Portrait, portrait, someone's nose is not that big but fine, portrait, Emma brings tea and sandwiches on that tray Ruvan made with the shadow-handles that adjust to her height, which is both sweet and unnecessarily complicated.
"Uncle Ruvan says lunch is in twenty minutes and you have to eat something first or he'll tell Arthur about the ladder."
"That was—how does he even—" I take the sandwich. My feet hurt. Everything hurts. "Never mind."
She shrugs. "He knows everything."
Lunch is going perfectly until they attack. I'm ladling soup, Emma's passing rolls, and there's crashing from the east entrance.
"Oh, come on. During lunch? Really?"
Half the room keeps eating while the other half goes to handle it. We worked this out week two because cold soup is depressing.
"USE THE GOOD WEAPONS," someone shouts. "SHE GETS MAD ABOUT THE FLOORS."
I keep serving. The soup's going to get cold if—crash—they better not have broken the new window. I just had that installed.
Davies appears, blood on his shoulder. His shirt's ruined. That was a good shirt.
"Handled. Nine attackers. Garden."
"Are they staying for lunch?"
"They... what?"
"Oh no, one of them has that gray look. You know, like when you haven't seen vegetables in weeks?" I pile bowls on a tray, nearly dropping it because my center of gravity is all wrong now. "Davies, is that one bleeding on my new rug? The blue one? I just—Emma picked that out."
"They tried to kill us."
"Well they're not doing it anymore, are they? Take them soup. The one with the tremor needs B vitamins. And you're getting blood everywhere—there's gauze in the drawer by the good spoons."
By two o'clock, six of the attackers have joined us. The other two are thinking about it over tea. One just needed someone to listen about his mother. She sounds awful, honestly.
I finally get back to the studio for Ruvan's portrait. He's already sitting there, wearing that hat I knitted him six months ago. It's getting ratty. There's a hole near the pom-pom. But he won't take it off, so.
"You fed our enemies again," he says, not moving.
"They were hungry." I mix paint, trying to get the burgundy right. The hat's faded. Or maybe my eyes are tired.
"They came to kill us."
"Inefficiently. Did you see how slowly they moved? Classic iron deficiency. Stevens might have scurvy."
"Which one is Stevens?"
"Fruit knife one."
His shadows curl around my easel legs, steadying it. They've been doing that lately. Little helpful things.
"You can't adopt every assassin who looks peaky," he says.
"I'm not adopting them. I'm feeding them. There's a difference." The baby kicks my ribs again. "Your child is training for something. I don't know what, but something violent."
"Or baking."
"Kneading is very aggressive, actually."
Emma appears with her little easel. "Can I paint too?"
