The Golden Key (107 page)

“Let me get it, Maessa.” A man several steps away shoved his way down to the base of the fountain and without minding shoes or trousers waded into the spray and fetched out her drawing board. It dripped water on the stone, painting the granite dark gray, as he climbed back up to her.

Behind him, like an afterthought, came a press of young men, singing a coarse drinking song while waving their signs and banners enthusiastically. They came so quickly that Eleyna had to retreat up another tier and partway around the fountain. She no longer had a clear view of the cathedral. Mist sprayed, winking in the sunlight.

She found a square of stone and held her ground. There he was! As he fought his way toward her, she studied him. In his late twenties, he had a bland, round, ordinary face, a familiar face, but one she could not place. His black hair was cut without flair, unlike most of the young bravos around her, who seemed as vain of their appearance as enthusiastic about their political views. He had no grace to speak of, skinning his knee with a grunted curse as he scrambled up beside her. But his hands. …

She always noticed hands, and his had long, tapering fingers and broad, strong palms, the kind of hands it was a pleasure to paint. And—there!—a telltale smear of dried paint.

“You’re a Grijalva,” he said, without giving her the board.

With the crowd roaring around her, her sketchpad creased and her dress disheveled, Eleyna lost her temper. “You’ll get no access to Palasso Grijalva from me!” She grabbed the drawing board and
tugged it out of his hand. “There is a painting academy on Avenida Shagarra. You would have better luck applying there.”

He only smiled. His preternatural calm in the midst of a swirling protest made her apprehensive. The crowd’s murmur began to crescendo, growing agitated and ugly.

“I only wish to escort you home, Maessa.” He had to shout to be heard above the noise. “I was watching you sketch. You are talented, are you not? Truly gifted.” He meant it not as flattery but as a plain fact which both he and she ought to recognize.

It stopped her dead. She ought to go, but she could not bring herself to move. This man, this stranger, knew something about her that no one else, not since Grandmother Leilias had died, knew, or admitted. Not Gifted—no woman could be Gifted—but gifted with a true talent as fine as that owned by her Gifted male cousins.

More young men leaped up onto the fountain, climbing higher and higher until a trio finally braved the spray to vault themselves to the finial. A compatriot threw a banner up to them, and they draped it over the statue of Duke Alesso to howls of approval from the crowd below.

“Let the Corteis meet!”

“No taxes without our consent!”

More, and more yet, swarmed up onto the fountain for a better view. A woman shrieked and a baby wailed in fear. Eleyna was caught, pressed backward.

“Who are you?” she cried, but a great roar broke loose from the crowd as a second blue, black, and silver banner was unfurled on the roof of the Palasso Justissia. In the crush, she was forced to stumble backward while the stranger was caught by the tide and swept away from her. She lost sight of him. Water misted her hair and neck. A woman in an apron and skirt stained gray with ash stared at her, at her sketchpad and drawing board, then pointed, away, where a line of green appeared, wavering, down one of the boulevards.

“Look there, arnica, down the Boulevard Benecitto. The Duke has called out the Shagarra Regiment. Chiros!” The woman spat into the fountain. She held a basket filled with dried crusts of bread. “They say that in Ghillas there is fresh bread for all people, even the poor, taken from the nobles’ kitchens.”

The hymn “Novva Pluvia,” The New Rain, started in one corner of the zocalo, swelling in volume as most of the crowd took up the song. But the words sounded now more like a threat than a plea to the heavens: “
With the new rain we shall be set free!
”

Mist—or were those tears?—stung Eleyna’s eyes. Why shouldn’t
the people of Meya Suerta protest? Weren’t they, like her, forced to be ruled without having any say in what they chose to do? She was twenty-one years of age, had been a widow for two years, but her parents thought of her only as a pawn to be used to further their ambitions.

First they had used her in the Confirmattio, and when through two Confirmattios she had failed to conceive, they had married her off to Felippo Grijalva, who had already outlived two wives. It was only after a stillbirth and Felippo’s death during the Summer Fever that they had grudgingly allowed her the run of the studio, but only because Grandmother Leilias had insisted upon it. Leilias had power within the family.

Now Leliras was dead. Dowager Duchess Mechella was dead. Mechella’s grandson, Edoard, first son and heir to Grand Duke Renayo II, had gotten grudging permission from his father to reinstate the old tradition of a Grijalva Mistress, the Marria do’Fantome.

What better choice than a young widow who had already proven herself as good as barren?

“All I want to do is paint!” she cried, if only to that chance-met stranger who had admired her talent. But he was lost, and the great shout that rose from the crowd as it finished the last verse drowned out her voice.

Fleeing the press of the crowd and the approaching soldiers, yet more people surged up onto the fountain. Too many. It was too crowded. Eleyna fell to one knee, catching herself and skinning a palm on stone, clutching her precious sketchpad, dropping the drawing board, and scrabbling for purchase. She could not stay here. The Grand Duke’s soldiers were coming.

Lowering her head, using her elbows, she fought her way down the basins and tiers of the fountain. She almost lost her footing when she reached the ground. People were caged together by others like so many chickens brought home from the market. Their shouts blended into an unintelligible din. She shoved and elbowed her way, stumbling over a crumpled body, was swept first to the right, then to the left, fighting against the current, but at last she managed to get out. As she reached the fringe of the crowd, opposite the cathedral, the going became easier. She had reached the Avenida Oriale when the first shots were fired.

Not bothering to look back, Eleyna ran. And hated herself, for was she not running back to the safety of Palasso Grijalva? That was not safety, but a prison!

Her parents wanted their daughter to be Don Edoard’s mistress.
Mistress to the Heir to the throne—that was power! That was influence! By that means they could control the Viehos Fratos, power which had been denied to her mother’s branch of the family for two generations—her mother, who was the niece of the fabled Tazia, mistress to Arrigo III … the woman who had dared to try to kill Grand Duchess Mechella.

But Eleyna didn’t care about that kind of power. She wanted no part of it. That was why they had never understood her.

She ran now, back to them, only because she was afraid. Behind, the dull roar turned into riot as the noon sun beat down on the city of Meya Suerta and a volley of musket fire broke the peace of the Iluminarres Procession.

  FIFTY-EIGHT  

Rohario
Alejandro Enricci Clemenzo do’Verrada, second son of Grand Duke Renayo and the late Grand Duchess Mairie, was the last person in the cathedral to realize that a riot had started outside in the zocalo.

The weight of the ceremonial clothing made it hard to move, but since he had no responses to speak, no verses to declaim, he had long since lost track of the ceremony. He stood in front of the altar—his appointed place—and stared at the monumental altarpiece that dominated the Sanctuary. The Mother, Her infant Son sitting on Her knee, gazed down on him. She wore cloth of gold robes in the antique style, draped elegantly along one arm; the other arm was shadowed by Her Son’s chubby figure. It was an old masterpiece, the only item saved from the original cathedral when it had burned down in 1155. When the cathedral was rebuilt, the
Birth of the Holy Child
took pride of place.

Matra Dolcha! It was a glorious painting. Rohario knew its history well: It was the last masterwork painted by the legendary Sario Grijalva. Although over three hundred years old, its fine golden luster still shone as if it was freshly painted: the calm, embracing gaze of the Mother, the delightful and delighted infant smile of Her Son, the attending angels with wings upswept and both sun and moon casting light over the Throne. The luza itself was so subtly done that it was only from this close that Rohario could see how that light played in the robes of the angels and along the form of the Mother, golden sunlight painted ever so slightly distinct from the pale silver beams of the moon.

There was something almost magical about it. Even at great state ceremonies like this one, when he might kneel among a thousand worshipers, Rohario still felt Her gaze like the weight of his robes. It wasn’t heavy, but reassuring: solid, tangible. Even when his dear mother had died and he had knelt, weeping, at the service given in her honor, even then the serene gaze of the Mother had soothed him. Even when his father had remarried that beautiful but brainless northern princess with her cartloads of gold and a merchant fleet as dower—but no ear for music, no eye for art and the most horrific accent—even then, as he stood through the marriage
ceremony, his anger and frustration and disappointment had slowly drained away.

He let that peace pour over him now, as if it were a whisper for his ears alone:
All will be well.

When a sancto jostled his elbow, Rohario started. A strange roar echoed through the cathedral.

“I beg your pardon, Don Rohario,” said the sancto, a white-haired man Rohario knew instantly: Sancto Leo was chaplain for the fourth service each month, a kind old man with a particularly gentle voice. “Please, my lord. We must hurry. You must get those robes off.”

“But the ceremony isn’t over yet.”

“There is a … disturbance outside, my lord. Please. We must get you back to the Palasso.”

Slowly it dawned on Rohario that, despite the calming presence of the altarpiece, Sancto Leo was terrified.

“What kind of disturbance?” He shrugged off the heavy robes into the waiting arms of a white-faced servitor, then took a few steps toward the great doors. In the vast nave of the cathedral, people milled: sanctos, sanctas, other members of the procession. The high vault made them all appear tiny, insignificant compared to the majesty of the Matra ei Filho. Rohario saw no sign of the Premio Sancto or the frail Premia Sancta.

“I beg your pardon, my lord. This way. We’re going out through the chapter house. It isn’t—” Leo broke off, waving away the servitor, and grabbed Rohario’s arm to tug him toward the door that led into the rooms behind the Sanctuary.

“It isn’t what?” protested Rohario.

The old man’s grip was amazingly ironlike, reminding Rohario of his old nurse, Otonna, who would come every day at noon to drag him out of the Galerria back to the schoolroom for his lessons. Because he hated scenes, he gave in.

Sancto Leo led Rohario into the warren of small rooms where the Premio Sancto prepared his lessons. Several other men, servitors and sanctos, followed like so many frightened sheep.

“It isn’t safe,” said the old man. “A riot has broken out. Nommo do’Matra! What has the world come to? This would never have happened when I was a boy. Why, Grand Duchess Mechella, Matra bless her memory, would have ridden out in her carriage and the mob would have prostrated themselves at her feet in shame. It’s a terrible thing, a terrible thing.”

There were no windows in these back rooms, so Rohario could not look outside. He had never seen a riot, never even suspected
one might happen in, of all places, Meya Suerta. But he had heard that in recent months mobs had burned down the king’s palace in Taglis and rioted for bread in the city of Niapali. Maybe, like a plague, the restlessness had now infected Tira Virte’s populace.

“Eiha!” said Rohario suddenly, dredging up some gossip he had heard in passing at a concert four nights before. “It’s something about the Corteis, isn’t it?”

“Matra ei Filho!” exclaimed the old man. “What is it you do all day, ninio? Do you know nothing of what goes on in this city?”