by Melanie Rawn
“What is it?” she asked sharply. “What is the Peintraddo Chieva but a self-portrait?”
Sario’s mouth jerked briefly. “A means of control,” he answered. “A secret means. What we saw, you and I, above the Crechetta.”
Saavedra remembered all too vividly what they had seen above the Crechetta.
“Punishment,” he said tautly, “for troubling them. For improper compordotta. For being—Neosso Irrado.”
“Oh, no—”
“Tomaz was Neosso Irrado.”
It seemed an obvious answer. “Then don’t you be!” she cried.
His face was pinched. “I can’t stop, ‘Vedra. I can’t help myself.”
“You can! Just stop. Don’t talk back, don’t question everything, don’t break rules, accept the compordotta—”
“Don’t you see? When it doesn’t make sense, what they ask; or when I see another way, a better way, I have to tell them! I can’t ignore what is obvious to me, even if no one else sees it … it would be dishonest. It would dishonor my talent. You know that! You know that!”
She knew that. She had felt it herself.
“They will blind me,” he said, “as they blinded Tomaz. They will cripple my talent as they crippled his hands.”
She had seen it done. “Sario—”
“I have to do this, don’t you see?—so I may prevent them. Tomaz told me the way, though he couldn’t realize it.” He hitched a thin shoulder. “He told me how he painted his self-portrait, the ingredients he used … but he painted in ignorance. I will not.”
Her mouth was dry. “How, Sario? How can you prevent the Viehos Fratos from doing whatever they wish to do?”
“By outwitting them,” he said. “I am young yet, too young, but surely they will test me soon. Surely they will discover that my seed is infertile, and then they will know; it is only the final proof, ‘Vedra … everything else is known. It lives here, in my soul.” He touched his breast. “You know I am Gifted.”
“Yes,” she said rustily. “I have always known.”
“And thus I am at risk. I must be what I am meant to be, because it lives inside me—but they wish to control it. And that is how they used the Peintraddo Chieva.”
Her breath ran shallow. “What is altered in the self-portrait is visited on the body.”
“Yes.”
She had seen it. Had watched them do it, the Viehos Fratos in the private Crechetta: carefully, meticulously, with surpassing skill they had painted the portrait blind, crippled—and so did Tomaz become. Sario had injured the painting—and so had Tomaz become.
“Matra,” she whispered, pressing a trembling hand against her lips. “Matra ei Filho …”
“I will paint them their painting,” he told her. “I will do as they tell me to do. I will give them a Peintraddo Chieva—but it will not be the first one. It will not be the only one. It will not be the real one. That, I will keep. That, I will lock away. And only you, and only I, shall know the truth of it.”
SEVEN
Meya Suerta was a city of many faces, of many hearts. Which face one saw, which heart one touched, was determined by such predictable things as birth, as craft, as gift, as beauty—and certainly as wealth. But the true soul of the city lay in its unpredictability, and the turgid flow of lifeblood within its people; even within those born elsewhere, strangers to Tira Virte, save they lived in her now, died, and were buried in her soil, blessed in their passing by the Matra ei Filho.
The old man did not wish to die in Tira Virte; did not wish to be buried in her soil; did not wish to be blessed by the Mother or Her Son. His own God was male, whose seed was plentiful, and whose sons were many. And the grace of whom the old man knew he claimed; his God was not so fickle as to deny blessings to the unborn or the newly born, the children who were taken before adulthood. He understood much about Tira Virte, and little. For all he had lived in her lands, in her cities—and now in the city itself—for half of his long life, Meya Suerta was a stranger to him in all the ways that counted.
Not cruel, save in that she could not understand what he was. Not angry, in that she punished him. And neither was she indifferent; he earned a decent wage. But she was not Tza’ab Rih.
But in truth, what was? Tza’ab Rih as he had known it was fallen, brought down by a series of calamitous events engendered, he supposed, by what some undoubtedly termed the follies of a religious madman; but to this man here, this aged man, such opinions were the follies, and nothing short of blasphemy.
How could no one see it? These lands had belonged to Tza’ab Rih. No one of any wit at all could fault a realm for wishing to keep what it once had, nor for trying to recover what had been lost over time, when incursions from others—from those who began to call themselves Tira Virteians for the bounty of their green land—were subtle, when incursions were viewed as nothing more than a family wishing to make a living, to shape a life.
But too many had come. Too many had settled. Too many lives were not of Tza’ab Rih. They spoke of the Mother and the Son in place of Acuyib, and so the Diviner, the Most Holy, the Lord of the Golden Wind, had sought wisdom from the Kita’ab, in whose pages the words of the God Acuyib—the only God who mattered—were written.
The old man had seen it. The Kita’ab—or its remains. His eyes had been blessed to witness what was revered within his land: the pages of carefully-scribed text bordered and illuminated most extravagantly, with stunning skill, by those who served the Diviner, who in turn served Acuyib.
And Acuyib had said, within the pages of sacred text, that Tza’ab Rih was most blessed of all lands within his dominion, and that it was for his chosen to safeguard its bounties, its peoples, its vast array of the faithful contained within its borders.
Its borders.
Thus did the Diviner of the Golden Wind assemble his most select, and train them, and sanctify them in Acuyib’s Holy Name, and title them Riders of the Golden Wind, and send them out to reclaim the old borders that others had encroached.
Thus did war begin.
Thus did the end begin.
The old man sighed. So many years ago. So many prayers ago. So many deaths ago. And so his Tza’ab Rih was fallen, and now he made his home in the capital city of the victor-by-proxy, many years removed: Baltran do’Verrada, whose ancestors had broken the Diviner’s Riders, his city, his heart; and, by employing such devoted and devastatingly effective warriors as Verro Grijalva, destroyed the Kita’ab.
He refused to live as Tira Virteians lived. Once, yes, he had; in Tza’ab Rih many of the folk built homes of brick and lived within them, but when the Riders were assembled, luxuries were forbidden until such a time as lost lands were recovered. And so the warriors had caused tents to be made, and learned to live without such roots as others knew: it was wiser, the Diviner said, to ride the Golden Wind than to anchor oneself forever on one small patch of land while others, lacking theirs, left what had been home to live within the cities.
And so they rode the Golden Wind. Horseback, always moving; sleeping in the saddle or in wind-billowed tents.
He had no horse now, and no saddle. But he did own a tent. And he made one small patch of the land now called Tira Virte his own Tza’ab Rih.
Within the tent, the small tent, an old warrior smiled. Then slowly, creakily, abased himself and prayed.
Though others, in the aftermath of calamity—requiring explanation for what was inexplicable—claimed Acuyib a weak God for permitting so much death, and the Diviner a madman, the old Tza’ab was serene. There was reason in all things; one could not question Acuyib and remain faithful. One simply believed, and served.
He believed. One day the prayer would be answered. One day another would come. One day Tza’ab Rih would be born in the breast of a man, even if he be a stranger. Even if he be born in what was now Tira Virte, that once was Tza’ab Rih. From the heart of the enemy would come Acuyib’s savior, a second Diviner. So he had seen in the magic, and had come to live among the enemy if not of him.
Death might be cleaner than living so, but Acuyib had not decreed it. And so the old man lived as he had lived for decades, secure beyond supposition in the certainty of his faith.
Alejandro scowled. Behind him stood the backdrop: A monstrous drape of purple velurro hemmed with braided gold cord, bedecked with massive tassels. Beyond that, albeit muffled, sounded the cacophony of the summer day: the drone of bees tending the scarlet vine blossoms spilling onto the sill of the unshuttered window; the staccato whirring of hummingbirds in competition with bees for nectar; the dueling songs of mockingbirds in complex conversation; the occasional outbreaks of laughter from the gardeners tending the courtyard below.
But where he was, the noise was far more prosaic and therefore wholly tedious: the tuneless humming of Zaragosa Serrano, intermixed with self-satisfied comments to the easel he faced; the scratch of chalk on pebbled, wood-speckled paper; the annoying half-whistle of breath sucked in and blown out between pursed lips.
Behind him, beyond him, the world beckoned. Alejandro fidgeted. He chafed. He felt the burgeoning of impatience that threatened to prove painful unless he found release. He could not be still much longer. He was made to move, not to stand stiffly, unnaturally, so a thin-faced, crimson-clad peacock could make annoying noises.
Alejandro, discommoded, scowled more blackly yet.
This time Serrano, looking up from his sketch, protested, albeit politely. “No—eiha, no, Don Alejandro … could you lift your chin again, grazzo?—only a moment longer, en verro …”
Alejandro did not lift his chin again. He continued to scowl.
“Grazzo, Don Alejandro—”
But Don Alejandro rejected the plea. “No more,” he declared, relaxing from the stiff pose into a natural posture. “You are too slow.”
“True art requires time, Don Alejandro—”
“Other artists don’t take so long.” The boy left the backdrop entirely and arrived to inspect the board on which the Lord Limner sketched his image. He scowled more deeply. “That isn’t me.”
Zaragosa’s chuckle was forced. “Subjects rarely recognize themselves … but of course it is you, Don Alejandro. This is but a rough sketch, the merest beginning—”
“It doesn’t look anything like me.”
“Perhaps not precisely, not just yet, but it shall, Don Alejandro—when I begin painting—”
With the definitiveness of youth, Alejandro shook his head. “I’ve seen Itinerarrios and street artists do better than that.”
That stung. Deeply. Zaragosa Serrano colored a deep and most unflattering shade of red much at odds with the crimson of his summer doublet.
Alejandro took careful note of it. “It is my face,” he pointed out reasonably. “I want it to be correct.”
Serrano, outraged, glared. “It is correct—have I not said it takes time? Have I not said that this is but the roughest of beginnings? Have I not said that once I begin laying on paint—”
“Yes, yes,” Alejandro interrupted, employing his father’s ducal impatience—it always got results. “But if it isn’t to look like me, why must I stand here for most of the day when I would rather be out there?”
Out there was indicated by a wave of one arm, encompassing the unshuttered window. Summer sunlight poured in, as did temperate air and the sounds of the world beyond. But Zaragosa Serrano had struck Alejandro on many occasions as deaf to all but what he heard inside his head; it was a great jest among the Courtfolk that one could call him every epithet known to the language when he was caught up in his work, and he would merely grunt detached acceptance.
“This is to be your Peintraddo Natalio—”
“It won’t be my birthday for two months yet.”
“Of course, but a great work of art requires time—”
Alejandro stared penetratingly at the preliminary sketch a long moment, then shifted his unwavering hazel-eyed stare to the artist. “Even the Courtfolk say you are slow.”
Zaragosa Serrano, already red with barely contained frustration, now turned corpse-candle white. Alejandro found it fascinating that mere words could hold such power over a man’s skin color.
“They say that?” Serrano’s chalk broke in his hand. “They say that?” He tossed down the pieces. “They say that, do they?” Now he snatched up a cloth and threw it haphazardly over the sketch. “Do they say that?”
Alejandro nodded gravely.
“Filho do’canna!” The Lord Limner forgot entirely he was not to swear before his Duke’s son—who of course knew all the words anyway, having spent time in the kitchens, in the stables, even in the guardroom, where every male born appeared to have intimate knowledge of a wide array of wondrously dramatic invective. “All of them, the pigs and sows … they know nothing of greatness, nothing—they spend their hours painting their pox-plagued faces, when they would do better to allow me to paint them on canvas the way they wish their flesh to look, each and every one of them—chiros all of them, rooting in filth for the single delicacy of gossip, of intrigue, of political expediency!—while I spend every hour of my day laboring to serve as the Duke wills it … what then, are they lacking the stench of human wastes? Merdittas albas, are they?” His foot crushed the discarded chalk into the stone floor, grinding it into powder. “What am I but Lord Limner, after all?—Lord Limner, appointed by the Duke himself to document the lives of the do’Verradas, the business of the city, the duchy—even of such chiros as those who inhabit the Court …” His face now was empurpled. “Do you think it is easy for me? Do you think I find it effortless to spend my days begging and pleading for a nobleborn to ‘turn this way, lift your chin, hold the smile just so—ah, no, this way, if you please—oh, a moment longer’… bassda! I am ill-used indeed for my time, my talent. I should paint them all as what they are, and call it Il Chiros do’Tira Virte … and it should be a masterwork to reflect the truth of this Court!”
Alejandro blinked. “I should like to paint you the way you are this moment. And call it Il Borrazca.”
But the storm that inspired Alejandro’s title had blown itself out. Now, in its aftermath, a trembling and fearful Lord Limner gathered his inconsequential dignity and took it—and himself—out of the atelierro.
The campaign thus was won, and with little effort expended. Alejandro, grinning, made his escape into the day.
Claiming illness, Sario fasted for two days. He drank nothing but water. On the morning of the third day he rose, collected his urine in a clean receptacle, filled a single glass vial with a portion of the contents, sealed it, set it aside.
The night before, though it was summer, he had lit his brazier. Into an iron pot he had placed small chunks of amber, the resin of trees; now it was melted, ready for use.
He washed his hair in clean rainwater and, while it was still wet, took up a knife and cut a hank from the back of his neck. With infinite care he trimmed the hair so that its shape, density and texture mimicked that of a brush; he then carefully married the trimmed hair to the slender stick of unpolished wood, tied it on with thread, then sealed it with melted resin.
Next he drank an infusion that, within five minutes, drove up his body’s temperature alarmingly. Feverish, racked with shudders and tears, he clung stubbornly to two vials and murmured prayers that he had not miscalculated; when within moments he broke out in a rolling sweat, he thanked the Mother and Her Blessed Son and collected both tears and perspiration in the bottles, sealed them, set them aside.
He spat prodigiously into a fourth tiny vial, sealed it as well, put it with the others.
He opened a finger with a heated lancet, counted the dollops of blood as they fell into a tiny bottle, sealed it also.
Urine. Tears. Sweat. Saliva. Blood.
One more fluid to be harvested before he could make the magic work.
His breathing quickened. Quietly he rose and slipped out of his sleeping smock. He looked down at his body: still boyishly slender, lacking the flesh, the muscle, the power of an adult male. But he was a
male withal, though young yet, and all of him knew it. Most mornings proved it.
This morning he had not spilled his seed. He found it somewhat annoying; he had been prepared. But now it would require something more than dreams, than imaginings, than unknown instinct crying out for release though he knew little of what it was.
He was virgin still, and would be until sent to the fertile women for Confirmattio. Not for tumbles in dark corners was he; not for secret assignations in the midst of night. Nor were any of them, who might be Gifted. A boy’s awakening was very nearly a sacred thing in the Grijalva family, because so much of their livelihood, their survival, depended on it.
If he were fertile, he was not Gifted. If he sired a child, he was nothing but a man. And for such as he, in whose brain and body burgeoned such talent and ambitions, fertile seed would prove his undoing.
What he had done this morning was forbidden; he had not yet undergone Confirmattio, was not yet admitted, not yet permitted such knowledge, such power as what he undertook. But time ran on swiftly, too swiftly; he dared not let it go without accelerating his own grasp upon it, to control it before it controlled him.
Before it controlled him.
For a moment his spirit quailed. What he undertook now was a watershed in his life. If he turned his back on it, rejected it, life went on as it had. If he grasped it, if he accepted the responsibility, life was forever changed.
I’m just a boy, his inner self said.
In boyhood was safety. In mediocrity also. In lack of ambition. In the serene acceptance of one’s limitations.
I could be just like everyone else. I could paint, and teach, and maybe sire children, live out my life in peace.
But the Light in his heart, his soul, flared up in conflagration and burned to ash the trepidations. All that remained was the talent, the Light, the hunger.
He stared fixedly at random motes caught upon pale sunlight slanting through warped shutters. “I am Sario Grijalva. I will be Lord Limner—because now I know how.”