The Golden Key (24 page)

The
crows took their leave of the chamber housing the dead. Candles were extinguished one by one as each Gifted departed until only a single flame remained, as the man remained whose breath was to damp its light; but he could not bear it yet. Let it bloom a little longer as a lone candleflower, so he could offer a final companionship to a man who had been his father in all ways but one.

It hurt. Eiha, but it hurt— “Oh, Matra,” Raimon murmured, locking rigid fingers into thick hair as he bowed his head. “Oh, Matra Dolcha—has his soul reached You yet?”

Perhaps not. Perhaps not while the flame yet blossomed on the wick.

Surely, in this, a chair was improper. Raimon slipped out of it awkwardly, graceless in grief, and lowered himself to rest, knees against the floor. He felt the roughness of uneven tile underneath the thin rug. “Nommo Matra ei Filho …” The prayer came easily, with utter sincerity; this man of them all deserved swift passage and certain welcome. “If You will but accept this man’s soul, I would gladly surrender my place with You—”

“And are you so certain you shall have a place?”

Startled, Raimon twitched; he had heard nothing, no sound of admittance, no quiet voice announcing entry. She was simply
here.

And he knew her.
Blessed Mother
— He pressed a hand against the bedframe to steady himself briefly as he rose. He swallowed before he could speak. “Premia … Premia Sancta—”

“I asked you a question, Grijalva. Are you so certain
you
shall have a place?”

The emphasis was slight, but he understood it. He was meant to understand it.

Despite his intentions, outrage kindled. It took every effort not to offer discourtesy, but humility in its place.
Give her no reason to say ill of me beyond what she manufactures.
“Premia.” He bowed elegantly, submissively, one hand against his heart.

The door stood open behind her. She was a blaze of white in wan shadows, unleavened by light. White robe, white coif; a trickle of silver hanging to her waist. The bones of her face were severe, but not so severe as her eyes. Malice inhabited them.

He flicked a glance at the open door, and understood again.
She does not care who sees, or what is heard.
And it would be unkind.

He began once more, in perfect courtesy. “Premia Sancta, regretto … forgive me for my presumption.”

“All you Grijalvas presume.” A thin, spare voice, her diction precise so he would mishear nothing. “You presume your minor talent worthy of recognition. You presume your limners worthy of elevation. You presume your souls equal to those of others. You presume to regain a place you lost through the divine punishment of the Mother and Her Son.”

Raimon’s mouth dried even as his flesh sheened itself with nervous perspiration. Malice now was banished. She was all the more frightening because there was no passion. She declared it: it was so.

He swallowed tightly. “Premia, grazzo—I sent for you—”

“So you did.” No passion at all. The dark eyes were flat and hard, framed by the simplicity of a plain linen coif drawn tight beneath her chin. “You presumed, and you sent.”

Humility waned abruptly. Grief stripped him of self-control. “What have we done?” he cried. “What sin have we committed? We serve the Blessed Mother, we worship Her Holy Son, we tithe to the Ecclesia, we glorify Their Exaltedness with our art—”

One upraised slender hand silenced him. “You soil us,” she answered. A simple declaration.

It was astounding, even from her. “
Soil
you!”

The hand disappeared within a fold of pristine robe. “I have spoken with the Duke many times, as has the Premio Sancto. We believe the blessings of the Ecclesia should be denied you Grijalvas.”

“
Why
?”

Abruptly dispassion was vanquished, malice reclaimed. Livid color rushed into her thin, sallow face, flushing it a most unbecoming hue. “Because you are abomination!” she hissed. “Because you
remind
us of the dishonor!”

Raimon pressed crossed hands against his chest. “It was more than one hundred years ago!” he cried. “Oh, Matra, how many centuries must we endure this? We have done nothing! Do you believe we
invited
the dishonor?”

“Your women were there,” she said curtly, “among the others. They were there, and they were carried away—without much protest, if one looks at Miquellan Serrano’s brilliant peintraddo historrico for the truth!—and Tza’ab estranjieros got half-breed children upon them. Worse, they
lived to bear them.
”

Miquellan Serrano’s so-called peintraddo historrico,
Rescue of
the Captives
, was a masterpiece of bigotry and cruel imagination, no more. “The Duchess also was there,” Raimon reminded her.

“Bassda!” White as her linen robe, the Premia Sancta kissed her fingertips, then pressed them to her heart in token tribute to the blessed Duchess Jesminia. Between her fingers glinted a chain not unlike his own. All sanctas wore the symbol of their office: tiny silver locks. The sanctos wore the keys. Each order, divided by gender if not by determination and exactitude, was half of a whole in Ecclesial service. “You profane the city,” she said. “You profane the Ecclesia. You profane the air we breathe.”

“Your Eminence—”

“Bassda!” She silenced him again, viciously, merely with her tone. “The Premio Sancto refused to come, as he should have. He recommended to me that I also refuse, but I sought the opportunity to look upon the man, the dying Grijalva chi’patro, and to tell him to keep his curs chained within their own kennel. Do not presume again to summon any sancta, Grijalva. Our eyes are closed to you.”

He could barely force breath through his constricted chest. “He is dead,” Raimon managed. “It doesn’t matter any more if you have come.”

The woman disagreed. “Of course it does. The message is given, no? And must be obeyed.”

To bear enmity for years long past, such hostility for an ancient dishonor … He struggled not to shout condemnation. “We were not at fault.
Not
Grijalvas.”

“Of course you were. Why else did the Matra permit those women to be dishonored? Why else were the children permitted to be conceived? Why else were so many born? And
why else
was the Nerro Lingua so particular in its punishment of your family? You have been marked out by our Most Holy Mother as abomination. In her wisdom she has punished you for the dishonor, the taint, by visiting upon you the Nerro Lingua, and the Ecclesia follows Her guidance.” One thin hand clasped the silver lock into a knob-knuckled fist. “Pray within your walls as much as you wish, chi’patro, but the Mother and Her Son have no mercy for Grijalvas.”

Raimon cast off discretion. “Then you have perverted Them,” he accused. “You have polluted Their hearts with your selfish, misguided fanaticism—”

“Bassda!”

“—and one day we Grijalvas
shall
regain what we had, including the Holy Blessings of the Mother and Her Son, and they shall know the truth of how They are served by such as you and yours, and those of the Premio Sancto!” He was trembling with outrage. “—Nommo Chieva do’Orro!”

Her face now was pinched and white, ageless in asceticism. “Oh, yes,” she said acidly, “your sacred Golden Key. One would believe you worship
that
above the Matra ei Filho!”

“Not above the Mother and Her Blessed Son. Above the Ecclesia and its unholy politics.”

“The Ecclesia
is
—” And she broke it off.

“Oh, yes?” It was his turn to spill the acid. “Were you intending to say the Ecclesia
is
the Mother and Son? Oh, but to do so is basest blasphemy, heresy, no?—and what, do you think, would be adequate punishment for it? A plague? Another Nerro Lingua?”

“Nommo Matra ei Filho,” she murmured, as if in supplication. “I pray You give me strength—”

“To circumvent a family you believe tainted, when we were merely victims!”

“Whores,” she said icily. “Every one of them. The
Rescue of the Captives
proves it.”

Illumination kindled. “What is your family name?”

“The Ecclesia is my family. My name is Premia Sancta.”

“Before,” he said steadily. And then laughed bitterly. “But no, do not trouble yourself to dissemble. I believe I know the answer.” Raimon paused. “And is the Premio Sancto
also
a Serrano, as was the artist?” He paused, timing it. “As is the Premia Sancta?”

Dark eyes flashed. “Bassda,” she hissed. “I will hear no more from you!”

Raimon extended a hand. “The door is there,” he said plainly. “I suggest you use it. Adezo.”

When the woman was gone, when the room was empty of vilification and bitter family rivalry, Raimon Grijalva turned again to the man in the bed. Very carefully he knelt once more upon the frayed, thin rug, bowed his head, and began the simple prayer the Ecclesia would never offer. “Matra ei Filho … accept this man’s soul, who labored so long and well to serve You, his Duke, and his family.”

Long indeed, for a Limner. From birth through depletion to death, Arturro Grijalva had survived fifty-one years.

The tent was little more than a framework of willow withies, bound and braided with reeds in intricate knotwork patterns, overdraped with doubled panels, a flutter of pennons stitched with green into complex designs. The inner layer was a gauzy, loose-woven fabric of time-suppled flax; the outer, though rolled up and tied neatly into a perimeter hemming the top, was a heavier, close-loomed canvas, oiled against the rains of autumn and winter. The tent was neither round nor square but an odd marriage of both, a series of flexible, slightly curved panels fastened into a whole, seamless and apparently impervious to the vagaries of weather. And yet it was a
tent.

In the center of Meya Suerta.

He had not been to this street before, because the Grijalvas kept to their Palasso and the artisans quarter. Today, during Fuega Vesperra, he had wandered purposely, rejecting the habits of his family, the cowardice that kept them sequestered. And he had discovered the tent. A tent wholly alien within the city, and yet ignored as if no one else saw it.

Sario, in its center, could not see how anyone might miss it. He had marked it instantly upon turning the corner. It had drawn him, brought him to its entrance with the colors, the patterns, the knotwork. It intrigued him to learn how it was attached to the ground, how it rooted into packed dirt and cobbles. Surely it was staked somehow; great winds occasionally howled down through the corridors of city dwellings, ripping away awnings, market stalls, cart shrouds. A tent could not withstand such.

Nor, he thought, should it withstand a festival day, or the city at all; and yet despite the throngs outside, fuzzily visible through the gauze, there was little sound. It was as if wax were stuffed into his ears, diminishing nearly all of the world’s song save for an understated hum, like the drone of distant bees. And despite the unruly crowd, its fabric and frame remained whole.

He knelt. Beneath his doubled knees lay a rug of intricate design, of strange ornate devices and stylized plant renderings at odds with Tira Virteian tastes. And the colors—
eiha, the colors!
He had known they existed, but never used them in his own work, which leaned more toward vivid hues as opposed to muted tones. He saw beneath him, despite the loomed fabric, the colors of another land: the rich rust of iron oxide; the pinker tones of rose-blushed sandstone; sparing but deep bloodied raisin verging on purple; seams of blue and green, though soft and barely visible. Unseen when examined but undeniably
felt.

Like art … like passion
… Accustomed to the warm subtle tones of Meya Suerta’s brickwork, its clay and cobbles and plaster sun-bleached ocher, oyster, and ivory, Sario’s eyes were drawn again and again to the rug, examining color, composition, theme but he could not identify the theme. That one existed he knew; the repetition of certain patterns made it obvious, the arched, knotted interlocking series of plant stems, leaves, petals, the meticulously clean-lined and oddly familiar borders. He
should
see the theme, should identify it. He had trained his eye for years to see the whole even in a vast array of infinitely intricate parts.

The response was instinctive, abrupt, characteristic. “I should use this …” Of a sudden, illumination: subtlety contained power as much as bold color.

Already his mind busied itself sketching the beginnings of a new work, a landscape of sere and sparing color, of brittle but binding tints unlike those he now employed. Even the tones of the flesh could be altered, when painting a portrait. “Sweet Mother …” He traced the stem of a woven plant “growing” from beneath a knee. “What I could do with this—”

Sound. He broke off thought, glancing up quickly to the flap that served as a door into the tent. He saw through gauze to the world beyond: the old man, and Saavedra.

Artistic absorption shattered. He felt again the confusion, the unease, the vague fear, though all was coupled with a perversely burgeoning fascination.
What he said
…
what he told me
… But questions he’d left unasked because he was made mute, too astonished by conception of new thoughts, strange thoughts, as yet fragmented and tentative.
What the moualimo said to me
—