"The door," he said. "-was open ... I went in ... I wanted to look at the Peintraddos-" He gulped a sob, worked hard to regain self-control. "It was open, 'Vedra, I swear it wasn't locked- and so I went in ..."

Peintraddos. She knew how desperately he wanted to be Gifted. "The Galerria Viehos Fratos?"

He nodded jerkily. "It's always been locked-this time it wasn't. And I wanted to look ... I wanted to imagine my own Peintraddo hanging up there one day-"

"As it may," she said, then flinched inwardly. "Unless-"

"And he was dead."

Breath gusted from her. "Dead? Who?"

He gulped another sob back. "Il Sanguo."

"Raimon-"

"I found him-he lay there, 'Vedra, all sprawled, all bloody-" His face convulsed briefly.

"And his Chieva was bloody, too."

"Matra ei Filho . . ." She felt cold. Ill. "Blood, 'Naddi?"

"On his breast, on his Chieva, everywhere . . ." He clutched her skirts into white-knuckled, shaking fists. " 'Vedra-his Peintraddo was pulled down, pulled down from the wall. . . and there was a hole torn through it!" But nothing was ever permitted to happen to the Peintraddos. Sario had been most plain. Such paintings were put away, locked away, warded against any accident so no harm could come to the Limner. So much risk was involved that they took great care that nothing happened to the Peintraddos.

Saavedra fell back then, collapsed against the wall so firmly her shoulder struck it painfully.

"Not Raimon . . . not Sanguo Raimon-eiha, Blessed Mother, Gracious Mother-not Raimon-"

"Why would he do it?" Ignaddio asked, fighting not to wail. "Why would he do it, 'Vedra?"

Raimon. Not Ferico, who might die in a week or a year. Not Sario, who might be victim to Chieva do'Sangua if he did not alter his compordotta- The flesh rose up on her bones. What she said she did not know, did not hear. But Ignaddio did, and it frightened him. " 'Vedra-'Vedra, don't . . . don't say that!"

"But it is," she said, so clear in mind, in certainty, that the world around her was distant. "It is his fault, 'Naddi! It must be! For no other's sake would Raimon do such a thing. For no other man would he be placed in such peril that he saw no other way." She caught him to her, hugged hard.

"Eiha, that he should do that-that you should see it..." She released him. "Regretto- that you should have seen such a travesty!"

Tears had stopped, but his face was still damp. "They sent me away."

"Who did?"

"Davo. The others. They came when I shouted . . . they sent me away because I had gone in where I wasn't supposed to, but also because I saw . . . him."

She nodded. "And now I must do the same." She shut her eyes, swallowed down the knot of pain from her throat, felt it lodge in her chest. "I must go. I must go to Sario. He should know ...

he should be made to know . . ." She scrubbed impatiently at her own share of tears. "They sent you away only so they could tend him properly, not because you didn't count. En verro. And now I must go, too-but I promise to come back later; I'll come to you, and we can go together to the shrine and pray for his soul before the icon."

He nodded, blinking rapidly.

"Sweet 'Naddi . . ." She doubted in this moment he would take offense at her words. "I am so sorry it was you who found him." Saavedra disengaged, rose from the floor. "I am so sorry for all of it."

And she left him there, wan of face, forlorn in posture, and felt the first knot of something in her belly that was neither child, nor sorrow, nor pain, but a cold and abiding anger.

Providential, Sario decided-or perhaps appropriate!-that he should only two weeks before prepare an oak panel for such an undertaking as this. The boiled linseed oil, carefully and repeatedly applied, had penetrated completely, so that no excess remained, and it had taken the thin layer of lean oil paint perfectly. The surface was ready for him.

The panel was large, begging a landscape, or a life-sized portrait. No easel would hold it; he had ordered it set against the wall, where it dominated the chamber, the atelierro of the Lord Limner. But he turned from the panel. Later. For now there were other concerns, other requirements of the task. Ingredients he pieced into a large copper bowl: bluebell, for Constancy; white chrysanthemum for Truth; cress, for Stability and Power; fennel to lend Strength, to Purify, to defeat Fire; fern, for Fascination; fir, for Time.

Sario nodded. Thank the Mother-or Acuyib-that the old man had taught him the language, the lingua oscurra, so that he had learned the Tza'ab magic. Now, coupled with the Grijalva Gift-eiha, he was unlike any other Limner in the world! And always would be.

More yet: honeysuckle, for Devoted Affection; lemon blossoms, for Fidelity; lime, for Conjugal Love-he would not deny her that after all; white rose, for Worthiness; rosemary, for Remembrance; thyme, for Courage, a walnut leaf, for Intellect. And hawthorn, for Fertility.

All of these things: Saavedra. He would dilute nothing, for to do so would be a falsehood, and in this he desired only Truth.

Urine he had, from Diega. The other ingredients he would procure himself: blood, sweat, saliva, hair. He would recognize the moment, seize it, take what was required. But he could begin already. She was as he was: different. A woman was made of parts and pieces even as a male.

Perhaps in Saavedra the tempering of Tza'ab blood with that of Tira Virte, with the changes wrought by the Nerro Lingua, coupled with her gender made her a female version of himself. She had her own Gift, her own Light. He had seen it.

And he would use it.

Sario set out also a clean marble slab, the muller on which he would temper ground pigments into paints; a paletto knife, jars and stoppered pots of pigments, of wine, milk of figs and oil of cloves, of poppy, linseed, saffron; a clutch of glass vials, brushes, a pot of wax, the charcoal he would use to sketch in the lines that would create from the inner vision the outer, the reality of Luza do'Orro.

Already he envisioned the border.

He stopped, counting out his needs. And glanced up in surprise as the door latch was lifted, the door was thrown open, as Saavedra herself came into his atelierro.

At first she could say nothing. And then she said everything and all at once, so that she could not tell if any of the words fit together into a whole, into something that made sense. She thought they must, somehow they must, because he was stirred out of an odd immobility and inner detached awareness into comprehension.

And he said nothing.

"Filho do'canna," she said at last, when nearly out of breath. "It should have been you in the Galerria. Should have been you who plunged his Chieva into his Peintraddo!"

"But why?" he asked. "If it's my death you want, that would not have accomplished it. That is not my Peintraddo."

The audacity of it astonished her. "No, that's true ... I have it!"

"Do you?" He barely shook his head. "If you would be certain, go to it and destroy it. And then come back and vilify me more."

Shock upon shock. "Then it was a copy-a second copy-" He was white around the mouth. "I am particularly gifted at making copies. It was all we were permitted to do for so many years."

"Sario . . . Sario-he's dead!"

He frowned abruptly. "Regretto-I am not being properly sorrowful, no? Not giving him proper honor-such shocking compordotta ..."

And then she saw the grief in his eyes, in the unnatural immobility of his posture. How he held himself so stiffly, with such absolute rigidity that she did not know how he might ever move again.

"Did you know?" she asked. "Did you ever once believe he would do such a thing?"

"I believed in myself," he said softly, "as he required me to do." His face was harrowed. "Eiha, 'Vedra-he must have known. And I suppose I did also . . . and yet did nothing to prevent it."

"They must have meant to destroy his Peintraddo."

"No-not destroy it. Destroy him-Chieva do'Sangua." He took up and clenched into a fist a paletto knife. "And so another sacrifice is made."

"For you." She wanted to spit. "So much, in your name."

"My Gift," he murmured. "For my Luza do'Orro." He looked at her then, stared at her.

Extended his hand. " 'Vedra, grazzo-can you offer me no comfort?"

"In this? Why should I? It was yours to do or undo, Sario-you chose to do it."

He shivered once, enough to set the paletto knife to spasming in his hand.

She bared her teeth. "I want you to suffer."

"I do"

"Suffer more."

"Eiha, 'Vedra-Blessed Mother, Gracious Mother-" He shut his eyes, lifted the paletto knife into the air. "And so my Gift fails me, and I can't bring him back-can't paint him back ... it isn't possible."

She feared then he might harm himself, might use the paletto knife on himself. And for all her anger, she could not deny his own measure of grief. He had never lied to her.

"Sario-Sario, grazzo . . ." She moved to him, put out her hand. "Give me the paletto knife-"

He whipped out his free hand, trapped her wrist in it, wrenched it over so the palm was exposed. And brought the knife down in an abrupt, slashing move that opened the flesh of her fingers.

"You're Gifted," he hissed. "Remember how Raimon burned a painting that had only a portion of the ingredients? This is the same, only this time it's you who will manifest the damage. So I can prove even to you what you are."

Saavedra was abruptly freed as he twisted away, reached toward the easel, the painting upon it. She staggered back, stumbled into a chair, over it, upset it, fell. Skirts were crumpled around her knees as she braced herself against the floor, one hand sliding in blood.

"Matra-" she gasped. "Matra ei Filho-"

Blood, her blood, splattered across the painting with a snap of his wrist, flung across the image of herself. She saw the spatters, saw the drips, saw how it marred the image, blended with the colors. "What are you doing?"

"I have said from the beginning you are different," he declared. "Nommo Matra ei Filho, but you are like no other. I cannot say what has caused it anymore than I can say what has caused me-was it our parents? The spark that kindled conception? Something in the blood?"

"I'm just a woman."

Sario laughed. "Perhaps that is it. Perhaps that you are a woman, and claim the Gift as I do-"

"I can't!"

"-combined with the blood, the talent, the heritage-"

"I'm not what you think I am!"

"-because the bodies are different. . . whatever it is that makes us male as opposed to female-"

"I'm not like you!"

"Attend me," he said sharply, and scratched blood and paint away with a ruthless thumbnail.

Saavedra cried out. Her shoulder burned.

Sario spun on her. "Look at it. Look at it, Saavedra."

It burned and burned.

"Not at the painting," he hissed, "at your shoulder!" And before she could move, could make an effort to escape, he was on her. Hands scrabbled at the neckline of her gown, tugged it away, exposed the shoulder. "There," he said. "Look, look at it-and tell me again you aren't Gifted!"

A scrape. A peeling back of a layer of flesh so that blood stippled fluid. As if a man's thumbnail had gouged into flesh, as his had gouged into blood and paint.

The wail escaped her, brief and broken.

"Admit it," he said. "Nommo Matra ei Filho, nommo Chieva do'Orro-to which you are entitled-admit it!"

"I carry a child," she said on a rush of expelled breath. "I carry a child-it can't be! I can't be!"

"In this there are no rules," he said. "How can anyone simply decide a woman who is Gifted may not also be fertile?"

"I can't be!" "You are ... as I have always known, you are."

"Alejandro-"

"Gone-whining to his mother, no doubt. It is for you and I to sort out, 'Vedra. As it should be ... as it has always been."

He was too close to her. She scrabbled awkwardly on the floor, aware of blood on the hardwood as she pulled herself away from him. "Let me go ... Sario, let me go."

He laughed. "I don't hold you here. Grazzo, go. Go and think upon the truth."

She struck out then, smashed the palm of her unbloodied hand across his cheek and set nails, so he would bleed as well.

He made no attempt to stop the blood, to explore the gouges. He sat before her, crouched as a supplicant, and grinned. "You are. Like me."

"Monster," she whispered, and saw the kindling of anger in his eyes.

"Gifted," he said. "No more, no less. And other. Different. What I have learned from Il-Adib and the Kita'ab."

"Bassda," she gasped. "Bassda, I will hear no more of this." She pulled herself away, caught at the chair, levered herself up to one knee, one foot. "Whatever you may be, I am not like you. In no way. I will never be like you . . ."It was hard to move, so hard; she felt ill and old and cold and weak. "-not like you-am not, will never be-"

He moved then, startling her anew. This time when he caught her shoulder it was not to pull away her sleeve, but to trap her, to push her back awkwardly against the wall. And he came down upon her, held her there, employing unanticipated, tensile strength to keep her.

"This once," he said against her mouth. "I don't love you, 'Vedra-not in that way . . . but we are the same, we are bound, we are linked, we share the Luza do'Orro-"

She twisted, tried to wrench her head awry, but his mouth came down regardless, touching first the perspiration across the top of her lip-and it was wholly without love, without passion or desire that he kissed her; was nothing more than obsession, possession, the enmity and rage of a man who has relied on a ruthless determination and alien compordotta to make himself into something more. Something other. No matter what it cost.

Even Raimon's life. Even her innocence.

And then he released her. Fell back, laughing, barely flinching as she spat first into his face, then again onto the floor.