by Melanie Rawn
“Eiha, I could, but then I would lose you all the sooner, no?” She smoothed the firm ridge of muscle that weapons practice had set like a shelf of stone into his back. “I would rather keep you as long as I may … you will marry, amoro meyo, and then—”
“But not yet. Not yet.” He sat up, shoving tousled hair—his— out of his eyes; depositing tangled hair—hers—aside so he would not catch it beneath him. “Forgive me for that, carrida … but meanwhile they will have me married, bedded, and presented with an Heir before the year is done; must you hasten it?”
“Poor Alejandro … am I supposed to pity you?” She sat up, tossed back disarrayed ringlets, sat against the wall. Her shoulders touched his, adhered. “Pity the woman instead.”
He swiveled his head to study her, to consider—marked laughter in her eyes. “Canna!” he declared, without heat. “Heartless, selfish woman—”
“Heartless, selfish, honest woman … and I know you.” She leaned, tipped her head against his. “I know you, Alejandro, and I know also she will be fortunate.”
Laughter was banished. It was complex: pleasure and pain at once. “Eiha, carrida—were I not a Duke—”
“Then I would never have taken you to my bed!”
He grinned briefly, but repeated, “—were I not a Duke—”
“—and I not a Grijalva …” She sighed, catching his mood. “But you are, and I am, and this is the best we may hope for. And it is not so poor a thing, I think. Better than nothing at all.”
Thoughts flowed like river water channeled by stones in a random pattern. “I don’t think he loved her …”
“Who?”
“Gitanna Serrano. I don’t think my father loved her. I think he liked her—”
“That is a beginning.”
“—and I think she offered something my mother couldn’t—”
“Mistresses do.”
“—and I think he needed her in some way, some way I can’t comprehend … perhaps to prove himself—”
“You are proven, en verro!”
“—to make himself a man in all respects—”
“And your presence evidence of that, no?”
“—because he was Duke of Tira Virte, and a Duke must be all things.” Alejandro looked at her. “I would not wish to be like that.”
“Duke?”
“All things.”
“Dukes are, Alejandro.”
“I can’t be, ‘Vedra. I am not my father.”
“And that pleases me, amoro meyo. I have no wish to sleep with your father.” She checked, touched his arm. “Regretto—I should not jest about the dead.”
“But he is.” He shrugged, aware of grief as yet unresolved, but not overwhelmed by it; her presence eased him. And knowing the death was accident, as Sario Grijalva had proven by examining the body and questioning the Tza’ab escort party, eased him even more. Dead was dead and worthy of mourning, but war was not a prospect he wished even to contemplate. Like a startled horse he shied from that, and yet admitted to her the other, because he could. “He is dead. Thus I am put in his place … and I am afraid.”
After a moment she turned toward him, set the flat of her palm to his heart, pressed her cheek against it. “You are not alone in this.”
“No. Grazzo do’Matra—and you.” He leaned, kissed her soundly, sat back, considering other options. Once again he slipped through the rocks, carried to yet another eddy of consideration. “And there is another who will aid me …” Recollection urged him upright; cool wall was against shoulder blades. “Eiha, ‘Vedra, you should have seen him! Should have heard how he spoke to them! Matra, I wish I had his courage—wish I had his poise! All those stiff, proud men, strutting like cocks in the henyard …” He laughed; he recalled it so well. “‘Grijalva,’ they accused, as if it were epithet, and ‘Grijalva’ he said back, as if it were honor! Perhaps it will not be so bad after all, with his help.” He turned to her. “’Vedra—you know him better than I … has he always been like this?”
Troubled, she grimaced briefly. “Arrogant? Yes. Certain of himself? Yes. Certain of his value to any man who requires help? Infinitely yes.”
He assumed an expression of mock astonishment. “And you call yourself his friend?” Alejandro clapped a hand to his breast. “Eiha, that would wound me!”
Dryly she said, “Nothing wounds Sario.”
He let the levity go. “Then perhaps that is best.”
Something in his tone caught her. “Alejandro, does it worry you so much?”
“That I am Duke? Yes. Infinitely.” He sighed, plucking at bedclothes. “I am not ready. Not prepared.”
“You have men to counsel you, men who served your father.”
“Fools,” he said curtly. “All of them, save …” He smiled a little. “Save the man you recommended. The infinitely arrogant one so certain of his value.”
“Alejandro …” Her tone was strange, as if she meant to say something; abruptly she dismissed it. “He is arrogant. He is certain of himself. And he is talented far beyond any man alive.”
“Then I am safe, no? I have you to counsel me in the night, and him to counsel me in the day. I am well-served indeed!”
She cast him a sidelong, troubled glance. Then abruptly caught his hand in hers. “Alejandro, promise me something … promise me you will be your own man.” He stared at her, astonished by the vehemence in her tone. “You may be frightened—so would I be!— but you have a good heart, Alejandro, a great and generous heart, and you are not a fool. Be certain of yourself, not in what others believe. Unless you agree with it.”
“Of course …” He smiled warmly, adjusting his hand so he clasped hers now. “Have faith in me, carrida … I require counsel, yes, but I shall make the decisions.”
She studied him, weighed his words, then sighed relief. A brilliant smile lighted her face. “Then all shall be well. But this once, if only this once, I shall make one for you: it is time you went back.”
“Back? ‘Vedra!—where are you going?” He pulled up the sheet rucked awry as she left the bed. “I thought you might show me more of your portfolio. You promised, en verro.”
“En verro,” she agreed, bending to retrieve his hosen; her shift. “But another time, I think.”
“Saavedra.” He had her now with that tone, forbade more evasions. “What is it?”
After a moment she shook her head. “Do’nado.”
He reached out and caught a hand as she turned. “This comes because of him, no? Is there something you are holding back?” Apprehension spasmed, coupled with shock. “Is it that you and he—”
“No! Never.” She shook her head. “Never.”
Alejandro frowned. “You suggested him, but even without your suggestion he was the only possible candidate. I saw that at once. Everyone agreed except the Serranos, and that was expected.” He grinned, recalling their displeasure; banished it and shrugged. “Had you and I never met at all, he would have been named. There was no other choice.”
“Eiha, no.” She managed a smile, though the bloom of it wilted too quickly. “That he would never permit. Not with such fire, not with such need.”
It was a tangle he did not wish to pursue. Not now. Too many other duties required him. “There,” he said, summoning his father again. “Bassda. Sario is Lord Limner, and you are my mistress. So it is, and so it shall be. Bliss.”
“Bliss,” she echoed sourly, and tossed his hosen at him.
Kita’ab. Folio. By either name, by any name: power.
One candle lighted the chamber, the Crechetta—they could not prohibit or prevent his presence in it, even if they wished to; he was of them as well as of Al-Fansihirro—banishing all shadows save those most ingenious; and he read by its light, a meager light unequal to such glorious inked and painted illumination made into borders, into lingua oscurra; and for the illumination of the truth, the way, the answer to questions he had never known to ask, because a man asks nothing when his imagination is crippled.
It angered him, that those who reared him lied. Fairness argued they did not even yet understand it was a lie, any of it, still lost within Grijalva ritual born of Tza’ab rites, but he was not inclined to fairness or argument and recognized it purely as falsehood now. Acknowledged it. Despised it.
So much yet to learn. Nearly two decades as a student of the family, two years with the old man, the estranjiero who offered him as much as an Al-Fansihirro could: the key to power, true and rooted power, power so integral to Tza’ab Rih that even now, more than one hundred years after Verro Grijalva captured the Kita’ab, its potential for rediscovery, rebirth, made one old man live in the heart of the enemy and wait for the fleshly vessel that could be recognized, reclaimed, reshaped.
His jaws clamped. Will no one let me be? Can no one see that what I am is what I have always wanted to be?
Not Duke. Not of the Viehos Fratos. Not even Premio Frato. Merely—painter. And Lord Limner, so he could defeat death by forcing the world to acknowledge his work, his Gift.
Yet now there was another way. His work would live on, as intended, but so would Sario Grijalva.
Tension ran from clenched jaw through neck and shoulders. Meek as sheep, these moronnos … they pray to the Mother and thank Her for Her generosity and blessing, when what she truly offers is Her divine backside! Body dead by fifty; talent killed by forty? No. No!
His Gift would not allow it, or his talent, his ambition. Too much yet burned in him, too much yet needed to be freed … two more decades was nothing, nothing at all, when weighed against the scope of his Gift, the lightscape of his vision. He needed time.
Needed youth.
He read by the light of candleglow, by the illumination of the pages of their Kita’ab and his; by the illumination of oscurra and imagination at last kindled into true Luza do’Orro, the golden light of comprehension.
“Let them die,” he said. “Let them permit themselves to fail at forty, to die at fifty. And I will watch them.”
He would. He could. While the Kita’ab lacked pages, it did not lack all answers to all questions he had learned at last to ask.
Sario stared into candleglow, letting the fixity of his gaze merge and bleed out light and shadow until nothing was distinguishable beyond the faint gleam of gilt upon ancient paper. One elegant, eloquent finger gently traced out the pattern inked onto the page two hundred years before. “It is enough,” he said. “It must be, and it shall be.”
He had said it so many times, prayed it so many times, declared it so many times to himself, to Saavedra; even, once, to Raimon.
A smile grew, broke into a grin, into laughter. For the first time in his life he believed long-dead Verro Grijalva was, after all, a hero. Believed, and blessed him, for providing the answers to questions he had not known how to ask.
He blew out the candle. One faint, final glint of gilt, of gold, of power.
It must be. And it shall be.
He walked alone through the city’s streets, unmindful of shadow, of darkness, of danger that lived in such, breeding desperate men out of despair. Let them come; Raimon did not care. And because of that, none came. Footsteps scraped, scratched, approached furtively, retired. He was left alone to walk the streets, to welcome darkness and death, and yet the latter did not come.
At last he passed out of squalor into security, save for those would-be bravos who challenged even security for a greater prize, and then into a pool of lamplight that spread like spilled ale around his feet, dappling cobbles and limning the way to the Sanctia.
He lingered, trapped like an insect in amber, wondering if anyone would melt him into a resin suitable for use in binding powder into paint, into creation … and then smiled to think of himself like that, ground powder made into a man by the talent and ambition of the painter.
Sario. Sario was like that.
It swooped back then, stooping like a raptor upon powerless prey, as Sario stooped on Il Sanguo’s protestations.
Il Sanguo. What were they but two words set together? Rank, yes, in his society, within the family, but wholly manufactured by such men as he counted himself among, an artifical system designed to keep order, to control compordotta. Art was so demanding, so consuming a master that without a system of discipline imposed upon its practitioners nothing would be accomplished beyond abject chaos. Art for art’s sake, no more; no goal, no ambition, no focus for the light, the Luza. It would serve no one, left to its own devices; would merely exist, unstructured, unrealized, and therefore unappreciated—and the men who created it would die unsung, their vast talents unknown, unseen, unappreciated.
To die young, with glorious works stacked away in a locked, forgotten atelierro, was a true punishment, a true discipline of the damned. And if Sario fought that, if Sario meant to transcend what they all of them faced, Raimon was uncertain he could truly blame him.
And for that he would be punished.
Lamplight glimmered. He turned to it, seeking admission, confession, comprehension, absolution. And went in, where he would be welcomed as a man in need—or turned away because of his name, with need refuted.
As he passed through the door he closed a hand around his Chieva, thinking to slip it within the collar of his doublet where it would not be seen, for surely without its presence no man—noviciato, initiato, sancto, Premio Sancto—would know what he was.
Grijalva. Tza’ab. Both.
Chi’patro.
But he released the key and left it there after all, shining in the light; no man should hide what he is. And was gratified nearly to tears when the sancto, coming forward from dimness to greet him, marked the Chieva do’Orro, knew it, smiled. Then extended a welcoming hand.
TWENTY-FIVE
Just in from sword practice, from wrestling, from smacking with and being smacked by age-polished staves, Alejandro reeked of his own industry. The doublet was shed in the tourney yard, left to a servant to fetch; now he wore no more than a loose cambric shirt soiled by sweat and the grime of the hard-packed dirt yard, sleeves rolled back to scraped and battered elbows; laces unlaced, or torn free to dangle haphazardly; billowy folds adhered to chest and spine. Hosen were shredded at both bruised knees from an unintended and painful obeisance, though he had got his own back; and his hair, slicked away from his face by a quick sluicing of water from the rain barrel, straggled damply.
He might have gone at once for a bath, to soak away aches and dirt, but he had been waylaid from his path by Martain bearing a letter, and the schooled blankness of expression on his secretary’s face alerted him. That expression, coupled with the quick-scanned contents of the letter, served to chase all thought of a bath from his mind. Because of it, he now sat in a chair in the atelierro of his Lord Limner, reeking of his efforts, with rump settled on the edge of leather and elbows planted against taut thighs with booted feet equally planted, while splayed, rigid fingers channeled riverbeds into damp hair.
The clever, infinitely arrogant young man who seemed older than he but was not, was less effusive in his concern. In fact, Alejandro was not certain his Lord Limner was concerned at all.
He looked up, glowered, scoured hair out of his face with unkind fingers. “Surely you must see,” he said sharply. “Don’t you?”
Sario Grijalva, poised at an easel, arched a brow. “That depends,” he answered. “En verro, I see that you are upset … and I don’t question that you should be; it is not my place to do so—but must news of this sort thrust you into despair?”
Alejandro scowled more blackly yet. “I would not expect that of you.”
A lock of dark hair straggled loose of leather tie, curving forward like a wing to echo the line of the Limner’s jaw. “Because I am your servant?”
Curtly Alejandro snapped, “Because you care for Saavedra.” He paused. “Or so I have been led to believe.”
“And so I do. And if I believed this a threat to her, I assure you I would share your concern.” Grijalva paid fixed attention to his work a moment, nodded approval, then co
ntinued. “But where there is no threat, no man need waste concern.”
Alejandro snapped stiffly upright in the chair. “Filho do’canna! You see this as of no moment?”
Grijalva considered that, then set down his paletto, his brush, and perched himself upon a stool to give over full attention to his exasperated Duke. He in his own way was as unpresentable, smeared with paint if not sweat, clad in clothing donned for comfort, activity, and the expectation of getting dirty. “A man might rejoice to know that a king considers him worthy enough for a princess.”
“And so my father’s final task is completed. The suit is accepted.” Alejandro collapsed into the chair again, flopping against leather. Broad hands depending from arms ridged with sinew dangled in eloquent assertion of futility and despair. “What am I to do?”
“Marry her, Your Grace.”
Alejandro scowled. “What about Saavedra?”
“Does it matter?”
“To me! As it should to you!”
“Why? Did you expect me to fall to the floor in despondency and helplessness?” Grijalva bared good teeth briefly—better than mine! Alejandro marked in annoyance—and continued before his Duke could frame a retort. “You could refuse, Your Grace.”
It was preposterous. “And hurl insult at Pracanza? Undo what my father began? Perhaps begin a war my conselhos would prefer, while I at the same time must rely on their biased counsel? Merditto, Grijalva, you understand nothing!”
Grijalva shrugged elegantly. “Then marry her, Your Grace.”
Alejandro, who had grown to inhabit a body too powerful for elegance, itched. He scratched at hair drying into unkempt spikes. “I am not opposed to marriage, en verro … nor even specifically to the Pracanzan princess, whom I do not know, have never met, have not even seen—”
“They are sending a portrait, Your Grace. Perhaps when it arrives, you will feel less concerned.”
“Why?” Alejandro, growing belligerent, was not disposed to courtesy. “If she is beautiful, am I then expected to be pleased above that which is expected of me in what is otherwise done strictly for politics?”