The Golden Key (4 page)

Saavedra was silent.

It struck him like a wave: he had erred. He had hurt her. “’Vedra, forgive me—” Matra ei Filho, when someone did that to
him
— “Oh, ‘Vedra, I’m sorry! I am!” He was. “But I couldn’t help myself.”

She put her charcoal into her tunic pocket. “I know.”

“’Vedra—”

“I
know
, Sario. You never can help yourself.” She got up from the bench and shook out her tunic. Charcoal dust clouded. Her tunic was, as his, stained by powdered pigments, dyestuffs, binder, melted resins, oil, all the workings of their world. “It is better, what you have done.”

He was anxious now, thrusting the board and pinned paper back into her hands as he rose hastily. “It was only—” He gestured helplessly. “It was only that I
saw
—”

“I know,” she said again, accepting the board but not looking at the sketch. “You saw what I didn’t see; what I
should
have seen.” Saavedra shrugged, a small, self-conscious lifting of her shoulders. “I should have seen it also.”

It lay between them now. They were alike in many ways, unalike in others. She could not be Gifted, but she was gifted, and more so than most.

He saw again in his inner eye the image. No one would mistake it. No one could have mistaken it for anyone other than Baltran do’Verrada
before
he had altered the sketch, but he had altered it nonetheless.

He was sorry to hurt her. But there was exactitude in his Gift, a punishing rectitude: there was no room in his world for than anything less than perfection.

“Regretto,” he said in a small, pinched voice. Inside his head:
Nazha irrada;
don’t be angry.
Nazha irrada, ‘Vedra.
But he could not speak it aloud; there was too much of begging in it, too much humility. Even to her, even
for
her, he could not bare so much of himself. “I’m sorry …”

She was in that moment far older than he. “You always are, Sario.”

It was punishment, though for her it was merely truth, a bastard form of luza do’orro. He valued that in her. Truth was important. But truth could also punish; his own personal truth had transformed the rough sketch from good to brilliant, with merely an added line, a touch of shadow—he understood it all so well, it burned in him so brightly that it was beyond his comprehension how another might not know it.

His truth was not hers. She was good, but he was better.

Because of it, he had hurt her.

“’Vedra—”

“It’s all right,” she said, tucking hair behind her ears. A bloody speck glinted there: garnet stone in the lobe. “Do’nado. You can’t help it.”

Indeed, he never could. It was why they hated him.

Even the moualimos, who knew what he could be.

“Where are we going?” she asked. “You said it was important.”

Sario nodded. “Very important.”

“Well?” She repositioned the board, but did not so much as glance at the image on the paper.

He swallowed tautly. “Chieva do’Sangua.”

It shocked her as much as he expected. “Sario, we
can’t
!”

“I know a place,” he told her. “They will never see us.”

“We
can’t
!”

“No one will see us, ‘Vedra. No one will know. I’ve been there many times.”

“You’ve seen a Chieva do’Sangua?”

“No. Other things; there hasn’t been a Chieva do’Sangua for longer than we’ve been alive.”

She was taken aback. “How do you
know
these things?”

“I have open eyes, unplugged ears—” Sario grinned briefly. “And I know how to read the
Folio
, ‘Vedra; I am permitted, being male.”

“To
look
, eiha, yes; but it’s too soon for you to read so much. Do the moualimos know?”

He shrugged.

“Of course not! Oh, Sario, you’ve read too far ahead! You must be properly examined before permission to read the
Folio
is granted—”

He was impatient now. “They won’t know we’re there, ‘Vedra. I promise.”

Beneath charcoal smudges, her face was leached of color. “It’s forbidden—it’s
forbidden
, Sario! We are not Master Limners to see the Chieva do’Sangua, any more than you are permitted to study the
Folio
—”

Again, he could not help it. “I will be.
I
will be.”
And Lord Limner also!

Color flared briefly in pale cheeks; she, being female, would never be permitted to study the
Folio
, or to be admitted to the ranks of Master Limners, the Viehos Fratos. Her purpose was to conceive and bear them, not to be one. “You aren’t one yet, are you?”

“No, but—”

“And
until
you are, you are not permitted to see such things.” She glared at him, clearly still stung by his reminder that gender as much as blood precluded her from rising as he would. “And it’s still true: we are not Master Limners to see the ritual. Do you know what would happen to us if we were caught?”

Abruptly he grinned. “Nothing so bad as Chieva do’Sangua.”

She ignored the sally and shook her head definitively. “No.”

He smiled. “Yes.”

Now she looked again at the sketch.
Her
image, that he had made come truly to life with the single quick stroke of his charcoal here, and a bit of shadow there.

Neosso Irrado they called him; Angry Youth—and with reason. He tried them all. Tested them all. But they knew it even as he did: the Grijalva family had never, since the Gift had come upon them, known anyone with his talent.

He was surely Gifted. Unacknowledged, undefined, as yet unconfirmed. But they knew it as surely as he did. As surely as Saavedra, who had told him so once, long before he saw it in his teachers’ eyes, because the moualimos would not speak of it.

Yet.

He would be a Master Limner, one of the Viehos Fratos … how could he not? The Gift surged within him despite his youth, despite the fact no one would yet consider admitting it.

Lord Limner, too.
He thrust his chin into the air proudly.
I know what I am. I know what I will be.

Saavedra’s mouth twisted. She looked away from the sketched face because his living one demanded it. “Very well,” she said.

He had won. He always won. He would go on winning.

No one, not even the moualimos, knew yet how he might be beaten. Or even if he could be.

The man hastily reached for and caught the boy’s hand. “This way, Alejandro … through here, do you see? No, let the candlerack be—this way, if you please … No, no guide sheet; and no, the curatorrio is not necessary. We shall do well enough on our own, we two … here, Alejandro, this way. Do you see? You are related to every do’Verrada hanging here on these very walls. In fact, you may well see your own face peering back at you from innumerable frames. Look you—here … do you see?”

He waited; was ignored.

“Alejandro.”

Had the boy somehow become deaf between the night and the morn?

“
Alejandro Baltran Edoard Alessio do’Verrada
, if you please: attend me!”

Belatedly, “Patro?”

Not deaf, then, obviously; merely—
always
!—distracted. It was age—or, more appropriately, youth—as well as the wholly anticipated trait of distractability; was the boy not his son?

His son. Matra Dolcha, yes!—and with duties to tend despite his youth; or perhaps it was better to say duties to
be
tended, one day. For now Alejandro was clearly too distracted—and distract
able;
for now there were but quiet truths to be told, though as yet only small and supposedly inconsequential, vast histories unveiled, infamous battles refought, endless genealogies unfolded. …

The father, caught in reverie, sighed. Such knowledge was vital to the training, if subtle and as yet unmarked, of a son who was also Heir.

“These are the
Marriages
—Alejandro!” Eiha, he was never still, this boy,
never
still … was much more taken up with, he supposed, the altogether natural pursuits of his age: food, and the obsessive need to be constantly active—with little attention left over for such tedious things as leisurely educational strolls through Meya Suerta’s renowned Galerria.

He grinned in wry self-deprecation.
Especially with his father!

At the moment the busy boy’s fancy was struck by a group of children his age gathering like hungry hound pups in the high-vaulted foyer of the gallery; none of the litter would be permitted to enter, of course, while the Duke and his son were present. The Duke saw the middle-aged, slight man whose linen-clothed throat glinted gold quietly deny entry to his charges—but all of them spent the unexpected delay staring hard at those who took precedence over them. And Alejandro stared back.

Matra Dolcha, but this boy has the attention span of a gnat.
Smiling wryly, he clamped a broad, ring-weighted hand over the curl-capped dome of the skull, threading strong callused fingers through disarrayed dark hair, and physically swiveled the head on its slender neck so that the boy had no choice but to look in the direction his father meant him to. “Alejandro.”

“Patro?”

“They are Grijalva children, no more. Did you see the necklace and device that man wears at his collar?”

Alejandro shrugged; he was infinitely bored by talk of unknown men and equally unimportant devices.

“Chieva do’Orro, little gnat: the Golden Key. It betokens a Master Limner, and the others with him, who are not yet masters of anything, are here to study the works painted by their ancestors …” He paused. “Alejandro, can you at least give the same grace to those they painted, who are
your
ancestors?”

The boy squirmed. “Are they to be limners, too?”

“Indeed, it is likely. They are Grijalvas.”

Bright eyes slewed in the direction of the foyer where the litter stood as one. “Do all Grijalvas paint, Patro?”

The Duke cast a glance at the adult with the children—their teacher, most likely, a quiet elder entrusted to guide and ward the wisdom and artistry of the next generation. “They paint as they have always painted, but also they are responsible for the wherewithal to do it. It is the Grijalva family which makes the materials used in art. It is their purpose, Alejandro. Their gift, if you will.” The hand lifted from the skull and gestured toward the wall. “Now, look upon this—this one here, before us …
Alejandro!
What do you see?”

Looking upon the
boy
, one saw an expression of manifest impatience. And, of course, distraction. He twitched, fidgeted, cast another quick glance across his shoulder at the children clustered at the entrance. “A painting, Patro.”

Indulgence was the luxury of nobility. The father smiled and did not reprimand. “A painting, yes. Does it speak to you, this painting?”

The boy’s smile was fleeting, a youthful echo of the father’s, but it lent an impudent glint to lively hazel eyes. “It does, Patro. It tells me I should return to the Palasso and practice my bladework.”

“Bladework, eh? Instead of hanging about the Galerria surrounded by tedious paintings documenting even more tedious marriages?”

The response was quick. “I will not be a limner, Patro. I am not a Grijalva, but a do’Verrada whose face hangs on these very walls.”

Eiha, a clever gnat
—though many of the faces had been painted by Grijalvas. “A swordsman, then, eh, little do’Verrada?”

“I would rather, Patro.”

“Eiha, so would I.” The father’s eyes glinted now in older echo of the son’s. “But you will rule Tira Virte one day, Alejandro, and a wise ruler realizes it need not be always by the sword.”

“But paintings, Patro?” The boy had not yet learned the subtleties of Court; he was honest in disbelief, in fleeting indifference, as yet knowing nothing of derision or condescension. “How may a man rule through a painting?”

All innocence—the boy, the question—as it should be. But it minded the father, abruptly, unpleasantly, of the latest story making the rounds, initially quiet but now blatant as a knife in the belly. There were rumors at Palasso Verrada of magics, of a dark power manifesting itself within the city, aiming for the Court, for the ducal family itself.

The father’s smile died away. The hand, stroking the importunate curls of his duchy’s Heir, stilled abruptly as he looked back at the Grijalva children still clustered in the foyer.
Innocent, at this age? Or is it fed them in the womb, this dark magic Zaragosa speaks of
?

In wan and ocherous sunlight—the Galerria was kept dim so as not to ruin the paintings with exposure to sun, to oil lamps, to candle flame—the ducal ring glinted dully: blood-black, and its cradle of gold in the tangle of dark hair. It was only with great effort that he resumed his affectionate display; and greater effort expended in adopting a tranquil smile. “A man rules using the tools that are given him, Alejandro. A wise man learns never to discard—or to overlook—any of them, lest there be danger in it. Now, or later.”

“But, Patro—”

“Look at this painting, Alejandro. Look, now, Neosso do’Orro, and tell me what you see.”

The boy made a great work of expressing elaborate acquiescence: thin shoulders heaved under an overdone sigh of such duration
the father marveled that his son had any breath left to speak. “A painting,” the boy said, “of your marriage to Matra.”