"To see if what I expected came to pass." He levered himself off his arm and sat up, mindful of his nudity as he pulled a linen sheet across his depleted lap and settled against the headboard.

The side of his knee brushed her lower leg, was drawn away, then crept back again; he was not yet accustomed to the ordering of bodies after intimacy. "I am told everyone will tailor answers in accordance to what they believe I wish to hear."

"And did you expect what came to pass?"

He had no nervous habits. He was settled now, at ease, and focused on what was said; unusual for Courtfolk, who sought truth in what wasn't said. "If you had intended to tailor your words, you would not have answered as you did. But I had honesty of you, not Court speech."

Gitanna shook her head. "Not in bed." Your father never wished it.

"Then perhaps I should spend more time in bed."

"I have no doubt," she said dryly, "that indeed you will."

"Do'Verrada potency?"

"Stamina," she retorted. And unflagging interest!

Alejandro looked thoughtful. "I was told you had no wit."

"No wit! Who told you that?"

"My mother."

Gitanna sat immobile, tailoring her answer into noisy silence.

"So," Alejandro remarked. "She lied."

"Duchesses never lie."

"Mothers do," he said. "My mother does. She says she hates my father." He let the back of his skull rest against the carved headboard. "And that, you see, is very definitively a lie."

She had not expected, ever, to discuss the Duchess with her son, least of all after she of all women had bedded that son. "In her place," Gitanna said, "to my son, I would lie also."

"Because you are my father's mistress."

"Because she loves him." "As he loves you."

Her response was immediate. "Baltran does not love me! Trust me, Alejandro-there may be bindings upon us, a thing of men and women, but there is no love in this. En verro."

"Because you cannot wed?"

Now he was young after all, to ask such a thing when he meant no harm by it, only desired to learn. "Noblemen do not wed their mistresses."

"If they loved them?"

"Politics," she said crisply. "Surely, in this Court, you have heard of such."

"Merditto!" he said vulgarly. "How could I not?"

"Eiha, how could you not?" Gitanna sighed and slid down against the headboard, snagging gauze on the scrollwork. "How could anyone in Palasso Verrada not be steeped in it?"

"Will he have you back?" he asked baldly.

Tears brimmed. "No."

"Gitanna-"

So, he knew her name. "No," she said again, turning her head away.

"Why not?"

Because this is his way of telling me it is ended. "Because-because ... no man cleaves to a single woman."

"No man?"

Viciously, she said, "No man that I have heard of!"

"And if that man should wish to?"

Gitanna Serrano laughed. It was a brittle, desperate sound, and it caused him to stare, eyes wide and astonished. "What-will you keep yourself to me now that we have shared a bed?" She saw the startlement in his eyes. "There," she said, "you see? En verro."

After all his questions, his smiles, his laughter, the Heir to the duchy had no answer to offer.

ELEVEN.

Sario stood utterly still, rooted into cobbles like a grandfather olive tree, splayed and ancient trunks split into ornate candelabra. He had arrived, seemingly all at once and without any physical effort, in the midst of the Zocalo Grando in the center of the city-or what had been the center before vital growth spilled into sprawl. Overshadowed by the many-tiered marble fountain and the massive twin-towered Cathedral Imagos Brilliantos, he was buffeted by the press of the crowd on festival day-Fuega Vesperra, to celebrate conception (and, no doubt, to cause it)- deaf to the noise as he was blind to the light, wholly alone amidst the tight-packed throng milling like a frightened flock of sheep with no dog in attendance. He supposed he had walked. Perhaps he had run. But he stood here now, very still, very stiff, very cold despite the day, and found the key on its chain clasped so tightly in the fist of one slender hand that the gold bit into his flesh.

Chieva do'Orro. What all Grijalvas longed for, were they born male: to be more than merely gifted but Gifted as well, and blessed, honored among the family to ascend to a higher level of talent, technique, training, and the blazing light of sheer genius.

"For what?" he murmured bitterly. "To burn more brightly than another, only to be blown out an hour later?"

If it were true ... if it were as Saavedra suggested. As she stumbled, all unwittingly, upon a hideous possibility even he, of the Viehos Fratos, had never heard in whispers, had never thought to ask. Had never so much as imagined, even to paint it.

He gripped the Chieva more tightly. "What if they don't know? What if none of them knows?"

They spoke of the Nerro Lingua, the deadly plague that racked the city, the duchy, but had so diminished the Grijalvas that even now, over sixty years later, they struggled to survive. Meya Suerta, for all the city's bounty, was not kind to the weak; a man needed size, as a family required numbers, to make a safe way in the world.

But they believe otherwise . . . Sario could not discount the plague, for the records, though incomplete, provided documentation that prior to the Nerro Lingua all Grijalva males lived longer. One need only go into the Galerria Grijalva and look upon the paintings to see the truth: the family had been vital, the family had been numerous, the family had been ranked among the highest, the strongest, the most richly favored in the ordering of the duchy.

"But now we die," he murmured. "What Duke would appoint a Grijalva to a lifetime post if that lifetime as an adult spans but thirty years, and within twenty of them the body and skills diminish?"

Someone jostled him from behind, jarring his shoulder: a squat Meya Suertan clutching an oil- soaked cloth sleeve of festival food. One city-bred cheek bulged greasily. Sario caught the pungent aroma of garlic, olives, onions, simmered overnight in rosemary and oregano, washed down now with spring wine; heard the muffled imprecation-his stillness caused a hardship for others who preferred to move-but did not respond. Only when a second voice grumbled more pointedly another vulgar comment did he rouse, and then it was to anger.

Chi'patro, the man had called him.

Sario could not argue, would not fight. In point of fact, it was truth: his parents had not been married. But that truth did not sting. That truth was not what the man referred to.

Being a bastard was one thing, and infinitely bearable within a family where such was not a stigma. But chi'patro was a wholly derogatory term applied only to Grijalvas, to insult Grijalvas specifically, whose once-honorable ancestry was widely and luridly known to be permanently tainted, as the sanctos and sanctas took care to remind everyone.

Tza'ab revenge. "Who is the father?"

Sario clamped his mouth shut on a stinging rebuke. There were no grounds for it, not now, with what he acknowledged; had he and Saavedra not stood before Piedro's Death of Verro Grijalva and looked upon both halves of their whole? Grijalva, and Tza'ab. Verro, dying in do'Verrada arms-and on the hilltop behind him a green-clad Tza'ab warrior, an Unbeliever, who had killed the greatest hero Tira Virte had ever known.

"He might have been Duke," Sario muttered, watching the city man stride away. "He might have been Duke-and I might have been also."

But he was not. He was Grijalva, and chi'patro. He was Tza'ab, and enemy.

And had, if he were very lucky, thirty more years to live.

Sario Grijalva lifted stinging eyes to gaze upon the bell towers of the great Cathedral. His fist yet was closed around his Chieva do'Orro. "Grazzo do'Matra," he began, deliberately ironic, "I thank you so very deeply for such blessings as you offer to an impure chi'patro moronno."

Seminno Raimon, rigid spine pressed against the doorjamb, clasped Sanguo Otavio's shoulder as the older man came in. "Rapidia, grazzo-he weakens quickly . . ." And to Davo, behind Otavio: "It comes now. Adezo. There is no time at all. . . ."

"Are we all here?" Davo asked, pausing before the door.

"No-no ..." Raimon cast a quick, assessive glance over the others gathering like crows-and so they were, he realized with a start: crows at the death site, waiting for the living body to become dead. "We are missing Sario-and Ferico-"

"No." Ferico came up and put a hand on Davo's sleeve to ask mutely for passage. "I am here, but Sario . . . eiha!-have you ever known Sario to be where he is expected?"

"-no time ..." Raimon murmured distractedly.

Davo moved aside, but Ferico did not enter at once. "Have you summoned sancta and sancto?"

Raimon hesitated minutely. "I sent for the Premias, yes, but-"

"Premias! Are you mad?" Ferico exploded. "They won't concern themselves with the passing of a Grijalva!"

Otavio joined them, expression severe. "And should we wish it? This is a private matter-"

"And we have not been of any import to the Ecclesia since before the Nerro Lingua," Ferico declared. "We Grijalvas do not count-"

"Chi'patros," Davo said plainly. Even in succinctness it was eloquent explanation, and a damning one.

"Bassda!" Raimon hissed. "Will you have us argue even at Arturro's deathbed?"

"And why not?" Ferico murmured dryly. "He would wish us to be as we are."

Tension lessened; Raimon could not suppress a brief smile-and then reflected that both the irony and the smile would be welcome to Arturro.

Despair abruptly engulfed him; what would the new order bring? "Matra Dolcha," he said fervently, "I wish this had not come!" "It comes to us all," Otavio said repressively.

Davo clasped and lifted his Chieva do'Orro, pressing it against his lips. "Nommo Matra ei Filho," he whispered. "In Their Blessed Names, offer this man peaceful passage, good light along the way-"

Otavio made a rude sound. "This man may well have passed already during all this lengthy chatter-we had best attend him. Adezo!"

Raimon lingered even as the others turned toward the bedchamber adjoining the solar.

"Sario-"

"He is not here!" Ferico snapped. "Would you have us request Arturro politely delay his death long enough to find him? Bassda!-let him be where he is, Raimon. He has never been one of us; why should he be so now?"

"He is one of us-"

"Bassda," Ferico repeated. "There is no time."

Otavio smiled with poisonous insincerity. "If you value the boy so much, why not have him paint Arturro's Peintraddo Memorrio?"

"If you can ever find him." Davo clapped a hand on Raimon's stiff shoulder. "Come. We can bicker later. Amaniaja."

Amaniaja. Tomorrow. Always, with so many: amaniaja. But Arturro would never see it. This day was his last.

Saavedra accepted her task without question, without comment, without protest. She would do anything for Seminno Raimon, who had always been kind-and who just this moment looked tense and distraught-and obligingly went out into the streets in search of Sario. It was, she knew, an unlikely hope; and why Raimon expected her to be able to find him when two others sent out had not . . . eiha, but perhaps Seminno Raimon knew her better than she thought. As she knew Sario better than any other.

But still. . . in the midst of a festival day? She doubted she could find her shoes, albeit she wore them; Meya Suerta today would be impossible.

Zenita: noon, and noisy with it. Sanctia bells throughout the city tolled the hour, the celebration. Today, as every year, the Mother conceived the Son, and ten months later, at daybreak of Nov'viva Premia, the Son was born.

Just now she wished it were Nov'viva; though spring, the day was warm, made sticky with early humidity and the press of too many people. Nov'viva could be cold, but there were never so many visitors-raw provinciales-as there were during Fuega Vesperra.

Already the mass of hair pinned up but hours before came loose of its crimped copper tethers.

Weight clogged her neck, straggled laggardly down her spine. She shielded her eyes from the glare of the sun with a hand against her brow, and saw in silhouette, looming above the rooftops one street over, the massive bell towers and tiled roofline of the Cathedral Imagos Brilliantos.

If I could climb into one of the towers . . . Surely from there she would find Sario even in the crush in the Zocalo Grando-but it would not be permitted. She was not a sancta, not even a noviciata; worse, she was chi'patro. There was not a sancta or sancto within the entire city who would let her ascend the tower to look for another chi'patro. And though she could in poor light be mistaken for a full-blooded Tira Virteian, they would know better: by the paint stains upon her clothing, by the chalk dust beneath her nails, by the clinging scent of solvents. Members of the Ecclesia searched avidly for such signs.

Saavedra's mouth hooked tautly. Under her breath she murmured, "I wonder how they justify their devotion to the Duchess Jesminia? It was she who gave us welcome!"

Of course, the Duchess Jesminia had been a do'Shagarra, wed to a do'Verrada. Do'Shagarra and do'Verrada did precisely whatever they chose to do.

But Saavedra supposed the tower was not so vital after all. Surely she would be deafened by the pealing of the bells, and not even for Sario would she sacrifice her hearing.

"Hot..." She lifted the fallen hair from her neck-and then knew what she would do. "The fountain!" It was tall enough, and cool enough-and infinitely more quiet than the belltower- and no one would disapprove no matter what her blood; if anything, there would be difficulty in finding space on a basin tier that was not already taken.

One street away, little more than a stone's throw, but it took time and effort to make her way through the crowd. In the end she shut her ears to the curses, the strident comments, and simply thrust herself through the throng, ignoring bruised toes, snagged clothing, tumbling hair. By the time she reached the Zocalo Grando she was sheened in sweat, and battered by careless feet and elbows. Her shoes, sandals only, provided little protection; she swore to herself she would seek a cool bath as soon as she found Sario and they returned to Palasso Grijalva.

If she found Sario.

"Merditto alba," she muttered. "Such a fortunate man, to be so gifted, so blessed, so certain . .

. you walk through the city as if you were Duke yourself!"

Or the Duke's Lord Limner.

"Matra," Saavedra breathed, "you believe it is only time . . . you believe yourself it already."