by Melanie Rawn
He took one long stride, appropriated the tankard and bent to set it down, then, disdaining dust and perspiration, swept her all of a piece into his arms. “Filthy, mussed, with paint upon your face—” He touched a smudge on her cheek. “—and the pungent perfume of spilled oil … eiha, I am besmirched. And inconsolably desoladio.” He kissed her. Hard.
Response was instantaneous. She had never known it quite so powerful before, an abrupt and unassailable awareness that nothing else in the world mattered in this moment but this moment, and what they could make of it.
“Door—” she murmured against his mouth.
“Closed,” he answered, into hers.
“There is a bed in the other—”
“No,” he said. “Here.”
Amidst a tangle of unprimed canvas; the rattling of stoppered bottles; a basket of chalk tipped over to spill its contents in a rainbow across the rug; the tankard mashed yet again; his crushed and now-featherless hat—here it was.
Sario had caused to be made a massive upright chest with drawers and locks built into it: shallow, wide drawers that stored and warded finished and incomplete works. There were other chests, caskets, baskets, so many containers for the storing away of his needs. It took time to sort through, to sort out, to put away into an arrangement he found most appropriate and useful the tools of his talent, the tangible requirements of his Gift. Pots, bottles, vials, all sealed with wax, or cork, or leather; sealed also with lingua oscurra. Rims of tiny, indecipherable runes warded that which was vital, so that he need not find himself naked of the makings of power at any given moment.
Grijalvas learned many crafts as they grew and were taught; the family had survived the years after the Nerro Lingua not only by copying, by occasional commissions, but by serving the needs of artists and others. He as much as any of them knew how to mix, to make, to bind together the necessary ingredients for various crafts and recipes. He could make paper, bind leather … and so he bound the loose pages of Il-Adib’s unintended bequest and made himself a Kita’ab. An infinitely brief, unfinished, private—and wholly personal—Kita’ab, that was also as much as it could be Grijalva Folio.
It took much time to sort out the past life of Palasso Grijalva he brought with him to the future life of the Palasso Verrada. He was given a wing all to himself so that he might tend his own requirements in such a way as to serve the needs of his Duke and thus the needs of the duchy. There were servants, of course, though he dismissed most of them; two he kept for convenience, because when lost within the work he often forgot to eat, to drink—and why not send another to fetch a tray to him rather than break his concentration?
Concentration was so vital, especially with the oscurra and borders that demanded his best, lest the magic harm him … it infuriated Sario sometimes that he needed to urinate. That too interrupted. But such things he would tend himself; he did not believe paying a servant to pee would relieve his own bladder. Although there were times he wished it were possible.
At present he did not require the nightpot; kneeling upon the rune-worked Tza’ab rug brought from Il-Adib’s tent, Sario sorted papers. Papers upon papers: maps of Tira Virte, maps of Pracanza, maps of Ghillas, of Taglis, Merse, Diettro Mareia, even of Vethia, so far to the north of the world … he did not believe he could bear to look at another map, and yet he must. He was now Lord Limner; his task was to acquaint himself with treaties, wars, alliances, with family needs and family habits, with the interests of other Dukes and kings and princes, with their innumerable wives and children, even with their pets—because if he were to help shape diplomacy, to assist his Duke in creating history, he had to know everything.
“Matra,” he murmured. “I cannot believe Zaragosa Serrano was capable of this—capable of anything beyond clothing himself in scarlet!”
A step scraped at the door. He had not shut it of a purpose; what he did was never undertaken without invoking proper protections—and he needed just now to convince everyone in the Palasso Verrada there was nothing for them to suspect of their new Grijalva Limner. Let them look upon him.
“And so Zaragosa clothes himself in it forever, no?” the other asked evenly. “The scarlet of shame, the reddening of fever-racked hands, the crimson of his blood as the leeches bleed him in hopes of healing an unanticipated and debilitating illness very like that which commonly afflicts Grijalvas.”
Sario did not turn. He knew the voice, recognized displeasure bordering on contempt. “His talent was dead. His body might as well be.”
“When the Matra decrees it so.” Raimon Grijalva came further into the chamber. “Have you usurped Her place?”
Sario, who yet knelt with his back to the man, grinned, tended maps. “No doubt the Serranos would argue so!”
“And have they the right of it?”
So, it comes … Sario stacked one map atop the other: Ghillas conquered Diettro Mareia. Now for the genealogies, the complex lattices and laceworks of marriages, births, deaths, the endless inventories of paintings recording events … “I do what I must. I am, after all, of the Viehos Fratos.”
“And?”
“And?” He shrugged, smiling, examined the multiple marriages of Baltassar of Ghillas written out so meticulously; how could a man bear to marry so many women? And how had so many managed to die? “Am I supposed to be other?”
“More, perhaps,” Raimon said. “You have resources others do not, even those who are of the Viehos Fratos.”
Oddly, he felt anticipation, not regret; and a stirring nearly as powerful as lust. “Does it trouble you, Raimon?” He set aside the Ghillasian genealogies, the inventories, turned instead to trade agreements between Taglis and Tira Virte. “Do you fear I will misuse what I know?”
Silence.
Sario smiled more widely. There is pleasure in this—there is POWER in this. Quietly he put aside the papers and rose, dusting knees. Turned: chain and Chieva glittered in candleglow. With schooled self-possession he confronted the only man he had ever and always respected. “You made me,” he said clearly. “Grazzo, be precise in this—of what do you believe I am capable?”
Raimon’s face was stark. “Anything.”
Sario paused a moment—he had not expected the bald truth quite so soon—and then nodded. “Permit me to rephrase, grazzo— what do you believe I will do?”
“Whatever you choose to do.”
Truth, again. From this man he expected nothing less, or more; events had moved more quickly than any anticipated, even he. Zaragosa had been meant to die, or to be dismissed because of illness, but Baltran’s freakish death had put all into motion too swiftly. And, clearly, Sanguo Raimon had accepted what others couldn’t or wouldn’t imagine. Not yet.
Then he shall have truth as well “Nommo Chieva do’Orro, Raimon, I swear this: I don’t want to rule. Is that what you fear?”
The older man shook his head. “Even you comprehend that contesting for Tira Virte would throw the duchy into a civil war so disastrous it would destroy everything—and leave you with nothing worth ruling. Unless …” Raimon’s expression was at once bitter as winter, sere as summer. “Unless it is that you serve Tza’ab Rih now.”
Sario laughed aloud. “Eiha, they might wish it! They might even expect it—it was what the old man wanted—but that is not my goal.”
“Then what is your goal, Sario?” Raimon paused, examined expression, posture, then continued. “Have you any that avoids usurping the Mother’s Throne?”
So much pleasure now, so much anticipation. “Heresy—or humor! Which is it, Raimon?” Laughing, he spread hands wide. “To be what I am. That is my goal. To be Lord Limner to the Duke of Tira Virte.”
“Why?”
“Because I was shaped to be so by men such as you.”
Raimon took a single step, checked. “It was not I who began this—”
“No? Of course it was. Otavio and Ferico would surely have done more than burned three tiny holes along my collarbone—” Sario touched his doublet. “—in
fact, I believe they might have suggested I be treated as Tomaz was treated, thereby forever quenching a fire they could not control.” He shrugged easily. “I am as you see me. I might have been less, might have been more, left to my own devices—but now I am the man whom the Grijalvas view as savior—”
“Savior!”
“—because it is to me the Duke shall come, must come, to plot his plots, his policies, and the campaigns of the conselhos; to conduct trade and make treaties; to arrange to marry a woman, to get heirs upon her; to marry another if that one dies in the bearing; to commemorate deaths and births and marriages and thus more births and marriages, and possibly more deaths … to document life, Raimon! To record the history and change of a nation and her people.” He paused, looking for comprehension in place of contempt in the other man’s aging face. “That is what we do. That is our task. To unmask the world so others may know the truth and be bound by it.”
“Your truth.”
“We all of us make our own—or, in the name of coin, accept commissions to twist the truth as others will have it twisted.”
“You will bring harm to no one.”
He fears that—fears ME. “No one beyond whom my Duke requires harmed.”
With elaborate irony and equally clear disdain, “Zaragosa Serrano?”
Sario sighed. “Do you truly care what becomes of him, Raimon? Eiha, I know you seek evidence I have become a monster—or threaten to become one … but why must you be so certain I shall? I am a painter, Raimon! All I have ever wanted to do is paint!”
Raimon’s hands trembled, betraying his rigid posture from strength into weakness. “Then paint,” he said hoarsely. “I give you leave to paint. As we have taught you to paint.”
Sario smiled, offering such brutal honesty as he could: truth was truth. “But there are many teachers. Many moualimos. And not all of them need be Grijalva.”
“That old man, the old Tza’ab you told me about—”
“—wanted to make me into a second Diviner.” Sario shook his head. “Why is it so many men wish to shape others? Am I nothing but flesh to you? A bit of bone, arranged so; a hybrid hide, stretched over that bone so; a mind empty of all save what thoughts men put into it, men like you and Arturro and Otavio and Ferico because surely the boy could never think for himself! Surely he mustn’t. Surely the boy must be controlled through the inflexible rigidity of compordotta, the rituals of dying men—”
“Dying men!”
Ignorance annoyed him. Refusal to accept truth stirred him to retort. “Viehos Fratos,” he said curtly. “Arturro. Otavio. All the dead men. All the men who shall be dead, and soon: Ferico. Davo. Even Raimon, though he has a handful of years yet left to him—even as the bone-fever destroys his Gift.” There was nothing now in him but a cold, abiding anger. “What is a Lord Limner but a man who lives forever?”
“He dies, Sario—they all of them die!”
“But not their works.” Sario shook his head. “Who comes to our galerrias, Raimon? Who comes to see what we were, what we shall be? Eiha, no one … they come to commission us to copy the others, to copy the Lord Limners, because only the work of such men grants those men immortality, and only Lord Limners are granted the chance to have their work preserved for the immortal glory it is.” He drew in a hissing breath. “And that is the family goal. Not to place a Grijalva beside the Duke … but to steal back the years that are stolen from us, to put them into our paintings because we can’t contain all those years in our flesh without being devoured.” He extended hands, displayed them. Slim, young, talented hands, tensile in beauty and strength. “I am nearly twenty. In the same span of years I shall be your age, and my hands, afflicted by the curse of our family, will be older yet. No Limner who must paint, no Limner with such hands, may paint. And so he dies.”
“Sario—”
“We die, Raimon. All of us. And no one remembers. No one cares.” He let his hands drop back to his sides. “Your way, the way of the Viehos Fratos, is to make a man whose work succeeds him. But that is a false life. An artificial life. You don’t understand, you or the Viehos Fratos, the boys who hope to be Gifted … you don’t understand at all. You have permitted your imaginations to become crippled, and you accept it as the Will of the Matra ei Filho… eiha, I do not, I reject it. True life is living—and that is my goal. To live. So I may paint. A man’s soul dies when his ability is stolen, as yours is now being stolen … but my soul will not die. I forbid it.”
“Sario …” Tears stood in Raimon’s eyes as he repeated in despair. “None of us lives forever.”
“Perhaps not,” Sario agreed, “when one accepts as inevitable that which is of the earth.”
“We are all of us of the earth!”
“Not I,” he answered. “I will temper myself as we temper paints: with binders … and my flesh that is pigment, my bone that is canvas, shall not die.”
Raimon’s face collapsed. The fine architecture of skull nearly pierced the brittle vellum of what once had been young, taut skin. “Blessed Mother … Matra Dolcha, Matra ei Filho—”
“Prattle your prayers,” Sario said, “but this has nothing to do with Her or Her Son.”
Anger kindled, took flame. The eyes yet were young, powerful in pride. “You would say so to me? To me?”
Resolution wavered, was renewed in a rush of conviction. “To you as Raimon Grijalva? To you as one of the Viehos Fratos?”
“To me as a man, as one who has befriended you, supported you, spoken for you—”
“Yes,” Sario answered. “I say it to you in all of your guises. I will do this.”
Raimon’s hand shut itself around his Chieva. “Even a Lord Limner is not beyond our means, Sario. If you make it necessary.”
Sario laughed. “Because you have my Peintraddo?”
A glint of quiet triumph shone briefly. “We have the useless copy, as you made certain. But Saavedra has the true one.”
“So.” Very softly he asked, “Does she?”
And so it came at last, so it reached Raimon in pure truth and unadorned simplicity: they none of them knew him. None of them at all. No man. No woman.
Gently Sario explained, “We are the finest artists in the world, Il Sanguo. Copying is as nothing. Not once. Twice. Thrice.” He looked upon the one man of them all he had liked and respected, even honored, and realized he had grown beyond such things. Weakness he dared not tolerate. Weakness he would not. “You have betrayed my trust,” Sario said, but felt no pain of it. That he was also beyond.
Raimon’s body trembled. “As you have betrayed mine. To paint a copy of your Peintraddo Chieva—to paint two copies!”
“And you see how it serves me, frato meyo. How it keeps me whole enough to paint, how it keeps me alive.” Sario shook his head. “I will never be Tomaz. I will never be you. I will never again be threatened by anything done in the Crechetta.”
The litany was begun. “It is our way—”
And ended. “Your way is outdated. I make a new way, now. No one else has the courage, the means, the capacity.” Sario smiled. “Or the Luza do’Orro.”
TWENTY-FOUR
Alejandro stirred out of a drowse into wakefulness. Leather bed-ropes squeaked beneath the mattress. After the first and infinitely satisfying union on the floor, they both of them complained of impediments to a more leisurely and comfortable exploration—brush handles, the battered tankard, the gouging corner of a box—and so he at last allowed her to lead him to the bed. A second union followed, as had the acknowledgment that wine consumed before he came, the warmth of the day, the lassitude in his body, would combine to carry him off to sleep.
Saavedra had retorted tartly that it was good of him to wait at least until they were finished.
Now he was awake, smiling over that, but disinclined to rouse or to rouse her; he drifted contentedly, one naked hip pressed against hers while hair not his own enshrouded his neck. In such peace as he had not known since news of his father’s death, he permitted himself t
o consider the ramifications of it more fully.
Death had made him Duke. It also extinguished his youth. Counted a man because of age, of size while his father lived, he was counted a boy beside that father by all who knew them both. Now Baltran was gone—and Alejandro invested. A forced and forceful entry into adulthood, but it was done. Duke Baltran was dead of the Mother’s whim, his wife transformed to widow, his children made fatherless.
Alejandro felt a pang of grief, of desertion, of loneliness. His mother had retired to dowagerhood immediately and lived now at Caza Varra, one of the country estates; and eight-year-old Cossimia also was gone, sent to Diettro Mareia to be fostered until of an age to wed the Heir. That left only him, both son and brother—save now he was Duke instead of Heir, and it changed matters. Significantly. Life now was difficult, and no choice at all was simple. Each was fraught with potentials and possibilities, and dangers within each one.
“Merditto,” he muttered wretchedly, turning to align his body more fully against Saavedra’s.
She was not, after all, asleep. “What are you thinking about that makes you swear so desperately?”
He sighed into her ringlets. “Marriage.”
“So.” She paused. “Alejandro …” Her tone was oddly choked, half-serious, half-ironic, as if she fought not to laugh. “… will you forgive my rudeness, grazzo?—but perhaps you might consider thinking about such things when not in my company—” She twisted to face him, to look into his face. “—and certainly when not in my bed!”
He caught fire. From head to toe. Sweat stung armpits and groin. “Merditto! Moronno! Cabessa bisila!—” He flopped over onto his belly and pressed his face into the mattress. How could he have been so unthinking, such a witless monster?
She trembled against him, laughing in delight. “And everything else, as well—Blessed Mother, let me call you the names … is it not my right?”
“—moronno luna,” he finished, lifting his still-warm face. “You should send me away at once!”