The Golden Key (132 page)

The morning of Dia Fuega dawned sullen and quiet. Eleyna smelled smoke on the air. Her mother arrived with the servant who brought rolls and tea at the early bell.

Dionisa looked, as usual, irritated. “Cabral wants to see you.”

“Sit down, mother! Doesn’t it tire you to walk back and forth like that?”

“To think I raised such a daughter as this!” She caught herself as Cabral came into the room. “Cabral!
Beatriz!
”

Beatriz, in a perfect morning gown of white lawn ornamented with gold suns, swept into the room like a sudden brilliant wash of sunlight, like the embodiment of warming fire. “Mother! You are looking particularly handsome, as always. If only I had your waist, but alas….” She kissed her mother heartily and turned to Eleyna. “Eiha, Eleyna! You look positively ragged and worn. That will not do. You are to come with me. We are going to Palasso Verrada this very moment. Then we will perhaps have time to make you respectable.”

“What is going on?” demanded Dionisa, but half her attention was on smoothing her hands down over her waist, which did indeed appear to advantage since she wore rigid stays under gowns cut in the old-fashioned style.

“Edoard wishes Eleyna to attend the Dia Fuega ball, Mama. I do not care to go against his wishes. Do you?” She said it sweetly, but the sweetness was laid down over a ground of iron.

“My children are all vipers!” exclaimed Dionisa, but her heart was not in it. She had never, Eleyna reflected, been able to remain angry at Beatriz.

Beatriz grabbed Eleyna by one hand and dragged her toward the door. “You need take nothing from here, corasson meya. I have everything you need, a gown, slippers, a hairdresser. Matra Dolcha! You need a hairdresser. You are positively dowdy.”

And so down the hall, down through the compound they went, Cabral dogging their path like a sheepdog herding its charges,
while Beatriz prattled on and on about the ball and the furnishings and the refreshments and the perfect gold-trimmed slippers she had found to match her ballgown.

Then they were out in the courtyard, Eleyna out of breath, Beatriz barely taking a breath between her flood of chatter. A carriage waited. Cabral handed them in, closed the door, and leaned in through a window.

“Eleynita, you must listen to me, an old man, but one who has survived many years. Stay in Palasso Verrada until all this furor has died down. Then we will see. You can be sure I will speak up for you as much as my voice is worth anything. Do not think it counts for so little in certain places, ninia meya, even though I am not Gifted. For I have one gift our Master Limners, even the best of them, do not have.” With that cryptic utterance, he closed the shutter and backed away.

The carriage moved forward, jouncing over the stones. Through slats Eleyna watched as they moved through the tunnel and out onto the avenue. “Is it safe?” she asked. “I have heard so many rumors about unrest in the city.”

“Can’t you hear them?” Beatriz appeared unnaturally calm. “We have been granted an honor guard of fifty guardsmen.”

Indeed, the noise of the guardsmen, of the hooves of their horses, serenaded them as they drove. “When did you come back from Chasseriallo?” Eleyna asked.

“Ten days ago. I have been staying at the Palasso, although I understand that is not the usual arrangement despite that they must have twenty guest suites. But it isn’t safe to travel in Meya Suerta now. We keep off the streets.”

Listening to their progress as they rumbled down one of the avenidas, Eleyna felt they travelled with an army rather than an escort. “I don’t like how it feels out here.”

“Do’nado,” replied Beatriz. “We will be safe once we are inside Palasso Verrada.”

  SEVENTY-FIVE  

Sario
had seen a city on the edge of riot before. He had watched unrest erupt into destruction. Today it had taken him hours to persuade a carter from an outlying village to convey Princess Alazais and her escort into Meya Suerta.

“To the Palasso? Matra Dia, amico, but do you know what you’re asking? Troops everywhere, searching everything on the street, beating apprentices, and ruffians wandering in the alleyways where the troops won’t go. It’s this disease, they say, a plague come to our beloved country from Taglis and Ghillas.”

“Have you been there to see it for yourself?” Sario demanded impatiently.

“I’m not such a fool! I heard it all from—” Then the list would begin: a brother, an uncle, a neighbor, the fourth cousin of the blacksmith’s wife.

At last, sheer weight of gold hired a cart and a nervous but young, and therefore foolhardy, driver.

The city was quiet on Dia Fuega, the day of fire, the final day of Penitenssia, but it hummed with a muted, nasty energy as twilight settled down over the city. Yes, indeed, Sario had seen it all before. If he did not reach the Palasso and advise Grand Duke Renayo on how to restore order, his chance to become Lord Limner, to restore Grijalva art to its primacy, would be lost. What if a mob did erupt? What if they burned the Palasso?

He shuddered, thinking of Rafeyo. He would not risk losing Saavedra’s portrait again!

“Are you ill?” asked Alazais, more curious than alarmed. She wore a cloak to cover her fine gown and a black lace shawl draped over her bright hair, shrouding her face.

“Cold,” he said.
As if a man has walked over my grave.

They made good time through the streets since there was so little traffic, but as they neared the heights and the long avenues that led up toward Palasso Verrada, they encountered a steadily growing stream of people. These folk carried the great effigies—Greed, Anger, Barrenness, and the others—but not to the cathedral, as was traditional. They carried them toward the zocalo that fronted Palasso Verrada. The crowd was quiet but intently so, like a beast
stalking its prey. More came all the time from the side streets, from the alleys, from the apartamentos.

Sario took out his sketchpad. Every time the cart rocked to a halt he touched his pencil to his tongue and drew the cart, its driver, himself and Princess Alazais, all the while muttering under his breath the syllables that would trigger a suggestion:
Make room for this cart. Let it go forward. Move away.

They came out onto the zocalo and saw the gates of the Palasso rising before them beyond a sea of torches and massed figures thrown dark against the evening silhouettes of buildings. Grotesque skeletons, the great effigies that symbolized sins and misfortunes, bobbed up and down in eerie silence. Countless lanterns lit the monumental staircase that formed the main entrance of the Palasso, a scattering of light like stars. From the far distance he heard flashes of music, the strains of gitterns and clapping hands: the Dia Fuega ball had commenced. Closer, he heard the voices of the crowd.

“They dance while we starve.”

“What of the Corteis?”

“They’re too busy feasting to think of such things!”

“We are nothing but cattle, to be bred and slaughtered at their whim.”

“Press forward,” said Sario sternly to the frightened driver. “To the gates.”

“But, Maesso, the crowd—”

“—will move to let us by.” So they did, with startled glances on a flurry of shoving.

When they reached the gates, Sario jumped down and grasped the bars. Guards—at least twenty—stared impassively at him. “I must speak to your captain! Adezo, you fool! I am a Grijalva Limner.” He clasped his golden key in his hand, concealing it from the crowd that moved restlessly five paces away.

The captain hurried up. “What is it you want? We cannot open the gates.”

Sario leaned toward him, speaking through the wrought iron bars of the great gate. “I have rescued Princess Alazais de Ghillas. She escaped the murder of her father and mother. By bribes I have gotten her out of Ghillas.”

“If it is true—eiha! But if not, and I open the gates—”

Behind them, out in the zocalo, a hymn had started up: “The Mother Grants Her Blessings to All.” But it rang out with an angry tone and he felt the crowd gathering in strength at his back like a
lowering storm.
Day of fire.
Sario thought of Rafeyo, of the Blooded painting in the cart behind—
his
blood—and shuddered.

“Take her forward,” he said to one of the Ghillasian soldiers. The man helped Alazais down and led her to the gates, and while the captain stared at her, Sario grabbed in his pockets for the little knife he used to sharpen his pencils. He nicked his finger and smeared blood on the paper, then sketched the captain in quickly and rubbed the blood into the drawing. “You must let us in
now
,” he whispered.

“Quickly,” said the captain, gesturing to his soldiers. “Get them through.”

One side of the gates swung slowly open. They passed through, and although a commotion erupted as they hurried down the avenue that led to the stairs, Sario did not bother to look back. The captain did not—perhaps could not—follow.

“Wait here,” Sario said to the driver and the Ghillasian servants when they halted at the foot of the stairs. “Let no one touch this cart, the chests, nothing that is here. I will return. Come with me, Your Highness.”

Taking Alazais by the hand, he climbed the stairs. By now it was full night. As they climbed, lanterns throwing shadows out across the tiled wall and stairs, he looked out over the zocalo where torches blazed and effigies loomed in ominous silence, waiting to be burned. King Ivo of Ghillas had tried to placate the mob. Such a course had earned him death.

“You must hurry,” he said to Alazais, although he was the one breathing hard, not she.

Soldiers stood everywhere, guarding the great doors that led into the Palasso, watching the broad portico, the arched passageways, the lantern-lit aisles and courtyards. Always the guardsmen stopped the pair, inquiring their business, but his Chieva do’Orro unlocked each door. The music sounded louder now, the cheerful clapping of hands, the rustle and slap of feet treading the measures of the dance. Moronnos! They danced, oblivious, while ruin crouched outside their gates. So had the nobles of Ghillas danced.

The gilded doors of the throne room stood open. The heat of the dance swelled out, a wave as tangible as the anger of the mob. Pausing in the door, Sario surveyed the great chamber. Ribands of silver and black decorated the hall, stamped with stylized skulls, symbolizing the remembered dead. Danza morta figures, sewn with silver thread, danced from wires strung across the vaulted ceiling. He remembered—vaguely—being a child and kneeling all evening on a hard stone floor while prayers were sung for the departed
and charms burned to release old troubles. Now, these moronnos laughed and drank and danced!

The quadrillo ended. As the dancers left the floor Sario led Alazais forward to the center. She stared, amazed by the bright colors and rich gowns.

“Remember who you are,” he whispered in her ear.

Grand Duke Renayo stood on the dais. With him was a slight, very young blonde woman dressed in a white gown with a red sash. She was too pale to be pretty. Next to her stood the Heir, a vigorous, good-looking young man—Arrigo?—no, this was Arrigo’s
grandson.
He did not look at all like Arrigo. With him stood a handsome young woman who was certainly his Grijalva Mistress.

Sario strode toward them. “Take off your cloak.”

With an uncanny sense of drama, Alazais dropped her cloak from her shoulders just as the Grand Duke noticed their approach and turned to face them, looking puzzled. The black cloak fell and, falling, created a focus; every gaze in the hall shifted to look at her.

“Your Grace.” Sario halted and bowed. “I am Sario Grijalva, the Itinerarrio assigned to Ghillas. The rumors are true. King Ivo and Queen Iriene are dead.” A gasp, first, from the assembled nobles. Then murmurs, hushed when Renayo—who did not look surprised—raised a hand to quiet them. Sario went quickly on. “But one thing has been salvaged from the wreckage, and I have brought her to you for safekeeping.”

“Cousin! I beg you, grant me sanctuary!” Alazais fell to her knees in the perfect suppliant’s pose, clutching the tails of Renayo’s evening coat. Sario had not instructed Alazais to perform this gesture but, like any masterpiece, she had a presence beyond that intended for her by her creator. The Grand Duke automatically took her hand—which bore the seal ring of Ghillas—and lifted her up. He saw the ring; he recognized her face.