The Golden Key (19 page)

“Such trust …” He grimaced. “Nothing. Do’nado.” He craned his head, trying to peer down at the precise trio of blemishes along his collarbone. “Will you do it?”

“Patience,” she chided, giving in, “or I will spill it all, and they will know from that.”

“They will expect me to come at once. I can’t tarry.”

“A spoon,” she said absently.

It astonished him. “Spoon?”

“Momentita …” To her table by the window, all of five steps away, then back, and she sat down carefully on the edge of her cot. “You must be very still, Sario.”

Stretched flat on her bed, he stared intently a moment, fresh color moving in his face as he studied hers. He stirred oddly—and then his gaze altered even as his color faded. He watched narrow-eyed as she spooned up a measure of liquefied wax from the clay candle-cup. She was aware of the pallor of his face, the faint sheen of perspiration, the abject determination and simmering anger.

“Be still,” she said again, pulling aside the chain with its weight of Golden Key, and with great concentration positioned the spoon so the wax droplets would land precisely atop the faint blemishes.

Premo. Duo. Treo. She heard the hiss of his indrawn breath, smelled the sweet tang of citrus-scented wax. Carefully she inspected
her handiwork, then returned the candle-cup and spoon to the table.

“Done?” He sat up, fingering the wax. Chain links chimed faintly, slithering across flesh to snag on rumpled lawn.

“Let it harden. Then peel it off.”

He did so, eventually flaking away the dried wax droplets. “Well?”

She inspected what lay beneath, sliding a finger under the chain to gently touch the flesh beside the wax burns. She heard the quick intake of his breath; pain? Or something else. “It may scar,” she said evenly. “The skin is tender here, not like callused fingers.” And she took her hand away.

“All the better.” Loosened lacings and the Chieva dangled as he stood up. “And now I will see
why
they felt it necessary to remind me of my fragility!”

He was gone before she could speak again, leaving the door open in his haste. Saavedra sighed, then smiled wryly. “Fragile?
You? Never.
”

  NINE  

With
grim, crisp efficiency—and no little anger—Sario yanked open the unlatched inner door leading into the Crechetta. As expected, his eyes immediately confirmed the presence of his
Peintraddo Chieva
upon an easel, naked of embroidered cloth, which had been peeled back and left drooping behind like a cloak half-slipped from a shoulder. But then he stopped registering anything beyond the man who waited beside it.

“You!” Sario blurted.

The slender, dark-clad Grijalva waited in silence. Wan candlelight glinted laggardly off the intricate small-linked chain that circled his neck, then spilled down the front of his summer-silk black doublet. From it depended the symbol of his Gift: Chieva do’Orro.

Him I can deal with
— Sario hesitated a moment, then loosed a quiet sigh. He was able now to release some of the tension in his stiffened shoulders; this man of them all had never decried his habitual hasty temper or impatient skills. But his expression was nonetheless unwontedly severe for the good bones of his face. “Aguo Raimon—”

A quiet, singularly brief interruption: “Seminno.”

Sario froze. Tension renewed, rushed back.
One word, one correction
… it indicated much. Anger reaffirmed itself, if icy in place of scorching. “So. My congratulations,
Seminno
Raimon … but it explains nothing.”

“Should it?”

To give himself time to master himself—this was not the man he expected to confront, and thus his stride was broken—Sario turned to the door and closed it with explicit care, making no sound even as he set the loose latch. He summoned extreme if alien patience; when he turned back, he saw the same implacable expression on the new-made Seminno’s face.

It encouraged nothing so much as wariness. Aside from himself, Raimon was the youngest, albeit more than a decade older than Sario—and by far the most bearable of them all.

Or had been.
Sario drew a steadying breath, then in slow understatement pulled aside the folds of his shirt to display blemished flesh in mute question and challenge.

Raimon said nothing, made no movement; if he marked the blemishes, he made no indication it mattered.
Then why inflict them upon me
?

Gritting teeth, Sario released the fabric and looked at the
Peintraddo.
He saw what was expected: three small, evenly-spaced holes carefully burned through paint to expose stained canvas beneath.

“I have done nothing,” he said in a low tone that was no less telling in its suppressed anger. “Nothing but what I am required to do.”

Raimon’s gaze was level and infinitely clear-eyed. “You frighten them.”

It was not in the least what Sario anticipated. He stared.

Raimon sighed and smiled faintly, a familiar brief crooked hooking of his mouth. “We are all of us tested thus, Sario. I no less than you.”

Irony was marked, but Sario was still too upset to pay it tribute—or to heed the opening offered by the only member of the Viehos Fratos he considered a friend, if such could be suggested of any of them who plagued him. “But—that?” A sharp gesture indicated the painting. “I was given to understand the only time Chieva do’Sangua was employed was in the rare case when a Gifted overstepped his bounds enough to threaten the family. Have I done so? Ever?”

“This was not—and is not intended to be—Chieva do’Sangua,” Raimon said plainly. “This is a warning. And you are expected to heed it.”

It was incredibly and exquisitely unfair all at once. “Heed that I am punished for
their fear
?” Sario shook his head; hair in need of cutting tugged against loosened collar. “If this is done, then surely they should look to themselves. I have been Confirmed according to the rites, my masterwork properly painted, and I was accepted two years ago into the ranks of the Viehos Fratos. Nothing was out of order, or surely I would have been denied. If they fear me so much, why should I be given such honor?”

“Do you view it as honor, Sario? Or the means to an end?”

He hesitated, righteous rage forestalled; renewed respect for Raimon’s customary shrewdness reminded him to take care. “But the end desired by all is that one of us
should
become Lord Limner again, so we may guide the Dukes in the ordering of the duchy—”

“And some men would fear that,” Raimon said. “Serranos. Others.”

Self-control fled. Passion replaced care. “But not Limners! Should we not honor the man among us who regains what was lost?”

“And you intend to be that man.”

“Should I not?” Sario spread his hands. “Have you never wished it could be you?”

The clean features softened slightly. “I
expected
it.”

Relieved laughter bubbled up from Sario’s chest and broke free.
Perhaps he
can
understand.
“There! Eiha, do you see? We are not so unalike after all.”

“But it will not be my task,” Raimon interjected softly, irony banished a second time. “Should Baltran do’Verrada die tomorrow, perhaps it would … but he will not, short of being assassinated, and he is too beloved for that. Thus it shall fall to his son to appoint a new Lord Limner, and I will be too old.”

Saavedra claimed he lost his temper too often, that others heard the anger and not the words. With effort Sario tamed his tongue, locked away the impatience, attempted reason. “We are raised to believe in our hearts we are better suited for the role than any other family in Tira Virte,” he appealed, “and yet when one of us aspires too openly to that role, he is punished.”

“Not for aspiration,” Raimon said. “For willfulness. For discourtesy. For questioning too broadly—too
disruptively
—the precepts of the family. For improper compordotta. For taking into his own hands the ordering of his Gift.”

“But it is
my
Gift—”

“
Our
Gift, Sario,” Raimon’s tone was abruptly cold; he was wholly Il Seminno, wholly of the Viehos Fratos. “And by that you merit such punishment as this. It is not
your
Gift,
your
goal,
your
appointment, but
ours!
Grijalva. We do this for the family, not for the ambitions of a single man. Gifted or no, Sario, it is your responsibility to work with the family toward restoration of what once was ours.”

“And I will gain it!” Sario cried. “Leave me be, Raimon. Leave me
free
to do what I must, and I will be the first Grijalva at the right hand of a do’Verrada Duke since before the Nerro Lingua!”

“Free to wrest the duchy away from the anointed Duke?”

Sario stilled. Raimon was a fair man, a pleasant man, the one among the Viehos Fratos he felt he could speak with openly, but
now, in this astonishing moment, he saw a different man. One capable of visiting harm upon the flesh by harm done to a painting.
He is as they all are, bound by his own weakness to outdated beliefs and rituals, not knowing the truth of power.
…

Quietly he asked, “Is that what you fear? That I want the duchy for myself?”

Raimon’s expression was stark. “There was a time when it might have been ours,” he said softly. “When others were poised to hail a Grijalva as savior, and thus our present—and our future—would have been significantly different. But Verro Grijalva died, Sario. He took a Tza’ab dart meant for Renayo do’Verrada, and died in his Duke’s arms.”

“And thus sealed our role as servants forever,” Sario said bitterly.

After a moment, Raimon shook his head. “You are the most gifted—and Gifted—Grijalva I have ever known. And the most dangerous.”

It stung. Far more deeply and painfully than expected. “You fear me, too?”

“The very thing that drives you to such ambitions in your work, that is your personal Luza do’Orro, could overtake and transform you, Sario. Ambition, to be effective, to be
useful
, must be controlled and directed. Or it is nothing more than base, selfish lust.”

“Power,” Sario answered baldly, stripping away from it the civilized speech and cutting to the bone.

Raimon met the challenge without prevarication. “Yes. Naked, infinite power, as you would have it be. But that day on the battlefield a Grijalva’s death determined the role Grijalvas would play in life, in the ordering of a new realm—
and it is not as rulers.
”

Sario laughed softly, though it was lacking in humor. “Had Verro let Renayo do’Verrada die, we would be Dukes instead of limners!”

“Perhaps. Perhaps not. But he made that choice.”

“Not for me.”

“But it was, Sario. He made it for us all—and then the Tza’ab made it certain.”

Sario knew; they all knew. “By stealing Grijalva women and getting bastards upon them.”

“Chi’patros,” Raimon said quietly. “Our ancestors.”

“Despised and hated by the others, especially the Ecclesia!”

“It was basest infamy, what the Tza’ab did to those women, but it became our infamy as well. The Tza’ab were the enemy, Unbelievers—and they dishonored our family, bred a taint into our blood … which in turn was reviled by others who were untainted.” Raimon adroitly redraped the
Peintraddo
with its brocade cloth, hiding the blemished image of a young boy whose talent was manifest, if not the blazing of ambition. “The Ecclesia has made it clear they consider us unclean because of the infidel taint. It is one of the reasons they hate us. But there is more, you see. We are
different
from them, and difference is feared.”

“They are sanctified fools!”

“Some of them, yes. Others believe sincerely. But so long as the Ecclesia claims us tainted, the people will believe it as well.” He paused a moment, as if seeking self-control, then continued. “But there is something else, Sario. The strength of a ruling family lies in its potency, in its life span. We are weak in both.”

“Once we were
strong
in both.”

“And the Matra ei Filho spurned that strength.” Raimon shook his head. “The Nerro Lingua was punishment, Sario … we overstepped. Grew too bold. And thus we were humbled.”