The Golden Key

by Melanie Rawn

  This confession brought a wondering buzz to the chamber. Rohario sighed and hunched farther down in his chair. Gaspar’s dining room was overcrowded, and with so many men lining the walls Rohario could see only the upper part of Eleyna’s beautiful mural. One white patch, the faint outline of the cartoon still stippled on its surface, was all that remained unfinished. It seemed forlorn, that bit of white caught halfway between starting and completion.

  Had she truly said those words: “Understand now what is in my heart.” Matra Dolcha! She had kissed him. Here. He lifted a hand to brush his cheek. He could still feel the touch of her lips on his skin, even after so many days.

  “To be successful,” Azéma was saying in that same oily voice, “you must unite all the discontented factions in Tira Virte, not just the guildsmen. If that means extending your hand to those of us who grew up in the Court, then so be it. No!” He gestured toward the journeyman, who had jumped up again. “My young friend, you look so fierce, but if you want your children to prosper, you will see that united by our common purpose we are stronger than we are divided by our birth.

  “To that end, we have a potent weapon to hand which we must use wisely. Sitting in this room is the second son of Grand Duke Renayo, whose sympathies to our cause I have known about for some time.”

  Matra ei Filho! But it was too late. First one, then another, then all at once the rest: they followed the line of Azéma’s gaze and stared. For once, there was complete silence.

  “Don Rohario, perhaps you have something to say to these, our comrades?” asked Azéma.

  Merditto! Those chiros Brendizias had never been trustworthy. His mother had said so. Despite a flash of real fury, Rohario knew he had to play along. He rose. The men stirred, like an anticipatory beast deciding whether to pounce or let alone. Innkeeper Gaspar, by the door, wore an expression of comical dismay—the secret he had been keeping was, at last, revealed.

  “Amicos meyos,” began Rohario, although it grated to address these men with such familiarity. “I stand before you … at a loss for words. I did not expect to be asked to speak.”

  A low chuckle from the assembly. He waited it out, struggling to think. Azéma still smiled, but his expression struck Rohario as more malicious than encouraging.

  Rohario reached for his cravat, thought better of straightening it here where everyone was watching. “I am not accustomed to politics. Nor did I truly know anything at all about what went on in Meya Suerta outside of the Palasso until just after the Feast of Imago, when I came for the first time to this inn.”

  “What brought you here?” demanded the journeyman defiantly. The lack of title resonated as clearly as a spoken insult in the chamber. Filho do’canna! Rohario fought to hide his anger. What could he say that they would believe?

  To his astonishment, Gaspar pushed forward. The innkeeper waved expansively toward the mural on the opposite wall. “He fell in love with the lovely young woman I hired to paint this mural!”

  That brought guffaws. Rohario blushed, but he felt the tide shift. It was time to forge forward.

  “That is not what kept me here!” He stood on firmer ground now. “I have been working—” He had to wait a moment while the buzz died down. “—as a clerk. But I have been listening, also, listening to the voices of the people of Meya Suerta. When I asked my father what he was doing about these grievances—these justified grievances—he threw me out!” He waited for that to sink in and finished in a quieter voice. “So I am here.”

  They regarded him with considering silence, no longer suspicious but not yet convinced.

  “What do you mean to do to help us?” demanded the journeyman, jumping to his feet.

  Velasco slapped a hand down on the table. “Young Ruis, if you speak out of turn one more time, I will happily throw you out of here. Bassda! Let Don Rohario speak.”

  But Don Rohario was staring helplessly at his audience, at a loss for words. Azéma’s smirk broadened; he seemed positively gleeful.

  Perhaps it was only coincidence. Perhaps the Matra truly watched over Her faithful sons. At that moment a rap sounded on the door which then opened to reveal a burly young man holding a cudgel.

  “Maesso Velasco,” said the young thug, whose coat bore the sigil of the respectable Silk Manufacturers Guild, “regretto, but there is a man here.…”

  “Regretto,” said his charge, who belied his polite expression by pushing past the young thug and into the room. He was a vigorous, elderly man with a full head of white hair. He wore a silver key on a chain around his neck.

  As soon as he entered the room, a number of the assembled men hissed softly.

  “—lackey for the Grand Dukes—”

  “—chi’patro—”

  “—cursed Limners—”

  “Silence!” roared Velasco, losing his bluff joviality. “All are welcome to speak.”

  “I beg your pardon,” said the old man, whom Rohario knew well. “I am Cabral Grijalva. I have come here to speak with—” He turned. “—Don Rohario. I did not mean to disrupt your proceedings.”

  “Do you mean to betray us to the Grand Duke?” demanded young Ruis.

  Cabral eyed him mildly, nonplussed by the antagonism directed against him, a man widely known to be the personal favorite of Grand Duke Renayo. “Young man, as long as you bring your petition forward without disturbing the peace, I can assure you the Grand Duke will take your grievances under advisement.”

  A number of men shouted at once. “Throw him out! Sit down! Sit down! Outrageous! Chiros!”

  Velasco seized a knife and with its hilt pounded furiously on the table. “Bassda! There is to be silence!” When the assembly subsided, he turned to Cabral Grijalva. “What is it you want, Master Cabral?”

  “Maesso Velasco, quommo viva? How is your lovely wife? I remember vividly what a beautiful bride she made.”

  “The wedding portrait you painted still hangs in our entrance hall, Master. Indeed, I have a daughter betrothed now, and we have only begun to think about her Peintraddo Marria. We had spoken of hiring you again.”

  Cabral bowed, acknowledging the compliment. “I hope you will vouch for my good name, Maesso, before this hostile audience. My presence here at this time is entirely accidental. I received information that I might find Don Rohario at this inn. I must consult him on a personal matter.”

  “Forgive me, but I must ask you to be more particular.”

  Cabral carefully adjusted his lace cuffs, as if weighing his words. “It has to do with a young woman, whose good name I do not care to bandy about in circumstances as public as these. I hope you understand.”

  Rohario walked forward before he realized he had set his feet one in front of the other. “A few minutes alone, I beg of you,” he said to Velasco, to the room at large. “Then I will return.” He was flushed, he knew it, but the thought that Cabral had brought news of Eleyna set him on edge.

  They relented but only so far as to let the two men confer in the kitchens. Here, by the hearth, it was hot, but private if they kept their voices down.

  “Eleyna—” Rohario blurted out before Cabral could even sit down on the stool where the cook’s girl usually sat to turn the roasting spit.

  “—is safely at Palasso Verrada. I think you unwise to allow yourself to become mixed up with these malcontents, Rohario.”

  “I will do what I think is necessary and right. Most of what they ask for is not unreasonable. It is my father who is unreasonable. If I lend my support—”

  “Then you simply lend legitimacy to a pack of ruffians.”

  “These are not ruffians, Zio! You can see that for yourself. Most of them are respectable men who wish to share in the governance of this duchy—”

  “And where will that lead?” A log shifted in the hearth and the fire spit sparks. Cabral chuckled. “Eiha! I did not come here to argue politics, ninio meyo.” He adjusted his cuffs again, Casteyan lace, Rohario noted idly, of the best quality. Then the old man went on. “I need this message ca
rried to Eleyna.” He drew a folded piece of paper from inside his jacket. “She will give you, in return, a message to carry back to Palasso Grijalva, to me or to Agustin. No one else must know of it.”

  “Of course I will find a way!” But beyond the kitchen door he heard the muttering of the assembly. He paced, five steps away, five steps back. He had not yet won the trust of the men in there. Going to the Palasso would without question seem suspicious to them. But what did their suspicions matter, compared to Eleyna’s need? He took the letter and slipped it inside his coat.

  “You should know,” added Cabral gravely, “one other thing. Lord Limner Andreo died suddenly yesterday.”

  “Your sorrow is mine, Zio. I am grieved to hear it. Who will become Lord Limner now?”

  Cabral frowned. It was a mark of his intimacy with Renayo and of his own forthright nature that he could be counted upon to be blunt. For four years, starting at age twelve, Rohario had studied painting with his “Zio”—as they affectionately called Cabral although of course he was no relation—until that fateful day he had asked the old man for a truthful assessment of his talent. Passable, Cabral had said, good enough for most, but you will never be a great artist.

  Better not to paint than to be merely passable. Rohario had never touched a brush again.

  Cabral smiled softly and squeezed Rohario’s shoulder, as a favorite uncle might. “I do not know who will be Lord Limner. I must go, ninio.”

  “Will you be safe, walking back? One of the young journeymen could accompany you.”

  Cabral’s smile was faint, almost mocking. “Are they yours to command? No, Don Rohario. I am an old man. I have seen too much in my lifetime to be afraid of anything that walks abroad in daylight in Meya Suerta.” And he left.

  Rohario returned to the assembly. The three dozen men waiting for him looked restless, suspicious, and not easily swayed. It suddenly did not look so easy to break the news to them: Don Rohario, having sat in on their meetings, was now about to return to Palasso Verrada. He thought fast.

  “The Grijalva family has sustained a tragic loss. Lord Limner Andreo is dead. But they have no way to carry this news to Grand Duke Renayo.”

  “Hang the cursed Limner’s body up in front of the barricades!”

  “Young pup! That is enough! Take him out!” Velasco had truly lost his temper this time. Four men converged on Ruis and dragged him, swearing, from the room. It took several minutes for order to be restored.

  “I am not yet through!” cried Rohario. That quieted the rest of them. “If this assembly, this very evening, produces an official set of demands, I will act as your representative to carry the paper of grievances to Palasso Verrada. I will return to you with Grand Duke Renayo’s answer.”

  The outcry that followed his words took Velasco ten minutes of vigorous table-pounding to subdue. Azéma watched with a lack of expression that made Rohario nervous.

  But in the end they voted. What an odd concept, that each man might vote on a question put before an assembly. By a scant majority, the Libertista assembly agreed to let Rohario carry the first official statement of grievance to Grand Duke Renayo. There was no going back now.

  EIGHTY

  Eleyna watched Sario at work. She was supposed to be sketching the fountain, but she could not help but watch a man whose technique, whose complete assurance, was everything she longed herself to possess. She could not help watching him because when he painted he burned with an intensity as strong as a blast furnace, white heat, blinding her to everything else.

  He painted Beatriz. Portraits made her nervous after what they had done to her to make her marry Felippo, but she had assisted him in preparing the paletto that would work best to bring Beatriz to life. His paints, this time at least, were as innocent as hers.

  Matra Dolcha! How could no one else have noticed? Sario Grijalva was a brilliant, assured, mature painter, so much better than any Grijalva alive today that she could only compare his work to the greatest of the Old Masters. Was it sacriligious to suggest he was better even than Riobaro, that his genius touched on that of the first Sario? How could the Viehos Fratos have ignored him? They were blind, all of them!

  Disturbed by the fierce passion of these thoughts, Eleyna set down her chalk and walked to the great windows that looked over the courtyard. Afternoon sunlight bathed the green lawn and raked garden in a golden glow. The fountain, a replica of the famous hundred-belled fountain found in the old Tza’ab palasso at Castello do’Joharra, flowed ceaselessly, light and water winking in bursts on the moving bells. A faint melody rang underneath the splash of the water.

  Beatriz, released from her pose by the entrance of Ermaldo, Count do’Alva, crossed to stand beside Eleyna. “It’s very flattering, is it not?” Beatriz asked.

  “What?”

  “The portrait. I will appear muita bela, no?”

  “You are already very beautiful, Beatriz. Look how Edoard watches you.”

  Beatriz turned slightly. Alazais sat on a couch covered in pale blue Zhinna silk brought by sea—by merchants under the protection of Tira Virte—from that distant land of clouds and hidden emperors. Don Edoard was regaling her with an anecdote, evidently about hunting, but mostly he was watching Beatriz with a kind of doglike befuddlement on his face. Beatriz nodded at Edoard, a smile caught on her lips. He paused in mid-sentence, floundered, then found the thread of his story again. Alazais embroidered without faltering. She looked up once but only to see where Sario had gone. He was conferring with the Count do’Alva.

  “How soon will they marry, do you think?” Eleyna asked.

  Beatriz shrugged and leaned toward the warmth of the window-pane. “I don’t know. Edoard says his father has said nothing of the matter to him, although surely it is the obvious course.”

  “And you?”

  “And I?” asked Beatriz with evident surprise. “When the betrothal is announced, I will get my estate and my freedom.”

  “Don’t you care at all?”

  “Edoard is a pleasant, attractive man who is a trifle boring, I admit to you alone. He will marry as his father wishes and after that will consult me from time to time as befits our relationship. And I will have what I want.”

  “How perfectly cold-blooded! You must feel something!”

  Beatriz rearranged her lace shawl, which had slipped. She wore her hair in the newly fashionable style, Ila Revvolucion, up in back with a few curls falling so artlessly to frame her face that Eleyna knew the effect had taken hours to achieve. Eleyna could not imagine spending so many hours sitting still doing nothing. But Beatriz had long ago mastered the art of quietness. She spoke calmly now. “Keep your voice down, Eleyna. I am less devoted to Don Edoard, kind though he may be, than you are to your Master Sario.”

  “I—!”

  “Hush, dolcha Eleynita. I know it is not every day that a Gifted Limner agrees to teach a woman. He is very good.”

  “He is not good, Bellitta,” she said indignantly. “He is brilliant.”

  “Eiha! He has a champion in you, I see.”

  “You don’t like him?” demanded Eleyna, fierce in his defense.

  “I find his behavior a little odd. I do not think you or I are fated to love any man as Grandmother did her Zevierin.”

  Like a belated greeting, tossed over a shoulder just as its bearer departed, Eleyna remembered Rohario. His name struck her like a bolt of cold light in a warm, dark room. She had been thinking of nothing but painting.

  “That isn’t true!” she protested and suddenly had Rohario whole before her, his diffidence that covered a stubbornly rebellious spirit, the line of his jaw, the cut of his jacket. “That isn’t true for me!” Or was it true? Would she ever love any man as much as she loved to paint?

  Beatriz glanced toward Sario, who bowed to Errnaldo and walked back to his easel. Matra! Beatriz had misunderstood her. She thought that she, Eleyna, was in love with Sario Grijalva!

  “Beatriz,” Sario said. “If you will resume your position, I will soo
n be done with you. Eleyna. If you will.”

  Beatriz patted her sympathetically on the hand and left. Eleyna hesitated.

  “Eleyna?” Sario asked sharply. He glanced at her, his gaze a flash of dark shadow. Drawn, she took two steps toward him without thinking.

  Matra Dolcha! And wasn’t she in love with him? Not with him, with Sario the man, but with what he was and what he offered her? It was a sobering revelation. Obedient, she crossed to his side. Beatriz watched her knowingly.

  Eleyna sketched, but she was by now too distracted to do more than a cursory study of the fountain. The door into the studio opened and closed; opened and closed. These days, Alazais’ sitting room—Sario’s atelierro—was the center of Court.

  “You are not concentrating,” said Sario without looking up from his painting. He had captured Beatriz to the heart. Eleyna saw the stubborn jut of her pretty jaw, the shrouded fire in her eyes, the compliant smile that promised much but gave away nothing important. How much his eye knew of her that she, Beatriz’s sister, had not suspected until recently.

  Eleyna bit her lower lip and frowned at her drawing. She took a stick of white and tried to give glints to the bells.

  “Merditto,” she muttered under her breath. It just wasn’t working.

  He made a noise in his throat, turned, took four steps to her side, pulled the chalk out of her hand, and made three marks on the paper. “There. There. And so.”

  Eiha! It was perfect. Sunlight glittered off bells shrouded in a mist of flowing water.

  “You are distracted,” he said. “There is no point in you working now. You may resume in the morning.”

  Stung, she stood passively while he returned the chalk to her hand and returned to his portrait. Behind her, a man cleared his throat. She spun, startled, to see a middle-aged man dressed in the do’Verrada livery.

  “Maessa Eleyna.” He bowed, one hand tucked into his jacket lapel. A folded slip of paper peeked from underneath the cloth. “I beg pardon for disturbing you. I have a message. …” He cocked one eyebrow up.