"We are at least marginally civilized in my country," he observed dryly. "Be easy in your mind, carridia matreia. If she is alone, Don Arrigo will be even more tenderly disposed to protecting her. There's nothing like a beautiful girl who is also vulnerable to make a man feel strong and powerful. And soon enough she will have true friends, you may count on it. No one could resist her charm and innocence for very long."

She wrung her hands again. "That's true, that's true," she fretted. "But promise you'll look out for her. Please, Limner, I beg you in the name of your own dear mother who loved you as I love my darling 'Chella!"

He filed the diminutive away for Arrigo's use while trying to recall his mother's face.

Impossible; and, after more than three hundred years, not surprising. He remembered her name- Felippia, and a vague scent of citrus tea. That was all.

"Be easy," he repeated. "Princess Mechella is everything Don Arrigo could wish for. He is no fool, to scorn perfection when all that most noble husbands can hope for is as short as possible a list of imperfections."

"Promise me!" the servant insisted.

He saw no harm in avowing that he would indeed keep watch over Mechella. It was only prudent for one in his current position to do so, and as for his future position as Lord Limner . . .

He sent the old woman back indoors, and if she was not entirely happy, at least she no longer wept. But her distress made him curious enough to wander the gardens for an hour or so. At length he was rewarded with the sight of Arrigo with his arms about Mechella, her face turned ecstatically up to receive his kiss.

Do they miss me? Wonder where I have gone? My friends, my family, the moualimos- Alejandro? What does he think? That I have run away, deserted him, betrayed him-no, he would never believe-but Sario could make him believe- Matra ei Filho, I could not bear it if Alejandro thinks me false!

When I am freed, I will go to him, tell him-but not until I have dealt with Sario, who claims to love me and yet has done this horrible thing to me-to my child-eiha, poor mennino, poor little one inside me- Your papa waits for us, corasson meyo, carrido meyo, he waits for us out in the world- And so does Sario. So does Sario. . . .

"And so you are Confirmattio! I'm so proud of you, Rafeyo!"

Tazia did not embrace her son; she couldn't recall ever having done so, and to do so now probably would have shocked him stuporous. But she gave him her laughter and her applause, and he basked, blushing, in the praise.

"You will learn Grijalva magic-and the rest will become fathers," she went on, pouring the wine Arrigo had sent her from Ghillas. Handing a glass to Rafeyo, she said, "You may find this a little dry, but it's time you educated your other palate, too!"

He grinned at the pun and ran a finger down the crystal flute to test the temperature. "Is it cold enough yet? I only just arrived."

"Carrido, do you think I haven't counted the days until your last girl would resume her bleeding? This has been on ice since last night!"

"You, at least, never doubted me!"

"And now no one else will either." She toasted him. "Saluto ei Suerta!"

"Sihirro ei Sanguo," he replied, and they drank.

" 'Magic and blood'?" she asked, arching a brow.

"It's how Limners toast each other. I heard it for the first time last night." He rubbed the back of his neck ruefully. "I heard it a lot last night, in fact. All the Limners in residence gathered to welcome me, and each toasted me in order of rank, so ..."

"You must've drunk barrels! I'm surprised you can even walk this morning. Eiha, the recuperative powers of youth. Now, tell me, Rafeyo," she said, leaning forward, "when does it begin? When will it finish?"

"I'll study with-" He paused. "Tazia, forgive me, but is it really safe to talk here?"

She gestured around the small, windowless room. "Months ago I had this chamber redone floor to ceiling so you and I could have a safe place to talk. I've had complete faith in you for much longer than it took to chill the wine."

His dark eyes widened-his father's eyes, long-lidded and thick-lashed; odd how as he grew older she saw less of herself and more of Renallo in their son, but he was growing to manhood and perhaps it was to be expected. Whatever his physical resemblance to his father, Tazia knew the boy's heart was hers. He proved it by giving her a dazzling smile. Her smile, she told herself proudly, her gift of the Gift that had made him a Limner.

"You did all this for me? For us? Grazzo millio, Mama!"

She could have counted on her fingers the times he'd called her that. And suddenly she knew it was a word she must encourage. The holy bond between Mother and Son, the most sacred in the Faith, sweetly repeated in herself and Rafeyo. She gave him her warmest smile, the one she'd practiced again and again in a mirror in the weeks before her first meeting with Arrigo, and Rafeyo returned it delightedly. A fourteen-year-old was no more proof against it than an eighteen-year-old had been.

"Only you could have thought of such a thing," the boy said, his gaze roaming once more about the room. It was one of those cramped, inconvenient spaces common in Meya Suerta's older houses, used for storage or pantry for wine served to afternoon guests. The room had been gutted of shelves and cupboards, nearly doubling its size. Vents had been cut into the ceiling, their outlets on the other side of the house to prevent use by eavesdroppers. Heavy brocade hangings and a thick rug soundproofed the chamber. The furniture was sparse but fine: sofa and chair upholstered in sapphire silk, carved wooden table topped in green marble, and a tall silver candlebranch in a corner. The door had a double lock. Reassured of privacy, Rafeyo detailed the next few years of his life. He would spend many months with the masters of watercolor, ink, pencil, chalk, charcoal. At the same time he would learn from other masters methods of preparing and using paper, parchment, silk, linen, plaster, wood. Only then would he be taught oil on canvas, and with these lessons would come tutorials from each of the three great masters.

"Do you know what they're called?" he asked, practically bounding in his chair with excitement. "Il Aguo, Il Seminno, and Il Sanguo!"

"Everyone's heard the terms," she reminded him. "I must say they always struck me as rather bizarre."

"You don't understand! Aguo is tears, saliva, and sweat. Seminno is-"

"-semen," she interrupted. "So?"

"That's where the magic is, Tazia! They mix the paints with all those, and with blood, and because all of them are part of a Limner's body, and Limners have the Gift, and know all the words and phrases and the special mental disciplines-" He paused for breath. "-the magic goes into the paintings!"

She sat back on the sofa, stunned. There were rumors, of course; mutterings around the Palasso, mostly, because everyone feared Grijalva power too much to speak in the open of magic.

Even the Ecclesials kept their mouths shut, though their eyes flung daggers. But Tazia, ambitious in the only way open to a female Grijalva, had ignored anything to do with painting.

Until now, when her Limner son explained it to her.

"Oil must be the most powerful, because they teach it last. Think of it-paints mixed with a Limner's blood, on a canvas prepared with his sweat and tears and the words of power-"

"Do you truly know this, Rafeyo?" she demanded. "Or are you only guessing?"

"I know it as truly as I've always known I'm a Limner," he replied solemnly. "I learned something earlier this spring. I couldn't come tell you about it because of the Confirmattio. Do you remember last year when the nephew of the Baron do'Brendizia died in prison before he could come to trial?"

She nodded. "He killed himself rather than expose his family to such disgrace."

"It wasn't suicide. A Grijalva killed him. Maybe even Lord Limner Mequel himself!"

Involuntarily she glanced around the room as Rafeyo had done a little while ago. Heavy wood and thick brocade calmed her. "Go on."

"Brendizia was arrested for being drunk and disturbing the peace. But that was just an excuse.

How many Courtfolk are ever thrown in jail for having a good time at a tavern? What he was really guilty of was plotting to convene the Corteis."

"I'd heard something of it," Tazia said, which startled Rafeyo, just as she intended. In truth, she had heard nothing of the sort, which she had no intention of admitting to her son, and the shock of hearing it now set her heart thudding. She must pay more attention to what was being said, or she would be useless to Arrigo. She must invite more of those boring old cows to tea, strengthen her contacts among the nobility-and to do that, she must wed very soon to the nobleman of her choice.

"Eiha," said Rafeyo, "someone found out what he was doing. There was evidence against him.

After he was arrested they searched his rooms in the city and found papers, letters, everything they'd need in a trial."

"Names of other conspirators?"

"Nothing so lucky. He wasn't very clever, but he wasn't completely stupid either. They could've tortured it out of him, though."

"A nobleman?" she gasped. "A Brendizia?"

He shrugged. "A traitor is a traitor. Anyway, they could've tried him, and jailed him for a while, but he'd be sure to use the trial to his own purposes, denouncing Grand Duke Cossimio and calling for freedom and a legislature to assemble and so on."

"The baron would die of mortification," Tazia declared with a certainty based on ten years'

acquaintance with that irascible nobleman. "If rage didn't kill him first," she added thoughtfully.

"What a scandal. A Brendizia! Certainly they had to execute the foolish boy."

"Quietly. And use it to warn anybody with the same ideas," Rafeyo finished, nodding.

"Yes, of course, but how?"

"Somebody painted him dead."

This time Tazia actually slumped into the sofa pillows, shocked beyond words.

"It's possible," her son told her. "He was found dead of 'natural causes,' but really it was an execution. I don't know yet how it's done, but I'm positive it was done." He caught her gaze, long- lidded eyes glittering. "Do you see what this means, Tazia? Do you know what we could do with this?"

She recoiled inwardly from the fevered glee in his eyes; outwardly she merely nodded. But because he was her son, even though she had not raised him, something in him responded to what she was certain she had not revealed. He drained wine down his throat in a gulp, and spoke quickly.

"Not really paint anybody dead, of course, but I'm sure there are things we could do, magic that would make them think what we want or do things-"

"Yes, of course," she said almost mindlessly.

"Don't you see it? That puling Princess of Arrigo's wouldn't stand a chance against you, Mama!"

The word triggered something in her, something that made her brain lurch into motion again.

Not maternal instinct; no, when he named her his mother, he reminded her that he and she were inextricably linked. "Rafeyo! Promise me, promise you'll attempt nothing until you're one of the Viehos Fratos!"

His young face registered something akin to betrayal. "But that'll take so long." "You can wait. Rafeyo! Obey me in this! You must know everything, be as wise as you can in all the ways of Grijalva magic, before you can use it to our best advantage. What if you were caught? Worse, what if you were harmed by magic you didn't yet fully understand? I couldn't bear it if anything happened to you. You will be Lord Limner one day, Rafeyo, don't be impatient, don't become the talk of the Palasso as a Neosso Irrado. It will all come to you in time, I swear it."

He bit his lip, no longer an ambitious young man yearning for power but a boy-child yearning for his mother's love. "You believe in me that much?" he asked softly, almost shyly.

It made her acutely uncomfortable, the way she'd felt when her mother Zara had brought him here just after Arrigo established her in this caza, and Rafeyo ran to her on unsteady legs crying out, "Mama!" After an awkward hug, she'd sent him to the kitchen with a servant-and told her mother to prevent similar displays in the future.

Now she reached over to touch his wrist. "I have always believed in you." She let her fingers trail down to his fingers, caressing them lightly, tenderly. "The hour you were born, I looked at these hands-so tiny then, so fragile, but such long, beautiful fingers!-I knew I had given birth and life to a Lord Limner greater than Mequel or Sario or even Riobaro!"

"You did," he replied fervently. "We both know you did. I'll make you so proud of me."

"I already am. But you must promise, Rafeyo. Attempt nothing until you know precisely what it is you do."

"I promise."

After he left her, she sat quite still for some time, eyes closed, in her safe but stifling little room. I must find a way to get some air in here, it's horrid now that summer's coming. Telling herself that she went in search of a breeze, she locked the door behind her and went upstairs to her bedchamber, calling on the way for another bottle of wine.

As she waited for it, she undressed, pacing, thinking of the other news of the morning: Mechella's first appearance in Meya Suerta had been delayed. Custom dictated that a do'Verrada collect his bride, come home and introduce her to the city, then journey north to the castle of Caterrine for a period of seclusion, during which it was his duty to impregnate her. But Arrigo, sending excuses to his parents through Itinerarrio Dioniso, had taken the girl directly to Caterrine.

Official gossip said it was to spare her the capital's summer heat and stink. Unofficial gossip- always more reliable-asserted that he wanted his charming child-bride to himself for as long as possible and indeed could scarcely keep his hands off her.

"That puling Princess of Arrigo's wouldn't stand a chance. . . ."

Tazia slid her arms into a white silk bedrobe, knotting the sash loosely around her waist. A servant arrived with the wine and was dismissed. She stretched out on the daybed before the louvered windows, drinking Arrigo's gift and wondering who among her Grijalva cousins she might persuade to a subtle interrogation of Dioniso. Perhaps one of her sisters, though they had all loathed each other from childhood. But she must find out if Arrigo had truly fallen in love with the girl.

Eiha, she was supposed to want that, wasn't she? His happiness in marriage, an advantageous alliance, Cossimio and Gizella satisfied, the people rejoicing, merchants enriched, Grijalvas entrenched at Aute-Ghillas, lots of little do'Verradas in the ducal nursery, the succession assured. It was her patriotic duty to wish Arrigo in love with his new wife.

His blonde, beautiful, innocent, adoring, twenty-year-old wife. . . .

She lay there in the coolness high above the most fashionable avenida in Meya Suerta, drinking wine and thinking about the do'Brendizia nephew painted dead in his prison cell.

THIRTY-SIX.

Arrigo did not bring his bride to Meya Suerta until autumn. The intervening weeks were punctuated for Tazia by social calls, though not as many as had been customary during her tenure as Mistress.

Her visitors fell into three categories. First, those who made sure she knew the latest from the lovers' nest at Caterrine. Some gossiped to pay her back for twelve years of social supremacy.

Some came out of curiosity over her reaction. An innocent few, assuming her affection for Arrigo to be as generous as Lissina's was for his father Cossimio, presumed she would want to know that her former lover was happy. The gossips, the vengeful, and the curious arrived in a state of anticipation and went away disappointed. The innocents, however, had their every expectation met: she was all smiles and sweet words for Arrigo's newfound joy.

The second sort of caller were admirers who, thinking her fair game now that Arrigo was well and truly wedded, wished to experience her charms personally-for private gratification or public boasting or both. These departed in frustration, not due to any overt ploy of Tazia's but because in near-constant attendance on her was a visitor who was a category unto himself: Count Garlo do'Alva.

He came as a suitor, and two days before the public announcement that Arrigo and Mechella would be home for Providenssia, Garlo and Tazia were quietly and privately married.

He was a tall, personable man, at forty-seven in his late prime, his build as powerful as his stringent personal compordotta. His black hair was thickly silvered, a striking contrast to dark brown skin-which, it was rumored, he owed to more than a dollop of Tza'ab blood. He had married the great heiress Ela do'Shaarria half his life ago, gotten three sons on her, and buried her in 1260. Needing neither heirs nor riches, his requirements in a second wife were beauty, conversation, familiarity with and influence in Court politics, and sexual sophistication.

Everything, in short, that he had not experienced in his first marriage. In Tazia Grijalva, he found them all and more besides.

The newly-wed Count and Countess do'Alva journeyed north from Meya Suerta to his ancestral castello in time for Providenssia. They missed encountering the newly-wed Don Arrigo and Dona Mechella on the road by mere hours. Whether Garlo planned this to spare his bride sight of her replacement, or whether Tazia planned it to spare Arrigo's bride sight of herself, in all quarters it was agreed that the thing was gracefully done.

Even though it was also agreed that Tazia could have shown up naked in the road and Arrigo wouldn't have noticed.

Arrigo was equally adept at timing. He arrived in Meya Suerta and introduced Mechella to his people on the very day of Providenssia, in the midst of harvest celebrations. With a fine sense of the dramatic and with the connivance of the Premia Sancta, he sneaked his wife into the Cathedral Imagos Brilliantos through a side door just before his parents' ceremonial entrance. Mechella's first curtsy on Tira Virteian soil was thus to the living embodiments of the Mother as Provider of Grain and the Son as Crusher of Grapes: Grand Duchess Gizella in glittering ripe gold and Grand Duke Cossimio in splendid wine-red with the dark ruby ring of his ancestors glowing from his finger. If the older pair symbolized autumnal riches, young Arrigo and Mechella were the promise of next year's spring in vivid do'Verrada blue embroidered with grape leaves (his) and new wheat (hers).

Those lucky enough to witness the scene went wild with joy. Even the most exaggerated reports of Mechella's blonde beauty were found to be lacking, and in a society that worshiped art she was seen to be a living masterpiece. The choirmaster, grateful for the Premia Sancta's timely warning, signaled his hundred adolescent boys to sing "Blessed by Thy Loving Smile," a hymn of thanksgiving more suited to nuptials than the seasonal favorite "Thy Gifts of Golden Grain." The refrain echoed to the vaulted ceiling and the crowds outside sang along, filling all the city with music.

After the service, the two couples walked down the nave and ascended to the Presence Balcony. The Zocalo Grando was packed; people even hung from the statue of Don Alesso do'Verrada atop the great central fountain. His descendants and their wives waved and smiled, acknowledged the cheers and singing, then toasted each other and all citizens with glasses of wine while servants in Verrada blue and junior Ecclesials in dun and brown distributed small loaves baked from this year's first grains.

The procession back to Palasso Verrada was on foot. The route was cleared-gently, at Cossimio's order-by the Shagarra Regiment. Garlands and swags of leaves and sheaves were everywhere: hung from lampposts, from tiled eaves, from lintels and shop signs, from the neck of every person on the streets. Those people close enough to Mechella to exclaim in wonder at her rare, fair northern beauty also saw that while she smiled and looked about her with excitement, she seemed a little pale and clung tightly to Arrigo's arm.

The popular verdict: she was with child. And indeed this proved to be the case, though formal announcement did not come until that evening when the torches were lighted and a second, more boisterous procession wove through the streets, with singing and dancing and thousands of bottles of last year's wine.

Arrigo told his parents first, as was proper. Mechella blushed becomingly when, the moment the four were alone in the private Grand Ducal suite, he said, "Papa, Mama, I present to you Mechella-mother of your grandson!"

"So soon?" Cossimio roared with laughter. "Quick work, boy!"

"Isn't that just like a man?" Gizella made a face at her husband and went forward to embrace the girl. "They think they do all the work of making a baby, when in reality their task lasts only a few minutes!"

The Grand Duke let out a guffaw to tremble the rafters. " 'Zella! Arrigo's a strong young buck-half an hour at the least! And I know you're not speaking from your own experience!"