Though naked, she was clad in certainty. "Let none of them come to Court, Baltran. Ever."

He sighed deeply, not troubling to hide exasperation. "As long as I live, your brother is Lord Limner. Other than art, the Grijalvas have no avenue by which to join the Court. And when I die, it shall be my son's decree who succeeds to the position."

"He is a boy, Baltran."

"Just so, Gitanna . . . and unless I expire of overindulgence in your bed-far better that way, I think, than of a poisoned Tza'ab dart as Verro Grijalva did!-Alejandro will not be making any appointments until well after his majority." He tugged at the crimson-embroidered cuffs of his shirt beneath stiff doublet sleeves. "And now it is time I paid my respects to the Duchess. Today we formally name our daughter before the Ecclesia." He bent slightly, planted a kiss on her brow, and was gone.

Saavedra, much exercised and out of sorts, found Sario at last in the family galerria within Palasso Grijalva. In the ten days since they had witnessed Chieva do'Sangua each had avoided the other, as if afraid to be reminded of what they witnessed. But now she sought him out; they had been too close for too long to remain apart, and the secret too great to keep to oneself alone. It must be shared with him-had to be shared with him-who knew what she had seen.

The Galerria Grijalva was not as the Galerria Verrada. It was much smaller, less grand, and distinctly private; no one entered without permission, and permission was never granted save to Grijalvas, who had no need of it.

"Sario-" He was a slender nonentity in the distant dimness at the far end of the chamber, standing very still before one of the older paintings in the galerria. The long whitewashed chamber was empty save for themselves-and countless paintings of long-dead people-but she lowered her voice nonetheless. The determined whisper carried straight to him. It was an innocuous question; let them hear, if there were any near enough. "Sario, why were you not in drawing class this morning?"

He turned his head away from the painting then and looked at her. Shocked, she saw that he had lost significant weight; his face was very thin, and the shadows of the chamber, lit by its whitewash and little else, created angled contours she had never seen before. He was of the age when boys grew overnight, all awkward of limbs and voice and movements, but this was not growth. This was something far more serious.

"Sario!" She hastened the length of the gallery to his side. "Axe you ill?"

He turned back to the painting, hitching a thin shoulder. "No!" A long pause; the set of his mouth was bitter, too bitter for a boy. "Why do we have nothing but copies here?"

"Copies?" Full of other thoughts, the question at first meant nothing. But the answer took no effort. "The originals are in the Galerria Verrada, of course. Or in private palassos."

What filled the galerria were carefully cataloged copies, placed in meticulous arrangement intended to best flatter the paintings, their colors, their composition. Gilt frames, wooden frames, canvas and wood and paper, patinaed and illuminated by natural light permitted entrance by strategically-placed windows and the angle of intricate shutters, as well as precisely-plotted placements of iron candle-stands, closely attended by quiet-colored clay jugs of water and sand, in case of fire.

"But we painted them," Sario said. "We did. Grijalvas." He looked at her again. "They rob us of our heritage."

He leaves me behind so often. . . . "Who does?"

"The do'Verradas. Serranos. The rich folk of the city." The hollows beneath the angle of his cheekbones were dark as a dusting of soot, limning brittle bones as sharp as his tone. "They commission the great works from graffiti-crafters like Zaragosa Serrano, strip us of what we once were-and ask us to paint copies of our own works!" Saavedra followed his line of vision and looked at the painting. It was a huge canvas, framed in a heavy, ornately-carved wooden frame: Death of Verro Grijalva. He was depicted as a miraculously attractive and unbloodied hero dying in the arms of his beloved Duke Renayo- blessed be his memory-with whom, the stories claimed, Verro Grijalva had been friends since childhood. The slackness in Verro's handsome face confirmed his death, but it was not that which transfixed the eyes. It was the grief in Renayo's face, the expression of deep sorrow, of a great and terrible anger-and of fear.

"A copy," Sario declared bitterly. "The original hangs in Palasso Verrada."

Saavedra studied the painting. The play of light and shadow intrigued her; chiaroscuro was difficult to paint properly, but this artist had been a master. Piedro Grijalva; only a Grijalva, grieving as much for his kinsman Verro as for Renayo do'Verrada, could properly capture the intense emotions of the moment.

"Tza'ab," she murmured, for in the background, in the upper right corner, was a lone man, dusky-faced as if burned permanently dark by the desert sun, yet remarkably pale of eye.

Magnificently mounted upon a gape-mouthed black horse, he wore dramatic robes of brilliant green, all aglitter with brass and glass, and in one hand clutched a brass-bound carved wooden tube through which had flown the poisoned dart that took Verro's life.

Saavedra doubted the Tza'ab warrior had been so close as was depicted, or surely he would have been killed by do'Verrada forces. But such was the way of art: one re-created truth, remade history, in honor of the subject.

At the behest of the patron who ordered it painted?

"Tza'ab," Sario said, looking at the green-clad warrior. "Perhaps a kinsman of ours. As Verro was." He turned directly to her. "Tomaz is dead."

The shift in topic, the baldness of the statement, shook her. "Dead? But-"

"They destroyed his talent, his Gift, by painting him blind, by painting him crippled in the Peintraddo . . . Chieva do'Sangua, the 'discipline of the damned'-but now he is dead."

"Matra ei Filho! Sario-"

"Dead," he repeated. "Now he need not suffer."

It had been ghastly, what they had seen, but Tomaz had not at any time appeared in danger of dying. Only of suffering. As they intended him to suffer. And he had suffered, she was certain, though she had sickened so soon thereafter that she had seen little beyond the physical results, and then only in a combination of shocked observation and a flash of insight, of too-vivid- and too accurate-imagination.

"If they intended him to die, why not kill him immediately?" she asked.

Perspiration gathered at his temples, across his upper lip. "They didn't intend him to die."

"Sario-"

His face lost the last remnants of color. He was white, so white he aspired to the starkness of Renayo do'Verrada's face in the painting, the bloodlessness of shock and stark realization that nothing could be changed; that all was altered forever. " 'Vedra-I did it!" It confounded her; he had gone ahead somewhere without her. "Did what?"

It hissed in the galerria. "Killed him!"

"Tomaz?"

" 'Vedra-oh, 'Vedra-"

"But-how?"

He trembled. She had never seen him so frightened. Even in the closet, in the secret chamber above the Crechetta, where terrible things were done. "You saw how they painted his eyes white in the Peintraddo-" he said, "-how they painted his hands all twisted-"

"Bone-fever," she murmured. "Yes. They painted out his eyes and made his hands over into those of an old man."

"It happened, Saavedra! You saw it! You saw what became of him!"

She had. Oh, Matra, she had. And so quickly, so very quickly: one moment whole, vital; exuberantly, defiantly Tomaz, and the next . . . "But they didn't paint him dead."

"I killed him."

"Oh, Matra-oh, Sario-"

"I did it, 'Vedra." His dark eyes had gone black, utterly black, so that he was, in his own way, blind as Tomaz had been, though with horror rather than with the milk-blindness that affected so many old ones. Black eyes, white face, and a tensile trembling that threatened, she feared, to shatter his very bones. "I made him die."

"How do you know?" It was all she could think to ask. She knew him, comprehended the terrible talent that drove him in his dreams, equally awake as asleep. "Sario-how can you know?"

"I thought to burn the painting, but I had seen how what was painted was inflicted upon the body, and I didn't want to hurt him-"

"Sario-"

"-so I didn't burn it after all ... I just put a knife in the canvas where I thought his heart would be." His eyes were black, so black, infinitely black, like a fire burned out and doused with too much water. "But-I missed. I went to him, to see . . . and he was still alive. Wounded, but alive, because I was not precise enough . . . and so, and so-" He swallowed so heavily she saw his throat convulse. "I burned it after all. He told me that would work."

All she could say was his name. No question, no statement; only his name, in horror and disbelief. Of him. For him.

"They don't know yet. They haven't found it yet. But they will."

She put her hands over her face, rubbing, scrubbing, stretching it this way and that, hiding from the world, the truth, his matter-of-fact retelling, even as she hid her own response from him.

Fear for him. Of him. " 'Vedra-what do I do?"

It was appeal. From him. He was infinitely young again, a boy of eleven years, prodigiously talented, demonstrably Gifted, but a boy. Who had done a terrible thing.

And now he pleaded with her to tell him what to do.

She took her hands away at last. "No one knows."

"They haven't found the painting yet-or what remains of it."

"And Tomaz?"

Even his lips were white. "I haven't looked."

"Looked where?"

"Where he was. In the secret chamber. Where we were."

"He was there?"

"They put him there."

"Are you certain he's dead?"

"He told me ... he told me to destroy the painting. And he would-be released." He bit deeply into his bottom lip. Beneath the surface, blood fled. 'I'm afraid to look."

"Then you don't know-"

"He said it would kill him! He said he wanted it!"

Her chest hurt. Her belly and head felt all hollow, insubstantial, emptied of contentment with all but the small complaints of insignificant lives. "Then-we have to find out. We have to know for certain."

"They'll find out. They'll find out-and do the same to me!"

Saavedra stared at him. She had never before seen Sario afraid of anything. "If he is dead-if he's dead, they will find out. And the painting . . ." She swallowed back the knot in her throat.

Only one answer existed. She doubted Sario, so clever-witted, was unaware of it. He simply could not speak it aloud. The task was left to her. "Then we'll have to make sure what they find is what we want them to find."

He looked drugged on poppy-juice: blackened eyes, whitened face, words slow to form. "

'Vedra?"

She drew in a breath. Matra, I beg your aid in this-grazzo, please, I beg you- "Where is the painting, Sario?"

"In the Crechetta."

"Then we have to go there."

"And do what?" She looked at the painting before them. A copy of one of their family's greatest works. "Burn it," she said flatly. "Burn it down, all of it. Everything in the Crechetta."

"But-"

"And then we must be found, so they know how it occurred-not why, but how-so that they may punish us for it, but never know-never know, Sario-why we did it."

" 'Vedra-"

"It's the only way."

It was. She knew it. He knew it.

They had been bound for so long, by so many intangibles. And now by this.

"It's the only way, Sario."

He touched trembling fingers to his lips, then to his heart beneath the shabby, stained summer tunic. "Matra ei Filho, aid us in this . . . oh, Blessed Matra, give us strength ..."

Saavedra wanted to laugh; at last he mouthed devotions, craved divine blessing, required intercession from someone other than his evanescent self-will-and her.

But she didn't laugh. She couldn't. She could only stare blind-eyed at the painting and think of Tomaz Grijalva, his Gift destroyed by the desecration of his self-portrait, his life destroyed by Sario's actions.

And us? she wondered. What of ourselves do we destroy with this?

The answer was implicit: innocence.

So much destroyed in the space of ten days. Even as Nerro Lingua had destroyed most of a family; as a Tza'ab dart had destroyed Verro Grijalva.

She looked at the painting. Sario had summed it up, the vast and naked truth of their ancestry.

Grijalva. And Tza'ab.

They were direct descendants of Verro Grijalva, as the genealogies proved. And, for all they knew, equally directly descended from the Kita'ab-quoting Rider of the Golden Wind depicted in the painting, servant of a dead man.

As they now served Tomaz.

FOUR.

They did not see him, all the women. They were too taken up with his mother, the Duchess; too concerned with fitting the ceremonial robes properly, with tying up the laces of the loose gown beneath, with the drape of costly fabric, with the arrangement of her hair, with the coloring of her face. She was beautiful, her son supposed. They all said she was.

But as for this, this thing, lying in the lace-swathed ducal cradle, he supposed nothing at all save that it-they called it a "she," but he saw no evidence of humanity, let alone of gender-was little better than a lump of silk and lace and cloth-of-gold, aglitter with seed pearls and gemstones crusted on the array of ribbons sprouting like the waters of the fountain before the Cathedral Imagos Brilliantos.

Usually she spouted complaints as unceasingly, though he admitted she was at this moment silent; asleep, she was unquestionably more tolerable than awake.

He was hidden behind the massive cowled cradle, lost in an excess of sheer panoply. No one saw him. No one shooed him out.

So many women clustered around his mother. "Your Grace, a moment longer-" one of them said; from long familiarity, her tone chided gently.

"A moment longer, and I shall expire from the sheer weight of this nonsense. Alizia, take care!