The Golden Key (105 page)

Arriano Grijalva stood in the Galerria foyer and stared in dismay. The once classical lines and clean bright walls of the art gallery had been replaced with the latest Zhinna style, lots of spindly-legged chairs painted black and trimmed with patterns of gold dragons, pedestals burdened with ugly black-lacquered vases, all very eastern and exotic. Worse, riotous gold-leaf wallpaper engulfed the walls, drowning the paintings that hung along the length of the gallery.

The paintings, too, had been rearranged. Instead of the old tradition of giving each magnificent painting, whether
Treaty, Birth, Death
, or
Marriage
, its own place, now they were hung all one atop the other with barely a hand’s-breadth between each one. It looked more like a gaudy storeroom than a gallery. How could anyone be so blind? At least Mechella had not suffered from the sin of bad taste. Her son was not so lucky.

He limped forward, leaning on his cane. Arriano’s body was fifty-three years old now. He had given it a good run, better than expected, but its time was over. The bone-fever was affecting his hands.

There, in the nook that looked out over the park, sat the Grijalva drawing class, boys and a few girls brought over this early morning from the compound. He had come today for one last look at the boy he had chosen as his successor.

He paused, catching sight of Lord Limner Riobaro’s lovely
Marriage of Benetto I and Rosira della Marei.
Matra Dolcha! The fools had stuck it up near the ceiling, surrounded by a series of
lesser
Treaties
that utterly destroyed the graceful beauty of line, the linked hands of Benetto and Rosira. Riobaro had drawn attention away from the bride’s plain face by lavishing his lush brushstrokes and perfect sense for color onto her gown’s emerald green train, which draped in splendid folds down the steps of the sanctuary in the Cathedral.

This insult made him so angry that he began to shake. He tapped his way carefully to a bench and sank down on it. His joints hurt. With difficulty, he unfolded the guidesheet.

The heavy paper was impressed with a border of intertwined roses outlined with gold paint. An appalling affectation! He skimmed over the names of the Dukes, of the Lord Limners. Was there
any
order whatsoever to the changes in the gallery? What had they done with Saavedra’s portrait?

A shudder of relief passed through his frame. It still hung in the place of honor accorded it by Mechella after the death of Arrigo—as a constant reminder to her sons, perhaps.

Laboriously he tracked through the tiny calligraphy, seeking Riobaro’s work. The exhibit had doubled in size in the last twenty years. Perhaps Grand Duke Renayo wanted to make sure everyone knew he had the greatest art collection of all the crowned rulers.

His eye caught on a title that had been lined out with black ink.
Birth of Cossima.
What had they done with his painting?

Manners be damned. He hammered his cane on the floor. At once the assistant curatorrio came running. They always came running, if a man wore the Chieva do’Orro.

“Embajadorro, are you well? What do you need?” The assistant curatorrio was a well-fed youth with pale skin. Not a fit subject for a painting.

His hands shook as he pointed to the lined-out title. “My—Guilbarro Grijalva’s painting, his
Birth of Cossima.
What does this mean?”

“Ah.” The curatorrio had the grace to look shame-faced. “The
Birth of Cossima.
”

“Was it removed for cleaning?”

“No, Embajadorro. Last month was the Name Day of one of the young lords. Don Rohario, if you please.”

He did not please, nor did he care one jot about Renayo’s whelps.

“He asked for it, sir.”

“
Asked
for it?”

“He’s always in the Galerria, sir. It’s a bit of a joke with us. He
loves painting. He’s even studying painting with Cabral Grijalva. The Grand Duke promised him he could have a painting from the Galerria for his twelfth birthday, to hang in his room.”

A spoiled twelve-year-old pup had absconded with one of his masterworks, meant to be admired and lionized, and stuck it in his bedchamber! Matra Dolcha!

He should never have spent so many years abroad, but after the disaster with Rafeyo, he had felt it safest to leave Tira Virte for an extended period. And he had enjoyed his travels, going farther afield than he ever had before, traveling as ambassador—and spy—to the distant north where princedoms and city states like Friesemark and Merse and Vethia were coming into their own. The people were a bit rough around the edges, with their seemingly inexhaustible new wealth from trading ventures, but they had treated him like a king and made much of his talent and his cultured southern background. He had taught them how to appreciate art. And he had sent reports home that had allowed first Arrigo and then Arrigo’s sons to make the most of new trading partnerships.

And what had they done with that wealth? He had only to look around the Galerria. He had only to look at the printed page, where his
Cossima
was now part of a boy’s private art gallery. What would be next? All the best paintings?

“He wanted
The First Mistress
,” said the assistant curatorrio, wrinkling up his face in the most unseemly, pacifying manner. “But His Grace refused. He said his mother, the blessed Grand Duchess Mechella, wouldn’t have wanted it moved.”

Arriano grunted. It was all he could manage. The nerve of that child! The bone-shattering stupidity of the Grand Duke. He heaved himself up, cursing his infirmities, and limped toward the drawing class. The assistant curatorrio trailed after him, wringing his plump hands.

“You needn’t accompany me,” snapped Arriano.

The young man bobbed his head and, with a look of relief turned back to the desk.

According to the guidesheet, the most recent paintings and portraits, additions of the last eighteen years, hung in the nook. Arriano looked forward to seeing them. The work he had seen in the past week, at Palasso Grijalva, had looked stiff and flat, lifelike renderings without any
life
in them. But these would be the best work produced during the years he had been gone.

Even in painting, fashions change, although of course the Viehos Fratos had kept a tight rein on any radical innovations. These could not be allowed. He had adapted over the centuries, but
he had never lost the essential touch of Sario’s genius: his Luza do’Orro.

He halted behind a row of benches set in a semicircle in the broad nook. Two great windows looked out over parkland. Grijalva children, adolescents mostly, sketched in silence, heads bent over their paper. The Limner in charge greeted him.

“Arriano Grijalva, I presume.” This man, too, wore the Chieva do’Orro. “I heard you had returned. I am Nicollo Grijalva.”

Arriano barely managed a nod as he surveyed the walls with horror.
This
was the prize of the last generation?

There was a
Treaty
, with all the figures in the right place, all of them realistically done down to the last fingernail and twist of gold braid on the men’s coats. It was a
relief
paraded along the canvas. The figures were solid, immobile. That was Renayo II, but he looked like a painted statue, not like a living, breathing man. The painting had no movement.

There was the
Marriage of Renayo II and Mairie de Ghillas.
It was even worse. The painter had talent, clearly, but to waste it on rendering these flat, dead reproductions—for that was all they were, truly. Reproductions.

“That
Marriage
is very fine, isn’t it?” said the Limner beside him. “It was Andonio Grijalva’s first major work as Lord Limner. You have been out of the country, of course, but Andonio truly changed the way we paint. He took to heart Master Dioniso’s famous speech: precision, accuracy, exactitude!” He said the words with a flourish. “So it was fitting that Andonio restored Grijalva painting to its true path.” Nicollo curled his fingers over his golden key and kissed the fingertips in a blessing to the dead Andonio. “He was a genius!”

He was a moron!
Precision, accuracy, exactitude, of course. But not to the exclusion of
life!

“There is the
Peintraddo Morta
of the Dowager Duchess Mechella,” Nicollo continued. “It was the audition painting done by Andreo Grijalva, who will be invested as Lord Limner at Nov’viva. All the realism of an exact reproduction of the scene.”

Without an ounce of spirit.
But Arriano said nothing aloud. Nicollo was clearly infatuated with the new style. But the new style was going to have to change.

Arriano nodded stiffly at the other man and limped forward, surveying the students’ work. Boys glanced up at him, saw the cane, the sigil, and with wide eyes turned back to their work, some sketching with more concentration, some hiding a smudge with a sleeve, one boy—
his
boy—smiling confidently at him.

His
boy. Arriano thought of him that way. He had met the boy already, surveyed his work carefully, looked into his bloodlines. The boy had potential, a good hand, a keen eye, a good sense for color; and he possessed something else that appealed to Arriano’s sense of irony. The boy was named
Sario
, in tribute to the long-dead master.

What would it be like to be called by his own name again after all these years?

But now, after seeing what passed for painting—the new “style”!—Arriano wasn’t so sure. He paused to watch the boy sketch. At fifteen, he showed good mastery of technique, but he was really only copying. His hand was perfect, but wasn’t that precisely the problem with this new “style”? It had no Luza, only lighting that cast precise shadows and figures glossed to the final tiny detail. Even with Sario’s mind to direct him, did this boy have enough talent? Did he have an already developing hand of his own, so that when he became Sario, his efforts to reinvent painting, to restore dignity, power, and beauty, would not seem entirely out of place?

There was so much to be done.

His gaze wandered idly over the other students’ work and came to rest on two sketches lying askew on a nearby bench.

And there it was. One sketchpad held the usual copy: well-done, lifelike, a rendering that would please an exacting master but with no originality of its own. But beside it! An immature hand, but with a stamp of boldness. This sketch, too, copied the appalling
Marriage
, but the youthful hand had already begun to alter and enlighten. In the
Marriage
, the young bride posed in the formal style, and although every drape of her elaborate gown was correct, she had all the personality of a bolt of cloth topped with a pale head and light ringlets. In the sketch, the bride held her free hand open toward the viewer, her shoulders turned slightly, seeming to entreat her audience to assure her that all would be well. In the
Marriage
, the Dowager Duchess Mechella wore her dignity with a gravity that was simply boring. In the sketch—Eiha! The sly child had altered the pose just enough that it echoed the pose of his very own Saavedra, suggesting a lifetime of waiting.

True, true, it was rough, the work of a talented child, but it had more originality than the portrait it purported to copy.

Arriano beckoned to Nicollo. “Who has done this?” He pointed.

Nicollo frowned at the sketchbooks. “It is a shame, isn’t it? The
grandchildren of Leilias Grijalva have been spoiled shamelessly, say what the others will.”

Evidently the relatives of Tazia and the adherents of Mechella’s faction were still fighting it out.

“I meant the promising one,” said Arriano, willing to concede that the first was left in an uninspiring light compared to the brilliant journeyman sketch of the other student.

“That one!” Nicollo’s face lit up. “A bit of a rebel, that boy, but fourteen now—”

“Confirmed?” Matra! It was enough to shake off his disgust at the whole sorry state of Grijalva painting.

“Not officially, but he’s Gifted, all right. The little scamp has been having an affair since he was thirteen with a serving wench from the kitchens, and once we found out, we tested her, and she promptly got pregnant. So we think it’s likely, quite likely. We have high hopes for the boy.”

“His name?”

“Alerrio. He’s my nephew. We’re hoping to put him forward as Lord Limner.”

Alas, my friend, Alerrio will only be Lord Limner if I am in him.
But obviously there was still plenty of in-fighting going on within the family. In-fighting he could profit by. “Where is the boy now?”

“He and … the other … went down to look at
The First Mistress.
There they are now.”

Arriano barely saw the other one, the slighter one, a girl, because his gaze was riveted to the boy. A good-looking boy, a bit too handsome, perhaps—as he knew himself, that could cause problems—but well built, strong, with an animated face. He was laughing now at something his companion had said.

“It’s a shame about her,” Nicollo was saying.

Arriano stopped listening. It was a shame to lose the irony of taking a boy whose name was Sario, but in the face of such potential, it did not—could not—matter.

The two young people sat down on the bench, taking up their sketchpads, oblivious to their elders standing behind them.

“Everyone knows that paints are better now,” said the boy in a low voice to the girl.

“Do you really think that makes these
paintings
better?” she demanded in a voice meant to be a whisper but carrying with intensity.

“You just want to paint like the Old Masters,” he taunted.

“I do not! But I’d rather paint like them than like this.”

She tossed her head, clearly relishing the argument. She was young, twelve perhaps; Arriano could see she would be—not a beauty, perhaps, but a woman worth painting, when she grew up.

Then he realized she was holding the wrong sketchpad.

She held the sketchpad with the altered painting. The boy started drawing, adding lines to the workmanlike reproduction on his paper.

She.

He watched as she began to draw.