The Golden Key (144 page)

At first Cabral did not answer. They sat, all of them, so still that two butterflies settled on the ironwork back of the bench, then fluttered away, bright yellow wings a fleeting reminder of summer approaching. What would it be like, Agustin wondered, to reach such a great age that the endless daily concerns of life, the joys and tragedies, might finally be assimilated into serenity? He would never know.

Finally Cabral spoke with that serenity, crafted of age and acceptance. “I am truly the father of Renayo. I am your grandfather. I loved Mechella very much, Rohario. She would have remained true to Arrigo had he given her the slightest encouragement. Eiha. I will not complain now, although I know I should not have let my heart lead me onto such dangerous paths. But I cannot regret the happiness we shared.”

Rohario hid his face in his hands. His shoulders shook so that Agustin could not tell if he was laughing or weeping. Cabral laid a comforting hand on the young man’s arm. In this way, the fountain oblivious to the drama enacted before it, they sat for a long while in silence.

  EIGHTY-SIX  

The
girl came in at dawn to stoke up the fire and open the drapes. Eleyna, half-awake, listened to her movements, heard the door open and close with a soft click. She rose and dressed in the same gown and lace shawl—her hyacinth-embroidered widow’s shawl—that she wore every time she spoke with Agustin. Filled the lantern with oil, lit the wick, placed it in the precise spot a hand’s width from the corner of the table. Then she brought out the parchment and centered it, sides neatly aligned with the table’s edge. Sitting, she squared her shoulders and tucked one stray corner of shawl into the ribbon tied around the high waist of her gown so it wouldn’t slip and spoil the spell.

Shadows lengthened. Light changed.

“Eleyna.” The whisper, a disembodied voice sounding so close that each time she had to stop herself from reaching out across the table to try and touch him.

“Agustin. I am here.”

“Beware. Yesterday the Viehos Fratos met to discipline Sario, but it didn’t work!”

She heard the urgency in his voice, the fear. “It didn’t work?”

“The Chieva do’Sangua did not work. Sario has protected himself—”

That suddenly, Sario burst out of her closet. She stared at him, astonished, then shook free of her amazement, began to stand.

Too late. Even that instant of shocked surprise was too much. He grabbed the lantern, wrenched open the glass shutter, and with palpable fury drenched the parchment with hot oil.

She grabbed for his wrist, got oil on her arm, but it was futile. The parchment shriveled and blackened, not quite catching flame. She ripped off her shawl and smothered the paper, but it did not matter. The damage was already done.

Surely it was only in her imagination that she heard Agustin scream.

Sario yanked her away from the table. “How could you betray me like this! I am teaching
you!
I chose
you!
Not even a Gifted boy. I saw your talent and chose to nurture it when no one else would. How could you!”

“
Murderer!
That was my Agustin!”

He slapped her. Furious, she slapped him back, hard enough that a red stain stood out on his skin.

“Canna!” he swore at her, spitting in his fury. He grabbed her by the wrist and dragged her after him, out into the corridor, down the long halls to Alazais’ suite. Only a few servants walked quietly through the halls at this early morning hour. They looked, but they said nothing. No one questioned Lord Limner Sario. Not anymore.

In shock she let herself be pulled along. Hot oil scorching a blooded painting.
Matra Dolcha, have mercy on him. He is only a child, a delicate filho like Your own.

Alazais was awake, sitting on her silk couch. She looked up as they entered, did not respond to Eleyna’s terrified yelp but went serenely back to her embroidery. Sario dragged Eleyna farther back, into a chamber with only one door.

He shoved her inside, closed the door behind him, locked it and pocketed the key, and then stood, staring at her, eyes bright with angry recriminations. “Where did they learn to talk through paintings? Why was I not told?”

Truly a monster, because he did not care. “That was Agustin!” A sob was torn out of her. “Is he dead?”

“Burned, certainly. Dead, perhaps.” He shrugged. “You used me, Eleyna.” His tone was plaintive. “I have offered you everything I know and you repay me like this! And they—! That they would keep such a secret from
me
but tell an unGifted woman—!”

She could not help herself. She would not give the Viehos Fratos credit for what she and Agustin had devised. “It is not their secret,” she cried triumphantly, and by his startled expression saw she had stricken him. “Agustin and I discovered it. No one else. We did not need your
Folio
—”

“Bassda!” His expression, enraged, scared her into silence. “You?
You!
UnGifted and untrained. …” He touched his key, almost caressed it, and a strange distant look settled on his features. “That I should find the one, and he a woman.” Abruptly he controlled himself. He gestured to the small chamber. A cot stood in one corner. There was a chair and table, two easels, paints, a locked chest, and a number of canvasses stacked along the walls. “Here you will stay.”

“What do you mean to do to me?” She caught her breath, an eerie calm descending on her now, replacing rage and fear.

He moved to one of the easels and pulled off the cloth: her
Peintraddo.
The truth of her revealed: the Luza do’Orro in her eyes and face and a brush in her hand. Such beauty: it rested like the
ashes of burned paper in her mouth. He touched tongue to finger, and that finger to her painted lips. “It is finished. I can do nothing
to
you, estuda meya. You are safe from the Grijalvas, but you are also safe from me, if that is what you feared. I kept
my
part of the bargain, though you have betrayed
me.
” This spoken querelously, like a boy whining over a childish injustice. “If I burn this painting to punish you, then I kill myself.”

“You killed Agustin,” she whispered. But perhaps Agustin was only burned. The parchment had not truly caught fire.
Matra Dolcha, make it be true.

Sario was oblivious to her, caught in his own monstrous concerns. “Yesterday I felt a burning on my hands, a fever, but as if it were happening to another body, not my own. My vision clouded for a moment, then cleared. So I knew they were attempting the Chieva do’Sangua. And I knew then I was harboring a traitor. Which could only be you. But I did not expect—to speak to each other through the painting!
I
should have thought of it!” He stopped suddenly, cocked his head as if listening, then hurried out the door. She heard the key turn in the lock, then silence.

Matra ei Filho! What had happened to Agustin? Retreating, she collapsed onto the cot and lost herself to weeping. And, later, to a kind of blank staring.

Nothing. No one. Too heavy to move. Perhaps he had imprisoned her within a painting. Perhaps this weight of air was what it felt like, dragging her down. Not grief at all, but paint and oscurra, the spelled boundaries confining her, forever and ever.

  EIGHTY-SEVEN  

It
was dark. How had it come to be twilight so soon? Where was she? Eleyna sat up. The canvas cot creaked under her weight. The chamber looked unfamiliar, dark shapes bulking against the wall, easels like ungainly human figures, stick legs and enormous bellies, the angular shadows of the table and chair.

It all came back to her. She had to shut her eyes, the force of memory was so like a sudden blinding light turned full on her, who had been lost in darkness. She had slept while Agustin died, if he was not already dead. Matra ei Filho. Beloved Agustin. She caught a sob in her throat. Heard the key turn in the lock.

She stood as the door opened and Sario entered the room, holding a lamp. He carried a tray in his other hand: a dinner of lamb, bread, vegetables, and fish smothered in a garlic sauce so strong she smelled it from across the room. He brought a fine white wine to drown her sorrow.

She ate, because it would be stupid not to. The silence smothered her, like a thick layer of paint, applied to a canvas in order to hide the image beneath. When he left, taking lamp and tray with him, it was too dark to see, to do anything except grope back to the cot and lie down. Clearly he did not mean to leave her fire, in case she chose to revenge herself by burning one of his spelled paintings, or glass or fork or knife with which to cut into the paint and cause him pain. That night she would have done so, had she the means.

In the morning he returned with rolls and goat cheese and tea. Again he watched her. His scrutiny made her uneasy.

“I give you a choice,” he said finally, as if he could not keep silence against his better judgment. “I cannot bear to see your gift go to waste,
you
, who should have been Gifted. I will continue to teach you, if you wish still to learn from me.”

“Never! Not from you, not from the monster who murdered my brother!”

He sighed, so mild, so reasonable in the light of day. “I
believe
in your talent, Eleyna. Who else does? Who can teach you what you want to know?”

No one else, truly.

Sario brought out pencils and paper and went to the window. In the courtyard below the bloodflowers were in bud, a few already blooming. Six days until Mirraflores Eve. He began to sketch. Her feet worked of their own to move closer to him, so that her eyes might watch him draw.

This man had shattered her life and murdered her beloved brother.

She turned away and sat on the cot, hands thrust between her knees so they would not betray her. After a while, uttering no word of excuse, no word of reproach, he left, locking everything behind him.

But he came back in the afternoon. “I am the only one who will teach you, Eleyna,” he said. “
All
the secrets of the Limners.”

“You murdered Agustin,” she whispered.
All the secrets.
Matra Dolcha, protect her from this temptation.

He went back to the window and began to sketch again. She turned just enough to watch his back, the assured movements of his hands, the set of his posture as he drew. She rose, but not to look at
him.
He was a monster.