Shangxiang wan'Heshi (1/2)

There was a knock, then the door slowly opened. "Huangdi? The painter wei'Rang is here ..."

Shangxiang—Huangdi Shangxiang I of Orbis, born of the royal wan'Heshi line which had produced the Huanhd for the last century and a half—looked away from her son and nodded to the hall servant whose head peered from behind the massive doors of her outer parlor. "Set the water clock," she told the servant. "When it empties, bring Mister wei'Rang to me here." He touched clasped hands to forehead, glanced quickly at the Huanhdi's son, and vanished, the door clicking shut behind him.

Her son—the Huan Yong, who might one day, upon her death, become the Huanhd Yong III—had not moved. Usually the Huanhdi's parlor was crowded with supplicants, courtiers, and aristocrats: the wan'-and-shu' of Orbis. Today, they were alone. Yong was standing before a painting set on an easel near the west wall, bathed in sunlight. The Huan's appearance was regal: a gray-flecked beard carefully trimmed in the current fashion, like a thin band glued to his chin; straight hair combed and oiled and arranged to minimize the alarming thinness at the crown of his skull; a long nose, deep-set dark eyes, and a nearly geometrically squared and jutting jaw, all features he'd inherited from his long-dead father. The resemblance still made Shangxiang occasionally startle when she looked at him. His body, molded by days spent hunting in the saddle, was that of an aging warrior—in his youth, the Huan had ridden in the Patrol along with the other aristocrats of Orbis. Despite the long decades of order under the Huangdi, despite her popular title as "Peacemeaker," the Creator of Peace, there were still the occasional border skirmishes and squabbles, and Yong fancied himself quite the military man. Shangxiang, who had seen the reports from the Patrol, had an entirely different opinion of her son's prowess.

Yong's head canted slowly as he regarded the painting.

"This is truly marvelous, Mamaqin," he said. His voice belied his appearance; it was reedy and unfortunately high. That was another trait he'd inherited from his long-dead father. "He's a handsome thing to look at," Shangxiang's own mamaqin had said long decades ago when she'd informed her daughter that a marriage had been arranged for her. "Just keep him from talking too much, or he'll completely destroy the illusion ..." She wondered if other mamaqins elsewhere said the same of Yong to their daughters.

"I'd heard that this wei'Rang was the master among masters," Yong continued, "but this ..." He reached out with a thin index finger that stopped just short of the surface of the canvas. "I feel that if I touched the figures I would feel warm flesh and not cold brush strokes. It's easy to see how some say that he uses sorcery to create his paintings." He paced in front of the canvas. "Look, their eyes seem to follow me. I almost expect their heads to move."

She had to agree with him that the painting was superbly crafted, so lifelike as to be startling. Three strides long, half that high, caught in an exquisite, filigreed gold frame as wide as two hands, the painting depicted a peasant family: a couple with their two daughters and a son. The wife and husband, dressed in stained linen with plain overcoats, sat behind a rough-hewn table laden with a simple dinner, a cloth dusted with bread crumbs covering the planks. An infant daughter sat on the mamaqin's lap, a son on the papaqin's, while a female toddler played with a puppy underneath the table. Shangxiang had seen paintings that appeared realistic from a distance, but the wei'Rang ... No matter how closely she approached it, no matter how she leaned in and peered at the surface, nowhere could she see the mark of a brush. The only texture was that of the canvas on which the pigments rested: it was as if the painting were indeed a window into another world. More details within the scene revealed themselves as you came closer and closer, until the varnished surface of the painting itself stopped you. Shangxiang knew (because she had looked) that if you examined the wimple on the mamaqin's head, that you could not only see the texture of the blue cloth and how it had been wrapped and folded, but you could also note where a rent had been repaired and sewn shut with thread of a slightly different hue. You could see how she was just beginning to glance down at her daughter in her lap, her attention beginning to move away from the viewer as her daughter's hand clutched at the hem of her blouse. The way the blouse bunched around the infant's pudgy, fragile fingers, the acne scars dimpling the young mamaqin's cheeks . . .

This was a true moment frozen and captured. It was difficult to be in the same room as this painting and not have it dominate your attention, not demand that you stare at it in hopeless fascination and examine its endless wealth of detail, to be drawn into its spell.

Sorcery indeed.

"Yes, Yong," Shangxiang said impatiently. "I can see why you would have recommended wei'Rang to me. He certainly has talent, even if the rumors about him are disturbing." Neither the painting nor the painter were why she'd asked Yong to come to her. She wanted to tell him what she'd just learned: Xiang Cao wan'Cao of Qinghai, alone of all the leaders of the countries that made up the Satellites, had declined Shangxiang's invitation to her Jubilee Celebration: a decided breach of etiquette, certainly, and knowing wan'Cao, a deliberate affront. More worrisome, he had placed the Qianghai army on maneuvers at the same time—not near the eastern borders by Jiangsu, but close to the Qiantang River and Orbis. She'd already sent a sharply-worded communique to Luban wan'Cao, her niece and the Xiangi of Qinghai. She knew Luban would pass along her displeasure to her husband. After the incident with the Mategician in Haixi, two months ago now, this was a disturbing development.

And there was the other, pressing matter that seemed to be an eternal subject between the two of them. But Yong, as was his wont, seemed uninterested in state affairs and politics. He was already talking before she'd finished.

"Indeed, Mamaqin. I can't wait to see what he does. It will be a fine official portrait for your Jubilee—"

"Yong," Shangxiang interrupted sharply, and her son's chiseled, handsome jaw shut with an abrupt snap of strong white teeth—good teeth were another, and luckier, family trait. "There will be another announcement before the end of the Jubilee."