The Golden Key

by Melanie Rawn

  “I need you as a husband, a father to my children—that’s what you can never be, not openly, not before the world—ah, Matra, why is it we all want what we can never have?” She covered her face with her hands and fled into the house.

  He stayed there on his knees for a long time, grappling with strange intensities of emotion: hate, despair, resentment, desperate longing for what he did not possess. Finally he pushed himself to his feet and trudged into the house. The drawing of Corasson was gone from its honored place in the dining room—torn off the wall, lying on the floor, the cords that had held it from the crown molding snapped. He cut a finger as he undid the frame hooks—glaring at the blood, hating it for not being Limner blood. For the rest of the afternoon he sat on a hay bale in the stable, watching in silent rage as the drawing dissolved in a huge tub of icy water. He left it cold on purpose, hoping the picture did have magic in it and that Rafeyo’s teeth would chatter so hard he bit out his tongue and died of blood loss.

  Does Sario gaze on me in my painted prison? Does he smile, does he laugh, knowing that he alone knows the truth? And … Alejandro? Does he weep, or curse, or cry out? Or does he stare in silence, hating me for leaving him?

  Or does he never look on me at all?

  I could look upon myself if I liked—there is a mirror, and I could see into my own eyes—but I’m so afraid of what I’ll find in them. I am so afraid for myself, for Alejandro, for our baby—I fear Sario, what he has done, what he might yet do. …

  He has left me a copy of the Folio—as a torment, I am sure. Did he know it would open? Did he know the pages are written on as clearly as if he had penned each word himself? Indeed, it is his writing in the margin glosses. It must be a painted replica of his own copy. Does he wish me to know precisely how he did this to me?

  Or is it not torment but challenge to confirm his belief that I, too, am Gifted?

  Could I use this book? Could I open one of my veins and find within it blood that would infuse mere paint with Limner magic?

  Eiha, he gave me the book. But no paints. Not even a pencil to write with. If he had, I could have written on one of these pages and someone would see my words and—

  But they should have guessed by now. Anyone seeing me within this framed prison would surely see that I have moved within it, that I am alive within it—

  Only Sario gazes upon me. Only his eyes watch me while I go mad.

  No. I will not go mad. I must be strong of mind and will and heart. For my child.

  But I am so tired … two nights I have been here, two nights without sleep or surcease from this horror. No one has seen me. No one but Sario.

  Matra Dolcha, when will he set me free?

  The day of Sancterria, Tazia received Arrigo early in the afternoon at her old caza in town. He had a few hours free between his luncheon with the Silk Merchants Guild and the evening’s festivities. They went out into the tiny garden behind the house to enjoy the sunshine. Tazia leaned back comfortably against Arrigo’s chest, listening to the music of the bees. It was safe to relax here, shielded from prying eyes.

  She had recently begun refurbishing her former home: taking back her own carpets and tapestries and furniture from Garlo’s caza and castello, buying replacements for things discarded when she’d married. Soon she would resume her old life here and it would be just as it had been in the years before Mechella, when Arrigo had been entirely hers.

  How often in those days had they done this: lazed away a soft sunny day on the square of lawn while bees dipped into new flowers and butterflies floated on a warm, languid breeze. Arrigo sat with his back to a tree trunk, Tazia reclining between his thighs, his arms enwrapping her and her head on his shoulder. She had never been so happy, and she smiled as she told him why.

  “Rafeyo says the painting is ready.”

  “Mmm?”

  “It only awaits your word. Whenever you please, Mechella will become as loyal and obedient as any man could wish.” She laughed. “Just like a little trained puppy!”

  A chuckle vibrated against her spine. “More boring than ever.”

  “But compliant. You must be careful not to order anything too contrary to her recent behavior for a while, Arrigo. Slide into it gradually. If there should be any sudden alteration—”

  “’Cordo, Tazia. We’ve talked about this before. You must admit, though, it would be amusing to command something really interesting. As punishment. She could host your next birthday ball,” he suggested, then laughed aloud. “Better, maybe she ought to take to a Sanctia cell for a few years.”

  She winced; it reminded her of Garlo’s wretched son, the cause of all her troubles with her husband. Garlo cared nothing for her renewed affair with Arrigo, but would never forgive her for the loss of Verradio to the Ecclesia. Perhaps Rafeyo could paint Garlo compliant, too. And Verradio silent forever. She wasn’t sure exactly what could and could not be done. Rafeyo had been so busy with his painting and his classes and his special tutorials with Premio Dioniso that yesterday was the first time he’d come to see her in months.

  Eiha, what she knew didn’t matter. It only mattered what Rafeyo knew—and what he did with it.

  Besides, she had plans of her own to pursue. Slowly, as if it had only just occurred to her, she said, “There is a way to punish her as she deserves. You could have another child.”

  “Not unless it was yours.”

  “It can be, in a way. I have a young cousin—”

  He sat up, dislodging her from her comfortable nest in his arms. She turned to face him, putting all her yearning into her eyes.

  “Arrigo, hear me out. Her name is Serenissa. She’s my younger sister’s child, born a year after Rafeyo and a Mennino do’Confirmattio, as he is. She’s not quite eighteen, very bright and witty—and she even reminds me of myself in looks, the way I was at her age.”

  “You’re still the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen. But I won’t do it, Tazia. Not if the woman isn’t you. I promised you fidelity. That you didn’t ask is all the more reason for me to give it. I couldn’t make love to another woman, even one who looked like you.”

  “Not even for a child who would be ours?” she whispered. “Mechella’s creature Leilias is wed to the Limner Zevierin—he’s sterile, but they want children. She’s at the Palasso even now, looking for a suitable father. Zevierin will treat her children as if he had sired them. He loves her that much. He wants her children that much.”

  “Tazia—carrida dolcha meya—” Arrigo drew her back into his arms, holding fiercely. “You are not only the most beautiful but the most generous and loving woman I’ve ever known! If you truly want this—”

  “More than anything but your love, Arrigo. I swear to you I’ll think of this child as ours, yours and mine. The crudest thing I ever had to endure was that I could never bear you a child. But this way—don’t you see—we could do what we’ve pretended so many times, make a baby of our own.”

  He was quiet for a few minutes, the drowsy hum of the bees and the sound of his heart the only things she heard. Then: “If you adopted the baby, wouldn’t it take Garlo’s name?”

  “Never! I’d never give him legal rights over a Grijalva! He—or she—would be a fosterling, and remain a Grijalva. Only you and I and the mother would know that the baby is also a do’Verrada.”

  “Well, naturally it must be kept absolutely secret.”

  “Naturally,” she agreed. All proof and documentation would be most secret indeed—until the time was right to reveal it. Her own adherents among the family would approve this. Mechella’s sons would never take a Grijalva Mistress, having grown up prejudiced against the tradition by their mother. Such a smear on the canvas of Grijalva power could not be tolerated. A bastard would ensure do’Verrada compliance no matter what the vagaries of Mechella’s sons. Tazia was sure she could explain it attractively enough to the important Grijalvas on her side so they would look the other way and break faith with an agreement dating back to Lord Limner Sario and Duke Ale
jandro. Even if she couldn’t convince them—and she would judge the telling most carefully before breathing a word—she would have the child in her possession.

  “—the next Confirmattio,” Arrigo was saying, and Tazia tore her mind from delectable possibilities to find him much less stunned than before. “The child would be attributed to the boy whose place I take.”

  Much less stunned. It was insulting, how quickly he’d taken to the idea.

  “The perfect solution,” she told him. “But could we be sure of trusting the boy?”

  “Eiha, there is that. What of the girl? Can she be trusted?”

  “I’m sure of it.” Tazia created laughter out of nothing. “Serenissa has always regretted that she was born too late to be your Mistress and too early to be Alessio’s.”

  But Serenissa’s daughter—and Rafeyo would use every scrap of magic he possessed to ensure that it was a daughter—would be of an age to seduce Alessio in twenty or so years. She laughed more easily, contemplating Mechella’s face when she found out that her darling elder boy was sleeping with his own half sister.

  Arrigo made the correct remark about being glad Tazia had been the one chosen for him, then returned to the logistics of getting Serenissa pregnant. As if Tazia hadn’t already thought of everything—though it must appear to him that he’d worked it out on his own.

  As she listened, guiding him subtly toward the conclusions she wished him to reach, she reflected that it really was rather touching, how it never even occurred to him that the lovely, fecund, dangerous Grijalva girl would have to die in childbed.

  FIFTY-FOUR

  Several hours before the Sancterna celebrations were due to begin, Dioniso let himself into Rafeyo’s tiny atelierro and locked the door behind him. The room reeked of paint and solvents and stale urine from the unemptied chamberpot by the window. Well, naturally it hadn’t been tended; Rafeyo kept the door locked. A pathetically easy lock it was to pick, too.

  Rafeyo was not present. His sketches were: dozens of them, tacked up on the walls and spread out on the worktable. Dioniso was impressed in spite of himself by the boy’s ability. On one wall were depictions of bygone Lord Limners in chronological order. It was, if nothing else, quite a fashion show. Starched neck-ruffs spread to outrageous widths before narrowing to white collars and then vanishing altogether; draped cloaks changed to long jackets, embroidered vests, and finally simple tunics; knee-britches (how he’d hated those!) were abandoned for trousers and boots. The only constants were the gray feathered cap and ceremonial collar of office. It had been such a long time since he’d felt that momentous golden weight across his shoulders, more satisfying than even the Chieva do’Orro at his breast.

  Another wall showed several studies of Lord Limner Riobaro’s Peintraddo Chieva. As anticipated, the candlelight had been troublesome for Rafeyo; Matra, he’d had trouble with it himself when he’d painted it. But Rafeyo was getting the feel of it rather nicely, as far as one could tell in a pencil sketch. Dioniso gazed for a long moment at the handsome young man—how wonderful it would be to be that young again! Eiha, soon. He could remember having worn that face. Perhaps if it had truly been his, Saavedra would never even have glanced at Alejandro.

  On the worktable was the preliminary small oil on scrap canvas of Rafeyo himself in Riobaro’s pose, gray drapery behind him and candle before him. Not yet filled out in detail, still it would suffice as a lure—if he had imbued it with magic. Dioniso bent to inspect it, squinting in late afternoon light through high attic windows. He cursed his slowly failing eyesight and his Grijalva pride that refused any palliative more conspicuous than a lens tucked in a pocket. Yet he saw the sign in the sketch: a tiny scratch on the back of the left hand, as if a fingernail had scraped across dried paint.

  Cabessa merditto! he thought, shaking his head. The fool boy had even tested the magic. But his folly was proof of Dioniso’s wisdom. Teasing Rafeyo down certain paths—not that he’d needed much urging; hinting at this and that—cautiously, for he was quick-witted; revealing just enough to make him hunger for more—certain that he would experiment on his own. What a wondrous thing curiosity was. How perfectly it complemented ambition, and put luster on the Luza do’Orro. He of all people knew this. He had lived his life by it. No surprise to anyone when Rafeyo continued to do the same.

  He allowed himself to anticipate the moment. Rafeyo: young, strong, and his. Other men knew what it was to possess a woman’s body for a few sweet minutes; he knew what it was to possess another’s flesh for a lifetime. To feel bone and muscle and skin and blood and sinew, and make it irrevocably his own. Only he had felt such things. He was unique. He was Sario.

  He smiled, reliving cherished memories—indeed, he could almost taste the sticky-sweet poppy syrup on his tongue. A mild dosage timed to take effect shortly after the transfer, it caused slight drowsiness, vague disorientation. He’d learned it was useful to make sure the abandoned host was befuddled; reliance on shock alone could be risky. One could never be sure of the resilience of any given mind.

  As always when he dipped into bright remembered pleasures, he called up the darker colors of danger as well. He knew everything that would happen, everything he would experience. It had been twenty-eight years since the last time—nearly twenty-nine, he realized with some startlement—but he remembered everything. Including the dangers.

  Only two things truly imperiled him. The first occurred during the instant the body died with the freeing of its spirit. The risk lay not in damage to abandoned flesh; it came when the soul had not yet been directed to its new home. Liberated from familiar matter, something—soul, consciousness, mind; he preferred to call it “spirit”—cast about in growing panic. It inevitably sensed the nearness of the shell it had so recently animated, struggling against the dictates of the lingua oscurra, trying desperately to reinhabit its former home. Forbidden this shelter, it sought the familiar in a painting from which it also must be blocked. Turning the spirit from blood it recognized was ever an act of sheer will.

  But in the next instant came even greater danger. Denied its own flesh and even the whispering memory of it that was the painting, the spirit felt hunger. As many times as it had happened, as prepared for it as he had become, the reality forever awed him. Perhaps one day he would decide if it was wholly one thing, the spirit hungering to be incarnate—or wholly another, the empty body calling out to be filled. Whichever it might truly be, that moment was the crux: if he could not guide the spirit to the flesh waiting for it, it might escape him. Such required the strongest magic of all.

  He had never yet failed. He would not fail with Rafeyo.

  He was about to leave the atelierro when curiosity made him investigate the stacked canvases behind the door. If Rafeyo had gone against the decision of the Viehos Fratos—not to mention his own private strictures—and continued to paint those appalling landscapes, Dioniso would—

  Landscape? Not technically. An architectural rendering, in Blooded paints that reeked from the canvas. Every malevolent symbol in the Folio and almost as many from the Kita’ab appeared in ribbon-wreathed lozenges around the edges, accompanied by runes so foul that even he was staggered.

  His first thought was that Rafeyo was indeed a fool to have kept this at the Palasso. If anyone but Dioniso had discovered it—

  Ah, but where else to hide it other than in damned near plain sight?

  Dioniso was torn between fury and admiration. Clever boy! And twice clever to have cobbled together bits and pieces, hints and intimations, what he knew and what he could guess, from what Dioniso had taught him. He’d strewn insinuations freely, but never suspected the boy’s hatred would provide such fertile ground. It would never do to let Rafeyo know how he had startled his master. Matra, even the stars were in their proper places!

  It required no guesswork to know what Rafeyo intended with this perfect portrait of Corasson on the night of Sancterria.

  “You go on without me, Arrigo,” Tazia said. “I should put in an app
earance at Baroness Lissina’s reception. I’ll join you later.” She stood on tiptoe to kiss him in the late afternoon shadow of a poplar tree. “I have a lovely spot all picked out, nestled in a hollow of the hill where we can watch the sun rise. My cook is packing a breakfast.”

  “Sounds wonderful,” he smiled. “I’ll slip away from my parents during the Paraddio Luminosso.”

  “Eiha, change your shoes to boots first, carrido. If you march all night in those soft things you’re wearing now, you’ll be blistered until Luna Qamho.”

  He kissed her cheek. “I really must find a servant who looks to my comfort as tenderly as you do. Until later, dolcha meya.”

  If she was irritated at being cast as his most faithful servant, she gave him no sign. He left by a back alley, for they did not yet visit each other openly in broad daylight—the very last of the proprieties they observed. As she went upstairs to put on evening clothes she vowed that this last trivial bit of compordotta would not endure long. Once Mechella was brought to heel like a good little lapdog, Tazia would kiss Arrigo in public if she felt like it. The Grand Duke and Grand Duchess could scowl all they liked. Tazia would have Arrigo. And Rafeyo. And most of the Grijalvas. And a dutiful, obedient Mechella tucked away forever at Coras son. And, eventually, a little do’Verrada of her very own in the nursery.

  She had to wait ten minutes for her footman to fetch a hired hack, then endured another ten minutes of bad springs and stuffy warmth on the ride to Caza do’Dregez across town. Lissina had for nearly thirty years held a ladies-only reception on Sancterria. Admission, by invitation only, was limited to the nobility and none but the wealthiest merchants’ wives—for the price of gobbling down fruit ices in company with the Baroness was a generous “voluntary” contribution to Lissina’s endless charities. As Tazia gave the butler the green leather pouch provided with the invitation for the purpose—suitably stuffed with do’Alva money—she wondered dismally if, on Lissina’s death, she as a Grijalva Mistress would be expected to perform the same tedious duties.