The Golden Key

by Melanie Rawn

  “The future,” his companion said at last, “should be fascinating. But for now, my Lord Limner, if it’s all the same to you, I’d like to get some sleep.”

  “’Cordo.” He hid relief, not wanting to hurt her feelings. If she’d met Grand Duchess Gizella, she could have Court connections that might be useful one day. Besides, she was the very first person to call him “Lord Limner.” He’d remember that—maybe paint it one day as a personal memento for her. The thought made him grin to himself.

  “Sleep is just what I need,” she was saying. “I was up late last night studying, and—” She broke off as another series of grunts, moans, and cries signaled duty done down the hall. “—and I doubt tonight will be very restful! Why must some people announce it so loudly?”

  “Trumpeting like a Grand Ducal Herald,” he agreed, and together they laughed, humor restored.

  She lay beside him, not touching him. The breeze had died down and it was too warm to sleep skin-to-skin, especially with someone who’d been a stranger three hours ago.

  “What do you study?” he asked all at once, wondering if she was one of those Grijalva girls who fancied themselves artistically gifted.

  “Hmm? Oh—plants.”

  “For medicines?”

  “Perfumes.”

  “En verro?” He decided to make much of her boring little hobby. She might be useful, she’d been fun in bed, and he liked her. And there was the brother, Cabral. One could never have too many Grijalva allies, even unGifted ones, if one desired to become Lord Limner. “It sounds difficult and complicated.”

  “I mix scents the way you mix colors. It’s how I met the Grand Duchess. I created a special fragrance just for her.”

  “From roses, I’ll wager. It’s said she loves them.”

  “I used a base of rose, yes. Always white, she won’t have any other. Then some grasses, valerian, a few other things.”

  His painter’s mind instantly translated the items into their symbology: I Am Worthy of You, Submissiveness, Accommodating Disposition. From all he’d ever heard, that was Gizella to the life.

  “You ought to make a perfume for the Princess,” he said suddenly.

  “As a wedding present? That’s a wonderful idea! Perhaps one day your mother will want something special, too.”

  He ignored the hint, merely saying, “Mmm, she might enjoy that,” thinking that Tazia would not be Tazia if she did not smell of the Elegance of yellow jasmine mixed with the Gladness of myrrh and the Sweet Temptation of apples. Turning onto his other side, he pretended to fall asleep. But it occurred to him, and he smiled to consider it, that the Princess’s perfume ought to be blended mainly from almond oil, for her Stupidity in marrying a man who belonged to Tazia Grijalva: Nazha Coronna, mother of the next Lord Limner.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  To Dioniso’s everlasting astonishment, Princess Mechella ordered him to paint her in her wedding gown—leaving space enough beside her for Arrigo.

  “You’ll have to paint this picture anyway,” she said, “and the sooner it’s finished, the sooner we can all go home to Meya Suerta.”

  Amazing enough to be summarily commanded (he, a Grijalva Limner—one might even say the Grijalva Limner); but she had all the precise details in mind, too. She knew every symbolic flower she wished included, how she wanted to stand and hold her head and hands, the background, even the time of day. Obviously, she’d been planning this for years. Thus once more the girl showed steel beneath the roses-and-sunshine sweetness. Dioniso bowed graceful homage to it, hiding a grin for the shock awaiting Arrigo, and told himself that as Lord Limner in his next life he’d have a merry time of it with Mechella as Grand Duchess.

  In her snowy bridal finery she was sheer splendor from diamond tiara to pearl-encrusted slippers. Miles of thin, airy white silk fell from her tiny waist like the petals of a rose, each edged in cobwebby lace. A starched underskirt supported the delicate material. The bodice mimicked a rosebud, tightly furled layers at the waist rising to cup surprisingly voluptuous breasts before lapping onto her shoulders in little sleeves sewn with pendant teardrop pearls. Just where the petals parted at her breastbone the initials A and M intertwined were embroidered in gold.

  She’d planned the dress for years, too.

  Accustomed to luxury, witness to three centuries of aristocratic display in six different countries, still he was stunned by this tall, golden-haired Princess in her wedding gown. When he bowed to her, it was with the genuine humility an artist must feel in the presence of beauty he is lucky enough to commit to canvas.

  The long hours he spent sketching and then detailing her were infinitely preferable to the interminable days he spent with Princess Permilla.

  She proved flighty over the posing of her person. Each of her suggestions was a disaster. In the robes of the Order of Ghillas, at an open window with gardens spreading to the horizon, she looked like a tour guide. In the robes of a Patron of the University, reclining in her salon surrounded by devotional books, sacred icons, and three hideous little yapping dogs, she looked equal parts scholarly sancta and kennel keeper. In her own interpretation of the colorful Ghillasian national costume (silk and satin substituting for linen and wool), seated by an ornate fountain, she looked like a parched plant in a painted pot set out by a worried gardener for watering.

  At long last he called on every scrap and shred of diplomacy he possessed to persuade her that no background could do justice to her innate presence, no pose could convey her instinctive grace, no symbolic costume could encompass her wide-ranging intellect. He asked her to wear a plain white gown, stood her in front of a plain white plaster wall, and presented her with a small but respectable fortune in very old, very rare blue Tza’ab glass beads. Earrings, necklace, hairpins, and bracelets had been meant for Mechella; he told the old prune this quite bluntly, adding that no matter how much trouble he brought on himself, as an artist he could not bear to see the azure mystery of these small crystalline miracles worn by any woman lacking the rich depths of character he perceived in Permilla’s eyes.

  “The jewelry and the Princess mutually enhance each other,” he concluded. “Nothing else can deserve to be in this painting.”

  She not only bit, she swallowed whole. The sketch took him half an hour. Permilla retired to her chambers positively stuffed with smugness.

  Then it was time for the Crown Prince.

  He had two choices: Crown Prince, with Horse or Horse, with Crown Prince. When young Enrei arrived in the stableyard with the biggest stallion Dioniso had ever seen, he knew which it must be. The youth was thrilled with the preliminary drawing, and even more impressed when Dioniso released him from his posing after only fifteen minutes so that he was free to take the monstrous horse for a gallop. Watching him ride off, Dioniso considered it not a matter of if he would break his royal neck, but when.

  This left only the King himself, and because there was as yet no formal portrait of Enrei II in all his regalia—there having been no limner at Aute-Ghillas in the year of his coronation—this picture proved easiest of all. King, Throne, Robes, Crown, Orb, Scepter: he’d done a score of them and could have mixed the cobalts and madders in his sleep. He was signing Dioniso Grijalva at the bottom by the end of the afternoon.

  Wonder of wonders, Arrigo arrived the next day—only fifteen days late, and just in time to reap the warm and welcoming benefits of Dioniso’s work. Mechella was, of course, not allowed to greet him with the rest of the family. Their first official meeting as betrothed husband and wife would take place in full view of the Court the next morning. But as Dioniso took a late-night stroll to clear the final brushstrokes of Princess Prune from his head, he witnessed an affecting moonlit scene in the private royal garden.

  Mechella’s shining head was unmistakable. So was the glitter of gold braid on Arrigo’s Shagarra uniform. Running toward him, she stopped just short of flinging herself into his arms. He stood his ground and bowed. They exchanged a few awkward phrases Dioniso could not hear. The
re was a brief, nervous pause—and then Arrigo offered her his hand. They walked like shy young lovers to the seclusion of a hedged retreat, and were lost to his view.

  So much for Tazia?

  “Limner,” came a trembling voice behind him, and he spun around. An elderly servant stood there, twisting work-roughened hands by the silver light of the waning moon. In common accents, and slowly—as if she didn’t believe a Tira Virteian would understand the King’s Ghillasian—she said, “Limner, I beg you—tell me he will be good to her!”

  “Of course he will,” he began.

  She shook her head vigorously. “No! Speak to me not as a man who serves a prince, but as a man who knows another man—and a man who knows his own kinswoman. Will the Grijalva loosen her hold? Will my precious girl have a chance to make him love her?”

  Dioniso was moved by the woman’s devotion. “I think she will,” he replied, honestly as far as he knew. “Don Arrigo is ready to marry and have sons. He knows his duty, and she is its delightful embodiment.” With a smile for the old woman, he finished, “Only look at your Princess. She’s a rare beauty, charming, young, a delight en tudo paletto—and the Grijalva is nearing forty, old enough to be Her Highness’ mother!”

  This did not seem to bring much comfort. “Look after her,” she urged. “You have painted her with rare understanding, you must have seen into her soul and been moved. Advise her, caution her. She is young in the ways of women like the Grijalva.”

  “Surely you’ll be there to do all that.”

  “No.” Tears ran down her wrinkles like spring snowmelt through streambeds. “I have been forbidden.”

  “By Princess Pru—Permilla,” he corrected himself, and when she nodded confirmation of his guess he went on, truly shocked, “Is the poor girl to take none of her own people with her?”

  By long tradition, brides were wed in their own countries and escorted to the border by a regiment or so of their own military. At that point the new husband’s officers and men took over guardianship. But the girl always was attended into her new country and home by her own maids, menservants, and the like.

  “I haven’t had the heart to tell her yet. It is declared that the instant she marries him, she is Tira Virteian and must surround herself with—with strangers who don’t know her or love her, courtiers interested only in advancing themselves, barbarians—”

  “We are at least marginally civilized in my country,” he observed dryly. “Be easy in your mind, carridia matreia. If she is alone, Don Arrigo will be even more tenderly disposed to protecting her. There’s nothing like a beautiful girl who is also vulnerable to make a man feel strong and powerful. And soon enough she will have true friends, you may count on it. No one could resist her charm and innocence for very long.”

  She wrung her hands again. “That’s true, that’s true,” she fretted. “But promise you’ll look out for her. Please, Limner, I beg you in the name of your own dear mother who loved you as I love my darling ‘Chella!”

  He filed the diminutive away for Arrigo’s use while trying to recall his mother’s face. Impossible; and, after more than three hundred years, not surprising. He remembered her name—Felippia, and a vague scent of citrus tea. That was all.

  “Be easy,” he repeated. “Princess Mechella is everything Don Arrigo could wish for. He is no fool, to scorn perfection when all that most noble husbands can hope for is as short as possible a list of imperfections.”

  “Promise me!” the servant insisted.

  He saw no harm in avowing that he would indeed keep watch over Mechella. It was only prudent for one in his current position to do so, and as for his future position as Lord Limner … He sent the old woman back indoors, and if she was not entirely happy, at least she no longer wept. But her distress made him curious enough to wander the gardens for an hour or so. At length he was rewarded with the sight of Arrigo with his arms about Mechella, her face turned ecstatically up to receive his kiss.

  Do they miss me? Wonder where I have gone? My friends, my family, the moualimos—Alejandro? What does he think? That I have run away, deserted him, betrayed him—no, he would never believe—but Sario could make him believe—Matra ei Filho, I could not bear it if Alejandro thinks me false!

  When I am freed, I will go to him, tell him—but not until I have dealt with Sario, who claims to love me and yet has done this horrible thing to me—to my child—eiha, poor mennino, poor little one inside me—

  Your papa waits for us, corasson meyo, carrido meyo, he waits for us out in the world—

  And so does Sario. So does Sario. …

  “And so you are Confirmattio! I’m so proud of you, Rafeyo!”

  Tazia did not embrace her son; she couldn’t recall ever having done so, and to do so now probably would have shocked him stuporous. But she gave him her laughter and her applause, and he basked, blushing, in the praise.

  “You will learn Grijalva magic—and the rest will become fathers,” she went on, pouring the wine Arrigo had sent her from Ghillas. Handing a glass to Rafeyo, she said, “You may find this a little dry, but it’s time you educated your other palate, too!”

  He grinned at the pun and ran a finger down the crystal flute to test the temperature. “Is it cold enough yet? I only just arrived.”

  “Carrido, do you think I haven’t counted the days until your last girl would resume her bleeding? This has been on ice since last night!”

  “You, at least, never doubted me!”

  “And now no one else will either.” She toasted him. “Saluto ei Suerta!”

  “Sihirro ei Sanguo,” he replied, and they drank.

  “‘Magic and blood’ ?” she asked, arching a brow.

  “It’s how Limners toast each other. I heard it for the first time last night.” He rubbed the back of his neck ruefully. “I heard it a lot last night, in fact. All the Limners in residence gathered to welcome me, and each toasted me in order of rank, so …”

  “You must’ve drunk barrels! I’m surprised you can even walk this morning. Eiha, the recuperative powers of youth. Now, tell me, Rafeyo,” she said, leaning forward, “when does it begin? When will it finish?”

  “I’ll study with—” He paused. “Tazia, forgive me, but is it really safe to talk here?”

  She gestured around the small, windowless room. “Months ago I had this chamber redone floor to ceiling so you and I could have a safe place to talk. I’ve had complete faith in you for much longer than it took to chill the wine.”

  His dark eyes widened—his father’s eyes, long-lidded and thick-lashed; odd how as he grew older she saw less of herself and more of Renallo in their son, but he was growing to manhood and perhaps it was to be expected. Whatever his physical resemblance to his father, Tazia knew the boy’s heart was hers. He proved it by giving her a dazzling smile. Her smile, she told herself proudly, her gift of the Gift that had made him a Limner.

  “You did all this for me? For us? Grazzo millio, Mama!”

  She could have counted on her fingers the times he’d called her that. And suddenly she knew it was a word she must encourage. The holy bond between Mother and Son, the most sacred in the Faith, sweetly repeated in herself and Rafeyo. She gave him her warmest smile, the one she’d practiced again and again in a mirror in the weeks before her first meeting with Arrigo, and Rafeyo returned it delightedly. A fourteen-year-old was no more proof against it than an eighteen-year-old had been.

  “Only you could have thought of such a thing,” the boy said, his gaze roaming once more about the room. It was one of those cramped, inconvenient spaces common in Meya Suerta’s older houses, used for storage or pantry for wine served to afternoon guests. The room had been gutted of shelves and cupboards, nearly doubling its size. Vents had been cut into the ceiling, their outlets on the other side of the house to prevent use by eavesdroppers. Heavy brocade hangings and a thick rug soundproofed the chamber. The furniture was sparse but fine: sofa and chair upholstered in sapphire silk, carved wooden table topped in green marbl
e, and a tall silver candlebranch in a corner. The door had a double lock.

  Reassured of privacy, Rafeyo detailed the next few years of his life. He would spend many months with the masters of watercolor, ink, pencil, chalk, charcoal. At the same time he would learn from other masters methods of preparing and using paper, parchment, silk, linen, plaster, wood. Only then would he be taught oil on canvas, and with these lessons would come tutorials from each of the three great masters.

  “Do you know what they’re called?” he asked, practically bounding in his chair with excitement. “Il Aguo, Il Seminno, and Il Sanguo!”

  “Everyone’s heard the terms,” she reminded him. “I must say they always struck me as rather bizarre.”

  “You don’t understand! Aguo is tears, saliva, and sweat. Seminno is—”

  “—semen,” she interrupted. “So?”

  “That’s where the magic is, Tazia! They mix the paints with all those, and with blood, and because all of them are part of a Limner’s body, and Limners have the Gift, and know all the words and phrases and the special mental disciplines—” He paused for breath. “—the magic goes into the paintings!”

  She sat back on the sofa, stunned. There were rumors, of course; mutterings around the Palasso, mostly, because everyone feared Grijalva power too much to speak in the open of magic. Even the Ecclesials kept their mouths shut, though their eyes flung daggers. But Tazia, ambitious in the only way open to a female Grijalva, had ignored anything to do with painting.

  Until now, when her Limner son explained it to her.

  “Oil must be the most powerful, because they teach it last. Think of it—paints mixed with a Limner’s blood, on a canvas prepared with his sweat and tears and the words of power—”