The Golden Key

by Melanie Rawn

  “I am not—”

  He overrode her. “I have told you: the fire in one recognizes the flame in another.” Sario looked beyond her, reasserted self-control. “And now at last he comes, our new Duke, for the Grijalva portion of his Paraddia Galerria—shall we watch as he examines the paintings, and try to predict his thoughts?”

  Saavedra seemed almost to flinch. And then she smiled, though it lacked the unforced brilliance of her others. “As if there is any question!”

  “Eiha, well—there is always a chance. Ettorio is not unskilled, and there is Domaos, Ivo, Ybarro …” Five Grijalvas, of them all. “And those of other families, even the Serranos; even, dare I say it, Zaragosa—” He smiled as he said it, knowing what he knew—except the work is wasted, now! “—and Alejandro may well reappoint his father’s Lord Limner.” He gestured qualification. “It’s never been done, but it could be—”

  “None of them, Sario. You.”

  It was declaration. It was expected. She never failed him.

  Sario smiled, then stepped away from the wall upon which a select few of his paintings were displayed, so that Duke Alejandro, when he arrived, might view them without obstruction.

  The scent of beeswax and cedar pervaded. Raimon Grijalva, bowed down before the exquisitely-painted icon—in Palasso Grijalva it could hardly be otherwise than exquisite!—with knees pressed into worn flagstones unsoftened by rug, heard the scrape of a footstep, the rattle of a latch. He murmured a hasty final devotion, kissed his Chieva, pressed it to his heart, then rose, turned, halted. “Davo!”

  The older man’s smile was ironic. “Did you expect someone else?”

  He did. “Sario,” he admitted, “come to tell me the result.”

  “It is as you expected. But did you doubt it?”

  “No.” Raimon released his self-steadying grip upon the velurro-draped table on which the icon was displayed. “Indeed, I expected it. Didn’t you?”

  Candlelight was unflattering to Davo’s face. At forty-five he began to fail; clearly he would not see the fifty-one years of Arturro’s lifespan, or the forty-nine of Otavio’s, dead the year before. It was Ferico now who was Premio Frato—but they all of them aged, and Ferico, too, would fail before much longer.

  Leaving Davo—or another … perhaps even me—

  “I expected it,” Davo admitted. “To me, there was no other choice. But—I am a Grijalva, and some would say I am biased.”

  Raimon arched brows. “There were four other Grijalvas among the candidates.”

  “Be not so ingenuous, Raimon … you are too old for such games, and it doesn’t become you.” Davo softened it with a smile, then sighed and collapsed upon a narrow bench beside the door. “Eiha, but I ache. I wish someone might discover a magical potion that could bring youth back to my joints.” He massaged misshapen knuckles gently. “It is the marshes, by the Mother—I swear, it is the marshes.” He settled his spine with care and returned to the topic. “There was no other Grijalva candidate who could in fairness be considered worthy of the appointment.”

  “And no other candidate of any other family worthy of the appointment.”

  “So. But there is talk already, Raimon. They say we influenced the decision.”

  Raimon coughed a laugh. “We did? Grijalvas? But we are no one, Davo … we are utterly insignificant in the politics of the city, of the duchy—”

  “Of the bedroom?” Davo’s face lighted briefly in sly amusement. “A Grijalva in his bed, a Grijalva in his Court.”

  “Then we are yet one shy of what the Serranos claimed,” Raimon countered sharply. “Caterin Serrano remains the Premia Sancta. She still poisons the Ecclesia, building on their fear of us.”

  “But she wields less power now.” Davo shifted again upon the bench. “We have gained much in a very brief time, Raimon, when one counts up the days of the pairing between Saavedra and Alejandro, and now Sario’s appointment. We must be certain the opportunity is not wasted. Not after working toward it so very long.”

  “Sario is the first Grijalva Lord Limner in three generations, Davo. The appointment is less than two hours old, and already you decry him.”

  “Not him, Raimon …” Davo grimaced. “Eiha, yes, I suppose you might say so—but I don’t mean to decry him so much as express concern. He is young—”

  “And will serve the Duke longer because of it.”

  “Young in self-control—”

  “That, he will learn. Has learned much already, no? Admit it, Davo.”

  “I admit it.” The older man smiled. “You have been his champion for nearly as long as Arturro was yours.”

  “I required it. So has Sario.”

  “You have a gift, Raimon, the gift of looking beyond the heat that sears a man into charred bone to the more focused and therefore less dangerous flame behind.”

  “There is nothing about Sario that is not dangerous,” Raimon declared. “I know it, Davo. I champion him, yes, but I have never denied it. My argument has always been that only someone with the talent, the Gift, the technique—and the unrelenting obsession to prove the rest wrong, the determination to defeat the rest—could accomplish this goal. Many have tried, Davo … in three generations, many have tried.”

  Davo’s eyes were steady. “It might have been you. Should have been you.”

  He demurred instantly. “No. My fire was too small, too uncertain …” Raimon walked softly to the bench on the other side of the door and sat down, echoing the posture of the older man. “My desire was nothing more complex, nothing more demanding, than simple ambition. There is a difference between such things as obsession and ambition. Ambition wants. Obsession needs.”

  “And thus will gain. But more than talent, more than Gift, far more than obsession is necessary to comport oneself properly— and to use the power at hand in the manner that serves the family as well as the Duke and his duchy.” Davo’s voice was infinitely quiet. “You were—and remain—the best for that task.”

  Raimon stared hard-eyed into the pallor of the tiny shrine within the Palasso; perhaps now with a new Duke, a new mistress, a new Lord Limner, things would change and Grijalvas might worship again in public. “But I also wish someone might discover something to bring youth back to my joints …” He lifted his hands, examined swelling knuckles; felt the stiffness in his spine. Be not so certain I am graced with anything save my own share of obsession, if for my family instead of myself “It comes to us all, the bone-fever. It comes—and consumes us.”

  “And Sario?” Davo asked. “Will it consume him as well? Or shall he consume us?”

  Raimon, brought up short, no longer felt the quiet ache in knuckles, in spine. He lowered his hands to his thighs and looked at the man who, after Arturro, had helped to shape his soul.

  “Sario learned very young how to make and wear a mask,” Davo began. “An inviolate mask; not invisible, but impregnable. There is nothing of his thoughts in his face because the mask shields it, and though a man may read arrogance and ambition, those are not sins such as we punish; that is for the Mother.” He resettled the weight of dangling Chieva against his chest. “But you, Raimon, never made a mask, and so there is none to wear.” He looked now at the icon. “If I wish to know what Sario is capable of, if I wish to see guilt, sorrow, regret, the devouring fear—all emotions he will never exhibit—I have only to look at your face. And thus know all.”

  A chill settled into Raimon’s bones. In that moment he thought surely the season had turned; was the bitter cold of bleak Sperranssia instead of the wet warmth of mid-Plagarra, named after the month of the plague.

  “We have not sent one of us to Court for three normal generations, and even this came sooner than believed possible. He has now placed himself beyond us, and thus is beyond discipline no matter what he might do.” Davo paused, closing one trembling, swollen hand over his Chieva do’Orro. “You are not.”

  It took effort to speak, and even then Raimon believed the voice issued from another throat entirely. “H
e is what we have made him.”

  “Eiha, I think not. I think Sario has made himself …” His voice was infinitely gentle. “… save for such encouragement and leave as was given by you.”

  Rising apprehension drove him to an impolitic answer. “We required someone like Sario!”

  It echoed briefly, died away into candle-scribed pallor.

  “Like Sario, I grant you—but not necessarily he.” Davo shifted his feet; boot soles scraped against flagstones. “A flawed tool will break, and in the breaking may injure another. Perhaps many others.”

  “‘May.”’

  “When admitting the ‘may,’ one must also admit the repercussions of the breaking itself—if the ‘may’ comes to be.”

  Raimon set his teeth. “Holy Mother,” he said hoarsely, “what do you want of me?”

  Davo sighed. “Nothing more than you have ever freely offered, frato meyo. Truth.”

  Raimon’s eyes burned grittily as he gazed upon the gilt-etched icon but three paces away. Arturro’s work. “You came here for this.” Because of the icon. Because of Arturro. Because I could not lie, not here, not now, before the Mother.

  “Because you would never attempt to lie, and I had no doubt you would desire divine assistance.” Davo gathered himself, rose with effort, turned stiffly toward the door. “In the Name of Our Blessed Mother and Her gentle Son, I give you this much, Raimon: on the day of our greatest triumph since Verro Grijalva destroyed the Kita’ab, nothing shall be done.”

  Raimon sat locked into immobility until Davo shut the door behind him, and then gave vent to the shudder that took him utterly, the fear that racked him without mercy.

  O Mother, that Davo might have chosen another example than the Kita’ab … might have used another phrase … But he had not, and so the irony of what the Kita’ab was, how it shaped every day of Grijalva life, Grijalva compordotta, was now a spear made to pierce through flesh to soul.

  So. The rank of Premio Frato will never be mine after all Raimon slid off the bench. Stood up as an old man, as they said Zaragosa Serrano stood: slightly stooped, shoulders shrunken, bone-fevered hands curling into loose and strengthless fists.

  He knelt again upon the flagstones before the icon. “I gave him leave,” he confessed. “I gave him leave to do as he would to make himself Lord Limner …”

  Flawed tool, Davo said.

  “… and so now he is appointed such by the Duke himself, may You Bless his name and his seed, and my task is done. You are wise, Sweet Mother, and always generous, and I question none of Your divine compordotta—but if I may offer this, if you will permit me in Your graciousness, I will say only that if Sario works for the family as well as for his Duke and his duchy, I shall count it well done.”

  And worth any sacrifice.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Alejandro, seated stiffly in the chair that had been his father’s, was entrapped in chambers with various conselhos all counseling him simultaneously. Shock and grief had dulled him into utter helplessness the first two days following the news of his father’s death, but he was allowed no time for personal mourning: he had inherited a duchy along with the grief. Thus the conselhos, after professing equal shock and grief, recovered very quickly, far more quickly than he in their lust for vengeance, and gave him no time to sort out thoughts and emotions. They proposed war. At once. Now they demanded ducal response as immediately.

  He shifted in the chair, conscious that its stiff, aged leather, stretched over two decades to suit the powerful, restive body of Baltran do’Verrada, did not in the least fit the equally restive but less mature son. Such power, such solidity, required time. Yet they will give me none. Alejandro moved again and scowled at the conselhos. They cluster like wolves waiting for me to offer my belly!

  He had in short order discovered that hard-won courtesy and self-restraint gained nothing. He was their Duke, they all told him—with such frequency and vehemence that he believed perhaps they themselves needed to be convinced—but they gave him no ground to speak. Attempts at offering comment, at explaining himself, met with a resounding lack of response save for the occasional polite dismissal.

  Frustration burgeoned. They ignore me! Although perhaps they would not when—if—he surrendered to the frustration and raw grief, as he had once before. But he preferred not to give over self-control; it served no purpose save to convince them he was incapable.

  Eiha—am I not? His father, after all, had prepared him for little. Forty-three was not old enough to expect death in any but Grijalvas, and especially not in a man as vigorous as Baltran do’Verrada. No one had believed his nineteen-year-old son would inherit the duchy so soon.

  Self-control was fragile, fraying with every moment; therefore he looked upon it as wholly providential when his new Lord Limner was announced into the chamber, and every voice in the room broke off at once.

  Holy Mother. Alejandro appealed, wiping a hand across a tense face as he settled once again into the cradling leather, save me from these moronnos who look for my father in me.

  Sario Grijalva, still clad in the black and green he had worn to the ceremony that invested him with the position so many coveted, entered quietly through the paneled door into utter silence. He stopped. Waited. Let them look upon him, upon the Chieva do’Orro that dangled at his waist even as the keys and locks of the sanctas and sanctos dangled against bleached robes.

  But so different, Alejandro thought. What ‘Vedra has told me of the Grijalvas, their rigid compordotta—Blessed Mother, but they are as different from us as those of the Ecclesia! And wondered uneasily if his thought might be construed as heresy.

  Someone shifted stance slightly, crunching boot sole against grit-coated stone flag. “Eiha,” a voice murmured dryly, “it is not so much the popinjay as Serrano, eh?”

  Someone laughed softly, and another man offered, “At least it is not wearing scarlet.”

  Grijalva smiled acknowledgment, an acceptance of the challenge. “Nor will it ever.” Deliberately he echoed the insult. “It detests the color.”

  Thus the posturing began. Alejandro, versed in the ways of Court if not in its political intricacies, marked the moment the conselhos closed ranks to bait. “And do you then fail to use it in your paintings?”

  “No, conselhos,” Grijalva demurred. “I use it with moderation.”

  “And will you never then wear it at all, even during Mirraflores?”

  Alejandro, relieved beyond measure that Grijalva’s arrival shifted the massed intensity from himself to another, waited expectantly. It was a test, he knew; Mirraflores, which marked the restoration of the Mother’s fertility—and thus the fertility of Tira Virte—after the birth of her Son, was celebrated by the draping of vivid bloodflowers throughout the city … and by the wearing of them, real or of silk or colored paper, as personal adornment.

  “With moderation,” Grijalva repeated serenely.

  Alejandro grinned. ‘Vedra said he had wit.

  Also boldness. Grijalva swept the chamber with an assessive glance, marked out the clustered conselhos individually, examined each, then turned to his Duke with an elegant bow. “Your Grace. I freely confess that I am new to my duties and as new to these chambers, but if you will permit me, I may be able to offer a resolution to your present difficulty.”

  Better-spoken than expected—that will annoy them. Alejandro opened his mouth to answer, but a massive snort from the man closest to him preempted speech.

  “May you!” Edoard do’Najerra, the late Duke’s Marchalo Grando, cut crisply through the murmuring and whispers. “You may?”

  “I may,” Grijalva did not even so much as glance at the older, stout-built man, whom the late Baltran do’Verrada considered a close companion. “If the Duke—” The pause was minute, but considered. “—or you will permit me to speak?”

  Dark brown eyes were turned from do’Najerra to the Duke, expressing no more than courteous patience. Alejandro, suppressing a brief startled smile, gestured awkward permission inst
antly. “Sweet Mother, Grijalva—be not so hesitant! If you can resolve this dilemma—”

  “And dishonor!” do’Najerra thundered; he had trained his voice on the tourney field.

  “—then I shall be most pleased,” Alejandro finished pointedly. He shot the Marchallo a baleful glare. “What does it entail?”

  “Merely that for which I am present, Your Grace.” Sario Grijalva’s smile was infinitely sweet. “I shall paint.”

  “Paint what?” someone shouted from behind the others. “And if that is the remedy you suggest, if you feel it more worthy than the honor of war, why not simply paint Duke Baltran back to life?”

  Matra Dolcha— It shocked Alejandro. Shocked everyone. Even the man who had suggested it. Oddly enough, it did not shock Grijalva; Alejandro wondered absently if anything could. “Bassda!” He was distantly gratified to see that this time they listened. They even looked at him. “Bassda,” he repeated. “Nommo do’Matra, that is what he is for, no?—the Lord Limner paints. And it is with paintings that such things as marriages are made, treaties recorded, wars avoided.” Now he had them. He nodded toward Grijalva, who waited in quiet self-possession a pace away from the ducal chair. “If he can settle this war by wielding a brush rather than a sword, I shall be glad of it. Nothing is earned in war—”

  Mistake. It set them off again.

  “Nothing but honor!” a man shouted: Estevan do’Saenza.

  “Nothing but land!” cried another; Alejandro believed it was Rivvas Serrano, a distant relation to the now-dismissed Zaragosa.

  “And lives saved, Your Grace,” put in Edoard do’Najerra, remarkably sanguine in the midst of clamoring disbelief. “As well as regaining your poor father’s abased body—”

  “I can do that,” Grijalva interposed.

  Thunderous silence. Then a furious roar.

  “You can do that!” Now even the Marchalo was angry. “So easily, then? Eiha—shall you paint the body here, and thus it arrives?”