Fable - Ask It's What's On the Inside That Counts

[Gaheris]

Gaheris allowed himself to be dragged to the appointed spot, observing with a placid ambivalence. He could not fathom what would be particular about this spot. Must be a painter thing.​

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But he did feel the sun beating down on his neck. Who knew how long he had before the sweating got uncomfortable.​

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"No, I have not," he said, pausing to yawn. He rubbed his jaw. "But I believe you were here before me, so..."​

 

[Kailyn]

Head quirked to the side. An errant strand of hair fell across one cheek. She huffed it out of the way with a puff of breath.

"Oh? I suppose I've been in Amol-Kalit awhile if you count Salitra before Gerra took it over. How long have you been employed by the fire giant and how did you become employed by him?"

 

[Gaheris]

Gaheris breathed in, mouth quirked in thought. Nosy little woman. But harem girls were often thirsty for gossip (one of several forms of thirst they endured, or so he heard). There was little harm in indulging.​

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"A few months now, I suppose. He told the Red Guild he had need of a mortician and they arranged me to do the work."​

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Mortician was not the word used, but there was no sense boring her with the technical details.​

 

[Kailyn]

Another flourish of brush strokes on canvas.

A mix of colors on her pallet and then some more fine details added.

"Well," she breathed, brow pinching in thought. "Do you enjoy working for him? Living here?"

 

[Gaheris]

Gaheris scoffed audibly. Did she really expect him to answer any way but in the affirmative?​

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"It is my highest honor and greatest privilege to labor in service of the God-Emperor of Amol-Kalit," he said, with dry, rote enthusiasm.​

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Just because they were alone in the garden didn't mean the walls were not listening in on them. Kings were finicky, God-Emperors even more so.​

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As for living here, he touched the back of his neck, brushing away the sweat accumulating there.​

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"It's a bit warm for my taste, but I've lived in worse places."​

 

[Kailyn]

"Oh?" Interest lit her face.

She hid what else she was feeling. His scoff and dry tone were enough for her to shift uncomfortably on her feet. She still didn't know Lord Gerra all that well. And she'd always wondered how free she truly was. If she asked it, would he let her leave so easily? Perhaps to go East.

"Where else all have you lived? I've only lived in Cerak At'Thul." If you could call that living. "Salitra and now here."

And Kailyn hadn't forgotten what he'd said about the Red Guild. It wasn't known for good things on the slave island and she doubted they were much better here. She'd have to do some digging of her own, later.

 

[Gaheris]

"The Black Bay?" Gaheris asked, failing to conceal his astonishment. "You lived in Cerak?"​

​

Cerak At'Thul was a rain-sodden hell on earth. He had never been there himself, but the ships that ferried him to the the Bloodgrass Academy had sailed close enough that he could see it.​

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The people he'd met who called it home tended to look more like diseased barnacles than people. They were pirates and slavers of such unflinching brutality that even the Red Guild was hesitant to deal with them. Usually.​

​

Kailyn was as far from that description as he could imagine. Fair and comely, and her eyes hinted at a sort of perceptive intelligence that he found especially... Wait, what was he thinking about again?​

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He wiped his hand on his vest, "I can't say I would have guessed. What was that like?"​

 

[Kailyn]

"Yes," she said quietly, eyes averted purposefully to the canvas. More brush strokes - fine-tuned and practiced. "I was born there. A slave. Grew up there until I was about ten or eleven and then sold and shipped off to these lands. Funny how I went from one extreme to another."

A practiced smile in the man's direction.

"A place of great darkness to a place of blinding light." Both were unforgiving in their own way. Eyes of amber lifted.

"But I wonder at the different places you have lived or traveled to." A gentle reminder at her unanswered question.

 

[Gaheris]

A slave. Yes, that made sense. If the slaves that came from Cerak looked like the locals, then Gaheris supposed they wouldn't stay in business for very long. He felt a pang of something. Probably pity, or perhaps regret to turning the conversation dour.​

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"My condolences," he said, clearing his throat. Was he standing properly?​

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Well, it couldn't have been all bad. There were worse harems she could have been enslaved in. The Goat King of Falwood came to mind.​

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Kailyn reiterated her question, though Gaheris had already forgotten she had asked the first time. He was just thankful to maneuver the topic to something outside of chattel slavery.​

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"The Cortosi Coast for a while, then Elbion, Cintria," he recited it like he was half-remembering a shopping list, "In and around Alliria for a time..."​

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Members of the Red Guild tended to get around. Such was their mercenary nature.​

 

[Kailyn]

She didn't respond to his condolences. What other life would she have known? It's all she'd ever known. Fighting for food. Surviving. If it wasn't for Vo, she didn't think she would've survived a night let alone ten years of nights. Things had gotten easier in Salitra.

Paint brushes were set down as she gave her painting one last critical look.

"Elbion and Alliria. I've only heard stories but always wanted to visit. Do you have a favorite?"

Not satisfied, she picked up a brush once more and paid careful attention to the details now.

"Almost finished," she called, mindful of the discomfort posing so often wrought on her subjects.

 

[Gaheris]

So soon? Impossible. Kailyn must have been finger-painting behind that easel. No one could paint that fast. She hadn't even sketched anything...​

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"Alliria, I suppose," Gaheris hesitantly said. "It attracts a different crowd. More interesting."​

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More to the point, Elbion was the only one of the two that had expelled him for spurious reasons. That was the kind of thing that could knock them out of the running for 'favorite city', so far as Gaheris was concerned.​

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He idly shifted weight from one foot to the other.​

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"And how did you come by Annuakat? From Salitra, you said?"​

​

 

[Kailyn]

Kailyn's portrait of Gaheris was very well done. She could very easily make a living as a professional artist. And she wondered if she could ever leave Gerra's side to set out on her own. At least she had a fall-back now. Even without her magic.

"Oh?" Brows raised along her fair skin. "What is a very interesting crowd to a mortician?" A smile hidden as she ducked behind the canvas.

"Yes," she said quietly. "There was a prominent family called the Sparrows who snatched me up from the docks after my voyage from the island. The Sparrows. Once they learned I could read, write, and was good with numbers, they put me in charge of much of their affairs. We were fleeing the city when Gerra arrived. He happened to intercept us at the opening of some secret tunnels."

She shrugged.

"I'm not sure why he set his eye on me out of the entire family or the household. Perhaps it was Mister Sparrow's insistence on keeping me and begging the god-king to let them go, me along with them."

A few brushes of her hand.

"But the emperor offered me my freedom. Sometimes I wonder if it's true."

She wasn't shy about speaking boldly even if her voice quieted just a tad.

 

[Gaheris]

"Poets, musicians, artists... That sort of thing," Gaheris answered, scratching the area behind his ear.​

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Something told him if he had just said "whores, sketchy apothecaries, and nobles willing to pay for an embalming procedure", Kailyn might have fainted on the spot. And then his painting, in the best case scenario, would have a frightful smear on it.​

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Otherwise, he seemed to listen carefully to her explanation. Sparrows. Sounded familiar, but maybe that was because it was a bird. The corner of his mouth twitched as she continued.​

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Yes. The beautiful slave who could paint and keep finances, whose master specifically singled out as his favorite. It would forever be a mystery why she would attract the Emperor's attention.​

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But she went from naive to cynical in only a couple more sentences, which nearly gave him whiplash. He cleared his throat awkwardly to hear the Emperor's sincerity regarded so skeptically.​

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"Well, it could hardly be untrue, if the Emperor granted you freedom in full view of his subjects..."​

 

[Kailyn]

A slow blink.

"Sure, if he'd granted me my freedom in front of...," voice trailed off. He hadn't. He'd even ordered the Captain of his guards out. But he had freed all the other slaves in her household publicly.

So perhaps...

Head shook. "If I asked for a public ceremony, he would surely grant it." After all, he'd granted her everything else she'd asked for and more she hadn't. Head peaked from around the canvas, eyes twinkling with amusement.

"And you think artists are interesting company, hm?"

 

[Gaheris]

Kailyn trailed off in a way that implied, no, there had not been any witnesses to Kailyn being freed. Which presented its own set of problems, foremost of which was that Gaheris had not intended to draw attention to such a fact.​

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His fault, really, for assuming Gerra would do things above board. The God Emperor was the board.​

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"Well, a ceremony might be, ah, unnecessary," he trailed off for a moment.​

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Gaheris could imagine her going to ask for such a thing, and then Gerra questioning where she had gotten such an idea. And she'd tell him, of course, because he doubted she had the instinct not to.​

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Maybe Gerra would oblige such a request. Maybe he would skin Gaheris and nail him to something. Possibly a wall. He was suddenly sweating for reasons other than the sunlight beating mercilessly down on him.​

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"You might have him draw up a, uh," he wanted to say deed of sale, but that was distasteful. "Certificate... Or something showing you have been freed... I imagine you're still marked. Such a thing would be necessary within the Empire, I imagine."​

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He had no idea how the Empire regulated its slave trade. It was beyond the scope of his office, insofar as the slaves remained alive.​

 

[Kailyn]

She shrugged. Amber eyes traveled down to her wrists. One had a trident tattoo and the other a sparrow. She was...marked as he said. She remembered being self-conscious about them and how Lani and Nym waved her fears away.

"I'm not worried about it," she said quietly.

She trusted Lord Gerra to keep his word and if he didn't? She trusted herself to get her out of a bad situation. She'd done it before.

Brush was set down with a final flourish.

The painting was quite good. No knots in his hair were shown. She stepped back, looking over her work closely, then waved the man over.

"Come have a look."

 

[Gaheris]

She wasn't worried about it. Which was good in the sense that it meant Kailyn wouldn't go asking questions and name-dropping Gaheris. Bad in the sense that trusting a God-Emperor who used implicit compulsion to get women to stick around was a terrible idea.​

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"Of course. You shouldn't be," he said, giving the corner of the courtyard a glance.​

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Once called over, Gaheris meandered to the other side of the easel. He had not been sure what to expect, but he opened his mouth in muted surprise when he saw it. He was no art student - the subtleties of composition and lighting were lost on him. But the work as a whole left him marveling.​

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Fuck, I'm gorgeous.​

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"Oh," he said, brushing aside an errant blonde lock. "That's good. That's very good."​

 

[Kailyn]

A hidden smile as she studied his reaction.

“Thank you,” she said quietly. “Yours to keep of course.” Dipping a small brush in a dark purple, she initialed the corner. Brush was set down.

“Perhaps one day you can show me the sites of Alliria.”

 

[Gaheris]

"Yes, indeed," Gaheris said, still studying the painting. He rubbed his jaw - which he now imagined to be unmistakably perfect thanks to this rendering. "That's the least I could do, really."​

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Mirrors had always been quite generous to him, but this was different for some reason. This was pure, distilled flattery. Packed up in a syringe and injected into him - like embalming fluid into a corpse.​

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His glanced at her now, "Have you considered doing this for a living? If that's not what you're already doing."​

 

[Kailyn]

“It’s more of a hobby at this point.” A quirk of her lips in his direction. “You don’t think this skill as paltry and nothing more than court entertainment?” An arch of one brow and a keen twinkle in her eyes.

She began cleaning the brushes off in a dish of water. Colors mixed to create a muddy color in the liquids - once pristine.

“For now I’m in charge of the Lord’s trade routes and relations of those routes. There is still mistrust and some bandits along the Northern mountains. I hope to strengthen ties so we lose less to vagrants and the like.”

Non-tax paying citizens.

 

[Gaheris]

"Painting? No," Gaheris shot her a look that could politely be described as unamused, "Using magic to pull fake objects from art? Yes. Of course."​

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For a moment he had forgotten the purpose of them even interacting, but now that she brought it up... Well, there was nothing about her training that could not be brought up tomorrow.​

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He regarded her skeptically for a moment. Good with numbers was one thing, but now the God-Emperor had put her in charge of trade? And here Gaheris thought that his impious thoughts often got the better of him. At least he didn't hand over entire government ministries to slave girls with pretty eyes.​

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Good way to keep them around, though. Saddle them with a stifling job that required them at the capital at all times. Free, sure. Free to work forever.​

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"That doesn't sound quite so expressive, but I suppose there are worse responsibilities."​

 

[Kailyn]

"Why Gaheris, there is nothing fake about them."

She smiled. Then her smile faltered.

"I don't mind. It lets me travel, at least, within the empire. Meet all sorts of folk." She'd met quite a few already. Brokered deals with the lawless. Probably members of the Red Guild.

She set the cleaned brushes to the side.

"Perhaps one day I will put in my letter of resignation and travel with my art supplies. Painter fire hire along the road. Who knows?" A twitch of her lips.

 

[Gaheris]

If an item disintegrates up to a few weeks after you pull it out of a painting, then yes, Gaheris would very much consider that a fake item. But he held his tongue, ostensibly because she didn't know any better. Something else he'd have to work on.​

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He smiled weakly, amused at the concept. "I wouldn't recommend it. The roads can be quite dangerous for lonesome artists."​

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Gnolls never gave the Red Guild caravans any trouble when Gaheris was traveling between the Cortosi Coast and Elbion. He imagined they wouldn't feel as reluctant when confronted with, say, a single painter.​

 

[Kailyn]

"Oh," a bemused expression on her face. An arch of a brow. Taking the canvas carefully from the easel, she handed it to Gaheris.

"What would you recommend then?"

A timid smile.

 

[Gaheris]

Gaheris started, lurching forward slightly as she handled the canvas. He did not like how it wobbled in the air as she took it from the easel - it looked unsteady, precarious. And nothing would break his heart more than to see his outrageously beautiful mug dashed on the stone floor.​

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"Careful," he muttered, one of his hands brushing Kailyn's as he took it.​

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He spoke from behind the painting he awkwardly held now, the picture of him facing out.​

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"You could join a guild, probably one of the larger ones in Alliria," Gaheris offered, "Most of the customers will come to you, and the ones who can't would probably arrange your travel."​