The Golden Key (39 page)

The door behind her banged open; a high-pitched curse accompanied it. She turned swiftly, startled, and grinned to see one of her many cousins trying to get through the door as arms overflowed with canvas, stretchers, boards.

“Here … Ignaddio,
wait!
” He did not. Things began to fall. “Ignaddio!” Hastily she caught and rescued that which also threatened to depart his arms, then bent to gather up what had already fallen. “’Naddi, you should never try to carry it
all.
Bring smaller loads.”

He stretched his chin to secure a heap of tattered canvas. “Takes longer. Where do you wish this to go?”

“In there.” Gathering fallen papers, Saavedra angled her head toward the balcony chamber, now her atelierro. “Through there, ‘Naddi—follow the sunlight.”

As bidden, he followed. His voice was muffled by what he carried as well as the wall between them. “So—have they decided you are Gifted, to give you such quarters?”

Saavedra sighed. He knew. They all knew. “Eiha, would I tell
you
?” She sorted papers—sketches she wished to consider transferring to canvas or wood one day—and rose, careful of edges and corners. “If it were true, you would never believe it.”

“No?” He remained in the room, out of sight. She heard the sounds of clinking bottles, a rattle of something else. “It would be foolish to deny it—our blood is closer than most, and I hope myself to be a Lord Limner …” His voice grew louder, clearer; he paused now in the open doorway, a slender and yet ill-defined boy, unkempt dark curls flopping down into hazel eyes. “But why should
you
be so blessed, eh? Duke’s mistress
and
Limner?” He grinned, danced around her outstretched, jabbing foot, slipped past her and through the sitting room to the door giving way to the corridor. “And what would they call you?—surely not
Lord
Limner! Eiha, no, you had better look to your bed-skill, ‘Vedra, if you wish to keep the Duke—what does he know of painting?”

He was gone, giggling, clattering down the flight of stairs to fetch more of her things, but Saavedra answered anyway. “He knows I am good.” She reconsidered. “He
says
he knows I am good—but perhaps that is only kindness.” She supposed it might hurt, but she was too happy for pain. “’Naddi …” She raised her voice, though undoubtedly he would not hear; or would choose not
to. “You had best mind your tongue as well as your lessons—or they will name you Neosso Irrado.”

“And why not?” He was back, arms full of cloth-draped paintings. “The last one so named became Lord Limner!” His grin was quick, even as he struggled with stiff, painted canvas. “Shall I—”

“
Ignaddio!
” Saavedra was horrified. “Matra Dolcha, that you should stack them up like so much cordwood … ‘Naddi, how
could
you?” She caught up and carefully lifted the draped painting on the top of the stack. “You know better, cabessa bisila!” She turned back the cloth with care. “Set out the others on the bed—
separately!
—so we may see if there is damage. ‘Naddi,
why
?”

Now he sulked; at thirteen, he offended easily. “They smelled dry to me.”

“What would you know of that?” Saavedra set the rescued painting against the wall and knelt to study it for damage. “Cabessa bisila,” she muttered. “A potential Limner would never do such a thing.” And then she frowned. “This isn’t mine. ‘Naddi—”

“It’s mine.” Stiff apprehension, and burgeoning hope.

“But—” Still kneeling, she twisted to look at him. Saw the pallor of his cheeks, the teeth worrying at bottom lip, the clenching of his hands in the soiled, tattered tunic. “Why?”

It burst out of him. “Because you
are
good, ‘Vedra—everybody says!”

It was unexpected, and unexpectedly gratifying. She laughed breathily. “So,
everybody
says?”

“The moualimos. Some of the estudos.” He twisted his mobile mouth. “Am
I
good, ‘Vedra?”

“Eiha, of course you—” Saavedra halted. What he wanted to hear was not necessarily the truth, but what she offered
ought
to be. It was why he asked. “’Cordo. Shall we critique it together?”

“Matra Dolcha,
no
” He reconsidered. “I mean—I think …” He stared hard at the floor, tunic hem stretched taut nearly to tearing. “I am afraid. Study it, grazzo—but tell me later what you think.”

“’Cordo.” She knew that fear. With care she redraped the canvas. “But you need only have asked … there was no need to risk the paintings merely to gain an opinion.”

Relieved that she would do as he wished, he paid little attention to her. Already he freed the stretched canvases on the bed of their protective wrappings. “This one is unharmed—I
was
careful!— and this one …
filho do’canna!
”

“’Naddi! Recall your compordotta, grazzo. If you truly wish to be a Limner—”

“What
is
this?” His voice was raw with excitement. “When did you paint
this
, ‘Vedra?”

“Until I see it, how can I know?” She shook dust from her skirts, walked to the bed. “That one—” She checked, shocked into silence.

Ignaddio’s fascinated gaze moved from the painting to her face. “I didn’t know you were
so
good, ‘Vedra!”

It gusted sharply from her lungs. “But—that’s
horrible
—”

Ignaddio nodded vigorously. “That’s what is
good
about it!”

“No, no—” Stricken, Saavedra gestured the comment away. “Where did you find this? It isn’t mine.”

He shrugged narrow shoulders, staring again at the painting in unrestrained delight. “In the workroom.”

“Which workroom?”

“The one where we put all the paintings packed to be shipped somewhere else.” He was uninterested; such shipments were routine in a family of artists who painted so many copies. “I like how you have painted the hands so crippled, ‘Vedra—and the lines of pain in his face—”

“’Naddi!” She wanted to protest that the grotesqueness of the painting was not due such flattery, and yet she had to admit the artist’s talent was more than talent. It was sheer genius.

“Who is it?” Ignaddio asked. “And why would he wish himself painted so?” Young he was, but already he understood that vanity often superseded truth.

“I don’t know who it—” But she did. Abruptly, she did. “Filho do’canna.”She collapsed to her knees even as ‘Naddi laughed in gleeful delight to hear her swear. “Oh Matra, Blessed Matra—”

“Who
is
it, ‘Vedra?”

She kissed fingertips, pressed them to her breast. “Nommo do’Matra ei Filho, let him not do this … let him never
do
this—”

“Who is it? Who has done what? Who shouldn’t do this?”

The series of questions posed in a child’s unbroken treble at last breached her horror. A trembling hand—her own?—reached out to tug at cloth, to cover the painting. “’Naddi—”

“Who painted it, ‘Vedra?”

“No.” Now the hand settled on his shoulder, clasped tightly. “No, ‘Naddi … no importada.” She stood up unsteadily, guided him toward the open door. “Go, now. You have helped enough today … go and play, if you wish.”

He balked. “But I want to
know
—”

“No.”
You don’t. No one should know.
“Go on, ‘Naddi.”

“But—”

“Do’nado,” she said firmly. “It was nothing at all, Ignaddio— just a poor jest painted by a moronno luna.”

“
But
—”

She pushed him out, shut the door, leaned against it. A final plaintive question came from beyond the wood; when she ignored it long enough, Ignaddio went away.

Trembling, Saavedra straightened. Pushed herself from the door. Went to the bed. Tore away the cloth to display the ruined hands and tortured features of Zaragosa Serrano.

She had seen the painting before, in Sario’s atelierro. She recalled questioning him about the border, the affectation that now was in everything he painted.

He put this where I was sure to see it. He
wanted
me to see it. He wanted me to know.
Her belly cramped. Saavedra turned her back on the painting, slid down to the floor, scraped her spine against the bed.
I have always been his confidante, always understood him, his need to express his Gift. And now he shows me this.

She sat there staring blindly, collapsed upon hard stone flags … aware of fear, of tears, of nausea—and an understanding at last of Sario’s terrible Luza do’Orro.

  TWENTY-TWO  

He
spent himself as a man does who has not lain with a woman in too long: with a quick-struck and scouring immediacy that left him drained, not sated; that left him limp in body and spirit as wet linen. The woman beneath did not protest; she laughed softly, breathily, murmuring of a sword whose temper is tamed by a properly-fitted sheath … and he let her have it, let her flatter herself, let her believe she had kindled and quenched his best.

He moved then, shifting weight, aware of slick flesh adhered to his own—and knew instantly and with utter certainty that he had wasted himself, his seed; had thrown away that which could better be used for power.

It palled: fleshly contact, release, sheer physical need. He pushed away from her and rose, climbing free of tangled sheets and coverlet, unheeding of his nudity as he stood beside the bed. Sweat dried on him as she turned, shifted, propped herself up on one elbow.

“Go,” he said. “Now. Adezo.”

It shocked her. “But—”

“You have had all of me you shall have … what is left is mine, and there are better ways to spend it.”

Astonishment now was anger. She tore back the bedclothes and climbed out, equally naked, equally uncaring. The epithet she used was framed in a mouth accustomed to such, and he laughed.

“Boys? Is that it?” She found and reached for smallclothes, yanked the shift over her head and tugged it across lush breasts and undulant hips. “Girl, followed by boy—as sweet vinho follows sour? Is that it?”

He said nothing. He watched her, marking the coursing of colors in her face: he had not studied scorn before, or humiliation, or such taut, restrained fury. All were tangible to him.
I must recall this
…
use this
…

She muttered again such vile commentary upon his person, his manhood, his poor and hasty industry that he grinned unrestrainedly, entertained by her vocabulary. Which infuriated her the more, and when at last she departed, she banged the door shut so forcefully he feared it might crack the lintel.

Gone. The smell of her remained, a cheap, thick perfume concocted of violets in an oil going rancid, and the undertang of love-making, of sweat, of spent—
wasted!
—seed. Yet naked, now dry, he stared at the bed and considered his emotions. That he was a man, he knew; that there was something worth more than the transient physical pleasure of copulation he was certain.

Transient
pleasure … wholly unlike art that remained as alive, as permanently documented as that passing moment of physical bliss could not be, ever, as alive and real as art because art was of the body
and
the mind; and art, once completed, could never be extinguished by such trivial things as exhaustion, as infrequency, as the inability of a man under certain circumstances to raise the infamous sword.

Sario smiled.
That sword is worthless. It ages, sickens, grows lax. But the blade of true creation cannot be broken. Ever.

Nor the one of power. He knew its name, its guises. And learned more each time he read of the
Kita’ab
, that was also
Folio.