The Golden Key

by Melanie Rawn

  The pursuers returned to report that the culprit had utterly vanished into the hills, where he undoubtedly had a horse waiting. Of the instrument of mayhem, nothing had been found.

  “So he had help,” Arrigo concluded, “someone who snatched it up and thereby removed all the evidence.”

  “Which may mean,” Zevierin said thoughtfully, “that it had some sort of identifying characteristic that would lead us back to its originator.”

  “Eiha, that’s possible. But we’ll never know.”

  That night Arrigo and Mechella slept in the Sanctia’s best bedchamber—“best” in that it had a frayed rug on the stone floor, and a window with a silk-mesh screen to let breezes in and keep insects out, and only slightly worn linen sheets on the narrow bed. She dismissed Otonna and brushed out her own hair; he similarly released his own servant for the night and hung up his own clothes on the wooden peg at the door. She watched him from the bed, wondering what he was thinking.

  “Arrigo … you saved my life.”

  Not looking at her, he said, “The damned thing wasn’t deadly, Mechella.”

  “But you didn’t know that,” she murmured.

  A shrug was his reply.

  “What you did was very brave, and very quickly done.”

  “Nothing of the kind,” he snapped. “What did you think, I’d take the opportunity to be rid of you?”

  Her hand clenched around the silver handle of her brush. “I’m only trying to thank you. Why must you speak so cruelly?”

  At last he turned, naked to the waist, and met her gaze. Something in his eyes softened, eased—became more like the man she had loved since girlhood. “Forgive me, ‘Chella. I suppose I’m more shaken by this than I thought. That someone would do this—that it might have been so much worse—”

  “You mean we might both have died.” She set down the brush and extended a hand to him. “Arrigo—please hold me.”

  A shard of the old wry humor touched his mouth. “Carrida, that bed’s so narrow it’s either hold each other or fall on the floor!”

  “Did you hear, Premio Dioniso? Did you?” Rafeyo burst into the atelierro, glowing with excitement.

  “You’re shouting, how could I fail to hear? But I assume you mean what happened three days ago.”

  “You really do know everything, don’t you?”

  But admiration for Dioniso’s sources of information was shortlived; Rafeyo went on to babble at tedious length about Arrigo’s courage, quick wits, and steely determination to find those responsible for this outrage. Dioniso wondered when—or if—Rafeyo would consider that this bravery of Arrigo’s had as its result an uninjured Mechella. Perhaps he would also figure out that the instinct prompting Arrigo’s actions revealed much about feelings he still cherished for the mother of his children, if not for his wife.

  Eventually the boy ran out of praise, and they began the day’s lesson. As he watched a series of meaningful flowers take shape in Rafeyo’s sketchbook, he idly added up years. It might not be much longer before he could cast off these forty-five-year-old bones that despite his care of them were beginning to ache. Maybe he could find an excuse to be at Corasson this summer; the heat would soothe him, and he could surely find a few ways to discredit Mechella.

  Her favor was no longer his object. With Tazia’s star once more ascendant and her son his choice for his next life, he would be a fool indeed to assist Mechella in any fashion, direct or indirect. She was, quite simply, of no importance whatsoever.

  The na’ar al’dushanna had been a calculated risk—would Arrigo act the hero?—but it had been impossible to let the Qal Venommo go unanswered. Dioniso had too much invested by now in Rafeyo as the next Lord Limner, and by extension in Arrigo as the next Grand Duke with Tazia as his Mistress, his Nazha Coronna. Their self-evident schemes for power dovetailed as sweetly with his own as the four sides of a well-constructed frame.

  Thus Dioniso couldn’t afford to have Arrigo look the fool, as the Qal Venommo had depicted him. Thus the frightening but harmless little incident of “fire and smoke,” perpetrated by a couple of camponessos paid and painted into treachery. The formula had been taken from the Kita’ab, mixed in his atelierro above the wine shop; he’d forgotten how much fun it was to blend things other than paint. And the long, stuffy day of waiting for the compound to gel had allowed him to select the perfect spot for Rafeyo in the Peintraddo Memorrio.

  Eiha, Dioniso’s lot was cast with Rafeyo and Tazia and Arrigo. He wished Mechella no harm, but recognized now that she had always been and always would be utterly useless to him.

  FORTY-NINE

  Investigation of the incident near Dregez proved fruitless. Grand Duke Cossimio was heard to curse without repeating himself for a full twenty minutes, and then flatly forbade the autumn tour of Elleon.

  “But we have to go!” Mechella fretted, pacing her sitting room at Corasson. As was now usual, Grijalvas surrounded her. Leilias sat by the window, blending little vials of perfume; Cabral lounged in a chair, working on sketches; Zevierin stood at an easel, painting magic into Lissina’s Will. None of them appeared to be paying the slightest attention to Mechella.

  “Doesn’t anybody see it but me?” she exclaimed. “How will the people of Elleon feel when they’re slighted?”

  “They’ll understand,” Cabral said absently, trading one pencil for another.

  “They might, but I don’t!” she declared, and swept from the room to lodge another complaint with Gizella.

  As the door slammed behind her, Zevierin put down his brush. “What I see,” he murmured, “is the hope in her eyes.”

  Leilias nodded. “When Arrigo is away from Tazia, he begins to remember why he used to love Mechella.”

  “Indeed. I’m surprised she’s not with child again.”

  “Eiha, it was only those last few nights on the way home to Meya Suerta. The question is, is it for the best to bring them back together? Could they be happy if Tazia was gone from their lives? Would he forget her?”

  “I wouldn’t bet the Palasso on it,” Zevierin told her. “One must take into account the acclaim Mechella receives in all quarters. That wears on his nerves. Although his recent heroism has done wonders for his sore pride—and his standing among the common folk, who praise him constantly for saving their Dolcha ‘Chellita.”

  “The trip to Elleon could include a stay at Caterrine,” Leilias mused. “To remind him how happy they were in those first months of their marriage.”

  “And possibly result in a third child. Yes. But they’ve got to come back to Meya Suerta eventually, you know—where Tazia will be waiting.”

  “But if she were packed off to Castello Alva—”

  Zevierin began to put away his paints, potent with magic. “Perhaps, but there’s the matter of Rafeyo. He’s well on the way to becoming the next Lord Limner—may the Mother give Mequel another ten years! Dioniso sings Rafeyo to the skies, his work is excellent—”

  Her lips curled in disgust. “And Rafeyo lets everyone know it, too!”

  “He wouldn’t take kindly to any efforts to paint his mother out of the picture. And you can bet the Palasso that once he’s Lord Limner, he and Arrigo will return her officially and permanently to Court.”

  “So it will start all over again.” Leilias turned a baleful eye on her brother. “Have you nothing to say about this?”

  “Nothing.” He continued to ply colored pencils on paper.

  “You’re supposed to be clever—Mother always says so, at any rate. Can’t you see a way out of this?”

  Cabral sprang to his feet. “You, Zevi, Mechella—all you do is see. You don’t hear.” So saying, he slid the sketch into a leather portfolio—Ghillasian green, a birthday gift from Mechella—and stalked from the room.

  Leilias found her voice again after a couple of minutes. “What did that mean?”

  Zevierin did not reply. Assiduously cleaning brushes, he watched his hands wipe many-colored magic saturated with his blood onto a cloth that lat
er he would soak with the brushes in a huge tub of water. Once, while still an estudo, he forgot to warm the water first, and the shock of icy cold through his veins sent him shivering to bed for two days. The tub of water would be poured down a sink, drain into the river, and eventually find its way to the sea. He wondered idly how many minuscule particles of Grijalva magic yet clung to rocks and mud and plants along the way, how much of it drifted in the endless depths of the Agua Serenissa and the Marro Mallica. …

  “Zevi! Answer me!”

  “Hmm? Oh.” He turned to her, wishing he could paint himself brave enough to tell her he loved her. The hell of it was that marriage to him would be a perfect solution for her no matter what she felt about him. He was a sterile Limner who could never give her a child. When Mechella took her into her household, the family had stopped pressuring Leilias to become a wife and mother. But they’d start their demands again soon. She was twenty-three, well past the usual age for marriage and children, and every Grijalva woman was expected to contribute at least one baby to the family line. He knew how Leilias felt about becoming a Grijalva brood mare. But he didn’t want her to marry him to escape that. He wanted … what he could never reveal to her. Ever.

  “Leilias,” he said quietly, “what Cabral hears and we do not is, I think, something I just said. About painting Tazia out of the picture.”

  A wax-sealed vial slipped from her fingers and rolled across the carpet. It occurred to him that with her knowledge of scents, she would make the perfect Limner’s wife. Odd that he’d never thought of that before.

  “You can’t be serious,” she breathed. “Cabral couldn’t have meant—”

  “Both of you know about the magic now. I’ve broken every oath a Limner swears by telling you. Hasn’t it crossed your mind that it could be done?”

  She shook her head so vehemently that her hair came loose from its pins. “Nobody has that much power, nobody!”

  “I do,” he said bleakly.

  “But—Zevi—”

  “It’s in that painting, as long as I’m alive.” He gestured at the Will, almost finished on the easel. “I’m twenty-five. Lissina’s seventy-one. She—” He paused as Leilias’ eyes widened in disbelief. “Didn’t you know she was that old? It’s one of the ironies of being a Grijalva that our women so often look much younger than they are and live to be ninety, while our Limners are old at forty and usually dead before fifty. Lissina doesn’t know about the magic, and you say she showed no interest in hearing even the most rudimentary of explanations.”

  “She sounded as if it frightened her. She said she didn’t want to know.”

  He shrugged. “It’s an attitude encouraged by the Viehos Fratos. Not everyone has your consuming curiosity. The point is, it’s a fair bet that I’ll outlive Lissina and this painting will be binding and there’s nothing anyone can do about it. But lingua oscurra—these runes around the edges—will enforce the magic even if I predecease her. Which is possible, of course. And that is how much power any one Limner possesses, Leilias.”

  She leaped to her feet and stood shaking at the window. Zevierin wanted to paint her just as she looked in that moment: black hair wild around her shoulders, the lines of her slim, strong body revealed by sunlight through the thin yellow silk of her dress.

  When she spoke, there were tears in her voice. “Don’t talk about dying, Zevi, I can’t bear it. And don’t talk about painting something terrible happening to Tazia—it’s horrible—nobody should have that much power.”

  “No more will be said of it,” he assured her. “Cabral might want to, and I wouldn’t blame him if he did. But in an odd way, he can feel safe in the wanting, because he’s not a Limner and he can’t do anything about it.”

  “Neither could you,” she whispered. “Even though you hate Tazia as much as we do, you could never—”

  Unsure if she said this because she believed it or because she needed to hear him confirm it, he told her, “I could make an excellent case for it, but I would never do it.”

  “I know that. But what of Rafeyo?”

  Zevierin shook his head. “There are reasons why he will never—”

  “What could keep him from doing anything he wants to Mechella once he learns enough about being a Limner?”

  He hesitated, then told himself it was as easy to be pricked for a painting as a sketch. “There’s something else Limners are forbidden to speak of, and please don’t share this part of it with your brother.”

  And he told her about the deepest of all Grijalva secrets: the Peintraddo Chieva, the self-portrait reeking of blood and magic that every Limner painted as his master’s piece. She heard it with fear and dawning comprehension and a horrified fascination, and a look on her face that chilled him to the heart.

  “Rafeyo won’t really know what he’s painting when he paints it,” Zevierin said. “None of us do. The demonstration of its power is … convincing. All magical paintings are ordered and sanctioned by the Fratos—”

  She shook herself. “Or the Lord Limner, which is what Rafeyo will be.”

  “Even Mequel answers to the Fratos. All Lord Limners do. If Rafeyo did anything, they’d know it by its magic and act accordingly to punish him.”

  Some of the tension left her body. “Then Mechella is safe. Rafeyo doesn’t know how to do such things yet, and by the time he discovers his real power, his Peintraddo Chieva will exist as a threat to prevent him from harming her.”

  “Even if he lacks morals or ethics—and I suspect he does—the threat will suffice.” The memory of pinpricks sending agony through his shoulder was thrust away. “Believe me, it will suffice.”

  Leilias pounded a clenched fist against the table. “I wish I had gotten pregnant by him!”

  Strange how his mind kept working even though the shock of it seemed to stop his heart and breath.

  Of course Zevierin knew she’d been called for a Confirmattio. Of course he knew that. And of course Rafeyo had undergone the test. Zevierin had simply never matched up the dates before. Or perhaps he had, and deliberately forgotten.

  Rafeyo had slept beside Leilias. Rafeyo had made love to her—no, he told himself savagely, Rafeyo had used her body to prove his own magic, blind to the greater magic of her soul.

  “Pregnant?” He made himself smile. “With Tazia’s grandchild?”

  Leilias gave a shudder. “Matra, what a repulsive idea! I should’ve just strangled him when I had the chance, and been done with it.”

  “There’s a thought,” he agreed.

  Cossimio made it a Grand Ducal Command: Mechella was not to set foot in Elleon without his express permission. Faced with this edict, she could only bow her head over her unopened morning letters and obey.

  After his witnesses—his Grand Duchess and his Lord Limner—departed Corasson’s breakfast room to read their own correspondence, Cossimio said, “I’m sorry to be so severe, gattina. But I know you by now. Anything less than a direct order, you’d wriggle your way around it. Not that I disapprove of your spirit! But don’t begrudge me your safety, carrida.”

  “You’re sweet to worry. Perhaps we can go in the spring.”

  His booming laugh rattled the crystal. “If not, there’ll be open rebellion in Elleon! I told you Tira Virte would love you, didn’t I? The very first night I saw you. None of us can do without you. Not me or ‘Zella or the children or Arrigo—did I tell you his letter says he’ll be here in just a few days?”

  “Will he? I haven’t heard from him.”

  “Eiha, I’ve probably just ruined a surprise. That’s a Grand Duke for you—can’t keep a single secret that’s not his own! You’ll be sure to be properly astounded, won’t you, gattina?”

  Mechella smiled; Cossimio was hard to resist. Certainly Gizella found him so—this summer, as last summer at Corasson, they behaved like young lovers.

  After a pleasant morning in the gardens, with the Grijalvas painting what they pleased and the do’Verradas doing nothing more strenuous than turning pages in boo
ks, everyone retired to nap away the midday heat. Then Otonna came to Mechella’s chamber, waving a letter of her own.

  “Beyond amazing, that’s what my sister writes—but it’s the truth all the same, that woman and her husband and all their sons are on their way to Castello Alva—including that merditto Rafeyo! And Don Arrigo’s bringing them here! To Corasson!”

  Sick with shock, Mechella shrank into a cool pillow. Here, he was bringing that woman here. “He can’t,” she whispered. “He can’t.”

  What a fool she had been. His instinct to protect her from danger. Those few sweet days—and especially nights—of the journey back to Meya Suerta. His regret that he must stay at the Palasso for a little while. His promises that he would very soon join the family at Corasson, promise after promise all summer long. But very soon it would be Luna Qamho, and the first wheat shorn and sheaved. Lies, all of his words were lies.

  Arrigo lived a lie.

  Gizella had long ago counseled accepting that woman at Court. But that woman was no Lissina. Lizia had suggested several alternatives—and Mechella’s own instincts had almost blindly directed her to the path she must follow. Her own life, her own place, her own power.

  “No,” she said softly, and Otonna halted in the middle of her bitter maledictions. “She will not set foot here. Not in Corasson.”

  “Your Grace?”

  Wonderful, really—how easy it made everything, how calm she felt now that she knew. Glancing at the slack-jawed maid, she smiled. “If I have to tear it down stone by stone and set fire to every stick and stitch with my own hands, that woman will never get so much as a glimpse of my Corasson.”

  Otonna was speechless. A historic occasion; Cabral or Zevierin ought to commemorate it with a painting. But Mechella’s Grijalvas had decided to roam the countryside after luncheon, the painters seeking landscapes to render for the new drawing-room mural, Leilias seeking flowers for her perfumes. Mechella wished for evening, when they would return and tell her what to do, how to keep that woman from crossing the threshold of her beloved Corasson.