The Golden Key

by Melanie Rawn

  Joao and Miari enjoyed only a few years of wedded happiness. It is said that Yberro Grijalva, who painted the Betrothal and, only a few years later, Joao’s Death, mixed his paints with his own tears for joy at the first and grief at the second, for the young Duke had been his cherished friend. The abundance of floral and herbal symbolism in the latter painting shows the maturation of Grijalva art and insight, and the use of iconography to make a visually powerful painting even more effective, both emotionally and as legal documentation.

  Thus have painted documents become more binding than anything written on paper. Variations of dialect can accidentally—or deliberately—confuse, but a picture of an event on wood, paper, or canvas transcends language. Not only betrothals, marriages, births, and deaths are so recorded, but also treaties, wills, and deeds of ownership. And only Tira Virte, with its astonishingly vital tradition of art, can supply enough limners to paint copies for all parties concerned. During the last fifty years, the work of Serrano and Grijalva Masters has become not only legendary but essential to the conduct of personal, mercantile, and state business.

  Sario Grijalva saw at once what had become of her; where she had gone, despite her physical presence. He knew that look, that blind glaze in eyes, the stillness of features, the fixed feyness of expression. He even knew how it felt: he, too, was what some might call victim. He himself named it potential. Promise. Power. And his definitions were unlike those of others, including the moualimos, the teachers who for now defined his days in the workshops of the students.

  Petty men, all of them, even those who were Gifted. They spoke of such things as potential, as promise; even, quietly, of power, and knew nothing of any of them.

  He knew. And would know; it was in him to know.

  “’Vedra,” he said.

  Bound by her inner eye, she neither answered him nor moved.

  “’Vedra,” he said more clearly.

  Nothing.

  “Saavedra.”

  She twitched. Her eyes were very black; then slowly the blackness shrank, leaving another color behind. Clear, unmuddied gray, unsullied by underpainting, by impure pigments. It was one of the things about her unlike so many others: Grijalva gray eyes, unusual eyes, the markers of their mutual Tza’ab ancestry, though his was cloaked in far more ordinary clothing: brown eyes, brown hair, desert-dark skin. Nothing in the least remarkable about Sario Grijalva.

  Not outside, where men could see. Inside, where no one could see but he, because the only light available was the kindling of ambition, the naphtha of his vision.

  He looked upon her. She was older than he, and taller, but now she huddled upon the colonnade bench like a supplicant, a servant, leaving him to accept or deny preeminence. She turned her face up to him, into a shaft of midday sunlight that illuminated expression in quiet chiaroscuro as it illuminated the wood-speckled paper attached to a board, the agile, beautiful hands. With a quick, unthinking motion she tossed unkempt black hair out of her eyes; saw him then, registered his presence, marked identity—and answered, dredging awareness back from the vast geography of her other world, confined by the bindings of her inner eye.

  “Wait—” Clipped, impatient, imperative, as if he were the servant now.

  They were all of them servants, Grijalvas: gifted and Gifted alike.

  “—wait—” she repeated—softer now, pleading, asking understanding, forgiveness, all underscored by impatience—and sketched frantically upon the paper.

  He understood. There was compassion in him for her, unalloyed comprehension. But impatience also, his own for other reasons, and more than a little resentment that she should expect him to wait; she was not and could not be Gifted, not as he was Gifted.

  Therefore he could answer: “There is no time, ‘Vedra. Not if we are to see it.”

  Silence, save for the scratching of her charcoal upon the inferior paper.

  “’Vedra—”

  “I must get this down …” And unspoken: —while it is alive, while it is fresh, while I see it—

  He understood, but could not coddle it. “We must go.”

  “A moment, just a moment longer—momentita, grazzo—” She worked quickly, with an unadorned economy of movement he admired. Many of the young girls labored over their work, as did many boys, digging and digging for small truths that would strengthen their work, but Saavedra understood better what she wanted to do. Her truths, as his, were immense, if unacknowledged by either of them as anything other than ordinary, because to each of them such truths were. They breathed them every moment.

  As did he, she saw those truths, that light, the images completed by her mind in all the complexities, exploring none so much as freeing them with a minimum of strokes, a swift stooping of her gift.

  Luza do’Orro, the Golden Light, the true-talent of the mind.

  He watched. For once he felt like moualimo to student, teacher to estuda. It was not he laboring beneath the unrelenting eye of another, but she beneath his eye, doing nothing for him but for herself instead, only for herself; she understood that freedom, that desire for expression apart from the requisites of their family, the demands of the moualimos.

  “No,” he said suddenly, and swooped down upon her. His own vision, his own Luza do’Orro, could not be denied. Even for such dictates as courtesy. Even for her. “No, not like that … here—do you see?” They none of them were without pockets or charcoal; he took a burned stick from his tunic and sat down beside her, pulling the board and paper away into his own lap. “Look you—see?”

  A moment only, a single corrected line: Baltran do’Verrada, Tira Virte’s Duke, whom they had seen only today in the Galerria.

  Saavedra sat back, staring at the image.

  “Do you see?” Urgency drove him; he must explain before the light of his vision died. Quickly he scrubbed away what he could of the offending line, blew it free of residue. The portrait now, though still rough and over-hasty, was indeed more accurate. He displayed it. “The addition here gives life to the left side of his face … he is crooked, you know. No face is pure in balance.” He filled in a shadow. “And there is his cheekbone—like so … do you see?”

  Saavedra was silent.

  It struck him like a wave: he had erred. He had hurt her. “’Vedra, forgive me—” Matra ei Filho, when someone did that to him— “Oh, ‘Vedra, I’m sorry! I am!” He was. “But I couldn’t help myself.”

  She put her charcoal into her tunic pocket. “I know.”

  “’Vedra—”

  “I know, Sario. You never can help yourself.” She got up from the bench and shook out her tunic. Charcoal dust clouded. Her tunic was, as his, stained by powdered pigments, dyestuffs, binder, melted resins, oil, all the workings of their world. “It is better, what you have done.”

  He was anxious now, thrusting the board and pinned paper back into her hands as he rose hastily. “It was only—” He gestured helplessly. “It was only that I saw—”

  “I know,” she said again, accepting the board but not looking at the sketch. “You saw what I didn’t see; what I should have seen.” Saavedra shrugged, a small, self-conscious lifting of her shoulders. “I should have seen it also.”

  It lay between them now. They were alike in many ways, unalike in others. She could not be Gifted, but she was gifted, and more so than most.

  He saw again in his inner eye the image. No one would mistake it. No one could have mistaken it for anyone other than Baltran do’Verrada before he had altered the sketch, but he had altered it nonetheless.

  He was sorry to hurt her. But there was exactitude in his Gift, a punishing rectitude: there was no room in his world for than anything less than perfection.

  “Regretto,” he said in a small, pinched voice. Inside his head: Nazha irrada; don’t be angry. Nazha irrada, ‘Vedra. But he could not speak it aloud; there was too much of begging in it, too much humility. Even to her, even for her, he could not bare so much of himself. “I’m sorry …”

  She was in tha
t moment far older than he. “You always are, Sario.”

  It was punishment, though for her it was merely truth, a bastard form of luza do’orro. He valued that in her. Truth was important. But truth could also punish; his own personal truth had transformed the rough sketch from good to brilliant, with merely an added line, a touch of shadow—he understood it all so well, it burned in him so brightly that it was beyond his comprehension how another might not know it.

  His truth was not hers. She was good, but he was better.

  Because of it, he had hurt her.

  “’Vedra—”

  “It’s all right,” she said, tucking hair behind her ears. A bloody speck glinted there: garnet stone in the lobe. “Do’nado. You can’t help it.”

  Indeed, he never could. It was why they hated him.

  Even the moualimos, who knew what he could be.

  “Where are we going?” she asked. “You said it was important.”

  Sario nodded. “Very important.”

  “Well?” She repositioned the board, but did not so much as glance at the image on the paper.

  He swallowed tautly. “Chieva do’Sangua.”

  It shocked her as much as he expected. “Sario, we can’t!”

  “I know a place,” he told her. “They will never see us.”

  “We can’t!”

  “No one will see us, ‘Vedra. No one will know. I’ve been there many times.”

  “You’ve seen a Chieva do’Sangua?”

  “No. Other things; there hasn’t been a Chieva do’Sangua for longer than we’ve been alive.”

  She was taken aback. “How do you know these things?”

  “I have open eyes, unplugged ears—” Sario grinned briefly. “And I know how to read the Folio, ‘Vedra; I am permitted, being male.”

  “To look, eiha, yes; but it’s too soon for you to read so much. Do the moualimos know?”

  He shrugged.

  “Of course not! Oh, Sario, you’ve read too far ahead! You must be properly examined before permission to read the Folio is granted—”

  He was impatient now. “They won’t know we’re there, ‘Vedra. I promise.”

  Beneath charcoal smudges, her face was leached of color. “It’s forbidden—it’s forbidden, Sario! We are not Master Limners to see the Chieva do’Sangua, any more than you are permitted to study the Folio—”

  Again, he could not help it. “I will be. I will be.” And Lord Limner also!

  Color flared briefly in pale cheeks; she, being female, would never be permitted to study the Folio, or to be admitted to the ranks of Master Limners, the Viehos Fratos. Her purpose was to conceive and bear them, not to be one. “You aren’t one yet, are you?”

  “No, but—”

  “And until you are, you are not permitted to see such things.” She glared at him, clearly still stung by his reminder that gender as much as blood precluded her from rising as he would. “And it’s still true: we are not Master Limners to see the ritual. Do you know what would happen to us if we were caught?”

  Abruptly he grinned. “Nothing so bad as Chieva do’Sangua.”

  She ignored the sally and shook her head definitively. “No.”

  He smiled. “Yes.”

  Now she looked again at the sketch. Her image, that he had made come truly to life with the single quick stroke of his charcoal here, and a bit of shadow there.

  Neosso Irrado they called him; Angry Youth—and with reason. He tried them all. Tested them all. But they knew it even as he did: the Grijalva family had never, since the Gift had come upon them, known anyone with his talent.

  He was surely Gifted. Unacknowledged, undefined, as yet unconfirmed. But they knew it as surely as he did. As surely as Saavedra, who had told him so once, long before he saw it in his teachers’ eyes, because the moualimos would not speak of it.

  Yet.

  He would be a Master Limner, one of the Viehos Fratos … how could he not? The Gift surged within him despite his youth, despite the fact no one would yet consider admitting it.

  Lord Limner, too. He thrust his chin into the air proudly. I know what I am. I know what I will be.

  Saavedra’s mouth twisted. She looked away from the sketched face because his living one demanded it. “Very well,” she said.

  He had won. He always won. He would go on winning.

  No one, not even the moualimos, knew yet how he might be beaten. Or even if he could be.

  The man hastily reached for and caught the boy’s hand. “This way, Alejandro … through here, do you see? No, let the candlerack be—this way, if you please … No, no guide sheet; and no, the curatorrio is not necessary. We shall do well enough on our own, we two … here, Alejandro, this way. Do you see? You are related to every do’Verrada hanging here on these very walls. In fact, you may well see your own face peering back at you from innumerable frames. Look you—here … do you see?”

  He waited; was ignored.

  “Alejandro.”

  Had the boy somehow become deaf between the night and the morn?

  “Alejandro Baltran Edoard Alessio do’Verrada, if you please: attend me!”

  Belatedly, “Patro?”

  Not deaf, then, obviously; merely—always!—distracted. It was age—or, more appropriately, youth—as well as the wholly anticipated trait of distractability; was the boy not his son?

  His son. Matra Dolcha, yes!—and with duties to tend despite his youth; or perhaps it was better to say duties to be tended, one day. For now Alejandro was clearly too distracted—and distractable; for now there were but quiet truths to be told, though as yet only small and supposedly inconsequential, vast histories unveiled, infamous battles refought, endless genealogies unfolded. …

  The father, caught in reverie, sighed. Such knowledge was vital to the training, if subtle and as yet unmarked, of a son who was also Heir.

  “These are the Marriages—Alejandro!” Eiha, he was never still, this boy, never still … was much more taken up with, he supposed, the altogether natural pursuits of his age: food, and the obsessive need to be constantly active—with little attention left over for such tedious things as leisurely educational strolls through Meya Suerta’s renowned Galerria.

  He grinned in wry self-deprecation. Especially with his father!

  At the moment the busy boy’s fancy was struck by a group of children his age gathering like hungry hound pups in the high-vaulted foyer of the gallery; none of the litter would be permitted to enter, of course, while the Duke and his son were present. The Duke saw the middle-aged, slight man whose linen-clothed throat glinted gold quietly deny entry to his charges—but all of them spent the unexpected delay staring hard at those who took precedence over them. And Alejandro stared back.

  Matra Dolcha, but this boy has the attention span of a gnat. Smiling wryly, he clamped a broad, ring-weighted hand over the curl-capped dome of the skull, threading strong callused fingers through disarrayed dark hair, and physically swiveled the head on its slender neck so that the boy had no choice but to look in the direction his father meant him to. “Alejandro.”

  “Patro?”

  “They are Grijalva children, no more. Did you see the necklace and device that man wears at his collar?”

  Alejandro shrugged; he was infinitely bored by talk of unknown men and equally unimportant devices.

  “Chieva do’Orro, little gnat: the Golden Key. It betokens a Master Limner, and the others with him, who are not yet masters of anything, are here to study the works painted by their ancestors …” He paused. “Alejandro, can you at least give the same grace to those they painted, who are your ancestors?”

  The boy squirmed. “Are they to be limners, too?”

  “Indeed, it is likely. They are Grijalvas.”

  Bright eyes slewed in the direction of the foyer where the litter stood as one. “Do all Grijalvas paint, Patro?”

  The Duke cast a glance at the adult with the children—their teacher, most likely, a quiet elder entrusted to guide and ward
the wisdom and artistry of the next generation. “They paint as they have always painted, but also they are responsible for the wherewithal to do it. It is the Grijalva family which makes the materials used in art. It is their purpose, Alejandro. Their gift, if you will.” The hand lifted from the skull and gestured toward the wall. “Now, look upon this—this one here, before us … Alejandro! What do you see?”

  Looking upon the boy, one saw an expression of manifest impatience. And, of course, distraction. He twitched, fidgeted, cast another quick glance across his shoulder at the children clustered at the entrance. “A painting, Patro.”

  Indulgence was the luxury of nobility. The father smiled and did not reprimand. “A painting, yes. Does it speak to you, this painting?”

  The boy’s smile was fleeting, a youthful echo of the father’s, but it lent an impudent glint to lively hazel eyes. “It does, Patro. It tells me I should return to the Palasso and practice my bladework.”

  “Bladework, eh? Instead of hanging about the Galerria surrounded by tedious paintings documenting even more tedious marriages?”

  The response was quick. “I will not be a limner, Patro. I am not a Grijalva, but a do’Verrada whose face hangs on these very walls.”

  Eiha, a clever gnat—though many of the faces had been painted by Grijalvas. “A swordsman, then, eh, little do’Verrada?”

  “I would rather, Patro.”

  “Eiha, so would I.” The father’s eyes glinted now in older echo of the son’s. “But you will rule Tira Virte one day, Alejandro, and a wise ruler realizes it need not be always by the sword.”

  “But paintings, Patro?” The boy had not yet learned the subtleties of Court; he was honest in disbelief, in fleeting indifference, as yet knowing nothing of derision or condescension. “How may a man rule through a painting?”

  All innocence—the boy, the question—as it should be. But it minded the father, abruptly, unpleasantly, of the latest story making the rounds, initially quiet but now blatant as a knife in the belly. There were rumors at Palasso Verrada of magics, of a dark power manifesting itself within the city, aiming for the Court, for the ducal family itself.