The Golden Key (50 page)

“You are Duke,” Grijalva said, as if he tested. “Your word is law.”

Merditto, is he blind
? He removed his thumb. “My word is the word of a young, untried, admittedly frightened Duke who would sooner have his father alive again and in this role than be in it himself. And they know that. They prey and play upon it.” Alejandro sighed again, deeply, and rested his forehead against the rim of the chairback, letting tacks bite into flesh. Muffled by stuffed velurro, he said, “I am Duke, you are Lord Limner. We need one another, although few understand that.” He lifted his face again. “Therefore I ask you to aid me in this, that we may, between us, protect your family.”

Grijalva turned back to the window. He blocked much of the light; Alejandro could see little but silhouette. “There is perhaps a way, Alejandro.”

He barely marked the familiarity. “En verro?”

Grijalva nodded. “If
each
mistress were to come from my family …”

“Each? You mean—forever?”

The words came more quickly now, with crisp declaration. “Let it be agreed that Palasso Grijalva and only Palasso Grijalva will supply the Duke with his mistress. A
confirmed
mistress—the one to whom he offers Marria do’Fantome.” Grijalva turned sharply, gesturing further illustration. “That need not bind a man to only
one woman, Your Grace—you and your Heir and
his
Heir and all the Heirs to come after may entertain whatever women you choose to—but only one woman, one
Grijalva
woman, would ever hold the rank.” He spread slim, eloquent hands. “One wife, sanctified by the Ecclesia; and one mistress, ‘sanctified’ and
confirmed
by Marria do’Fantome.”

“That gains me Saavedra,” Alejandro said. “What does it gain you?”

“Not me,” Grijalva said. “Do’nado—beyond the knowledge that my family’s future is secured.”

“And that is enough for you?”

Grijalva laughed softly. “I am Lord Limner. It is all I ever desired in this life … but my responsibility is to my family—” His pause was very slight. “—and of course to my Duke, for Grijalva Lord Limners, as much as the tragic Verro himself, have
always
served do’Verradas.”

Alejandro considered it. He played out as many ramifications as he could conjure in his mind, knowing very well how others would react.

He smiled, taking fire. “Twist their tails,” he murmured, seeing it, and the smile kindled to grin, to laughter, “eiha,
how
it would twist their tails!”

“And would go far to establishing your own rule,” Grijalva added. “You are not your father, may the Matra bless his name—” Briefly he kissed fingers, pressed them to breast. “—and it is time they accepted it.”

Alejandro thrust himself up from the chair. “Done!” He nodded vigorously, grinned; the world was whole again, bursting with promise. “Paint it, Lord Limner. Document this edict. Confirm this position. And when I am returned from Caza Varra, I will have it known to all the conselhos, all the Courtfolk—even to Serranos!— I mean to offer Saavedra Grijalva the Marria do’Fantome.”

Sario Grijalva’s expression was strange. “That,” he said, “is more than Gitanna Serrano ever had.”

“Or the Premia Sancta?” Alejandro laughed, then said: “Pluvio en laggo.” He shrugged. “We make a new lake, you and I, with fresh rain besides.” Alejandro shoved the chair back toward the table. “I must go. Tend to this, Grijalva, and you shall have my permanent protection in all things. For as long as you live.”

“Twenty years? Twenty-five?” Smiling oddly, Grijalva hitched a shoulder. “Eiha, what does it matter? Much may be done in so little time.”

“Begin now,” Alejandro commanded—it was effortless, now
that he was certain of his course—and strode out of the room briskly.

The corridors, grazzo do’Matra, were empty of others. On a fine day such as this most went out into the city, or set up easels and sketchbooks in the colonnades surrounding the inner courtyard, or went into the gardens. Lessons were taken away from Palasso Grijalva entirely, so that estudos had the opportunity to take instruction at the specific sites the moualimos discussed. Raimon recalled such occasions in his own life, as estudo and moualimo both.

Deep inside the walls, light was not a given. In the outer corridors high arched windows permitted sunlight to illuminate the chambers, the cells, but in the heart of Palasso Grijalva, grown large despite the harrowing of their numbers, dimness and darkness pervaded, and shadow.

His soul was as dim, as dark, as shadowed. Bitterness was banished; rage dismissed. It was done. The words said.

He walked stiffly, as an old man. It was age, but escalated, the age of a man twice his years, were he anything but Grijalva. But more even than age, than the depredations of bone-fever.

Nommo Matra ei Filho. Nommo Chieva do’Orro.

Through the inner corridors, through dimness and darkness, and shadow, into the light of acceptance, of peace, of willingness. He was only helpless in so much as he permitted it, and he did not.

At the doorway he paused. He unlocked, then set his hand to latch, lifted, and went in.

Galerria Viehos Fratos. Where brothers and uncles and cousins, and all manner of ancestors, contemporaries, stared out of painted images as if they yet lived.

No sons. No fathers. That was denied such as he.

Peintraddo Chieva.
Each one. Save one.

A copy. One of several. How clever. How sublimely prescient. And Raimon for the first time in his life truly envied Sario, for having the courage to know himself far more than any man alive, and to look beyond his immediate goal to the long-range repercussions.

Clever Sario. Gifted Sario.

Sario Grijalva, in whom burned a fire, a Luza do’Orro so bright, so incontestably brilliant as to blind a man. And to kill a man. As many, Raimon suspected, as he viewed necessary.

He went to his own face and gazed upon it. There was no doubting, even now, that it was his, did a man look from the painted face to the living. But younger, infinitely younger, less worn, less used,
less shaped by the events of the latter years of his life; shaped of fifteen years only, not forty-one, full of hope and humor and certainty of purpose.

Certainty of purpose, that he among them all might become Lord Limner.

Nommo Matra ei Filho. Nommo Chieva do’Orro.

He had not become. He had made.

He sighed so deeply as to empty his lungs of air, his heart of apprehension. “Eiha,” he said, “what does it matter? They will do it themselves, as we did to Tomaz … as perhaps we should have done to Sario.”

Nommo Matra ei Filho. Nommo Chieva do’Orro.

He took down from the wall the
Peintraddo Chieva
, to touch again the image, the brushwork, the pigments and binders and resins and varnish, the recipe of the
Folio
that was in truth
Kita’ab
, that was he: Gifted, Limner, of the Viehos Fratos; that
had
been he before Sario.

Raimon Grijalva shut his hand around the Golden Key hanging from its chain. Then adjusted his grip and plunged the Chieva through the heart painted beneath the clothing.

Sario stood before the unfinished painting Alejandro had so admired. He was distantly pleased that the Duke had been so impressed, but that reaction also stirred in him a measure of condescension, condemnation: it was not his best. But Alejandro could not see it.

“No,” he said tightly, “I will not permit it to be so. No man may judge my work save me, because no man can know what of myself I put into it.”

Into this, little. It lacked the ingredients Alejandro himself had commanded: the eyes of love. No, he had painted it with the eyes of jealousy, of resentment, of impatience. And it showed. To him.

“Lord Limner?”

A small voice. A female voice. He turned and beckoned her in impatiently. Diega. A Grijalva, but little more; she was meant to bear children to unGifted males. In her hands was clasped a small clay pot, stoppered and sealed with wax.

“There.” He indicated the table. “Have you the other?”

She placed the pot on the table, then backed away. She shook her head.

He knew she was afraid of him. Eiha, he had required it; what he requested of her was to remain private. He had assured it by agreeing
to paint a miniature of the man she professed to love to ensure he would love her, though he did not tell her how—bound with Tza’ab lingua oscurra so that the man would forever welcome her affections. He wondered if she thought of what she truly asked; if she grew weary of the man she would nonetheless have him until one of them died.

“No?” he asked sharply. “You clean her chambers, you wash her linens—can you not do so simple a thing?”

Diega shook her head again. “Lord Limner, her courses have ceased.”

“Ceased! But—” It robbed him of breath, the abrupt comprehension. For a moment he gaped like a fish gulping air instead of water; then Sario shut his mouth so tightly his teeth protested.

Alejandro’s child. Of course.

How could this
not
happen?

He had ignored it, because there was no child of their pairing— until now. He had ignored the images of bedsport utterly because the work had consumed him, and because he had been
able
to ignore it—until now. They were private people, Saavedra and Alejandro, and shared the fire of their passion with no one else.

Alejandro’s child. Growing beneath her heart even as Sario painted her. Even now.

He became aware then of Diega, waiting stiffly. With effort Sario forced a smile. “Eiha, then it cannot be helped. There is cause for joy, then, no? A bastard do’Verrada, son of the Duke himself?” He paused. “Or daughter. One must not forget that women have some uses.
You
do, no?” He favored her with a smile that drained the color from her face. “Eiha, you may go. And be certain that you shall have what you want of—Domingo?”

“Alonso.”

“Of course. Alonso. Forgive me.” He nodded. “Come to my rooms at Palasso Verrada in ten days, and I will have it ready for you.”

She wavered. “Ten days?”

“Can’t you wait until then?” She forbore to answer. He had frightened her very badly. “Five days,” he amended. “But no sooner than that, for I have other tasks.”

She bobbed her head, waited for dismissal; he gave it impatiently.

As she left, he realized he trembled. For only a moment he wondered why—had he not accepted the truth?—and then the pain of renewed acknowledgment stooped upon him and took him so deeply in his vitals that he fell awkwardly and unexpectedly to his
knees, gripped doubled fists into his belly, bent and bent and bent until his head touched the floor.

He rocked there, like a child; wanted to spew food and wine and pain out onto the floor until he was free of it all, free of grief and futility and fear, free of tears, of the emptiness that wracked him, of the knowledge that she had accepted it before he, had seen it, acknowledged it, had
embraced
it, even as she embraced Alejandro do’Verrada.

There was no crueler pain he could imagine, than to know the only one who shared his Luza do’Orro, his Gift, could so thoroughly, definitely, reject it. And him.

Blessed Mother, but he had accepted she would never sleep with him. That was no longer of any moment; his art was all, and though he would occasionally take such release as perhaps he wished or needed, it was more vital that he not spend himself profligately, not waste the power.

Eiha, it was not that at all. It was that she left him alone so entirely, that she turned from him when he most needed her to find his way among the enemy; that she spent
herself
in the arms of another man, and now carried his seed.

Fertile seed, that had taken root.

His own never would. Never could offer her what apparently she believed was worth the sacrifice of her Gift.

He, who had broken every oath, every vow made of such bindings as would result in the destruction of his Gift if he permitted them the opportunity, was left alone even by Saavedra, who had never once failed to support him, to guide him, to sacrifice herself in the name of his Gift.

She extinguished his light. Clouded his vision.