I do not wish to do this, but here we are.

My benefactor insists that it will be of help. “Write every day,” he instructed me, before departing in the night upon his dark horse. He’s fond of such dramatics. Once he arrived through my window with a rope, despite owning the house we live in. When I asked him what was wrong with the door, he shrugged off my skepticism and offered me the rope.

I did not take it. The window’s rather high, you see.

In any event, I’ve decided to keep him secret. Perhaps in revenge for his keeping me secret. “When you’re ready,” he told me, “the world will see your creations.” It’s been two months now and I have not been ready, despite long days and longer nights in front of the canvas. Painting after painting, each a little better than the one before, but none marking the end of my imposed almost-solitude.

“What do you see in me?” I asked him once. He was sitting on the little golden couch, the one I’m able to stretch out on but that he needs to fold his knees to fit. “I’m nowhere near the skill of the Prismata maestros, and you can afford them.” I looked pointedly at the gold around his neck and wrists, speckled with tiny jewels called aetheria. 

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“I am not interested in them,” he replied. He shifted to face me, and I was struck by the moon-like quality of his face. It seemed to gather my curiosity and reflect it back without giving a hint of his own thoughts. “Consider this, nestling; the work of the maestros, they have voices, correct?”

I nodded. Voice was another word for style. In a world where the competition for royal patrons was fierce, each man needed to stand out among his peers. For Alastare, that meant stark landscapes in black and white. For Karte, it was paintings so real you felt you could reach in and touch the fruits of his labor. And Vai, Vai did not paint at all, but sculpted marble with such care that you could hardly believe it was stone and not thin silk blown up in the face of a startled young woman.

“Your voice is not yet clear,” my benefactor went on. “You have the skill, but you have not yet unfolded into yourself. And that is what I want to see.” He smiled at me. “And perhaps to influence.”

My first instinct had been anger; the next, gratitude. I may have been something of a tool for his pride, but I was a well-kept tool. No, a tool is unfair. I resembled more of a flower, plucked out of the wilds and transplanted in a beautiful garden while the eye of the lord stayed on to see if it wilted.

All the same, I am kept. And, lacking virtue, I will nurse my pettiness and call him Cicerone, an ancient title for mentor - because the thought of titling him Master would make him smile and make me gag.