by Melanie Rawn
“Twenty years? Twenty-five?” Smiling oddly, Grijalva hitched a shoulder. “Eiha, what does it matter? Much may be done in so little time.”
“Begin now,” Alejandro commanded—it was effortless, now that he was certain of his course—and strode out of the room briskly.
The corridors, grazzo do’Matra, were empty of others. On a fine day such as this most went out into the city, or set up easels and sketchbooks in the colonnades surrounding the inner courtyard, or went into the gardens. Lessons were taken away from Palasso Grijalva entirely, so that estudos had the opportunity to take instruction at the specific sites the moualimos discussed. Raimon recalled such occasions in his own life, as estudo and moualimo both.
Deep inside the walls, light was not a given. In the outer corridors high arched windows permitted sunlight to illuminate the chambers, the cells, but in the heart of Palasso Grijalva, grown large despite the harrowing of their numbers, dimness and darkness pervaded, and shadow.
His soul was as dim, as dark, as shadowed. Bitterness was banished; rage dismissed. It was done. The words said.
He walked stiffly, as an old man. It was age, but escalated, the age of a man twice his years, were he anything but Grijalva. But more even than age, than the depredations of bone-fever.
Nommo Matra ei Filho. Nommo Chieva do’Orro.
Through the inner corridors, through dimness and darkness, and shadow, into the light of acceptance, of peace, of willingness. He was only helpless in so much as he permitted it, and he did not.
At the doorway he paused. He unlocked, then set his hand to latch, lifted, and went in.
Galerria Viehos Fratos. Where brothers and uncles and cousins, and all manner of ancestors, contemporaries, stared out of painted images as if they yet lived.
No sons. No fathers. That was denied such as he.
Peintraddo Chieva. Each one. Save one.
A copy. One of several. How clever. How sublimely prescient. And Raimon for the first time in his life truly envied Sario, for having the courage to know himself far more than any man alive, and to look beyond his immediate goal to the long-range repercussions.
Clever Sario. Gifted Sario.
Sario Grijalva, in whom burned a fire, a Luza do’Orro so bright, so incontestably brilliant as to blind a man. And to kill a man. As many, Raimon suspected, as he viewed necessary.
He went to his own face and gazed upon it. There was no doubting, even now, that it was his, did a man look from the painted face to the living. But younger, infinitely younger, less worn, less used, less shaped by the events of the latter years of his life; shaped of fifteen years only, not forty-one, full of hope and humor and certainty of purpose.
Certainty of purpose, that he among them all might become Lord Limner.
Nommo Matra ei Filho. Nommo Chieva do’Orro.
He had not become. He had made.
He sighed so deeply as to empty his lungs of air, his heart of apprehension. “Eiha,” he said, “what does it matter? They will do it themselves, as we did to Tomaz … as perhaps we should have done to Sario.”
Nommo Matra ei Filho. Nommo Chieva do’Orro.
He took down from the wall the Peintraddo Chieva, to touch again the image, the brushwork, the pigments and binders and resins and varnish, the recipe of the Folio that was in truth Kita’ab, that was he: Gifted, Limner, of the Viehos Fratos; that had been he before Sario.
Raimon Grijalva shut his hand around the Golden Key hanging from its chain. Then adjusted his grip and plunged the Chieva through the heart painted beneath the clothing.
Sario stood before the unfinished painting Alejandro had so admired. He was distantly pleased that the Duke had been so impressed, but that reaction also stirred in him a measure of condescension, condemnation: it was not his best. But Alejandro could not see it.
“No,” he said tightly, “I will not permit it to be so. No man may judge my work save me, because no man can know what of myself I put into it.”
Into this, little. It lacked the ingredients Alejandro himself had commanded: the eyes of love. No, he had painted it with the eyes of jealousy, of resentment, of impatience. And it showed. To him.
“Lord Limner?”
A small voice. A female voice. He turned and beckoned her in impatiently. Diega. A Grijalva, but little more; she was meant to bear children to unGifted males. In her hands was clasped a small clay pot, stoppered and sealed with wax.
“There.” He indicated the table. “Have you the other?”
She placed the pot on the table, then backed away. She shook her head.
He knew she was afraid of him. Eiha, he had required it; what he requested of her was to remain private. He had assured it by agreeing to paint a miniature of the man she professed to love to ensure he would love her, though he did not tell her how—bound with Tza’ab lingua oscurra so that the man would forever welcome her affections. He wondered if she thought of what she truly asked; if she grew weary of the man she would nonetheless have him until one of them died.
“No?” he asked sharply. “You clean her chambers, you wash her linens—can you not do so simple a thing?”
Diega shook her head again. “Lord Limner, her courses have ceased.”
“Ceased! But—” It robbed him of breath, the abrupt comprehension. For a moment he gaped like a fish gulping air instead of water; then Sario shut his mouth so tightly his teeth protested.
Alejandro’s child. Of course.
How could this not happen?
He had ignored it, because there was no child of their pairing— until now. He had ignored the images of bedsport utterly because the work had consumed him, and because he had been able to ignore it—until now. They were private people, Saavedra and Alejandro, and shared the fire of their passion with no one else.
Alejandro’s child. Growing beneath her heart even as Sario painted her. Even now.
He became aware then of Diega, waiting stiffly. With effort Sario forced a smile. “Eiha, then it cannot be helped. There is cause for joy, then, no? A bastard do’Verrada, son of the Duke himself?” He paused. “Or daughter. One must not forget that women have some uses. You do, no?” He favored her with a smile that drained the color from her face. “Eiha, you may go. And be certain that you shall have what you want of—Domingo?”
“Alonso.”
“Of course. Alonso. Forgive me.” He nodded. “Come to my rooms at Palasso Verrada in ten days, and I will have it ready for you.”
She wavered. “Ten days?”
“Can’t you wait until then?” She forbore to answer. He had frightened her very badly. “Five days,” he amended. “But no sooner than that, for I have other tasks.”
She bobbed her head, waited for dismissal; he gave it impatiently.
As she left, he realized he trembled. For only a moment he wondered why—had he not accepted the truth?—and then the pain of renewed acknowledgment stooped upon him and took him so deeply in his vitals that he fell awkwardly and unexpectedly to his knees, gripped doubled fists into his belly, bent and bent and bent until his head touched the floor.
He rocked there, like a child; wanted to spew food and wine and pain out onto the floor until he was free of it all, free of grief and futility and fear, free of tears, of the emptiness that wracked him, of the knowledge that she had accepted it before he, had seen it, acknowledged it, had embraced it, even as she embraced Alejandro do’Verrada.
There was no crueler pain he could imagine, than to know the only one who shared his Luza do’Orro, his Gift, could so thoroughly, definitely, reject it. And him.
Blessed Mother, but he had accepted she would never sleep with him. That was no longer of any moment; his art was all, and though he would occasionally take such release as perhaps he wished or needed, it was more vital that he not spend himself profligately, not waste the power.
Eiha, it was not that at all. It was that she left him alone so entirely, that she turned from him when he most needed her to find his way among the enemy; t
hat she spent herself in the arms of another man, and now carried his seed.
Fertile seed, that had taken root.
His own never would. Never could offer her what apparently she believed was worth the sacrifice of her Gift.
He, who had broken every oath, every vow made of such bindings as would result in the destruction of his Gift if he permitted them the opportunity, was left alone even by Saavedra, who had never once failed to support him, to guide him, to sacrifice herself in the name of his Gift.
She extinguished his light. Clouded his vision.
She might as well have burned his true Peintraddo Chieva, even as she had burned Tomaz’s so many years before.
Evisceration, unflagging and systematic. She took from him his pride in achieving the goal he most wanted by admitting it was her doing, not his, that gained him that goal. She took from him his knowledge of cleverness in avoiding the only power a man might hold over him, the potential destruction of his hands and eyes by the alteration of his Peintraddo, by accusing him of changing, of madness. She took from him her absolute and unadulterated support of him, of his talent, of his Gift. And she bore another man’s child, when he could sire none that might inherit his Gift, his Light.
It was not a thing of Grijalvas, inheritance; Giftedness was unstudied, unknown beyond that it existed, and infertility was welcomed for what it betokened. But in the world he now inhabited, the vast and boundless world of Dukes, of conselhos, of foreign courts and kings, he was no man in their eyes at all, merely a boy who painted. Whose loins were empty of fertile seed. And who could, by their lights, never prove his manhood.
It mattered to them. And thus it mattered to him, because it must.
Sario unbent and gazed blankly up at the unfinished portrait. With the eyes of love, Alejandro had commanded. Eiha. Therefore let it be so.
Nommo Matra ei Filho. Nommo Chieva do’Orro.
He rose, shook out the sleeves of his shirt, began to pack up his things. What he would do was best undertaken in his own atelierro, as it was equally undertaken in his own heart.
THIRTY
Saavedra came upon Ignaddio crouched in a corridor, bundled up as if he were forgotten laundry. Legs were crossed, doubled up, pulled tight against his chest; elbows hooked his knees, but forearms stretched vertically to grant his hands the freedom to clutch hair, to drive fingers into the tousled curls and snug tightly, tight enough to threaten his scalp. His spine brushed the wall only momentarily, and again, and again: he rocked, if slightly, if with quiet, unceasing economy, with utter, abject grief.
“’Naddi!” She swept down, skirts fanning across the broad flags of the corridor floor. “Blessed Mother, what is it?”
He stiffened beneath her hand, stilled, then turned to her, releasing his hair to grasp at skirts instead, to set his face into their folds and sob unremittingly.
Matra Dolcha—is it Confirmattio? Had he failed? She threaded fingers into hair, cupped the crown of his skull against her palm. “’Naddi … Ignaddio—you must tell me.”
He cried the harder, a harsh, racking sound that brought tears of empathy to her own eyes. One hand groped for her upthrust knee, capped it, clung. And when at last he raised his head and exposed his face, she saw grief coupled with horror.
She knelt fully now, cradling the back of his skull in both hands. “You must tell me, ‘Naddi!”
“The door,” he said. “—was open … I went in … I wanted to look at the Peintraddos—” He gulped a sob, worked hard to regain self-control. “It was open, ‘Vedra, I swear it wasn’t locked—and so I went in …”
Peintraddos. She knew how desperately he wanted to be Gifted. “The Galerria Viehos Fratos?”
He nodded jerkily. “It’s always been locked—this time it wasn’t. And I wanted to look … I wanted to imagine my own Peintraddo hanging up there one day—”
“As it may,” she said, then flinched inwardly. “Unless—”
“And he was dead.”
Breath gusted from her. “Dead? Who?”
He gulped another sob back. “Il Sanguo.”
“Raimon—”
“I found him—he lay there, ‘Vedra, all sprawled, all bloody—” His face convulsed briefly. “And his Chieva was bloody, too.”
“Matra ei Filho …” She felt cold. Ill. “Blood, ‘Naddi?”
“On his breast, on his Chieva, everywhere …” He clutched her skirts into white-knuckled, shaking fists. “’Vedra—his Peintraddo was pulled down, pulled down from the wall … and there was a hole torn through it!”
But nothing was ever permitted to happen to the Peintraddos. Sario had been most plain. Such paintings were put away, locked away, warded against any accident so no harm could come to the Limner. So much risk was involved that they took great care that nothing happened to the Peintraddos.
Saavedra fell back then, collapsed against the wall so firmly her shoulder struck it painfully. “Not Raimon … not Sanguo Raimon—eiha, Blessed Mother, Gracious Mother—not Raimon—”
“Why would he do it?” Ignaddio asked, fighting not to wail. “Why would he do it, ‘Vedra?”
Raimon. Not Ferico, who might die in a week or a year. Not Sario, who might be victim to Chieva do’Sangua if he did not alter his compordotta—
The flesh rose up on her bones. What she said she did not know, did not hear. But Ignaddio did, and it frightened him. “’Vedra— ‘Vedra, don’t … don’t say that!”
“But it is,” she said, so clear in mind, in certainty, that the world around her was distant. “It is his fault, ‘Naddi! It must be! For no other’s sake would Raimon do such a thing. For no other man would he be placed in such peril that he saw no other way.” She caught him to her, hugged hard. “Eiha, that he should do that—that you should see it …” She released him. “Regretto—that you should have seen such a travesty!”
Tears had stopped, but his face was still damp. “They sent me away.”
“Who did?”
“Davo. The others. They came when I shouted … they sent me away because I had gone in where I wasn’t supposed to, but also because I saw … him.”
She nodded. “And now I must do the same.” She shut her eyes, swallowed down the knot of pain from her throat, felt it lodge in her chest. “I must go. I must go to Sario. He should know … he should be made to know …” She scrubbed impatiently at her own share of tears. “They sent you away only so they could tend him properly, not because you didn’t count. En verro. And now I must go, too—but I promise to come back later; I’ll come to you, and we can go together to the shrine and pray for his soul before the icon.”
He nodded, blinking rapidly.
“Sweet ‘Naddi …” She doubted in this moment he would take offense at her words. “I am so sorry it was you who found him.” Saavedra disengaged, rose from the floor. “I am so sorry for all of it.”
And she left him there, wan of face, forlorn in posture, and felt the first knot of something in her belly that was neither child, nor sorrow, nor pain, but a cold and abiding anger.
Providential, Sario decided—or perhaps appropriate!—that he should only two weeks before prepare an oak panel for such an undertaking as this. The boiled linseed oil, carefully and repeatedly applied, had penetrated completely, so that no excess remained, and it had taken the thin layer of lean oil paint perfectly. The surface was ready for him.
The panel was large, begging a landscape, or a life-sized portrait. No easel would hold it; he had ordered it set against the wall, where it dominated the chamber, the atelierro of the Lord Limner. But he turned from the panel. Later. For now there were other concerns, other requirements of the task.
Ingredients he pieced into a large copper bowl: bluebell, for Constancy; white chrysanthemum for Truth; cress, for Stability and Power; fennel to lend Strength, to Purify, to defeat Fire; fern, for Fascination; fir, for Time.
Sario nodded. Thank the Mother—or Acuyib—that the old man had taught him the language, the lingua oscurra, so that
he had learned the Tza’ab magic. Now, coupled with the Grijalva Gift— eiha, he was unlike any other Limner in the world! And always would be.
More yet: honeysuckle, for Devoted Affection; lemon blossoms, for Fidelity; lime, for Conjugal Love—he would not deny her that after all; white rose, for Worthiness; rosemary, for Remembrance; thyme, for Courage, a walnut leaf, for Intellect. And hawthorn, for Fertility.
All of these things: Saavedra. He would dilute nothing, for to do so would be a falsehood, and in this he desired only Truth.
Urine he had, from Diega. The other ingredients he would procure himself: blood, sweat, saliva, hair. He would recognize the moment, seize it, take what was required. But he could begin already. She was as he was: different. A woman was made of parts and pieces even as a male. Perhaps in Saavedra the tempering of Tza’ab blood with that of Tira Virte, with the changes wrought by the Nerro Lingua, coupled with her gender made her a female version of himself. She had her own Gift, her own Light. He had seen it.
And he would use it.
Sario set out also a clean marble slab, the muller on which he would temper ground pigments into paints; a paletto knife, jars and stoppered pots of pigments, of wine, milk of figs and oil of cloves, of poppy, linseed, saffron; a clutch of glass vials, brushes, a pot of wax, the charcoal he would use to sketch in the lines that would create from the inner vision the outer, the reality of Luza do’Orro.
Already he envisioned the border.
He stopped, counting out his needs. And glanced up in surprise as the door latch was lifted, the door was thrown open, as Saavedra herself came into his atelierro.
At first she could say nothing. And then she said everything and all at once, so that she could not tell if any of the words fit together into a whole, into something that made sense. She thought they must, somehow they must, because he was stirred out of an odd immobility and inner detached awareness into comprehension.