Capitol

And then, when Bergen was fourteen, he remembered that he had painted as a boy. An uncle visited and said, "And this is Bergen, the boy who paints."

"His painting was just a childish whim," Bergen's mother said. "He outgrew it."

Bergen was not accustomed to getting angry with his mother. But at fourteen, few boys are able to accept the word childish without wrath. Bergen immediately said, "Did I, Mother? Then why is it that I still paint?"

"Where?" she said, disbelieving.

"In my room."

"Show me some of your work then, little artist." The word little was infuriating.

"I burn them. They aren't yet representative of my best work."

At that his mother and the uncle laughed uproariously, and Bergen stomped off to his room, Dal a shadow behind him.

"Where the hell is it!" he said angrily, hunting through the cupboard where the art supplies had been.

Dal coughed. "Bergen, Sir," he said (at twelve Bergen had halfway come of age, and it was the law that he had to be called sir by anyone under contract to him or his father), "I thought you weren't using your painting stuff anymore. I've got it."

Bergen turned in amazement. "I wasn't using it. But I didn't know you were."

"I'm sorry, sir. But I didn't get much chance to try while the instructor was coming. I've been using the materials ever since."

"Did you use them up?"

"There was a good supply. There's no more paper, but there's plenty of canvas. I'll get it."

He went and got it, brought it into the big house in two trips, being careful to use the back stairways so Bergen's parents wouldn't see. "I didn't think you'd mind," Dal said, when it was all brought back.

Bergen looked puzzled. "Of course I don't mind. It's just the old biddy's taken it into her head that I'm still a child. I'm going to paint again. I don't know why I ever quit. I've always wanted to be an artist."

And he set up the easel at the window, so he could see the yard below, dotted with the graceful whiptrees; of Crove that rose fifty meters straight up into the air-- and then, in a storm, lay over completely on the ground, so that no farmer of the Plains could ever be free of the worry of having a whiptree crash against his house in the wind. He began with an undercoat of green and blue, and Dal watched. Bergen hesitated now and then, but it came back quickly, and, in fact, the long separation from art had done him no harm. His eye was truer. His colors were deeper. But still an amateur.

"Perhaps if there were more magenta in the sky under the clouds," Dal offered.

Bergen turned to him coldly. "I'm not through with the sky."

"Sorry."

And Bergen painted on. Everything went well enough, except that he couldn't seem to get the whiptrees right. They kept looking so brown and solid, which wasn't right at all. And when he tried to draw them bent, they were awkward, not true to life. Finally he swore and threw the brush out the window, leaped to his feet and stormed away.

Dal walked to the painting and said, "Bergen, sir, it isn't bad. Not at all. It's good. Just the whiptrees."

"I know about the damned whiptrees," Bergen snarled, furious at his failure to be perfect in his first attempt in years. And he turned to see Dal taking swipes at the canvas, quick strokes with a slender brush. And then Dal turned around, and said, "Perhaps like that, sir."

Bergen walked up to the canvas. The whiptrees were there, by far the most lifelike, most dynamic, most beautiful thing in the painting. Bergen looked at them-- how effortless they seemed, how effortlessly Dal had stroked them into the painting. This was not how it should be. It was Bergen who was going to be the artist, not Dal. It was not just or right or fair that Dal should be able to paint whiptrees.

And in anger Bergen shouted something unintelligible and struck out at Dal, catching him a blow at the side of his head. Dal was stu

"You've never hit me before," he said, wonderingly.

"I'm sorry," Bergen said immediately.

"All I did was paint the whiptrees."

"I know. I'm sorry. Hitting servants isn't the kind of thing I do."

And now Dal's surprise turned to fury. "Servants?" he asked. "For a moment I forgot that I'm a servant. I saw us try our hands at the same task and I was better at it than you. I forgot I was a servant."

Bergen was frightened at this turn of events. He hadn't meant anything by his statement-- he just prided himself on not being an uncontrolled master.

"But Dal," he said i

"That I am. I must remember that in the future. Not to win at any games. To laugh at your jokes even when they're stupid. To let your horse always be a little faster. To always agree that you're right even when you're being a fool."

"I've never wanted anyone to treat me like that!" Bergen said, angry at the unfairness of it.

"That's the way servants treat their masters."

"I don't want you to be a servant. I want you to be my friend!"

"And I thought I was."

"You're a servant and a friend."

Dal laughed. "Bergen, sir, a man is either a servant or a friend. They're opposite directions on the same road. Either you're paid for service, or you do it for love."

"But you're paid for service, and I thought you did it for love!"

Dal shook his head. "I served for love, and I thought you fed and clothed me for love. I felt free with you."

"You are free."

"I have a contract."

"If you ever ask me to break it, I will!"

"Is that a promise?"

"On my life. You aren't a servant, Dal!"

And then the door opened, and Bergen's mother and uncle came in. "We heard shouting," his mother said. "We thought there was a quarrel."

"We were having a pillow fight," Bergen said.

"Then why is the pillow neatly on the bed?"

"We finished and put it back."

The uncle laughed. "What a regular little housemaid you're raising, Selly."

"My Lord, Nooel, he wasn't joking. He still paints." They walked up to the painting and looked at it carefully.

Finally Nooel turned to Bergen and smiled, and put out his hand. "I thought it was just bluster and blow. Just a teenager spouting off. But you've got talent, boy. The sky's a bit rough, and you need some work on detail. But whoever can paint whiptrees like that has a future."

Bergen could not take credit unfairly.

"Dal painted the whiptrees."

Selly Bishop looked furious, but smiled sweetly at Dal nonetheless. "How nice, Dal, that Bergen lets you play with his paintings." Dal said nothing. But Nooel stared at him.

"Contract?" Nooel asked.

Dal nodded.

"I'll buy it," Nooel offered.

"Not for sale," Bergen said quickly.

"Actually," Selly said sweetly, "it's not a bad idea. Think you might want to develop the talent?"

"It's worth developing."

"The contract," Bergen said firmly, "is not for sale."

Selly looked coldly at her son. "Everything that was bought can be sold."

"But what a man loves enough, mother, he'll keep regardless of the price he's offered."

"Loves?"

"Your mind is disgusting, Selly," Nooel said. "Obviously they're friends. Sometimes you can be the worst bitch on the planet."

"You're too kind, Nooel. On this planet it's an achievement. After all, there's the empress."

They both laughed and left the room.

"I'm sorry, Dal," Bergen said.

"I'm used to it," Dal answered. "Your mother and I haven't ever gotten along too well. And I don't care-- there's only one person here I care about."

They looked at each other closely for a short time. Smiled. Then dropped the subject, because at fourteen there are few gentle emotions that can be openly borne for very long.

When Bergen turned twenty, somec came to their level of society.