The Golden Key (88 page)

“Your Grace!” Cabral was with her suddenly, his eyes red and streaming with tears. “’Chella, are you hurt?” When she shook her head, he mumbled a prayer of thanks. “Come into the sunlight and let everyone know. Half their panic is because they think you’re dead.”

“Dead?”

“Rapidia, Your Grace, before they trample each other.”

She stepped out onto the porch, coughing as some of the dissipating smoke again stung her throat. At sight of her, the young sancta cried out to the Mother and Son in gratitude. Others called the news that their Dolcha ‘Chellita was unharmed, and slowly the scene calmed down. It was just as it had been on her return from Casteya: her presence was enough.

“Where’s Arrigo?” she demanded of Cabral.

“I think he’s helping chase down the culprit. As for what happened—” He didn’t finish, for Leilias had elbowed her way to Mechella and a moment later Otonna flung her arms around her mistress, sobbing.

“Oh, Your Grace, I thought for a certainty we’d lost you!”

“I’m perfectly all right—or would be, if you’d stop strangling me.” She smiled and wiped Otonna’s cheeks.

A few Grijalvas took their turn reassuring themselves of Mechella’s safety. Their reddened eyes overflowed with involuntary tears. At last Arrigo ran panting up the steps.

“The filho do’canna got away,” he snarled. “Did anyone see the thing hit? And where did it end up?”

The village alcaldeyo, trembling from his pointed red velurro cap to his shiny green leather boots, tottered up to where they stood. “Your Grace, someone kicked it out of the way, I didn’t see where—oh, Dona Mechella, forgive us!”

“Forgive you for what?” she asked blankly.

“No one saw where the iron ball went?” Arrigo swore under his breath. “Eiha, in the manner of assassins, it’s probably long gone. No evidence.”

Leilias gasped. “Assassins?”

“It was a Tza’ab device, called by them
na’ar al’dushanna
—’fire and smoke.’ Either this one didn’t work exactly as planned, or it was only a warning.” He dragged his sleeve across his forehead to mop up the sweat. “They stuff chemicals into a sphere with a wick attached. When it’s lit, the smoke can be an irritant or a lethal poison.”

Mechella swayed with shock. Cabral steadied her with an unobtrusive hand at her back. She hardly noticed.

Leilias said, “The sancta took the worst of it. But she’ll recover. They’ve taken her to her chambers.”

Cabral spoke quietly. “I believe you’re right, Your Grace. It was both a failed device and only a warning. There was little smoke, and what there was did no serious hurt.”

“But why would someone do this?” cried Mechella. “Who could hate us so much?”

“Not here,” Arrigo said gruffly. “Come, we’ll find someplace private within the Sanctia where we can talk. Cabral, attend us. Leilias, unpack some wine, Her Grace is too pale. And Otonna—washing water, at once.”

“Oh, Your Grace,” moaned the alcaldeyo. “This was the work of a moronno luna, no one to do with our village—you must believe this—”

“Of course we do,” Mechella told him. “Go and wash the sting from your poor eyes, Maesso Birnardio. Would it be all right if we stay the night here? I’m far too upset to continue our journey as planned.”

“Stay—” He pressed his fists to his tear-stained cheeks. “But we have no castello nearby, not even a proper caza. Nowhere fitting for Your Grace to place her head—”

“In Casteya last year, I slept in my carriage. Even a bed of hay in someone’s barn would be more comfortable than that!”

“A barn—yes, we can do that.” He started off to arrange it, caught himself, turned to bow to Mechella, again to Arrigo, and finally scurried from the Sanctia steps, wiping his eyes all the way.

“
Are
you hurt?” Arrigo asked worriedly of his wife.

“No. But we must show these good people that we don’t blame them and feel safe in their village. Besides, if they catch this person,
I want to ask him myself what complaint against us could make anyone do such a thing.”

A short while later everyone’s eyes had been rinsed as a precaution and they sat in the Sanctia schoolroom drinking wine from chipped pottery mugs. Speculation about the attack got them exactly nowhere. In Cabral’s opinion, it was Tza’ab doing. Arrigo pointed out that this could be what they were intended to think. Knowledge of the
na’ar al’dushanna
was not limited to the Tza’ab, though they were the only ones cowardly enough to use it. Neither could anyone come up with a reasonable explanation of why this had occurred.

The pursuers returned to report that the culprit had utterly vanished into the hills, where he undoubtedly had a horse waiting. Of the instrument of mayhem, nothing had been found.

“So he had help,” Arrigo concluded, “someone who snatched it up and thereby removed all the evidence.”

“Which may mean,” Zevierin said thoughtfully, “that it had some sort of identifying characteristic that would lead us back to its originator.”

“Eiha, that’s possible. But we’ll never know.”

That night Arrigo and Mechella slept in the Sanctia’s best bedchamber—“best” in that it had a frayed rug on the stone floor, and a window with a silk-mesh screen to let breezes in and keep insects out, and only slightly worn linen sheets on the narrow bed. She dismissed Otonna and brushed out her own hair; he similarly released his own servant for the night and hung up his own clothes on the wooden peg at the door. She watched him from the bed, wondering what he was thinking.

“Arrigo … you saved my life.”

Not looking at her, he said, “The damned thing wasn’t deadly, Mechella.”

“But you didn’t know that,” she murmured.

A shrug was his reply.

“What you did was very brave, and very quickly done.”

“Nothing of the kind,” he snapped. “What did you think, I’d take the opportunity to be rid of you?”

Her hand clenched around the silver handle of her brush. “I’m only trying to thank you. Why must you speak so cruelly?”

At last he turned, naked to the waist, and met her gaze. Something in his eyes softened, eased—became more like the man she had loved since girlhood. “Forgive me, ‘Chella. I suppose I’m more shaken by this than I thought. That someone would do this—that it might have been so much worse—”

“You mean we might both have died.” She set down the brush and extended a hand to him. “Arrigo—please hold me.”

A shard of the old wry humor touched his mouth. “Carrida, that bed’s so narrow it’s either hold each other or fall on the floor!”

“Did you hear, Premio Dioniso? Did you?” Rafeyo burst into the atelierro, glowing with excitement.

“You’re shouting, how could I fail to hear? But I assume you mean what happened three days ago.”

“You really
do
know everything, don’t you?”

But admiration for Dioniso’s sources of information was shortlived; Rafeyo went on to babble at tedious length about Arrigo’s courage, quick wits, and steely determination to find those responsible for this outrage. Dioniso wondered when—or if—Rafeyo would consider that this bravery of Arrigo’s had as its result an uninjured Mechella. Perhaps he would also figure out that the instinct prompting Arrigo’s actions revealed much about feelings he still cherished for the mother of his children, if not for his wife.

Eventually the boy ran out of praise, and they began the day’s lesson. As he watched a series of meaningful flowers take shape in Rafeyo’s sketchbook, he idly added up years. It might not be much longer before he could cast off these forty-five-year-old bones that despite his care of them were beginning to ache. Maybe he could find an excuse to be at Corasson this summer; the heat would soothe him, and he could surely find a few ways to discredit Mechella.

Her favor was no longer his object. With Tazia’s star once more ascendant and her son his choice for his next life, he would be a fool indeed to assist Mechella in any fashion, direct or indirect. She was, quite simply, of no importance whatsoever.

The
na’ar al’dushanna
had been a calculated risk—would Arrigo act the hero?—but it had been impossible to let the Qal Venommo go unanswered. Dioniso had too much invested by now in Rafeyo as the next Lord Limner, and by extension in Arrigo as the next Grand Duke with Tazia as his Mistress, his Nazha Coronna. Their self-evident schemes for power dovetailed as sweetly with his own as the four sides of a well-constructed frame.

Thus Dioniso couldn’t afford to have Arrigo look the fool, as the Qal Venommo had depicted him. Thus the frightening but harmless little incident of “fire and smoke,” perpetrated by a couple of camponessos paid and painted into treachery. The formula had been taken from the
Kita’ab
, mixed in his atelierro above the wine shop;
he’d forgotten how much fun it was to blend things other than paint. And the long, stuffy day of waiting for the compound to gel had allowed him to select the perfect spot for Rafeyo in the
Peintraddo Memorrio.

Eiha, Dioniso’s lot was cast with Rafeyo and Tazia and Arrigo. He wished Mechella no harm, but recognized now that she had always been and always would be utterly useless to him.

  FORTY-NINE  

Investigation
of the incident near Dregez proved fruitless. Grand Duke Cossimio was heard to curse without repeating himself for a full twenty minutes, and then flatly forbade the autumn tour of Elleon.

“But we
have
to go!” Mechella fretted, pacing her sitting room at Corasson. As was now usual, Grijalvas surrounded her. Leilias sat by the window, blending little vials of perfume; Cabral lounged in a chair, working on sketches; Zevierin stood at an easel, painting magic into Lissina’s
Will.
None of them appeared to be paying the slightest attention to Mechella.

“Doesn’t anybody see it but me?” she exclaimed. “How will the people of Elleon feel when they’re slighted?”

“They’ll understand,” Cabral said absently, trading one pencil for another.

“They might, but
I
don’t!” she declared, and swept from the room to lodge another complaint with Gizella.

As the door slammed behind her, Zevierin put down his brush. “What
I
see,” he murmured, “is the hope in her eyes.”

Leilias nodded. “When Arrigo is away from Tazia, he begins to remember why he used to love Mechella.”

“Indeed. I’m surprised she’s not with child again.”

“Eiha, it was only those last few nights on the way home to Meya Suerta. The question is, is it for the best to bring them back together? Could they be happy if Tazia was gone from their lives? Would he forget her?”

“I wouldn’t bet the Palasso on it,” Zevierin told her. “One must take into account the acclaim Mechella receives in all quarters. That wears on his nerves. Although his recent heroism has done wonders for his sore pride—and his standing among the common folk, who praise him constantly for saving their Dolcha ‘Chellita.”

“The trip to Elleon could include a stay at Caterrine,” Leilias mused. “To remind him how happy they were in those first months of their marriage.”

“And possibly result in a third child. Yes. But they’ve got to
come back to Meya Suerta eventually, you know—where Tazia will be waiting.”

“But if she were packed off to Castello Alva—”