Artists and Fools

For July’s fourth, free, story, Paolo Bacigalupi brings us a tale from the world of his new fantasy novel, Navola. We hope you enjoy meeting Pico the artist as much as we have! ~ Julian and Fran, July 28, 2024

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Artists and Fools

by Paolo Bacigalupi

Pico Pezzolio was, above all, an artist. Enormously skilled in dipintura, sculuptura, and architectura, and equally at ease in bronze, wood, marble, and paint. And, if he was honest before Amo (and not at all exaggerating), more gifted than any artist Navola had ever seen—other than (perhaps) Madrasalvo.

But even Madrasalvo . . . Well, if you examined closely his depictions of Amo’s rise on the great arcing dome of Navola’s Catredanto Amo (grand as it might be, covering the heavens so), it might be observed that the storied artist was, perhaps, well . . . un picotizzo incompetetto? The average eye would be awestruck, naturally, but if you looked closely at the hands of the gods: of Caliba, Argo, Virga, Urulo, Urula, all of them crouched and cowed before Amo’s righteous glory—well, if you looked at the shadows and shapes there, you might notice a disappointing distortion of proportion.

But in any case, even if Madrasalvo’s hands were judged adequate, Pico was less than a third of Madrasalvo’s age when the famous artist had begun his work on the catredanto, and even now Pico would have done much better. This wasn’t bragging. This was truthful.

Pico was always truthful when it came to his art.

This was how he came to be hiding under the dye woman’s skirts.

Pico’s mother had always warned him that his pride was too great.

“As big as the whale that ate Tuffino!”

“More wide than all of La Cerulea!”

“More fat than the pigs that the Borraghese feed with nothing but butter and sweet walnuts, to make them juicy!”

And then she would strike him upon his head with her wooden spoon.

“You’ll reap a bitter harvest for all your peacocking!”

Whack.

“A bitter harvest!”

Whack.

Such a font of wisdom.

But really, how was Pico to know that arguing with some fescato mercanto that Pico’s price was more than fair for his most excellent artifacts would lead to the Lupari catching his trail once again, and then to him crashing headlong through the tangling hanging linens of the dye quarter, and now to this most ignominious end beneath a young woman’s skirts with his face mashed upon blue-stained cobbles—though, if he was honest before Amo, the sia’s ankles had a certain charm, and her bare blue toes were dainty little things—but belly down upon the cobbles like a snake?

It was not ideal.

Still, in other ways, was he not also fortunate?

Pico prided himself on making the best of difficult circumstance. All artists must be optimistic, for to make beautiful things in the face of an indifferent mob of venal vianomae and asinine archinomi was a task more bitter than when Nimedion’s daughter went up the mountain to eat sand. Artists have to make the best of things. And, as the great philosopher Aeschius once said, nothing existed without the thinking.

Or perhaps that was the barefoot Soppros?

Or was it that sour and ancient prick the Emperor Vittius?

In any case, despite his awkward position, Pico counted himself lucky. He had come tangling and crashing through the hanging fabrics of the dye-maker’s alley, stumbling and scrabbling across the water-slick cobbles, when his feet suddenly decided to leap into the air at the precise moment that his ass decided to crash down upon the street—

And there she had been, gazing down upon him, wreathed by the hot summer sun, her arms sunk deep into a barrel of blue, lovely arms bared all the way to the shoulders, her skin dyed the color of the sky. Her hair all bound up in those complicated plaits that Navolese women preferred.

A muse. A fata. A vincii sent by Amo.

Pico had stared up at her, wide-eyed and stunned. A beauty more sublime than Erostheia—and then she had hiked up her skirts and stepped over him, hiding him from the Lupari.

Such a kindness was to be lauded!

To be memorialized in song!

The fine sia was not only a muse, but also a rescuer, as celebrated as Urula’s daughter Cerulea when she walked across the waves to fish out the drowning sailors of Hittopolis—though perhaps not quite as kind, for this young woman also had a very—ai!!!—sharp heel that she now dug into his head whenever Pico made a noise.

“He was rat-faced,” one of the Lupari was saying. “Not a tall man. Ragged-like.”

You, too, would be ragged if you’d been chased all the way from Via Corso, Pico fumed.

If he craned his neck, he could just glimpse the Lupari’s heavy boots beyond the hem of the young lady’s skirt. Good boots. Soldier boots. Boots that apparently didn’t slip on dye-soaked cobbles.

“I haven’t seen anyone like that,” the sia said.

“He had a sack full of trinkets.”

Trinkets? Pico’s gaze went to his sack, barely hidden by a bolt of linen that the young sia had tossed down to cover the rest of him. He fought his rising righteous umbrage.

Trinkets?

The sia’s heel dug hard into his skull, mashing Pico’s face into the cobbles.

“He was a thief?” she clarified.

“Nai. A cheap forger. He was selling his trash in Via Corso.”

His trash? That was really too much—ai! How did such a dainty foot manage such cruel leverage? But really—ai! Well, perhaps it was best not to argue the point. Anyway, what did some mercenary know? The Compagni Militi Lupari wouldn’t know a Zuzzo from an Aragnallo if they were looting a fine palazzo. They would probably walk right past both and steal one of those absurdly cone-breasted Boscatinos. Ignoramuses, all of them.

“There’s ten navisoli in it for you,” the Lupari was saying, “if you help us find him.”

Ten navisoli? Pico froze. Why, he would sell his own self for ten navisoli! Above him, the silence stretched as the young sia digested this news. Pico waited like a man about to be executed in Quadrazzo Amo—dead already, expecting the axe to fall.

“Veridimmi? Ten navisoli?” the sia murmured. “That’s a pile of gold.”

“Archinomo Furia wants him, badly. He fooled her somehow, and now she’s out for blood.”

“Ci. That’s bad business. I heard what she did to her brothers.”

“Indeed. But her gold is good.”

The sia made a disapproving sound. “It’s all that can be expected from one in the misery trade.”

“Aivero. But the siana always pays when it comes to runaways. You’re sure you didn’t see him gallop by?”

“Sfeliciamente, nai,” the sia sighed (and Pico stifled a sigh of relief along with her). “It’s possible he went through Siana Amostino’s. Back just a few doors. There’s a passage all the way through to Via Amoluce.” She dunked her linen deep into her barrel, stirring vigorously. “If he knows the quartiere, that’s what he should have done.”

Splashes of rich blue rained down and ran between the cobblestones. The color of a summer sky, just as the sun was sinking toward the horizon. Extraordinary, really. Pico reminded himself to ask what she used, if he got out of this predicament with his skin intact.

“Now,” the woman said briskly, “unless you want your uniforms stained, you’ll need to stand back and make way. I’m needing to hang this.” She splashed her mass of linen suggestively. The Lupari thanked her. Their boots retreated from view.

A moment later, hot sun blazed down upon Pico as the sia moved off him to hang her newly dyed linen. Pico scrambled up and peered down the alley. The Lupari were gone, swallowed behind the many undulating waves of deeply dyed cloth that hung across the alley and that he had come crashing through in his hasty escape.

Lovely colors. So many shades. The bright summer sun seemed to cast their colors back and forth upon one another, not just a rainbow, but a cascadina of color—

“Inside!” the sia said. “Quickly now!” She was rearranging some linen over another line, blocking the view to her door. “Lots of eyes about.”

“Ai. Yes. Thank you.” Pico grabbed his sack of—well, not trinkets, and most certainly not trash—and ducked inside.

Cool shadows enveloped him. A small kitchen, many buckets. Powdered pigments in open clay cups upon a rough table. Why, it was nearly a studio. Pico felt immediately at home. Beyond, through a low doorway, stacks and rolls and bolts of various linens, silks, some of them dyed, some of them raw—

“Hold still.” The sia grabbed his elbow, preventing exploration. “Stay right there.” She seized a rag from a peg and began to chafe his skin.

“Ouch! Please. Sia. Mercy!” The rag was stiff and black with all the dyes it had absorbed. “Allow me to make myself presentable.”

“It’ll take more than a rag,” she said doubtfully, standing back.

“Well, my mother would agree.” Pico began to scrub at the blue stains on his shirt and pantaloni. “Fescato. I look like some creature out of La Cerulea’s depths. I don’t think this will come out.”

“You’ll need new clothes, of a surety.”

“Ai. Yes. Well. That will be a bit difficult.”

“You have no others?’

“I have them. Well, had. As it turns out, the Siana Grazzarollo is unforgiving when it comes to late payment for her rooms. I fear they’ve been sold.”

“Sold? Your pantaloni?” The young woman laughed. “I’ve never heard of such a thing!”

“Well, in her defense, I was a month late. I kept climbing in and out through a window to avoid her.”

The sia laughed again. She was really quite compelling. Dark lustrous eyes. Dark eyebrows. And that luscious hair, bound and twisted, twisted and bound, piling blackly atop her head. There was a speck of blue on her cheek. A tiny accent mark. If he had painted it there deliberately, it would not have looked half so lovely.

Pico realized he was looking too closely, and too long; and that she, too, was studying him. He blushed, suddenly, painfully aware that they stood alone in her home. He began wiping his face vigorously, breaking the moment. “Does this . . . Will this dye last?”

“You’ll need a wash before it sets any more.”

“I can’t go to the baths. The Lupari would spot me instantly. I’m covered in blue.”

“And the baths would hardly let you in.” She sighed. “All right. Take off your clothes.”

“My . . . ?” Pico liked to think he was a skillful wooer of women, but this seemed abrupt. “Sia . . . I—do not think—that . . . that . . .”

“Not here.” She laughed and pointed. “Behind the curtain. There’s a bucket and soap.”

“Ah. Yes. I—of course.” Following her directions, he stepped behind a little curtain and did indeed find a bucket of water, a bristle brush, and a lump of sandy rough soap such that many artists used to remove stubborn paints and dyes. He began to unlace his shirt and skinny out of his pantaloni. “You’re very kind, sia.”

“It’s siana,” she said from the other side of the curtain. “Not sia.”

“Siana? Veridimmi?” He splashed a ladle of water over himself, took up the soap, and began to scrub. “You seem too happy to be married.”

“And you seem too naive to have such an oily tongue. Hand me your clothes, I’ll find you others. Those stand out like a lantern in Quartiere Sangro. And don’t be so loud. My husband is napping upstairs.”

“Upstairs?” Pico froze, suddenly feeling much more naked than he had a moment before. “Ah . . . he won’t mind me?”

“He drinks a jug of wine and sleeps three hours every afternoon. His sussirre. If you’re not too loud, he won’t care at all.”

“Well, thank you then. You are very kind.” He handed through his stained shirt and breeches with some regret, wondering if they were soon to become more colorful rags. He began to soap himself again. “I wouldn’t want him to—”

A faint breeze made him pause.

He turned.

“Ah . . .”

Before him the siana stood, smiling and boldly naked. As pure as when Argo shaped woman and man on his potter’s wheel, as lovely as when Amo had fired them full of life, and as vital as when Virga had threaded them into her weave.

“I have dye on me, too,” the siana said.

The blue on her cheek was really quite extraordinary.

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Her name was Lizzia, and after their bath they were both damply and happily wrapped in madly colored lengths of linen, the error scraps of her trade, she had explained as they shared a lovely cold precciocina tossed with mushrooms. With a splash of vinegar and a flick of parsley, it was all quite delightful—all the more so because the siana sat upon his lap as they traded bites from the bowl.

“I am not a forger,” Pico explained as she fed him another bite with her tongs. “I am . . .” He swallowed. “I am an artist.”

“The Lupari called you a forger.”

“Ci. The Lupari. The best they can do is hack a body into pieces, where I create bodies—well, take a look.” He reached across the table for his sack, pushing aside several different crocks of pigments and powders. The hues this woman worked with! “You have to tell me how you make that blue. I would worship you for a year for that color.”

“I think you already worship me.”

Pico liked the light in her eyes. He could paint her, here, in this place of her own expertise, among the bolts of cloth. So lovely. “Ai. Well . . .” He found himself at a loss for words.

Why did she have to be so very married?

“Here, look.” He opened his bag and offered it to her.

“Are these the coins you forged?” she asked, reaching in.

“Not coins. Something finer.”

Lizzia drew out a statue of bronze. “This?” She eyed it skeptically, hefting it in her palm. “This is why they’re all so angry?”

“That, little sweet, is a masterpiece.”

“Sfaiculo. You’re a braggart.” She peered closer. “Ci. It’s damaged.”

“Not damaged. Aged.” He wrapped his hands around hers, turning the statue to face them. “Do you recognize him?”

“Of course,” she said. “It’s Leggus.”

“Ai. You Navolese are well taught. The people of my little village, they are not so clever. Yes. Leggus, the ancient Amonese one-eyed god of misura, happily counting shells. Does he not look happy?”

“He smiles like you.”

“Does he? Well, I suppose we’re both very happy people.” Pico used her finger to trace the laugh lines of the god. Running her finger over the worn and polished bronze. “You can almost imagine that he will follow his shells out into the ocean, down to the bottom and never stop counting. Tuotto contento, tuotto felice, as they say. And here . . .” He guided Lizzia’s fingers to the base of the statue. “Do you see these little marks?”

“The scratches?”

“Aha! I know some things you clever Navolese do not! These are misura lines. The decixii, in Amonese Anciens. Ten of them, always ten, perfectly spaced. And if you take these marks and follow them around, why, you have a square, the deciduexii. And if you were to measure up to the top of our happy friend’s head, you would have the decitirxii. A perfect cube. Now, if we heft our friend in our hands . . . Go on. That’s right. Up. Down. Up.”

“I think you enjoy this up and down too much.”

“Ci. Not for a little while yet. Even I need to recover. Now pay attention. Feel the weight? As it happens, our friend Leggus is exactly the weight of water when it fills the cube of a decitirxii—the dexiinus in Amonese Anciens.

“This was both a holy object for the priests of Leggus, but also a tool. The art of misura was their worship. See how worn it is along its edges? How hands have brushed and burnished it? With this tool, the priests of Leggus measured bolts of linen and silk and cotton and wool, and weighed urns of olive oil and piles of cerulean eyes, ensuring that lengths and weights and volumes were honest. Look at the cheek of our friend, look how it has been touched, the shine there.” Pico touched Lizzia’s own cheek, where the blue was almost banished, but not entirely. “Loving hands, worshipful hands . . . This is an object of history. Of devotion. Of our own ancestors’ ancient past . . .”

She took the little statue and held it up, seeming to measure it against his face. Pico smiled hopefully. Perhaps a kiss—

“But it’s just a fake,” she said.

“A fake?” Pico tried not to be stung. “Siana, that is a harsh word.”

“I see that you are most proud of your work, but it’s not actually old. It’s just a pretender. A fake, veri e vero?”

“Siana,” Pico said. “It is very much my own work. In fact”—he cleared his throat, controlling his annoyance—“if there’s any fault in our friend at all, it’s that he is too much my own work. The original I saw in Torre Amo was clumsy in comparison. Our forebears were skilled, but struggled to capture the emotions of the face. Under my hand, Leggus looks as if he truly will run after the shells, counting them all the way into the ocean. Look at that expression!”

From Lizzia’s expression, Pico thought perhaps he should stop arguing the point, but she simply didn’t appreciate the skill. The labor! “I had to discover entirely new methods for aging bronze. To rub and score and pit. Seawater baths, scraping stones, the alternating use of sand and silk, pig fat and olive oil. And the scouring! Ai, days of scouring . . . The dirt, even! Look here! The dirt in this crevice is red clay dug from the banks of the Cascadina Livia up in the Romiglia, almost an exact match for the great river that feeds Torre Amo, proof positive that it was dug from temple ruins there—”

“So why not make your own trinkets?” Lizzia interrupted. “If you are so very skilled?”

“Because you Navolese are mad for memories of the ancient past! You refuse to buy new, but always buy old, and for that you’ll pay a pretty price.” He tried to make it sound like a joke, but perhaps it did not echo that way in Lizzia’s ears, for she was frowning.

“I know for a fact that there are many workshops that make new bronzes,” Lizzia said. “Via Gabbina is full of such, many artists: painting canvas, making frescoes, constructing mosaics, carving marble, casting bronze. The archinomi all hire them for their palazzi.”

“But only if you have a name established!” Pico said. “Archinomi do not hire or respect a boy with a country accent who promises wonders!”

“So why not apprentice, then?” Lizzia asked in an irritatingly reasonable tone. “You could build your name.”

“Ci,” Pico scoffed. “I am so far above even the maestri of those workshops, I might as well be Urulo of the sky. I would never apprentice with such clods.”

“Ci,” Lizzia said with a snort, and got up off his lap. “I begin to see now why you have no home or pantaloni, and run from the Lupari.”

“Oh? Well, I begin to see why your husband drinks a jug of wine and sleeps all day.”

Lizzia’s eyes widened.

The conversation had not been galloping in a hopeful direction, but looking back, Pico was at least clever enough to understand that this was the moment when he drove it irretrievably over the cliff. Indeed, even as the words leapt from his lips, his mother struck him with her wooden spoon.

“A pride greater than the whale that ate Tuffino!”

“Your words are very fine,” Lizzia said stiffly, “until you feel a little scuffed. Then you bite like an alley dog. Your little trinket takes a better scuffing than you. At least he smiles.”

“Siana,” Pico said placatingly, “I am an artist, of course my pride feels scuffed when I am insulted.”

“There is no insult in apprenticeship.” She tucked her scrap of linen sheet more tightly around her nakedness and pulled him upright. “It’s time to go, artisto.”

“Siana . . .”

“Shoo!” She gave him a shove toward the door. “On you go!”

“But the Lupari are looking for me!” Pico tried to keep his footing and his own sheet about him, but she easily bumped him, one step, two, three—out into the hot sunlight. “Siana—”

His blue pants splattered wetly against his face as he turned to protest. A moment later, his sack flew unceremoniously out the door and clanked at his feet. Little Leggus statues rolled this way and that, scattering. The noise attracted a number of eyes, people peering out from windows overlooking the alley. Pico gave them the three off his cheek and began to gather his many statues, summoning what little dignity a man wrapped in a scrap of sheet can manage.

Timing.

All is timing.

A few minutes later, few minutes sooner, and it might all have been a silly dalliance. A story for his grandchildren, not yet made, not yet even imagined.

But of course, as Pico scrabbled about on the wet blue cobbles gathering one bronze from behind Lizzia’s dye barrel, another from the step, clutching his pantaloni, trying to keep them out of the dye, slipping and dropping his sheet, landing bare-assed upon the blue stones—in that moment, voices echoed down the alley.

“. . . fescatolo flea . . .”

Pico spun, listening, straining his ears. Vibrant fabrics waved lazily in the heat. Somewhere behind their veils, heavy boots thumped. Good boots. Boots that didn’t slip on dye-soaked cobbles. “. . . has to be here somewhere . . .”

“Lizzia? Why is there a naked man outside our door?”

Pico didn’t want to turn, didn’t want to look.

It was worse than he’d expected.

A giant filled Lizzia’s doorway. The kind of man who could squeeze linen dry with a single twist. Enormous hands. Distorted, really. Unnaturally massive. Hands that even Madrasalvo would hesitate to draw, their proportions were so very unreal.

“What is your name, stranger?” the absurdly-handed man asked.

“I?” Pico squeaked. His legs were tangled in the sheet. “I’m, well, an artist, you see . . .” He lifted a bronze Leggus, waved the one-eyed god like a talisman. The poor thing was covered with blue dye. Everything was. He’d landed right in it. Still, a lovely color—

The Lupari chose this moment to arrive. Their gazes went from Pico to Lizzia’s big-fisted husband. Pico wondered fleetingly which was worse. Frying pans or fires? Angry Romigliani or deep blue seas? Rock-strangling hands or sword-wielding Lupari? . . . Really, it could almost be a tavern song.

“What are you doing with my wife’s sheet?” The husband’s monstrous hands flexed in an almost hypnotic way.

“Her sheet? This sheet?” Pico dropped Leggus, snagged his sopping pantaloni from the cobbles, and clambered upright, clutching said sheet strategically before himself. “I’m sure this looks strange, but really it was the color.” He held up his pantaloni, dripping blue. “I’m an artist, you see, I just wanted to see this lovely dye.“ The husband took a step toward him. “Maestro! Please!” Pico tried to circle away. “I am a simple artist.” The Lupari moved to cut him off. He was surrounded.

Pico slumped in defeat. There was nothing for it.

“Ai,” he sighed. “Go ahead, then. Do your worst.”

“He’s ours,” the Lupari said.

“He’s mine,” the husband said.

“Maybe you can share?” Pico suggested.

“Maybe you can—ai!”

With a sudden flick, Pico hurled his pantaloni into the husband’s face, spattering blue dye. The man roared and lunged, but even as he did, Pico turned. He whipped his sheet over the heads of the Lupari and yanked. The three man crashed together, shouting and grappling.

Pico bolted.

Down the alley he ran, naked as a babe new born. His bare ass shone blue in the sunshine, the perfect blue of a summer sky in the late afternoon.

His enemies shouted and gave chase, but Pico was undaunted. Somewhere ahead, salvation beckoned. All he needed was a bit of luck. One kiss from Lady Fortune. An open door. The mercy of a stranger.

Perhaps a convenient parade!

Pico didn’t know what form it would take, but Sia Fortuna looked kindly upon artists and fools, and if he was honest before Amo, he was probably both.

Did that not make him doubly blessed?

The shouts of his pursuers grew louder. They were gaining on him.

Pico remained optimistic.

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Thank you for joining our journey this week.

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Paolo Bacigalupi’s writing has won the Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy, and Michael L. Printz Awards, and was nominated for the National Book Award. After a bit of an absence, he is happy to announce a new book just released: Navola, set in the same world as “Artists & Fools.” It can be found at your local bookshop or via this link: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/708812/navola-by-paolo-bacigalupi/

“Artists and Fools,” © Paolo Bacigalupi, 2024.

The Sunday Morning Transport: Selected Stories 2022 is now available at Weightless Books!