The Golden Key (54 page)

Saavedra wondered if Arturro knew. If Arturro welcomed Raimon, or if self-murder would turn the Premio Frato against his estudo.

Ignaddio stirred. “May I go, ‘Vedra?”

She started. “Eiha—of course you may go. I don’t mean to keep you here beyond your wishes.” She touched his hand briefly. “I will stay a while, ‘Naddi. Go on.”

He nodded and stood up, turned to the door. With his hand on the latch he looked back at her. “You didn’t mean what you said, did you? About it being Sario’s fault?”

She drew in a breath to give her a moment, and strength. “It’s very important to you that he be forgiven, no? That
I
forgive him?”

Ignaddio looked at the floor fixedly, then lifted his eyes again. “He’s Lord Limner,” he said. “It’s what I want, too—but if what you say is true …”

If what I say is true, I have forever spoiled your dream. When it isn’t even the position at fault, but the man in it.
That much she could offer: an ending to his worry.

“I was angry.” That was truth. “Angrier than I have ever been, ‘Naddi—I make no excuses for it. But I will also offer you this: that sometimes in anger things are said that shouldn’t be.”

He worked that out. “Then you didn’t mean it?”

“I said things I shouldn’t have.”

Ignaddio wanted to ask more, but saw swiftly enough he might not hear what he wished. And so he took what was offered, what he could shape to mean what he wished, and left the shrine.

“Poor ‘Naddi,” she said. “All our fine ideas have been shattered today: a Limner takes his own life; another is accused of abetting that. But I can’t help it: life is
never
fair.”

Neither fair to a boy, despairing of his dream, nor to a woman despairing of innocence.

“I want it back,” she said, looking at the icon. “I want that innocence
back.
”

But she had lost it so many times. In the closet above the Crechetta, witnessing Chieva do’Sangua; in the Crechetta itself after burning Tomaz’s
Peintraddo.

All for Sario. But as much for herself, because deep down, deep inside, far back in the hidden, forbidden places, she had longed for the Gift that made him so different.

So much more. And other.

He said she was. He
swore
she was.

Saavedra stood up abruptly from the bench and walked the four
paces to the table. There she knelt, there she bowed her head. “Forgive me,” she begged. “Forgive me!”

He labored over the chain, detailing every link. All of it oscurra, all of it Tza’ab script, all of it tiny, perfect, precise. Link after link, rune after rune, word after word after word. It depended from her neck, bisected the swell of breasts, of bodice, dangled to her waist. Above the hand that gently warded abdomen he painted the key, also of oscurra, its shape the shape of his own.

He stopped then. Gasped. Shook himself out of stupor, out of the trance of Al-Fansihirro, of concentration so absolute as to render him not of the world even though he inhabited it. He set down his brush of a sudden, dropping it heedlessly to smeared marble muller; staggered back, back; pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes, ground, smeared, scoured; breathed loudly and raggedly in the silence of the room.

Blessed Mother, Great Acuyib
…

He had spent himself badly, pouring all that he was into what she would be. Spent the talent born of Grijalva, of Tza’ab, of everything he was. More. Other. Different.

So little left
—

And in the admission of his efforts his hands began to tremble, his body to spasm, his teeth to click together. On the floor it seemed safer; he knelt there, shivering, retching, and heard the faint chiming of the links of his chain. He shut his hand upon the key, felt its shape, its weight, its solidity.

Fear flooded abruptly. Had he sacrificed it?

He climbed to his feet, reeled, approached the panel, searched the painted key and links.
Identical.
Save his own was hard, pure gold formed of natural and manmade links, not of oscurra.

Relief blossomed. He spun away, muttered a prayer to dual deities, went to lean weakly against the wall. So much done—so
much
done in so brief a time.

And something left to do.

He slid down the wall, feeling the faint bite of hand-smoothed clay as he collapsed upon the hardwood, hearing the scrape of cloth against it, smelling the stench of his industry: blood, urine, semen, sweat.

Sario shook.
I have done all save the last.

Paint, solvent, oil, wax, the pungency of plantstuffs, the incense of guttering candles.

Felt the shuddering of his heart beneath unquiet flesh.

And breath choking him as if he died of Plague.

Trembling hands worried hair into a wilderness of spikes and sweat-stiffened curls. Beard stubbled his jaw; his wrists scraped against it as he drew his hands down along the contours of his harrowed features. He caught the Chieva again and clasped it, shut it up within his hands, locked fingers around it.

Wait. Wait.

It was not achieved yet. He could still undo it.

Wait.

He would not. Dared not.

Tears welled. Spilled. Shivering, he lifted the Chieva do’Orro to his lips, kissed it, pressed it hard against his breast, and thrust himself to his feet in one abrupt motion. He walked swiftly to his table, took up the tiny brush containing his and Saavedra’s hair, dipped it first into urine, saliva, blood, and lastly into pigment still smeared upon marble muller.

He leaned close to the portrait, biting deeply into his lip in intense concentration, hesitated—then crisply signed his name into the latch upon the door leading into Saavedra’s cell.

Kneeling before the table, before the icon, Saavedra believed at first the candle had gone out. She looked up, marking the sudden dimness, the pallor of the shrine, but saw through a hazy glaze the faint glow of lighted candle.

Within her chest, her heart hammered. Startled, she pressed both hands to her breast. Against her palm she felt the uneven beating, the thump and retreat, the too-swift hastening, the lagging.

She could not draw breath. Could not
breathe
—

“Matra—Matra Dolcha—” It gusted from her, taking her final breath. Empty of air, lungs labored.

Saavedra stumbled up. Grasped the table, caught cloth, tugged it away so that the icon moved, but did not tip. And then she lost her grip, lost the cloth entirely, could not grasp the table beneath.

She threw back her head in a silent wail of fear, of utter incomprehension.

One hand clutched at her abdomen, the other at the icon as she fell, the painted wooden panel, Arturro’s masterwork in praise of the Matra ei Filho.

Her hand passed through it. Through varnish, through paint, through binders, through oils, through the wood beneath. As she
fell she did not rock the table, did not upset the icon, nor pull down the velurro.

She smelled oil and wax and blood, the pungency of aged urine, a drift of fern, of fennel, a trace of peach blossom.

Felt as she fell the weight of a chain on her neck, the cold touch of metal against warm and living flesh.

And then the weight was gone, the cold touch of metal; and flesh was neither warm nor living but mixed upon a muller, painted onto wood.

  THIRTY-TWO  

In
the sultry warmth of summer, Alejandro shivered. “Do you—” He stopped. Swallowed. Found breath and strength, from somewhere. Began again. “Do you know what this says?”

Grijalva nodded.

“That—that—” Again he halted. Again read the words on the page held in trembling hand. And, again, began. “—that she wishes to grant my wife—my
true
wife, she says—the love and honor of a true husband, and not a man of divided heart?”

Grijalva nodded.

“You know this? That it says this?”

Grijalva offered nothing.

“But it can’t be
true
!”

“Your Grace.”

Not disagreement, compassion. Merely confirmation.

Alejandro’s outcry was framed of pain, of anguished denial. Frenziedly he tore the paper to shreds, then threw the scraps to the ground: supreme rejection of evidence, or truth. “I will have her back. I will. Do you hear it?
I will.
”

Tonelessly: “Your Grace.”

“Find her. Find her at once! You are a Grijalva, her friend—” His face spasmed. “—her kinsman, and closest companion …
find her.
I am Alejandro do’Verrada, by the Grace of the Mother and Son, Duke of Tira Virte, and I
will
have her back!”

Grijalva held his silence.

Silence defeated. The Duke was again no more than a man. “Nommo Matra ei Filho, this can’t be.” It was. He knew it. Knew
her.
“Sario—Sario, tell me she wants me to come fetch her … I, myself, to fetch her, to prove my love and devotion …” Of a sudden he looked down at the scattered scraps and cursed himself for destroying what was, the Limner said, written in her own hand. Through tears he begged, “Tell me.”

Grijalva shook his head.

“Filho do’canna, Limner,
say
something! Sweet Mother, you stand there with your mouth sealed up like a corpse, pale enough unto death … can you say nothing? Make no explanation? Offer no suggestion?”

Grijalva at last graced his Duke with more than an honorific. “Her letter made it clear: she is not to be found. Not to be brought back. You are not to search for her—because it would be futile.”

“Futile.” The Duke sat down all at once, collapsing into the chair his father once inhabited. “Futile.”

“She will not be found, Your Grace.”

“You must know something, Limner. You know things. Limners know things.”

“Not what you wish me to know.”

He slid out of his chair, knelt, took up the first scrap, then another, thought to mend the letter, to paste it back together.

Futile.

“I can’t,” he said unsteadily. “—can’t—do this … Grijalva, I can’t
do
this. Not without her. She is to be
here
, with me … she is to be my mistress, my
wife
, confirmed according to the rite of Marria do’Fantome. You told me so. You showed me the way.” He gazed down upon the two scraps of paper he clutched. Released them. “I can’t do this without her.”