The Golden Key (42 page)

Raimon’s hands trembled, betraying his rigid posture from strength into weakness. “Then paint,” he said hoarsely. “I give you leave to paint. As
we have taught you
to paint.”

Sario smiled, offering such brutal honesty as he could: truth was
truth. “But there are many teachers. Many moualimos. And not all of them need be Grijalva.”

“That old man, the old Tza’ab you told me about—”

“—wanted to make me into a second Diviner.” Sario shook his head. “Why is it so many men wish to shape others? Am I nothing but flesh to you? A bit of bone, arranged so; a hybrid hide, stretched over that bone
so;
a mind empty of all save what thoughts men put into it, men like you and Arturro and Otavio and Ferico because surely the boy could never think for himself! Surely he
mustn’t.
Surely the boy must be controlled through the inflexible rigidity of compordotta, the rituals of dying men—”

“Dying men!”

Ignorance annoyed him. Refusal to accept truth stirred him to retort. “Viehos Fratos,” he said curtly. “Arturro. Otavio. All the dead men. All the men who
shall
be dead, and soon: Ferico. Davo. Even
Raimon
, though he has a handful of years yet left to him—even as the bone-fever destroys his Gift.” There was nothing now in him but a cold, abiding anger. “What is a Lord Limner but a man who lives forever?”

“He dies, Sario—they all of them die!”

“But not their works.” Sario shook his head. “Who comes to our galerrias, Raimon? Who comes to see what we were, what we shall be? Eiha, no one … they come to commission us to
copy
the others, to copy the Lord Limners, because only the work of such men
grants
those men immortality, and only Lord Limners are granted the chance to have their work preserved for the immortal glory it is.” He drew in a hissing breath. “And that is the family goal.
Not
to place a Grijalva beside the Duke … but to steal back the years that are stolen from us, to put them into our paintings because we can’t contain all those years in our flesh without being devoured.” He extended hands, displayed them. Slim, young, talented hands, tensile in beauty and strength. “I am nearly twenty. In the same span of years I shall be your age, and my hands, afflicted by the curse of our family, will be older yet. No Limner who must paint, no Limner with such hands,
may
paint. And so he dies.”

“Sario—”

“We die, Raimon. All of us. And no one remembers. No one cares.” He let his hands drop back to his sides. “Your way, the way of the Viehos Fratos, is to make a man whose
work
succeeds him. But that is a false life. An artificial life. You don’t understand, you or the Viehos Fratos, the boys who hope to be Gifted … you don’t understand at all. You have permitted your imaginations to become crippled, and you accept it as the Will of the Matra ei Filho… eiha,
I do not, I reject it. True life is
living
—and that is my goal. To live. So I may paint. A man’s soul dies when his ability is stolen, as yours is now being stolen … but my soul will not die. I forbid it.”

“Sario …” Tears stood in Raimon’s eyes as he repeated in despair. “None of us lives forever.”

“Perhaps not,” Sario agreed, “when one accepts as inevitable that which is of the earth.”

“We are
all
of us of the earth!”

“Not I,” he answered. “I will temper myself as we temper paints: with binders … and my flesh that is pigment, my bone that is canvas, shall not die.”

Raimon’s face collapsed. The fine architecture of skull nearly pierced the brittle vellum of what once had been young, taut skin. “Blessed Mother … Matra Dolcha, Matra ei Filho—”

“Prattle your prayers,” Sario said, “but this has nothing to do with Her or Her Son.”

Anger kindled, took flame. The eyes yet were young, powerful in pride. “You would say so to me? To
me
?”

Resolution wavered, was renewed in a rush of conviction. “To you as Raimon Grijalva? To you as one of the Viehos Fratos?”

“To me as a man, as one who has befriended you, supported you, spoken for you—”

“Yes,” Sario answered. “I say it to you in all of your guises.
I will do this.
”

Raimon’s hand shut itself around his Chieva. “Even a Lord Limner is not beyond our means, Sario. If you make it necessary.”

Sario laughed. “Because you have my
Peintraddo
?”

A glint of quiet triumph shone briefly. “We have the useless copy, as you made certain. But Saavedra has the true one.”

“So.” Very softly he asked, “Does she?”

And so it came at last, so it reached Raimon in pure truth and unadorned simplicity: they none of them knew him. None of them at all. No man. No woman.

Gently Sario explained, “We are the finest artists in the world, Il Sanguo. Copying is as nothing. Not once. Twice. Thrice.” He looked upon the one man of them all he had liked and respected, even honored, and realized he had grown beyond such things. Weakness he dared not tolerate. Weakness he would not. “You have betrayed my trust,” Sario said, but felt no pain of it. That he was also beyond.

Raimon’s body trembled. “As you have betrayed mine. To paint a copy of your
Peintraddo Chieva
—to paint
two
copies!”

“And you see how it serves me, frato meyo. How it keeps me
whole enough to paint, how it keeps me alive.” Sario shook his head. “I will never be Tomaz. I will never be you. I will never again be threatened by anything done in the Crechetta.”

The litany was begun. “It is our way—”

And ended. “Your way is outdated. I make a new way, now. No one else has the courage, the means, the capacity.” Sario smiled. “Or the Luza do’Orro.”

  TWENTY-FOUR  

Alejandro
stirred out of a drowse into wakefulness. Leather bed-ropes squeaked beneath the mattress. After the first and infinitely satisfying union on the floor, they both of them complained of impediments to a more leisurely and comfortable exploration—brush handles, the battered tankard, the gouging corner of a box—and so he at last allowed her to lead him to the bed. A second union followed, as had the acknowledgment that wine consumed before he came, the warmth of the day, the lassitude in his body, would combine to carry him off to sleep.

Saavedra had retorted tartly that it was good of him to wait
at least
until they were finished.

Now he was awake, smiling over that, but disinclined to rouse or to rouse her; he drifted contentedly, one naked hip pressed against hers while hair not his own enshrouded his neck. In such peace as he had not known since news of his father’s death, he permitted himself to consider the ramifications of it more fully.

Death had made him Duke. It also extinguished his youth. Counted a man because of age, of size while his father lived, he was counted a boy
beside
that father by all who knew them both. Now Baltran was gone—and Alejandro invested. A forced and force
ful
entry into adulthood, but it was done. Duke Baltran was dead of the Mother’s whim, his wife transformed to widow, his children made fatherless.

Alejandro felt a pang of grief, of desertion, of loneliness. His mother had retired to dowagerhood immediately and lived now at Caza Varra, one of the country estates; and eight-year-old Cossimia also was gone, sent to Diettro Mareia to be fostered until of an age to wed the Heir. That left only him, both son and brother—save now he was Duke instead of Heir, and it changed matters. Significantly. Life now was difficult, and no choice at all was simple. Each was fraught with potentials and possibilities, and dangers within each one.

“Merditto,” he muttered wretchedly, turning to align his body more fully against Saavedra’s.

She was not, after all, asleep. “What are you thinking about that makes you swear so desperately?”

He sighed into her ringlets. “Marriage.”

“So.” She paused. “Alejandro …” Her tone was oddly choked, half-serious, half-ironic, as if she fought not to laugh. “… will you forgive my rudeness, grazzo?—but perhaps you might consider thinking about such things when
not
in my company—” She twisted to face him, to look into his face. “—and
certainly
when not in my bed!”

He caught fire. From head to toe. Sweat stung armpits and groin. “Merditto! Moronno! Cabessa bisila!—” He flopped over onto his belly and pressed his face into the mattress. How could he have been so unthinking, such a witless monster?

She trembled against him, laughing in delight. “And everything else, as well—Blessed Mother, let
me
call you the names … is it not my right?”

“—moronno luna,” he finished, lifting his still-warm face. “You should send me away at once!”

“Eiha, I could, but then I would lose you all the sooner, no?” She smoothed the firm ridge of muscle that weapons practice had set like a shelf of stone into his back. “I would rather keep you as long as I may … you
will
marry, amoro meyo, and then—”

“But not yet. Not yet.” He sat up, shoving tousled hair—his— out of his eyes; depositing tangled hair—hers—aside so he would not catch it beneath him. “Forgive me for that, carrida … but meanwhile they will have me married, bedded, and presented with an Heir before the year is done; must you hasten it?”

“Poor Alejandro … am I supposed to pity you?” She sat up, tossed back disarrayed ringlets, sat against the wall. Her shoulders touched his, adhered. “Pity the woman instead.”

He swiveled his head to study her, to consider—marked laughter in her eyes. “Canna!” he declared, without heat. “Heartless, selfish woman—”

“Heartless, selfish,
honest
woman … and I know you.” She leaned, tipped her head against his. “I know you, Alejandro, and I know also she will be fortunate.”

Laughter was banished. It was complex: pleasure and pain at once. “Eiha, carrida—were I not a Duke—”

“Then I would never have taken you to my bed!”

He grinned briefly, but repeated, “—were I not a Duke—”

“—and I not a Grijalva …” She sighed, catching his mood. “But you are, and I am, and this is the best we may hope for. And it is not so poor a thing, I think. Better than nothing at all.”

Thoughts flowed like river water channeled by stones in a random pattern. “I don’t think he loved her …”

“
Who
?”

“Gitanna Serrano. I don’t think my father loved her. I think he
liked
her—”

“That is a beginning.”

“—and I think she offered something my mother couldn’t—”

“Mistresses do.”

“—and I think he needed her in some way, some way I can’t comprehend … perhaps to prove himself—”

“
You
are proven, en verro!”

“—to make himself a man in all respects—”

“And your presence evidence of that, no?”

“—because he was Duke of Tira Virte, and a Duke must be all things.” Alejandro looked at her. “I would not wish to be like that.”

“Duke?”

“All things.”

“Dukes
are
, Alejandro.”

“I can’t be, ‘Vedra. I am not my father.”

“And that pleases me, amoro meyo. I have no wish to sleep with your father.” She checked, touched his arm. “Regretto—I should not jest about the dead.”

“But he is.” He shrugged, aware of grief as yet unresolved, but not overwhelmed by it; her presence eased him. And knowing the death was accident, as Sario Grijalva had proven by examining the body and questioning the Tza’ab escort party, eased him even more. Dead was dead and worthy of mourning, but war was not a prospect he wished even to contemplate. Like a startled horse he shied from that, and yet admitted to her the other, because he could. “He is dead. Thus I am put in his place … and I am afraid.”

After a moment she turned toward him, set the flat of her palm to his heart, pressed her cheek against it. “You are not alone in this.”

“No. Grazzo do’Matra—and you.” He leaned, kissed her soundly, sat back, considering other options. Once again he slipped through the rocks, carried to yet another eddy of consideration. “And there is another who will aid me …” Recollection urged him upright; cool wall was against shoulder blades. “Eiha, ‘Vedra, you should have seen him! Should have heard how he spoke to them! Matra, I wish I had his courage—wish I had his poise! All those stiff, proud men, strutting like cocks in the henyard …” He laughed; he recalled it so well. “‘Grijalva,’ they accused, as if it were epithet, and ‘Grijalva’ he said back, as if it were honor! Perhaps it will not be so bad after all, with his help.” He turned to her. “’Vedra—you know him better than I … has he always been like this?”