The Golden Key

by Melanie Rawn

  “They wish to climb too high, Your Grace—and they will use dark magics to do so.”

  Do’Verrada turned now to face him fully. “I have spoken with several of the Courtfolk—it need not be said who they are, of course, so do not ask me with those eloquent eyes!—in order to learn more of this power you speak of. There are those who speak instead of your jealousy, Zaragosa, those who say you bear the Grijalvas ill will for no sound reason beyond fear you will lose your place.”

  Zaragosa Serrano colored. The splotchy flush clashed horrendously with his red-and-purple doublet and particolored hosen. “Your grace, the Serrano family has held the confidence of the do’Verradas for decades—”

  “Yes, of course, but do you fear you will be dismissed as Lord Limner? You personally, Zaragosa?”

  “Your Grace, I—”

  “Do you fear your talent is threatened by that of the Grijalvas?” Or perhaps your color choice ? Perhaps I should look again at your most recent paintings, yes?

  “Your Grace, they are the next thing to half-breeds, barbarian Tza’ab bandits—do they not acknowledge this themselves, Your Grace, with reference to chi’patros?” Serrano was in full spate now, like a cataract unhappily squeezed by too many fallen boulders. “‘Who is the father?’—they admit it, Your Grace! They are riddled with Tza’ab blood. And they are as nothing compared to the Serranos, who are pure in blood to the days of the great Duke Alessio I. We do not name bandits and bastards in our ancestry!”

  Quietly do’Verrada asked, “Then why do you fear them, Zaragosa?”

  “I have told you, Your Grace—”

  “That they have some unknown and unnameable power.” Do’Verrada sighed. “Do you know, I was at the Galerria today. I took my son, that he might be acquainted with such things as he must know. There was a clutch of Grijalva children there.” He paused. “They appeared nothing worse to me than children, Zaragosa—perhaps even Serrano children.”

  “They are not!”

  Do’Verrada lifted an eloquent eyebrow; Serrano had forgotten the honorific. “No, indeed; as you say, some of them are descendants of those first bandit-bred Tza’ab chi’patros. But a man, looking on them, sees nothing but what he sees when he looks on any family. Children, Zaragosa.”

  “Your Grace, I have told you what they are!”

  “You have told me what you believe they are—and, do you know, I very nearly succumbed? I believed, Zaragosa. For a moment, one moment, standing there before my Marriage, I believed …”

  “Your Grace, you should believe—”

  “… and then I recalled that if it were true, what you tell me, how could it not also be said of Serranos?”

  “Your Grace!”

  The Duke smiled. “Oh, admittedly you are pure in blood to the time of my ancestor, the great Duke Alessio I. But it might yet be argued that this is nothing more than Court politics, Zaragosa, and that you, seeing fresh talent in the Grijalvas growing beyond the execution of common and fair copies made of your paintings—and wishing to vehemently deny such self-described blasphemy!—seek to damage them so there is no chance any of that family might be appointed to the position you yourself hold.”

  “Your Grace! My family has held this position for nearly sixty years!”

  “And before that, Grijalvas did.”

  “Three of them only.” Immense derision. “And very briefly.”

  “Three. Caught between Serrano and Serrano.” Do’Verrada smiled. “It might be argued that you wish to discredit those who may be worthy of the position you yourself hold. Well, I say let there be proof.”

  “Proof! But, Your Grace, we know it to be true!”

  “Who does, Zaragosa?”

  “The Serrano family, Your Grace! We know it.”

  “Then provide me with proof.”

  “Grijalvas were not always painters, Your Grace. They were common craftsmen, no more, manufacturing such things as true limners require.”

  “That is your proof? The development of artistic talent? But, Zaragosa, it might then be argued that you yourself—and your father before you, and his father’s brother before him—claim a share of these magics, this dark power. Three Grijalvas served as Lord Limners prior to your great-uncle’s and father’s appointments to the post—and then were replaced. By a Serrano.”

  “They grew frightened, Your Grace, and returned to the common crafts so as to avoid exposure.”

  “Leaving the appointment as Lord Limner to your grandfather’s brother? Come, Zaragosa, why would a family of such power as you describe willingly step away from Court? It makes no sense.”

  “Has anyone ever accused the Grijalvas of having sense, Your Grace?”

  It was a small-spirited, mean-minded insult. But it angered the Duke. “Despite their lack of nobility, the Grijalvas have been closely allied with Tira Virte and the do’Verradas for more than one hundred years, Zaragosa. Are you forgetting Verro Grijalva? Despite his common birth, he was perhaps the greatest captain the armies of Tira Virte have ever known. There is no doubt he would have been named Marchallo Grando over all the armies one day— had he not perished defending my grandfather, Duke Renayo.” More tellingly, so Zaragosa would not miss it: “Had he not died in Renayo’s arms.”

  Serrano wisely was silent.

  Do’Verrada signed. “Surely you understand I cannot have it said I would countenance revocation of the Protection without proof, Zaragosa. The Court is riddled with political dissension; only a fool would give this rumor credence without proof.”

  Grudgingly: “Indeed, Your Grace.”

  “Then provide it, Zaragosa. Show me proof that the Grijalvas have this dark power you speak of, and—if indeed there be sustainable proof—then I will revoke what my grandfather instituted. They will have to leave Meya Suerta and become no more than Itinerarrios, all of them, making their way as they can on the roads of the duchy. And no hope of ever rising once again in the armies, in trade, or of sending one of their own to Palasso Verrada as Lord Limner.”

  Serrano’s face was still; he spoke stiffly through a compressed mouth. “Proof, Your Grace, is often difficult to obtain.”

  “But necessary.” Do’Verrada smiled, though there was nothing of humor in it. “Eiha! But I may have a new son or daughter before the day is out, and I weary of this topic. Put on your new hat with its elegant purple feather—so elegant, Zaragosa!—and find me this proof. Only then shall we speak of this again.”

  “Your Grace.” White-faced, Zaragosa Serrano turned smartly and strode from the chamber. Wisely, very wisely, he did not put on his new hat with its elegant purple feather until he was out of the ducal presence.

  “Moronno,” Do’Verrada murmured. “If a Grijalva should replace you as Lord Limner, at the very least, half of it shall be of your own doing!”

  Saavedra’s belly clenched. This was wrong, wrong, to witness the Chieva do’Sangua. It was denied to all but Limners, the Gifted males, for a reason; and even though she had no doubt Sario would one day be admitted to the ranks, he was yet a boy and not admitted—and she only a female. If discovered, they would be severely punished.

  “What if they find us?” she whispered. “Me they will beat, but you—eiha, Sario, would they deny your Gift?”

  “They can’t do that,” he whispered back. “The Gift is too important, too powerful. They need me.”

  So secure in his talent … but she was not. She knew no security save that which was offered any Grijalva woman: the chance to bear children, to increase their numbers again and to provide hope that any male-child born might be Gifted as Sario was.

  Saavedra shivered. The saliva dried in her mouth. Though cramped, she touched her lips, her heart. “Eiha, Matra ei Filho, protect us both—”

  “Bassda!” Sario whispered vehemently. “If you are such a moronna, go. I will not miss seeing this because of you—”

  She could leave … she could, but she knew she wouldn’t. He would make her suffer for it; and, for all that, a perverse curiosit
y, dreadful in its birth, undeniable in its growth, transfixed her to the stone.

  She put her cheek against the brick floor. Through the crack she could see the central portion of a large chamber—the Crechetta, Sario called it—though its sides were cut off by the abbreviated width of the seam. It was a completely enclosed room, a whitewashed interior chamber within Palasso Grijalva, with neither casements nor lamps to light it. Only a single fat candle on a tall twisted-iron stand set against the wall, and also an easel, a shrouded painting upon it, and a sturdy wooden chair.

  “Peintraddo Chieva …” Sario whispered, his head pressed against hers.

  “What? What is that?”

  “A masterwork. A self-portrait. I will be required to paint one as well, to be approved as a Limner. All Gifted are.” His breath gusted against the floor. “It must be a Peintraddo Chieva!”

  Men’s business, and boys’; Saavedra felt lost in Sario’s murmurings. She wondered uncharitably if he shrouded so much in secrecy and half-spoken comments merely to tease her cruelly, to remind her that what he could know, she could not. He had done it to others. He had never done it to her.

  A windowless chamber, a single candle set on iron, a covered painting on an easel, one lone chair. Stark, minimalist, empty; oddly naked.

  And then men came into the room.

  She knew them all. Gifted, each one; Master Limners—Viehos Fratos, in the private tongue of Grijalvas—wearing the Chieva do’Orro on chains at their throats, or dangling nearly to hips after the fashion of sanctas and sanctos who wore on cords the sacred keys and locks of their respective orders. It signified their piety and devotion to, like gender with like gender, the Mother and Son.

  The keys of the Grijalvas meant something else altogether.

  Thin of breath, she again touched fingertips to lips, to heart.

  Those in the chamber mimicked her.

  For a moment Saavedra knew sheer panic; had they seen her? Did they mock her?—and then realized no, of course not, they merely prepared to undertake a ceremony that naturally would be done in the names of the Mother and Son, for all things done in Tira Virte were in Their Blessed Names.

  Even blasphemy?

  “Matra Dolcha,” she murmured breathlessly. Where did such a thought come from? “Sweet Mother, protect me—”

  “Bassda, ‘Vedra!”

  “Bassda yourself, cabessa merditta!” Much stronger insult, that; head of excrement instead of brain of pea: “Do you know what they are going to do?”

  Sario smiled. “I think so.”

  Matra Dolcha—blessed Matra ei Filho—

  Sario’s exhalation hissed in the darkness. “Yes … eiha!—yes—”

  Saavedra shut her eyes.

  “They have brought someone in … filho do’canna—it’s Tomaz!”

  “Tomaz?” Saavedra’s eyes sprang open; she ignored the vulgar alley-argot. “What are they doing with Tomaz?”

  “Not ‘with’… to.”

  “To’?” She shifted closer to the crack, scraping her nose against the wall. “What do they mean to do?”

  Sario’s voice was thinned by fascination. “Chieva do’Sangua.”

  The Bloody Key. It made no sense. The only Key she knew was golden, the Chieva do’Orro of the Grijalvas; and the keys and locks, separated by gender, by order and service, of the sanctos and sanctas. She had heard Chieva do’Sangua referred to only once prior to Sario’s mention earlier, in furtive whisperings between boys—punishment, they had said, happily horrified, sacred discipline of the damned. “What is that—eiha, Sario!—what—”

  Below, one of the Master Limners stepped quietly forward and stripped away the brocaded cloth covering the easel; and indeed, as Sario had said, the painting displayed was of Tomaz Grijalva, was truly a masterwork—she could judge its quality if not its detail even from her hidden place high over the chamber—but not as Tomaz was now: as he had been five years before at age fifteen. Two years after he had undergone Confirmattio and was declared Gifted.

  Sario had said he, too, would be required to paint a self-portrait. A Peintraddo Chieva. “Sario—”

  “Neosso Irrado,” he whispered. “Angry Youth—just like me.”

  “Tomaz has always been a braggart, Sario, full of loud and empty talk of such things as he knows nothing—no one thinks anything of it.”

  “Neosso Irrado.”

  “Then this is punishment for that?” Sacred discipline of the damned, those boys had said. “Why? What has he done? What will they do to him?”

  Sario scraped impatiently at a dusty lock of unruly brown hair that threatened his vision. “Bassda, ‘Vedra. Wait, watch, and you will see.”

  She waited. She watched. She saw.

  And vomited onto the floor.

  TWO

  Sario, recoiling so quickly he smacked his head against the slanted ceiling, had never been so disgusted in his life. “Matra Dolcha, ‘Vedra—”

  But she was beyond hearing, beyond marking his appalled disgust, beyond anything but shock so deep as to paralyze her. She crouched awkwardly, limbs trembling as she gasped and gulped in the aftermath of her belly’s rebellion. Tangled hair straggled into her face, obscuring her expression.

  They dared not linger; he dared not shout or otherwise show his extreme displeasure lest those in the Crechetta hear them, find them, punish them … and he, as she, had just witnessed a punishment he would never banish from memory, even if he lived forever.

  Therefore Sario clamped his mouth shut on further elaborate complaints and instead grabbed a handful of her linen tunic. He tugged. “’Vedra, get up! Get up—we have to go—”

  And they did go, immediately; she managed awkwardly to find her feet at last with his urging, to flail upward, gagging still. She clamped hands against her mouth so as to seal in any further calamities.

  The tiny chamber stank. Sario tugged again on her tunic and headed down the steps; he knew the staircase well, better than she. It took effort to get her down without losing her to a tumble.

  “Out,” he hissed. “We have to go out, outside. If they heard you—” It was possible, though perhaps not, but they dared not risk discovery. What they had witnessed …

  Down and down, fourteen steps counted twice; at the bottom he unlatched the lath-and-plaster door, stuck his head out warily, then plucked at her tunic. “Come on, ‘Vedra, we have to go outside.”

  “Stop pulling, Sario!” She yanked the tunic away, then dragged it upward to scrub her mouth and face violently, as much to rid her memory of truth, he knew, as to clean away the proof of her weakness.

  Such actions guaranteed he would not now catch any part of the fabric to pull her onward. “’Vedra, hurry!”

  Out through the painted curtain, into the corridor, winding through the mazelike coils and angles away from the central rooms, where people gathered—they avoided people, now—and to a door that he unlatched hastily, nimble fingers working, and shoved open on a gusty breath of relief.

  Sunlight flooded in; they tumbled outside, squinting, like a brace of awkward puppies into an alley near the side of the compound: cobbled alley, narrow, and slanted from either side toward the center, where it met in a shallow gutter to carry rain and refuse away. But there was no rain now, not today, only bright and blinding sunlight leaching into the cracks in their souls and illuminating unrepentantly, reminding them of what Chieva do’Sangua was, what it meant, what it did, how it was accomplished. …

  —bells—

  Meya Suerta throbbed with bells.

  In the pure light of the summer sun, Saavedra’s face was white as a corpse-candle. Even her lips, so tightly compressed, were pale, as if she feared to be ill again.

  Sario’s disgust was not lessened, but in view of her obvious discomfort he was moved to suggest a solution. “The fountain,” he said briskly. “Come on, ‘Vedra—you need cleaning.”

  He took her there to the fountain nearest Palasso Grijalva, to the primary fountain in the zocalo, the square of the ar
tisan’s quarter, where they and everyone else involved with the trade and craft lived. In the heat of the day most people lingered indoors, partaking of cool fruit drinks or relaxing drowses, though now the bells began to draw them out of doors again.

  Saavedra leaned over the stone ledge and scooped up handfuls of water, sluicing her face. The front of her tunic was soon sodden, but Sario thought a water-wet tunic far more bearable than one exhibiting the proof of her weak belly.

  Distracted, he frowned. So many bells— From the cathedral, every Ecclesia and Sanctia in the city, but rung in celebration, not tolled in memorial.

  Saavedra hooked her elbows atop the lowest basin and leaned there, staring down into the water. Tangled, sweat-dried curls cascaded over her shoulders, floated atop the surface of the water. Spray like a cataract from the finial of the fountain—the Matra Herself with arms outstretched—set a net of mist in the coiled strands of black hair.

  Something pinched inside of Sario. They were so alike, yet so unalike. Tza’ab blood ran in both of them. Her skin was not so dusky as his, but her eyes were a clear, unsullied Tza’ab gray, clean as fountain water. He was dark as a desert bandit, though of a different hue than the olive-skinned Tira Virteians.

  He saw the rigidity of her shoulders, the pallor of knuckles locked over the lip of the ledge, clinging as if she dared not let go for fear of drowning, or falling.

  “Matra ei Filho,” she murmured, “In Their Blessed Names, grant him release from his torment—”