The Diviner

Moreover, he was the son and grandson of artists, and proud of it. “We’d just won the commission to make the tiles for the new palace at Shagarra,” he told Qamar. “But while we were there to plan it and take the dimensions, the Sheyqa came, and we were stranded, my father and I. It took us all spring to find any kind of armed resistance we could join—”

“I can well imagine. More qawah?” He poured from the pitcher Tanielo had brought. “So you found an army. Whose?”

“No one’s. At first there were only about fifty of us, then twice that, and then we found another group—they were from Qaysh—it was all very tangled, and everyone argued about where to go, except then we happened upon a troop of real soldiers from Andaluz. And now we’re here, and there are thousands of us!”

“We are on the same side, you know,” Qamar said.

“Are we? Who do you hate most?”

Qamar understood very well what he meant. The Sheyqa Nizhria was at the top of the list; once she was defeated, the Tza’ab would be next. And then the peoples of this land would all fall upon each other, and lay waste whatever they touched. He could stop this. He could show them how futile it all was. He would do it. Solanna had seen him old; he would succeed.

“Do you draw patterns or scenes?” Both figured in Grijalva tiles, designs and landscapes.

Bewildered by the abrupt change of subject, Jaqiano took a moment to reply. When he did, it was with pride bordering on arrogance. “I can do all of it, and more besides. I’ve been sketching the soldiers—”

“—and they encouraged you to do their individual portraits to take home,” Qamar murmured, “or to send home, just in case. Which is a thing nobody talks about, of course.”

“How did you know that? How do you know any of this?”

“If I told you that it’s necessary, all of it is necessary, you wouldn’t understand. So you have learned how to draw the human face and form. Are you any good?” He asked the question only for effect. He already knew the boy was talented. He would not be here otherwise. Acuyib had provided.

“If I had my sketchbook, I’d show you. The sentries took it. I was only making the drawings for—”

Qamar waited, hiding a smile. At length, when the boy said nothing more, he finished for him, “For the grand great tile wall that will tell the story of victory over the Sheyqa. You are ambitious. Tanielo!” he called. “Find the guards who found this young man, and restore to him his sketchbook!”

“At once, Sh—Qamar,” he amended hastily, for as adamant as Qamar had been about his title before, now he had given even stricter instructions that no one call him anything but his name.

Turning his attention back to the boy, he asked, “Do you mix your own glazes? Or perhaps the inks for your drawings?”

“I am an artist. There’s no more imagination goes into mixing colors than there is in boiling water.”

“I think you may be wrong about that.” He opened the case of inks and pulled out a bottle. “Have you ever seen this color, for instance? Or this?”

The boy was indeed an artist. His blue eyes lit with longing at the diversity of inks, and his fingers actually reached for them before he remembered they were not his. Not yet his, Qamar thought. Not quite yet.

“You may be interested in the recipes, Jaqiano, for when you create your depiction of victory.”

“Not just that—not just a single scene. I’ll do a whole wall, as you said, but it will be the whole battle, a series of images, each tile moving seamlessly into the next.”

Qamar remembered the beautiful garden of tiles his grandfather had ordered and the fountain that had not worked, and then had worked, and then had died once again. And the Haddiyat who had died in agony with the burning of a page.

Jaqiano mistook his silence for skepticism. “I can do it,” he stated. “I will do it.”

“I haven’t a single doubt that you will. But perhaps you will oblige me, do me a great favor.” He gave the boy a self-deprecating smile, a shrug. “Before you return to your fellow soldiers, would you be so kind . . . ?”

The portrait looked exactly like him. Not that he had expected anything else, but still—it was an extraordinary experience, looking into one’s own face. Nothing like a mirror, he discovered: when he felt his own brows arch and his own eyes widen with surprise, the portrait did not respond as a reflection would. And all the tiny flaws that inevitably distorted glass were not to be found here. It was his perfect face he saw. Perfect.

Jaqiano watched him react, a smug grin spreading across his face. He had reason for his arrogance. Each subtle black line that delineated face and body was a stroke of brilliance. Delicate washes of ink defined golden skin and dark eyes, the flush of blood in cheeks and lips, the threads of silver in black hair, the shadows that marked the bones of his face. These were Qamar’s eyes, dark and beautiful; these were his shoulders, his hands, down to the tiny scar left by a burning feather so many years ago. Down to the topaz leaf ring and the al-Gallidh pearl.

Yet there was more to the artist’s self-satisfaction than pride in his own skill. It was as if this young man with the not-quite-ugly face had, in replicating the beauty of another, taken some of that beauty unto himself. The perfection of this portrait could not exist without him. He could rightly claim a share in that perfection.

Equally fine was the rendering of Qamar’s plain white tunic, the brown trousers of lightweight wool. Feeling their softness against his body, he was convinced that a fingertip touched to their likenesses would feel just as soft. The gleam of polished leather boots was also taken from life, but the sash around his waist—white with green and glittering gold stripes—was entirely of Jaqiano’s doing, suggested by Qamar and interpreted by imagination.

There was no background to the portrait, not even the suggestion of the willow leaves that sheltered him. Only darkness. In all the long hours of the night that it had taken to complete the picture, the lamplight had not wavered, providing a steady soft glow. The work contained time, for it had taken time to make—yet there was no sense of time within it, no specific shadows that would mean morning or afternoon or evening.

Qamar stared at himself, and after the first shock, he realized he looked much older than he’d expected. He didn’t remember these lines radiating out from the corners of his eyes, the furrows of determination crossing his forehead. It was still a beautiful face, just not in the way he recalled it.

They were both exhausted, of course. Qamar poured out the last cold cups of qawah, and they sat with the picture lying atop the closed case of inks, looking at it in silence as they drank.

At last Qamar said, “You have done me a greater service than you can ever understand.”

Jaqiano glanced briefly at him, but seemed incapable of taking his gaze from his own work for more than a few moments. “Doing this . . . it was different from all the others. Your inks are supple enough that the lines nearly draw themselves with the pen. And the colors blend almost without effort.”

Recognizing the craving, Qamar smiled. “I have need of them yet, but once the battle is won, come back and I’ll give them to you. Poor enough payment for such work, but—”

“I accept,” he interrupted. “All of them? The whole case of inks?”

“All of them.” He set aside his cup and stretched. “And now I think you had best return to your people. Some sleep before dawn would not be a bad thing. Again, I thank you. And—Jaqiano, do try not to get yourself killed, won’t you? You’re worth far more than your ability to wield a spear.”

A blush stained the boy’s cheeks. “I’m not very good in battle, it’s true,” he confessed, low-voiced. “The first time I was in a fight, I—”

Qamar lifted a hand to stop him. “I fell off my horse and threw up. You can’t have done anything worse than that!” They traded grins, and Qamar finished, “Go, and give my compliments to your father—and to your mother, when you see her again, on having birthed such a son as you.”

“You won’t forget about the inks?”

“I won’t forget.”

When he was alone, Qamar unstoppered several bottles and picked up a fresh pen. With the portrait flat atop the green book, he began designing the border. Talishann after talishann, elegant and potent, gradually framing one side, then two, then three. He kept glancing into his own eyes, and smiling. He took up a finer pen and traced barely visible symbols into the subtle shadows on his clothing, entwined them in the lines of his sash. Only a little while until dawn, only a little while before he would be able to fulfill the mission with which Acuyib had entrusted him, for which he alone had the daring and ambition—