by Melanie Rawn
To grow old … to feel pain in every limb … to watch his hands twist and gnarl like tormented tree roots … to know his senses were losing their sharpness and his mind its quickness and his body its health and strength. …
No. Not this time. Dioniso came of good stock. Healthy. Long-lived—for Limners.
And there was Rafeyo. He was here, available, within easy reach of hands and magic and paintbrush. There would be none of the horror of being Matteyo or Domaos, exiled far from Tira Virte, without hope of a strong young Grijalva for refuge.
But he remembered. Chieva do’Orro, the pain, the terror, the solitude, the dread—! He remembered all those things with a physical anguish, as if every painting he had ever Blooded in more than three hundred years was being simultaneously pricked with needles and seared with candleflames.
Eiha, ridiculous! He roused himself with the reminder that only those few paintings Blooded as Dioniso could harm him. The others were dead paint on dead canvas, painted by dead men. Only this body, this blood, had power over him.
And this reminded him of something else he must attend to very soon: the cataloging of every magical painting Rafeyo had done or would do until the day came. No stray pieces of Rafeyo’s substance, on paper or canvas or frescoed wall or even so much as a scribbling in his sketchpad, to provide a painful future surprise.
Chieva, it was so complicated, this business of living forever.
Cabral stood back from his easel, scowling. Mechella, singing softly to Alessio to keep him from fussing, glanced up. Seeing the limner’s expression, she made a comical grimace to imitate it and began to laugh.
“What a dreadful face! Smile at once, you’ll scare the baby!”
“I’m not good enough,” he muttered. “I shouldn’t be painting this, I haven’t the skill. You should’ve asked Dioniso or Zevierin, a real Limner—”
“I don’t want Dioniso or Zevierin to paint this portrait, I want you.” A breath of a breeze quivered the trellised roses above her head, scattering a few more petals onto her thin lacy gown. “Now, stop being so silly and paint!”
“I tell you I’m not good enough!”
“Nonsense. Mequel did the official version. I want one for myself, and you painted my copy of Teressa’s Birth, so it’s only logical that you should paint Alessio, too.”
“But this isn’t a copy!” he exclaimed, flinging his brush onto the grass. “If you’d only let me work from Mequel’s portrait—”
“If I did, the picture wouldn’t be yours, the way you see my son. Cabral, pick up that brush and paint!”
“Best obey her command, Cabral,” said the last voice Mechella had expected to hear at Corasson. She turned to see Arrigo strolling toward her with a smile on his face and a huge bouquet of wild-flowers in his arms. “As I’ve learned to,” he added, bowing playfully. “You commanded my presence, Dona, and here I am.”
“Arrigo! At last!” She transferred the baby from her lap to the blanket and scrambled to her feet. She ran across the lawn to throw her arms around her husband. “I’m so glad you’ve come! There’s so much I want to show you—”
“Careful, carrida, you’re crushing the flowers!” But in the next instant he bent his head to kiss her.
Cabral moved tactfully away, calling his sister to come take the baby upstairs for his nap. As Leilias approached, Mechella drew away from Arrigo and smiled: joyous, breathless, bright enough to outshine the summer sun. Taking the flowers into her arms as Arrigo bent to pick up their son, she said, “See how big he’s getting? And you won’t know Teressa, she’s grown at least a foot and she’s brown as a sparrow!”
Cabral busied himself packing up his paints and gathering brushes for cleaning. Arrigo, jiggling the infant in his arms, came over to look at the unfinished portrait.
“It’s excellent, and she’s right. Pick up your brush and paint, limner,” Arrigo smiled.
“I thank Your Grace, and I shall do so tomorrow.”
“Oh, no,” Mechella protested. “Tomorrow we’re going exploring. There’s so much to see, and Alessio fusses if I’m not with him the whole day long, so I’ll have to steal your subject from you, Cabral. You’ll love Corasson, Arrigo, I know you will.”
“I’m sure of it,” he replied.
Mechella laughed, perfectly happy now that he was at her side again. Corasson was complete. Leilias stepped forward to take the baby, but Arrigo shook his head.
“I’ve missed him. His nap can wait. But it’s sweltering out here, ‘Chella, let’s go inside for something cold to drink.” Together they crossed the lawn and entered the house by the garden doors.
Leilias studied her brother’s face for a long moment. “Is it worth it, Cabral?’
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Yes, you do.”
“What if I did?” he burst out. “Would you warn me about what’s in my eyes every time I look at her? I could grind that lying chiros into sausage meat and stuff him into his own foreskin!”
Leilias blinked; Cabral was rarely rude and never profane. But she couldn’t help a sudden giggle either, and the words, “Merditto en chosetto seddo!”
Cabral snorted at the old country saying. “Shit in a silk stocking? You flatter him!”
“Eiha, the lying chiros had at least one good idea. I think we both need something very strong poured over the last of that nice, cold, white Casteyan snow down in the coldroom.”
“I’d rather bury him in it.”
“Easier, but not as creative. I liked your first plan best.”
At summer’s end, Lizia took her two daughters home to Castello Casteya. Maldonno and the rest of the family returned to Palasso Verrada in time for Providenssia. Arrigo met them in the inner courtyard. He had left Corasson after only six days, pleading the pressures of government. Mechella parted from him most bitterly beneath the gigantic oak on the south side of the house, and watched weeping as he rode away with his retinue. Now, seeing him smile a warm welcome home, she could not help but think of the angry words exchanged that day.
“You’ve barely arrived and now you want to go ? All I want is for us to be happy here, and you won’t even give us a fair chance!”
“It’s you who’s not being fair. I was meant for this work from my birth—all I want is to be of use to my people.”
“Our people! And stop lying to me, I know why you’re so anxious to return to Meya Suerta! It’s not the power and position you want so much and don’t yet have, it’s that woman—and you’ll never really have her, don’t you see?”
“You are ridiculous, Mechella. Let go of my arm, they’ve brought my horse and it’s time to leave.”
She watched Arrigo dandle Alessio in his arms as they all went inside, and could have burst into tears. Kind Gizella, attributing her looks to weariness, told her to go upstairs and rest. Escaping gratefully, Mechella locked her bedchamber door and flung herself across the vast bed. But the tears wouldn’t come, and the burning of her eyes wouldn’t go away, and she pummeled a pillow with her fists with fury at what Arrigo had done to her.
Yet—what had Lizia said about making one’s own life? And Leilias, about showing the world the woman Arrigo had seen that night at Caza Reccolto? How she wished either friend could be here with her now.
But Lizia was at Castello Casteya, Leilias at Palasso Grijalva. Otonna would listen. Still, clever as she was in the use of her wits and her relations on Mechella’s behalf, Otonna was neither a do’Verrada nor a Grijalva. Mechella needed someone intimate with power and politics. Lizia was unreachable—but not Leilias.
The Grijalvas were flattered—though some were suspicious—when Mechella announced that Leilias would join her suite as a lady-in-waiting. This singular honor, from a woman whose husband’s renewed Marria do’Fantome with another Grijalva was an open secret, renewed comparisons with Duchess Jesminia. Admired for her beauty and goodness, beloved for her care of orphaned children, with a Grijalva in her household as friend and companion
just as Jesminia had befriended Larissa and Margatta Grijalva—though Duke Renayo had remained faithful and devoted to the end of his life, which would not be said of Arrigo. …
Lord Limner Mequel was not blind. Tradition held that when the Heir was born, his mother’s portrait was painted for the Cathedral. Mequel used the same pose and background as in the only full-face image of the beloved Duchess—Liranzo Grijalva’s unfinished Duchess Jesminia at the Ressolvo. The same luminous glow of stained glass windows framed Mechella, although her own golden hair was halo enough. At the festival of Imago, the painting was hung next to those of the other living do’Verradas. Mechella was officially Tira Virteian at last.
All that winter she complained to Leilias that her picture saw more of Arrigo than she did. Apart from family dinner twice a week, after which he dutifully spent the night in her bed, he was always anywhere but at the Palasso. She knew he wasn’t with the Grijalva woman, who was wintering with her husband at Castello Alva. If the lovers met at Chasseriallo—Arrigo was forever going there to hunt—no one heard about it. Mostly he attended meetings, conferred with the conselhos, and in general earned a reputation as tireless, dedicated, and fully capable of ruling Tira Virte all by himself.
Which he did not.
Cossimio, back in the capital after a summer of leisure, felt in need of some work again. All foreign relations were conducted by him; all matters of high justice; all trade negotiations; all disbursements of public funds. Arrigo was left with settling petty squabbles, reviewing the tax rolls, and supervising construction of the new hospital wing—named for King Enrei II of Ghillas. Arrigo did not deputize for his father at holidays and social gatherings, for Cossimio appeared in his customarily prominent role at all such celebrations. In fact, Arrigo missed the party of the season: a banquet given by Mechella in honor of Cossimio’s sixty-ninth birthday at which Maldonno, wearing for the first time the blue-and-gold of the Grand Duke’s personal suite, acted as his grandfather’s squire. Arrigo did not attend, having left two days earlier to dedicate the new memorial to Alesso do’Verrada in Joharra.
This was done at his father’s bidding, and Cossimio didn’t even miss him. The visit was meant to judge intimations of unrest in the southern provinces. On his return, Arrigo told his father the blunt truth: swift response to Casteya’s urgent need had provoked disgruntled envy. Why, the Joharrans asked, had the catastrophic sandstorm of 1260 not produced such quick and generous aid?
“The difference,” Arrigo finished, “is attributed to Mechella.”
This statement he presented as he would a verdict sent up by the law court left to lie on the table for Cossimio’s examination. It was true, and it was a danger. From the do’Verradas came all bounty, and to them was owed all loyalty. Mechella, innocently enough in her desire to help, had become a threat.
To Arrigo’s fury and frustration, Cossimio didn’t see it that way.
“Mechella, you say? Then I’ll send her on a progress, to show the south that she cares equally for them. Arrange it, Arrigo, and go with her. The roads will be reliable again by Fuega Vesperra. Leave then, and stay away until Sancterria—when we’ll all spend another fine summer at Corasson. This autumn you can take her up to Elleon for the same purpose, and everything will work out just fine.”
Thus Arrigo became the man who accompanied Dona Mechella to Joharra. And Shagarra. And every market town and farming village in between. With each ecstatic welcome given their Dolcha ‘Chellita—along with presents as grand as a lapis necklace and as humble as a basket of almonds—Arrigo’s temper worsened. Joharra held a parade and a service of thanksgiving in the Sanctia Matra Serenissa. Varriyva named a new school for her. Brazzina renamed the town’s central zocalo in her honor. Shaarria declared a three-day holiday to celebrate her visit. Shagarra gave a city-wide banquet with fireworks. At last, one evening in his mother’s own home of Granidia, his resentment boiled over.
He had watched her smile and laugh and hug children and converse with everyone from the lowliest servants to the barons and counts who couldn’t tell her often enough how they and all their people adored her. But in Granidia they knew him. He’d spent many summers here as a boy and youth, and the people welcomed him back with a warmth even greater than the homage they gave Mechella. The road up the hillside was lined with cheering throngs, and once within the massive walls the narrow streets reverberated with his name. At the peak of the hill was the castello he had played in as a child with a score of do’Granidia cousins, and they all turned out in force to embrace him into the family fold.
That evening, replete with good humor, he entered Mechella’s bedchamber to find her still dressing for what Count do’Granidia, his mother’s uncle, had described as a rustic country dance. With a slight frown for her tardiness, Arrigo poured himself a goblet of wine and sprawled in a chair to wait. He was always waiting on her these days.
Otonna fussed with the laces of an embroidered bodice, Leilias with the flounces of a tiered skirt—gaudy camponessa clothes given her on their arrival, which Mechella had received with as much delight as if they’d been the finest and most fashionable silks. When she spun around from the mirror, loose hair flying in wild golden curls and skirts flaring to show the length of slim bare legs, Arrigo slammed down his empty winecup and glowered.
“You look like a peasant.”
Her blue eyes widened. But where once she would have flinched and begged his pardon and changed her attire immediately, now she merely turned away from him, saying, “I find these clothes charming.”
“I said nothing about the garments. I said you look like a peasant.”
Their gazes met in the mirror. A lengthy moment of real malevolence was broken by a nervous choking sound from the maid. Nearby, Leilias’s eyes shot black daggers.
“Get out, both of you,” he said.
“Stay where you are,” Mechella ordered.
He rose from his chair. “It’s the instinct of a peasant not to care who overhears what should be private between husband and wife.”
“Husband!” She spun on one bare heel. “You haven’t been that for half a year!”
“And have you been a wife? You’re merely the woman I married and got children on.”
Though this struck home—he saw it in her face—she rallied with remarkable speed. “If that’s how you think of me, then I suppose you consider that Grijalva your true wife! Either way, you’re living a lie!”
“Your insight surprises me, Mechella. Yours is the seeming—hers, the substance.”
Trembling, she said, “If only there was a way to stop living the lies—”
“Perhaps we can arrange it,” he suggested.
“Never will she take my place! Never!”
“You must know by now that never could you have taken hers.”
There was another terrible silence before the rosewood clock chimed and the rooster flapped its rainbow wings. Arrigo flicked imaginary lint from his dark blue jacket.
“You’ve made us late—again.” Swinging around, he caught sight of the two stricken servants and frowned. “Gossip as you like. It won’t be believed. This is my mother’s home, these people are my close kin.” He smiled. “Besides, everyone knows how devoted I am … to my wife.”
FORTY-EIGHT
Leilias was Zevierin’s lookout that night. Most of Granidia was either at the “country dance” or at similar entertainments in the little grassy zocalos honeycombing the city. Those few who were on the winding streets, especially after midnight, thought she and Zevierin were fellow revelers on their way home.
“Hurry up, it’s taking too long,” she hissed, glancing over her shoulder. They were in a deserted alley between Ruallo Vacha and Ruallo Cordobina. On one side cattle were slaughtered for meat; on the other, skinned for leather; offal from each was thrown into the alley refuse bins. The stench was unbearable.
“Just another few lines,” Zevierin promised, tossing long, straight black hair from his eyes. “Qal Venommo isn’t very comp
lex, but it’s damned dark and I’m not used to working in charcoal on brick.”
“Grown too exalted for the simpler things, have you, my fine Master Limner?”
Zevierin only grunted by way of a reply.
At the mouth of the alley dogs snarled, scrabbling through the offal. Leilias flinched and again urged Zevierin to hurry.
“’Cordo, ‘cordo,” he muttered. “It’s done.”
She squinted in the darkness. “What does it say?”
“Nothing. It’s all done in pictures, not words.”
“Well, then, what does it show?”
“Allowing for imprecision caused by lack of light, haste, and the inferior materials—”
Warningly: “Zevierin!”
He grinned at her, a flash of white teeth in his dark face. “Tazia on horseback, digging in her spurs. The horse bears an uncanny resemblance to Arrigo.”
She clapped a hand over her mouth to stifle a giggle, but it escaped anyway. “Zevi! You didn’t!”
“Do you want people to get the idea or not? Where shall we go next?”
She took his hand and they hurried from the alley, wary of growling dogs. Back on a main street, she paused under a lamp to examine the hand she’d held. He tried unsuccessfully to keep it from her.
“No, let me look. Why are your fingers so sticky?”
“Why do you think?” He dragged a scrap of cloth from his pocket. “Come on, I want to finish at least four more before I faint from loss of blood.”
“Blood?” Stricken, Leilias stared as he wrapped the cloth around his hand. In the stinking alleyway, she hadn’t smelled it—she who blended perfumes and could tell the scent of an Astrappa Bianca rose from a Pluvio Bianco at twenty paces with her eyes shut.
“Zevi,” she whispered. “Why?”
“Later I’ll tell you what we Limners really do.” He shrugged slender shoulders, a rueful smile quirking his rather plain, long-nosed Grijalva face into something suddenly much more interesting. “For now, find me a good wall, preferably plastered smooth. Brick is absolute flaming merditto to work on.”