The Golden Key

by Melanie Rawn

  “Of course I do, carrido. Here, I’ll help. Did you finish before he came in?”

  As they straightened out crooked limbs, he told her. Whined, actually; it was characteristic of Rafeyo when thwarted. “I don’t know what happened. It didn’t work. I did everything just right, I know I did—but it didn’t work!”

  Tazia shot him an angry glance across Dioniso’s prostrate body. “If you did all of it correctly, why didn’t it work?”

  “I don’t know!”

  She sat back on the high heels of her gold-stitched slippers. “I can’t say I’m not disappointed, Rafeyo. But you’ll try again.”

  “But if I don’t know what happened, how can I fix it?”

  “You’ll be an acknowledged Limner soon. Nothing will be kept from you then. You’ll identify your mistakes—”

  “I didn’t do anything wrong, I know I didn’t!”

  “You will identify your mistakes,” she repeated sternly, “and rectify them. And then you must paint as quickly as possible, because Arrigo has agreed to the thing we discussed.”

  “He has?” Sario hoped his expression wasn’t too blank. He hadn’t yet spent the usual long hours at a mirror, experimenting with control of a new face. And he was worried about controlling the body, too—the legs and the reach were shorter, the weight less, the poise of the head just different enough to unbalance him a trifle.

  “He’s quite eager,” Tazia was saying, her voice sour. “And he won’t like waiting until you spell his bitch of a wife to obedience. On the other hand, I’ll have more time to work on Serenissa. Which reminds me, can you paint her amenable to bearing his bastard? It would help.”

  Sario reeled. A Grijalva bastard? Was she insane? Time sideslipped and he was once again the Sario he’d been born, learning that Saavedra was pregnant. Savagely he thrust away centuries-old emotion and fixed his mind on the appalling woman before him.

  “Well?” she demanded. “Can you? And make it a girl?”

  “I—I think so.” Rising, he compelled his muscles to steadiness and reached down to help her up. Touching her was unexpectedly disgusting. “I should clean up in here and hide the painting. Can you get him into the hall? I’ll be there in a minute to help.”

  “You want me to drag him? Eiha, ‘cordo. But hurry.”

  Each of them took a leg and lugged Dioniso to the door. As Sario opened it, Tazia cast a last look at the painting of Corasson.

  “She’s nowhere to be seen in that. How can the magic work if she’s not in the painting?”

  He thought fast. Tazia obviously knew nothing of her son’s plans for arson. “It’s a special spell,” he said. “It creates a whole atmosphere at Corasson.”

  Her black eyes went wide. “Do you mean that the very air she breathes would contain spells of obedience to Arrigo’s wishes? How marvelous!” Alight with pride, she leaned over to kiss his cheek. He resisted the impulse to wipe his skin. “You never told me such things could be done. You’ve surpassed the greatest Limners, Rafeyo. Even Riobaro!”

  “I try,” he said, sketching a grin onto his face. “Drag him as far as you can. His rooms are down the stairs at the end of the hall.”

  “Don’t be too long.”

  “You’re wonderful, Mother. Did I ever tell you that?”

  “I try,” she replied, and winked.

  “I don’t like this,” Zevierin said softly. “You had no reason to follow her from Lissina’s except vague suspicion.”

  “Tazia looked entirely too pleased with herself to please me.” Leilias walked boldly into the Limners’ wing of the Palasso, where not even female servants were allowed, and started for the nearest staircase. “And I suppose it was ‘vague suspicion’ that made you tell Cabral to destroy that drawing!”

  “Not that stair, it takes forever. This corridor is faster.” He waited until she was beside him again, then caught lightly at her arm. “How can you be sure she’s in the Limners’ quarters?”

  “Who else would she visit here but her son? Zevi, I wasted a lot of time finding you in that crowd outside. She may already have done what she came to do and left by now. We have to hurry.”

  “What do you think she might be doing?”

  “How do I know?” she cried, frustrated, and flinched as her voice echoed. More quietly, she continued, “Why here, when she can see Rafeyo anytime at her caza? Why tonight, with everyone gone and the Palasso deserted?”

  “’Cordo,” he agreed reluctantly. “The senior estudos are one floor up from the Viehos Fratos. Come on.”

  They climbed one flight and were halfway up another when they heard a woman’s voice rise in some impressively creative cursing. Leilias froze at Zevierin’s side.

  “Tazia,” she said with no sound at all.

  “You were right,” he whispered back.

  They crept up the second flight and then the third, praying for silent floorboards as they followed bizarre scraping noises toward the Fratos’ rooms. Turning a corner, neither was able to stifle gasps at the sight of the Countess do’Alva, hauling a body by its heels toward the stairs.

  She glanced around, eyes wild and strange in the lamplight from down the hall. Her hair had come loose and her face was flushed, and rage flared in her eyes when she recognized them. Rallying quickly, she stood straight, let go the man’s ankles, and with regal arrogance demanded, “What are you doing here?”

  Zevierin stared at her, amazed. She was the one dragging a corpse. Then he saw whose corpse it was. “Premio Dioniso!” he blurted.

  “I found him dead in the upper hall,” Tazia said—too coolly, yet somehow not quite coolly enough. “I called out but everyone’s gone. You two take him to his rooms and see him decently put into bed while I go for help outside.”

  “Of course,” Zevierin said, as if he believed every word of it, and went forward to crouch by the Premio’s head, fully aware of his wife’s astounded eyes. He was sickened by the expression on the dead face: stark terror, hideous pain. Heart attack? Brain seizure? Zevierin hadn’t the medical experience to know.

  But he did understand the small bloodstain. The white shirt had tugged out of the belt as the body was dragged along, but it was easy to see that the drop corresponded to the left chest, just over the heart. Without conscious will he saw his hands rip open the shirt, buttons flying to rattle away in shadows beyond the lamplight. There—the little smear on bare skin—

  “Murdered,” he said thickly, not recognizing his own voice. “Premio Frato Dioniso was murdered.”

  Tazia backed up a few steps. “What? Impossible!”

  Leilias bounded toward her, grabbing a double handful of costly silk cloak. The gold ties at the throat choked Tazia; she scrabbled to undo them and the slick white material hissed from her shoulders. Leilias dropped it and dug her fingers into the woman’s arms.

  “How dare you! Take your hands off me this instant!”

  Leilias yanked her back toward the corpse. “What are you doing in the Limners’ wing?”

  “A question I could ask of you!”

  “Why tonight?” She gave her captive a vigorous shake. Tazia tossed black curls from her face and glared.

  “By what right do you interrogate me? Let me go!”

  In a way, Zevierin had to admire her. Courage, cunning, arrogance, or sheer bravaddio, it was a remarkable performance. He got to his feet, certain that this sick weight of weariness in his bones was a preview of twenty years hence, when he would be old.

  “Did you kill him?” he asked quietly. “Did you do it, or did Rafeyo?”

  She struggled a moment longer against Leilias’s grasp, then gave an incoherent cry and began to sob. “Rafeyo! It was Rafeyo!”

  So much for courage. And Arrigo preferred this to Mechella.

  “He did it, he’s responsible!” she babbled. “He told me to come here tonight—I had to, he’s a Limner, I’m afraid of what he might do if I disobey—he’s told me things about your magic—terrible things! I went to his atelierro and there was Pre
mio Dioniso, dead! I had nothing to do with it, nothing!”

  Perhaps that much was true.

  “Once out of his sight, why didn’t you run?” asked Leilias.

  A slight hesitation that said much. Then: “He’s my son. I’ve protected him all my life—when you’re a mother, you’ll understand—it’s your duty to help him, love him, no matter what! He’s my only son, a mother loves her son no matter what he does—”

  Frightened, but not frightened out of her considerable wits. Zevierin reconsidered his estimation of Tazia. And reminded himself to make his wife promise never to love any son of theirs like this.

  “Where is he now?” Leilias rattled Tazia’s teeth this time.

  “Gone, I expect,” Zevierin said, sparing Tazia the attempt to find a plausible lie. “We’ve certainly made enough noise to warn him. Can you hold her here while I find Mequel?”

  “Certainly.”

  Leilias did something then that no Limner would ever do—no Limner, musician, goldsmith, or anyone whose hands were his life and livelihood. Zevierin watched in awe as his wife swung a fist at the Countess do’Alva’s chin, with instantaneous and predictable results.

  Further reminder: never, ever make Leilias angry.

  Laughter and lamplight in every window and doorway. Roil of raucous bodies dancing, parting, swaying, staggering. Reek of alcohol sweat, pungent stink of pitch from burned-out torches, stench of cheap perfume. He slipped through the crowded streets like a shadow on strong young legs, kept watch with sharp young eyes. At the atelierro above the wine shop, clever young hands wielded the first key and subtle young fingers unpainted the second and the third.

  And then he was safe.

  He needed no light. He had known this place for hundreds of years. He knew where the Peintraddo Memorrio faced the wall, he knew the pattern of stains on the paint-blotched tarp covering it. Table here, chair beside it, easel there, trunk in a corner filled with paints and solvents and Folio and Kita’ab, stacked virgin canvases over by the shuttered window.

  Musty sheets, moth-eaten blanket—a haven nonetheless. He curled on the bed and shook for a long time. Telling himself it was only the reaction of this body, this unfamiliar flesh that he could not as yet perfectly control.

  No thread of sunlight wove him warning of the day. Sealed and blackened windows, thick wooden shutters over them, heavy burlap curtains over those, no breath of air. He was used to the closeness, to the dust and heavy air. His body was not. He couldn’t breathe. The sun rose and warmed Meya Suerta’s streets, newly sanctified by fire, and baked the walls and roof of this high attic room, and heated the air around him, and the only reason he knew it was morning was that he could not breathe.

  He made himself rise and walk through the humid dark and open the bottle left on the table—how long ago? The wine had soured. He drank anyway. He coughed and spat, and drank more.

  At last he sat down. The chair was a relic of Alejandro’s reign, once beautiful. The last of the gilding had flaked off a century ago. The velurro cushion had disintegrated long before that. Five times he had replaced the braided rope seat. He supposed he ought to replace the chair itself, but he was never here long enough to justify the bother.

  He lit the candles, one in silver and one in gold. His skull grinned at him, whitely shining out of the shadows, and he flinched back.

  In the centuries he had owned this building, he’d spent a total of perhaps two months in this squalid atelierro—only to paint the portraits that gave him his next hosts and the additions to the Peintraddo Memorrio. He would have to add Rafeyo’s face soon. Another face in the painting, another life memorialized. He sighed a long, draining sigh. Dioniso’s had been a good life, productive and useful—but in the end a disaster, and all because of Rafeyo.

  The body was calming down. The panic had never been his. It was only the body that had reacted, spurring instant flight. He was grateful. If Zevierin and Leilias had found him, the way they’d found Tazia. …

  He poured another swallow of wine down his throat. Yes, he was feeling much better now. A little sleep, and later some food—he’d go downstairs and tell the innkeeper to bring him something to eat. They were faithful to him here; he owned the place, after all, the Deed painted long ago and tucked into the trunk over in the corner. Successive generations of this same family of innkeepers inherited their trade just as they thought successive generations of his own unnamed family inherited the premises. Once, in the early days, he’d returned after long absence to find the chair had been moved. Two days and an Aguo sketch later, the innkeeper’s sister confessed to having poked around the atelierro. Two weeks and a Sanguo painting later, she was dead of a fall down the stairs. Yes, they were faithful to him here ever since.

  So he would ask the son of the house to take a message to Palasso Grijalva, and—

  Message to whom?

  Remaining Rafeyo was impossible. Damn the boy! If only he’d waited, he could have had it all. Sario could have had it all. How long since he’d worn the honored regalia of Lord Limner? Not since Riobaro. Nothing had gone right for him since then.

  Suddenly he saw this life as Dioniso and this taking of Rafeyo was representative of all his many lives and takings. It had never worked. Never the right time or circumstances or luck. Never everything falling into place with sweet perfection. Never finding exactly the right host to bring him back to his rightful place, the place he had held as Sario for too brief a time.

  He leaped to his feet and tore the covering from the Memorrio. There they were, all his lives except for Rafeyo’s, all the faces he’d worn through the centuries.

  Ignaddio, lacking the right bloodlines. Zandor, thwarted by Grijalva politics. Verreio, waiting in vain for the then-Lord Limner to die. Martain, condemned by others’ envy to insignificance. Guilbarro, destroyed by the incompetence of a criminally stupid sancta sent to heal him. Matteyo, ruined by accusations of collusion in his brother’s “suicide.” Timirrin, a welcome respite—but nothing of accomplishment, nothing of glory.

  Only Riobaro. Only that one perfect life. He gazed upon the wonderful face he had worn for so many brilliant years, the regret more bitter on his tongue than the sour wine.

  And after Riobaro? Domaos, and the disastrous affair with Benecitta. Awkward, ugly Renzio. Oaquino—known to the ages as Il Cofforro, The Hairdresser. Ettoro, crippled at thirty-five, whose mother had foolishly offended her powerful half-sister Tazita, Arrigo II’s Uncrowned Grand Duchess and ruined her son’s chances thereby.

  Dioniso had had a chance. Rising to Premio Frato, he’d had the chance to create perfection in Rafeyo.

  Gone.

  Only Riobaro. Only that one perfect life.

  Why?

  What had he ever done but to work to the good of his family, his Dukes, his country? He had served so long and so well, he had done things for all of them that any other Limner would shrink to do, that only he, Sario, The Grijalva Limner, could ever do—and he was rewarded with only that one perfect life.

  He would make another. He vowed it. But first he must rid himself of Rafeyo. If they found him here before he could find another host, he would be lost.

  So would Saavedra. He had saved her last night. One day he would tell her about it, how he had saved her life. Right now he must save them both.

  But—who?

  They would lay out Dioniso’s body today. There would be no Paraddio Iluminaddio; his death had been sudden and alone. The mother, Giaberta, would come to Meya Suerta from her husband’s home and do her ritual weeping and depart. All would know it had been murder; Zevierin and Leilias would tell them. And Tazia, too—he knew enough of her to know she’d try to save herself by blaming her son. He must remember to do something permanent about Tazia.

  Rafeyo’s sketches were mushy pulp in a Palasso sink by now. Sario had all the paints in his possession—packed neatly in their case, he’d simply grabbed the handle when he’d fled. He supposed he owed Tazia his thanks for giving him precious time to g
et away.

  They could do nothing to “Rafeyo” unless they used the painting of Corasson. But whatever happened to it would happen at Corasson. And they knew that. They would not use it. There was no Peintraddo Chieva to stick with pins or set alight with fire, there were no paintings at foreign courts or in Tira Virteian cazas or castellos that could be used against him. As for the inheritance paintings done for those wretched Casteyan orphans—those were plain paintings, needing no magic in them.

  Rafeyo was beyond their reach.

  But Rafeyo would be hunted until they found him and brought him to trial and executed him for the murder of Premio Frato Dioniso. He must find a way out of Rafeyo’s body and into another.

  Who—?

  He stared at the box of paints. He would strengthen them with his own private formulations. Rafeyo had thought he knew so much—he’d known nothing of real power. This body could afford to lose the necessary blood. This strong, handsome, perfect young body—

  Damn Rafeyo!

  Lord Limner Mequel cast a last tired glance around Rafeyo’s tiny atelierro. “I do hope that’s all for tonight. It’s very much past my bedtime.”

  “It’s enough,” Zevierin replied grimly.

  “The question remains, however—what do we do with what we know? And it must be answered tonight.”

  “My Lord, is there any reason we can’t go downstairs and be comfortable while you decide? And I could use a drink to take the taste of this from my mouth,” Zevierin added forthrightly.

  “My brittle bones would appreciate a soft chair and some wine. Perhaps your good lady would see to it?”

  Leilias—for once the good Grijalva girl—departed immediately to obey. Zevierin held back from offering Mequel any assistance; the Lord Limner acknowledged his tact with a wry smile as he took the younger man’s arm.

  “She is a good lady, make no mistake in it,” Mequel murmured as they slowly descended the stairs. “You are fortunate, both as a Limner and as a man.”

  “I know,” Zevierin said softly.

  “A piece of advice, Frato meyo. Never think of the years remaining to you. They do not yet exist. And may never exist—after all, crossing a busy avenida can be fatal. You have this day, and you have her love.”