Watson, Ian - Black Current 03 Read Online Free Page B

           Till Tam sniffed
the air anxiously. "It's so dry here," he said, more to himself
than to me.
                 "Yes? Pecawar's near the
desert."
                 Tam's feet scuffed the dust. His eyes
assessed a warehouse built of sandstone blocks which we were passing.
                 "Dry. Even the river was
dusty."
                 "What's wrong, Tam? It's a
different place, that's all. Aladalia isn't the whole world. If you'd wedded,
you'd have had to—"
                 "I wedded my art."
                 "Which you can
practise here as easily as. ..." I faltered. For in that moment I
had seen what he was seeing.
                 "Clay," he murmured.
"A potter needs clay. And not just any sort of mud, either! I need kaolin
clay and petuntse clay. Kaolin is decomposed granite, and petuntse is decayed
feldspar which melts into glass. That's if I want to craft real porcelain. . .
. For soft paste- ware I'd only need chalk, white clay and frit. But frit's
made up of gypsum, salt, soda and quartz sand. Anyhow, pasteware scratches easy
and picks up grease marks. . . . And if I just wanted to craft faience or
majolica, I'd still need the right sort of soft earth, wouldn't I? It's so arid
here. All dust and sand. I hadn't realized."
                 "Whatever you need, the guild
will get."
                 Tam laughed. "What, tubs of the
right kinds of clay all the way from Aladalia?"
                 "Why
not?"
                 "They'd probably dry out.
Anyway, it isn't the sort of stuff you buy in any old quayside shop. It has to
be sought. A potter should know his clay like his own flesh, or else he
botches. He turns out second-best that cracks and crazes."
                 "Can't you write to friends in
Aladalia, saying exactly what you need?"
                 "And wait weeks and weeks, and
meantime change my plans? No, a potter should work with the local clay that
he's in touch with." His shoe grooved the surface of the street. "Dust and sand all around me. Oh well, I guess I can
try my hand at brickwork. Why not? I'll be a big fish in a pond that's
otherwise empty." He grinned lamely.
                 But of course I didn't yet know the
half of it; and it was Peli who got Tam to explain fully over dinner, which we
three ate privately that evening in my own chamber.
                 Just before the meal was served, he
presented me with his gift: a bundle of straw tied with twine. Within was a
mass of chicken feathers. And nestling inside those ... a
fragile translucent white bowl.
                 A bowl about the
size of Tam's hand. The sort of bowl that ought only
to hold clear water with a single green leaf afloat. Or only air. There
was already something floating at the bottom of the bowl beneath the glaze: a
dark violet fleuradieu, last flower of deepening winter. For a moment I thought
this was the very bloom which I had sent to Tam by way of goodbye. But no; it
was painted exquisitely on the porcelain.
                 "Why, Tam! It's beautiful. No,
it's more than beautiful. Did you
really craft this?"
                 "Who else? It's part of a series showing all the hues of the farewell flower from
summer's powder-blue to the midnight blue of year's end."
                 "How did you manage it?"
                 He shuffled his big feet and twisted
his knobbly hands about. Lana had finished setting out some lacquer food boxes
for us. She said, "Better fetch a brush and pan for the feathers, hadn't
I?"
                 "No. Just leave us, will
you?"
                 When she'd gone, Tam said, "How
indeed? Well, when you sent that flower, Yaleen, something altered in me. This
emblem . . . purified my art; enhanced it. It's only a little while since;
it's a big change, I'd say."
                 "A breakthrough?"