The Golden Key

by Melanie Rawn

  He was wholly infuriating. “You are moronno luna! Do you think I wish to waste my time listening to that old fool? Nommo do’Matra, Sario—”

  “Or Acuyib.”

  It slowed her only fractionally. “Acuyib! Acuyib? Have you renounced the Ecclesia, then? Have you turned your back on the Mother and Her Son?”

  Unperturbed, Sario laughed indulgently. “I only meant that there are other names to swear by. And perhaps we should renounce the Ecclesia; the sanctas and sanctos have renounced us!”

  “Not ‘renounced’—”

  “Then what else should you call being ordered to worship within your own walls, eh?” He indicated the atelierro. “The Premia Sancta herself ordered us not to pollute the shrines and Sanctias, Saavedra. So much for mercy!”

  “She is wrong,” Saavedra said tightly, “but it has nothing to do with the Ecclesia. She is a Serrano, after all.”

  “And so is the Lord Limner. Thus we are powerless to change anything.”

  Saavedra opened her mouth to contest that, then clamped it shut so hastily she nearly clicked her teeth together. Lord Limner— She turned her attention back to the first painting she had observed, still propped upon its easel. Before she had not marked the identity of the unfinished face, merely that it was begun. The border had drawn her attention. Now it was the face. “Holy Mother, Sario. What are you doing painting Zaragosa Serrano?”

  Something glittered in his eyes, was banished even as he glanced at the box into which he had put the vials. “A jest,” he answered blandly. “I thought I would paint his portrait and have it delivered to him—anonymously, of course—so he might know what true talent is, albeit he must see it in his own face!”

  It made no sense. “But why waste your time on him? On that? He is nothing to us, Sario.”

  “He is a heresy to us. He pollutes what once was an honorable office. When Grijalvas held the appointment.”

  “Eiha, but I thought you renounced the Grijalva in you and looked now to the Tza’ab!” Saavedra bestowed a mocking smile upon him. “Are you one only when and as it serves, the other as it serves?”

  “As you are,” he answered.

  It startled her. “I am! I have no part in this.”

  “But you do, Saavedra. You were a painter, once. Now you are a woman, someone meant to make babies. As it serves the family.”

  “Filho do’canna,” she blurted. “Oh, Matra, what that old man has done to your tongue!”

  “My tongue was always my own, as you well know. And as for that, look to your own. Street speech, from you?”

  “From you!” she shot back. “It was you who taught me it.”

  “Well, then.” He grinned spectacularly. “We are even, no? And very much alike.” He gestured to the painting. “You might try borders, Saavedra. They lend themselves quite well to the composition.”

  She clamped teeth together. “Affectation.”

  “Look again. See how the patterns repeat themselves throughout?” He moved quickly to the easel, indicating the sketched portion of the border as yet unpainted. “Do you see? The branch of an almond tree, so; a spray of lavender, here; a cluster of meadowsweet, thusly. And roses, here; do you see? They shall be yellow, I think.” He smiled briefly, privately, as he moved his finger. “And all repeating itself here, do you see, within the context of the portrait itself … do you see what he will be holding?”

  An almond branch, a spray of lavender, a cluster of meadowsweet, and a single rose. To be painted yellow, no doubt.

  Saavedra shrugged. “You can include those elements without the border.”

  “But the border draws it all together. It becomes a part of the painting, a frame within the frame.”

  She shrugged again, elaborately. “I suppose …”

  He laughed softly. “Innovations in style always meet first with resistance.”

  That struck home. Saavedra scowled. “The old man taught you this?”

  “The Al-Fansihirro always painted such borders into their work. Even into the Kita’ab. It’s a Tza’ab tradition.”

  “And I suppose you believe you’re one of them now, too?— these Al-Fansihirro, whatever they may be!”

  “The Order of Art and Magic.” He grinned. “En verro, why not? One of the Viehos Fratos, one of the Al-Fansihirro. Only a fool ignores what may aid him in attaining what he wants.”

  And that, Saavedra reflected, sounded exactly like Sario. Perhaps the old man had not perverted him after all.

  Mollified, she nodded. “But I still don’t see why you’re painting Zaragosa Serrano.”

  Sario smiled serenely. “As I said, it’s a jest—even if he won’t ever comprehend it.”

  “Then why do it?”

  “Because it pleases me.”

  Eiha, but he was the same, and he was not. What was tolerable in the boy because of youth was less attractive in the man. “No importada.” Saavedra turned toward the door. “I shouldn’t have come.”

  “Why did you come?”

  She stopped. Considered. Turned to confront him. “To ask for your opinion of my work.”

  He arched unsubtle brows. “You know my opinion. I have declared it many times. Your work is far better than any woman’s, and even that of many men. But why does it matter? You will waste it, waste yourself—”

  “I have no choice, Sario! There are so few of us compared to what we were. Would you suggest that I refuse to bear children merely because of talent?”

  He shrugged, turning away to restore the cloth shrouding over various canvases and panels. “Talent is as worthy of birth as a child, ‘Vedra … but you will set your art aside in the name of that child.”

  She stood, stiff with anger, and watched him. Curtly she said, “You have no idea what it is to be a woman.”

  “No,” he agreed coolly, “only what it is to be driven so fiercely to paint—just as you know that drive, that fierceness, but will reject it out of hand.” He looked at her now, no longer tending shrouds. “You are Gifted, Saavedra. I cannot explain how it came to be, but it has. The fire recognizes itself when it burns equally in another.” He stepped closer, eager now. “You know how it is done—I have explained it all … and if you would allow me to guide you—”

  “No!”

  He spread his hands. “No Confirmattio, ‘Vedra, only the painting.”

  “So you can harm it in some way to see if it harms me?” She shook her head vehemently. “Even if I were Gifted, there is no future in it. The only future for me lies in bearing children.”

  The mask of his face slipped. But then he gestured sharply before she could respond. “Bassda! Go, then … I have work to do.” He turned back to the canvases.

  Saavedra stood her ground. “It was not the body of my work I sought you for, but my work-in-progress. You have in the past had such definitive opinions about the subject matter.”

  He swung back sharply. He knew. She saw he knew. Color suffused his face, then drained away. “Him again?”

  “Why not?” she asked lightly. “You have never once felt I got him right.”

  “You aren’t painting Alejandro do’Verrada for me, Saavedra—”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because you are and always have been infatuated with him! Merditto, ‘Vedra, do you think I am blind?”

  Success: he was angry, shaken out of habitual arrogance into honesty of emotion. “I speak as an arrtia,” she said serenely, “as one who wishes to improve her work, no more. What more is there? What more could there be?” She gestured at the painting upon the easel. “You paint Zaragosa Serrano as a jest … I paint Alejandro do’Verrada because I have been commissioned.”

  “Only because he can see you that way, ‘Vedra! No vulgar, hateful comments made by others about a do’Verrada keeping company with a Grijalva chi’patro when that chi’patro paints him … eiha, ‘Vedra, he uses the portrait as an excuse to be near you, no more!”

  Ingenuously she inquired, “Then I am not gifted enough to paint h
im?”

  He glowered at her. “You are teasing me.”

  Saavedra grinned. “Yes. And—no. I am painting his portrait. I do enjoy his company. There would be talk—there probably is talk … but none of it matters, Sario.”

  It astounded him. “None of it matters?”

  She smiled crookedly. “As I paint, he tells me all about the different women he is bedding … what man who desires a woman speaks to her of such things? Would you?”

  “Then he is a moronno,” Sario stated baldly. “Matra, what a moronno!”

  “Friend,” she said. “No more. As it should be.”

  But she was very glad to see even Sario, who knew her so well, could not look beyond her mask to know how the truth eviscerated.

  SEVENTEEN

  The young bravos with him styled themselves dangerous men. They wore swords and two knives apiece: a meat-knife, plus the longer blade that balanced the swords at their hips and lent them an elegant symmetry. They were not dangerous men, however, in anything but profligacy with coin; he was himself far more careful, though of them all he had less need, but saw no sense in ringing down gold so that everyone in the tavern noticed. Of course, that was precisely what they wanted, the would-be bravos, but he forgave them. It was all part of the role they played, stepping outside the truth of their lives into amusing fantasy and a freedom they craved.

  His own freedom was two-faced. Far wealthier than they, better served than they, his future infinitely more promising than any they might devise for themselves, and yet he was constrained by the very aspects that gifted him above others.

  It chafed, such freedom, when he yearned for something else, though at other times he valued it for its immeasurable wealth. Ironically, freedom wasn’t free but infinitely costly.

  They clustered, five of them, at a broad, cloth-decked, pitcher-weighted table in one of the city’s finest taverns. Four of them were scions of the principal families of Meya Suerta and thus of the duchy itself: a do’Brendizia, a do’Alva, a do’Esquita, and a Serrano, one of Zaragosa’s countless cousins.

  Alejandro closed his hand upon a pewter tankard of ale, but its journey to his mouth was dramatically interrupted by a woman’s lush body landing with definitive demand upon his lap. He caught her easily enough, though not without some wreckage; the tankard, knocked free, spun away, spewing contents, and landed with a dull metallic clank against the hardwood floor. The cloth upon the table, caught along with her skirts, was pulled askew, thus risking the pitcher and assorted tankards. His companions, seeing the risk, shouted various curses and reprimands as they hastily steadied the pitcher and rescued threatened tankards, though ale slopped over rims to stain the cloth.

  Alejandro had no breath to reply to their vulgar comments and sallies. The woman’s weight was not precisely negligible, and it took some effort to keep her upright before they both overbalanced and joined the tankard on the floor. He grasped her more roughly than intended and resettled her hastily, but that effort, he learned with chagrin, was precisely what she desired. She screamed with delighted laughter, locked firm arms around his neck, wriggled suggestively against his loins.

  He winced. His loins, he had discovered some years before, did not always respond quite the way he intended. Predictably, at this moment, his loins welcomed the woman. The rest of him did not. “Momentita, arnica meya—”

  She wriggled closer, leaning her head against his own so that warm, wine-scented breath gusted in his ear. “Friend?” she asked. “No more than that, am I? But I can be more, amoro meyo—”

  As she desired. As she intended. Alejandro grimaced, then managed a weak version of the smile his friends claimed—crudely!— could spread a woman’s legs with no other effort expended. “Eiha, of that I have no doubt—but you see, my mind is on other things—” Which caused his friends to laugh uproariously; the woman immediately applied a skilled hand to his betraying loins. “—wait—” He squirmed uncomfortably. “Matra Dolcha, woman, have you no shame? This is not a common tavern where the women are harlots—” Eiha, it never had been! “—and I will be the one who determines how I spend my time …”

  “And your ducal seed?” Ermaldo do’Brendizia, the most crude of them all. “By the Mother, Alejandro, surely you have enough to spare for the carrida … or does the Duke have attached certain devices that render you unable to sow the fertile fields?”

  Ysidro do’Alva laughed. “Or do you fear to mingle it with our seed, therefore leaving the child’s paternity in doubt?” He slanted a sharp glance at the woman. “But surely she would prefer that? Then she could lay claim to support from each of us!”

  Tazio do’Esquita grinned. “And would you pay it, ‘Sidro? You are notoriously tight with the contents of your purse.”

  Do’Alva produced the elaborately eloquent shrug they all of them emulated. “So long as other parts of me remain tight, my purse is of no concern.”

  The woman laughed. “Hah! What do I care about the contents of your purses, menninos? It is the contents of the flesh that interests me most—” Whereupon the hand grew more insistent.

  “Filho do’Matra!” Alejandro abruptly shifted his weight to his thighs. With effort he rose, thrusting to his feet, and forcibly set the woman upright. There was no gentleness in it, no attempt at courtesy; he wanted to rid himself of her, of them, of the tavern. He wanted suddenly to be rid altogether of the drinking, the whoring, the griping belly and aching skull that by morning attended such evenings. He felt old and used up, disgusted by the part of himself that had once found this amusing.

  He reached into his purse and fished out a coin. Spun it down onto the table, where it chimed faintly against cloth stained wet by spilled ale. “There is your evening,” he said. “In my name, drink as you will—but I excuse myself of it.”

  The others made noises of denial, of protest, extended fresh invitation to sit down once again. But Alejandro shook his head, taking care to untangle swordhilt from tablecloth, ensnared by his efforts to empty his lap of the woman.

  It was Lionello Serrano who made no attempt to stay him, but slanted him instead a dark, oblique glance out of curiously malicious eyes. “That girl,” he said disdainfully. “That Grijalva chi’patro.”

  Alejandro froze. His voice sounded rusty. “The painter? But she is painting me—that is why I hired her.”

  “You know what she is,” Lionello said. “More than merely chi’patro, Alejandro. She dabbles in dark magics.”

  “Filho do’canna,” Alejandro said tightly. “If I believed that, I would not commission a painting—”

  “Or more than a painting?” Lionello shook his head. “We know what they are, Alejandro. We know the truth of them.”

  “Do you, then? Eiha, I think you are infinitely Serrano in this, Lio, fearful of losing your place. Or fearful of losing your blessing from the Ecclesia. I don’t know which your family values more.” Alejandro shot the others a hard glance; they were nonplussed, clearly taken aback by the turn of the topic. At least Lionello had not spread the poison. “Well, you may well look to your cousin’s work, Lio … it decays, and he will not be my Lord Limner.” It was cruel, mean-spirited, but Lionello touched a nerve Alejandro had not known existed. “Drink,” he said curtly. “Drown yourself in the bitter dregs of sour vinho, Lio, as you will have it—but say no more to me of chi’patros and dark magics.”

  “Or painters?” Do’Brendizia grinned, as if to diffuse the unexpected tension. “Go, then. Visit her if you will, Alejandro … have your portrait painted. We are infinitely fascinated to learn what talent she has.” It was, from him, replete with innuendo, but it was enough to dismiss Lionello’s accusations. Ermaldo do’Brendizia, for all his notorious crudeness, was not a stupid man.

  Alejandro cast a glance at the woman who had begun it all. Nor was she stupid, though ignorant of the currents of the moment. She looked away from him at once, as if embarrassed she had instigated such tension.

  He shook his head. I have been a fool, to find amusem
ent in this. “Dolcho nocto,” he offered briefly, and departed the tavern.

  The slender branch of an apple tree, leaves as yet plump, undried, for Temptation, Dreams, and Fame to Speak Him Great.

  Bay laurel, for Glory and Prophecy.

  Cedar, for Strength and Spirituality.

  Myrtle wand, so he might Speak With the Dead.

  Palm, for Victory; pine, for Protection and Purification; plum for Fidelity.

  Lastly, walnut, for Intellect and Strategem.

  All of these things Il-Adib took from the market basket and placed with meticulous care on a square of green silk, just so, infinitely precise; magic was demanding of such things as perfection, lest there be tragedy of it.

  Leaves and limbs were layered one atop another in careful intercourse, the veins of each touching the veins of others so that the strength of their power might mingle, enriching the whole. The pattern was made complete. Perfect.

  The old man felt a flutter deep in his belly. Anticipation. Exultation. The warm kindling of vindication.

  So long to wait, but what is time in Acuyib’s Great Tent? Patience is rewarded.

  No one that he knew had been so patient. Nor was so old, of the blood of the Desert.

  New blood, now. Not pure in content, mingled with that of the enemy, but better that than utter absence. And he knew, as Al-Fansihirro, that one pigment mixed with another often produced a different and richer color. And an entirely new magic.

  We need that now, in this new world. The old ways were defeated. The new shall bring us strength. New blood, new magic, a new Diviner.

  The scent of tightly compressed and freshly crushed wild geranium commingled with rosemary and sage drifted from the copper bowl set beside the silk, weighting the air inside the tent. Steadfast Piety; Remembrance, Love, and Memory; Wisdom. To lend him the strength to do what he did in service to Acuyib. To Tza’ab Rih.

  From one of the leather tubes he drew a parchment, a page of holy text extravagantly illuminated by a hand of great skill equally devout in service to Acuyib. So many brilliant colors, so many infinitely perfect mergings, the precise lines of black, the filigree of gold and silver, the bloom of Art, and Magic. The patterns of his world, that was becoming the boy’s as well.