The Golden Key (17 page)

Nothing
remained in the Grijalva Crechetta to mark what had occurred there five years before, when a young woman’s curiosity and clumsiness had killed a man. Much time had passed, and such things were set aside in the daily concerns of the family. What concerned the Viehos Fratos now was also the future of their family, but with controversy attached.

Sario Grijalva, Confirmed, Gifted, one among them now—save for this moment, this meeting—had unexpectedly, inexplicably, established himself as the Limner among them who most promised to become the one they had planned for. And it did not please them.

The Viehos Fratos had divided themselves even before the gathering within the Crechetta. They had in the two years since his Confirmattio come to know Sario as a truly talented as well as remarkably Gifted painter; that was unquestioned. But aside from the talent there was the matter of compordotta: he was not and had never been amenable to control.

Some felt that could be overcome. Some were convinced it provided a pivot point for defiance, for a rebellion that might prove disastrous.

They had argued for hours now, gathered around a linen-bedecked table laden with fruit, comfits, wine, water, crockery bowls of flowers that scented the close air, unleavened by window, in concert with honey-tinged beeswax candles. And yet no conclusion had been reached.

Frato Otavio, sour of expression as well as manner, shook his graying head vigorously. “We dare not,” he said; yet again he said it. “There are others.”

“Students,” Aguo Raimon said very quietly. “Sario is Confirmed …”

“Then let it be one of
us
,” Otavio insisted. “I grant you, I am too old, but there are others among us younger—even
you
, Raimon!”

Raimon, seated across from the older man, smiled diffidently. “For that I thank you, Frato Otavio—but I think we have little choice.”

“How is that?” interjected black-haired Frato Ferico, at Otavio’s left. “There are twenty-one of us here—”

“And there should be a
twenty-second
,” Frato Davo interrupted from his place beside Raimon, slapping the flat of his slender hand against the table’s surface. “Sario was Confirmed two years ago and accepted into our number. He should be here. Is it fair we decide his future without his presence?”

Otavio muttered beneath his breath, then heaved himself upright in his carved, velurro-cushioned chair. “We aren’t deciding his future, Davo. We are
discussing
it—”

Ferico overrode once more. “It still remains there are twenty-one of us, does it not? Eiha, surely we can select one from among those of us present here and now.”

“Sario is our youngest,” Otavio declared, making it an insult.

Raimon tilted his head in graceful acknowledgment. “Youngest, yes—and perhaps the most Gifted.”

Thunderous silence. Then the argument broke out anew.

Raimon sighed. He caught the eye of the Premio Frato and smiled faintly, wryly; Arturro did not smile back, but a glint in his eyes suggested he was not entirely unappreciative of what Raimon had wrought. And then he knocked once upon the table with a knuckle.

The others silenced themselves. Even the most fulsome of them.

Arturro lifted the knuckle, lifted the hand from the table and set it back into his lap. It had hurt to knock the wood, but he did not let it show. It was a necessary discipline he asked of himself, to let no sign betray his increasing infirmity. At nearly fifty he was, by Limner terms, a very old man.

“Who among us has not ever questioned the Viehos Fratos?” he asked. “Who among us has not chafed beneath the demands of such rigid compordotta as we must cleave to? Who among us has not suggested alternatives to what already exists?” He nodded. “We know what we are, and we know what we must do. But in Limners the task is made far more difficult by our greatest handicap: a stunted life span.”

There was not an expression among them now that was not wholly still.

Arturro nodded. “Thus, youth should not be decried as disadvantage.” That was for Otavio, whose disagreeable face reddened in response. “Our Dukes, the do’Verradas, do not experience the same handicap as we Limners … they are long-lived during peacetime, during years without plague, and thus it does not occur to them that the most gifted, those whose talent burns the most brightly, may burn themselves to death—
and that we would willingly do so in service to the duchy.
”

He had them now, even Otavio, Ferico, and Davo, traditionally the most mettlesome of them all. “Baltran do’Verrada is in excellent health. To us, at forty-three, he walks the cusp of death, but to those who are not Limners such age is not so great. We cannot expect Don Alejandro to succeed to the Dukedom any time soon, perhaps not for two decades or more, and thus the one among us who meets our requirements for a candidate
must
be young.” He smiled slightly. “I will be dead, of course. So will some of you, certainly Otavio, nearly as old as I, and likely Ferico and Davo as well. Certainly half of our present number, perhaps nearly all … perhaps even Raimon, albeit unlikely as he is the youngest save for Sario; nonetheless, even alive, Raimon would be of an age—
for a Limner
—that renders him unlikely to be selected by the new Duke. There is no one in the city who is not aware of our handicap.” Indeed, no one in the duchy; it gave their enemies, such as the Serranos, much fuel: weak seed, weak blood, without worth. “Thus our task is to find a younger man whose talent, whose Gift, makes him ideal to succeed Zaragosa Serrano as Lord Limner.”

“He is
sixteen
” Otavio objected.

“And in ten years he will not be,” Davo countered quickly.

Arturro smiled. “Precisely. And how many of us would not wish ourselves back to that age, that
youth
—that we might know there were twenty years left to us, instead of the one, or three, or five?” He looked at each of them, seeing the agreement in quiet eyes, stilled expressions: there was no man among them save Raimon and Sario who had a decade left, and likely but half the years at most. “We must not look at the here and now, but borrow the future and bring it to us, so we may shape it.”

Ferico shook his head. “Sario is not our future.”

“Ungovernable,” Otavio muttered.

“No man is ungovernable who lives among the Viehos Fratos,” Raimon said clearly. “Or have you forgotten Tomaz?”

They none of them had forgotten Tomaz.

“Nor, I think, has Sario forgotten Tomaz. And a reminder is not impossible.” Arturro smiled faintly and adroitly altered the topic. “I would like to nominate Aguo Raimon for advancement to the position of Il Seminno. He has served me well these past six years, as he has served
us
, and if we are to look to the future of the family, we must look to its present as well. Many of us will not be alive when Don Alejandro succeeds his father, and if we are to train Sario for the position of Lord Limner, we must have in place a man who has earned our trust. He will be Sanguo one day, I have no doubt, but for now he must be more than Aguo.”

“Grazzo, Premio,” Raimon said huskily. “But—I fear I am not worthy.”

“You are.” Arturro raised a hand against further protest. “Is there a man among us who disagrees?”

Davo said dryly, “Should we not have Sario in to at least vote on
this
?”

Ferico snorted. “What man would vote
for
his keeper?”

“Ah, but are we not all his keepers?” Arturro asked. “Are we not also the keepers of one another, and thus of our family?”

“So long as we hold any man’s
Peintraddo Chieva
, there is no threat,” Davo declared. “From any of us.”

“Only
to
us,” Raimon said, “if we prove ungovernable. And who among us can claim no one ever despaired of each and every one of us when we were young?”

“Personal ambition must be subjugated,” Arturro said quietly. “It is
family
ambition that takes precedence, so we may recover what was lost to the Nerro Lingua. Strength. Position. Respect.”

“Numbers,” Raimon said quietly. “But that, too, is lost to us now. We have only the Gift to aid us, and we must use it wisely.”

“Wisely?” Otavio shook his head definitively. “Sario cares little enough for the restoration of our family. He thinks only of himself.”

Ferico nodded, plucking cloves from a pierced orange left in a crockery bowl to serve as scenting against the closeness. “He is too consumed with questioning our precepts.”

“So was I,” Arturro said. “Once.”

Even Raimon was startled. “Premio? You?”

“Of course.” Arturro laughed easily. “I think it is a requirement.”

Indignant, Otavio protested at once. “
I
never questioned—”

“Eiha, ‘Tavi, of course you did,” Davo said wearily. “Will you have me recite the times? I can do it word for word; you never hid your frustrations when the moualimos insisted you practice tedious perspective when you wanted to work instead with the sweet curves of a woman’s breasts and buttocks.”

It stirred laughter from them all, a grudging grimace from Otavio.

“We have his
Peintraddo Chieva
,” Davo said briskly. “And it was Sario, after all, who was found with the girl who destroyed Tomaz’s self-portrait; do you think he of all people doesn’t know what would become of him if we determined disciplining was needed?”

“Sario is not a fool,” Raimon said. “Merely the one among us whose talent most likely will place a Grijalva at Court again. And that, we should recall, is the true point of this discussion.”

“Indeed,” Arturro agreed, “as I believe some of us may have forgotten.” Quietly he looked over them all: Otavio, Davo, Ferico, Joao, Mequel, Timirrin, the others. All talented. All Gifted. All wholly dedicated to the recovery, preservation, and enhancement of an old family so very nearly destroyed. “It is our task to set aside petty arguments, personal ambitions, and sublimate our wills to the greater good of the family.”

Otavio grunted. “Will Sario?”

“He must,” Raimon murmured.

“And if he refuses?” Ferico threw out a handful of discarded cloves onto the linen cloth in fretful annoyance, as if he would as forcefully scatter arguments. “He is an unsteady foundation, yet you propose to build our entire city upon him.”

“We have time,” Arturro said. “Time to prepare him. But we can only do it properly if we are agreed.”

Otavio’s expression hardened. “Too young.”

Ferico nodded. “And too angry.”

“Neosso Irrado,” Arturro agreed, “but a young man who will be older, and perhaps far less angry, when the do’Verradas are in need of another Lord Limner.” He looked directly at Otavio. “I understand your concerns, old friend, and I will not so glibly dismiss them as you might fear. Sario
must
be ours, and we must be certain of it. We cannot afford to question our decision, nor to distrust the Grijalva who may restore our place at Court.”

Raimon’s expression was startled. “Premio—”

Arturro ignored him. “The Chieva do’Sangua was developed expressly to punish any Gifted who sought to use his talent for himself rather than for his family … though he has done nothing more as yet than annoy a number of us, perhaps there is cause for a reminder.” He nodded at Otavio. “If you wish, Otavio—and if the others are in agreement—you may invoke the Lesser Discipline.”

Otavio’s thin-lipped mouth sprang open at once, but he clamped it shut again before he spoke. After a moment of turbulent silence, he glanced at the others. “Is there agreement?”

“He has done nothing,” Raimon protested.

“Yet,” Ferico snapped.

“He questions us,” Otavio said austerely.

“One
learns
by questioning,” Raimon countered.

“Within reason,” Ferico clarified.

Raimon looked for support from the Premio Frato, but the old man remained silent. “I say again: he has done nothing. We cannot punish a man for what he has not done.”

Otavio echoed Arturro. “Let it be a reminder.”

“Had we done the same with Tomaz, perhaps he would not have faced the Chieva do’Sangua,” Ferico put in pointedly. “Have we learned nothing from that?”

Davo sighed, pushing his shoulders into the carved chairback. The key at his collar glinted. “There is merit in both arguments. Sario tests us for reasons known to some of us as wholly natural in one so Gifted—and also for reasons known only to himself. But if there are no clearly defined boundaries, he may breach them through ignorance.”

“Or spite,” Otavio said sourly. “I put nothing beyond that boy.”

“Nor I,” Raimon said quickly, “if we speak of talent.”

“Let it be done.” Ferico again took up the orange plucked nearly naked of its cloves. “As a hound must be leashed, let us leash Sario. Let him feel the collar.”

Otavio nodded approval, then looked directly at Raimon. “We do not propose to choke him on it. But if you fear for the boy, administer the Lesser Discipline yourself.”

Raimon’s expression was stark. “As Il Aguo, it lies beyond the bounds of compordotta.”

“But you are Il Seminno now,” Otavio said, smiling, “as we have approved you.” He took into his hand the Chieva do’Orro, kissed it, then pressed it against his heart. Gold links, sparking in candlelight, spilled through his fingertips. “In Their Blessed Names, let this be your first act, Raimon … if for nothing more than to prove you are worthy.”