The Golden Key

by Melanie Rawn

  The momentary hesitation was odd. “He bedded a woman to prove he had artistic talent?”

  Now she withdrew, though she remained still against the wall. It was a subtle shift, but he felt it. Especially as she changed the subject. “Will she be sent away now? Gitanna?”

  “It is likely … he will give her a country estate, some money, some jewelry.” Alejandro sighed. “It seems so little after so many years.”

  “Surely a mistress cannot hope for more.”

  “I suppose not. And she will be comforted, I have no doubt, that at least her brother remains at Court. Her family will retain some power with Zaragosa there.”

  “Zaragosa—Zaragosa Serrano?”

  “Of course. He is Lord Limner.”

  “I know who he is.” She sat rigidly now, clutching crockery. “She is his sister? Gitanna Serrano?”

  “Yes. Why?”

  Her laughter now held a tight, ugly sound. “You are well rid of her.”

  It shocked him. “Why? What is she to you? What right have you to speak of her so?”

  Her face was very white. “Yes—you are correct. My compordotta requires improvement.” She rose stiffly, all the relaxed and bantering friendliness banished from her expression. “Grazzo, Don Alejandro, for the rescue, the lemonada—but I must go now.”

  Matra Dolcha. Why did he feel as if he had overstepped when it was she who transgressed? Scowling, he pushed himself to his feet. “Wait. You are not to go until I say so.”

  Her face colored. Gray eyes glittered. “You order the chiros away, but you order the canna to stay. Quite the man with the animals, no?”

  She was angry …. at him? But it was she who insulted Gitanna. And yet the words he meant to speak altered themselves into something else entirely, something bled free of affront. “You did say I had a fine way with command.”

  Anger evaporated. Startled, she stared, and then began to laugh.

  She is nothing like Gitanna. No, she was not. And there was no other woman in his life he could compare her to, which he supposed might amuse other men—and perhaps other women, perhaps even Gitanna—but not, he suspected, her.

  He took her cup from her hand. “More lemonada,” he said. “Momentita, grazzo.” If he could not order her to stay, not even with his fine grasp of command, he would at least rely on her good compordotta.

  Sario climbed the final steps just short of twenty-eight. He halted at twenty-six, two below the man who waited for him. A lamp stood at the top, washing the chamber with illumination redoubled by the closeness of walls and ceiling. From below, it lent Seminno Raimon’s expression an intense expectancy, an odd chiaroscuro of the bones of his face washed white in light while the hollows were stained by shadow.

  I should paint him so. But he let it go. There was more to the moment than this. “Seminno,” he said respectfully, with genuine regret. “They told me when I returned of Arturro’s death.”

  “I sent for you, Sario.”

  It pinioned him into stillness. He has never sounded so cold before, so distant. “Yes, Seminno.”

  “Two men were sent, and Saavedra. Did all of them fail?”

  This was not the subject of the discussion, but Sario forbore to avoid the preliminaries. He was uncertain of his ground in such surroundings, before a man whom he knew and did not know, all at once. “Saavedra did not fail. But I—I delayed.” Hastily he said, “She didn’t tell me the Premio Frato had died, or I would have come at once!”

  “Saavedra was not given to know. It is a thing of the Viehos Fratos.”

  “But—the others will know … the family. How could they not know?”

  “I suspect all of them know by now. But there is a ritual given at the deathbed—you were not here, Sario, and you could not be found, and so you were not present. Your candle was unlighted. Arturro’s Paraddio Illuminaddio was not as it should have been.”

  The Lighted Walk. Sario did not know it. But then, no one of the Viehos Fratos had died since he was Confirmed, and there were rituals and traditions as yet unfamiliar. “Is there nothing I may do?”

  “For Arturro? Nothing. He is dead, he has passed, the Paraddio Illuminaddio, though lacking the youngest candle, is completed.” Raimon’s tone was oddly inflected. “But there is much you may do for your family … provided you are willing to contravene every precept. All compordotta.”

  Another pattern made whole. Outrage kindled to flame. “This is a test!”

  “No.”

  He would not accept the denial. “You test me again, Raimon! Was not burning my Peintraddo enough?” Sario clapped fingers to the place where he had ordered Saavedra to drip hot wax. “What more must I do to convince you? Have I not done all I have been required to do? Have I not completed the tests? Have I not been properly Confirmed and accepted?”

  “You have.”

  “Then why?”

  “It is not a test, Sario. It is the means to an end.”

  Sario shook his head. “I don’t trust you.”

  Raimon’s face was bleached linen stretched right to tearing over a framework of brittle bone. “Eiha, I do not blame you. Here, then—let me show you …” Deftly he stripped the chain over his head and held it outstretched, golden key dangling. “Come, Sario. Take this. Hold this.”

  It baffled. It stunned. “Your Chieva?”

  Urgently now, “Take it, Sario! You must know this is no test, no discipline. It is desperation, no more, my desperaddio, and the only way to be certain Otavio cannot thwart what is meant to be.”

  Warily—it must be some form of test—he prevaricated. “If it’s meant to be, how can Otavio—”

  “Nommo Chieva do’Orro, Sario! Bassda! Do as I say!”

  Sario sealed his mouth, stopped his questions, put out his hand. Raimon poured key and chain into it. The metal was warm from contact with living flesh; Sario swallowed hard and shut his fingers over the weight of gold that had not, to his knowledge, ever left the man’s neck since he had first been made a Limner.

  Raimon’s face was stark, stripped of color and character. He was estranjiero, and wholly alien. “Arturro is dead. There will be a new Premio Frato, and I fear it will be Otavio. I am certain it shall be he.”

  “You don’t expect me—”

  “I expect you to hold your tongue and permit me to finish.”

  Sario clamped his jaws shut. The chain and key seemed to grow heavier in his clasp.

  “You must understand,” Raimon went on, “if I believed it possible, I would do this myself. But it is not. There is only you.”

  Questions burgeoned. Sario asked none of them.

  “I need you. I need what you have, what you are. We need you, though no other will admit it. Certainly not Otavio. I am alone in this … save for you.”

  Sario waited. He could not leave now if the world itself exploded.

  “Neosso Irrado,” Raimon said. “For that, and for your fire. For your Luza do’Orro. For your tenacity, your insatiable ambition— and your ruthlessness.” He was so tightly strung his body trembled with it. “I might have been you—once. I might have taken this on myself. But they—quenched me, as you once accused.”

  “No,” Sario managed. “I have looked on your paintings.”

  The faintest glint of comprehension, of gratitude, flashed through Raimon’s eyes, was gone. “Break them,” he said. “Break all of our precepts, our fine compordotta … but you must become Lord Limner.”

  “Indeed, I hope to—”

  Raimon’s voice was sharp. “No ‘hope,’ Sario. It must be.”

  Sario groped for the new pattern, seeking to find the pieces so they might be properly joined. “If it is possible—”

  “Not ‘possible,’ Sario. For once, for once, speak your mind. Your truth. Don’t rely on compordotta.” The smile was a grimace. “Nor will I. And therefore I will say it as a man, as a Grijalva, as a Gifted: you must use any recourse to make yourself Lord Limner. Any recourse at all.” In lamplight, the dark, fierce eyes were hid
den behind a glaze of fire. “You hold my Chieva. I am not in this moment one of the Viehos Fratos. And what you choose to do, how you choose to do it, is not of my concern.”

  He breathed with effort. “Matra ei Filho,” Sario said, “you are truly afraid of me.”

  “Only a man who has been near enough to fire to hear his own flesh sear knows what and how to fear.” Raimon stepped down a single stone riser. He closed his hand over the fist that held his golden key. “If you are found out, it will mean Chieva do’Sangua.”

  Sario thought of the old Tza’ab in the tent, and the page of the Kita’ab that was also the Folio, and the power that was promised. Tza’ab magic. Grijalva magic. Born of the same source, hidden by blood, by fire, by old hatred and ancient rivalry.

  Lord Limner.

  Another watershed. All the parts and pieces of power.

  He was older now, but not immune to fear. Not immune to comprehension that each step he took led him closer to something other than what he had been.

  But how do I know this was not intended when my father lay down with my mother and she bore me nine months later? Maybe all of this was to happen, even the old man.

  And the parts and pieces of power made over into a whole.

  Sario placed his other hand atop Raimon’s and gripped it. “Nommo Chieva do’Orro, Nommo Matra ei Filho, Nommo Familia Grijalva, I swear I will not fail.”

  SIXTEEN

  The door stood ajar, permitting entry. It was a private atelierro within the confines of Palasso Grijalva, set apart in a wing off the central building, the heart of the compound, but Saavedra had never been denied permission to enter. She and Sario shared too much.

  She set palm to door and slipped into the atelierro. Summer sunlight flooded the studio: with northern exposure and several tall windows, shutters folded back, the atelierro was ideal for an artist. She was not permitted the same luxury—she was not male, not Gifted, not of the Viehos Fratos—and thus basked in his, soaking up atmosphere. It was a peaceful place, a place of contentment, lending itself to creation.

  A narrow door in the northern wall led out onto a small tiled balcony overlooking the central courtyard with its many-tiered fountain. Often she found him there, sketching furiously before the light died; or within the room itself, oblivious to time, to food, to the bells of the Sanctia pealing prayers across the city, and utterly to company, even her own, as he applied paint to canvas.

  Saavedra smiled. He was endlessly patient with his own work, and wholly impatient with hers. It was a simple matter for Sario to find her, to claim her, to pull her away on one errand or another— often to critique his work-in-progress—and utterly impossible to convince him to let her be even the merest moment so she might find a place in her own work that was appropriate to stop.

  But that is Sario. And she forgave it, because no one else would. I might refuse him … I might insist that he leave me to work just once. But she would not. She understood the insatiable need that ravaged him: to free the fire of his inner vision before it burned him up.

  Empty of his presence, his intensity, the room was oddly diminished despite its clutter: raw, primed, and cloth-draped canvases, oiled wooden panels propped against the walls; shelves and tables packed with chipped, wax-plugged crockery pots containing solvents, oils; bowls of dried beeswax, chunky amber and gum acacia that would eventually be melted down to resin; sealed bottles of ground pigment powders; sheaves of tattered paper and vellum bearing bold or intricate scrawls; clouded vials of unidentified substances; brushes, handles, and paletto knives scattered like corn for chickens; and rags festooning the room like the bloodflower wreaths of the Mirraflores festivities.

  Saavedra thought to return later when he was present, but an unfinished painting caught her eye. Propped yet on an easel near the balcony door, it glistened wetly, smelled of resin and oil, of a faint coppery tang oddly akin to blood; even, strangely, of the sweet-sour, acrid pungency of old urine—or perhaps it was just that Sario, consumed by inspiration, hadn’t bothered to empty the nightpot shoved behind a battered screen!

  She wandered to the painting, curious; she had not seen it before, but he showed her everything. The work was far from completion. A portion of the meticulously primed canvas was as yet naked of paint, bearing only the detailed sketches of what he would do, the first thin layers of ground and body color. But most of it was well underway, and she saw the scheme of the thing, the scope— and a very bizarre border, almost like a frame itself though painted onto canvas.

  “Matra,” she murmured, frowning, “what are you doing, Sario?”

  “What I am doing is wholly my business, no?”

  Saavedra jumped and swung awkwardly, startled so badly she nearly knocked over the easel. She grasped it hastily, steadied the painting, then turned to face him squarely. “This is not you, Sario … this is not your style at all.”

  “What I do becomes my style.” He wore a tattered cambric shirt liberally daubed and stained by the substances of his talent and something that looked like blood, sleeves rolled back from sun-darkened forearms. Dark hair in need of cutting was tied loosely with a length of leather thong, though one heavy lock swung forward along the line of his jaw. A smear of paint altered the shape of his nose from blade-straight into something less stringent, a smudge of charcoal dust hollowed the steep angle of a cheekbone.

  He looks so much like the old man now, that old Tza’ab fool—it’s in the bones, the flesh—

  Beneath the soiled collar—the shirt was left carelessly untied to fall open nearly to the high waistband of his tight, paint-stained hosen—the chain of Sario’s rank glinted against a smooth, dark chest. “I refuse to lock myself into a box, Saavedra. J must be free to paint as I will.” He went to one of the worktables, took vials out of a pocket, tucked them away into a box.

  “Of course,” she replied mechanically; they had discussed this before. “But this border is new, and—”

  “Odd?” He smiled, tangibly smug. In two years he had matured completely in body, as Grijalva Limners did; there was little time for awkward adolescence. He was eighteen now, not tall but well-made, slender but inherently graceful, with striking Desert-bred features that would do as well as subject as the artist. In all ways a man, Sario Grijalva, albeit more than most: supremely talented, unarguably Gifted, content within himself as he had never been as a boy. “Yes, odd,” he agreed in his light baritone. “It is a Tza’ab convention, the border. The Al-Fansihirro always employed it in their work.”

  Saavedra bristled to hear him so condescending. “You never have!”

  “No. But I do now. Here—would you see? Surely you came to see.”

  Uneasy, Saavedra watched him move around the room crisply, throwing cloths back from canvas. He was often curt with others, but never with her … and yet now he treated her as one of them.

  “Look upon them.” He stripped concealing fabric away. “Borders on all of them, yes?”

  She looked from canvas to canvas, trained eye naturally noting the composition, balance, use of color—but what she most noted were the indicated borders. Each was different. Some were wide, some narrow, a few ornate, others spare and clean. He had painted interlocking ribbons, braided tree branches, ornate vines; odd, stylized patterns endlessly repeating. Fruits, branches, flowers, herbs, and leaves all played an integral part.

  Saavedra stared. “This changes everything …”

  “Yes,” he agreed. “I meant to.”

  “This is like nothing done before!”

  “Not here, no. But it’s traditional in Tza’ab Rih.”

  She looked at him now, sharply. “It’s that old Tza’ab … you spend so much time with him—too much time!—and now it’s invading even your work!”

  “Invading?” he asked mildly. “As the Tira Virteians invaded Tza’ab Rih? Eiha!—but I’m forgetting … it wasn’t Tira Virte then. Just the do’Verrada and their supporters, even a few Grijalvas.” He shrugged elaborately. “But what does it matter, names?—
the end was the same. Tza’ab Rih destroyed, the Diviner killed, the Kita’ab lost, and lands stolen by those who were then acclaimed Dukes in perpetuity.”

  “Sario!”

  He pressed a flattened hand against his breast. “What, Saavedra—shocked? But why? It is the truth. Our truth. There is no Grijalva living who does not bear Tza’ab blood.”

  “There may be Tza’ab blood in us, but we aren’t Tza’ab, Sario! We’re Tira Virteian.”

  “And they hate us for it.”

  It stopped her utterly. For the first time in months she looked at him to judge, to weigh, to consider who and what he was beyond what she knew, and realized he had at some point become estranjiero.

  “That man,” she declared virulently. “He has done this to you. He’s perverted you, polluted you, told you lies. Next you will be wearing a Tza’ab turban!”

  “No, no turban,” Sario said, laughing, “nor any lies either. What Il-Adib has given me are such truths as you could not imagine, first because you lack the vision of Al-Fansihirro, but also you would never permit yourself the freedom of thought required. You are a good little Grijalva, yes?”

  Defying purposeful provocation, she shook her head firmly. “Sario, this is lunacy. He’s trying to turn you against your own people.”

  “The Tza’ab are my people.”

  “But not to the exclusion of others,” she shot back. “Matra Dolcha, Sario, have you gone moronno luna? Look around you! You are a Grijalva, born and bred of Tira Virte—”

  “And Tza’ab Rih.”

  “They were bandits who stole away those women and raped them, Sario! There is no glory in that.”

  “And thus nothing to revere? Nothing to learn from them?” He flung out a hand. “Look at the paintings, Saavedra! Different, yes … unlike anything anyone else is doing, yes—but poor? No. Unschooled? No. Worthless? No.” His eyes shone. “Different, ‘Vedra. Just as I am.”

  “Merditto! You are no different than I, Sario.”

  Teeth flashed briefly against his sun-darkened face. “Then perhaps you would do well to come to Il-Adib for instruction. He has much to teach.”