The Golden Key (130 page)

At
dawn she paced out her prison, measuring it, noting the couch covered in the finest blue Zhinna silk, the Niapalese chair and table, and the single painting, a remarkable study of the Grand Duchess Mechella as a young woman presiding over the festival of Astraventa, one hand resting on the tousled head of her younger son, Renayo, the other holding a mirror that reflected a star. And yet Cabral’s fine portrait was doomed to languish in this side room because of the prohibition made centuries before by the Ecclesia that art should depict no mother and son together except the Matra ei Filho. Yet if Cabral had been Gifted, she thought, the Grijalvas would have championed his beautiful painting, not hidden it away like this.

Without question, he was the best Grijalva painter alive today. She paced. Perhaps not better than the young Itinerarrio, Sario, who had come and gone before she had been able to meet him. She recalled him vaguely from classes in the ducal Galerria, ten years ago: He had shown no particular spark then, but it was not unknown for a boy’s Gift to mature late. The sketches Sario had produced during his Itinerrario service had been fascinating. This was someone, she was sure, who understood what she wanted to do.

Alas, Sario Grijalva had left to resume Itinerarrio service. Andreo had been too stupid to keep him here. Moronnos! They could not see quality when it sat in front of their noses!

Eiha! Pointless to think about it.

She paced, measuring the room. Fourteen paces by nine paces, a room on the third floor, hidden away in the warren that was the oldest part of the compound. A couch, a chair and table, a bed and washstand; all furniture of the finest workmanship but a prison’s furniture nevertheless. At least she had Cabral’s painting to study. Grazzo do’Matra that there were windows in this chamber. There would be light enough to paint during the day. If they gave her paper and paints.

What did they mean to do with her?

Felippo.

What if they meant to paint her into submission again? There were other men who needed brides, families grown rich on Tira
Virte’s bounty who would count it a fine accomplishment to feather their nests with a Grijalva bride, even a barren one. Especially if that bride’s sister was the Heir’s Mistress.

Horrified, she searched, hands shaking, in the pocket sewn into her inner skirt. Let out a gasp of relief, finding paper and chalk and a pencil there. When Giaberto had arrived at the inn she had not thought to grab anything. She smoothed the paper out on the table and wrote, hastily, glancing time and again at the door. Every creak and distant footfall startled her. Soon they would come.

I am Eleyna Grijalva. I am a painter. I am writing these words down now so I might remind myself, whatever they do to me, who I really am. I am Eleyna Grijalva. I am a painter. I will paint. It is the gift the Matra granted me at my birth. It is my life. Trust Agustin and Beatriz and Grandzio Cabral, but no others. Trust Rohario do ‘Verrada.

Staring at these last words, she flushed. Unaccountably the room became warm, although the brazier was not lit. Biting her lip, she added another sentence in tiny letters.

I think I love Rohario do ‘Verrada.

She set down the chalk and covered her face with her hands. These feelings were as sudden and unexpected as if they had been painted onto her. All those weeks together at the inn—Matra ei Filho, but she had simply been happy. Yet she had not
felt
this until now. What had triggered it? In her mind’s eye she saw his face, half lost in the smoky glare of the torches. She heard his last words: “
At least do not forbid her to paint.
”

Footsteps, coming down the hall. A key set into the lock. She folded the paper quickly, thrust it into her pocket just as the door opened to admit Giaberto and her mother.

“What use do you have for me now?” Eleyna demanded.

“You! That my firstborn should turn into a viper striking her own mother’s breast!” Dionisa strode energetically to the window and back, unable to be still. She wore a gown of do’Verrada blue today, as befit the mother of the Heir’s Mistress. “You have brought disgrace down onto Palasso Grijalva. Living as a common mistress with a man, in a public inn! Have you no shame?”

Eleyna saw no point in replying.

“The Grand Duke is furious. Furious! He blames you for seducing his son away from Chasseriallo. Why could you not have done as you were told and become Edoard’s mistress? Moronna! You
would have had wealth, anything you wanted, but you must throw it all away only to spite your family! Now your sister is ruined forever—”

“Surely you overstate the case, Mama. As I remember, Grandzia Tazia married very well after Arrigo married.”

“You will not mention her name to me again. Venomma ninia!”

“Dionisa!” Giaberto had remained silent throughout this diatribe, his only movement to massage his right hand. “The child is not poisonous, only strong-willed.”

“Bassda, ‘Berto! The Grand Duke is furious. Andreo thinks Revirdin and I have made the Grijalvas look foolish, and he is sure to take out his petty irritation against us in one way or another. Beatriz is ruined for a good marriage. Agustin has fallen ill—”

Eleyna gasped. “What has happened to Agustin?”

“You can be sure I will not let you corrupt him further, Eleyna. Here in this room you will stay until we have decided what to do about you. Come, ‘Berto.”

Dionisa swept out. Giaberto followed more slowly, looking as if he wanted to say something but dared not. The door shut firmly, and the key turned in the lock. Eleyna went at once to the window, but through the bars she could only see the servants’ garden and a line of old oak barrels set out to catch rainwater. Twisting her hands on the cold iron, she considered, her mind in turmoil.

A perfect rendering. A portrait, painted with the blood or tears or saliva or seed from a Limner’s body. Did she have any defense at all against Limner magic? She would shift all the furniture in her room, each day, twice a day, perhaps. Turn the coverlet over. Sleep with her head at the other end of the bed. Sleep on the couch. But from what she had put together of Agustin’s hints and Leilias’ murmured secrets, it seemed to Eleyna that suggestion magic was less taxing. What if there was no defense against the subtle insinuation of a new thought, a new preference? No defense except the conscience of the Limners? It was not a reassuring thought.

Oh, Agustin would never do such a thing. Leilias’ beloved Zevierin would never have done so, nor Leilias’ two Gifted sons, both dead now. Nor would Cabral, had he been granted the Gift. But the others—eiha! She already knew what they were willing to countenance.

A pall of smoke hung over the city, dissipating in an evening wind that soughed up from the distant marsh. A servant brought her food at the midday bell and again at evening. She passed the day pacing, thumbing through the Holy Verses that had been left on the table and drawing increasingly elaborate, impossibly tiny portraits
of Rohario in and around the letters of the note she had written to herself. The evening bell rang. As its reverberations trembled into silence, she heard the scrape of a shoe and the snick of the key in the lock. Then she caught the scent of manzanilla tea and of freshly baked bread, and she relaxed. It was only a servant bringing the evening supper.

But it was not only a servant.

“Agustin!” She jumped up and took the tray from him. He had, unaccountably, grown noticeably taller in the past weeks, but his complexion looked pallid. The manservant in the hallway shut the door behind them. Agustin made a little grimace as the door was locked from the outside.

“You are ill?” Eleyna set the tray down and hugged her brother, examining him carefully.

He smiled cheerfully. “No, it is nothing. I only have weak lungs. They will kill me, or the Gift will, eventually. What does it matter which one?”

“Agustin!”

His face wore a new maturity. “Pluvio en laggo. I can do nothing about it. What matters more is that I have learned so much these past weeks!” It flooded out: suggestion spells, the Blooded parchment through which he had listened in on the Conselhos meeting, the careful use of blood and tears to create a spelled painting.

“Eiha, young master! I see you are wearing your Gift proudly, en verro. Can you protect me from a suggestion spell!”

He sat down on the couch. “I am talking when you should be eating. There is onion and tomato soup, still cold. Saffron chicken with rice and peas. Bread, as you see. Fruit tart. Everything you like best. I asked the cook to prepare all your favorite things.”

Eleyna laughed, but she sat down. The food did smell very good. “You are not hungry?”

“Not at all. I ate all the leftover custard.”

The soup was excellent, as always. “You haven’t answered my question, Agustin.”

“I don’t know,” he said seriously. “The
Folio
is locked away, but I have been given a key—made of bronze but of the same shape as the Golden Key worn by the Master Limners—because I am recognized as an apprentice. I’ll read ahead.”

“Don’t do anything that might endanger you!”

“Damiano is twenty-four and already a Vieho Frato.
I
am the only apprentice. They
need
me.”

“Surely they have ways of controlling you as well as unGifted family like me,” she said bitterly.

He frowned, gnawing on a nail.

“Your hands!”

“Eiha.” He pulled his finger from his mouth and smiled sheepishly at her. “It’s a bad habit. In a few years I will paint my
Peintraddo Chieva
, which will elevate me to Master Limner status. With all the—eiha! This is what you do not know. In oils, with my blood. Oil and blood is the most potent spell. But if that painting is Blooded, they can use that painting to discipline me or as a threat of discipline to make sure I adhere to the decisions made by the Viehos Fratos.”

Eleyna pushed the chicken away, suddenly sick with foreboding. “That would mean, if your essence was intertwined with the painting, if it was blooded with your blood, then to harm or destroy the painting would be to harm or destroy you.”

“Exactly.”

“The Grijalvas have always kept a tight grip on their own, have they not?” No ambitious Gifted Grijalva boy had ever taken the world by storm, done what he pleased for his own gain. All had served the family. “So they control you. If you do not do as they bid, then they destroy you.”

Agustin picked up the chalk she had left on the table and spun it, end over end, through his fingers, as if its motion reflected his throughts. “This very morning I read some old documents from the time of Duke Baltran. The Serrano family were still Lord Limners then. They accused the Grijalvas of black magic. And you
know
what happened after the Nerro Lingua. If we do not protect ourselves, we could all be condemned and impoverished. Or killed.”

“Eiha, Agustin. No doubt you speak the truth. It is an effective way to rein in the excesses of those men who might abuse the power they have. But it is easier for you, who have the Gift, to think lightly of it. I can only be its victim. And I do not like that.”

“Eat your supper. It is rude not to eat what the cook has gone to such pains to prepare for you.”

“You are growing up, picco frato.” She dutifully finished her supper. She was too practical to let good food go to waste, especially after drawing so many starving faces. And she had a special fondness for the old cook who reigned in the kitchens and who was always willing to slip treats to those Grijalva children who made the slightest attempt to sweeten her up. The fruit tart, garnished with apricots and nutmeg, was delicious.

“Tomorrow,” said Agustin after she finished, “I will bring you some new drawings I have done.”

From outside, they heard a muffled shriek.

“Matra Dolcha!” Agustin sat up straight on the couch.

The door opened. Dionisa appeared, a clutch of papers crumpled in her left hand. “Agustin, go back to your room!”

He regarded her calmly. “No, Mama, I will not. I will visit Eleyna whenever I please, as is my right as her brother.”

“Agustin! How dare you disobey me!”

If he was at all nervous, defying his mother in this fashion, he betrayed it only by his hands, clasped together and thrust between his knees. Eleyna waited for the explosion, but to her astonishment their mother acquiesced to this rebellion. Instead, thwarted of one outlet, she threw all her anger at her daughter.

“Giaberto tells me that you—
you!
—have been party to this Libertista treachery.” She waved the papers, which Eleyna now saw were broadsheets. “Is this true?”

“You did not recognize my drawings yourself but had to have Giaberto identify them for you?” Her mother’s anger hurt less than the knowledge that Dionisa cared so little for Eleyna’s art that she did not know her own daughter’s hand.

“Your beloved Libertistas burned down the west wing of the Palasso Justissia last night! And we found
these
… these
thing’s
, these spewings of a dog, being distributed on the streets. Where any man might see a Grijalva’s handiwork! You would be ashamed of yourself if you had any shame.”

“I must do with my gift what I think is right.”

Dionisa ripped the broadsheets into tiny pieces and threw them like so much confetti onto the plank floor. “Eiha! You will not defy me for long, mennina! You have a visitor. I would have prevented him from seeing you, if I could, but Andreo and Nicollo overruled me. It is all very well to say that his father has thrown him out of the Palasso, but I do not imagine the Grand Duke will cut him off completely or refuse to come to his aid if he is not treated with the deference due his station. So I gave in. Venomma! You have ruined all my plans!”

Eleyna rose so quickly she knocked over her cup, spilling the dregs of her tea. Rohario walked in, escorted by Giaberto and—Matra!—Lord Limner Andreo himself.

Rohario had gone to great pains with his dress, although she could see the worn patches at his elbows, faded but not yet fraying. Beside his sober elegance, Andreo’s jacket and waistcoat looked gaudy, not rich. But in all those tiny portraits she had drawn today,
she had not even once gotten Rohario right: the mouth drawn too thin, or the eyes not dark enough, the brows too arched, his hands too lax, without a pen in them.