The Golden Key

by Melanie Rawn

  Sario had no choice but to retreat. But as he walked the length of the sitting room, he looked back to see Renayo settling down for a cozy chat with Alazais. The Grand Duke might deny his ambitions, but they existed nonetheless.

  The suite assigned to Alazais was large enough to accommodate a score more servants. Beyond the sitting room Sario had set aside a chamber for himself. It had windows, a single door, and mercifully drab decor: wood-paneled walls unchanged for a hundred years.

  Entering and locking the door behind him, he surveyed the room and then shifted a table a hand’s width to the right, moved the couch out away from the wall, turned the covers back on his bed. Placed a branch of candles, unlit, in a different position on the side table.

  Finally he eased the cover off his newest canvas. He regarded the portrait of Renayo, still in half-tones, deadcolor and under-painting visible. Renayo stood in a parkland, his booted feet resting on grass, which represented Submission, his hands grasping a bouquet of blue-flowered flax—the only spot of bright color in the half-finished painting—whose blossoms signified Fate. He needed a tincture of valerian, to increase Renayo’s Accommodating Disposition. He should add a peach tree in bloom, a few of the blossoms settling on Renayo’s coat, and blend a fine powder of peach blossom into the paint as well. “I Am Your Captive.”

  Long ago Alfonso Grijalva had attempted to control a Duke and failed. He had not been subtle enough. He had not been Sario. But Renayo was not the real problem, not right now.

  Sario set the canvas of the Grand Duke against one wall, then placed a new canvas, already primed with a honey-colored ground mixed with his tears, his seed, and a spicing of nutmeg oil. Cutting himself, he bled red blood into poppy oil and used that oil to lighten his pigments. Then, lighting the candles on the sidetable, he rummaged in his chest for his incense burner. The strong perfume of the incense went straight to his head. He gulped in great breaths of it until he was dizzy.

  Not dizzy but grown aware of the feel of the air against his fingertips, of the muffled noises that marked life within the Palasso, far away from him.

  “Chieva do’Orro,” he murmured. “Grant this power against life and for death.”

  He touched oil to his tongue and began to paint. The old Tza’ab words came readily to his tongue, an uncanny echo of the old man’s voice, he who had first taught him. So many voices, faces, names lost in the veil of years, but never that of Il-Adib. He shook off the distraction. He must concentrate on what was before him.

  The cypress trees, whose shadow is Death.

  First a brush sketch, then the underpainting, gaining life with tone and detail. Then, into the interstices and the dark corners of the painting, the shading and the shadows, he traced the chain of signs that linked illness and poison and death, insinuating them into the underpainting so no outward face would ever show of this spell. He murmured, under his breath, each syllable as he painted the oscurra.

  Bound them into a chain of oleander that wrapped each slender wrist. Bound them into the eyes, and the fingers, and hid them in black hair.

  The candles burned low as the light outside faded to twilight.

  There. He was finished with the oscurra. Now the final touch. He took up a new brush, one made of his own hair, and wet it with his saliva. He raised his brush.

  A rap sounded on the door.

  “Master Sario? Regretto.” It was one of the Ghillasian soldiers. The voice wrenched him back to earth. The impact was jarring. “Princess Alazais is asking for you, Master Sario.”

  Alazais. Who was Alazais?

  Yes, yes, of course. He must go. Never mind it. The underpaying would dry and he would finish it later.

  Now that he was about to take his rightful place, there was no hurry.

  SEVENTY-EIGHT

  Agustin before his easel dabbed halfheartedly at a watercolor study of the front of Palasso Grijalva while he focused all his attention on the council going on at the other end of the room. The Viehos Fratos were meeting, and they were not pleased.

  “—cannot even send our servants out safely to the markets!” How Agustin had come to hate Nicollo’s whining complaints. “When is the Grand Duke going to take action and clear these thieves and highwaymen from the streets? Or must we take action ourselves? This is intolerable!”

  The Lord Limner’s cough hurt to hear. Andreo spoke with laborious slowness. “Nicollo, you understand I am still trying to reestablish communication with Grand Duke Renayo. I have tried sending notes to his study, but something has been shifted in the room. The spell does not work.”

  There was a long pause while the Lord Limner fought to catch his breath. Andreo Grijalva leaned on his chair back, face gray with pain. This illness had come on suddenly yesterday, and he grew weaker with each passing hour.

  “We have heard rumors,” said Giaberto, “about the arrival of the Ghillasian Princess. It may be Sario is at the Palasso. Surely you could establish contact with him.”

  “I have tried.”

  “Sit down!” snapped old Zosio. “Rest, Andreo. Let others do this work today.”

  “I cannot—I must get through—the barricades on all the avenidas, the Palasso itself blockaded….”

  Andreo broke off. Several voices shouted at once and then came the sickening thud of a body falling heavily to the floor. Agustin dropped his brush and ran across the room.

  Andreo lay on the floor. All the others had risen, even Zosio, except for Nicollo who could not. They stared in horror.

  They’re helpless, thought Agustin with surprise. He turned, ran for the door, and hurried down the stairs, looking for Cabral. He found his Grandzio in the yellow-tiled courtyard, sitting on the bench in the sun, eyes closed. Perhaps Cabral was listening to the fountain, the constant, soothing sound of water. Perhaps, as old people sometimes did, he was reminiscing; his expression mingled sorrow and joy.

  “Zio! Zio! Come quickly. Something terrible has happened!”

  Despite his great age, Cabral was remarkably fit. Agustin, with his weak lungs, was breathing hard by the time they reached the Atelierro. By some magic Agustin did not understand, his mother had reached the Atelierro before him. She stood beside Giaberto, calmly surveying the situation while two servants brought a litter.

  “What has happened?” demanded Cabral, pushing forward.

  “He collapsed.” Giaberto looked stunned. “He is scarcely breathing. May the Matra grant him mercy.”

  Cabral frowned down at Andreo, whose breathing, even in sleep, was labored. Andreo’s fine hands were curled like claws, like a man in the throes of the bone-fever, and yet his joints were not swollen. His chest rose and fell in an irregular rhythm, painful to watch.

  “Has anyone checked his Peintraddo?” Cabral asked quietly.

  Shocked, Agustin saw the same reaction rise on the faces of the other Limners.

  “Andreo has had excellent health,” continued Cabral. “There is no reason for him to collapse in this sudden way, even if he were taken with an illness. Which has not, I note, struck anyone else here.”

  “I am not well,” protested Nicollo. No one spared him a glance.

  “Poison, you mean?” asked Dionisa breathlessly.

  The assembled Viehos Fratos looked at her, then at Giaberto.

  “Dionisa,” said Giaberto quickly, “you must go and prepare a room for Andreo. He must rest in complete quiet. We must send for a sancta.”

  “I will go,” said Cabral.

  Andreo was taken away, still unconscious and with Dionisa as his attendant, and old Davo helped Nicollo to his rooms. The others walked in a herd down to the Crechetta where they stood—staring, speechless, and lost.

  Agustin went to examine Andreo’s Peintraddo. Twenty years ago Andreo had been a handsome young man; he had not weathered the years well, having the kind of looks that fade after the bloom of youth. Agustin had heard that Dionisa and Andreo had gone through a Confirmattio together but if they had once shared an old attachment, then it had lapsed in th
e intervening years under the weight of Dionisa’s fecudity, ambition, and the outrageous behavior of her eldest daughter.

  The self-portrait looked no different than it had yesterday or last week … except, perhaps….

  “Zio Giaberto,” Agustin said. “Look there.” He waited, impatient now, while his uncle detached himself from the others and came over to him. “If you look closely, where you can see glimpses of the underpainting, doesn’t it almost look as if it’s beginning to age and crack, as oil paintings do when they get very very old?”

  At first, as Agustin spoke, Giaberto’s expression remained flat and uninterested, as if he was humoring the boy. But slowly he leaned forward and his eyes narrowed.

  “Yes. Yes!” His voice caught on the word. “These aren’t ordinary cracks. The portrait is barely twenty years old, and Andreo painted it in every way correctly. It should not be deteriorating so soon.” Clasping his hands behind his back, he walked back to the others and they all began to speak in low, intent voices as they returned to the Atelierro.

  Agustin moved right up to the portrait, squinting. Almost it seemed as if these were not cracks at all, visible here and there, at the lips and the side of the nose, at the lid of the eyes and the collar of Andreo’s jacket, but brushstrokes or pencil marks, curving and looping … he shook his head and hurried after the others, catching up with them in the Atelierro.

  The Viehos Fratos were arguing.

  “As senior among you—”

  “You can no longer paint, Zosio. If Andreo does not recover—”

  “Matra Dolcha, Giaberto! You only say that because your sister has wanted you all along to take the position of Lord Limner!”

  “Eiha!” Agustin turned in time to see Giaberto take hold of Andreo’s chair and bang it once, loudly, on the floorboards. “What point is there in arguing? The mobs could burn down our Palasso tomorrow! Moronnos! Until Andreo recovers, if he recovers, which we must devoutly hope he will, we must have a plan of action. We must communicate with the Palasso, so that we can be forewarned if the Grand Duke takes any drastic measures against the mob. We Grijalvas are irrevokably linked with the fortunes of the do’Verradas. We rise or fall with them.”

  Agustin had never heard his uncle speak so forcefully, so pragmatically, Always, before, he had seemed the reluctant mouthpiece of Dionisa.

  “Surely you can’t believe these mobs intend so much destruction?” asked young Damiano, looking frightened.

  “Nicollo is crippled because of the mobs,” said old Zosio, arthritic hands stroking his cane nervously. “Matra ei Filho! I am glad I am an’old man. All these new ideas, this talk of the Corteis and the apprentices having a say … eiha! Nothing good will come of it. Nothing good. See what happened in Ghillas and Taglis when the kings did not slap these rebels down in one stroke?”

  “Hush, Zosio.” Giaberto lifted a hand imperatively. “For good or ill, we are here now. Since the streets are not safe, we need to find a way to communicate—”

  “—with Eleyna,” said Agustin. They all turned to look at him. Gulping down his fears, he walked up to the table. Its great dark bulk, like the weight of all those centuries of councils held round its black expanse, reassured him. “When she was at Chasseriallo, she sent me detailed drawings of the lodge, and I sent her messages—”

  Uproar.

  He wrung his hands and was sorry he had said anything.

  Finally Giaberto shouted them down to silence. “You did what?”

  Agustin smiled tremulously. “I read ahead in the Folio. It’s nothing Grijalvas haven’t done for years. I didn’t see why I should wait for you to teach me. And—” Quickly, because they glared at him. “Eleyna is in the Palasso.”

  “But she is not Gifted. If we could only be sure Sario is in the Palasso, if we could only communicate with him….”

  They began to talk again, to argue, all wasting their breath. Agustin inched backward, then left. No one marked his going. He was too young, not important enough. But Cabral had spoken with Don Rohario, and Don Rohario was linked with the Libertistas. Surely Don Rohario could, by one means or another, communicate with those trapped by the barricades in the Palasso. Surely Rohario could become the conduit through which Agustin could send that first letter to Eleyna—because he had been thinking about her suggestion for talking through two Blooded sketches. It might be possible. As he reached the courtyard, a scream rent the quiet.

  “Ai! Ai! Matra ei Filho! Come quickly!” One of the serving women.

  He ran, puffing, lungs burning, to the chamber off the great hall from which the shrieks came. He was the first to arrive, and there he stood as others, first his mother and then old Davo and then the servants and finally the other Limners, formed a crowd in the doorway behind him.

  Andreo was in seizures. It was so sudden, so violent … he jerked, eyes wide but lifeless. Foam frothed at his mouth. Blood ran from his nose. His arms and legs spasmed, flailing, hitting the wall, until he rolled right off the bed and landed hard on the floor.

  Agustin ran forward. The serving woman crouched, terrified, in the other corner.

  Agustin grasped Andreo’s shoulder and, with a heave, rolled the man over. Blood stained the Lord Limner’s chin and a last gush of red poured from his mouth and washed down into the curve of his neck. His eyes showed only white.

  “Matra!” swore Agustin, staring.

  “Get back from him!” cried his mother. Through a fog, he felt her grab his shoulders and wrench him to his feet, drag him back, away from the horrible wreck that was all that was left of Andreo Grijalva.

  “Matra ei Filho protect us,” murmured Giaberto. “He is dead.”

  SEVENTY-NINE

  Rohario had never seen a council that conducted itself in such an unruly manner. The conselhos at his father’s council table spoke only when spoken to and rarely said anything with which his father might disagree. It was one reason Rohario found the Council of Ministers so boring.

  This, the second official meeting of the Libertistas, was not boring.

  “I say we call ourselves the Corteis and to the hells with those who feel we need the Grand Duke’s permission!” That from a brash young journeyman who wore the sigil of the Masons Guild, the most senior of the building trades.

  “Sit down, young man! Maesso Torrejon has not finished speaking. We speak each in our turn. Or must I remind you again of the rules we have agreed to for this assembly?”

  The journeyman threw himself onto a bench not five paces in front of Rohario, looking sulky but not displeased with his outburst. An equally young friend, wearing the fringed cap typically worn by young men newly come to the practice of architecture, whispered into the journeyman’s ear. This surprised Rohario, since architects were received at Court and craftsmen most certainly were not except for formal audiences on certain Holy Days. Somehow, these two young men had formed a common bond. Others now commented on the journeyman’s furious declaration.

  Maesso Velasco pounded a fist on the table he was using as a podium. He had a big, booming voice and a jovial manner underscored by a steely authority. “My friends, my colleagues, let us pray have silence so Maesso Torrejon can continue.”

  Slowly the crowd of men crammed into Gaspar’s dining room quieted down. They might, and did, disagree vehemently over some issues, yet the rules they had agreed to allowed every man there the right to speak.

  And speak they did. Maesso Torrejon, representing the cloth merchants. Maesso Araujo, an ostentatious man who headed one of Meya Suerta’s prominent banking families. A goldsmith. A notary attached to the civic wing of the Palasso Justissia. Maesso Lienas, a landlord so wealthy he had managed to marry his handsomest daughter to an impoverished Count. Two sanctos, who had sacriligious views about the Ecclesia’s support of the Grand Duke. Even a man Rohario recognized from Court, a perennial malcontent, younger son of one of Renayo’s ministers. Rohario remained in his corner and hoped no one would recognize him.

  As for Maesso Velasco, his great-g
randfathers had parlayed their shipbuilding business founded in the province of Shagarra into a trading venture that spanned all of Tira Virte and far beyond. Rohario knew the Velasco name well from Treaties hung on the wall of the Galerria. Now this scion of that house presided over the proceedings with solemn forbearance for the most outrageous speeches and a strict adherence to the time limit given to each man to present his views.

  What they wanted did not sound to Rohario like the demands of thieves and ruffians.

  A greater say in taxation; the right to grant imprimature to any unusual revenue demands by the Grand Duke. The right to judge themselves through their own courts and to pass laws that would affect their own proceedings and the lives of the many craftsmen and property-holding families who were—they insisted—the backbone of Tira Virte. The right to establish the Corteis as an assembly equal in stature to the Grand Duke’s appointed conselhos, whose ranks were only filled with men of noble family.

  One of the sanctos suggested that the right of suffrage, of the vote to fill the assembly, be granted to all men because all men were equal in the eyes of the Matra ei Filho. “Fraternite; as they claim in Ghillas!” he cried. He was hissed down.

  Rohario frowned as a new speaker stood up.

  “Gentlemen, you know me as Maesso Azéma.” His silver hair stood out starkly against the fine cut of his black coat.

  “Bloody aristocrat!” shouted the mason’s journeyman, not without pride at his own audacity.

  Azéma smiled softly. Rohario did not trust a man who moved through the world so smoothly. “It is true, my young friend, that I am a relative of Baron do’Brendizia. For those of you who do not know why I am here today—”

  “I don’t! Go back to the Palasso, if you can get through the barricades!”

  “Quiet!” said Velasco sternly. “Let our friend speak. He has much of interest to say.”

  Azéma continued. “I am here because my beloved brother, Sebastiano, died in the prisons of Grand Duke Cossimio, third of that name. Sebastiano supported the very cause we meet for today: to reconvene the Corteis. I vowed to carry on his work.”