A Portrait of Loss - Chapter 3

I stared down, wondering where to begin.

Not where to end. I had a clear vision of what I sought to accomplish. But the challenge was ever in that translation, from celestial perfection to the movements of the mortal brush.

Those first few strokes were always the most difficult. Sometimes one painted over them entirely, the bones of a work shifting like the departing tide as a new shape arose from flawed design. But that was a rare thing, and not a desired outcome either. Normally, the first few strokes set the shape of the final piece. Blocked out volumes that would later resolve into shapes and silhouettes.

With Arthur Ficot, I began with time.

He'd first seen my face not more than two hours ago. I had no need to tarnish any memory that stretched back further than that.

It was difficult to describe a painter's work. The shape and process of it. We began as mundane artists did, learning to break down the impressions of our senses into shape and color. To faithfully reproduce what we truly saw, rather than the scattered and dishonest impressions our minds relied upon to quickly process a scene. But the skein of unearthly glass I wove around Arthur's body and mind bore even less resemblance to mundane painting than the my glass of Proletariat's Tears bore to a proper ale.

My brush often kissed his flesh, but for every stroke that stained his skin, I placed three more upon the air around him, watching my chroma disappear into a space that was not space. There are very good reasons why most serious painters first enhance their own eyes. Works like these are outright impossible, without sense that are more than real.

With the bounds of my work set, I next moved to the faces. Even with my painted eyes, I could not truly see what I was working with. A skilled painter could perform many miracles, but reading memories like a book was not among them. Instead, I focused on where the faces should be. I'd been with Arthur for the entirely of the period I worked. I knew roughly when our conversation had begun, where he'd been looking. I was liberal with my chroma, daubing and smearing over his memories. I didn't wipe the time away entirely, but instead twisted it to such a degree that his mind would need to reconstruct the narrative that bound those broken moments together whole cloth. I hoped when he awoke, it would read as a plausible consequence of an overindulgence in alcohol and hot blood, with perhaps a small helping of head trauma to boot.

This much foreign chroma would be worse than a hangover anyway, so that part of his recollections should at least match his circumstances. It was not an exact science. I'd worked with memories before, my old palette, my blue and white especially, had possessed applications in the area. But those had been softer changes, tinting old wounds with peace and catharsis.

Outright erasing details had been beyond me. My fingers tingled, as the colorless chroma that dripped from them seemed to tense with anticipation. As if it wished to show me that it could do so much more than merely blur, if given more lead to run free.

I set my brush aside. This would do for now. I'd tarried on the street too long already.

Arthur had business cards in one of his waistcoat's inner pockets. His studio was not on the Rue Saint-Bernard, but Avenue Duquesne was almost as respectable. He did primarily Portraits de Stase apparently. A little déclassé, but respectable, steady, work. Nobody wanted to grow old, after all.

I heaved the unconscious painter up over my shoulder, and began to drag him home.

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Arthur Ficot was not a man accustomed to affairs of honor. He did not stalk the streets of Clairmorne in search of bloody grievance.

And yet, even the gentlest and most even tempered of men can be pushed too far. The young Painter who darkened the door of the Graven Stag that night had wild eyes, slitted things painted red as blood, and an unrestrained tongue. When the painter mocked Arthur for the portraits he painted to pay his rent, Arthur easily brushed off his words. But the viper sensed blood beneath his reserve, and pressed on, throwing out accusations until he hit a vein. Every man has something he will not suffer to see slandered. Chimeristes and Realistes are natural enemies, but this was not a matter of opposites. That night, the man with the eyes of a snake did not enter that bar as an Artist, but as a predator.

Arthur would just have to count himself as lucky, that all the monster took was some of his chroma.

I winced. It was weak. Light on details. A scrap of diegetic doggerel that I hoped would be sufficient when piled on top of Arthur's owned scrambled recollections.

I'd never been half as gifted a Writer as a Painter.

I folded the scrap of paper up all the same, and placed it in his pocket next to the business cards. Sometimes, when your skills were insufficient, knowing your audience could make all the difference. I didn't really know Arthur of course, but our short acquaintance had suggested some very general lines I might follow.

All that remained was to make the words I'd written true, at least in part.

When I raised my brush this time, I did not call upon my own powers.

We had many names for the strange talents that separated Painters from ordinary men. Chroma. Innate Hues. Immortal Pigments. The gift of color. We had so many names for them. They were one of the most foundational pieces of our profession, and also one of the most mystical, and poorly understood.

I knew more than most about their mysteries, which was simply a prouder way of saying I knew precious little.

Some men and women were seemingly born with them, their talents bursting forth as they approached maturity. Others studied for years or decades to acquire a single shade, often a lesser derivative of their one of their master's. They bore relation to the mortal pigments we worked with, but were not determined by them. Men who worked most often with gradations of light were more prone to awakening shades of black or white, but seeking to attain a particular color was largely considered a fool's game. Some colors were common, characteristic of a particular family or lineage. Others were utterly unique, seen once and then never again. They defied categorization at every turn, and yet men tried to pin them down all the same.

There were great hefty tomes that listed them. The best even had swatches, painted by the wielders themselves, though few save luminaries ever had the privilege of browsing those records. But despite their mystery, we had pieced out patterns and commonalities over the years. Greens could be verdant, or toxic. But rarely were they capable of making an object weightless, or inspiring those who witnessed them. Blacks concealed or destroyed, or amplified other colors. Reds were among the most versatile. They could comfort or burn, both literally and with emotion; or do a thousand other things.

Every Painter had to discover on their own exactly what their colors were capable of. But every color was useful. Coveted. We all wanted more, because every new color pushed further the bounds of our arts, the limits of what we were capable of.

There was however, one truth about colors that was not common knowledge. Especially among the uninitiated. They were not inexhaustible. Yet, they were not finite either. How our colors were used, and and how we lived, influenced the quantity of Immortal Pigment we could command. My own losses had been sudden and drastic, rare even in light of the tragedy I had suffered. But it was not unheard if for painters who used their colors profligately to find them begin to dry up.

What I was about to do to Arthur could go much the same way, if the spirit was fragile.

Like most things that a man could create, chroma could be stolen. Taken, by force or guile. It would not take root in me as it had in him, and come to replenish itself. But I would command it for a time.

The only question was which color I would take. Red. Green. Or black.

It was not black. My colorless sorrow had destruction more than covered, and was proving useful for subterfuge as well. I'd discarded my long serving shortsword on the walk back. Merely channeling my new chroma through it for a few moments had left it pitted and warped. It was little wonder the corrosive power had made short work of Arthur's goblin élan. Chroma always had stronger effects on other paintings then it did on more mundane substances.

That left red, and green. I was leaning green. I had little understanding of his red, he'd not visibly made use of it in our short scuffle. But his green seemed like it exerted a stabilizing or resistive effect. It was the green of ancient woods untouched by man, a color that seemed meant to outlast lifetimes.

Despite our best efforts, there was no unified system of evaluating the quality of one's chroma. But everyone could see that some colors were better than others, and Arthur's green struck me as by far and away the most valuable piece of his pallete.

I'd been deep in thought, during my walk home with Arthur's unconscious body. My poor choices this eve had left me in a pensive mood. I'd sworn I'd make better decisions come tomorrow. And yet, as the churches of Clairmorne had begun to ring in midnight, and the dawn of a new day, I'd made one final terrible choice.

It would probably kill me. Attempting it had killed dozens of Painters across the centuries. Tens of thousands of other men and women, albeit at significant remove, since one could arguably attribute the Revolution to one such attempt.

But it'd hardly been a choice at all, really. It was that, or vengeance. And I hardly had any notion of who I would take vengeance upon.

I would bring her back. No matter the cost.

And Arthur Ficot's green was the first thing I would need to do it. Rare indeed was the masterpiece done in a single color after all.

My brush hovered over his eye, a hair's breadth from his cornea. I'd never done this before. I'd campaigned against allowing the government to do it to convicted criminals. Clarisse and I had once spent an evening arguing about whether it was greater crime than rape.

All these arguments buried in the depths of memory felt bloodless, academic, compared to my need. I did not have decades to cultivate new colors, if they ever returned at all. I'd made my decision. I would do worse, if it were needed to see it through.

My brush plunged into Arthur's eye.

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I was awoken by the sound of cursing.

"Putain du merde! That snake faced bastard! If I ever see him again, the police will be the least of his worries. Pulling a gun in a duel between painters! I'll see the honorless cur skinned for that!"

His voice trailed off.

"Fuck." He groaned, much quieter now. "My head."

Ugh. I sympathized, though my back ached far worse. I was too old to be dragging men back home after a night of excitement. Arthur was not exactly portly, but I was certainly out of practice. My own lack of sleep did not improve the matter. Maybe I should have kept him under until I woke up.

I groaned in answer, from my position against the wall. Both of us were sprawled in the kitchen,

"What! Who's there!" Arthur shouted, immediately wincing at the sound of his own voice. He flopped over, too incapacitated to rise

"Good morning, monsieur." I ground out. "Where... Where am I? It's so..."

"Where are you? You're in my..." Arthur trailed off, thinking.

The moment of truth. Would my inelegant work take root in his scrambled mind?

"You're in my house." He finished. "But how did I get here? The last thing I remember..."

He trailed off again.

"I must've carried you, sir." I prompted.

"Must you have?"

"Your leg, sir."

Arthur looked down at the blood staining the crushed green velvet of his trousers.

"Ah. Yes. Thank you."

"I think I... Found you? In the street?" I said, feigning confusion. "I must admit I thought you dead at first, the way you laid there. But I cannot remember why I did not call upon the police. I had certainly been drinking, before I stumbled upon you."

Arthur winced. Dueling was, strictly speaking, illegal. Even among artists. I let his mind concoct its own explanations for the gaping holes in my story. The script seemed to have taken. He'd not suspect me so long as I believed he knew who had committed those crimes against his person. Especially not with my sword at the bottom of the Ardèche and my pistol temporarily stashed in one of his neighbor's gardening beds.

"I believe I have been discourteous, monsieur..."

"Alexandré Boulanger, sir." I lied. Ugh. That one was terrible. And I'd used the start of the alphabet twice. I was clearly not at my best this morning.

"I am Arthur Ficot, painter. I believe we would both prefer concluding this conversation over a mug of tea."

"I would appreciate that greatly, Master Ficot."

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"It was like something out of a tale, Master Ficot." I let a little tremble slip into my voice, the uncertainty of a man who knows his business, but has found himself far our of his depth, confronted with our strange world for the first time. "I though the puddle was blood at first, that you'd dragged yourself free of it. I apologize again, for making use of your clothing. I think I feared my own to be rather unsuitable for bandaging wounds, dirty as it was. Is."

"Please, my good man, do not denigrate your deeds. I might not be alive without your kindness. Biscuit?"

I took the offered biscuit and filled my mouth instead of responding. Despite his words, I could tell he suspected me. Not as the man who waylaid him, but as a confederate perhaps. I certainly was a suspicious character.

"You are new in town, you said?"

"Not new-new, Master Ficot. Some months, I've been here now."

"And how are you finding our fair city?"

I feigned a wince.

"If you'll excuse my forthrightness, I've found it hard going. It's no kind place for a man with light pockets. I'd thought for find work as a mason or porter, but nobody seems to be hiring. I know something about the former trade, but all the jobs seem to go to men who know somebody."

Arthur's eyes lit up.

"Well, I daresay I might be able to help you with that, Monsieur Boulanger."

"I'd appreciate that mightily, Master Ficot." I said, pushing up the rustic accent a little. I'd gotten pretty good at it, over the years. "You'll find I'm no shirker or swindler. I might not be as young as I once was, but my back's still more'n strong enough for a good day's labor. Why, I carried you I did."

"Yes." Arthur said dryly. "I do suppose you did, Monsieur Boulanger."

Gods I hated that name already. Why hadn't I prepared a second false name before I needed it? If Arthur turned out to be my path back into society gatherings, I might be stuck with it for a while. Entering as an artist would work in a pinch, but snagging a job as one of the help would be far more convenient for my purposes. I'd need a well prepared canvas, and other colors.

Still, I'd guessed right, he did want to keep me close. He probably had another élan or contrainte he might call upon, something more stealthy than that goblin. He'd wait for me to let my guard down, then have it tail me looking for the snake-eyed man who didn't exist.

As Arthur began to regale me with tales of his influence in the city, and examples of the sort of work he might connect me to, I fell back into thought. It was easy enough to nod along, play the hungover hick out of his depth.

There was one thing that was still bothering me, drawing my attention a like piece of sinew stuck between one's teeth. Arthur was a Realiste. He wore the emblem proudly, and was mortally offended when I mocked him for the worst excesses of his tradition. Realistes painted from life. At their best, they memorialized the transient and ineffable. Flowers and sunsets that would never fade, captured forever on canvas. Overpainting that allowed men and women to retain some facet of the vitality and the beauty of youth even into their fading years. Mondaines that one could dive into, retreat from the world without losing oneself in a Chimeriste's fever dream. At their worst, they destroyed the very subjects they sought to capture, pinning them forever with pigment, as healthy and vital as a schoolboy's bug collection.

And yet, Arthur Ficot had painted an élan of a goblin.

I'd travelled further than most, and I was pretty sure those were not real. A tale to chastise misbehaving children. Was there more to him than I'd first assumed? Or more to the world than I'd ever known?

Had he found some musclebound midget and decided he'd look better green? Unlikely.

The thought stuck in my craw. I had no reason to care. It was not relevant to my goal. And yet, I did. It was a piece out of place in my understanding of the world, and it irked me.