Blue and Gold Read Free Page A

yourself whenever she came to visit, back at Elpis—”
    “Yes, all right.”
He was actually blushing. “I knew I didn’t have a hope in hell.”
    “No,” I said, “you
didn’t.”
    “She never liked
you much either,” he said, and then realised what had just slipped past the
gate of his teeth, and looked wretched. I smiled, to show it was all right. It
wasn’t, but he was doing me a favour.
    “She liked you,
though,” I lied. “Not that way, but she liked you. Told me so, several times.”
    A light came on in
his eyes. “Really?”
    I nodded. “Thought
you looked sensitive,” I said. “Misunderstood.”
    “Is that right?”
he said, in a sort of stupid voice, and I nodded again. Actually, the only time
I ever mentioned him to her, she said, “Who?”
    *
    I spent most of the night drifting
around Coppergate, too scared to go in a bar out of the cold or crawl in a
doorway. I walked up and down, trying to look like I was on my way somewhere.
Fortunately, the people in that part of town can practically smell trouble and
keep well out of the way of anybody who looks like he’s in it. I think I ended
up on the steps of the Nika Fountain, along with a couple of crying drunks and
an elderly streetwalker who’d given up trying for the night. At one point, I
tried to remember all thirty-six of Zeuxis’ propositions of paradigmatic
symmetry, but I only got twenty-eight of them, and knowing I couldn’t simply
drop in to the library in the morning and look up the other eight made me burst
into tears. One of the drunks offered me his bottle, which I’m ashamed to say I
accepted. It was empty, of course.
    Round about dawn,
I knew from experience, the watch makes a tour of Nika Square and arrests
anyone who can’t get out of the way, so I got up and headed back to Astyages’
place, taking my time. No sign of any scuttlehats but plenty of watch. I was
sure they were going to pull me in, but they walked right past me, which made
me wonder if Phocas had spoken to the City Prefect. One less thing to worry
about if he had, but I couldn’t know that for sure. I made myself slow down,
dawdle, the way I’d seen drunks and beggars to every day of my life, but
suddenly I couldn’t quite call to mind the fine nuances of how they walk, how
they stand, how their heads droop from their shoulders.
    Astyages was
already up and working when I got there. He likes to do his fancy penmanship in
the early morning, when the light comes in through his window just so. He was
hard at work on a W when I got there. Amazing what you can do with a simple
everyday consonant if you’ve got the skill and imagination. He’d turned it into
an amazing double-crested wave, with a little ship bobbing desperately on the
middle peak. If you wanted to, you could see that as transmuting base material
into gold, though if you ask me, it’s pushing it.
    “Green,” I said.
“Since when is the sea green?”
    He gave me a
filthy look. “For three bits,” he said, “the sea’s green.”
    I grinned at him.
Blue is, after all, impossible. Can’t be done. To get blue, you have to go all
the way to Ges Eschatoi, buy a thumb-sized slab of lapis lazuli for the price
of a good farm, trudge all the way back here, over the mountains and across the
desert, grind it up in a pestle and mortar and add spirits of earth and gum.
People I know in the painting trade reckon blue is proof positive of Nature’s
nasty sense of humour. Blue sky, blue sea, and who the hell can afford to pay
for realism? And even if you’ve got a ridiculously wealthy customer who’s
prepared to fork out for the best, it’s still only background.
    “Letter for you,”
he said.
    I was stunned.
“Already?”
    “Royal courier,”
Astyages replied, pretending to concentrate on his W. “About an hour ago. It’s
on the table, there, next to the glue-pot.”
    *
    Phocas to
Saloninus, greetings.
    It’s all right.
It was an accident. Well of course it was. I’ve known you for what, ten