The Golden Key

by Melanie Rawn

  “I will preserve the Kita’ab,” he said, “not for what it is to Tza’ab Rih; not for what it is to the Viehos Fratos, ignorant of its truths … but for what it shall be for me.” He closed the casket, reset the latch, briefly traced the carved glyphs incised in wood. Lingua oscurra, warding sacred contents. “My Kita’ab,” he said. “My key to true power.”

  Sario laughed. Indeed, a chieva. Chieva do’Sihirro.

  In silence he rolled up the thin, rune-woven rug that had so fascinated him, tucked it beneath his arm, carried it with the casket out of the tent.

  Within minutes of his departure the body would be found, he knew, the tent destroyed. The old man had been visible outside of the fabric, but never the tent itself. Without the rug, without the lingua oscurra warding its presence, the house of Il-Adib now could be discovered.

  A Tza’ab tent within the walls of the enemy, though its viper were slain, would not be tolerated.

  Alejandro took her to the private solar granted the Duke’s son within Grijalva walls, and told her the truth. He saw the color drain from her face, saw the imminent collapse of her legs, and caught her elbows before she could fall. At once he guided her to a chair and helped her settle into it with some degree of grace and self-control.

  “’Vedra,” he said, “I am as shocked as you, but is it so bad a thing?”

  One hand gripped the smooth pale column of her throat, naked of adornment. “Of course it is,” she managed. “Nommo do’Matra, Alejandro—my painting to be presented to the King of Pracanza?”

  He attempted humor. “Eiha, at least it speaks well of your work, no?”

  “No,” she declared. “It speaks well of nothing but that he has stolen something from you—and from me!”

  “Eiha, yes, I suppose you might put it that way.” He prowled around her chair, less amused now. Absently he clasped his meat-knife, drawing it a half-inch, clicking it home again. “But he is the Duke, after all, and what is mine is his.”

  “It was a gift to you.”

  “I commissioned it.”

  “I refused payment.”

  He smiled. “So you did.”

  Tightly she said, “Had I meant it to go to the Duke, I would have sent it to the Duke.”

  Alejandro laughed. “Arrtia’s temperament? Not many would dare to criticize Baltran do’Verrada!”

  “He deserves it for this, no?”

  He halted his pacing, his clicking of the meat-knife, reassessed her agitation. My poor arrtia— “’Vedra, amora meya, what would you have me do? Ask for it back?”

  “You could.”

  Stony-toned. Stony-faced. He did not know how much was truly anger, how much was regret, how much was fear that her talent, good enough for him (though only because he insisted it was; she refused to believe him), was not good enough for the Duke. Nor for the King of Pracanza and the King of Pracanza’s daughter.

  Matra Dolcha, lend me strength. I would not hurt her, given another way. But neither do I wish to be hurt. He moved behind her chair, set hands upon her shoulders, took solace in the contact and offered comfort all at once. “I can’t ask for it back. My father left two weeks ago, and the painting is with him. But I have only now had the courage to tell you.” He sighed, feeling her stiffen into immobility; first the painting appropriated, now he confessed to not informing her at once. “And I should think— should hope!—it more important to you, to us both, that a betrothal is imminent, rather than the portrait has been appropriated.”

  “Stolen, Alejandro?”

  He squeezed cold flesh gently, seeking familiar response. Thumbs caressed. “Does it mean nothing to you that I am to be married?”

  Her head was bowed. Masses of hair fell forward, obscuring her expression, blinding him to her thoughts. But her tone was infinitely level, betraying nothing but acceptance. “Of course you will be married. So will I.”

  That stopped him. His hands stilled upon her shoulders, tightened. Coldness clenched his belly: abject, utter fear. “There is talk of that? A marriage for you?”

  “There is always talk of it. For all women, most especially Grijalva women. And I am somewhat older than most who are already wed.” He felt the choppy inhalation that made the shoulders tremble beneath his hands. “I am nineteen now … it is time I bore children.”

  It came without thought. “Bear mine.” And knew the instant he said it, he wanted it very much. He leaned close, stirring ringlets with his breath. “’Vedra, grazzo, I beg you—”

  “Grijalva children.”

  It stunned him into anger, into pain. Would she do no more than mouth the family litany? Did no part of what he said move her? “Blessed Mother,” he said curtly, withdrawing stiffly, “does it mean nothing to you at all that I am to be married to make another Heir for Tira Virte, and you are to be married to make artists for Grijalvas?”

  Saavedra laughed softly, and he heard desperation at last. “What else are we to do? Protest? Refuse? We are what we are, Alejandro … we were never meant to be anything else, anything more, since the day of our births.” She stiffened beneath his touch. “After all, would you have me be your wife? A Grijalva chi’patro as Duchess?”

  His hands encircled her neck, rested atop delicate collarbones as if he adorned her with the finest of all jewels. As perhaps he did: the love and regard of a man who would be Duke. “Nommo Matra ei Filho … were it permitted,” he vowed in formal lingua, “so I would have it be.”

  A spasm passed through her. “But it isn’t. It won’t be. It can’t be.”

  “No.” He removed his hands, left her, circled now to face her. Onto one knee he bent, close enough that his breath gusted against the sheer fabric of her skirt. Into both strong hands he took one of hers, clasped it, kissed it, drew it to his heart, held it there. “I will never insult you with false promises of what cannot be. But I will honor you as I may, as it is within my will and power to do.”

  She was very white. There was nothing in her now of the girl beside the fountain two years before, flinging soaked ringlets away from her face to grin at him in delight, in an unself-conscious display of the generosity, the honesty of spirit that made her remarkable.

  Nothing in her, this moment, of the girl he had fallen in love with that day beside the fountain, though he denied it much too long for reasons he could no longer recall.

  Blessed Mother, make her see how very much I care. Eiha, he denied nothing now. He wanted it all; if he could not have precisely all, he would demand what was left. “Marria do’Fantome,” he said clearly.

  Color spilled into her cheeks. Gray eyes grew enormous, blackened by shock and candlelight. “The ‘shadow marriage’? You, and—me?” Disbelief echoed it. “Me?”

  “As real as it can be, far more than a shadow. All but the sacred vows recited before the Premia Sancto and Premia Sancta—”

  “Before your father, your mother, all the highest of Tira Virte.” She sighed, closed her eyes, removed her hand from his clasp. “They will never permit it.”

  It startled him. “Who? My father? My mother? The Ecclesia? Eiha, they will have little to say about it—”

  “My family,” she said bitterly. “The Viehos Fratos, who govern Grijalvas.”

  He blistered the air with an exorbitantly vile curse fully worthy of the streets.

  Saavedra opened her eyes—those great, gray eyes, enormous and strikingly eloquent in her elegant, fine-boned face—and smiled sadly. “You serve the do’Verradas. I serve the Grijalvas.”

  It stung. “Am I not good enough for them?”

  Tears glittered briefly. “I think you are certainly good enough, Alejandro. I think they see only that what they need of me are strong children, talented children, potent and fertile children who may sire and bear others. We can afford to lose no one, you see … there are so very few of us left.”

  He withdrew from her, rose from his knee, prowled again as a cat, walking the perimeter of the small, private solar. Meat-knife clicked blade against sheath lip. Boot heel
s scuffed first baked tile, then bright-hued rugs, setting serpentine wrinkles in them. And when eventually he stopped, turned, smiled, he saw the truth in her face at last, blatant as a sword blade: she was terrified to lose him, but certain that she would.

  Blessed Mother … It hurt to see her pain, gladdened to know she cared as deeply as he. And now he knew what he could offer at last to assuage the mutual fear. She will not lose me, nor I her.

  “Negotiations,” he said crisply, certain of his course. “My father, with Pracanzans. I, with Grijalvas.” He lifted broad shoulders in an eloquent shrug. “The key to successful negotiation is finding out what the other side wants, and—if it be possible—offering it, or something very like. Something more. Something they want so badly they will offer up precisely what you want.”

  Saavedra shook her head; in candlewash the ringlets sheened blue-black. “There is nothing,” she said. “We are not rulers … we are not Dukes, or Heirs. And our living, earned from skills, is acceptable and honorable.”

  “Painters,” he told her simply. “Superb, remarkable painters. Even their women, as proven by my father’s intention to use your work to advance a betrothal.” He smiled to see her astonishment; she had not thought of it so. “And what is there in this world that a Grijalva painter desires most?”

  She understood perfectly. At once. She required no explanation. And did not hesitate even as the light of joy suffused her eyes and color tinged her face.

  “Sario,” she said.

  Alejandro grinned. Laughed. Swept her up from the chair and embraced her, essayed a few steps of a popular danza, was gratified and emboldened by her echoing, exultant laughter, by her unfettered joy, by the magnitude of her response.

  “Sario,” he said.

  Nothing more was needed.

  NINETEEN

  Saavedra stood at the open door of the tiny cell that had served her so long as atelierro, as the confines of her world, defying distinction, dictating inspiration, defining imagination. She had served and learned at once, for nearly all of her life; and yet now her life was changed.

  Empty, the room—eiha, not utterly: the cot remained, the small window worktable, the basin and ewer, the nightpot behind the screen. Such things were the family’s, not owned by an individual. There would be others for her now, grander though not so great as to mark her wealthy or noble. And a grander room as well, larger, spacious, boasting bigger, better windows for improved light. She supposed some felt it wasted on her—she would never be a Limner and therefore did not deserve the better quarters—but no one would protest. They understood the import of the Heir’s interest, his patronage. For the first time in three generations a Grijalva had the ear of a do’Verrada.

  “Ear,” Saavedra murmured dryly, “and, I am certain they say, something entirely more.”

  She grinned fatuously. Indeed, patronage … save it was not for her work, not specifically so, nor for the work of other Grijalvas.

  “For me.” Though spoken softly, it echoed in the room.

  Tentative at first, the slow blossoming of joy into exultation— afraid to commit herself; afraid admission would spoil it all—but then Saavedra, freed, laughed, and laughed again into the echoes of her joy.

  “Alejandro do’Verrada … and Saavedra Grijalva.”

  There. It was said. Was announced.

  She supposed—no, she was certain—that in the streets, in families such as Serrano, she was reviled as harlot. Whore. But among the Courtfolk it would not be for what purpose she served, but for her wholly undistinguished and notorious name. At Court, such things as this were common. Baltran do’Verrada himself never hid his mistresses. Gitanna Serrano had been in his bed for seven years, acknowledged and tolerated, as was Alizia do’Alva.

  “But I am a Grijalva” For that, they would revile her. Call her chi’patro. Deplore Alejandro’s lamentably poor taste.

  And the Ecclesia would be outraged! Sanctos and sanctas might drop dead in the streets!

  Saavedra laughed again. She could find no portion that regretted what had kindled between them; eiha!—it had kindled long before consummation, which had proved neither of them entertained thoughts of unworthiness or hesitation. There was no part of her that flinched, that hid, that avoided contemplation; love had followed infatuation even before consummation. Now all of her exulted. Body and spirit thrummed with it.

  Alejandro loves me. And then in an uprush of joyous disbelief and hesitant acknowledgment: “Alejandro loves me.”

  It made not the slightest difference there would be no formal sanctioning beyond the vows they themselves made. Among the Grijalvas, where children were so vital, even brief pairings between men and women were considered very like a sacrament. Some married, some did not. It was not even unheard of for a Gifted male and a fertile woman to marry, despite his sterility; there were potent men who could impregnate the woman. There was no sense in denying a true bond between Limner and fertile woman merely for the sake of children. Sterility was not, after all, a punishment, but an indication of Giftedness. So long as children were born to Grijalvas, the parentage did not matter.

  Saavedra herself had never known her father. A kind but physically weak man of poor health, reputed to be odd in appearance— plump and womanish—her mother told her the summer before Suerta Grijalva died of fever. Guilbar Grijalva was a family oddity, confirmed as Gifted, and yet inexplicably incapable of painting a proper Peintraddo Chieva. Late in life he most unexpectedly sired a child whom his wife swore was his: Saavedra, his only progeny in fifty-eight years of life. He lived longer than Limners, but more briefly than men lacking the Gift; Guilbar Grijalva’s only legacy was to be known as different even within a family of those who were commonly accepted as so.

  But her child, if one were born, would know its father, because its father would survive far beyond Limners or poor, sickly, different Guilbar Grijalva, and no one of the Viehos Fratos would suggest she marry or bed other men so long as she was the Heir’s mistress.

  Smiling, Saavedra put out a hand, caught the latch, pulled the door to. This part of her life was finished. Surely one day she would marry, as Alejandro would marry, but for now they were as one. And she would make it last as long as she possibly could, even with the aid of the Mother to whom she prayed with increasing gratitude and vigor.

  Saavedra closed the door. Heard the latch click. Turned her back on what she had known to look instead upon what she would know.

  For only a moment something other than joy crept in to sink a brittle barb into her spirit. I must never tell Sario … must never say anything at all of the discussion Alejandro and I had regarding negotiations—and Lord Limners. But then mentally she shook the barb away as a horse a biting fly; it didn’t signify, was worth no contemplation and certainly no apprehension. Sario’s prodigious genius was enough of itself to win him the position when Baltran do’Verrada died.

  “More than enough,” Saavedra murmured, and winced inwardly to acknowledge the folly in believing even for a moment she had played a part.

  As she turned, thinking ahead to her new chambers, bells began to toll.

  The long plank worktable in the huge, arch-ceilinged atelierro was cleared of all save the Folio and the thornwood casket. Sario set out a small copper bowl containing three items: blossoms of goldenrod, geranium, and vervain, for Precaution, Protection, and Enchantment. He broke them beneath his thumb, inhaled the admixture, then dropped the crushed blossoms into the bowl.

  Next he opened the casket and began removing and uncapping leather tubes, methodically drawing from them the sheets of parchment, some tattered, some torn, some burned ragged at edges or marred by spark-charred holes. Carefully he unrolled and spread each upon the worktable, weighting them with such things as brush handles, pigment bottles, chunks of ruddy amber.

  Sario studied them. The text, so carefully hand-lettered, meant nothing in essence save to serve as a book of prescribed behavior— compordotta—and misdirection. There was something to be lear
ned of it, some small magics such as the Grijalvas knew, some acquisition of Acuyib’s teachings and philosophies, but not what he had learned, what Il-Adib had taught. What he knew now, the truth of Al-Fansihirro, lay in the lingua oscurra, the shaping of the borders, the splendid illumination of each initial letter.

  Next he turned to the Folio, the great prize of Verro Grijalva. He opened the leather cover, settled it flat upon the table, began to turn and examine each page. From Folio to Kita’ab, from Kita’ab to Folio, until he saw the pattern.

  Broken, of course. There were gaps within the Folio, gaps with the pages retained for so long by the old man. Torn pages, half-pages, blood- and water-stained pages, marred in some cases into indecipherability. Missing pages, missing sections, so that where one left off and another began there was no sense at all, no completeness or clarity of language.

  Broken patterns. They could never be remade. Too much lost, too much destroyed. But he knew more than any how best to fit together the triad of a triptych, even multiplied.

  Time. It was what all of them lacked: Grijalvas, Gifted, Lord Limners, Viehos Fratos. Ironically those who lived the longest had the least to offer the family, being unGifted and therefore secondary, essentially powerless, meant for lesser things.

  He was meant for greatness. And greatness required time.

  Sario, sighing, brought the candles closer, set them upon the table. It was compromise: light, yes, but at a distance so as not to threaten what could never be replaced. Still, it was enough to see by, enough to make the gold and silver filigree glisten as if yet wet. As if but newly drawn.

  In the silence of the atelierro, broken only by the whisper of parchment moved here, moved there, then brought again to here, Sario worked. The pattern could never be healed, but he could repair portions. And learn from them.