2. Pro Patronage 101
"So... what you're saying is that you intend to hold some manner of open competition?"
"Calling it a competition doesn't sit quite right with me. This is less a contest than a matter of choosing which artist to sponsor. An audition—that's the better word for it, no?"
"You mean to sponsor a more carefully vetted artist, then?"
"Talent would be nice, but more than that, they have to be to my taste."
Rin, after all, had been someone whose temperament I liked even more than her skill. To be sure, her talent was genuine, which made the confidence and stubborn pride she wore on her sleeve easy enough to accept—but even if her painting had been mediocre, I would have taken an interest all the same.
As I'd said before: if all I wanted were exaggerated, theatrical reactions, I could simply shower street performers in gold coins. There would be no need to put anyone through an audition.
What I wanted was a reaction that welled up from somewhere deep and genuine in an artist's heart.
"How thoroughly wicked of you, my lord. So you intend to sit back and savor the sight of penniless artists coming to clutch at your coattails of their own accord."
"And look, this way you won't have to go tramping around the city hunting artists down yourself, will you?"
"Now that I think on it, it truly does seem a splendid method. Let us put it into effect at once."
Claire, persuaded with almost suspicious ease, was on her way out of the room to post the official notice when she paused and glanced back at me.
"By the way, my lord—how many applicants were you expecting?"
"Hard to say. It's a decent-sized city, so... fifty or so? Is that too many?"
"And you intend to interview every single one of them?"
"I'd have to, wouldn't I? The artist matters more to me than the work."
"Fifty-odd would pose no trouble for this villa, granted. But what if a number far beyond your expectations comes flooding in?"
It was a fair question, in its way, but I shrugged without giving it much thought.
Unlike my father and my brother, I lived not in the Medici main residence but in a detached villa. It wasn't that I'd been cast out—the place existed largely for show, something to display to the vassals. I had zero interest in claiming my brother's seat as head of the house, and this was my way of forestalling any tiresome misunderstandings. A political gesture, you might call it.
In exchange, within these walls I might as well have been head of the family myself. The villa spanned several stories, was staffed by a fair number of servants, and Father had given me leave to do as I pleased here so long as I didn't overstep—so housing fifty guests would be no strain at all.
No, even a hundred would have been fine. Which was why Claire's worry didn't strike me as much of one.
"Like that'd ever happen. Big as the city is, there can't be that many artists in it."
"Think it over once more, my lord. Consider the standing House Medici commands in this city."
"It's not as if my brother is hosting this. It's a second son with hardly any real power to his name. Whatever—I'll go prepare for the interviews."
"Hah... as you wish."
Interviews were misery when you were the one in the chair, but from behind the interviewer's desk, they were wonderfully comfortable affairs.
I would be picking a single person out of fifty—call it a hundred, to be generous. I would have to arrange consolation stipends and meals for the artists I turned away, too.
Now this was fun.
It was all groundwork for an audition, for the patronage that fed my dopamine—but even groundwork like this beat the old days hands down, when all I ever did was read.
Alone in the room once more, I smiled. It was time to select my second artist, and I had all the leisure in the world for it.
Or so I thought.
"...Sorry, run that by me again? What did you say?"
"To begin with, some two hundred applicants have gathered in front of the villa. The crowd squirming before me right now is the result."
"Seriously? Two hundred?"
"Ah—strictly speaking, it is not exactly two hundred."
"See? I knew it. People applying on a lark, and—"
"There are still districts where the notice has yet to be posted, so we must wait several days more. Then two hundred will be left far in the dust."
"...Projected total?"
"We have covered roughly half the city, so even the crudest arithmetic doubles the figure. Our working estimate stands at around five hundred."
Good lord, this was insane.
Were there really that many starving artists in one city? No—that wasn't the point. It was more that the artists of the entire city, literally all of them, appeared to have come calling.
Not just painters like Rin, but street acrobats, jesters, performers whose claim to the word artist was dubious at best. Every last one of them.
"How did it come to this...?"
"Well, there are no entry requirements, no age limits, no works to submit, and word has it that judging will not rest on skill alone—that your personal taste carries the final say. Naturally everyone will enter, dreaming of a windfall."
"You knew this would happen, didn't you?"
"I did."
"...And you didn't warn me in advance because you decided I ought to experience it firsthand."
"That is also correct."
Claire was my bodyguard, but our relationship had never been only that. We'd known each other since we were children—childhood friends, of a sort—she was bound to me as vassal to master, and above all, she was a confidante who would stand at my side until the day I died of old age.
Honestly, calling Claire book-smart would be generous, but in this sort of lived experience and gut instinct, she was leagues beyond me.
There was bound to be a gulf in worldliness between a noble second son who had never done a thing with himself and Claire, who had adventurer years behind her and had once traveled to the capital entirely on her own—leaving me behind.
"That's a stinging lesson... one I won't soon forget."
"Is that so?"
"Anyone who could look at that swarm of artists seething at the villa's gate and feel nothing would have to be out of their mind."
Five hundred was not a small number by any measure. In my previous life, when I'd served in the army, a full muster of my battalion filled the entire parade ground—and even that came to only two or three hundred men. Ours was a unit on the eve of disbandment, so it ran small to begin with.
Interviewing, one by one, more than twice the strength of that entire battalion? While inviting them into the villa, paying them consolation money, and feeding them on top of it all?
Impossible, surely.
It wouldn't even be a question of funds or manpower—at that point, Father's displeasure would come raining down. What on earth are you doing, assembling five hundred people at the villa? I would catch holy hell for it. And frankly, I would have had nothing to say in my own defense.
It was late, but the hour for countermeasures had come.
"For a start, let's send every applicant gathered out front home. I'll bow my head to them myself."
"There is no need for you to come out and apologize, my lord. In the end, they are people who came seeking your patronage—free money."
"Don't be so cutting about it. This was a mistake on the host's end; an apology is what I owe."
"It is not so simple as that. Recall the standing House Medici commands in this city. You are one of only three children of that house—and its second son."
...
"That one who stands above should own his mistakes rather than avert his eyes from them—truly, this is praiseworthy. But even virtue is weighed against the gravity of the offense. You did not keep them standing out there for hours on end, nor did you collect an entry fee in advance, did you?"
"Well... no, that's true."
"They bear their share of blame as well. The notice stated plainly that the audition would begin in three days, yet here they are, gathered at the villa gates before then, angling to catch your eye. You made your mistakes, yes, but so did they—which means there is no need for you to bow your head."
"Claire."
"I will see them sent home myself, so kindly occupy your time with drafting a plan instead."
Having left her stinging lesson behind, Claire walked out of the room without waiting for an answer. Before long, the knights and servants who kept the villa sprang into motion and dispersed the artists who had crowded the grounds.
No one put up much of a fight. As Claire had said, the actual start date was still days away, and they hadn't even been gathered for half an hour.
But what if that scene had played out on the opening day of the audition itself? It would have been chaos, plain and simple.
Entry requirements it is, then.
I had hoped to avoid them, but at this rate, long before I ever found the bottom-rung artist I was looking for, I wouldn't manage to hold a proper audition at all.
And yet if I imposed an age limit or an entry fee, I might miss the very artist I wanted.
Each of them submits one work. As for the field... we limit it to painting.
However I turned the problem over, that was the best option. A single work couldn't tell me whether an artist was the sort I was after, true—but I had to winnow the field somehow before interviews were even possible.
Narrowing the discipline was part of the same calculation. Honestly, I had bitten off more than I could chew, so for the moment, limiting the field was simply the realistic move. An acrobat's "work," after all—what would that even be?
Which left one new problem.
I can't judge a painting to save my life.
To make matters worse, everything I had prepared so far was for interviews. Even restricting it to painters, painters made up the largest share of all artists by a wide margin. Naturally that meant close to two hundred applicants—and, in turn, some two hundred paintings to sift through.
Even if all I intended was to pick whatever caught my fancy, I would need some baseline standard to decide what to cut. Otherwise I would most likely dither endlessly—well, this one's nice, and that one's nice too—without ever settling on anything.
I needed a collaborator. One who genuinely understood painting. A skilled painter would be even better—
"Oh."
"So that is why you came to see me?"
"That's right. I need your help, Rin."
A skilled painter, and a collaborator who could lend me a hand right away.
And someone who would never dream of refusing me.
This was the moment for Rin to step up.
...
"Um... hello?"
"...Yes."
"You'll help, right?"
"......Yes."
"Th-thank you."
"Yes."
...In any case, she accepted readily enough. And with that, the conversation simply died.
Awkward. Agonizingly awkward. The silence was crushing.
With the air demanding that somebody, anybody, do something, I pulled out the trump card I'd brought along in a desperate bid to keep the exchange alive.
"Oh, right—I brought some wine this time. Care for a glass? I heard you like the stuff."
"I'm quite alright."
"Is... that so?"
"Yes."
.........
..........
Uh-oh.
This wasn't how it was supposed to go...?