"Michelle West - The Augustine Painters" - читать интересную книгу автора (West Michelle)

head, although he sat in a rickety chair half a wide, wide room away.Old habits, foundling habits.

It irritated him.

"You are hardly a child," he barked, "to be remonstrated with a simple slap."

She lifted her head, straightening the line of her shoulder, her cheeks pink.

"I'm not asking you to paint the battle of the gates of Augustine; I'm asking you to paint a picture of a
tired, old man."

She shook her head, which was as much of a lie as she dared; such a task would be beyond most of the
apprentices of the Augustine Painters.

And especially this one.

"Camille. Look at me."

Obedient, she raised her head.

"In a week's time," he told her, the gruffness in his voice gentling, "You will be asked to Paint the battle
of the gates of Augustine."

"P-pardon?"

He did not return to the confines of his favorite chair; instead, he paced a half circle in front of it. The
floorboards in the apprentices' studio were worn with just such pacing; it was part of the ceremony of his
art. But the floorboards in the west tower studio had obviously seen little use; they retained no memory of
his circular passage.

"You heard me."

"But—"

He rolled his eyes. "We will all be asked to Paint that battle. Have you paid attention to nothing that's
happened beyond these walls in the last five years?"

Camille lifted a brush as her Master spoke. It was an old brush, its handle of bone, thin and hollow. Her
Master had cast it aside because the strands of hair were bent in such a way that they could not longer
produce a clean line—but although he had cavalierly ordered her to burn it, for the brushes of the Master
Painters were never merely discarded, she had kept it for her own.

It amused him. He did not understand that these muddied lines fascinated her; that she could use those
stray hairs, avoiding the bulk of the brush itself, to paint the thinnest of lines, the evocation of color. Her
art and his were not the same.

"Yes, sir."The battle at the gates."But that means…"

All impatience left his face; she liked it better than the gravity that settled there in its place. "Yes. He is
coming. And if the Augustine Painters are not up to their task…"