The Golden Key (30 page)

But that is Sario.
And she forgave it, because no one else would.
I might refuse him … I might insist that he leave me to work just once.
But she would not. She understood the insatiable need that ravaged him: to free the fire of his inner vision before it burned him up.

Empty of his presence, his intensity, the room was oddly diminished despite its clutter: raw, primed, and cloth-draped canvases, oiled wooden panels propped against the walls; shelves and tables packed with chipped, wax-plugged crockery pots containing solvents, oils; bowls of dried beeswax, chunky amber and gum acacia that would eventually be melted down to resin; sealed bottles of ground pigment powders; sheaves of tattered paper and vellum
bearing bold or intricate scrawls; clouded vials of unidentified substances; brushes, handles, and paletto knives scattered like corn for chickens; and rags festooning the room like the bloodflower wreaths of the Mirraflores festivities.

Saavedra thought to return later when he was present, but an unfinished painting caught her eye. Propped yet on an easel near the balcony door, it glistened wetly, smelled of resin and oil, of a faint coppery tang oddly akin to blood; even, strangely, of the sweet-sour, acrid pungency of old urine—or perhaps it was just that Sario, consumed by inspiration, hadn’t bothered to empty the nightpot shoved behind a battered screen!

She wandered to the painting, curious; she had not seen it before, but he showed her everything. The work was far from completion. A portion of the meticulously primed canvas was as yet naked of paint, bearing only the detailed sketches of what he would do, the first thin layers of ground and body color. But most of it was well underway, and she saw the scheme of the thing, the scope— and a very bizarre border, almost like a frame itself though painted onto canvas.

“Matra,” she murmured, frowning, “what are you doing, Sario?”

“What I am doing is wholly my business, no?”

Saavedra jumped and swung awkwardly, startled so badly she nearly knocked over the easel. She grasped it hastily, steadied the painting, then turned to face him squarely. “This is not you, Sario … this is not your style at all.”

“What I do
becomes
my style.” He wore a tattered cambric shirt liberally daubed and stained by the substances of his talent and something that looked like blood, sleeves rolled back from sun-darkened forearms. Dark hair in need of cutting was tied loosely with a length of leather thong, though one heavy lock swung forward along the line of his jaw. A smear of paint altered the shape of his nose from blade-straight into something less stringent, a smudge of charcoal dust hollowed the steep angle of a cheekbone.

He looks so much like the old man now, that old Tza’ab fool—it’s in the bones, the flesh
—

Beneath the soiled collar—the shirt was left carelessly untied to fall open nearly to the high waistband of his tight, paint-stained hosen—the chain of Sario’s rank glinted against a smooth, dark chest. “I refuse to lock myself into a box, Saavedra. J must be free to paint as I will.” He went to one of the worktables, took vials out of a pocket, tucked them away into a box.

“Of course,” she replied mechanically; they had discussed this before. “But this border is new, and—”

“Odd?” He smiled, tangibly smug. In two years he had matured completely in body, as Grijalva Limners did; there was little time for awkward adolescence. He was eighteen now, not tall but well-made, slender but inherently graceful, with striking Desert-bred features that would do as well as subject as the artist. In all ways a man, Sario Grijalva, albeit more than most: supremely talented, unarguably Gifted, content within himself as he had never been as a boy. “Yes, odd,” he agreed in his light baritone. “It is a Tza’ab convention, the border. The Al-Fansihirro always employed it in their work.”

Saavedra bristled to hear him so condescending. “
You
never have!”

“No. But I do now. Here—would you see? Surely you came to see.”

Uneasy, Saavedra watched him move around the room crisply, throwing cloths back from canvas. He was often curt with others, but never with her … and yet now he treated her as one of
them.

“Look upon them.” He stripped concealing fabric away. “Borders on all of them, yes?”

She looked from canvas to canvas, trained eye naturally noting the composition, balance, use of color—but what she most noted were the indicated borders. Each was different. Some were wide, some narrow, a few ornate, others spare and clean. He had painted interlocking ribbons, braided tree branches, ornate vines; odd, stylized patterns endlessly repeating. Fruits, branches, flowers, herbs, and leaves all played an integral part.

Saavedra stared. “This changes everything …”

“Yes,” he agreed. “I meant to.”

“This is like nothing done before!”

“Not here, no. But it’s traditional in Tza’ab Rih.”

She looked at
him
now, sharply. “It’s that old Tza’ab … you spend so much time with him—
too
much time!—and now it’s invading even your work!”

“Invading?” he asked mildly. “As the Tira Virteians invaded Tza’ab Rih? Eiha!—but I’m forgetting … it wasn’t Tira Virte then. Just the do’Verrada and their supporters, even a few Grijalvas.” He shrugged elaborately. “But what does it matter, names?—the end was the same. Tza’ab Rih destroyed, the Diviner killed, the
Kita’ab
lost, and lands stolen by those who were then acclaimed Dukes in perpetuity.”

“Sario!”

He pressed a flattened hand against his breast. “What,
Saavedra—shocked? But why? It is the truth.
Our
truth. There is no Grijalva living who does not bear Tza’ab blood.”

“There may be Tza’ab blood
in
us, but we aren’t Tza’ab, Sario! We’re Tira Virteian.”

“And they hate us for it.”

It stopped her utterly. For the first time in months she looked at him to judge, to weigh, to consider who and what he was beyond what she knew, and realized he had at some point become estranjiero.

“That man,” she declared virulently. “
He
has done this to you. He’s perverted you, polluted you, told you lies. Next you will be wearing a Tza’ab turban!”

“No, no turban,” Sario said, laughing, “nor any lies either. What Il-Adib has given me are such truths as you could not imagine, first because you lack the vision of Al-Fansihirro, but also you would never permit yourself the freedom of thought required. You are a good little Grijalva, yes?”

Defying purposeful provocation, she shook her head firmly. “Sario, this is lunacy. He’s trying to turn you against your own people.”

“The Tza’ab
are
my people.”

“But not to the exclusion of others,” she shot back. “Matra Dolcha, Sario, have you gone moronno luna? Look around you! You are a Grijalva, born and bred of Tira Virte—”

“
And
Tza’ab Rih.”

“They were bandits who stole away those women and
raped
them, Sario! There is no glory in that.”

“And thus nothing to revere? Nothing to learn from them?” He flung out a hand. “
Look
at the paintings, Saavedra! Different, yes … unlike anything anyone else is doing, yes—but poor? No. Unschooled? No. Worthless? No.” His eyes shone. “
Different
, ‘Vedra. Just as I am.”

“Merditto! You are no different than I, Sario.”

Teeth flashed briefly against his sun-darkened face. “Then perhaps you would do well to come to Il-Adib for instruction. He has much to teach.”

He was wholly infuriating. “You
are
moronno luna! Do you think I wish to waste my time listening to that old fool? Nommo do’Matra, Sario—”

“Or Acuyib.”

It slowed her only fractionally. “Acuyib! Acuyib? Have you renounced the Ecclesia, then? Have you turned your back on the Mother and Her Son?”

Unperturbed, Sario laughed indulgently. “I only meant that there are other names to swear by. And perhaps we
should
renounce the Ecclesia; the sanctas and sanctos have renounced us!”

“Not ‘renounced’—”

“Then what else should you call being ordered to worship within your own walls, eh?” He indicated the atelierro. “The Premia Sancta herself ordered us not to pollute the shrines and Sanctias, Saavedra. So much for mercy!”

“She is wrong,” Saavedra said tightly, “but it has nothing to do with the Ecclesia. She is a Serrano, after all.”

“And so is the Lord Limner. Thus we are powerless to change anything.”

Saavedra opened her mouth to contest that, then clamped it shut so hastily she nearly clicked her teeth together.
Lord Limner
— She turned her attention back to the first painting she had observed, still propped upon its easel. Before she had not marked the identity of the unfinished face, merely that it was begun. The border had drawn her attention. Now it was the face. “Holy Mother, Sario. What are you doing painting
Zaragosa Serrano
?”

Something glittered in his eyes, was banished even as he glanced at the box into which he had put the vials. “A jest,” he answered blandly. “I thought I would paint his portrait and have it delivered to him—anonymously, of course—so he might know what
true
talent is, albeit he must see it in his own face!”

It made no sense. “But why waste your time on him? On
that
? He is nothing to us, Sario.”

“He is a heresy to us. He pollutes what once was an honorable office. When Grijalvas held the appointment.”

“Eiha, but I thought you renounced the Grijalva in you and looked now to the Tza’ab!” Saavedra bestowed a mocking smile upon him. “Are you one only when and as it serves, the other as
it
serves?”

“As you are,” he answered.

It startled her. “
I
am! I have no part in this.”

“But you do, Saavedra. You were a painter, once. Now you are a woman, someone meant to make babies. As it serves the family.”

“Filho do’canna,” she blurted. “Oh, Matra, what that old man has done to your tongue!”

“My tongue was always my own, as you well know. And as for that, look to your own. Street speech, from you?”

“From you!” she shot back. “It was you who taught me it.”

“Well, then.” He grinned spectacularly. “We are even, no? And very much alike.” He gestured to the painting. “You might try borders,
Saavedra. They lend themselves quite well to the composition.”

She clamped teeth together. “Affectation.”

“Look again. See how the patterns repeat themselves throughout?” He moved quickly to the easel, indicating the sketched portion of the border as yet unpainted. “Do you see? The branch of an almond tree, so; a spray of lavender, here; a cluster of meadowsweet, thusly. And roses, here; do you see? They shall be yellow, I think.” He smiled briefly, privately, as he moved his finger. “And all repeating itself
here
, do you see, within the context of the portrait itself … do you see what he will be holding?”

An almond branch, a spray of lavender, a cluster of meadowsweet, and a single rose. To be painted yellow, no doubt.

Saavedra shrugged. “You can include those elements without the border.”

“But the border draws it all together. It becomes a part of the painting, a frame within the frame.”

She shrugged again, elaborately. “I suppose …”

He laughed softly. “Innovations in style always meet first with resistance.”

That struck home. Saavedra scowled. “The old man taught you this?”

“The Al-Fansihirro always painted such borders into their work. Even into the
Kita’ab.
It’s a Tza’ab tradition.”

“And I suppose you believe you’re one of
them
now, too?— these Al-Fansihirro, whatever they may be!”

“The Order of Art and Magic.” He grinned. “En verro, why not? One of the Viehos Fratos, one of the Al-Fansihirro. Only a fool ignores what may aid him in attaining what he wants.”

And that, Saavedra reflected, sounded exactly like Sario. Perhaps the old man had not perverted him after all.

Mollified, she nodded. “But I still don’t see why you’re painting Zaragosa Serrano.”

Sario smiled serenely. “As I said, it’s a jest—even if he won’t ever comprehend it.”

“Then why do it?”

“Because it pleases me.”

Eiha, but he was the same, and he was not. What was tolerable in the boy because of youth was less attractive in the man. “No importada.” Saavedra turned toward the door. “I shouldn’t have come.”

“Why
did
you come?”

She stopped. Considered. Turned to confront him. “To ask for your opinion of my work.”

He arched unsubtle brows. “You know my opinion. I have declared it many times. Your work is far better than any woman’s, and even that of many men. But why does it matter? You will waste it, waste yourself—”

“I have no choice, Sario! There are so few of us compared to what we were. Would you suggest that I refuse to bear children merely because of talent?”

He shrugged, turning away to restore the cloth shrouding over various canvases and panels. “Talent is as worthy of birth as a child, ‘Vedra … but you will set your art aside in the name of that child.”

She stood, stiff with anger, and watched him. Curtly she said, “You have no idea what it is to be a woman.”

“No,” he agreed coolly, “only what it is to be driven so fiercely to paint—just as
you
know that drive, that fierceness, but will reject it out of hand.” He looked at her now, no longer tending shrouds. “You are Gifted, Saavedra. I cannot explain how it came to be, but it has. The fire recognizes itself when it burns equally in another.” He stepped closer, eager now. “You know how it is done—I have explained it all … and if you would allow me to guide you—”

“No!”

He spread his hands. “No Confirmattio, ‘Vedra, only the painting.”

“So you can harm it in some way to see if it harms me?” She shook her head vehemently. “Even if I
were
Gifted, there is no future in it. The only future for me lies in bearing children.”

The mask of his face slipped. But then he gestured sharply before she could respond. “Bassda! Go, then … I have work to do.” He turned back to the canvases.