The Golden Key (86 page)

Lord Limner Mequel was not blind. Tradition held that when the Heir was born, his mother’s portrait was painted for the Cathedral. Mequel used the same pose and background as in the only full-face image of the beloved Duchess—Liranzo Grijalva’s unfinished
Duchess Jesminia at the Ressolvo.
The same luminous glow of stained glass windows framed Mechella, although her own golden hair was halo enough. At the festival of Imago, the painting was hung next to those of the other living do’Verradas. Mechella was officially Tira Virteian at last.

All that winter she complained to Leilias that her picture saw more of Arrigo than she did. Apart from family dinner twice a week, after which he dutifully spent the night in her bed, he was always anywhere but at the Palasso. She knew he wasn’t with the Grijalva woman, who was wintering with her husband at Castello Alva. If the lovers met at Chasseriallo—Arrigo was forever going there to hunt—no one heard about it. Mostly he attended meetings, conferred with the conselhos, and in general earned a reputation as tireless, dedicated, and fully capable of ruling Tira Virte all by himself.

Which he did not.

Cossimio, back in the capital after a summer of leisure, felt in need of some work again. All foreign relations were conducted by him; all matters of high justice; all trade negotiations; all disbursements of public funds. Arrigo was left with settling petty squabbles, reviewing the tax rolls, and supervising construction of the new hospital wing—named for King Enrei II of Ghillas. Arrigo did not deputize for his father at holidays and social gatherings, for Cossimio appeared in his customarily prominent role at all such celebrations. In fact, Arrigo missed the party of the season: a banquet given by Mechella in honor of Cossimio’s sixty-ninth birthday at which Maldonno, wearing for the first time the blue-and-gold of the Grand Duke’s personal suite, acted as his grandfather’s squire. Arrigo did not attend, having left two days earlier to dedicate the new memorial to Alesso do’Verrada in Joharra.

This was done at his father’s bidding, and Cossimio didn’t even miss him. The visit was meant to judge intimations of unrest in the southern provinces. On his return, Arrigo told his father the blunt truth: swift response to Casteya’s urgent need had provoked disgruntled envy. Why, the Joharrans asked, had the
catastrophic sandstorm of 1260 not produced such quick and generous aid?

“The difference,” Arrigo finished, “is attributed to Mechella.”

This statement he presented as he would a verdict sent up by the law court left to lie on the table for Cossimio’s examination. It was true, and it was a danger. From the do’Verradas came all bounty, and to them was owed all loyalty. Mechella, innocently enough in her desire to help, had become a threat.

To Arrigo’s fury and frustration, Cossimio didn’t see it that way.

“Mechella, you say? Then I’ll send her on a progress, to show the south that she cares equally for them. Arrange it, Arrigo, and go with her. The roads will be reliable again by Fuega Vesperra. Leave then, and stay away until Sancterria—when we’ll all spend another fine summer at Corasson. This autumn you can take her up to Elleon for the same purpose, and everything will work out just fine.”

Thus Arrigo became the man who accompanied Dona Mechella to Joharra. And Shagarra. And every market town and farming village in between. With each ecstatic welcome given their Dolcha ‘Chellita—along with presents as grand as a lapis necklace and as humble as a basket of almonds—Arrigo’s temper worsened. Joharra held a parade and a service of thanksgiving in the Sanctia Matra Serenissa. Varriyva named a new school for her. Brazzina renamed the town’s central zocalo in her honor. Shaarria declared a three-day holiday to celebrate her visit. Shagarra gave a city-wide banquet with fireworks. At last, one evening in his mother’s own home of Granidia, his resentment boiled over.

He had watched her smile and laugh and hug children and converse with everyone from the lowliest servants to the barons and counts who couldn’t tell her often enough how they and all their people adored her. But in Granidia they knew
him.
He’d spent many summers here as a boy and youth, and the people welcomed him back with a warmth even greater than the homage they gave Mechella. The road up the hillside was lined with cheering throngs, and once within the massive walls the narrow streets reverberated with his name. At the peak of the hill was the castello he had played in as a child with a score of do’Granidia cousins, and they all turned out in force to embrace him into the family fold.

That evening, replete with good humor, he entered Mechella’s bedchamber to find her still dressing for what Count do’Granidia, his mother’s uncle, had described as a rustic country dance. With a slight frown for her tardiness, Arrigo poured himself a goblet of
wine and sprawled in a chair to wait. He was always waiting on her these days.

Otonna fussed with the laces of an embroidered bodice, Leilias with the flounces of a tiered skirt—gaudy camponessa clothes given her on their arrival, which Mechella had received with as much delight as if they’d been the finest and most fashionable silks. When she spun around from the mirror, loose hair flying in wild golden curls and skirts flaring to show the length of slim bare legs, Arrigo slammed down his empty winecup and glowered.

“You look like a peasant.”

Her blue eyes widened. But where once she would have flinched and begged his pardon and changed her attire immediately, now she merely turned away from him, saying, “I find these clothes charming.”

“I said nothing about the garments. I said
you
look like a peasant.”

Their gazes met in the mirror. A lengthy moment of real malevolence was broken by a nervous choking sound from the maid. Nearby, Leilias’s eyes shot black daggers.

“Get out, both of you,” he said.

“Stay where you are,” Mechella ordered.

He rose from his chair. “It’s the instinct of a peasant not to care who overhears what should be private between husband and wife.”

“Husband!” She spun on one bare heel. “You haven’t been that for half a year!”

“And have you been a wife? You’re merely the woman I married and got children on.”

Though this struck home—he saw it in her face—she rallied with remarkable speed. “If that’s how you think of
me
, then I suppose you consider that Grijalva your true wife! Either way, you’re living a lie!”

“Your insight surprises me, Mechella. Yours is the seeming—hers, the substance.”

Trembling, she said, “If only there was a way to stop living the lies—”

“Perhaps we can arrange it,” he suggested.

“Never will she take my place! Never!”

“You must know by now that never could you have taken hers.”

There was another terrible silence before the rosewood clock chimed and the rooster flapped its rainbow wings. Arrigo flicked imaginary lint from his dark blue jacket.

“You’ve made us late—again.” Swinging around, he caught sight of the two stricken servants and frowned. “Gossip as you like. It won’t be believed. This is my mother’s home, these people are my close kin.” He smiled. “Besides, everyone knows how devoted I am … to my
wife.
”

  FORTY-EIGHT  

Leilias
was Zevierin’s lookout that night. Most of Granidia was either at the “country dance” or at similar entertainments in the little grassy zocalos honeycombing the city. Those few who were on the winding streets, especially after midnight, thought she and Zevierin were fellow revelers on their way home.

“Hurry up, it’s taking too long,” she hissed, glancing over her shoulder. They were in a deserted alley between Ruallo Vacha and Ruallo Cordobina. On one side cattle were slaughtered for meat; on the other, skinned for leather; offal from each was thrown into the alley refuse bins. The stench was unbearable.

“Just another few lines,” Zevierin promised, tossing long, straight black hair from his eyes. “Qal Venommo isn’t very complex, but it’s damned dark and I’m not used to working in charcoal on brick.”

“Grown too exalted for the simpler things, have you, my fine Master Limner?”

Zevierin only grunted by way of a reply.

At the mouth of the alley dogs snarled, scrabbling through the offal. Leilias flinched and again urged Zevierin to hurry.

“’Cordo, ‘cordo,” he muttered. “It’s done.”

She squinted in the darkness. “What does it say?”

“Nothing. It’s all done in pictures, not words.”

“Well, then, what does it show?”

“Allowing for imprecision caused by lack of light, haste, and the inferior materials—”

Warningly: “Zevierin!”

He grinned at her, a flash of white teeth in his dark face. “Tazia on horseback, digging in her spurs. The horse bears an uncanny resemblance to Arrigo.”

She clapped a hand over her mouth to stifle a giggle, but it escaped anyway. “Zevi! You didn’t!”

“Do you want people to get the idea or not? Where shall we go next?”

She took his hand and they hurried from the alley, wary of growling dogs. Back on a main street, she paused under a lamp to
examine the hand she’d held. He tried unsuccessfully to keep it from her.

“No, let me look. Why are your fingers so sticky?”

“Why do you think?” He dragged a scrap of cloth from his pocket. “Come on, I want to finish at least four more before I faint from loss of blood.”

“Blood?” Stricken, Leilias stared as he wrapped the cloth around his hand. In the stinking alleyway, she hadn’t smelled it—she who blended perfumes and could tell the scent of an Astrappa Bianca rose from a Pluvio Bianco at twenty paces with her eyes shut.

“Zevi,” she whispered. “Why?”

“Later I’ll tell you what we Limners
really
do.” He shrugged slender shoulders, a rueful smile quirking his rather plain, long-nosed Grijalva face into something suddenly much more interesting. “For now, find me a good wall, preferably plastered smooth. Brick is absolute flaming merditto to work on.”

The next morning, as sunlight penetrated the steep and twisting streets of Granidia, outraged cries and derisive laughter began to ring out. “Qal Venommo!” the well-informed assured their friends—“poisoned pen”—as in every neighborhood people gathered to gawk, point, and believe the hilarious and occasionally salacious drawings that had appeared overnight as if by magic.

When Arrigo found out, he summoned to his presence all the Grijalvas—limner
and
Limner—currently in Granidia. Of the twenty-nine, eleven had witnesses that they’d been at home all night in their beds, twelve had similar witnesses that they’d been at one or another of the dances, six had been at Count do’Granidia’s ball, and the remaining six were so feeble they were hardly able to climb a flight of stairs, let alone spend the night racing all over the tortuously sloping streets.

Arrigo glared at Cabral and Zevierin, the two Grijalvas Mechella had insisted on bringing with her. They were his prime suspects, of course. But he’d seen the latter several times at the ball, dancing with Leilias; the former wore the look of someone who has spent the previous night getting very, very drunk. Indeed, one of the do’Granidia servants had been questioned earlier, and he affirmed that Cabral had sent with clockwork regularity for yet another bottle until shortly before dawn.