either, but you had all of those ‘flashes of inspiration’.”
“I guess so...but I can’t force them to come to me. I just know how some things are put together.”
“Hmm,” Frederica grunted, then stood, “come with me.”
“Where are we going?”
“I told you, I’ve got a block of maple to buy. You have to help me with all my supplies, so you’re coming to help,” without so much as a backward glance, Frederica walked out of the room.
“I guess I owe you an apology, Ele,” Elena brushed the cylinders, brush handles, and bristles into the corner of her desk and hid them with a rag, making a mental note to buy a chest with a lock. “You were right about something bad happening. That ‘storm about to break’.”
“This wasn’t it,” Ele was still frowning, but his face was more worried than angry, “this is just the warning thunder.”
Chapter XIX
Garzona Connections
Milia was a city of art, so it was appropriate that the streets of Milia were essentially works of art themselves. Not that a lot of people noticed it, the way the stones were arranged, a pretty asymmetry that appeared random but actually lay in sloping mathematical patterns. Even those attuned to artistry might miss how artistic the mechanisms were in the gutters, fresh water forced through at high speeds every hour. Very few understood that Milia itself was a perfect circle, and of those that did even fewer realized just how hard that must’ve been to achieve.
Maple truly believed that Milia was more beautiful to her than to any other Milian. One could not appreciate the true beauty of a city unless one appreciated the artistry that lay in its every line, and who was better at appreciating the artistry than a Stormtouched artist? Focusing on the art of the city let her accept its imperfections with a kind of calm reverence as she walked its dusty and hot streets. Sure, the merchants here were loud, but they were loud so that they could keep the coin moving through the city, and there was artistry in that. Yes, that man had nearly splashed her with the bucket of rotting compost, but he was using the gutter system, and as long as citizens kept using the gutter system it would be maintained. There was a kind of artistry in that, the art of utility. A majority of minor annoyances and problems of life could be accepted as long as they were for the good of the art.
It had been lucky timing that she’d found her way to De Luca’s studio when she did. Even after being accepted, her bitterness and anger had nearly ruined it for her, had almost kept her from absorbing the lessons that De Luca had taught her. It had taken the better part of the last year to transform her into a new person, one without the half-contained rage that had always seemed to control her. Occasionally she would still have a flare of anger, but she had learned the tools to cope with them. Just as Master De Luca had taught her, true Artists respected the Art even when Art led to inconveniences. She had become a true Artist.
She had become Maple.
“What’s in the big box?” Elena asked. Maple closed her eyes for a moment. Elena’s voice was always so cheerful. It wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it lacked a certain gravitas that a true Artist should maintain. Also, it had interrupted her reverie, but that was her own fault for inviting the Fabera along.
“You always ask so many questions,” Fred commented from behind them.
“What? That was just one!”
“Yeah but there’s always five or six following on its tail.”
“Why are you complaining about questions I haven’t asked yet?”
Annoyingly chipper or not, she asks que
stions so that she can learn. She asks questions to further her own Art, I can respect that. Besides, this is good. Forming bonds, garzona to garzona. If there’s one thing I can learn from Vittoria, it’s that it’s good to make garzona connections.
“It’s a carving,” Maple interrupted the two, stopping and opening the box to show Elena. A little wooden squirrel rested on green cloth within, still and silent, dead wood. “It’s one of mine. One that didn’t turn out.”
“But it looks so cute!” Elena all but squealed. “And it looks so lifelike, how can you say it didn’t turn out?”
“I’m a Caelator,” Maple snapped, “the fact that it just looks lifelike means it didn’t turn out.” She centered herself almost immediately, adding “or at least it didn’t turn out how I would’ve liked. Living. Breathing.”
They continued in silence for a while longer, and Maple mused. She had been snapping like that a lot more often over the past week or so, slipping back into the habits of old Frederica. Perhaps it was because of the sudden influx of four new garzoni adding chaos to her life, or maybe it was the fear that nagged at the back of her mind that she wouldn’t make it, but she had been finding it harder to slip into Maple, harder to see the art in everything.
“I thought you were bringing me with you to check out a block of wood. Why are you taking that piece with us?”
“Told you there’d be more questions,” Fred smirked.
“Questions don’t hurt, Fred, shut up.” Maple tried to think of the best way to phrase her answer. “Master De Luca has the money to handle our supply purchases, but he also appreciates it when we can offset those costs, so I’m selling it. Except our studio doesn’t bother selling mundane art, it makes us look bad.”
“Why would that make us look-”
“Because Studio De Luca is the studio of Stormtouched, the best Studio in Milia. He doesn’t accept Mortalis, he hires Rhetor as cooks, and as far as the everyday Milian knows, he and his garzoni don’t produce mundane art. But we’re not perfect, not everything I make has the Storm in it, not all of Carlo and Vittoria’s paintings are Touched. It’d be a waste to get rid of them, so we make money off of them.”
“If the studio doesn’t sell them then who buys them?”
Perhaps it would’ve been a less annoying question if they hadn’t just arrived at their destination. Maple sighed, and reminded herself that however unobservant and stupid Elena was, she respected the Art. She waited patiently for Elena to make the connection on her own. The girl waited for an answer for a long time, but finally began looking around her, actually seeing where she was.
“This is the Street of Grey Artisans, isn’t it? Is this another studio? Whose studio is on the Street of Grey-Wait, you sell to THEM?” Elena’s face was such a mixture of outrage and horror that it was almost comical. “Frederica you can’t be serious! Other studios are taking credit for De Luca’s work?”
“We’re well payed for it. Besides, you don’t seem to have a problem with Master De Luca taking credit for his garzoni’s work.”
“That’s...that’s different!”
Maple looked up at the sturdy grey bricks of the Grey Studio, ignoring Elena’s sputtering. Its walls seemed more solid than those of De Luca’s studio, with no courtyard and nothing but a heavy door separating the studio from the street. It was built to withstand intrusion, built to be defensive. The Art of the place was in the design to keep people out.
Built poorly, Maple smirked.
“Whose studio is this?” Elena asked again.
“I just think of it as the Grey Studio,” Maple knocked briskly on the heavy door, “it’s Master DaRose’s.”
“Master DaRose...the name sounds so familiar...”
“Why wouldn’t it? There are only eight Masters in Milia, eight studios.”
“Something else-”
“Well, well, well. If it isn’t Miss Lucciano and friend.”
Maple didn’t like the boy the second she heard his voice. His grey uniform marked him out as one of DaRose’s garzoni, his brown curls marked him out as a heartthrob, and the way he was looking at Elena confirmed his was just as slimy as his voice indicated.
“Arturo! I wondered why DaRose’s name sounded so familiar!” Elena seemed delighted to see the boy, and Maple kept her lip from curling.
“Ah, so you remember my name and everything,” the words seemed bitter, but Arturo’s smile was wide and friendly, “I wondered if life as a De Luca garzona would’ve driven your unimportant friends from your head.”
“Of course I wouldn’t forget you!” Elena seemed too excited to pick up on the bitterness in his words, and she turned back to Maple, “Frederica, this is a friend of mine, we met when we were both applying to be De Luca’s garzoni!” When her back was turned, Arturo’s eyes traveled down to her backside, and Maple’s dislike of him was solidified. Elena was...not a ‘friend’ exactly, but she was a fellow garzona, which made Maple feel protective of her, like a big sister saddled with an annoying sibling. She would be damned if this slimeball ogled her not-really-a-sister’s rear.
“How lovely,” Maple smiled sweetly in Arturo’s direction, “what a shame he wasn’t good enough to be accepted.”
Arturo’s smile slipped from his face, which satisfied her. Elena’s Echo glanced at her, and they exchanged a look. Maple couldn’t help but feel that she had passed some hidden test as far as Ele was concerned.
“Frederica!” Elena gasped.
“No, it’s alright, Elena,” Arturo’s Echo piped up from behind him, a paintbrush behind her ear, “it’s pretty typical. Garzoni of different studios tend to be a little... tense... around each other.”
“Hi, Arta!”
“We’re selling,” Maple interrupted, handing Arturo the box. “Mundane animal sculpture, standard price. Go tell your Master.”
“I don’t need to check with DaRose, we can pay,” Arturo growled, and Maple grinned. He turned to his Echo, “go get Festo, tell him to bring money for a De Luca sculpture.”
It was a bad habit, left over from when she didn’t know how to be Maple, but Frederica occasionally liked pushing people to the edge, making them feel a hint of the anger that had up until a year ago always filled her. These days she reserved it for people who had offended her. Being a DaRose garzoni was enough to offend her, ogling Elena had merely pushed her over the edge.
“So did you fail to get in to any other studios as well before you ended up here, or was it just De Luca’s?” she asked lightly. Arturo set his jaw and said nothing.
“Frederica, you don’t have to be so rude,” Elena admonished.
Oh but I do, I do have to be rude. If I’m rude enough he’ll get angry, and if he gets angry enough I might find out who he really is. Not that the information was worth anything, but it would upset him, and it would satisfy her curiosity, so it was reason enough to pass the time while they waited for her money.
“Oh I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be rude,” Maple laughed, “I just never know what will upset people. I know I wouldn’t mind being confronted with the truth if I failed to achieve a goal...at least, I don’t think I would. I wouldn’t know.”
“I’m not sure why you’re doing this,” Arturo’s jaw was clenched. “It’s pretty obvious to everyone here that you’re trying to get a rise out of me, for whatever reason.”
And it’s working, Maple thought.
“I don’t really need a reason, do I?” she said aloud, “it’s not as if you can do anything about it, is it?” It was a shot in the dark, but his type tended to be on-edge when it came to challenges to their power.
“I can shut you up,” Arturo’s face darkened and he reached for his belt, where a leather cylinder hung. It was a subtle motion, but the leather cylinder was a dead giveaway. It was fashioned to carry papers, and she knew one person who used a cylinder like that.
“Aaah,” Maple breathed, smiling with satisfaction. “Grabber. No, I don’t think you want to try playing that game with me.”
&n
bsp; Grabber frowned, but he dropped his hand from the leather cylinder begrudgingly.
“I wasn’t going to,” he muttered, “it’s broad daylight anyway.”
“Why did she call you ‘Grabber’, Arturo?” Elena was looking back and forth between the two of them, and Maple cursed under her breath. More questions De Luca wouldn’t want Elena asking, and this time it was pretty squarely her fault.
“I’d actually prefer if you forgot I mentioned that name, Elena,” she said.
“Why is that?” One of the other DaRose garzoni brought a small purse of coins, but Grabber had picked up on Elena’s question and pounced, “surely she knows that...Does she not know?”
“I’ll take that please,” Maple’s voice was tight as she snatched the purse from Grabber’s hand, “and we’ll be going now.”
“Iam matre she doesn’t know. She doesn’t know any of it,” Grabber seemed delighted by the fact, “what the hell do you even tell her to explain it all away?”
“Tell me what? What don’t I know? Arturo do you know something about...about what happened a week ago?” Elena asked.
It was bad. The entire situation was bad, Maple saw that now. She shouldn’t have brought Elena here, shouldn’t have baited Arturo, definitely shouldn’t have said his real name aloud. Maple struggled for the words, for anything that she could use as damage control. She resorted to the one thing she knew she could fall back on; intimidation.
“Terribly sorry you won’t be able to answer Elena’s questions Grabber, but we’ll be going now. Let me repeat, you don’t want to play games with me again. If you’ll recall, the last time we played, I won.”
Grabber, Grabber’s Echo ‘Arta’, Elena and Ele, Maple and Fred all waited in tense silence for a few moments as Grabber scanned her face for a few moments.
A Student's Dream (Twisted Cogs Book 1) Page 16