Or worse, maybe the dragon would want to talk too much. Jebi couldn’t imagine what it would have to say, after it had spent most of its existence pacing in a circle. Maybe it had gone mad, or as mad as a machine ever could. That thought didn’t inspire confidence, either.
Grimly, Jebi applied the miraculous mortar and pestle to the pages they’d shredded. Sorry about the cartoons, they added silently. Maybe the dragon would be an art critic. That would be hilarious.
The pigment that took shape in the mortar was powdery and had a slightly bitter smell, like oversteeped green tea. Jebi had experienced more noxious things in the service of art, however. They kept grinding. They wanted to make sure they had plenty of pigment from the same batch. Better to overprepare.
When Jebi judged that they had enough, they mixed in a conventional pigment so they could see what they were doing, something Shon had taught them. Some mystical pigments had variable visibility, which made them inconvenient to work with. Jebi didn’t want to mess this up because the paint was invisible. After a moment’s thought, they chose carbon black. Of the five traditional colors, black signified water and wisdom, both of which an incendiary weapon of destruction could benefit from.
Do I have time to make a preliminary sketch? Jebi wondered. They couldn’t afford not to. By now they had most of the glyphs memorized; their excellent memory for visuals served them well.
Every chance noise, every murmur that drifted into the workshop caused Jebi to tense. I have to ignore the distractions, Jebi thought, even if the ‘distractions’ might be their only warning of intrusion—or danger. They would paint poorly if they jumped at every sound.
Jebi took another few precious moments to meditate, something they’d never been particularly good at. Even Bongsunga hadn’t pressed them to do it much, given how chancy her temper was. Thinking of their sister caused Jebi’s rhythm to stutter, and they spent more moments taking deep breaths until they calmed.
Now I’m ready, Jebi thought, and took up the pencil again. With quick, deft strokes, they sketched the initial design on the surface of the mask. Their hand slipped once, smudging the gray marks. They grabbed a kneaded eraser and lifted the worst of the smudges, then returned to work.
Jebi fetched a small bowl of water from the sink in the back, and their favorite brush. This one needed replacement; the bristles no longer came to quite as fine a point as they had when Jebi first obtained it. But they would rather work with a familiar brush than try to break in a new one on a project of this importance.
In the past, Jebi had not been particularly aware of painting as a ritual. Oh, they’d learned from their first teachers the work of grinding pigments, measuring out binders, mixing paints, cleaning brushes. But it had all struck them as something to get out of the way, part of the price one paid for the joy of expressing the inner heart of things on paper or silk.
This time, however, the ceremonial aspect of their work impressed itself on them. It no longer seemed surprising that the strange magic of the glyphs and these paints had been discovered by a priest. Jebi was only middling religious as Hwagugin went, making small offerings or relying on charms as the situation required, instead of frequenting shrines or fortunetellers; the larger ancestral offerings, while a necessity, were Bongsunga’s duty as the eldest.
At last Jebi finished painting the mask. They stared down at the black lines and curves, the glyphs that sometimes resembled clouds, sometimes waves, sometimes—and how had they not noticed this during the act of creation?—the phases of the moon. The paint glistened wetly, with an unearthly luster as of dark pearls, or perhaps abalone shell.
A memory returned to Jebi: a conversation they’d overheard at Hak’s party, the Razanei bureaucrats whispering of a plan to colonize the moon. The moon! Did Hafanden intend for the dragon to fly? Arazi had no wings, but neither did the dragons in the folktales and paintings, and that never stopped them. Too bad they’d never thought to ask him about that. If cavalry thundering over the hills was terrifying, surely flying war machines would be even more so.
It took all of Jebi’s patience to wait for the paint to dry. If they’d had access to a window and daylight, they’d have put the mask in the sun to hurry the process along, even if it risked fading. They didn’t think it would matter in the time they had left, anyway.
Jebi’s heart nearly seized when the door swung open more widely and one of the artists ambled in: Tia, singing softly off-key. How didn’t I hear her coming in? Jebi berated themself.
“What’re you working on?” Tia asked, too loudly for Jebi’s comfort.
“Things,” Jebi said, repositioning themself to block Tia’s view of the painted mask. Of all the times...
Tia made a face. “I thought you were a normal person, but here you are, trying to make us look bad again by working while you’re sick.” She was smiling as she said it. “I’m going to work on a personal project for once. Are you going to snitch on me?” She belched, with great enthusiasm.
Jebi couldn’t help but grin. “No,” they said. All the same, they worried that Tia was going to report on them anyway. Just because she was acting friendly now didn’t mean she wasn’t also reporting odd behavior to Hafanden. At least, in Hafanden’s place, Jebi would have informers, instead of relying on the guards. And of course the automata couldn’t report what they saw or heard.
I’m going to change that, Jebi thought. For Arazi, anyway.
Once they had satisfied themself that Tia was, indeed, working on... what the hell was that? The painting she’d pulled out didn’t resemble any work of representational art Jebi had ever seen. A bunch of abstract paint splotches in fierce reds and yellows. Maybe the abstraction was the point. It wasn’t a vision they understood. Under other circumstances, they would have liked to talk to Tia about it, but they had another mission.
Jebi carefully touched one of the painted lines with a fingertip—good, it was dry—then wrapped it up in hanji paper so they could carry it. After a moment’s thought, they added a mortar and pestle, and the jar of pigment for good measure.
Nobody interrupted them on the way to Arazi’s prison, not even Vei. And why am I thinking about her anyway? Jebi thought, annoyed with themself.
The guards eyed Jebi sourly. “At this hour?” one of them demanded.
Jebi spread their hands apologetically. “Inspiration, you know.” Their favorite excuse. They’d heard the other artisans using it to wheedle special treatment out of the guards, too.
The guard sighed and made a notation on their clipboard. “If you insist.”
“I need to concentrate,” Jebi added. “It’s very important. The guards inside need to wait outside or they’ll disrupt my focus. They can go back in after I’m done.”
It was a stupid bluff, but the guards either believed them or didn’t mind letting Jebi incriminate themself. Jebi tried not to think about the latter.
Jebi hurried past once the guards inside had filed out, pretending it was eagerness rather than terror. The doors scraped shut behind them, leaving them alone with Arazi.
The dragon still paced, but Jebi fancied they detected tension in the lines of its body. Did it, too, sense what was to come, a change in its routine?
“Arazi,” Jebi said after a deep breath. “Come here. I just want—I just want to talk.”