by Melanie Rawn
Stung, he scowled. “How do you know?”
Blithely she answered, “A woman would interfere with your ambitions, Sario. You would never permit that.”
Ruddy color bloomed in cheeks like a mottled sunburn, though he was too dark to burn; and in summer, his desert-bred flesh merely deepened and did not blister. “How do you know?”
She grinned. “I know you.”
One hand twitched, reached, then was pulled back to his side. Tautly he said, “But not everything, ‘Vedra.”
Abruptly troubled, she looked away hastily from the intensity of his fixed and eloquent gaze. “No,” she confessed, “not everything. You are a man, and Gifted—and one of the Viehos Fratos. I can never know everything.”
His tone was odd. “Do you want to?”
She looked back at him sharply. He was in that instant open to her, unshielded behind the arrogance that annoyed so many, behind the impatient ambition and cynicism that annoyed even her. He was in that instant the boy of five years before, eleven in place of sixteen, helpless to engineer what would save him from the discovery that he had killed a man, that he had known ahead of time how the Chieva do’Sangua worked, and its magic—and that he had used it unaided to destroy a masterwork and thus a Grijalva life, when there were so few to risk.
His voice was stripped of all save bitter honesty, and in it, this moment, resided a stark vulnerability he hid from everyone else. “I would tell you anything you asked.”
And in that instant she understood completely what she had not, until moments before, so much as imagined. They were no longer children, certainly not within a plague-racked and artificially insular society whose survival depended solely on the ability to produce more Grijalvas. Sixteen was young, but not too young; there were fathers not long out of boyhood. In no wise was he a child— he was sterile, not impotent—nor, since her courses had come, was she a girl considered too young for motherhood.
She looked again to her drawing board, gazing blindly at the image of Alejandro do’Verrada. And it struck her, in odd juxtaposition with her fragmenting thoughts, that her nails were rimed with bits of charcoal like blackened frost.
Why am I thinking of that at this moment?
To avoid Sario’s intensity, the intent of his confession.
Matra Dolcha, aid me. Carefully she said, “You are Gifted, Sario.”
The fine straight teeth flashed briefly in quick gritting. “And thus I am sterile,” he said clearly, “but not in the least unable.”
Hot-cheeked, she stared even more fixedly at the half-completed sketch of Tira Virte’s glorious young Heir. “I am meant to bear children.”
To most men, men who were not Limners, it would be taken as insult, an implication that he could not do the one thing that proved a man’s potency. But here it was the truest of all honors: a Grijalva who sired children did not bear the Gift.
“A waste,” he said in disgust; then, as she gasped in shock, “eiha, ‘Vedra—not a waste to bear them, but to be limited to that when you could offer so much more!” Vulnerability was vanquished by a habitual impatience; he suffered no one who could not share his vision. “Do you think I am blind? You have your own Gift, ‘Vedra—”
“No!” She stood up so quickly the drawing board nearly tumbled from her hands. Charcoal snapped; she tossed its fragments onto the bench. “Matra Dolcha, Sario—don’t you see? I am not Gifted. I can’t be. No matter how much you may wish it. No matter—” She gestured futility, then blurted bald conviction. “—no matter how much you wish to turn my attention from another.”
“You believe …” Like a hound, he hackled. Even his lips went white. “It isn’t that, ‘Vedra—”
“It is.” She smiled sadly. “We aren’t children any longer. You are one of the Viehos Fratos, and I am to bear children when it is decided who best I should suit. And so our childhood is left behind …” Very softly, she said, “And you resent what is lost with it.”
He shook his head. “I regret nothing. A child has no power.”
“No. No more than a woman.” Saavedra sighed. This was a conversation—an inept and cross-purposed conversation—she had never imagined having. “You—want me, perhaps, because—because you are of an age to fasten upon the woman who is closest to you.” She looked away quickly from his taut face and finished in a rush, “But it is no more than that. I promise you.”
“Do you?” His eyes glittered beneath uncut, untamed dark hair that shielded the fine, smooth brow. “How can you promise anything? You say you know me, but—” He broke off a moment, wincing, and lifted a hand to his left collarbone. “You may believe you know me, but—” Fingers pressed fine cloth against his flesh. The topic was altered abruptly by irritated surprise. “Am I bitten?”
And so the awkwardness was banished. Relieved, Saavedra set down the drawing board and began to untie the lacings of his crimped collar; one of the Viehos Fratos put aside the tunics and trousers of childhood to wear the clothing of a man, though Sario, as was habitual, had left off his doublet and wore only high-waisted hosen and creased lawn shirt. “Here, let me see—no, move your fingers.”
Affronted protest: “It stings.”
“Let me look, Sario.” She loosened the laces, pulled the collar apart so that a strip of hairless, dusky chest lay bare, and the gold chain across it that dipped lower into shirt folds. “Here—you see?” She turned back the crumpled shirt. “What is this? I’ve seen no bite like this! Not three bumps all in a perfect row.”
“Let me—” Fingertips explored the flesh, sliding beneath the chain. “Like a burn—” And then he froze into absolute stillness. Color drained from his face, and the rage that engulfed his dark eyes startled her by its magnitude. “’Vedra—you have the painting. The self-portrait.”
“Of course, but—”
“Safe?”
“Where we left it, in my cell.” She frowned. “What is it?”
“Filho do’canna,” he hissed. “How dare they?”
“Sario—”
“Don’t you see?” He caught one of her arms, clamping down. “They fear me. And so they seek to control me, to remind me they hold my Peintraddo Chieva.”
“But they don’t,” she said. “I have it.”
“The real one, yes. But the one I gave them, the one I painted and presented as my masterwork …” Muscles rolled in a taut jaw; his would not boast the square, clean lines of Alejandro do’Verrada’s, but there was nothing girlish about him as he matured out of boyhood. “It is not truly a Peintraddo Chieva, but there is enough of me in it—there had to be!—that I would know if they sought to use it against me.” Dark eyes were dilated black despite the blaze of the day. “’Vedra—come with me. There is a thing you must do.”
“Sario—”
“Come with me … we must go to your cell.”
“But—”
He caught her hand and pulled her. “Adezo! They will expect me to come to them, to ask why—I must show them what they believe will be there.”
She went with him because she had no choice; and harkened back five years to the closet above the Crechetta, and the Chieva do’Sangua. Then he had pulled her, urgent and determined, and she had no more choice now.
Then, he was shorter than I, and slight. He was taller now, though his was not the frame that would carry excess flesh or a warrior’s hard muscling. His bones and muscles were long, his expressive hands large; by the time he finished growing, he would claim an elegance lacking in the shorter, squarer Tira Virteians. Tza’ab blood, they say— And also, uneasily, What will it do to me?
Inside the corridor leading to her tiny quarters … There were no locks. He unlatched and flung open the narrow door to her small estuda’s cell, pushing her inside. “Candle,” he said curtly, shutting the door behind.
“I have one, of course. Sario—”
“Lighted?”
“Yes, but—”
“Bring it here.” Without leave he threw himself down on her narrow cot, st
retching flat. One hand tore aside the collar of his shirt, baring the faintly curved line of bone beneath taut flesh and the furtive glitter of gold chain. “The marks are not enough, not as they are. You must do more.”
Saavedra fetched the burning candle to the bed. “What are you asking, Sario?”
“Hot wax,” he said briefly. “Three drops: here—here—and here.” Fingertips indicated the faintly reddened spots already present. “Now, ‘Vedra.”
“Burn you? Sario, for the love of the Mother—”
“Yes,” he hissed. “And for my survival. If they learn I am not burned, not as I should be, they will know the truth about the Peintraddo in their keeping. ‘Vedra—now.”
“Matra Dolcha,” she whispered. “You are mad.”
“But alive,” he said harshly, “and whole, which is what I will not be if they learn the truth.”
She clamped her jaws shut. She would do as he asked, but not without argument. “Why would they do such a thing? What have you done to provoke it?”
“Such trust …” He grimaced. “Nothing. Do’nado.” He craned his head, trying to peer down at the precise trio of blemishes along his collarbone. “Will you do it?”
“Patience,” she chided, giving in, “or I will spill it all, and they will know from that.”
“They will expect me to come at once. I can’t tarry.”
“A spoon,” she said absently.
It astonished him. “Spoon?”
“Momentita …” To her table by the window, all of five steps away, then back, and she sat down carefully on the edge of her cot. “You must be very still, Sario.”
Stretched flat on her bed, he stared intently a moment, fresh color moving in his face as he studied hers. He stirred oddly—and then his gaze altered even as his color faded. He watched narrow-eyed as she spooned up a measure of liquefied wax from the clay candle-cup. She was aware of the pallor of his face, the faint sheen of perspiration, the abject determination and simmering anger.
“Be still,” she said again, pulling aside the chain with its weight of Golden Key, and with great concentration positioned the spoon so the wax droplets would land precisely atop the faint blemishes.
Premo. Duo. Treo. She heard the hiss of his indrawn breath, smelled the sweet tang of citrus-scented wax. Carefully she inspected her handiwork, then returned the candle-cup and spoon to the table.
“Done?” He sat up, fingering the wax. Chain links chimed faintly, slithering across flesh to snag on rumpled lawn.
“Let it harden. Then peel it off.”
He did so, eventually flaking away the dried wax droplets. “Well?”
She inspected what lay beneath, sliding a finger under the chain to gently touch the flesh beside the wax burns. She heard the quick intake of his breath; pain? Or something else. “It may scar,” she said evenly. “The skin is tender here, not like callused fingers.” And she took her hand away.
“All the better.” Loosened lacings and the Chieva dangled as he stood up. “And now I will see why they felt it necessary to remind me of my fragility!”
He was gone before she could speak again, leaving the door open in his haste. Saavedra sighed, then smiled wryly. “Fragile? You? Never.”
NINE
With grim, crisp efficiency—and no little anger—Sario yanked open the unlatched inner door leading into the Crechetta. As expected, his eyes immediately confirmed the presence of his Peintraddo Chieva upon an easel, naked of embroidered cloth, which had been peeled back and left drooping behind like a cloak half-slipped from a shoulder. But then he stopped registering anything beyond the man who waited beside it.
“You!” Sario blurted.
The slender, dark-clad Grijalva waited in silence. Wan candlelight glinted laggardly off the intricate small-linked chain that circled his neck, then spilled down the front of his summer-silk black doublet. From it depended the symbol of his Gift: Chieva do’Orro.
Him I can deal with— Sario hesitated a moment, then loosed a quiet sigh. He was able now to release some of the tension in his stiffened shoulders; this man of them all had never decried his habitual hasty temper or impatient skills. But his expression was nonetheless unwontedly severe for the good bones of his face. “Aguo Raimon—”
A quiet, singularly brief interruption: “Seminno.”
Sario froze. Tension renewed, rushed back. One word, one correction … it indicated much. Anger reaffirmed itself, if icy in place of scorching. “So. My congratulations, Seminno Raimon … but it explains nothing.”
“Should it?”
To give himself time to master himself—this was not the man he expected to confront, and thus his stride was broken—Sario turned to the door and closed it with explicit care, making no sound even as he set the loose latch. He summoned extreme if alien patience; when he turned back, he saw the same implacable expression on the new-made Seminno’s face.
It encouraged nothing so much as wariness. Aside from himself, Raimon was the youngest, albeit more than a decade older than Sario—and by far the most bearable of them all.
Or had been. Sario drew a steadying breath, then in slow understatement pulled aside the folds of his shirt to display blemished flesh in mute question and challenge.
Raimon said nothing, made no movement; if he marked the blemishes, he made no indication it mattered. Then why inflict them upon me?
Gritting teeth, Sario released the fabric and looked at the Peintraddo. He saw what was expected: three small, evenly-spaced holes carefully burned through paint to expose stained canvas beneath.
“I have done nothing,” he said in a low tone that was no less telling in its suppressed anger. “Nothing but what I am required to do.”
Raimon’s gaze was level and infinitely clear-eyed. “You frighten them.”
It was not in the least what Sario anticipated. He stared.
Raimon sighed and smiled faintly, a familiar brief crooked hooking of his mouth. “We are all of us tested thus, Sario. I no less than you.”
Irony was marked, but Sario was still too upset to pay it tribute—or to heed the opening offered by the only member of the Viehos Fratos he considered a friend, if such could be suggested of any of them who plagued him. “But—that?” A sharp gesture indicated the painting. “I was given to understand the only time Chieva do’Sangua was employed was in the rare case when a Gifted overstepped his bounds enough to threaten the family. Have I done so? Ever?”
“This was not—and is not intended to be—Chieva do’Sangua,” Raimon said plainly. “This is a warning. And you are expected to heed it.”
It was incredibly and exquisitely unfair all at once. “Heed that I am punished for their fear?” Sario shook his head; hair in need of cutting tugged against loosened collar. “If this is done, then surely they should look to themselves. I have been Confirmed according to the rites, my masterwork properly painted, and I was accepted two years ago into the ranks of the Viehos Fratos. Nothing was out of order, or surely I would have been denied. If they fear me so much, why should I be given such honor?”
“Do you view it as honor, Sario? Or the means to an end?”
He hesitated, righteous rage forestalled; renewed respect for Raimon’s customary shrewdness reminded him to take care. “But the end desired by all is that one of us should become Lord Limner again, so we may guide the Dukes in the ordering of the duchy—”
“And some men would fear that,” Raimon said. “Serranos. Others.”
Self-control fled. Passion replaced care. “But not Limners! Should we not honor the man among us who regains what was lost?”
“And you intend to be that man.”
“Should I not?” Sario spread his hands. “Have you never wished it could be you?”
The clean features softened slightly. “I expected it.”
Relieved laughter bubbled up from Sario’s chest and broke free. Perhaps he can understand. “There! Eiha, do you see? We are not so unalike after all.”
“But it will not
be my task,” Raimon interjected softly, irony banished a second time. “Should Baltran do’Verrada die tomorrow, perhaps it would … but he will not, short of being assassinated, and he is too beloved for that. Thus it shall fall to his son to appoint a new Lord Limner, and I will be too old.”
Saavedra claimed he lost his temper too often, that others heard the anger and not the words. With effort Sario tamed his tongue, locked away the impatience, attempted reason. “We are raised to believe in our hearts we are better suited for the role than any other family in Tira Virte,” he appealed, “and yet when one of us aspires too openly to that role, he is punished.”
“Not for aspiration,” Raimon said. “For willfulness. For discourtesy. For questioning too broadly—too disruptively—the precepts of the family. For improper compordotta. For taking into his own hands the ordering of his Gift.”
“But it is my Gift—”
“Our Gift, Sario,” Raimon’s tone was abruptly cold; he was wholly Il Seminno, wholly of the Viehos Fratos. “And by that you merit such punishment as this. It is not your Gift, your goal, your appointment, but ours! Grijalva. We do this for the family, not for the ambitions of a single man. Gifted or no, Sario, it is your responsibility to work with the family toward restoration of what once was ours.”
“And I will gain it!” Sario cried. “Leave me be, Raimon. Leave me free to do what I must, and I will be the first Grijalva at the right hand of a do’Verrada Duke since before the Nerro Lingua!”
“Free to wrest the duchy away from the anointed Duke?”
Sario stilled. Raimon was a fair man, a pleasant man, the one among the Viehos Fratos he felt he could speak with openly, but now, in this astonishing moment, he saw a different man. One capable of visiting harm upon the flesh by harm done to a painting. He is as they all are, bound by his own weakness to outdated beliefs and rituals, not knowing the truth of power. …