The Golden Key Read Online Free PDF Page A

could, surely he would be punished yet again for yet another perceived transgression when he was but merely curious. His inquisitive nature simply could not bear to be held ignorant, and—despite his always frustrating inclination toward disobediences large and small—he was, after all, her closest companion, her
only
true companion.
    He understood her. Completely, utterly, unquestionably. They spoke the same language, an inner silent language of the limner’s art and heart; recognized identical truths and power in the ambitions of their talent, the constant yearning for more, for better, for
best
in every undertaking, even in crude sketches. Luza do’Orro incarnate, mutually evidenced and mutually comprehended.
    No one else knows what is in me. No one else frees me to be as I wish to be.
And yet … “Matra ei Filho!” she cried as he caught her hand and dragged her to a narrow coiled stairway. “We can’t, Sario. We shouldn’t be doing this!”
    “Of course we shouldn’t, cabessa bisila; if we should be doing it, there wouldn’t be any risk.”
    “You
want
risk!” It was accusation, not question. “And my brain is larger than a pea!”
    He grinned slyly. “Not when you protest so much about something that interests you as much as it interests me.”
    Yes, it interested her. Eiha, it interested her! Sario spoke of hidden, forbidden things, a ritual to which women were never admitted, and only those males found worthy of admission. She had no doubts Sario’s day would come—how could it not, with the burgeoning talent she knew as Gift?—but he was as yet too young for consideration. He was eleven, not thirteen; the moualimos ignored his blatant attempts to impress them, to seduce them through elaborate sketches and graceful paintings into admitting his talent, andthe Viehos Fratos—eiha, she doubted they even knew he existed! Any more than they knew
she
did.
    I know
… She had always known. He burned with a concentrated flame far brighter than any she had yet seen in Palasso Grijalva, even in the sprawling nichetangled maze of the family premises, and she had met everyone. There were not so many of them now as the genealogies once boasted. The Nerro Lingua had killed so very many.
    The plague had engulfed Meya Suerta, a selfish, unrelenting conflagration of infection that presented itself as high fever and swollen, blackened tongue. It killed nobility and commoners alike throughout the city, then cruelly invaded the rest of the duchy. All in Tira Virte lost loved ones, providers, servants, masters. But no family suffered as much as the Grijalvas.
    We still suffer.
And so they did. In addition to killing nearly two-thirds of the family, the Nerro Lingua had also rendered much of the male seed infertile. Even now, sixty years later, the Grijalva family suffered depredations of the loins as well as of ducal favor; far too many males died before age fifty, and they had not placed one of their own at Court since the Nerro Lingua. The last Grijalva Lord Limner died in the plague, as so many Grijalvas died, and was replaced by, of all things, a Serrano.
    The Grijalvas quite naturally expected it to be an interim appointment only—had they not sent a limner to Court for the thirty-five years prior?—but such confidence proved misplaced. Except for their successful production of materials used by limners, they were overlooked. Too many of them had died, too many important, talented, established Grijalvas; in the aftermath of plague, as they struggled to recover, other families less stricken overtook their places.
    The rival Serranos, of course, jealous of their recovered ducal favor, argued that the Protection issued by Alessio I was wholly enough, better, in fact, than Grijalvas deserved. In return Sario called them such epithets as she would not herself speak, and was quite rightly beaten for it; such blatant criticism, precociously clever-tongued or no, was not permitted on the family premises. But Saavedra