The Painter's Contract
75 Zida Arc 706
Most of Zida had passed and the weather had turned colder. The “unemployed” courtesan Yrmellyn Cole hadn’t been successful at finding a new protector of the kind she ordinarily kept to, rich merchants for example. She was twenty. It had started to seem like people considered it a high age for a courtesan in the top tier of the profession.
Then again, she knew it wasn’t about her age. She wasn’t old. It was about other things, like the fact that she had been active as courtesan in Rharne during four years now and worked through a row of protectors. As a consequence she was well known in the wealthy circles of the city and had lost the charm of novelty. People seemed to like her well enough, but today it was experience people were looking for if they approached her, not novelty. She had come to realize that this meant that the days when she had been able to pose as nearly a lady, with a streak of decadence, seemed to be over. Now she had fallen down a notch on the invisible ranking scale of the city’s top courtesans and was instead seen as a decadent woman with a somewhat less than ladylike style.
It shouldn’t have surprised her. The rise and downfall of the beauties from the Dust was as repetitive as the cycles and seasons that passed by. It was the same story told over and over again. She had seen numerous other women like herself rise, bask thoughtlessly in easy got luxury for a while, then descend gradually again. Just like those girls, Yrmellyn had thought it only happened to others, no to herself. Her own time on the top had felt eternal, until one day it had just suddenly stopped. Most of Zida had already passed and she had failed to snare a new rich protector. She knew it was the first small sign of being past the peak of her career and she was facing the beginning of the downfall from luxury courtesan to mere streetwalker.
Her first reaction had been anger. She was only twenty! How could everything already be over this early in life? It was unfair! Annoyment had grown to burning anger, anger had grown to flaming rage and rage had faded to a hard to kill bitterness that continued to glow deep down inside her. It scared her, because she felt like she was becoming just like Auntie Vilda, the woman who had reared her and who Yrmellyn feared might be her biological mother, even if the “aunt” had always denied it.
Yrmellyn Cole could have been well off by now, if she had been able to manage money and invest them wisely instead of just squandering every nel as soon as she had it in her hands. Unfortunately there were no money to manage in the Dust Quarters where she had grown up, so she had never had the chance to learn how to handle them. Auntie Vilda’s advice had been simple: “Have some fun while you can, because you never know how long it will last. The world is cruel and unfair. Make sure to grab what you can and use it before you lose it all.”
So true. Yrmellyn had been having fun, and now she was nearly penniless.
It looked bleak, except for one thing: Mariuz Arbin, the painter she had learnt to know during this season. After their first meeting in a gambling house in The Glass Quarter she had visited him a number of times, to sit for a portrait he said she had won from him. Mariuz Arbin had turned out to be the kind of painter who found it necessary with a long row of sittings. Yrmellyn had found it taxing in the beginning. Eventually she had however become accustomed to being a motif and sitting totally still for a break or more. Truth to tell, the visits in the painter’s atelier had become something of a sanctuary to her. There she could forget the world and all it’s terrible demands and just sit there and rest from all her troubles, while she had her picture made.
She sat there in the atelier now, feeling like she was in a safe world outside time and room. It was early evening and near sundown. Mariuz Arbin focused on his work, painted silently and made use of the last daylight.
When the painter first had told her that he was a magician of attunement and also a practitioner of a mysterious art named ensorcellment, it had felt like a rift in reality had opened right in front of her. The atelier had suddenly felt like a gate to an alien world existing in parallel with the down to earth real world she knew. As she had grown up in the slum and spent years living as courtesan it was hard to shock her, so Yrmellyn had managed to stay composed, but she had felt surprised and vary. At same time, she was intrigued. Ever since she had been made aware that there was a possibility for her to be initiated and become the painter’s apprentice in painting, magic and ensorcellment, the temptation to abandon her career as courtesan had grown in her mind like a seed secretly setting roots in fertile soil.
Mariuz Arbin had offered her to give her life of an artist and crafter with insight into mysteries few people knew. He hadn’t said it, but she felt convinced he knew this also meant he offered her an escape from her own fate. She wouldn’t be a courtesan any more. She would become a mage’s apprentice.
The thoughts of this had been milling in her mind during sleepless nights and cold Zida days.
You can change what you thought was your inevitable fate, she thought to herself. You can become something else, something new, be what you can be, albeit you never knew it before. Instead of a powerless woman selling my body because that’s what I’m accustomed to do, I can become an artist, painter, mage and magic crafter. I can become able to yield power and shape art and the world to my wishes. If I say no, my fate is sealed. If I say yes ... I will break free from the dust life gave me and rule over my own fate. Isn’t it better to grab this glimpse of hope of something more, something better, whatever it is? Even magic?
The sunlight was getting darker and more golden.
“We are done for today. Have you thought of what I offered you Yrmellyn? The portrait is nearly done. Will you stay with me or not?” Mariuz Arbin spoke to her while he worked, sharing his attention between the painting and the motif.
“I will repeat it one last time” he continued when the courtesan didn’t answer at once.
“As I have told you, I would initiate you to a magic named attunement and teach you to paint and to practice ensorcellment. In return you stay with me until my dying day and care for me as will be needed. Alas I seem to suffer from an unknown lung disease. No healer has so far been able to find out what causes it. All they can say is that if it continues to develop like it has done lately, I will have an arc or two to live. I cannot keep you in the amazing luxury you have been living in with others, but as you have seen my living standard is reasonably good and you wouldn’t lack anything. One day you would come out of the arrangement as a skilled artist and crafter, with special powers.”
A light cough attack interrupted him. He put the brush down and said they were done with the painting for today.
“I don’t want you to die Mariuz. Is there really no cure?”
The words slipped out of her without conscious thought. Once she had said them they lingered in the silence that followed, impossible to revoke.
“No” said the painter after a short silence.
The courtesan stared at him. An odd feeling moved in her chest.
“I wish we could just have normal arrangement” she blurted out with sudden passion. “I mean, the kind of arrangement where all people get something they want, everybody are happy, they part as friends and nobody dies at the end. “
The painter smiled and his smoky blue eyes glittered.
“It’s a normal arrangement in all ways. I want my last days to be a fun arrangement where all people get what they want and everybody are happy and part as friends. I’m not able to conquer death though. The only thing I can do is make the best of my life as long as it will last. And you...I wouldn’t leave you with nothing else than money, but with knowledge and a profession that will enable you to provide for yourself and live as you like.”
“I just wish that you would live forever.”
Mariuz Arbin looked at her with his smoky blue eyes. “Aren’t we all wishing that we would live forever? But we are all mortal. Only art and gods can live forever, but art can be destroyed and lost and some say that even the immortals can die. Now, are you going to indulge me and sign the contract I have prepared? ”
“Contract” said the courtesan. “Sign? Well, I ... guess I will do so. I have thought of your offer. I accept it. “ She leaned back in the chair while the painter went to fetch the papers he wanted her to sign. He returned with the contract and a pen. It was time to sign.
“But is this really necessary Mariuz?”
“You have maybe lived without formal papers in other arrangements, and so have I. However, this agreement is of a special kind and it’s going to last as long as I live. It’s best to have a written contract, where the conditions are stated in a way that cannot be misunderstood. It will of course not mention the magic or the ensorcellment, but it will mention the painting and the duration. It’s an apprentice contract. You have a right to really get the education I have promised you. You are also obliged to really stay the whole time and not leave me before it’s over. As all normal apprentice contracts it comes with a commitment to provide for the apprentice, but it also states that if you would abandon the deal I can use the contract to demand that you refund me.”
It was the most businesslike discussion Yrmellyn had ever had with a potential protector.
“Refund...” she said, uncertain of how to think. Nobody had ever before said anything about refunding them for the money they spent on her. “People don’t use to ask me to get their money back afterwards. You know. Spent money are gone. Easy come, easy go.”
“No Yrmellyn, that’s not the right way to think. This isn’t about being a courtesan. If you want to make a living as an artist and crafter you are in practice managing your own business. You will need to learn to think appropriately, so you can make business deals without risk for too big losses.”
Yrmellyn nodded hesitantly. “I understand. It’s important to make business deals in the right way in order to avoid big losses. ” This was logical. She didn’t want to make losses.
“I think I will add some knowledge in business management to what I will teach you...you can see this contract as your first lesson. Always make a clear agreement before you start at a commission. Make the client invest in the materials and cut your losses by stating that you will keep the canvas and your art if they change their mind and don’t want to pay for the work you have done. Preferably it should be written. I...hope you can write.”
“Well enough. I can read and write.” This was true, but Yrmellyn was still hoping that these skills wouldn’t be tested any time soon, so she would get to practice at them secretly. “So. I should always write a contract with a clear agreement before I start to work. And I should always make the customer pay the material in advance.”
“That’s right. Good girl.”
Arbin handed her a paper with a whole lot of detailed text and two line at the bottom of the page. Mariuz Arbin had already written his own name on one of those lines. The courtesan looked at it. His handwriting was nice. The rest of the text seemed complicated and also boring, terribly boring. Would she really need to read all that boring text? She felt reluctant to delve into it. Mariuz had already told her what it was about, so what was the point with reading it all. There was so much text that I must be clearer than any deals she had ever struck. Yrmellyn prentended to read it a bit, but truth was that she just skimmed it briefly. Then she looked up at the painter.
“Your handwriting is nice. I need the pen.”
The painter shook his head. He seemed amused. “You must always read all the small text on a contact” he said. “Read it for real now.”
Yrmellyn did as he told her, albeit it took effort to do it when twilight was taking over after the last rays of golden red sunlight were gone.
“But I trust you.”
“I don’t want you to trust me now and come back later about things you didn’t care to read. Yrmellyn, in business you always read the contracts, you read them thoroughly and in detail. And you don’t just trust other people, you make sure you can trust them. Please repeat this to me in your own words so I can feel sure that you listen to what I’m telling you.”
“I should never trust people blindly and I should always read the contracts properly” she obliged.
“But Mariuz, all those things are fine I suppose, but I’m not familiar with it...I use to make deals about entirely other things. I thought you would want something more of me than an apprentice and a future nurse. I mean, I thought there would be...something more than this.”
“There’s the magic” said Arbin. “As I said it’s not written in the contract, but there’s the magic.”
“The magic, yes...” There was that. She still felt something more had been left out. “I thought there would be something more to it. I thought you sort of liked me, I mean...people use to like me, not write contracts with me.”
It was obscure in the room. Yrmellyn felt more familiar with the part of the contract she was bringing up now. She looked straight into the painter’s eyes, her gaze steady and dark in the shadows of the room. She continued to look at him silently this way, until the painter put the pen away, closed the distance between them, put his hands on her upper arms and pulled her up from the chair. The important contract fell on the floor, as soundless as if it was just a slip of paper.
It was sundown. The atelier faded to black.
Later that evening she signed the contract in the light of a lantern.
Then again, she knew it wasn’t about her age. She wasn’t old. It was about other things, like the fact that she had been active as courtesan in Rharne during four years now and worked through a row of protectors. As a consequence she was well known in the wealthy circles of the city and had lost the charm of novelty. People seemed to like her well enough, but today it was experience people were looking for if they approached her, not novelty. She had come to realize that this meant that the days when she had been able to pose as nearly a lady, with a streak of decadence, seemed to be over. Now she had fallen down a notch on the invisible ranking scale of the city’s top courtesans and was instead seen as a decadent woman with a somewhat less than ladylike style.
It shouldn’t have surprised her. The rise and downfall of the beauties from the Dust was as repetitive as the cycles and seasons that passed by. It was the same story told over and over again. She had seen numerous other women like herself rise, bask thoughtlessly in easy got luxury for a while, then descend gradually again. Just like those girls, Yrmellyn had thought it only happened to others, no to herself. Her own time on the top had felt eternal, until one day it had just suddenly stopped. Most of Zida had already passed and she had failed to snare a new rich protector. She knew it was the first small sign of being past the peak of her career and she was facing the beginning of the downfall from luxury courtesan to mere streetwalker.
Her first reaction had been anger. She was only twenty! How could everything already be over this early in life? It was unfair! Annoyment had grown to burning anger, anger had grown to flaming rage and rage had faded to a hard to kill bitterness that continued to glow deep down inside her. It scared her, because she felt like she was becoming just like Auntie Vilda, the woman who had reared her and who Yrmellyn feared might be her biological mother, even if the “aunt” had always denied it.
Yrmellyn Cole could have been well off by now, if she had been able to manage money and invest them wisely instead of just squandering every nel as soon as she had it in her hands. Unfortunately there were no money to manage in the Dust Quarters where she had grown up, so she had never had the chance to learn how to handle them. Auntie Vilda’s advice had been simple: “Have some fun while you can, because you never know how long it will last. The world is cruel and unfair. Make sure to grab what you can and use it before you lose it all.”
So true. Yrmellyn had been having fun, and now she was nearly penniless.
It looked bleak, except for one thing: Mariuz Arbin, the painter she had learnt to know during this season. After their first meeting in a gambling house in The Glass Quarter she had visited him a number of times, to sit for a portrait he said she had won from him. Mariuz Arbin had turned out to be the kind of painter who found it necessary with a long row of sittings. Yrmellyn had found it taxing in the beginning. Eventually she had however become accustomed to being a motif and sitting totally still for a break or more. Truth to tell, the visits in the painter’s atelier had become something of a sanctuary to her. There she could forget the world and all it’s terrible demands and just sit there and rest from all her troubles, while she had her picture made.
She sat there in the atelier now, feeling like she was in a safe world outside time and room. It was early evening and near sundown. Mariuz Arbin focused on his work, painted silently and made use of the last daylight.
When the painter first had told her that he was a magician of attunement and also a practitioner of a mysterious art named ensorcellment, it had felt like a rift in reality had opened right in front of her. The atelier had suddenly felt like a gate to an alien world existing in parallel with the down to earth real world she knew. As she had grown up in the slum and spent years living as courtesan it was hard to shock her, so Yrmellyn had managed to stay composed, but she had felt surprised and vary. At same time, she was intrigued. Ever since she had been made aware that there was a possibility for her to be initiated and become the painter’s apprentice in painting, magic and ensorcellment, the temptation to abandon her career as courtesan had grown in her mind like a seed secretly setting roots in fertile soil.
Mariuz Arbin had offered her to give her life of an artist and crafter with insight into mysteries few people knew. He hadn’t said it, but she felt convinced he knew this also meant he offered her an escape from her own fate. She wouldn’t be a courtesan any more. She would become a mage’s apprentice.
The thoughts of this had been milling in her mind during sleepless nights and cold Zida days.
You can change what you thought was your inevitable fate, she thought to herself. You can become something else, something new, be what you can be, albeit you never knew it before. Instead of a powerless woman selling my body because that’s what I’m accustomed to do, I can become an artist, painter, mage and magic crafter. I can become able to yield power and shape art and the world to my wishes. If I say no, my fate is sealed. If I say yes ... I will break free from the dust life gave me and rule over my own fate. Isn’t it better to grab this glimpse of hope of something more, something better, whatever it is? Even magic?
The sunlight was getting darker and more golden.
“We are done for today. Have you thought of what I offered you Yrmellyn? The portrait is nearly done. Will you stay with me or not?” Mariuz Arbin spoke to her while he worked, sharing his attention between the painting and the motif.
“I will repeat it one last time” he continued when the courtesan didn’t answer at once.
“As I have told you, I would initiate you to a magic named attunement and teach you to paint and to practice ensorcellment. In return you stay with me until my dying day and care for me as will be needed. Alas I seem to suffer from an unknown lung disease. No healer has so far been able to find out what causes it. All they can say is that if it continues to develop like it has done lately, I will have an arc or two to live. I cannot keep you in the amazing luxury you have been living in with others, but as you have seen my living standard is reasonably good and you wouldn’t lack anything. One day you would come out of the arrangement as a skilled artist and crafter, with special powers.”
A light cough attack interrupted him. He put the brush down and said they were done with the painting for today.
“I don’t want you to die Mariuz. Is there really no cure?”
The words slipped out of her without conscious thought. Once she had said them they lingered in the silence that followed, impossible to revoke.
“No” said the painter after a short silence.
The courtesan stared at him. An odd feeling moved in her chest.
“I wish we could just have normal arrangement” she blurted out with sudden passion. “I mean, the kind of arrangement where all people get something they want, everybody are happy, they part as friends and nobody dies at the end. “
The painter smiled and his smoky blue eyes glittered.
“It’s a normal arrangement in all ways. I want my last days to be a fun arrangement where all people get what they want and everybody are happy and part as friends. I’m not able to conquer death though. The only thing I can do is make the best of my life as long as it will last. And you...I wouldn’t leave you with nothing else than money, but with knowledge and a profession that will enable you to provide for yourself and live as you like.”
“I just wish that you would live forever.”
Mariuz Arbin looked at her with his smoky blue eyes. “Aren’t we all wishing that we would live forever? But we are all mortal. Only art and gods can live forever, but art can be destroyed and lost and some say that even the immortals can die. Now, are you going to indulge me and sign the contract I have prepared? ”
“Contract” said the courtesan. “Sign? Well, I ... guess I will do so. I have thought of your offer. I accept it. “ She leaned back in the chair while the painter went to fetch the papers he wanted her to sign. He returned with the contract and a pen. It was time to sign.
“But is this really necessary Mariuz?”
“You have maybe lived without formal papers in other arrangements, and so have I. However, this agreement is of a special kind and it’s going to last as long as I live. It’s best to have a written contract, where the conditions are stated in a way that cannot be misunderstood. It will of course not mention the magic or the ensorcellment, but it will mention the painting and the duration. It’s an apprentice contract. You have a right to really get the education I have promised you. You are also obliged to really stay the whole time and not leave me before it’s over. As all normal apprentice contracts it comes with a commitment to provide for the apprentice, but it also states that if you would abandon the deal I can use the contract to demand that you refund me.”
It was the most businesslike discussion Yrmellyn had ever had with a potential protector.
“Refund...” she said, uncertain of how to think. Nobody had ever before said anything about refunding them for the money they spent on her. “People don’t use to ask me to get their money back afterwards. You know. Spent money are gone. Easy come, easy go.”
“No Yrmellyn, that’s not the right way to think. This isn’t about being a courtesan. If you want to make a living as an artist and crafter you are in practice managing your own business. You will need to learn to think appropriately, so you can make business deals without risk for too big losses.”
Yrmellyn nodded hesitantly. “I understand. It’s important to make business deals in the right way in order to avoid big losses. ” This was logical. She didn’t want to make losses.
“I think I will add some knowledge in business management to what I will teach you...you can see this contract as your first lesson. Always make a clear agreement before you start at a commission. Make the client invest in the materials and cut your losses by stating that you will keep the canvas and your art if they change their mind and don’t want to pay for the work you have done. Preferably it should be written. I...hope you can write.”
“Well enough. I can read and write.” This was true, but Yrmellyn was still hoping that these skills wouldn’t be tested any time soon, so she would get to practice at them secretly. “So. I should always write a contract with a clear agreement before I start to work. And I should always make the customer pay the material in advance.”
“That’s right. Good girl.”
Arbin handed her a paper with a whole lot of detailed text and two line at the bottom of the page. Mariuz Arbin had already written his own name on one of those lines. The courtesan looked at it. His handwriting was nice. The rest of the text seemed complicated and also boring, terribly boring. Would she really need to read all that boring text? She felt reluctant to delve into it. Mariuz had already told her what it was about, so what was the point with reading it all. There was so much text that I must be clearer than any deals she had ever struck. Yrmellyn prentended to read it a bit, but truth was that she just skimmed it briefly. Then she looked up at the painter.
“Your handwriting is nice. I need the pen.”
The painter shook his head. He seemed amused. “You must always read all the small text on a contact” he said. “Read it for real now.”
Yrmellyn did as he told her, albeit it took effort to do it when twilight was taking over after the last rays of golden red sunlight were gone.
“But I trust you.”
“I don’t want you to trust me now and come back later about things you didn’t care to read. Yrmellyn, in business you always read the contracts, you read them thoroughly and in detail. And you don’t just trust other people, you make sure you can trust them. Please repeat this to me in your own words so I can feel sure that you listen to what I’m telling you.”
“I should never trust people blindly and I should always read the contracts properly” she obliged.
“But Mariuz, all those things are fine I suppose, but I’m not familiar with it...I use to make deals about entirely other things. I thought you would want something more of me than an apprentice and a future nurse. I mean, I thought there would be...something more than this.”
“There’s the magic” said Arbin. “As I said it’s not written in the contract, but there’s the magic.”
“The magic, yes...” There was that. She still felt something more had been left out. “I thought there would be something more to it. I thought you sort of liked me, I mean...people use to like me, not write contracts with me.”
It was obscure in the room. Yrmellyn felt more familiar with the part of the contract she was bringing up now. She looked straight into the painter’s eyes, her gaze steady and dark in the shadows of the room. She continued to look at him silently this way, until the painter put the pen away, closed the distance between them, put his hands on her upper arms and pulled her up from the chair. The important contract fell on the floor, as soundless as if it was just a slip of paper.
It was sundown. The atelier faded to black.
Later that evening she signed the contract in the light of a lantern.
Yrmellyn Cole
