by Melanie Rawn
“’Vedra, bassda!”
It was not enough. She had to speak it all, to bring it into the light where they could both see it. “But you will not, and your Luza do’Orro will blaze more brightly than most, and you will die.” Blindly she gazed at the paintings. “Raimon will die too soon. All of you die too soon, every Gifted Grijalva.”
A shudder convulsed his slender body. “I won’t stop. I can’t. Stop painting? I would die—”
It escaped before she could stop it. “And so you will. Die.”
He pushed past her then, bumping her shoulder. It was not rudeness, nor insult; she had shaken him so badly he could barely walk. She watched him go, watched the hunched line of his shoulders, watched the wavering steps. Then she turned back again to Seminno Raimon’s paintings.
“If,” she said, trembling, “if I destroyed them all as I destroyed Tomaz’s Peintraddo—would he live longer? Would Raimon not die?”
And Sario, whom she would outlive, because Grijalva women, who did not paint, lived substantially longer than Gifted males.
She could not imagine the world without Sario in it. And nor, she knew, could he.
Fuega Vesperra. A heathen month, a heathen festival to celebrate heathen rites … the old man took solace in his own rites and rituals celebrated for the true god, Acuyib, Father of Heaven, Lord of the Golden Wind, whom he was quite certain found such apostasy affront and abomination. But then he knew it as well, and also found it so, and therefore did what he could to mitigate it by performing his own private prayers frequently so as to soften the slight to Acuyib.
In his paneled Tza’ab tent, girdled about by the stone palassos, plasterwork Sanctias, the brick and tile zocalos of Meya Suerta— hard, everything hard, subjugating sun, and soil, and wind!—the old man worked the latch on a casket of waxed and polished thorn-wood, bound and tacked by brass. Swollen fingers were not so adroit as they once were—cursed be the humidity, so different from his beloved desert!—and so it took longer than anticipated, but at last the latch was released and he lifted the lid.
Green silk lay beneath, its edges freighted with glass and gold, beneath a scattered mantle of protective elements. Tza’ab magic incarnate: dried stalks of desert broom, for Purity and Protection; a fragile netting of cress, for Stability and Power; leaves of lemon, holly, and hearts-of-palm, for Fidelity and Health, Foresight, Victory. He gently folded aside the silk, taking care not to crush the scraps of plants, and took from beneath the shielding a tube of finest, thinnest ivory-hued leather.
Other tubes remained undisturbed as he loosened the gold wires stitching the cap to the tube and slipped it, allowing it to dangle from one glinting wire, then with careful fingertips drew the rolled parchment from its protective insulation. A faint whiff of carnation, cedar, and honeysuckle accompanied it, denoting several of the scents symbolically linked to Acuyib: Magical Energy; Strength and Spirituality; Devoted Affection.
In Tza’ab Rih, the holy texts had not been stored so. But that was in the days of the Diviner himself, when the world had been at peace and such things as a collection of illuminated pages could be safely bound inside a book … but times changed, and war decreed differently; the Kita’ab now, that which remained of it, was in his keeping, one old man in the lap of the enemy. No true book remained, no flat illuminated pages bound by leather and gold and gemstones, merely a few sheets, some torn, some scorched, some stained—blessed!—by Tza’ab blood, carefully rolled and stored in spell-stitched leather tubes, and hoarded in a thornwood casket bound by brass and belief.
He did not know what had become of the leather book covers. He was certain the gold inlay had been scraped away, the gem-stones pried out of their settings. Probably the leather had been burned altogether; so much had burned that day, including human flesh, when the Grijalva Apostate had surprised the caravan and stolen from it, from Tza’ab Rih, from every man, woman, and child of the desert, the most sacred of texts, the most holy, the wise teachings of divine Acuyib set down in inks, in images, in words of such power only the select were permitted to read them.
Others, of course, were told them, through the offices of the Diviner.
So many pages lost, so much text, so much of Acuyib. So much of the magic. But the power remained, as did one member of the Order permitted to read the words: Al-Fansihirro.
The old man smiled tremulously with relief and gratitude. One alive, only one—but one was enough, because one could teach another. It mattered no longer that he had been driven out by the defeated of his own people who cursed him for worshiping a powerless god, for serving a holy man weak enough to die. That he was exile, outcast, estranjiero within his own borders. The task remained, and he carried it out.
He brought the rolled parchment to his lips, briefly touched them to the tubed page, barely a breath of a touch—he smelled old smoke, and death—then cradled the page gently in gnarled hands against the paucity of his chest, swathed in Tza’ab robes.
Green, of course. Rich, brilliant green. The color of Al-Fansihirro.
The lush vegetation of Tira Virte—literally “green country”— was of a different hue, and a far different spirit. Its people were barren of belief, empty of Acuyib’s blessings, and did not know it. They prated of their Mother and Her Son, of their sacred dual deity, and did not realize what fools they were, what ignoble children, to ignore the God who had made the world.
Sometimes it was easy to forget why he had come, why he remained. His heart yearned for the sere heat of the desert, for its spare, desolate beauty that shaped and made a man. But his duty lay here, here where he disdained the enemy even as he called them friends in their own language. Because among them were his own, albeit they were tainted with the enemy’s heathen rites, the enemy’s blood, and were thus blinded.
Those of his people, his blood, were born here, lived here, died here. And in between remained ignorant of their God, their heart, their heritage.
But mostly of their power.
She had ridden him hard, cajoled him, roused him, used him, proving the stallion had more miles in him than he suspected, albeit the labors were of an impatient and wild young animal, wholly unschooled. He scented the mare, wanted the mare; knew what he was to do, but not how to do it properly. The first lesson therefore had been hers to teach, and so she had taught him.
He slept now, sated, sprawled across two-thirds of her bed in unthinking, selfish abandon, cutting her off with a diagonal slant that offered no room for her feet. But she had no mind to sleep and sat up instead, leaning into silken cushions stacked against the ornate headboard shrouded in gauzy draperies, festooned with tasseled cords. The day began to die; they had been hours abed.
She wondered which of his country manors the Duke would deed to her, added to the townhome he had already bestowed. She wondered how much of an annual allowance he would settle upon her. She wondered of what quality—and quantity—the jewelry would be.
She wondered who shared his bed now, while his son shared hers.
“Pluvio en laggo,” she murmured, as tears started up in her eyes. She dashed them away bitterly; no, no protests for her: that rain was in the lake. Baltran would offer her a sturdy boat with good shelter against the storm, but he would never now grace the decks with his ducal presence.
“I told him,” she murmured tersely. “I told ‘Gosa it would be this way … a Lord Limner he will keep, but a mistress he will not!”
Alejandro stirred. Gitanna sealed her mouth against further complaint; let her say such things in her head, where the Heir could not hear them.
But even as she made the decision, he opened his eyes. Pale brown, flecked with green; fine counterpoint, when coupled with dark brown hair and lashes, to the olive complexion of their shared Tira Virteian ancestry.
He came awake smiling, briefly displaying teeth in a sweetly boyish smile. One was slightly crooked, she noted now with eyes instead of with her tongue, turned a little on edge so that the squared tip was layered somewhat aslant atop
its neighbor. She wondered if any of the official portraits showed the imperfection, or if her brother had avoided portraying such things as physical flaws in his duties as Lord Limner. She had never paid any attention to Alejandro beyond what was required for courtesy’s sake; Baltran was her world.
Damn Zaragosa; he would keep his place while she was sent from hers!
Alejandro stretched languorously, laughing deep in his throat. His voice had broken two years before into a fine baritone, very different, thank the Mother, from his father’s bass, or this would be more difficult than it already had been.
“What happens now?” he asked, loose of limb and lazy.
“Now? More, if you wish.” She hoped not. But she would not forbid him.
“More?” He grinned again, blindingly; he would win them all with that smile, and no effort expended. “You know better than I: have I any left to offer?”
Gitanna bared her teeth, though he saw it as a smile. “The do’Verrada bloodline runs to stamina.”
“So.” He was young, so young—a decade her junior—but not precisely a boy; and he had grown up in the house of a ruler. “And potency?”
He would speak of horses, then; eiha, and why not? There was truth in it enough. “The Duchess conceived four children. I would presume so.”
“Yet only two survived.” He hitched himself up on an elbow and propped his head against the heel of a broad palm.
“Potency has nothing to do with survival,” she countered, “unless one argues that without the potency there can be no seed to survive.”
“Shall we argue it, then?”
“If you wish, Don Alejandro.”
He grimaced. “I wish to be Alejandro, not the Duke’s Heir.”
“But you are.”
“In this?”
“In all things. Alejandro.”
The quick, flashing smile lit humor-crinkled eyes. “What becomes of me now?”
“Whatever you desire.”
“And if I desire you?”
“Then I am here.”
“For as long as I wish?”
Did he probe to learn, or because he knew? “I think you are to do whatever you wish to do. I am—yours.” For this day at least, and possibly the night, before she was sent away. Matra, but it stabbed deeply, so painfully. I am no longer your father’s.
He stretched again, working kinks from a shoulder. “What becomes of you?”
Bitterness lashed out. “You ask too many questions!”
Into the startled silence that followed she heard his breathing cease, then begin again. She muttered a prayer in her head—how could she have been so foolish as to use that tone with him?—and prepared herself to endure the anger, the curses, the scorn.
“Eiha,” he said eventually, “it is the best way to learn answers.”
She stared at him, shocked speechless, and saw he was serious.
“Is it not?” The grin—and crooked tooth—flashed again. “But then that is another question, and I have offended once more.”
Sixteen, just. Sixteen, and no longer a virgin, and more cheerful of temperament, less sparing of his laughter, than one might expect in a ducal Heir whose behavior, so very often, was rigidly circumscribed by inflexible tradition.
Was this what Baltran was like when he was a boy?
“Your brother,” he said, “is not a particularly gifted painter.”
“Matra ei Filho, he is too a gifted painter—” And then she broke off, because he was laughing at her. “Why?” she asked sharply. Why provoke me?
“To see if what I expected came to pass.” He levered himself off his arm and sat up, mindful of his nudity as he pulled a linen sheet across his depleted lap and settled against the headboard. The side of his knee brushed her lower leg, was drawn away, then crept back again; he was not yet accustomed to the ordering of bodies after intimacy. “I am told everyone will tailor answers in accordance to what they believe I wish to hear.”
“And did you expect what came to pass?”
He had no nervous habits. He was settled now, at ease, and focused on what was said; unusual for Courtfolk, who sought truth in what wasn’t said. “If you had intended to tailor your words, you would not have answered as you did. But I had honesty of you, not Court speech.”
Gitanna shook her head. “Not in bed.” Your father never wished it.
“Then perhaps I should spend more time in bed.”
“I have no doubt,” she said dryly, “that indeed you will.”
“Do’Verrada potency?”
“Stamina,” she retorted. And unflagging interest!
Alejandro looked thoughtful. “I was told you had no wit.”
“No wit! Who told you that?”
“My mother.”
Gitanna sat immobile, tailoring her answer into noisy silence.
“So,” Alejandro remarked. “She lied.”
“Duchesses never lie.”
“Mothers do,” he said. “My mother does. She says she hates my father.” He let the back of his skull rest against the carved headboard. “And that, you see, is very definitively a lie.”
She had not expected, ever, to discuss the Duchess with her son, least of all after she of all women had bedded that son. “In her place,” Gitanna said, “to my son, I would lie also.”
“Because you are my father’s mistress.”
“Because she loves him.”
“As he loves you.”
Her response was immediate. “Baltran does not love me! Trust me, Alejandro—there may be bindings upon us, a thing of men and women, but there is no love in this. En verro.”
“Because you cannot wed?”
Now he was young after all, to ask such a thing when he meant no harm by it, only desired to learn. “Noblemen do not wed their mistresses.”
“If they loved them?”
“Politics,” she said crisply. “Surely, in this Court, you have heard of such.”
“Merditto!” he said vulgarly. “How could I not?”
“Eiha, how could you not?” Gitanna sighed and slid down against the headboard, snagging gauze on the scrollwork. “How could anyone in Palasso Verrada not be steeped in it?”
“Will he have you back?” he asked baldly.
Tears brimmed. “No.”
“Gitanna—”
So, he knew her name. “No,” she said again, turning her head away.
“Why not?”
Because this is his way of telling me it is ended. “Because—because … no man cleaves to a single woman.”
“No man?”
Viciously, she said, “No man that I have heard of!”
“And if that man should wish to?”
Gitanna Serrano laughed. It was a brittle, desperate sound, and it caused him to stare, eyes wide and astonished. “What—will you keep yourself to me now that we have shared a bed?” She saw the startlement in his eyes. “There,” she said, “you see? En verro.”
After all his questions, his smiles, his laughter, the Heir to the duchy had no answer to offer.
ELEVEN
Sario stood utterly still, rooted into cobbles like a grandfather olive tree, splayed and ancient trunks split into ornate candelabra. He had arrived, seemingly all at once and without any physical effort, in the midst of the Zocalo Grando in the center of the city—or what had been the center before vital growth spilled into sprawl. Overshadowed by the many-tiered marble fountain and the massive twin-towered Cathedral Imagos Brilliantos, he was buffeted by the press of the crowd on festival day—Fuega Vesperra, to celebrate conception (and, no doubt, to cause it)—deaf to the noise as he was blind to the light, wholly alone amidst the tight-packed throng milling like a frightened flock of sheep with no dog in attendance.
He supposed he had walked. Perhaps he had run. But he stood here now, very still, very stiff, very cold despite the day, and found the key on its chain clasped so tightly in the fist of one slender hand that the gold bit into his flesh.
Chieva do’Or
ro. What all Grijalvas longed for, were they born male: to be more than merely gifted but Gifted as well, and blessed, honored among the family to ascend to a higher level of talent, technique, training, and the blazing light of sheer genius.
“For what?” he murmured bitterly. “To burn more brightly than another, only to be blown out an hour later?”
If it were true … if it were as Saavedra suggested. As she stumbled, all unwittingly, upon a hideous possibility even he, of the Viehos Fratos, had never heard in whispers, had never thought to ask. Had never so much as imagined, even to paint it.
He gripped the Chieva more tightly. “What if they don’t know? What if none of them knows?”
They spoke of the Nerro Lingua, the deadly plague that racked the city, the duchy, but had so diminished the Grijalvas that even now, over sixty years later, they struggled to survive. Meya Suerta, for all the city’s bounty, was not kind to the weak; a man needed size, as a family required numbers, to make a safe way in the world.
But they believe otherwise … Sario could not discount the plague, for the records, though incomplete, provided documentation that prior to the Nerro Lingua all Grijalva males lived longer. One need only go into the Galerria Grijalva and look upon the paintings to see the truth: the family had been vital, the family had been numerous, the family had been ranked among the highest, the strongest, the most richly favored in the ordering of the duchy.
“But now we die,” he murmured. “What Duke would appoint a Grijalva to a lifetime post if that lifetime as an adult spans but thirty years, and within twenty of them the body and skills diminish?”
Someone jostled him from behind, jarring his shoulder: a squat Meya Suertan clutching an oil-soaked cloth sleeve of festival food. One city-bred cheek bulged greasily. Sario caught the pungent aroma of garlic, olives, onions, simmered overnight in rosemary and oregano, washed down now with spring wine; heard the muffled imprecation—his stillness caused a hardship for others who preferred to move—but did not respond. Only when a second voice grumbled more pointedly another vulgar comment did he rouse, and then it was to anger.