The Golden Key (58 page)

Killing him, as he so richly deserved.

Alejandro. He stood there in the prime of his years, a plain curtain of dull black velurro behind him, his beauty all the more compelling for the bleak backdrop. Beside him, every other do’Verrada appeared either a barbarian or a beribboned bravo. His physical beauty was both of the warrior and the poet. His consciousness of worth—so hard-won!—combined with his genuine modesty so plainly in his face that even the clumsiest Limner could have painted his portrait and been hailed a genius. But there was also in his green-flecked eyes and in the curve of his lips a terrible grief that no one but Sario could capture—and no one but Sario had caused.

“You were what I made you,” whispered the former Lord Limner to his Duke. “Because of me, you gained the wisdom they all praise. With me at your side, you thwarted all who opposed you, fought when you had to, made peace when you could, and did all that had to be done for this land we both loved. But you were the man
I
made you. Without me, you would have ruined yourself over her. I saved you from that. Because of me, you became a legend.”

And Alejandro had known it. He repressed a smile at the memory of himself on what everyone thought was his deathbed, withered hand clasped gently in fingers still strong and supple. He and his Duke had both been only thirty-four years old.

“
Fare you well, old friend
,” Alejandro murmured, tears brilliant
in his fine eyes. “
Everything I’ve accomplished—I could never have done it without you.
”

Nice of him, Sario thought at the time, to admit it.

A few days later, the worn-out body died, and he watched with wide, carefully awestruck eyes as the great Duke came to pay his respects.

“The painting we discuss this morning is a work by Oaquino Grijalva, called Il Cofforro. Can any of you tell me the origin of this nommo do’arrtio?”

Called Il WHAT
?

His head snapped around. Seven Grijalva boys, none past Confirmattio, were seating themselves on the floor beside a vastly populated picture Sario didn’t remember painting—either as Oaquino or anyone else. He edged closer, glancing at the work: his, en verro, abruptly recalling the hours he’d spent mixing exactly the right color for the incredible wig worn by Pepennar II of Ghillas, a shade of red never seen in nature.

“Eiha?” barked the moualimo. “Why Il Cofforro?”

When did they think
that
up
? He folded his arms and repressed a glare.

“Dirado? Can you answer?”

A boy’s voice piped up, “Moualimo Temirro, it’s because all his pictures have such peculiar hairstyles.”

He winced. Fashions in Aute-Ghillas in 1210 had been uniquely absurd.

“Wrong,” snarled Temirro—who was beginning to remind Sario of Otavio. “Anyone else? Cansalvio?”

“It was the way he did hair, Moualimo,” another boy said in a smugly superior tone.

“Indeed? So he plaited all those wigs with his own hands, did he? Arriano, perhaps you can be more precise?”

The youngest of them, scarcely nine years old, gulped. “He—he
painted
the hair very well, Moualimo. On the canvas, I mean. It looks so real you could—you feel like you could curl it around your finger.”

“
The Hairdresser”!
Still, he supposed he ought to be mollified by recognition of an effect he’d worked very hard to achieve. Matra knew that Ghillas in those days fifty years past had provided ample chance to perfect it: all those massed curls and coiling braids, intricate crimps and cascading wigs. …

“Hmph,” grunted Temirro. It was all the acknowledgment any
boy ever got for a right answer, Sario felt sure. More and more like Otavio, he thought, and hid a grin.

“We’ve established Oaquino’s claim to fame—his only one, I might add. You’ll have noted, I’m sure, that his placement of figures in this
Treaty
is exceptionally awkward, if not actually ridiculous.”

I’d like to see
anyone
get twenty-seven people into one painting when no two of them would consent to be in the same room with a third, and four of them were assassinated before I even finished the damned thing!

But it seemed someone had come to his defense. He caught the tail end of Cansalvio’s question about how hard
was
it to make all those people stand still long enough to be painted?

“Moronno! You think all were present at the same time? Recall which
Treaty
this is!”

They fell silent. He racked his own brain trying to remember. He’d painted it, he ought to—oh, yes. Pepennar had rounded up his fractious vassals—some of them nearly kings in their own right—and forced them to sign a treaty of undying friendship and mutually profitable trade with Tira Virte. The friendship had died with Pepennar twelve years later; the trade had survived. Trade always did.

But now he knew why these boys were studying this particular painting: Ghillas, it was strongly rumored, was angling for the betrothal of its Princess to the current Heir. This was unheard-of, that Tira Virte’s huge and powerful northern neighbor would actively solicit a marriage rather than wait in regal disdain for Tira Virte to come begging. Talk also had it, though, that Don Arrigo was resisting this honor with all his might, for he deeply and genuinely loved his Mistress, even twelve years into the association.
Eiha, the do’Verrada passions
, he thought acidly,
and the Grijalva beauties—ever a dangerous combination.
…

The boys had taken sketchpads out of their satchels and were dutifully lining up to take a brief but intense look at the painting. He knew this drill well; he’d been through it often enough, and would endure its tedium again. Each boy would choose something specific about the picture and attempt to reproduce it. For older boys, the lesson was to attempt something not yet mastered: the flow of drapery, the shadows thrown by vast candle-masses of overhead lustrossos, the arrangement of background figures not touched by direct light. These youngsters would merely repeat lessons already taught back at the Palasso by copying something
they already knew how to do from the work of a recognized master—even one called Il Cofforro, whose only real talent was for doing hair.

One of the boys merely glanced at the painting when it came his turn. He sat back down on the floor, hunched over his sketchbook, and with breathtaking rapid strokes outlined the entire composition. Sario’s brows arched.
Arrogant little merditto
, he thought, smiling in spite of himself. He spent the next minutes pretending to admire a
Marriage
by Grigarro—a rival of Oaquino’s—then strolled over to Temirro and introduced himself.

“Itinerarrio Dioniso?” A tentative smile touched the old man’s face—wrinkled and age-spotted, though he could not have been fifty. “Son of Giaberta?”

He nodded—dangerously; he had no idea of “his” mother’s name. “She’s well?”

“Healthy as a two-year-old filly, for all that she’s sixty!”

This was not welcome news. “Saluto!” he replied heartily, to the old lady’s health. “Does she still live in the Palasso?” he asked, praying that she did not.

“No, more’s the pity. Wed to some twice-widowered lordling with a hundred children and a thousand square miles of Joharran desert. I miss her. It’s ten years, and we correspond regularly, but I miss her. Go see her, she’ll be glad of—
Rafeyo!
” he barked all at once. “Chieva do’Orro, what are you doing?”

The ambitious stripling looked up from his work, but not with fright. There was defiance, but also something deeper, something he’d seen in his own eyes—
his own eyes
—centuries ago. He always experienced a twinge of guilt when he took a boy whose eyes burned this way. Who knew but what he deprived the world of a genius to rival his own? Still, the feeling always passed. His Gift was the greater. His Gift must be served. If the boy possessed the fire of a Neosso Irrado, better to quench it before it could truly rival Sario.

And, en verro, it was infinitely easier to choose someone whose fire already shone. He needn’t pretend half so much.

Rafeyo rose from his place beside Arriano, showing a grace unusual in one his age. Most boys of thirteen or so battled constantly against elbows and knees and feet that never seemed to do as told. But Rafeyo’s movements were lithe and supple as he approached Temirro.

“What’s this?” the moualimo demanded. “What’s this, then?”

“The
Treaty of Aute-Ghillas.
”

“The whole painting?”

Rafeyo nodded.

“Was the assignment to sketch the whole painting?”

“No, Moualimo Temirro.”

A slow, controlled inhalation. “Then, if you would be
so
kind, explain why you have done precisely that!”

Rafeyo’s face was yet a muddle of childish softness around the sharpest of Grijalva noses. But, practiced at such extrapolation, Sario saw the promise of fine looks. More, he saw the certainty of fire in that hasty but perceptive sketch. He even heard it in the man-child voice when Rafeyo at last framed his reply.

“A painting must be viewed as a whole, not an assemblage of parts. I can’t separate out one thing from the composition as if I were a milkmaid straining curds.” He paused, deliberate in his insult as he tacked on, “—Moualimo.”

He had barely bitten back another grin when, at Rafeyo’s next words, he was ready to strangle the boy himself.

“Most of it
is
curdled, in fact. If you’ll look closely, you’ll see I’ve changed it. It’s much better now.”

Temirro seized the sketchpad, ripped the page out, and held it up to the
Treaty.
There was barely time to note that several figures had been moved and most of the Throne Room’s tapestries were omitted when, with a snort, Temirro tore Rafeyo’s page in half. “Sit down,” he growled, “do as you’re told.”

Rebellion flashed in Tza’ab-black eyes, and sheer fury at seeing his work—
his work!
—destroyed. But Rafeyo was still just a child, and his future until his Confirmattio was in Temirro’s gnarled hands. He did not bow, he did not yield, but he did sit down and do as told.

“Miserable little wretch,” Temirro muttered. “His mother’s fault, of course. But for your ears alone, Itinerarrio, he’s among the best I’ve ever taught.”

“Eiha, it won’t do to let him know that for a few more years, though.” He was still stinging from the slight to Oaquino’s work—criticism from a thirteen-year-old boy!—but knew he must make the effort to be casual with the old man.

“If I had my way, he’d
never
know how good he is. I’ve seen things from him you’d swear were done by an Aguo or Seminno or Sanguo!”

“Truly?” His interest in the boy increased. “One of us?”

It was more than a query about his painterly talents. Temirro understood and shrugged. “Not yet Confirmattio. If he becomes so, I
hope he learns the rights and wrongs of it before he learns too much.”

Sario nodded at this likewise oblique reference to magic’s power. A few moments later he excused himself and walked back to the bronze doors, musing about young Rafeyo all the length of the Galerria. Sunlight now baked the jasmine and roses within the scent-pillars, and he was sure the odor would cling to his clothes. Repressing a sneeze, he handed the guide sheet back to the assistant curatorrio and took a half-dozen steps before remembering to ask about the portrait of Saavedra.

“Oh, you mean
The First Mistress
? Permanently removed to storage. Grand Duke Cossimio’s mother didn’t much like it—or maybe it was his grandmother, I forget. But it hasn’t been on display for years.”

“It hasn’t?”

“I don’t think it was even uncrated during the last cleaning—but someone might’ve done that for the inventory in 1216—the one ordered by the Nazha Coronna.” When Sario continued to look as blank as a virgin canvas, the curatorrio explained, “Tazita. Grand Duke Arrigo II’s Mistress. What she ordered was done, and done at once.” Though he was far too young to have known her, there was genuine and awed respect in his voice for the force she had been.

“I remember,” he replied, though he did not; he’d been out of Tira Virte for most of the Uncrowned Grand Duchess’ rule.

“But as regards the painting, if you want specially to see it, perhaps I can ask—”

“No,” he managed. “No, I was just curious. It—it’s something of a legend.” He’d been about to say,
It was a favorite of mine.
Which could not be if no one had looked on it in so many years.

“And a legend
she
is,” sighed the curatorrio. “Sad story. Very sad. I think that’s why it was removed. Yes, I’m sure of it. Cossimio’s mother it was, Grand Duchess Verradia—she came here as a young bride, wept when she heard the tale, and it was taken down.”

“How … compassionate … of her,” Sario said through gritted teeth. “Dolcha mattena, curatorrio.”

He raged in silence all the way to the steps of the Portalla Granda. Some sentimental idiot of a girl had shed a few tears over Saavedra’s “sad story” and
that
was the reason no one had seen his masterpiece in so long? The crowning achievement of his youthful art and magic, the instrument of his revenge in oil and blood and oak panel, had not been seen by
anyone
?

He should have known. For an artist of his caliber, he had been
singularly blind. The evidence had been right there in front of him, and he hadn’t seen it.
The First Mistress
was longer and wider than the
Duchess Renata
now occupying the space—yet no telltale darkness around the replacement indicated where a larger painting had once hung. It had been missing so long from the Galerria that faded wallpaper had been replaced. Taken down and forgotten, except when a Grand Duke died and complete inventory was taken of his possessions. …

Sudden sunshine blinded him in earnest, and the sneeze that jasmine and roses had sired was finally born. He wiped his eyes and his nose with a square of silk from his pocket, prosaically distracted from trancelike fury.

Eiha, what did it matter who saw or didn’t see the painting?
He
knew it was unequaled.
He
knew the sweet taste of his vengeance. What did anyone else matter?