Abursa had told the truth. The troupe had a spare tent and blankets that became mine before the afternoon was out. It was even large enough to fit a second person. Not that Thesil seemed grateful when we laid down to sleep that night.
Thesil was still sleeping when I woke. Her thin blanket barely covered her, and her head moved restlessly, but she seemed uninclined to rise. I left her there and walked Sefi out to the cookfire. She had laid an egg at dawn. I brought it with me.
Most everyone was already awake. I offered my egg to the cook, but Abursa guided her cart over and took it before the woman could crack it into the pot.
I frowned but passed over my tablet when she gestured for it.
"Come with me," she wrote, and took my egg and my tablet off towards the wagon.
The wagon, a big splintered affair that was still painted blue in the cracks, was almost empty with all the tents set up. But a large mound stood near the back, covered with a heavy tarpaulin.
Abursa brought her cart right up to the wagon and pulled the tarred canvas off with a flourish that scattered dust and tiny dried leaves everywhere. Underneath lay an automa.
I stepped closer.
It was a battered old thing, nothing like the magically animated wooden men I'd seen in the city, but it had been freshly sanded, and not a bit of mold marred its dents. Oil and dust perfumed it, along with a sharp, familiar tang. I froze and stared. Was I imagining it? I didn't think so. The green ore, the oracle ore. The automa stank of it.
I had the embarrassing urge to lick it.
Abursa motioned me closer and handed me my slate. "This automa is ours. It's a model of what we do. Our signpost. We display it when the perfectas come to camp."
I wrote back, "A model of what?"
"We fix automa for the cities. Once we get them working, we slap on a layer of cheap color, then cover it in varnish. But with a real painter, we could charge more. We could get more custom." She cast me a significant look.
My heart lifted. Even if what they wanted was more functional than art, I might have a future working with paint after all. "And you want me to decorate them?"
She nodded as she scribbled, "To paint them, and help with repairs like anybody else. The core that powers the automas, it's a mix of magic ores. One of them ought to be familiar to you."
I had already smelled it. "Oracle ore. The revelations."
"The automas don't need it to run. It's just mixed in to give them Efra's blessing. If you've rarely taken revelations, there's enough in the core to make you dizzy and dreaming. But the other ores can kill you, especially over a long period of time. We take turns handling the cores. First I test everyone to see if they're going to fall down giggling."
I took a small step back from the automa. "You want me to try? And what about Thesil?"
"You, yes. I wouldn't trust her not to drop it. These are worth more than she is."
As I read her last message, she leaned up and hauled on the chest of the automa. I lowered the slate necklace, intending to help her, but she waved me away. Her ass flicked its ears, apparently used to this sort of thing. I hung the amulet back over my neck.
The panel of wood sprang free suddenly, as some unseen latch gave. An edge of it clipped Abursa's legs. The gaping hole it left glowed with dim yellow light.
The humanoid shell was hollow as a vase, and at its center, suspended in a web of chains and wires, hung a fist-sized heart. The mixture of ores shone faintly gold, with only a hint of oracle green. Someone had carved it in the shapes of ventricles and atria.
I stepped forward, worried the troupe-leader was hurt, and walked straight into dreams.
The sky glowed red. Red, as the sun set and winked in and out of the clouds like the twitching of a nervous eye. It caught the plumes of smoke that rose from the desert. From the cities. From the mountains. It carried the caramel sweet scent of meat cooking, although I'd rarely smelled it – only once, when a farm elp had died of old age and the whole city had split its flesh among themselves, so it wouldn't go to waste. My parents had brought home a whole pound, and baked it with our lentils and goat-cheese.
I tried to look down, to find the fire, and was swept into the sky like a dizzy bird. I think I threw up, somewhere over the highest peak in the world.
I plunged through the side of the mountain as though it, too, were only smoke. I fell upwards, my skin freezing and tingling. It hurt, but I was not afraid; with the visions came joy so intense I thought I would rather be here, flying through rock, than ever wake again.
But I was going to wake. I felt it building, like it does when you're dozing and someone tries to rouse you with a tap on the hand.
The last thing I saw was a woman, pale-skinned as Thesil, her whole face sharp as an axe-blade, her nose narrow and patrician. Her hair was dark and curling, mounded on her head and held by a dozen silver laces. Thick lashes rimmed her eyes.
Ice coated each lash. Frost filmed her blue eyes.
She was dead.
#
I came back to myself on the ground, again. I looked up at the troupe-leader with bleary eyes. The world seemed so confined. So heavy.
"Right," Abursa said, her lips clear enough for me to read. "No handling the cores for you."
I climbed slowly to my feet and leaned against the side of her cart.
The next message she wrote me read, "You must have had some sweet dreams, painter. If I catch you cracking the automa's hull to sniff the cores, I'll throw you out on your rear. I won't have your death on my head, and it wastes the core."
I nodded.
She handed me Sefi's egg with the tablet, this time. "The automa's put back together, air-tight, and ready for color. Go make your paints. Then come back and show me what you can do."
She was letting me decorate the whole thing. One egg yolk wouldn't be enough to do it. But I could make a start.
"What should I paint?" I said aloud as I hung the amulet over my head.
Her teeth flashed white as the ivory plug in her lip. "Anything. But make it flashy."
#
I could only make a few colors in tiny quantities with one egg yolk. After the gesso had dried on the automa's chest, I mixed my paints carefully on my palette, grinding the pigments with my knife as I sat on the ground next to the wagon.
Once I had assembled my tools, I selected my favorite brush and rose. The rest of the camp vanished. There was only the automa and me.
When using tempera, it is important to layer thin washes of color, letting each dry between. It takes patience and a steady hand. I had both.
On the torso of the automa, I painted the head and chest of the woman I'd seen in my recent vision. Not her frozen corpse, but as I thought she must have looked when she was alive. Slowly she became real. She looked back at me, her gaze both sad and arrogant. The curve of her mouth suggested she should stretch her hands out in an offering of mercy, but she folded them tight at her breast.
I washed a last blush of red over her cheeks, and she was done. I lowered my brush and looked at her. The painting felt right. I was satisfied. I began to walk away to view my work at a distance. But I stopped. The troupe had flocked around me. Behind them, even Thesil had come out of our tent to watch. I'd refused Madam Vrida, but apparently I was ending up a spectacle of my own. I shied back, uncomfortable, and wished Sefi were here to hiss at them.
Abursa steered her cart towards me. As she reached the partly painted automa, she held a hand out. I dropped my writing amulet into it.
Her message was not the praise I'd hoped for. All it said was, "Are you sure you're not a pilgrim?"
I frowned at her. I wrote, "I'm sure. Why? If you don't like the painting, I can go over it. I'll need to make more paints to cover the rest, anyway."
"Don't you dare. The painting is fine. Whatever else you paint will be fine. I've never seen... It looks like she's alive."
A cold feeling settled in my chest. For a moment, the face of the frozen corpse stared me in the eyes. "It's supposed to."
She shook her head as she scribbled a reply, her face twisted in some emotion. Her message, a thick and hasty scrawl, was difficult to decipher. The first time I scanned it, I thought I'd read it wrong.
It said, "That's Holy Efra. I met her once."
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