The Golden Key (51 page)

She might as well have burned his true
Peintraddo Chieva
, even as she had burned Tomaz’s so many years before.

Evisceration, unflagging and systematic. She took from him his pride in achieving the goal he most wanted by admitting it was
her
doing, not his, that gained him that goal. She took from him his knowledge of cleverness in avoiding the only power a man might hold over him, the potential destruction of his hands and eyes by the alteration of his
Peintraddo
, by accusing him of changing, of madness. She took from him her absolute and unadulterated support of him, of his talent, of his Gift. And she bore another man’s child, when he could sire none that might inherit his Gift, his Light.

It was not a thing of Grijalvas, inheritance; Giftedness was unstudied, unknown beyond that it existed, and infertility was welcomed for what it betokened. But in the world he now inhabited,
the vast and boundless world of Dukes, of conselhos, of foreign courts and kings, he was no man in their eyes at all, merely a boy who painted. Whose loins were empty of fertile seed. And who could, by their lights, never prove his manhood.

It mattered to them. And thus it mattered to him, because it must.

Sario unbent and gazed blankly up at the unfinished portrait. With the eyes of love, Alejandro had commanded. Eiha. Therefore let it be so.

Nommo Matra ei Filho. Nommo Chieva do’Orro.

He rose, shook out the sleeves of his shirt, began to pack up his things. What he would do was best undertaken in his own atelierro, as it was equally undertaken in his own heart.

  THIRTY  

Saavedra
came upon Ignaddio crouched in a corridor, bundled up as if he were forgotten laundry. Legs were crossed, doubled up, pulled tight against his chest; elbows hooked his knees, but forearms stretched vertically to grant his hands the freedom to clutch hair, to drive fingers into the tousled curls and snug tightly, tight enough to threaten his scalp. His spine brushed the wall only momentarily, and again, and again: he rocked, if slightly, if with quiet, unceasing economy, with utter, abject grief.

“’Naddi!” She swept down, skirts fanning across the broad flags of the corridor floor. “Blessed Mother, what is it?”

He stiffened beneath her hand, stilled, then turned to her, releasing his hair to grasp at skirts instead, to set his face into their folds and sob unremittingly.

Matra Dolcha—is it Confirmattio
? Had he failed? She threaded fingers into hair, cupped the crown of his skull against her palm. “’Naddi … Ignaddio—you must tell me.”

He cried the harder, a harsh, racking sound that brought tears of empathy to her own eyes. One hand groped for her upthrust knee, capped it, clung. And when at last he raised his head and exposed his face, she saw grief coupled with horror.

She knelt fully now, cradling the back of his skull in both hands. “You must
tell
me, ‘Naddi!”

“The door,” he said. “—was open … I went in … I wanted to look at the
Peintraddos
—” He gulped a sob, worked hard to regain self-control. “It was
open
, ‘Vedra, I swear it wasn’t locked—and so I went in …”

Peintraddos.
She knew how desperately he wanted to be Gifted. “The Galerria Viehos Fratos?”

He nodded jerkily. “It’s always been locked—this time it wasn’t. And I wanted to look … I wanted to imagine my own
Peintraddo
hanging up there one day—”

“As it may,” she said, then flinched inwardly. “Unless—”

“And
he was dead.
”

Breath gusted from her. “Dead? Who?”

He gulped another sob back. “Il Sanguo.”

“
Raimon
—”

“I found him—he lay there, ‘Vedra, all sprawled, all bloody—” His face convulsed briefly. “And his Chieva was bloody, too.”

“Matra ei Filho …” She felt cold. Ill. “Blood, ‘Naddi?”

“On his breast, on his Chieva,
everywhere
…” He clutched her skirts into white-knuckled, shaking fists. “’Vedra—his
Peintraddo
was pulled down, pulled down from the wall … and there was a hole torn through it!”

But nothing was ever permitted to happen to the
Peintraddos.
Sario had been most plain. Such paintings were put away, locked away, warded against any accident so no harm could come to the Limner. So much risk was involved that they took great care that
nothing
happened to the
Peintraddos.

Saavedra fell back then, collapsed against the wall so firmly her shoulder struck it painfully. “Not Raimon … not Sanguo Raimon—eiha, Blessed Mother, Gracious Mother—
not Raimon
—”

“Why would he do it?” Ignaddio asked, fighting not to wail. “Why would he do it, ‘Vedra?”

Raimon. Not Ferico, who might die in a week or a year. Not Sario, who might be victim to Chieva do’Sangua if he did not alter his compordotta—

The flesh rose up on her bones. What she said she did not know, did not hear. But Ignaddio did, and it frightened him. “’Vedra— ‘Vedra, don’t … don’t
say
that!”

“But it is,” she said, so clear in mind, in certainty, that the world around her was distant. “It
is
his fault, ‘Naddi! It must be! For no other’s sake would Raimon do such a thing. For no other man would he be placed in such peril that he saw no other way.” She caught him to her, hugged hard. “Eiha, that he should do that—that you should
see
it …” She released him. “Regretto—that you should have seen such a travesty!”

Tears had stopped, but his face was still damp. “They sent me away.”

“Who did?”

“Davo. The others. They came when I shouted … they sent me away because I had gone in where I wasn’t supposed to, but also because I saw … him.”

She nodded. “And now I must do the same.” She shut her eyes, swallowed down the knot of pain from her throat, felt it lodge in her chest. “I must go. I must go to Sario. He should know … he should be
made
to know …” She scrubbed impatiently at her own share of tears. “They sent you away only so they could tend him properly, not because you didn’t count. En verro. And now I must
go, too—but I promise to come back later; I’ll come to you, and we can go together to the shrine and pray for his soul before the icon.”

He nodded, blinking rapidly.

“Sweet ‘Naddi …” She doubted in this moment he would take offense at her words. “I am so sorry it was you who found him.” Saavedra disengaged, rose from the floor. “I am so sorry for all of it.”

And she left him there, wan of face, forlorn in posture, and felt the first knot of
something
in her belly that was neither child, nor sorrow, nor pain, but a cold and abiding anger.

Providential, Sario decided—or perhaps appropriate!—that he should only two weeks before prepare an oak panel for such an undertaking as this. The boiled linseed oil, carefully and repeatedly applied, had penetrated completely, so that no excess remained, and it had taken the thin layer of lean oil paint perfectly. The surface was ready for him.

The panel was large, begging a landscape, or a life-sized portrait. No easel would hold it; he had ordered it set against the wall, where it dominated the chamber, the atelierro of the Lord Limner. But he turned from the panel. Later. For now there were other concerns, other requirements of the task.

Ingredients he pieced into a large copper bowl: bluebell, for Constancy; white chrysanthemum for Truth; cress, for Stability and Power; fennel to lend Strength, to Purify, to defeat Fire; fern, for Fascination; fir, for Time.

Sario nodded. Thank the Mother—or Acuyib—that the old man had taught him the language, the lingua oscurra, so that he had learned the Tza’ab magic. Now, coupled with the Grijalva Gift— eiha, he was unlike any other Limner in the world! And always would be.

More yet: honeysuckle, for Devoted Affection; lemon blossoms, for Fidelity; lime, for Conjugal Love—he would not deny her that after all; white rose, for Worthiness; rosemary, for Remembrance; thyme, for Courage, a walnut leaf, for Intellect. And hawthorn, for Fertility.

All of these things:
Saavedra.
He would dilute nothing, for to do so would be a falsehood, and in this he desired only Truth.

Urine he had, from Diega. The other ingredients he would procure himself: blood, sweat, saliva, hair. He would recognize the moment, seize it, take what was required. But he could begin already. She was as he was: different. A woman was made of parts
and pieces even as a male. Perhaps in Saavedra the tempering of Tza’ab blood with that of Tira Virte, with the changes wrought by the Nerro Lingua, coupled with her gender made her a female version of himself. She had her own Gift, her own Light. He had seen it.

And he would use it.

Sario set out also a clean marble slab, the muller on which he would temper ground pigments into paints; a paletto knife, jars and stoppered pots of pigments, of wine, milk of figs and oil of cloves, of poppy, linseed, saffron; a clutch of glass vials, brushes, a pot of wax, the charcoal he would use to sketch in the lines that would create from the inner vision the outer, the reality of Luza do’Orro.

Already he envisioned the border.

He stopped, counting out his needs. And glanced up in surprise as the door latch was lifted, the door was thrown open, as Saavedra herself came into his atelierro.

At first she could say nothing. And then she said everything and all at once, so that she could not tell if any of the words fit together into a whole, into something that made sense. She thought they must, somehow they must, because he was stirred out of an odd immobility and inner detached awareness into comprehension.

And he said nothing.

“Filho do’canna,” she said at last, when nearly out of breath. “It should have been
you
in the Galerria. Should have been
you
who plunged his Chieva into his
Peintraddo!
”

“But why?” he asked. “If it’s my death you want, that would not have accomplished it. That is not my
Peintraddo.
”

The audacity of it astonished her. “No, that’s true …
I
have it!”

“Do you?” He barely shook his head. “If you would be certain, go to it and destroy it. And then come back and vilify me more.”