The Golden Key (45 page)

Sario swears I am Gifted.
She shut her eyes.
Matra ei Filho, if I were
—

“What would you be?” Ignaddio asked. “Gifted, or no?—if you were a man? If you could have a choice?”

She prevaricated. “It’s a choice I will never have to make.”

He persisted. “But if you
had
to.”

To be male, and Gifted, meant she would become one of the Viehos Fratos, would tend to the family, to compordotta, to such things as agreeing to, ordering, or undertaking the Chieva do’Sangua. To destroying genius.

She had already helped kill a man. She did not believe she could ever make that choice, take that life, again.

And yet a choice between being good, or being better, was no choice at all.

“Bassda,” she muttered, “you ask too many difficult questions!”

Ignaddio sighed. “That’s what the moualimos say, too.”

“Then it must be true. En verro.” She indicated his sketch. “Complete that, ‘Naddi. It is well begun. Think on what I have said, consider how you would begin differently, and bring it back to me. I would like to see it when you are finished.”

All the world was in his eyes. “I will! Don’t forget!”

“No.” She smiled as he darted away for fresh paper. “No, I won’t forget; there is too much of me in you. But
you
will have more opportunity.”

And then she knew her choice made after all. Opportunity. One might or might not fail, but when the opportunity to
try
was taken away, one would never know at all if there was merely technique in one’s work, or talent.

Genius was another thing, but that was beyond her comprehension.
Sario had and was genius.
She
was a woman, was good, was perhaps gifted—but not Gifted.

Trust ‘Naddi to show her the truth.

“Matra Dolcha,” Saavedra muttered. “You may become Neosso Irrado without even trying!”

  TWENTY-SIX  

The
lath-and-plaster door. Fourteen steps, twice. The tiny closet from which a man could see, if he crouched down and peered through a slit between wall and floor, into the Crechetta.

Raimon did not crouch. He did not peer. He merely mounted the final step, ducked his head against the low ceiling, then escaped it by sitting down.

Better. With feet upon a lower stair, and head not so threatened, he could breathe.

Worse. He could also think.

And so he thought. He sat perched upon the floor in the closet above the Crechetta, and remembered back down the years to the time he had been punished and sent to dwell in darkness while the burn on his wrist seared his soul as deeply as his flesh.

In the Sanctia there had been peace. Though he could not tell the elderly sancto everything—his oaths as Gifted, as one of the Viehos Fratos, forbade it—he told him enough to be as truthful as one could be. To his credit, the man had neither expressed shock, disgust, nor ordered him out of the Sanctia. The sancto merely listened, allowing Raimon to purge—and then quietly explained there was nothing he might offer a man who could not be wholly truthful.

Davo had said he was. Davo had, in the family shrine, suggested he be nothing but what he ever was: truthful. But there were truths, and
truths;
he would not honor his oaths if he told the sancto everything, even in the sight of the Mother and Her Son, nor would he honor the Mother and Son in whose names he had sworn his Grijalva oaths.

Therefore he was twice-damned, twice condemned, and worthy of punishment. Perhaps, to be symmetrical, of
two
punishments.

Only one mattered.

Raimon turned back the sleeve of his summer-silk doublet, untied and unlaced the cuff of his shirt and peeled it away. The wrist now was bared; in the nearly nonexistent light creeping up from the open door below no scar could be seen. But he saw it. Felt it.

Holy Mother, how it burns.

He had throughout his life been honest by his lights, and
for
his
light, his Luza do’Orro. Punished for it, also, for his determined attempt to be more, to be
other
, than was allowed. But the punishment, the Discipline, had not been limited to the slight blemishment of his
Peintraddo
that also burned his flesh, but to time, and time to think; to consider who and what he was, who and what he might be, and how he might become it.

In punishment, in the closet above the Crechetta he had sought and discovered a new truth, a painful truth, the kind of truth that did more to quench his fire, to extinguish his light than any physical punishment.

Gifted. Good. But not great. Not good ENOUGH.

It had nearly destroyed him, that truth. Even as it did now.

He knew who and what he was. And it was not enough. All he would
ever
be, all he had become, but it was not enough.

Sario had known. Sario had become. Sario
was.

Everything Raimon was not, nor could ever be.

Truth: In the name of his own failure he had shaped boy into adult, gifted into Gifted, limner into Limner—and man into monster.

Sario Grijalva was everything they had prayed for, had worked for, had made. But also more. And other.

Truths:
Folio
was
Kita’ab. Kita’ab
was destruction.

Laughter was quiet, and ugly. Until the tears came.

Sario was most particular about the way the room was arranged. He instructed Ignaddio, who had come to watch, where to shift furniture, pile books, distribute the small items such as a pot of flowers; a drift of silk cloth across a velurro-and-leather chair; a basket of fruit; a tapestry shawl; the copper-clad iron lantern, albeit un-lighted during the day; a half-melted ruby-hued candle stub in a clay cup; a flagon of wine and two crystal glasses, both freshly poured. And he also had the boy shut and latch the shutters.

“Why?” Saavedra asked, watching the meticulous industry as she sat crosswise in a chair, silky velurro skirts sliding like water from her knees as hair over shoulders and breasts. “Don’t you prefer the light?”

He busied himself with setting up his easel, selecting the charcoal he would use to sketch in the first details, envisioning parts of the painting that would make the whole. “Light may be painted in later.”

“No—I mean, don’t you want the light by which to
see
?”

He barely glanced at her. “For now, no. Perhaps later. I’m seeking
shadow for this.” Ignaddio made a sound of delight, and Sario looked at him curiously. “This meets with your approval?”

“Eiha,
yes!
” the boy cried, red-faced in pleasure mixed with self-consciousness. “They say you are the best at handling shadow, and that is
my
best, as well.”

“
Have
you a best?” He did not look at the boy now, still concerned with preparations.

“Sario!” Saavedra chided sharply, shooting him a glare of displeasure.

It brought him up short, spilled him into abrupt and discomfiting realization.
So
…
she protects yet another eager boy.
But he went on without indicating his brief consternation. “Eiha, ‘Vedra, we all believe we have a ‘best,’ but often it is no more than mediocrity.”

“How would you know?” she challenged instantly. “You have never viewed any of his work.”

“Should I?” It pleased him to see such color in her face; he would recall it, paint it that way. “What do I know of such things? I am not a moualimo.”

“But you
could
be!” That from the boy. “And—and I would be most honored—”

“Of course you would.” Sario cut him off; Saavedra’s expression suggested he would pay for that. “But I am Limner, not moualimo—and Lord Limner at that—”

“He knows that,” Saavedra snapped. “Why else do you think he wishes to learn from
you
?”

The emphasis made it sound entirely horrific. Now beyond the first unpleasant shock, he found it all rather perversely amusing and fascinating that she neglected her protection of him in favor of someone else, another boy who wanted very much to be better than good. Sario wasn’t wholly certain how it made him feel, that acknowledgment.

“There are things I can teach, and things I
may
teach, but none of them just now.” Sario looked again at the boy, marked the anxious hope in eyes and expression. “Ignaddio … ‘Naddi?—” A nod confirmed the diminutive. “—there is much you must learn before I could teach you. It was a thing I didn’t understand very well at your age, either, but it was true; an artist must learn the rules before he transgresses them.”

“
You
never did,” Saavedra remarked pointedly.

He decided then it
did
hurt, that she should desert him in favor of another. Quietly Sario found the proper charcoal, fit it to his
hand, nodded. “’Naddi, you had best go for now. Surely you have classes.”

“None just now.” The boy smiled winningly. “
This
can be my class—and I will stay out of the way! I promise!”

“Do you like it when others watch you work?”

Ebullience faltered. “No.”

“There will be time later. This is merely the preliminary sketch, you see … later there will be paint, and time for questions.”

Ignaddio looked from one to the other. “You only want me to go because you mean to argue.”

It astonished them both; Saavedra bit into her lip as Sario frowned fiercely to suppress imminent laughter. “Indeed,” he answered gravely, and Ignaddio was so taken aback by being told the truth he merely blinked and acquiesced without further comment. Sario grinned at Saavedra as the boy left. “You see? Your sulks and black scowls are obvious even to that boy.”

“He has seen none of them before,” she countered, “unless
you
are the object of discussion.”

“Am I often?”

“More often than
I
prefer!” She sought, found a stray hair, smoothed it away from her face. “Must you be so cruel to him? He wants very badly to be like you.”

“Or
be
me.” Sario smiled. “It’s now attainable, ‘Vedra, the appointment as Lord Limner … what once was only dreamed is now truth, and all the boys will think they have the talent to take my place.”

“Quite natural, no?”

“Of course, as it should be. But they are fated to be disappointed. I make no plans to be replaced.”

“You will be one day. You
must
be.” She gestured. “In ten years, fifteen, your knuckles will begin to swell, to lose flexibility …”

“Will they?”

“Unless you have found a cure for the bone-fever, I think so!” She scowled. “Have you?”

He grinned. “Eiha, no.”

She contemplated his expression. “For a man who comprehends very well that his hard-won position must be given to another in twenty years, you seem uncommonly content.”

“Twenty years is a long time, ‘Vedra.”

“You have never believed so before! You always decried the fact that all the Limners failed by forty, died by fifty—”

“And so I still do,” he agreed, “but that does not prevent me
from enjoying my position for now.” He waggled a hand at her. “We discussed how you should stand … so
stand
, grazzo.”

Saavedra did not move. “You were unconscionably rude to ‘Naddi.”