The Golden Key (29 page)

He sobered. “My father explained I don’t love her, not truly— but that I am infatuated with her.”

“It is likely,” she agreed, unperturbed. “Sario believed he was in love with his first woman, but he wasn’t. He only thought so, because it was new. Because it made him a man, and proved he was— Gifted.”

The momentary hesitation was odd. “He bedded a woman to prove he had artistic talent?”

Now she withdrew, though she remained still against the wall. It was a subtle shift, but he felt it. Especially as she changed the subject. “Will she be sent away now? Gitanna?”

“It is likely … he will give her a country estate, some money, some jewelry.” Alejandro sighed. “It seems so little after so many years.”

“Surely a mistress cannot hope for more.”

“I suppose not. And she will be comforted, I have no doubt, that at least her brother remains at Court. Her family will retain some power with Zaragosa there.”

“Zaragosa—Zaragosa
Serrano
?”

“Of course. He is Lord Limner.”

“I know who he is.” She sat rigidly now, clutching crockery. “She is his sister? Gitanna
Serrano
?”

“Yes. Why?”

Her laughter now held a tight, ugly sound. “You are well rid of her.”

It shocked him. “Why? What is she to you? What right have you to speak of her so?”

Her face was very white. “Yes—you are correct. My compordotta requires improvement.” She rose stiffly, all the relaxed and bantering friendliness banished from her expression. “Grazzo, Don Alejandro, for the rescue, the lemonada—but I must go now.”

Matra Dolcha.
Why did he feel as if
he
had overstepped when it was she who transgressed? Scowling, he pushed himself to his feet. “Wait. You are not to go until I say so.”

Her face colored. Gray eyes glittered. “You order the chiros
away, but you order the canna to stay. Quite the man with the animals, no?”

She was
angry
…. at him? But it was
she
who insulted Gitanna. And yet the words he meant to speak altered themselves into something else entirely, something bled free of affront. “You did say I had a fine way with command.”

Anger evaporated. Startled, she stared, and then began to laugh.

She is nothing like Gitanna.
No, she was not. And there was no other woman in his life he could compare her to, which he supposed might amuse other men—and perhaps other women, perhaps even Gitanna—but not, he suspected, her.

He took her cup from her hand. “More lemonada,” he said. “Momentita, grazzo.” If he could not order her to stay, not even with his fine grasp of command, he would at least rely on her good compordotta.

Sario climbed the final steps just short of twenty-eight. He halted at twenty-six, two below the man who waited for him. A lamp stood at the top, washing the chamber with illumination redoubled by the closeness of walls and ceiling. From below, it lent Seminno Raimon’s expression an intense expectancy, an odd chiaroscuro of the bones of his face washed white in light while the hollows were stained by shadow.

I should paint him so.
But he let it go. There was more to the moment than this. “Seminno,” he said respectfully, with genuine regret. “They told me when I returned of Arturro’s death.”

“I sent for you, Sario.”

It pinioned him into stillness.
He has never sounded so cold before, so distant.
“Yes, Seminno.”

“Two men were sent, and Saavedra. Did all of them fail?”

This was not the subject of the discussion, but Sario forbore to avoid the preliminaries. He was uncertain of his ground in such surroundings, before a man whom he knew and did not know, all at once. “Saavedra did not fail. But I—I delayed.” Hastily he said, “She didn’t tell me the Premio Frato had died, or I would have come at once!”

“Saavedra was not given to know. It is a thing of the Viehos Fratos.”

“But—the others will know … the family. How could they not know?”

“I suspect all of them know by now. But there is a ritual given at the deathbed—you were not here, Sario, and you could not be
found, and so you were not present. Your candle was unlighted. Arturro’s Paraddio Illuminaddio was not as it should have been.”

The Lighted Walk.
Sario did not know it. But then, no one of the Viehos Fratos had died since he was Confirmed, and there were rituals and traditions as yet unfamiliar. “Is there nothing I may do?”

“For Arturro? Nothing. He is dead, he has passed, the Paraddio Illuminaddio, though lacking the youngest candle, is completed.” Raimon’s tone was oddly inflected. “But there is much you may do for your family … provided you are willing to contravene every precept. All compordotta.”

Another pattern made whole. Outrage kindled to flame. “This is a
test!
”

“No.”

He would not accept the denial. “You test me
again
, Raimon! Was not burning my
Peintraddo
enough?” Sario clapped fingers to the place where he had ordered Saavedra to drip hot wax. “What more must I do to convince you? Have I not done all I have been required to do? Have I not completed the tests? Have I not been properly Confirmed and accepted?”

“You have.”

“Then why?”

“It is not a test, Sario. It is the means to an end.”

Sario shook his head. “I don’t trust you.”

Raimon’s face was bleached linen stretched right to tearing over a framework of brittle bone. “Eiha, I do not blame you. Here, then—let me show you …” Deftly he stripped the chain over his head and held it outstretched, golden key dangling. “Come, Sario. Take this. Hold this.”

It baffled. It stunned. “Your Chieva?”

Urgently now, “
Take
it, Sario! You must know this is no test, no discipline. It is desperation, no more,
my
desperaddio, and the only way to be certain Otavio cannot thwart what is meant to be.”

Warily—it
must
be some form of test—he prevaricated. “If it’s meant to be, how can Otavio—”

“Nommo Chieva do’Orro, Sario! Bassda! Do as I say!”

Sario sealed his mouth, stopped his questions, put out his hand. Raimon poured key and chain into it. The metal was warm from contact with living flesh; Sario swallowed hard and shut his fingers over the weight of gold that had not, to his knowledge, ever left the man’s neck since he had first been made a Limner.

Raimon’s face was stark, stripped of color and character. He was estranjiero, and wholly alien. “Arturro is dead. There will be a new
Premio Frato, and I fear it will be Otavio. I am certain it shall be he.”

“You don’t expect
me
—”

“I expect you to hold your tongue and permit me to finish.”

Sario clamped his jaws shut. The chain and key seemed to grow heavier in his clasp.

“You must understand,” Raimon went on, “if I believed it possible, I would do this myself. But it is not. There is only you.”

Questions burgeoned. Sario asked none of them.

“I need you. I need what you have, what you are.
We
need you, though no other will admit it. Certainly not Otavio. I am alone in this … save for you.”

Sario waited. He could not leave now if the world itself exploded.

“Neosso Irrado,” Raimon said. “For that, and for your fire. For your Luza do’Orro. For your tenacity, your insatiable ambition— and your ruthlessness.” He was so tightly strung his body trembled with it. “I might have been you—once. I might have taken this on myself. But they—quenched me, as you once accused.”

“No,” Sario managed. “I have looked on your paintings.”

The faintest glint of comprehension, of gratitude, flashed through Raimon’s eyes, was gone. “Break them,” he said. “Break all of our precepts, our fine compordotta … but you must become Lord Limner.”

“Indeed, I
hope
to—”

Raimon’s voice was sharp. “No ‘hope,’ Sario. It must be.”

Sario groped for the new pattern, seeking to find the pieces so they might be properly joined. “If it is possible—”

“Not ‘possible,’ Sario. For once, for
once
, speak your mind. Your truth. Don’t rely on compordotta.” The smile was a grimace. “Nor will I. And therefore I will say it as a man, as a Grijalva, as a Gifted: you must use any recourse to make yourself Lord Limner. Any recourse at all.” In lamplight, the dark, fierce eyes were hidden behind a glaze of fire. “You hold my Chieva. I am not in this moment one of the Viehos Fratos. And what you choose to do,
how
you choose to do it, is not of my concern.”

He breathed with effort. “Matra ei Filho,” Sario said, “you are truly afraid of me.”

“Only a man who has been near enough to fire to hear his own flesh sear knows what and how to fear.” Raimon stepped down a single stone riser. He closed his hand over the fist that held his golden key. “If you are found out, it will mean Chieva do’Sangua.”

Sario thought of the old Tza’ab in the tent, and the page of the
Kita’ab
that was also the
Folio
, and the power that was promised. Tza’ab magic. Grijalva magic. Born of the same source, hidden by blood, by fire, by old hatred and ancient rivalry.

Lord Limner.

Another watershed. All the parts and pieces of power.

He was older now, but not immune to fear. Not immune to comprehension that each step he took led him closer to something other than what he had been.

But how do I know this was not intended when my father lay down with my mother and she bore me nine months later? Maybe
all
of this was to happen, even the old man.

And the parts and pieces of power made over into a whole.

Sario placed his other hand atop Raimon’s and gripped it. “Nommo Chieva do’Orro, Nommo Matra ei Filho, Nommo Familia Grijalva, I swear I will not fail.”

  SIXTEEN  

The
door stood ajar, permitting entry. It was a private atelierro within the confines of Palasso Grijalva, set apart in a wing off the central building, the heart of the compound, but Saavedra had never been denied permission to enter. She and Sario shared too much.

She set palm to door and slipped into the atelierro. Summer sunlight flooded the studio: with northern exposure and several tall windows, shutters folded back, the atelierro was ideal for an artist. She was not permitted the same luxury—she was not male, not Gifted, not of the Viehos Fratos—and thus basked in his, soaking up atmosphere. It was a peaceful place, a place of contentment, lending itself to creation.

A narrow door in the northern wall led out onto a small tiled balcony overlooking the central courtyard with its many-tiered fountain. Often she found him there, sketching furiously before the light died; or within the room itself, oblivious to time, to food, to the bells of the Sanctia pealing prayers across the city, and utterly to company, even her own, as he applied paint to canvas.

Saavedra smiled. He was endlessly patient with his own work, and wholly impatient with hers. It was a simple matter for Sario to find her, to claim her, to pull her away on one errand or another— often to critique his work-in-progress—and utterly impossible to convince him to let her be even the merest moment so she might find a place in her own work that was appropriate to stop.