The Golden Key (28 page)

“No, no—you wouldn’t.” She scowled blackly. “I shall have to begin again.”

“Begin
what
?”

“You.”

“Me?” He blinked in astonishment. “But—how is this done? That you can—
begin
me … again?”

“With chalk,” she explained crisply. “Or pencils. Perhaps watered color, one day … I have not advanced to oils.”

His face cleared. “Arrtia!”

“Arrtia,” she agreed, “though a poor one—or so the teachers tell me, because I am a woman and whatever talent I have is not necessary, save to make talented children.” She did not know why she was speaking to him so—babbling, more like!—but she could not
stop. It was easier simply to plunge ahead and give him no time to speak, because then she would have to remember again who he was. “I do what I can, learn what I can, and hope when I have borne my children, I can return to my art once more.”

“Why not?” He shrugged. “I admit I have never known an arrtia before—always arrti
os
—but I see no reason you should not be one if you wish.”

A Duke’s son indeed, to be so sublimely ignorant of the way the world worked beyond do’Verrada doors. “I do wish,” she said, “but there will be little time … it is expected I will bear children, and children require much attention. Although if it is a son, and the son proves Gifted, I will have no time with him anyway.” Saavedra hitched her shoulder and looked away from his fascinated face to the fountain. “I’m sorry—I should not say such things to you.” She drew in a deep, hasty breath. “Grazzo, Don Alejandro. I doubt he would have harmed me beyond a dunking—and I am already soaked!—but you have done me a kindness. I will say your name in my prayers tonight.”

“Momentita—” He stretched out a delaying hand. “Will you walk with me? The crowd is no place to talk … I know! I shall buy you a lemonada and find you a seat in the shade.” His smile was dazzling. “And I assure you I will not dunk you in the fountain, or beg improprieties of you, not even in the name of Fuega Vesperra.”

As he grinned, Saavedra saw the faint overlap of the tooth Sario had decried. Heat rushed into her face. “Matra Dolcha, no! Eiha, I could not,
should
not—oh, Don Alejandro …” A wild glance gave her explanation: the looming Cathedral Imago Brilliantos. “The Ecclesia would never permit it!”

The grin died. “The Ecclesia? Why? What should it matter to them if I buy you a lemonada and sit with you in the shade?”

For the first time in her life she dreaded saying her surname. “I am—Grijalva.”

“Are you?” He was neither dismayed nor insulted. “Then it is no wonder you spoke of art—your family are fine painters!”

This was not what she expected. Only trained courtesy allowed her to stammer out a response. “Grazzo, Don Alejandro—you are too kind.”

“I am not,” he disagreed promptly. “I am truthful. I have been in the Galerria Verrada many times, and there are Grijalva masterworks hanging in the Palasso. I see them every day.”

Including Piedro’s original
Death of Verro Grijalva.
Saavedra smiled weakly. “Of course.”

“So. You are a Grijalva, and I am a do’Verrada. Bassda. Shall we fetch our lemonada and find our shade?”

“’Cordo,” she managed, and was treated again to his brilliant grin. But this time it was neither grin nor tooth she noticed.
No
, she reflected absently,
I did not get the nose right at all.

  FIFTEEN  

The
boy now was gone, excused, given leave—though he believed it
taken
—to go out into the celebration, but the old Taza’ab believed he would instead proceed straight to Palasso Grijalva to contemplate and hotly reject all he had been told. Such truths as these took time.

Begun at last, the beginning, and an ending reached as well. No more waiting, no more clinging to hope that one would come out of the womb of the enemy, albeit sired by Tza’ab; one
had
come, and now Il-Adib could look to the present and the future instead of to the past.

The old man smiled. His name was spoken again by a Tza’ab in concert with Acuyib’s. True enough the accent was imperfect, the tone one of youthful and wary skepticism, but the name was known again, spoken again, by one who bore the blood. No more estranjiero, or Tza’ab filho do’canna as all the cityfolk called him … he was once again Il-Adib of the Al-Fansihirro, born to the Desert, to Tza’ab Rih, to Acuyib’s service.

One among many; now two. The boy would learn. He had appetite, ambition, a quick and devious mind searching always for challenge,
to
challenge, though refuting those thrown at him with an eloquent grasp of irony that far surpassed his age. It would not be a simple task nor a comfortable journey, but the ending justified all.

And he has the vision.

There had been many Grijalva boys he had watched, even those who walked down this very street, but none had watched his tent because none of them had
seen
it. It was true the Grijalvas were bred out of the Tza’ab blood of their ancestors, but none had been blessed with the inner vision. None but this boy.

Acuyib promised me there would come another.

Il-Adib placed one withered hand atop the polished thornwood casket bound and tacked with brass. Wrinkled, plum-tinted lips stretched into a ghastly smile. “We begin again,” he murmured. “I shall make another Diviner, and we of Acuyib’s Great Tent shall have back what was stolen from us.”

Raimon counted the years as he counted steps. Fourteen of them, twice; and then he stood at the top beneath the low, looming ceiling, and recalled the last time he had been present in the closet over the Crechetta.

Not for unfortunate Tomaz. That had been another’s task, another’s burden when the Disciplined Limner was discovered unexpectedly dead. Before Tomaz, well before Tomaz, when it was
his
time, and
his
turn, at age twenty-eight—as there were twenty-eight steps—to be Disciplined and to think on it locked away inside the heart of the Palasso, albeit his punishment was not so severe or significant as the Chieva do’Sangua.

His wrist throbbed. Raimon bent and set down the lamp, then clamped a hand over the ache. Beneath the cloth of silk doublet, the fine lawn cuffs of shirt, the scar burned again.

“Suggestion,” Raimon murmured. “The magic is dead … it has been too long, and I learned what I was to learn.”

Indeed. He had set aside such questions as had gained him the Lesser Discipline, or learned to frame them differently. And the meticulous compordotta had served him well. No more doubts from others, no more distrust, no more punishments, no more arrested progression through the ranks of the Viehos Fratos. He was Il Seminno now, one of the loudest voices, though not to offer defiance but alternate opinion.

Eiha, he had
gathered
another opinion, an alternate opinion: Davo’s. And it gave him no peace.

They listen to my voice, yet it is not heard.
But he had not come here for that, nor even to recall his own punishment. He had come to wait, to meet, to discuss—and to offer a suggestion no other in the family would ever contemplate.

Raimon laughed softly; what it lacked in humor was replaced by bitter triumph. “This one will contemplate it!”

Indeed, this one would, and as the sound of ascending footsteps scraped through the narrow lamp-lighted stairway to the stuffy closet above, Raimon knew what he sought was the best, the only way, and that Sario Grijalva was solely the one who would not only accept the task but perform it perfectly.

Perspiration gathered beneath a fallen forelock. Raimon wiped it away impatiently with a sleeved forearm, then shut his eyes briefly to compose himself. By the time Sario climbed into sight, he was calm. He was prepared. And committed himself to damnation.

Alejandro was shocked as he heard himself tell the Grijalva girl all about Gitanna, his father, his intentions to come and find a woman to prove he could. Would she believe he meant her? Would she fire up the way she had at the city chiros?

They were no longer at the fountain but sat in the shade, as promised, against a cool wall dappled by shadows from a looming olive tree, content to sit atop packed soil brushed hastily clear of deadfall fruit despite what it did to their garments. And he spoke about finding
women;
would she therefore hurl the contents of her crockery cup into his face in lieu of fountain water?

He hoped not. Lemonada was sticky, and it burned when in the eyes.

But all was admitted. It could not be unadmitted. He steeled himself for her withdrawal, for her coldness, for the intemperance of her anger. Yet none of it came.

“Eiha,” she said equably. “I do not blame you for that.”

“For—wanting a woman? Another woman? Even after declaring I wanted Gitanna?”

She sat mostly in profile, its purity uninhibited by the wilderness of her hair, dried into long curls. He could see the wry downward hooking of her mouth. “It isn’t that you want a woman so much, but that you wish to prove to your father that you are a man who does as he chooses.”

He considered it. Possibly. “How can you know that?”

She hitched a shoulder. “I have known other men to do the same.”

Man. Not boy. It comforted him. But also provoked curiosity. “Have you known many?”

“Men? Eiha, yes—but not I myself, not as you mean.” She laughed softly. “I live with men, Don Alejandro, and I am an arrtia. We are trained, you see, to watch the behavior and manners of others.”

“Compordotta.”

He saw a quick glint in her eye. “To gain the true spirit of a subject, to put into the portrait a portion of that fire, one must observe keenly. One must train the eye. One must understand compordotta.”

“All of it?”

Her grin was brilliant, displaying white teeth. Hers were straight. Hers were perfect. Hers were better than his, with the lone crooked tooth Zaragosa Serrano refused to paint into his portraits.
“
Some
of it,” she answered. “I am not able to see into minds, only into faces.”

“Mine?”

She grimaced. “Enough to realize I made the nose wrong.”

He laughed. She had an exquisite way with wry self-deprecation and dry irony, subtle but unhesitating even in his presence. It was not the way most people spoke to him, especially women.