The Golden Key (89 page)

Zevierin began to put away his paints, potent with magic. “Perhaps, but there’s the matter of Rafeyo. He’s well on the way to becoming the next Lord Limner—may the Mother give Mequel another ten years! Dioniso sings Rafeyo to the skies, his work is excellent—”

Her lips curled in disgust. “And Rafeyo lets everyone know it, too!”

“He wouldn’t take kindly to any efforts to paint his mother out of the picture. And you
can
bet the Palasso that once he’s Lord Limner, he and Arrigo will return her officially and permanently to Court.”

“So it will start all over again.” Leilias turned a baleful eye on her brother. “Have you nothing to say about this?”

“Nothing.” He continued to ply colored pencils on paper.

“You’re supposed to be clever—Mother always says so, at any rate. Can’t you see a way out of this?”

Cabral sprang to his feet. “You, Zevi, Mechella—all you do is
see.
You don’t
hear.
” So saying, he slid the sketch into a leather portfolio—Ghillasian green, a birthday gift from Mechella—and stalked from the room.

Leilias found her voice again after a couple of minutes. “What did
that
mean?”

Zevierin did not reply. Assiduously cleaning brushes, he watched his hands wipe many-colored magic saturated with his blood onto a cloth that later he would soak with the brushes in a huge tub of water. Once, while still an estudo, he forgot to warm the water first, and the shock of icy cold through his veins sent him shivering to bed for two days. The tub of water would be poured down a sink, drain into the river, and eventually find its way to the sea. He wondered idly how many minuscule particles of Grijalva magic yet clung to rocks and mud and plants along the way, how much of it drifted in the endless depths of the Agua Serenissa and the Marro Mallica. …

“Zevi! Answer me!”

“Hmm? Oh.” He turned to her, wishing he could paint himself brave enough to tell her he loved her. The hell of it was that marriage to him would be a perfect solution for her no matter what she felt about him. He was a sterile Limner who could never give her a child. When Mechella took her into her household, the family had stopped pressuring Leilias to become a wife and
mother. But they’d start their demands again soon. She was twenty-three, well past the usual age for marriage and children, and every Grijalva woman was expected to contribute at least one baby to the family line. He knew how Leilias felt about becoming a Grijalva brood mare. But he didn’t want her to marry him to escape that. He wanted … what he could never reveal to her. Ever.

“Leilias,” he said quietly, “what Cabral hears and we do not is, I think, something I just said. About painting Tazia out of the picture.”

A wax-sealed vial slipped from her fingers and rolled across the carpet. It occurred to him that with her knowledge of scents, she would make the perfect Limner’s wife. Odd that he’d never thought of that before.

“You can’t be serious,” she breathed. “Cabral couldn’t have meant—”

“Both of you know about the magic now. I’ve broken every oath a Limner swears by telling you. Hasn’t it crossed your mind that it could be done?”

She shook her head so vehemently that her hair came loose from its pins. “Nobody has that much power, nobody!”

“I do,” he said bleakly.

“But—Zevi—”

“It’s in that painting, as long as I’m alive.” He gestured at the
Will
, almost finished on the easel. “I’m twenty-five. Lissina’s seventy-one. She—” He paused as Leilias’ eyes widened in disbelief. “Didn’t you know she was that old? It’s one of the ironies of being a Grijalva that our women so often look much younger than they are and live to be ninety, while our Limners are old at forty and usually dead before fifty. Lissina doesn’t know about the magic, and you say she showed no interest in hearing even the most rudimentary of explanations.”

“She sounded as if it frightened her. She said she didn’t
want
to know.”

He shrugged. “It’s an attitude encouraged by the Viehos Fratos. Not everyone has your consuming curiosity. The point is, it’s a fair bet that I’ll outlive Lissina and this painting will be binding and there’s nothing anyone can do about it. But lingua oscurra—these runes around the edges—will enforce the magic even if I predecease her. Which is possible, of course. And
that
is how much power any one Limner possesses, Leilias.”

She leaped to her feet and stood shaking at the window. Zevierin wanted to paint her just as she looked in that moment:
black hair wild around her shoulders, the lines of her slim, strong body revealed by sunlight through the thin yellow silk of her dress.

When she spoke, there were tears in her voice. “Don’t talk about dying, Zevi, I can’t bear it. And don’t talk about painting something terrible happening to Tazia—it’s horrible—nobody should have that much power.”

“No more will be said of it,” he assured her. “Cabral might want to, and I wouldn’t blame him if he did. But in an odd way, he can feel safe in the wanting, because he’s not a Limner and he can’t
do
anything about it.”

“Neither could you,” she whispered. “Even though you hate Tazia as much as we do, you could never—”

Unsure if she said this because she believed it or because she needed to hear him confirm it, he told her, “I could make an excellent case for it, but I would never do it.”

“I know that. But what of Rafeyo?”

Zevierin shook his head. “There are reasons why he will never—”

“What could keep him from doing anything he wants to Mechella once he learns enough about being a Limner?”

He hesitated, then told himself it was as easy to be pricked for a painting as a sketch. “There’s something else Limners are forbidden to speak of, and please don’t share this part of it with your brother.”

And he told her about the deepest of all Grijalva secrets: the
Peintraddo Chieva
, the self-portrait reeking of blood and magic that every Limner painted as his master’s piece. She heard it with fear and dawning comprehension and a horrified fascination, and a look on her face that chilled him to the heart.

“Rafeyo won’t really know what he’s painting when he paints it,” Zevierin said. “None of us do. The demonstration of its power is … convincing. All magical paintings are ordered and sanctioned by the Fratos—”

She shook herself. “Or the Lord Limner, which is what Rafeyo will be.”

“Even Mequel answers to the Fratos. All Lord Limners do. If Rafeyo did anything, they’d know it by its magic and act accordingly to punish him.”

Some of the tension left her body. “Then Mechella is safe. Rafeyo doesn’t know how to do such things yet, and by the time he
discovers his real power, his
Peintraddo Chieva
will exist as a threat to prevent him from harming her.”

“Even if he lacks morals or ethics—and I suspect he does—the threat will suffice.” The memory of pinpricks sending agony through his shoulder was thrust away. “Believe me, it will suffice.”

Leilias pounded a clenched fist against the table. “I wish I
had
gotten pregnant by him!”

Strange how his mind kept working even though the shock of it seemed to stop his heart and breath.

Of course Zevierin knew she’d been called for a Confirmattio. Of course he knew that. And of course Rafeyo had undergone the test. Zevierin had simply never matched up the dates before. Or perhaps he had, and deliberately forgotten.

Rafeyo had slept beside Leilias. Rafeyo had made love to her—no, he told himself savagely, Rafeyo had used her body to prove his own magic, blind to the greater magic of her soul.

“Pregnant?” He made himself smile. “With Tazia’s grandchild?”

Leilias gave a shudder. “Matra, what a repulsive idea! I should’ve just strangled him when I had the chance, and been done with it.”

“There’s a thought,” he agreed.

Cossimio made it a Grand Ducal Command: Mechella was not to set foot in Elleon without his express permission. Faced with this edict, she could only bow her head over her unopened morning letters and obey.

After his witnesses—his Grand Duchess and his Lord Limner—departed Corasson’s breakfast room to read their own correspondence, Cossimio said, “I’m sorry to be so severe, gattina. But I know you by now. Anything less than a direct order, you’d wriggle your way around it. Not that I disapprove of your spirit! But don’t begrudge me your safety, carrida.”

“You’re sweet to worry. Perhaps we can go in the spring.”

His booming laugh rattled the crystal. “If not, there’ll be open rebellion in Elleon! I told you Tira Virte would love you, didn’t I? The very first night I saw you. None of us can do without you. Not me or ‘Zella or the children or Arrigo—did I tell you his letter says he’ll be here in just a few days?”

“Will he? I haven’t heard from him.”

“Eiha, I’ve probably just ruined a surprise. That’s a Grand Duke
for you—can’t keep a single secret that’s not his own! You’ll be sure to be properly astounded, won’t you, gattina?”

Mechella smiled; Cossimio was hard to resist. Certainly Gizella found him so—this summer, as last summer at Corasson, they behaved like young lovers.

After a pleasant morning in the gardens, with the Grijalvas painting what they pleased and the do’Verradas doing nothing more strenuous than turning pages in books, everyone retired to nap away the midday heat. Then Otonna came to Mechella’s chamber, waving a letter of her own.

“Beyond amazing, that’s what my sister writes—but it’s the truth all the same, that woman and her husband and all their sons are on their way to Castello Alva—including that merditto Rafeyo! And Don Arrigo’s bringing them here! To Corasson!”

Sick with shock, Mechella shrank into a cool pillow. Here, he was bringing that woman here. “He can’t,” she whispered. “He
can’t.
”

What a fool she had been. His instinct to protect her from danger. Those few sweet days—and especially nights—of the journey back to Meya Suerta. His regret that he must stay at the Palasso for a little while. His promises that he would very soon join the family at Corasson, promise after promise all summer long. But very soon it would be Luna Qamho, and the first wheat shorn and sheaved. Lies, all of his words were lies.

Arrigo
lived
a lie.

Gizella had long ago counseled accepting that woman at Court. But that woman was no Lissina. Lizia had suggested several alternatives—and Mechella’s own instincts had almost blindly directed her to the path she must follow. Her own life, her own place, her own power.

“No,” she said softly, and Otonna halted in the middle of her bitter maledictions. “She will not set foot here. Not in Corasson.”

“Your Grace?”

Wonderful, really—how easy it made everything, how calm she felt now that she knew. Glancing at the slack-jawed maid, she smiled. “If I have to tear it down stone by stone and set fire to every stick and stitch with my own hands, that woman will never get so much as a glimpse of my Corasson.”

Otonna was speechless. A historic occasion; Cabral or Zevierin ought to commemorate it with a painting. But Mechella’s Grijalvas had decided to roam the countryside after luncheon, the painters seeking landscapes to render for the new drawing-room mural, Leilias seeking flowers for her perfumes. Mechella wished for
evening, when they would return and tell her what to do, how to keep that woman from crossing the threshold of her beloved Corasson.

No. Her own life, her own place, her own power. Corasson was her beginning. She owned it, loved it, had made it her true home. It was Arrigo’s tragedy that he preferred to live a lie with that woman rather than a true life with her.

She remembered the tall, handsome, charming young man she had first loved. Fifteen, she’d been: lanky and clumsy and adoring. She could see herself and him as clearly as if a Limner’s brush had painted them both and the portrait was right before her. And when he’d returned to the Palaisso Millia Luminnai, and kissed her in the moonlit garden—she could see that, too, from the sparkle of his epalettos to the coronet of a Princess of Ghillas that bound her hair. At Caterrine, at Palasso Verrada, at village fairs and guildhalls and ceremonies in the Cathedral Imagos Brilliantos; so many images of herself and him.

And none of them real.

Only one painted picture existed of the two of them together: a blond girl in a white bridal gown, a dark man in a green Shagarra uniform, newly handfast and full of confidence that they would be happy.

Who knew but what they might have been. She had fallen in love with Arrigo twice, once when she met him and once when she married him. Now she wondered why. And if he had ever loved her at all. It seemed stunningly appropriate that she had ordered Dioniso to paint her into the
Marriage
before Arrigo had even arrived in Ghillas; hers had been the heart-whole commitment, hers the eagerness to make a marriage. Now that marriage was no more than paint and perhaps a few stray fibers from a brush on canvas. Not even a Grijalva Limner could bring to life the seeming when there was no substance.

It hurt. She could not pretend it didn’t. Something in her whispered that if only he would send that woman far away and make amends, she would forgive all and try once more to be happy.