"Momentita," she answered. She looked beyond his embarrassed, self-conscious face to the work itself. "Sario."

Ignaddio nodded, sat up, did not look at her face, as if afraid to see her expression communicate disapproval or disappointment.

Saavedra studied it, marking technique, the first suggestion of style as yet unrecognized. "He has an expressive face, no?"

Ignaddio hitched a shoulder.

"Have you spent much time observing him?"

"Before he went to the Duke." Now he was anxious, no longer avoiding her eyes. "You knew it was he!"

"There is no question of it." She smiled to see his relief. "You have a good eye for line, though your perspective requires work."

"How?" He stood up hastily, dragging the paper from the tile. "How may I improve it?"

No protest. No defense. Simply an inquiry into how he might improve. Eiha, he will be a good learner. "Do you see this line here? The angle here between nose and eye?" He nodded. "You have drawn them too perfectly-no face is truly balanced. One eye is set higher, one lower . . .

one is set closer to the bridge of the nose, so; the other is not so close." She touched a fingernail lightly to the indicated lines. "Do you see? There. And there."

"I see! Eiha, 'Vedra, I see-" He caught his breath. "Will you show me?" "Ah, but it is for you to do. I have told you what I see, now you must see it for yourself, and correct it." She smiled, recalling how swiftly Sario demonstrated corrections and improvements by doing, not by asking. I will not do the same with 'Naddi. He deserves to make his own mistakes, and correct them in his own hand. "You must always be hungry, 'Naddi ... to improve technique, your talent, you must always be hungry."

"I am hungry!" he said. "There is so much left to learn, and no matter what I do, it seems the moualimos are always adding more." He sighed, heaving narrow shoulders. "Rinaldo says I may never catch up."

She knew what that meant. "Rinaldo undergoes Confirmattio soon?"

"In a week." Ignaddio stared down at his powder-smeared hands, clasping paper and chalk.

"They will send him to the women in six days."

Saavedra restrained the impulse to set a comforting hand to his cap of dark curls; a boy on the cusp of manhood did not wish to be treated by any woman as if he were still young. "Your turn will come. I promise. Perhaps in two weeks, and then you will not be behind Rinaldo by much time at all."

It did not placate. "But I am older!"

"Are you?" She affected surprise. "I thought it otherwise."

He shook his head vehemently. "I am older. By two whole days."

Saavedra shaped her sudden grin into a smile; he would take offense at anything more than mild humor. "But surely there are things you do that are superior to his. Color, perhaps?

Perspective?"

"No, you have just said my perspective needs improvement." It was stated as fact, nothing more, which spoke well of his attitude. "And he mixes colors better, also. But the moualimos have said I have a good eye for shadow." He grinned proudly. "I used Sario's painting of the exterior of the Cathedral Imagos Brilliantos for a model; the moualimos say he captured the shadows of the arches and the belltowers far better than anyone."

"Eiha, in art he is not so poor an example to mimic," she agreed, "but recall that his compordotta was far less advanced-and far more troublesome!-than yours."

Ignaddio was not impressed by that. "If I could be as he is, I would suffer any punishment they wished to give me for poor compordotta."

" 'Naddi!"

His eyes implored her. "I want to be good, 'Vedra. I want to be as he is, to be Lord Limner and serve the Duke. Isn't it what we train for? Isn't it what you would train for if you were a man, and Gifted?"

It took her like a blow. She defined herself by her art first, her gender lastly, but even by art she was defined a woman because she could never be more than she was: female, and not Gifted.

Talented perhaps, but meant for no more than a man who was proved fertile, and thus incapable of the true-talent that those of the Viehos Fratos must exhibit, or a potential Lord Limner.

Sario swears I am Gifted. She shut her eyes. Matra ei Filho, if I were- "What would you be?" Ignaddio asked. "Gifted, or no?-if you were a man? If you could have a choice?"

She prevaricated. "It's a choice I will never have to make."

He persisted. "But if you had to."

To be male, and Gifted, meant she would become one of the Viehos Fratos, would tend to the family, to compordotta, to such things as agreeing to, ordering, or undertaking the Chieva do'Sangua. To destroying genius.

She had already helped kill a man. She did not believe she could ever make that choice, take that life, again.

And yet a choice between being good, or being better, was no choice at all.

"Bassda," she muttered, "you ask too many difficult questions!"

Ignaddio sighed. "That's what the moualimos say, too."

"Then it must be true. En verro." She indicated his sketch. "Complete that, 'Naddi. It is well begun. Think on what I have said, consider how you would begin differently, and bring it back to me. I would like to see it when you are finished."

All the world was in his eyes. "I will! Don't forget!"

"No." She smiled as he darted away for fresh paper. "No, I won't forget; there is too much of me in you. But you will have more opportunity."

And then she knew her choice made after all. Opportunity. One might or might not fail, but when the opportunity to try was taken away, one would never know at all if there was merely technique in one's work, or talent.

Genius was another thing, but that was beyond her comprehension. Sario had and was genius.

She was a woman, was good, was perhaps gifted-but not Gifted.

Trust 'Naddi to show her the truth.

"Matra Dolcha," Saavedra muttered. "You may become Neosso Irrado without even trying!"

TWENTY-SIX.

The lath-and-plaster door. Fourteen steps, twice. The tiny closet from which a man could see, if he crouched down and peered through a slit between wall and floor, into the Crechetta.

Raimon did not crouch. He did not peer. He merely mounted the final step, ducked his head against the low ceiling, then escaped it by sitting down.

Better. With feet upon a lower stair, and head not so threatened, he could breathe.

Worse. He could also think.

And so he thought. He sat perched upon the floor in the closet above the Crechetta, and remembered back down the years to the time he had been punished and sent to dwell in darkness while the burn on his wrist seared his soul as deeply as his flesh.

In the Sanctia there had been peace. Though he could not tell the elderly sancto everything- his oaths as Gifted, as one of the Viehos Fratos, forbade it-he told him enough to be as truthful as one could be. To his credit, the man had neither expressed shock, disgust, nor ordered him out of the Sanctia. The sancto merely listened, allowing Raimon to purge-and then quietly explained there was nothing he might offer a man who could not be wholly truthful.

Davo had said he was. Davo had, in the family shrine, suggested he be nothing but what he ever was: truthful. But there were truths, and truths; he would not honor his oaths if he told the sancto everything, even in the sight of the Mother and Her Son, nor would he honor the Mother and Son in whose names he had sworn his Grijalva oaths.

Therefore he was twice-damned, twice condemned, and worthy of punishment. Perhaps, to be symmetrical, of two punishments.

Only one mattered.

Raimon turned back the sleeve of his summer-silk doublet, untied and unlaced the cuff of his shirt and peeled it away. The wrist now was bared; in the nearly nonexistent light creeping up from the open door below no scar could be seen. But he saw it. Felt it.

Holy Mother, how it burns.

He had throughout his life been honest by his lights, and for his light, his Luza do'Orro.

Punished for it, also, for his determined attempt to be more, to be other, than was allowed. But the punishment, the Discipline, had not been limited to the slight blemishment of his Peintraddo that also burned his flesh, but to time, and time to think; to consider who and what he was, who and what he might be, and how he might become it.

In punishment, in the closet above the Crechetta he had sought and discovered a new truth, a painful truth, the kind of truth that did more to quench his fire, to extinguish his light than any physical punishment.

Gifted. Good. But not great. Not good ENOUGH.

It had nearly destroyed him, that truth. Even as it did now.

He knew who and what he was. And it was not enough. All he would ever be, all he had become, but it was not enough.

Sario had known. Sario had become. Sario was.

Everything Raimon was not, nor could ever be.

Truth: In the name of his own failure he had shaped boy into adult, gifted into Gifted, limner into Limner-and man into monster.

Sario Grijalva was everything they had prayed for, had worked for, had made. But also more.

And other.

Truths: Folio was Kita'ab. Kita'ab was destruction.

Laughter was quiet, and ugly. Until the tears came. Sario was most particular about the way the room was arranged. He instructed Ignaddio, who had come to watch, where to shift furniture, pile books, distribute the small items such as a pot of flowers; a drift of silk cloth across a velurro-and-leather chair; a basket of fruit; a tapestry shawl; the copper-clad iron lantern, albeit unlighted during the day; a half-melted ruby-hued candle stub in a clay cup; a flagon of wine and two crystal glasses, both freshly poured. And he also had the boy shut and latch the shutters.

"Why?" Saavedra asked, watching the meticulous industry as she sat crosswise in a chair, silky velurro skirts sliding like water from her knees as hair over shoulders and breasts. "Don't you prefer the light?"

He busied himself with setting up his easel, selecting the charcoal he would use to sketch in the first details, envisioning parts of the painting that would make the whole. "Light may be painted in later."

"No-I mean, don't you want the light by which to see?"

He barely glanced at her. "For now, no. Perhaps later. I'm seeking shadow for this." Ignaddio made a sound of delight, and Sario looked at him curiously. "This meets with your approval?"

"Eiha, yes!" the boy cried, red-faced in pleasure mixed with self-consciousness. "They say you are the best at handling shadow, and that is my best, as well."

"Have you a best?" He did not look at the boy now, still concerned with preparations.

"Sario!" Saavedra chided sharply, shooting him a glare of displeasure.

It brought him up short, spilled him into abrupt and discomfiting realization. So . . . she protects yet another eager boy. But he went on without indicating his brief consternation. "Eiha, 'Vedra, we all believe we have a 'best,' but often it is no more than mediocrity."

"How would you know?" she challenged instantly. "You have never viewed any of his work."

"Should I?" It pleased him to see such color in her face; he would recall it, paint it that way.

"What do I know of such things? I am not a moualimo."

"But you could be!" That from the boy. "And-and I would be most honored-"

"Of course you would." Sario cut him off; Saavedra's expression suggested he would pay for that. "But I am Limner, not moualimo-and Lord Limner at that-"

"He knows that," Saavedra snapped. "Why else do you think he wishes to learn horn you?"

The emphasis made it sound entirely horrific. Now beyond the first unpleasant shock, he found it all rather perversely amusing and fascinating that she neglected her protection of him in favor of someone else, another boy who wanted very much to be better than good. Sario wasn't wholly certain how it made him feel, that acknowledgment.

"There are things I can teach, and things I may teach, but none of them just now." Sario looked again at the boy, marked the anxious hope in eyes and expression. "Ignaddio . . . 'Naddi?-" A nod confirmed the diminutive. "-there is much you must learn before I could teach you. It was a thing I didn't understand very well at your age, either, but it was true; an artist must learn the rules before he transgresses them." "You never did," Saavedra remarked pointedly.

He decided then it did hurt, that she should desert him in favor of another. Quietly Sario found the proper charcoal, fit it to his hand, nodded. " 'Naddi, you had best go for now. Surely you have classes."

"None just now." The boy smiled winningly. "This can be my class-and I will stay out of the way! I promise!"

"Do you like it when others watch you work?"

Ebullience faltered. "No."

"There will be time later. This is merely the preliminary sketch, you see . . . later there will be paint, and time for questions."

Ignaddio looked from one to the other. "You only want me to go because you mean to argue."

It astonished them both; Saavedra bit into her lip as Sario frowned fiercely to suppress imminent laughter. "Indeed," he answered gravely, and Ignaddio was so taken aback by being told the truth he merely blinked and acquiesced without further comment. Sario grinned at Saavedra as the boy left. "You see? Your sulks and black scowls are obvious even to that boy."

"He has seen none of them before," she countered, "unless you are the object of discussion."

"Am I often?"

"More often than I prefer!" She sought, found a stray hair, smoothed it away from her face.

"Must you be so cruel to him? He wants very badly to be like you."

"Or be me." Sario smiled. "It's now attainable, 'Vedra, the appointment as Lord Limner . . .

what once was only dreamed is now truth, and all the boys will think they have the talent to take my place."