The Golden Key

by Melanie Rawn

  From dawn until noon on Dia Fuega, adults came to pin bits of paper to the effigies. Sketched on these were the last year’s troubles—anything from a major illness or bad luck in business to an unhappy love affair or the theft of a cow. In the afternoon children wearing charms their mothers had woven pelted the effigies with stones and offal.

  Then, with the twilight rising of the first fragment of the moon, the Premia Sancta and Premio Sancto stood with the Grand Duke on the steps of the Cathedral to declare the old year finished. The images were set alight. In the graveyards, all the little pieces of paper were ignited and the pebbles retrieved for fortune telling while the blazing effigies burned away the old year and cleansed the world for the new. Back in their homes, families exchanged gifts and a feast was laid out. And if celebrations spilled into the streets and lasted until dawn, it was only natural after solitude and contemplation of sins and the fright of those stark glowing skeletons.

  That night, too, all the guilds gathered in their halls to hear who had won the prize for the finest work of the year. Woodcarvers and carpenters, potters, glaziers, tanners and cobblers and saddlemakers, goldsmiths and stonemasons, coopers, wainwrights, and especially Grijalva Limners—masters of every craft waited nervously for the outcome of fierce competition. After the victors were announced, the names were read of apprentices who had earned the rank of master. The very best had the honor of accompanying the guildmaster and the winner of the competition to the offering of masterpieces at Palasso Verrada.

  Penitenssia was Cossimio’s favorite holiday. Not only did Gizella throw a terrific party on Dia Fuega, but he received the most splendid gifts imaginable. He reveled in evidence of Tira Virte’s superiority in all crafts. But that night Cossimio did something completely unexpected, extremely cunning, and wildly popular. He announced that this year the finest work of every master in Meya Suerta, which would have gone to him, would be presented instead to their beloved Dona Mechella in gratitude for her selfless service to Tira Virte.

  Dona Mechella’s blushes lasted all during the formal gifting. Don Arrigo, standing at her elbow, smiled and smiled. If that smile wavered occasionally … eiha, he was worried that she would tire herself by staying up so late. Before Casteya her condition had not been noticeable, but now she was very pregnant—and glowed so with it that rumors of illness were scornfully dismissed. Surely it was nothing more than demonstration of husbandly devotion that made Don Arrigo take the first opportunity to urge her upstairs to rest.

  There was nothing wrong with Mechella’s health. In retrospect, she was ashamed of herself for ever having felt ill. Mequel was right: one simply decided that one had too much to do, and in the doing forgot to be sick. And she had learned that she could do much more for her country than simply bear its next Heir. In fact, life would be just about perfect if only Arrigo didn’t wear such a grim face when they were alone.

  The morning after Dia Fuega, while she sat in bed admiring all the lovely things spread all over her room, Arrigo entered to inform her that he would be celebrating his birthday elsewhere than at the Palasso.

  She regarded him in dismay. “But—I thought we’d spend the day together, you and Teressa and I—”

  “Plans were made while you were gone,” he said, picking up a gorgeous lace shawl. “I had no idea when you’d return. It would be unforgivably rude to cancel. This is very fine, isn’t it? Each sunburst picked out by one gold thread—subtle, yet richly done. Much better than that gaudy stuff they make in Niapali.” Running the shawl through his fingers, he went on, “What will you do with all this?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “We have plenty of tapestries and vases—what’s this thing, a salt cellar?—and Matra knows you have more than enough jewels.” He nodded at a box open to reveal gold earrings shaped like tiny irises, a diamond dewdrop on each. “Father spends days deciding which pieces he can bear to part with for the usual charity auction.”

  “I know,” she said quietly. “I remember from last year. Not to criticize your father, but I think the crafters expect us to keep their gifts and use them.”

  “You intend to keep all of it?” He used a corner of the shawl to polish a button on his Shagarra uniform; he was on his way to a review in honor of his birthday. “That’s hardly of a piece with your new reputation for good works.”

  After a moment of mindless hurt, Mechella decided she hadn’t really heard him say so cruel a thing. “I plan to ask your father what the usual proceeds are from the auction, and give the same amount to the Ecclesia schools.”

  His brows arched. “So much for your privy purse! With the Casteyan expenses added to what you spend on clothes, you’ll be out of money within the month.”

  More sharply than she intended, she replied, “You forget that the balance of my dowry will come when I bear a son for Tira Virte.”

  “But your dowry goes into the do’Verrada coffers, not your own,” he countered.

  “My father will be generous to me as well when I give him a grandson.”

  “I’ll have to tell that to my father so he can stop worrying about the cost of rebuilding those wretched villages.”

  “There’ll be enough,” she retorted. “Don’t worry. And plenty left for something else I had in mind—” She hadn’t meant to tell him this way, but it all came tumbling out. She waved one hand to encompass all the marvels: stained-glass lampshades, carved rocking chair, tapestry, brass lustrosso, rosewood clock, a dozen more gifts. “All this will go to Corasson.”

  “Corasson?”

  “I’m going to buy it, Arrigo.”

  “Matra Dolcha! Wherever did you get such a ridiculous idea?”

  “We stopped there on the way home and—I want it, Arrigo. I want to live there—when we’re not here at the Palasso, I mean.” Although just why she had wanted this so much, she couldn’t quite recall just now—not with Arrigo staring in frank astonishment.

  “The Grijalvas will never sell it.”

  “They’ve been trying to get rid of it for fifty years. When my son is born, my father will—”

  “Your son? Didn’t I have anything to do with it? And what if this one’s another girl?”

  “This baby is a boy.”

  “That’s what you said last time.” The gold-shot lace snagged on his signet ring; untangling it, he went on, “Do you know Corasson’s history? It was built by the Serranos before their ruin at the hands of the redoubtable Lord Limner Sario. Every Serrano who ever lived there died an unnatural death on the way to it or from it—a fall from a horse, an overturned carriage, murdered by bandits, heart seizure, all manner of sudden tragedies. And you want to live in that horror of a place?”

  “They didn’t die at Corasson. It’s not the house’s fault.” She leaned toward him, hands clasped on drawn-up knees. “And perhaps we’re just what’s needed to turn Corasson’s luck. I want us to have a home of our very own—”

  “We would, if you didn’t hate Chasseriallo so much.”

  “I don’t hate it, I just—oh, Arrigo, Corasson is such a beautiful house—”

  “I’ve never seen it,” he said with a shrug, and she felt a surge of joy: Leilias had told her true, the Grijalva woman had never taken him there. Corasson would be theirs, hers and his. But her happiness died as he finished, “Eiha, if it amuses you to scheme about buying it, do so. But I tell you the Grijalvas will never sell.”

  “You don’t want me to have it!” she blurted. “You don’t want us to live there! You want me to stay in the Palasso!”

  He looked even more surprised, as much by her tone as her words. “I thought that would be obvious. You’re my wife, mother of my children. You belong at my side, not at some remote, ramshackle—” Suddenly he let out a sharp laugh. “Of course, that’s it. Lizia infected you with the fever that made her rebuild Castello Casteya from the ground up. This is her doing.”

  “Only in that she suggested we visit Corasson on the way home! It’s not ramshackle, it’s wonderful, and I’m
going to buy it, and there’s nothing you can do about it!”

  “Isn’t there?” He took exactly one step toward the bed, fist clenched in fragile lace. Then he checked his temper with visible effort and gave another careless shrug. “We’ll discuss it another time. I’m late. Kiss Teressa for me.”

  The door slammed behind him.

  Beside her was a little rosewood clock, a lovely thing of richly carved wood surmounted by an enameled copper rooster that flapped its wings and chirped each hour. Her fingers closed around it and she very nearly flung it at the closed door just to hear the crash. But she couldn’t destroy a master crafter’s work—and it would look so beautiful on display at Corasson.

  She threw a pillow instead.

  An instant later Otonna entered from the dressing room. She snatched up the pillow and plumped it with casual efficiency. “So there’ll be no day with the family, Your Grace?”

  “Stop listening at keyholes, Otonna. It’s impertinent.”

  “I’m afraid I’m to blame,” said another voice, and Mechella turned to see Leilias Grijalva appear from the dressing room. “I came by to return the things you lent me on the journey, Your Grace—we didn’t mean to listen, en verro—”

  Mechella felt the annoyance drain out of her. Fingering the little rooster’s rainbow wings, she said listlessly, “It doesn’t matter. The whole of Meya Suerta will know by tonight that he isn’t spending his birthday with me.”

  “Your Grace.” Leilias approached with soft footsteps. “Had you thought—forgive me, but—surely you know whom he will spend it with.”

  Shocked, she stared at the two women. In both faces was heartfelt sympathy; not pity for her stupidity—though she knew she should have realized at once where Arrigo would be—but genuine compassion for her and real anger for Arrigo.

  “Where?” she demanded. “Tell me where they’ll be!”

  FORTY-SIX

  “Insult me, will he?” Mechella fumed in the darkness of her carriage—hers, not Arrigo’s, a gift from Cossimio that combined the efforts of the best saddlers and wainwrights and blacksmiths in all Tira Virte, with the paint still drying on the Grand Ducal seal stenciled onto its door just yesterday. “Patronize me, treat me like a child—he wants me here in Meya Suerta, of a certainty he does—to stifle gossip! As if I countenance this relationship and signal it by staying in the same city with that woman!”

  Leilias heard this with shock, dismay—and a sneaking little thrill of enjoyment. “It’s not Don Arrigo to blame here, Your Grace, not entirely,” she amended. “You must realize what a clever woman she is. And how ambitious for herself and her son.”

  “He’s as bad as his mother!” Mechella spat. “Both of them nasty, stinking little merdittos!”

  Leilias blinked; she hadn’t thought Mechella knew that word. But she put aside startlement and set herself to turning Mechella’s anger from Arrigo—with whom she might still make a successful marriage—to Tazia.

  “The great good you did in Casteya, that’s what she played on. It was you doing it, you see, not him. She made it seem to him as if this was your fault, that you’d done it deliberately to make him look the fool.”

  “He could have come with me! He could have defied his father!” Suddenly she sank wearily into dark blue cushions. “No, of course he couldn’t. He had more important duties, he’s the Heir. It’s one thing for me to do it—I’m the foreigner, they’ve all commented on my odd ways, I know they have—”

  “No one has ever done so, Your Grace. And you’re no longer estranjiera in Tira Virte. The people love you.”

  “Do they?”

  “You know they do! Eiha, you have only to listen to them cheer your name—”

  “She probably used that against me, too.”

  “As I say, she’s very clever.” Bracing herself against a jounce of carriage springs, Leilias wished for some light so she could see Mechella’s expression and choose her words accordingly. “Her cunning is something you must be ready for. I might be able to help if I knew what you plan.”

  “It’s enough that you came with me tonight, Leilias. I’m very grateful.”

  “I still wish you’d tell me what you intend.”

  With a kind of fatalistic grimness, Mechella replied, “I intend to help my husband celebrate his birthday, of course. Why do you think Otonna spent all day letting out the seams of my best gown?”

  Tazia’s tenure as Mistress had yielded not only the caza in town but a small manor house built especially for her. Caza Reccolto was aptly named, for it was the final harvest of her twelve years with Arrigo. She was the official owner, but on her death it would revert—like Corasson and all the other properties given to Grijalva Mistresses through the centuries—to the family. Caza Reccolto was about a hundred years old, a half-timbered building in the shape of a T for Tazia; Arrigo’s idea of a tribute, Leilias supposed. The crossbar was the front of the house, fully three hundred feet from one side to the other; the rest of the letter was invisible to the rear. As Mechella’s carriage turned into the drive, Leilias saw that the place was ablaze with lamplight at every window like a Sanctia greeting the Birth of the Son on Nov’viva. The music of gambas and gitterns and flutes could hardly be heard for the laughter echoing out the front door—open, even though it was winter, to let in enough cold air to offset the heat of all those lamps and all those dancing, drinking, laughing guests. As Mechella and Leilias descended from the carriage—to the slack-jawed befuddlement of the footmen—Mechella nodded regally to the youth who leaped forward to assist her up the steps. Leilias gulped down a lump of apprehension and followed.

  Once inside, any other woman would have been compelled to spend at least ten minutes repairing the damage of an hour’s drive to her hair, clothes, and makeup. Mechella, golden and glowingly beautiful, merely paused in the hall to glance in a mirror and tweak a curl back into place. She wore a gown of raw silk, woven gold in one direction and silver in the other. The point of the low-cut bodice was decorated with a fabulous Tza’ab pearl brooch, drawing the eye to perfect shoulders and full breasts. Tiny pleats provided the necessary fullness at the raised waistline. Soft curls cascaded down her neck, held up by the dainty tiara of pearls that had been her father’s wedding gift. The gown shone like one of those antiquated suits of armor on display at Shagarra Barracks; Mechella was well-girded for war.

  Leilias watched her walk calmly toward the source of the loudest music and laughter. The rustle of silk skirts sounded like the warning of distant thunder; the subtle glitter of the material was like flashing gold-and-silver lightning. War, storms—Leilias shook her head, her anxiety redoubled with the images scattering through her mind. She crept forward, telling herself it was her duty to listen. Although it was a very good thing that Mechella was acting instead of reacting, Leilias wasn’t sure she was wise enough yet to make her actions the right ones. By the abrupt hush and the stutter-scrape of gamba bows, she knew Mechella had been noticed. Gliding closer to the ballroom door, she heard Tazia’s bright call.

  “Your Grace! How marvelous!”

  “I hope I haven’t come too late and ruined the surprise,” Mechella replied, with such cool aplomb that Leilias joined the footmen in an imitation of an astonished goldfish.

  Even more bizarre, Tazia fell in with it. “You’re exactly on time—and by the look on his face, we’ve well and truly surprised Don Arrigo!” Leilias wished mightily that she could catch a glimpse of the man’s face as Tazia went on, “Forgive me for stealing Her Grace away for a few moments. She really must have something hot to drink, it’s shockingly cold outside tonight.”

  “I’m quite comfortable, I assure you.”

  “I insist. Back to the music! And if anyone says anything really interesting while we’re gone, I’ll be furious!”

  The two women came across the ballroom threshold and onto the chessboard-tiled floor smiling. The smiles stayed intact even when Tazia took hold of Mechella’s elbow. Then Mechella yanked her arm from the grip and
commanded icily, “I require privacy.”

  “What I have to say to you isn’t for the gossips, don’t worry,” Tazia snapped. “This way, down the hall.”

  Leilias followed, silent as a ghost, past other guest-filled rooms where gilt lustrossos blazed above eye-popping silence. The long hall was a galerria unto itself, every available wall surface occupied with a painting—landscapes, still-lifes, nature studies, even a few maps, but only one portrait. Tazia herself, of course, recently done and done twice life-size by her son Rafeyo, whose signature was in the bottom corner. Leilias paused to curl her lip at the huge image of Mechella’s rival, then hurried down the hall.

  She held back at the kitchen door, flattening to the plaster wall as cooks and kitchen maids prudently fled. Then she inched closer and craned her neck for a full view of the battle.

  If Mechella was dressed for it, so was Tazia. Overdressed, Leilias thought acidly. The brocade gown was too busy: huge blue flowers, writhing green vines, no two blossoms or leaves alike, as if an untalented Grijalva had gotten drunk before slopping paint all over a canvas. But Leilias had to admit that the lace shawl was a marvel, sunbursts delicately outlined in gold thread. Tazia’s tiny, tightly sashed waist made Mechella look enormous, but she couldn’t compete in regal bearing. In height either—though heeled slippers and upswept black hair brought her within a few inches. Leilias wondered if short women really thought such things fooled people into thinking they were tall.