The Merchant Guild’s great hall was a functional room — high-ceilinged for ventilation, wide-floored for commerce. Its proportions were designed for the movement of goods and people and the negotiations that accompanied both rather than for any aesthetic purpose.
Tonight, with the guild’s hanging frames erected along the walls, long display tables running down the center, and the evening light coming through the high windows, it was almost something beautiful.
Almost.
Beltran stood just inside the entrance and took stock of the room — quickly, comprehensively, a soldier’s habit. He noted the exits. He noted the density of people — perhaps sixty, perhaps seventy — the guild’s membership, their guests, and the diplomatic delegation distributed through the space in clusters. He noted Vessa near the far wall, already in conversation with someone.
The local textile work hung along the northern wall. He walked slowly beside the frames, hands behind his back.
He was three steps past the third frame from the end when he stopped.
It was not the most immediately arresting piece; there was something near the entrance in a saturated crimson that had drawn several eyes. This one was smaller, the size of an open book, hung simply, not announcing itself.
He turned back.
Green. That was the first thing — a green so specific that something in him went still. A color that seemed to hold the light. Something between blue and green and something else, something dense and… vital.
There was sky at the top — pale blue-grey, a spring sky not yet decided on rain — and earth at the bottom, the browns of turned ground. But the green…
It stole his breath. Not all at once. Slowly.
Behind his back, his right thumb pressed against his left knuckle — the small, private gesture of a man arriving at a place he knew well.
Because he knew this place. He knew this color. This green. The Blooming-Month-green of—
“—winter wheat,” he said to himself — and heard, simultaneously: “—weld and woad.”
He blinked.
Then: “Ah-ah—” while he turned to say, “Pardon—”
He looked at the woman who stood beside him — tall, very tall, rich skin, bright colors. Dark eyes. In the white of the left one, a small dark freckle.
She was smiling, or beginning to, the expression arriving like daybreak.
She began to laugh. So did he.
Adaeze studied the man beside her with fresh eyes.
The Conte was as she remembered from the Orvetti gathering — tall (though with the wrap on her head she rivaled his height), olive-skinned and dark-haired, those saffron-gold eyes. The scar along his jaw was fainter in this light.
He shifted on his feet, a quarter turn toward her. “Apologies,” he said politely, voice quiet and deep. “I was thinking aloud. What was it you were saying?”
Adaeze smiled. “No need for apologies. I was also speaking my thoughts.”
His eyes crinkled lightly in response, and she gestured toward the tapestry.
“An interesting piece, I think.” She looked at it, at the cool green that captured the eye: not yellow-plus-blue but something of its own. “I have been learning about local dye techniques. I suspect it is weld layered under woad that produces this stunning color.”
The Conte’s eyes narrowed in interest as he leaned closer to the piece. “I grow both those crops on my land,” he said, “but I never knew they could produce something so... true.”
The smile he gave her then was small and warm and changed the texture of his face.
She mapped this expression for slightly longer than polite — and then corrected with a smile and a nod at the tapestry.
“What was it that you said?” she asked. “The thought you spoke aloud—if I may.”
The Conte’s lips parted as if surprised, then closed.
“Ah,” he said, then turned toward the display. “It… I was thinking that I know this field—” He glanced at her and then back at the fabric. “—or one very much like it. This is the specific green of winter wheat at exactly this time of year.
“When it first sprouts in early spring, it is a more… muted green, like the olive fruit. A week or two from now, it will deepen and warm, and then turn to gold before harvest.
“But here, in between, the winter wheat is—” One of his hands lifted to hover over the green. “—this. This breathtaking… vital… unreasonable… Oh.”
He stepped back abruptly, hands firmly behind his back again, posture straight.
Adaeze had been so absorbed in the scene he was painting that she blinked.
“Apologies,” he said with a slight bow.
Adaeze smiled.
“No, there is no need to apologize,” she said. “It was a lovely vision. It makes me want to see it, this winter wheat of yours.”
The Conte opened his mouth. Nothing came out.
Movement behind him drew Adaeze’s eyes, and a moment later he turned to follow her gaze.
The former contessa was crossing toward them in a purposeful diagonal.
“Beltran,” she said when she arrived, touching the Conte’s arm briefly. Her eyes — pale, clear green — flicked to the tapestry and back, and then to Adaeze. “And Envoy Okafor. I’m glad you could make it.”
“It is a joy.” Adaeze meant it. “The guild does excellent work.”
“They do.” The satisfaction in the former contessa’s voice was the kind that came from months of work rather than a single evening. “Is Prince Amadou here as well?”
“Ah, no,” Adaeze said with an apologetic smile. “He arranged his beadwork display and departed early.”
“Beads.” The former contessa’s gaze flicked to the Malendan side of the room.
For a moment, she seemed to be somewhere else.
Then she was back, eyes shifting between them. “I don’t believe the two of you have been properly introduced.”
“Ah—” The Conte straightened somehow further.
Adaeze smiled. “No, we have not.”
“Well then,” the former contessa said. “Envoy Okafor, may I present Conte Beltran of Casorio—my former husband, yes—” She delivered this with the air of someone who had been asked about it frequently, and the Conte glanced at her with an expression that was more amused than surprised. “—and more importantly, a dedicated landlord, an avid student of the agricultural sciences, and a man who has thoroughly earned his title.”
The Conte’s bow was proper, polite — but his eyes remained fixed on Adaeze. “I am honored to make your acquaintance,” he said.
Adaeze’s lips parted slightly. He held the bow — and her gaze — until she nodded.
“Beltran,” the former contessa continued, “this is Envoy Adaeze Okafor of Malendi—cousin to Prince Amadou—and a master weaver, scholar of the textile arts, and advisor to the Malendan ambassador.”
“I am glad our paths have crossed,” Adaeze said to the Conte.
He nodded in response. His eyes still did not move from hers.
Vessa Selvano looked at them for a moment.
“Well,” she said, “do enjoy the rest of the evening. Find me if you have questions.”
And then she was gone.
Beltran blinked, his gaze flicking from the dark eyes with the dark freckle to Vessa’s retreating form. He looked back at the woman — at Envoy Okafor beside him.
“If you will excuse me for just a moment,” he said with a slight bow.
She nodded. “Ehn—of course.”
He caught Vessa at the edge of the room, before she had fully rejoined the current of the event.
“Vessa.”
She turned. “Mm?”
“That piece,” he said. “Is it for sale?”
“That’s up to you, Beltran,” she said with a tilted smile. “It was made for you.”
She squeezed his arm once and walked away into the room.
Beltran stood at the edge of the gathering, watching Vessa move through the crowd. He released a sigh that was almost a laugh, the corner of his mouth lifting.
He went back to his tapestry.
Envoy Okafor had not moved from the display while he was gone — had in fact moved closer to it, her head tilted, looking at something in the center of the piece.
“There is something here,” she said to him. “In the green. I noticed it when you left. See, if you look at it from this angle—” She shifted slightly to the left, tilting her head, and he followed her lead without thinking.
From here, the green did something different — or perhaps it was not the color itself but the texture of it. A slight sheen ran through the center of the piece, irregular, almost like a current, as though the cloth itself were moving.
“Ehen,” she said softly. “These are weft floats. The weaver let the weft thread pass over several warp threads without interlacing — here, and here.” She indicated with one finger, not touching the cloth. “It changes how the light falls on the surface. From straight on you feel it but you cannot see it. From the side—”
“It moves,” he said.
“Ehn,” she agreed.
“The whole field breathing once.”
She looked at him. He looked at the tapestry.
“I tried to describe it to someone, once,” he said, “the wheat at this height, the way it moves, the color of it.” A laugh left him in a breath.
Envoy Okafor’s lips quirked. “They did not understand it?”
“No,” Beltran said. His eyes softened. “But still, she commissioned this for me. A gift.”
The Envoy looked at him, then back to the tapestry.
“It is very fine work,” she said. “The selvedge edges are perfect. The color sequence in the earth—look, from here—it is not one color. It is four, beaten so tightly together they read as one from a distance.” She leaned slightly forward. “Someone spent a long time on this.”
Beltran looked where she was pointing. At the earth tones he had not examined before — the layers of it, the ochre into sienna into something darker, the ground of his field rendered as a thing with depth and history rather than a single note.
“I would not have seen any of that,” he said.
“Of course not,” she said. “That is what I am for.”
The corner of his mouth moved.
The room continued around them — voices, the clink of glass, the guild’s evening proceeding smoothly and fruitfully.
Across the hall, Vessa Selvano had found the Malendan display and was standing in front of an intricately beaded chest panel. She had been there for some time.
Signore Damiano, who had been hovering, translating, and supplying context all evening, looked at Envoy Okafor and the Conte of Casorio. He hesitated, then moved instead to join the small, still figure of the former contessa next to the prince’s work.
The Envoy’s hands were clasped loosely in front of her, her gaze moving over the tapestry.
The Conte’s hands were clasped firmly behind him, right thumb pressed to his left knuckle.
“About this ‘weft float’ technique,” he said. “How does the weaver decide where to place them?”
The Envoy looked at him, and her expression settled.
She began.
Chapter Thirteen
The Conte told Signora Sera the day after the guild exposition, which meant that by the following morning the entire staff had heard the news.
Image
Giuseppe Barberi, Design for Windows in a Hall or Gallery, 1746–1809 (public domain)