The Golden Key (123 page)

“
Your Grace!
” He backed up swiftly, bowing.

Agustin had not known Andreo could move so fast. The Lord Limner had come forward, and bowed, before Grand Duke Renayo entered the Crechetta. But he could scarcely stop the Grand Duke from entering the most private Grijalva sanctuary. The other Limners rose, all but Zosio and Nicollo.

The Grand Duke looked annoyed and completely unaware of his trespass. “Andreo! I am in a hurry.” His gaze touched and dismissed the chamber and its furnishings. He examined the assembled Grijalvas, pausing longest on Agustin, who squirmed and tried
to look innocuous. Agustin had never seen the Grand Duke this close before: a good-looking, stocky man, Renayo had the light hair and delicate features of his Ghillasian heritage. Indeed, Agustin could see very little resemblance between Renayo II and any of his illustrious do’Verrada ancestors. “I trust I may speak freely here?”

Andreo proferred a hand, palm up. “Of course, Your Grace. May I offer you a seat?”

“No. I will be blunt. I have just come from Chasseriallo.”

The atmosphere in the chamber, already charged, became taut with expectation.

“I have spoken with my son, Edoard. To my vast surprise at least one third of the sentences he uttered made sense, so I must tell you that your daughter is having a magnificently good influence on him. It was not what I would have chosen, you understand. I was given to believe that the elder daughter, the widow, was Edoard’s choice and a better choice besides from our point of view, as well as being the more remarkable in looks, but this other girl is very handsome, too, if rather young. An older woman is the traditional choice. Be that as it may. I am at peace with this decision. It is what Mairie always said: ‘A strong woman will be the making of Edoard.’ This is a good start, despite my misgivings.”

“Your Grace,” said Andreo. It answered nothing but seemed to be the response expected of him.

Agustin was awed by Renayo’s energy and by the ease with which he commanded the attention of everyone in the room. Now Renayo nodded curtly. “The young woman will be introduced officially to society at the Dia Fuega ball.”

“As you wish, Your Grace. May I ask—?”

“Matra ei Filho, Andreo! Of course you may ask. You need not abase yourself! What concerns you? Eiha! Perhaps you are as surprised as I was, no? Of course it was your intention that the elder girl—did she refuse to go, after all was said and done?”

Andreo blinked. “No, not at all. You did not speak to her there?”

“At Chasseriallo? No, I only spoke to Edoard and his charming Beatriz. She is a sweet girl. I wish my daughter Timarra had a tenth of her charm. I quite liked her, in fact. The elder girl—what was her name? Momentito. Don’t tell me. Of course.” Renayo snapped his fingers. “Eleyna. No, she was not there.”

“Not there?” The exclamation came from Giaberto.

Not there!

“Nor was Rohario. I sent him off with his older brother to get him out of the Palasso. Eiha!—if only he would think as well as he
dresses. So. Eleyna Grijalva
was
there, was she? Edoard made some confused comments. I didn’t put it together at the time, but now—”

Three taps came on the door. Damiano cracked it open.

“I beg your pardon, Zio,” the young Limner said in a voice meant to be a whisper which instead carried easily to the others, “but you cannot—”

“Is that Cabral?” Renayo clapped his hands together, once, emphatically. “Of course you must let him enter! Zio Cabral!”

Of course you must let him enter!
No Limner dared contravene the Grand Duke’s direct order, even in their own sanctuary. Their expressions of consternation delighted Agustin.

The Grand Duke hurried forward to draw the old man into the chamber which Cabral had certainly never seen before in his life. Cabral entered hesitantly. But it was Renayo’s expression that surprised Agustin: the Grand Duke addressed Andreo forthrightly and with trust; Cabral he approached with genuine fondness.

“Zio,” the Grand Duke said, hand resting comfortably on Cabral’s arm, “you asked me to come by when the white iris bloomed. So they have, and I have come to fetch you.”

“You are kind to remember me, Your Grace,” said Cabral, but from his mouth the polite words gained a sudden sweetness. He glanced once around the Crechetta, eyes wide; then he forced his attention back to the Grand Duke. “You also have news of Chasseriallo, I hear. My niece, Eleyna, how is she?”

Renayo burst into guffaws. Agustin could hardly breathe. The Grand Duke and a limner standing in the Crechetta! And, worse, what had happened to Eleyna?

“No one knows how she is! It appears my son Rohario has done the first manful thing of his entire life: run off with a beautiful woman!” Still laughing, he swept Cabral out with him. Their footsteps receded down the hall.

Inside the Crechetta there was stunned silence.

“Curse that woman,” said Nicollo at last in a voice scraped raw with pain.

“Giaberto, prepare a canvas.” Andreo shook himself to life and strode over to an iron lampstand. He adjusted the wick in the lamp, although Agustin had refilled the basin with oil that morning and it burned brightly enough, then turned to face the others. “We must track Eleyna down, quietly, so as not to attract too much attention. It is vital we find her. She knows too much.”

To Agustin’s horror, Andreo turned his grim gaze on
him.

“
You
, mennino. If your sister sends you word, if you hear anything
from her at all, you will come to me at once. She knows a very few of the secrets of the Viehos Fratos, but a very few is too many in the hands of those who could use that knowledge against us, who might destroy with one stroke what we have labored so long, so many generations, to build. She must return to Palasso Grijalva. Here she must stay. Do you understand?”

Agustin gulped down his fear. He did understand. He was beginning to understand the power of the Grijalvas very well. “Yes, Lord Limner,” he said obediently.

But in his heart, he knew he would never betray Eleyna.

  SIXTY-NINE  

Alazais
was stupid.

No, stupid was the wrong word. She was blank. She was a white canvas, primed but unpainted.

Sario revised his plans. He had a great deal of work to do before he, her rescuer, could present her to a grateful Grand Duke Renayo. There were always unintended consequences to any action: it simply had not occurred to him that while her physical presence might be reproduced with painstaking exactitude, her mind might not follow her form.

Which was, perhaps, just as well. Sario could do his own forming.

“You are the Princess Alazais, daughter of King Ivo and Queen Iriene of Ghillas, who are, alas, dead, murdered by a renegade mob. It is no wonder that your memory is weak, your nerves overset, having witnessed such a horrific scene.”

“I am Princess Alazais, daughter of King Ivo and Queen Iriene. They are—” Here her voice caught. “—dead. Alas. I saw, I saw … I saw it happen.”

Sario regarded her with approval. She was a skilled mimic, and she picked up his every word, every emotional nuance, and incorporated them into her fragile being. Just as wood or cloth, paper or plaster provide a surface onto which paint is applied, she was’ the support on which he created the masterwork which would assure his elevation to Lord Limner. He need only apply the final layer— of words and thoughts rather than brushstrokes.

He heard the footsteps on the stairs. Going out, he found a tray of food and drink. It was nothing special, but the rich head of foam on the ale, freshly drawn, the savory meat pies, and aroma of freshly baked bread made his mouth water. He was still weak, though he had slept and eaten more than usual these last three days. But he had been ten days painting her, most of that time in a trance so that he did not notice the passage of day and night. He carried in the tray and, placing it on the table, served them both.

“Princess Alazais is always served by others. She waits for their service, never moving to help herself.”

So she waited, and handled the knife and fork daintily, sipped at
the ale cautiously and with more pleasure at a mug of spiced tea, all as he had taught her in the three days since her creation.

“Who are you?” he asked again. “What is your lineage?”

She had a voice more breath than tone, but like a feather, she might be tossed in storm winds and emerge unscathed. “I am Princess Alazais, daughter of King Ivo of Ghillas. My mother Iriene is the second daughter of Fretherik, Prince of Sar-Kathebarg. My father is the great-grand-nephew of King Pepennar the Second of Ghillas who died without issue in the year 1238. The throne of Ghillas passed in time to Enrei the Second, who sired Mechella, who became Grand Duchess of Tira Virte, and Enrei the Third, who died without legitimate children in the year 1287. After the death of Enrei the Third, the throne passed to my father, Ivo, his distant cousin. Thus it passes to me, as last survivor of the Pepennid family and only child of King Ivo.”

“And if a man were to marry you who was himself descended from Mechella de Ghillas and Mairie de Lillone?”

“The Lillone family is a collatoral branch of the Pepennids. Their claim is not as good as mine, since they were only cousins of Enrei the First, his father’s youngest brother’s children, but there are sons, descended through the male Lillone line. …”

Here she hesitated. Was she struggling to remember the many facts he had poured into her or showing maidenly modesty? Even he, her creator, could not guess. Even a blank canvas contains within its substance certain intrinsic, unique qualities.

She went on. “In Ghillas it is preferred that inheritance descend through the male line. That is why the noble houses of Ghillas rejected Renayo’s claim, because it passed to him through his mother. But Pepennar himself established and was confirmed in his claim to the throne through his father’s mother’s kinship to King Enrei the First. She was Enrei’s only daughter and her children alone of his many grandchildren survived to adulthood.”

It was so odd to listen to that gentle voice—which in Ghillas had never uttered a word of greater import than to ask for praise for her latest piece of embroidery or her mastery of a new dance step or her appearance in a new gown—reel off the complicated lineage of the Ghillasian noble family.

“Furthermore,” she continued, each word perfect, “in this terrible time of strife, it is vital that the throne and royal family of Ghillas be restored and that there be no struggle between competing factions lest the rabble that heinously murdered King Ivo and Queen Iriene gain in strength and destroy Ghillas utterly with this plague of restlessness. Where will it end if the common rabble are
allowed to sit whenever and as ever they please on the throne of Ghillas, if fishwives and panderers may wield the royal scepter, if innkeepers and street sweepers believe they can govern as well as the King and his advisers, who have been granted by Matreia e Filhei the right to rule as their part in life? Order must be restored or we will all suffer.”

“And you,” he finished, “are the one person behind whom the noble families of Ghillas, the neighboring princes, the landed classes and the wealthy merchants will all stand.”

She gazed at him solemnly with those brilliant blue eyes. Eiha! Perhaps he had overdone it, made her too perfectly beautiful when she had actually been a pretty girl but not more than that.

“I am the rightful Queen of Ghillas,” she said.

He smiled and patted her on the head as he might a pet dog, were he the type of person who kept pets. She was, indeed, beautiful, built a bit more voluptuously than she had been in real life, all of which was blatantly apparent on a young woman clad now only in a thin chemise. She stirred not one iota of sexual response in him, but for decades now only painting made him feel fully alive. The other was merely a brief moment of satiation.

She waited as he mulled over in his mind what he needed to teach her. He must bring in a woman to teach her to embroider. Alazais had loved to embroider—little pillows, sleeves, hems, ribands, hats, reticules, all manner of frilly things necessary to a pampered lady of the court. A gift of one of the princess’ handicrafts had been a mark of favor at Ivo’s court.