The Golden Key (55 page)

“You are not without her, Your Grace.”

He snapped his head up. “What?”

“Without her in flesh, perhaps, but not without her in spirit.” Grijalva gestured to the wall, to the shrouded panel set against it. “I freely give you what is left of her, Your Grace …
all
that is left of her, so you may have her forever.”

Alejandro stared at the concealing cloth. “Is that—” His throat closed painfully. “That is Saavedra? The portrait?”

“It is Saavedra.” A hint of a smile. “Indeed, the portrait you commissioned, Your Grace. So she would never leave you.”

Holy Mother, but it hurt. “She
has
left me!”

“In flesh, perhaps. Surely not in spirit.” Grijalva lifted one shoulder in an elegant shrug. “Perhaps she lied in part—women do, Your Grace, as suits their needs—but there is truth in this.” He paused. “Every truth, Your Grace.”

Dazed, Alejandro waited.

“So long as you have the portrait, you shall always have Saavedra. But you must tend the painting as if you tend her flesh.”

“I can’t,” he said, and tears rushed into his eyes yet again. “Nommo Matra ei Filho, how am I to bear this?”

“You will, Your Grace. You are the son of Baltran do’Verrada, and your task is to rule Tira Virte.”

“Without her?”

“You
have
her, Your Grace; Nommo Matra ei Filho, I promise
you that. You need only guard it most carefully, as if you guarded your life, your loins, your duchy.”

He rose. Stared at the shrouded painting. Then gestured sharply with a snap of his wrist. “Take it away.”

“Your Grace?”

“Take it away. Put it somewhere. Be rid of it. I will not look upon it.”

Grijalva’s face went corpse-white. Dark eyes blackened to fill his face. “Not at
all
?”

“
I can’t.
”

A gust of breath issued from Grijalva’s mouth. “Eiha, I understand … here, then, I shall assist you—”

Alejandro took one step to halt it, stay it, prevent it—but it was too late, the shroud was lifted and pulled aside, the portrait was his to see.

“She’s waiting for you,” the Limner said. “Do you see it? Look closer. Here she waits, passing the time until you come—and here you have only just arrived, unseen but heard … see how she begins to turn, to look? See the delicate color of her face as she recognizes your step? See how the
Fol
—the
book
—is left unopened; how she forgets all in the realization that you are there, just
there
, on the other side of the door? See how she means to rush to the door and lift the latch, to admit you in good haste?” Dark, desert-bred eyes were strangely opaque. “It is all there, Your Grace. All. Saavedra. For you.”

Trembling beset him. What he felt, how he hurt, was private, not even for his Lord Limner. “Go,” Alejandro said. “Adezo.
Go.
”

Grijalva made as if to turn, stopped. Gestured slight but eloquent inquiry. “Shall I have it carried away, Your Grace? Shall I keep her for myself?”

That stabbed. He could barely speak. “Leave it.”

“Of course.” The Lord Limner inclined his head. “Your Grace, regretto—forgive me for such presumption. But you are not alone in this. You have her still … and you have me.”

“Nommo do’Matra—
go
—”

Alejandro heard the soft steps, the lifted latch, heard it click into place.

Alone. Alone.

Matra Dolcha, he could not bear this.

Alone.

Could not.

And knew he must.

Sario departed Alejandro’s presence and went at once to Palasso Grijalva, made his way up the stairs, to the rooms she had inhabited. The rooms where he had placed all of his paintings, such as the one of Zaragosa, that might provide evidence of his power, or a means to bring him down. He would paint more, of course, but there were other places for them to be hidden. What he had been was gone. For now the paintings of his past were where no one would ever find them.

He shut her door from the corridor, then took from leather scrip a small brush and a pot of paint. Unsealed, unstoppered it. Dipped the brush into it, withdrew, began to paint.

The door was a panel smaller than the other, but he did not intend to paint it all. Only what was required.

Lingua oscurra, born of Tza’ab Rih even as he had been. Fitting.
Children of the Desert
, Il-Adib had called them; had meant them to be. But they were not, either of them. They were Grijalva. Chi’patro. And Gifted.

He painted oscurra into the woodgrain, set a border around the edges, signed his name beneath the latch. And when Ignaddio came up the stairs and asked what he was doing, he did not do more than cap his little pot, clean his brush upon a rag, tuck both into his scrip.

“She asked me to do this,” Sario said quietly. “Before she left, she requested this.” He shrugged. “Who can predict what fancy will take a woman?”

Shadows cradled Ignaddio’s eyes. “Why did she leave?”

“Because she loved the Duke, but he is to marry the Princess of Pracanza.”

“She could have stayed here!”

“Eiha, some things are too bitter, too painful for women to bear.” He turned toward the stair. “Will you come? I thought I would walk through Galerria Viehos Fratos; would you like to accompany me?”

The boy’s color ebbed, then rushed back. “With
you
?”

“Eiha, it is not so much.”

“You’re Lord Limner!”

“And so you would like to be.” Sario smiled to see the sudden blush, put a hand upon the thin shoulder and guided him toward the stairs. “Is that so poor an ambition? I think not. I think it a worthy goal.”

Ignaddio descended the stairs, twisting to look back over his shoulder. “Do you think I could be? Ever?”

“Oh, I do believe so … but only if you
survive!
—mind the stairs, mennino, or you will break your neck.” He smiled easily. “And that would be a terrible sorrow for both of us.”

Ignaddio gripped the rail more firmly. “For me, eiha, I suppose. But—why for you?”

“Because I need you.”

Now the boy missed a step, caught himself. One more and he was down, and there he turned swiftly. “Why? Why would you need
me
?”

“Because there is much of me in you, if also a surfeit of innocence. But that can be altered …” He laughed softly. “Have I utterly stunned you, ‘Naddi?”

The boy nodded mutely.

On the final step Sario halted. “I need your youth. I need your strength, I need your talent, your Gift, your flesh, your Luza do’Orro. Because one day mine will fail.”

Ignaddio’s voice rose to a broken squeak. “I’m
Gifted
?”

“You are.”

“But—how can you know? I haven’t undergone Confirmattio yet, and you’ve seen none of my work”

“Bassda.” He touched a shoulder briefly. “It is in me to know. And I do. The Light recognizes itself in another.”

“But—”

“But. Bassda. Come with me to the Galerria; if you would begin your lessons, they are best begun today.”

“Merditto,” Ignaddio muttered, and then reddened. “Regret-to … but—how long will it take? To know what you know? Will I ever?”

Sario guided him gently down the corridor. “You are thirteen, no? Eiha, let me say only this: in fifteen years’ time I will be thirty-five and you twenty-eight …” He nodded; smiled inwardly because he told the boy everything,
everything
, yet would not be understood. A perverse jest, and ironic. “By then, I feel certain. Perhaps later it will require fewer years, but for now, fifteen. To be safe. In fifteen years I will be irreplaceable, and Alejandro will know the truth—he must know, eventually!—but he can’t dismiss me
because
I am irreplaceable … and so he will learn to use me, to rely on me absolutely, to
require
me—and it will all become an infinitely simple matter.” He looked down at the boy. “Can you wait fifteen years, ‘Naddi? To be a Lord Limner?”

The boy’s eyes shone. “Fifteen years is a very long time, Lord Limner.”

“But such things as I will teach you require time—if you are to be me. And I am to be you.”

The words within words bewildered Ignaddio. “But—I
can’t
be you! Can I?”

“Eiha, perhaps not—perhaps I exaggerated.” Sario made a dismissive gesture. “But I most certainly can be
you
, because I know how.”

“How?”

“Lessons,” Sario explained crisply. “Lessons learned from an old estranjiero, a
Folio
, and a few reclaimed pages of a most holy book.” He smiled. “And now let us proceed to
your
lessons, and in fifteen years you will know absolutely everything I know. I promise it.”

Ignaddio stopped short. Thrust his young, unformed chin into the air. “Make an oath of it.”

Sario laughed, then inclined his head. “As you would have it.” He lifted his key to his lips, kissed it, pressed it to his heart. “Nommo Matra ei Filho. Nommo Chieva do’Orro.”

Ignaddio Grijalva broke into a brilliant grin of such magnitude it illuminated the corridor.

It eased the soul, that smile.
It will be well. It must be, and it shall be. And all of it worth it.

He cast a glance over his shoulder, but could not see the stairway. Could not see the door.

Eiha. In time, neither would anyone else.

“Lord Limner?”

Sario prodded a narrow shoulder. “Bassda. We have work to do.”

Always the work. Always so much. Always so little time.

Unless one were Limner. Gifted. Chi’patro.

And willing to
use
Luza do’Orro, not to extinguish it.

In the absence of day is night; in the absence of sound is silence; in the absence of light: darkness.

I did not plan for this, anticipate this, dream of this. No one would, save a madman; and I can’t truthfully say
he
planned for it at first, or even in the middle … only at the end. For reasons I can’t know, save for speculation, though I’m certain he offers one. A single clever sentence full of explanation, of witty justification, explaining the
need
for such action.

No need. Save his own.

No fear, save his own, perhaps; for what I could say to one who would listen? Who might then respond with threat, with harm
?

But no one will ever know. He need explain nothing, and Alejandro will never think to threaten, to harm.

It came upon me all at once. Engulfed me utterly. Blotted out my world and created another, at his behest. His requirement.

Gift. Curse. In both there was conception, gestation, birth. I was progenitor once, though now I am prey, victim to magic, to power no one, not even those who are Limners, might comprehend. And what I—even I—can’t properly describe.

Neosso Irrado. But he is more. Is other.

That some call gift, I must name nightmare.

What have you done to me
?

The vaulted foyer of Galerria Verrada was as coolly serene as he remembered, and as soothing in its early morning silence. But it smelled different. The current Grand Duchess, Gizella do’Granidia, had introduced a fashion from her sweltering southern home: glazed white porcelain pillars, high as a man’s head and slender as a woman’s corseted waist, pinhole-punctured in Tza’ab-like geometric patterns and stuffed every third day with fresh jasmine and rose petals. Set in every window recess, the pillars gave off only a faint odor now, but as the day wore on, the sun’s heat would fully release the fragrance. An affectation, but he had to admit its practicality. The hotter the day, the heavier the sweat—and the stink—of the privileged visitors. Yet the hotter it became, the richer the masking scent would become.

An elegant solution to an inelegance; still, he found it effete. Without exception—but for a few Serrano mediocrities—the pictures here had been painted amid the sharp smells of blood, sweat, semen: crude and earthy smells that permeated canvas and colors. Long gone, of course, worn away by rainy winters and torrid summers, by cleanings, by the sighs of those who stood here in awe of Grijalva genius. It was too bad; the reality of power ought to be recalled in the smell of the paintings. Then he smiled at his folly. No one but ruling Grand Dukes ever knew the source of the magic, and not even they understood its real scope. That was how it must be. He had arranged that a very long time ago.