Subtly. Wisely."

"Matra ei Filho willing."

"Indeed," Arturro said, fingertips to lips, to heart. "As I think They must be, to let us come so far."

SIX.

Gitanna Serrano, lingering contentedly at midday in the central zocalo with tumbling fountain spray lightly bathing her upturned face, was startled out of her reverie as her elbow was roughly grasped. She fired up to shout her outrage-how dare anyone lay hands on the Duke's mistress?-but caught it back unspoken as she recognized her brother. "Zaragosa! What?"

With much haste and far less gentleness, he pulled her away from the fountain. "We have to talk."

"Must you drag me?" She righted herself on uneven cobbles. "Matra Dolcha, 'Gosa, people are beginning to stare!"

"Let them." He ushered her briskly across the cobbled zocalo into one of Meya Suerta's innumerable shrines. "What we have to discuss cannot be heard by others."

She hissed as the carved and studded wooden door banged into a shoulder; he had misjudged its weight. "Well, you have certainly ensured they will try-Zaragosa! What is so important that you must be so rough?"

The door dismissed, he pushed her around the corner into one of the tiny niches containing an icon. Gilt paint glowed in muted sunlight let in through shuttered windows and the thin illumination of fat, scented candles set out in clay cups, upon wood and iron racks. "Bassda, Gitanna!" He glanced around quickly. There was no one in earshot. "Listen to me!"

There was little else she could do; accordingly, she listened. At first she was hard-pressed to give him the attention he so blatantly craved-she was angered by his rude handling of her-but she let the resentment go as she heard him out.

When at last he finished, she sighed prodigiously. "Eiha, I have tried," she told him, letting the wall prop up her spine. "I have, 'Gosa, but the Duke can be stubborn. You know that."

"He dismisses me too easily," Zaragosa said. "He sends me off to paint yet another family portrait, complaining that I meddle in what does not concern me."

"You!" She rearranged the pearl-freighted silken scarf draped around her shoulders. "At least you he sends to paint! Me he sends off to bed, telling me not to worry my pretty little head about such things as politics." She glared at the icon; the serene expression of the painted Matra was an offense to their very real concerns. "I have tried to cajole him, to tease him, to make him swear in the midst of bedplay, but he refuses. He claims the Ducal Protection is inviolable."

"It is not," Zaragosa retorted. "But one needs proof to make him understand what we're facing."

Gitanna pulled away from him and walked to the small table on which the icon stood. Dried flowers bedecked the embroidered cloth, faded blooms left by someone asking intercession of the Mother; this was Her little shrine, not Her Son's. "How are we to find proof?" Gitanna demanded, swinging back. "We are not Grijalvas to walk unmolested into their Palasso. They are insular, secretive-they take great pains to keep themselves private from others, so no one realizes the scope of what they intend."

"Infamy," he said. "They will bring down to the do'Verradas so they may claim the duchy."

"Well," she said grimly, "so long as we Serranos retain our places at Court, they will not gain a foothold. You must paint whatever he wishes you to paint, 'Gosa . . . you must keep his favor."

That sat ill with him. "And you as well, Gitanna!"

"Yes," she agreed calmly, "I as well. But you as Court Limner know more security than a Duke's mistress; me he may replace at any time, on any whim, but unless illness carries you off, he cannot replace you. Only Alejandro may appoint another Court Limner, when he becomes Duke in his father's place."

"An odd boy," Zaragosa said, chewing idly on a thumbnail as he leaned a padded shoulder against the hand-smoothed wall.

"Odd or not, you should befriend him," Gitanna suggested. "I can do nothing-my only power is in Baltran's bed, but you have the freedom of the Palasso. You hold the Duke's favor." "But not the Duchess's" he said grimly, words distorted by the thumb still at his teeth.

"Does that matter? You were Baltran's appointee, not hers. She has no power."

"Beyond bearing heirs."

Gitanna grimaced. "Well, I was never promised anything more than what I have. If I bear him children, they will be bastards. He has his heir in Alejandro-"

"-who will decide if a Serrano shall replace me, or someone of another family."

"Then make certain only a Serrano may replace you," she said. "We cannot let those cursed chi'patro Grijalvas steal our place from us. Befriend Alejandro, 'Gosa. Prove to him we are his allies in all things."

"He is but a boy, Gitanna! Would you have me waste my days on a feckless child?"

"Eiha, you are a fool sometimes, 'Gosa! Don't you understand? It is an investment, this 'wasting' of days! He will be Duke one day . . . and if you are his friend, he will naturally look to someone else of our family when the time comes that a new Court Limner is appointed."

Color flared in his thin face. "You mean when I am dead!"

"Well," she said matter-of-factly, "you will die, one day, or become disabled by age. Why deny it? Find a solution, 'Gosa. Do you think my time as the ducal mistress will last forever?

Matra Dolcha, no! My time is limited, and I accept it ... he will not keep me as long as he keeps you."

He had stripped one thumb of nail; now he proceeded to the other. "I don't know, Gitanna ..."

Frustration clamped her teeth shut tightly. He was too shortsighted to fully understand the ramifications of what they needed to do, lest they suffer for its lack of success. "Coddle the boy,"

she said. "Earn his trust, his affection. Make yourself indispensable to him."

"What could I be to a ten-year-old child?"

" 'Gosa," she declared without leavening her disdain, "for a man who paints for a living you have an astonishing lack of imagination."

It stung, as she intended. "Matra Dolcha, Gitanna-"

"Think," she said plainly. "Think it through. Paint yourself a portrait, 'Gosa. Surely you can do that."

He glared at her, mutilated thumbs forgotten. "If this is how you speak to the Duke, it is no wonder he believes you fit only for bedplay!"

"Bassda," she said wearily. "Go back to the Palasso and think on what I have said. We have presented it to Baltran in a straightforward manner, and we have failed. It is time for us to try another way."

"He wants proof."

"Then we shall have to find it," Gitanna said calmly. "Or manufacture it." Saavedra stopped in the corridor before the narrow door of her tiny estuda's cell. Beyond it lay her private world where she called her own such things as a bed, a chest containing clothing, a table and stool before the deep-cut window. Little more, save for the necessities: a basin and ewer, a night pot behind a screen. And imagination.

The family believed that privation fed inspiration, that absolute privacy was necessary so that solitude encouraged exploration among the tools at her beck, such things as an understanding of proportion, the way the body fit together in the bending of a wrist, the way a corridor appeared broad at the near end but small at the far. There were classes to teach such things, but solitude refined it; a person left alone often created a world within the mind, and the artist put it to paper, to canvas, brought to life what was not real with such power as paint and chalk.

There were, of course, Grijalvas who did not exhibit the true-talent, who were no more than adequate; even those who lacked all artistic talent. Such persons were not condemned for this lack-the Matra did not bless every-one-but neither were they trained the way those who exhibited talent were. Saavedra was.

She had told Aguo Raimon the truth: Sario was her only friend. He had done her the courtesy of not telling her to find another, and for that she was grateful. Perhaps it was because he understood. He was after all a Grijalva, talented, Gifted-and he knew how the family was run. It was a city within the city, a smaller Meya Suerta that did not claim a Duke save for those men who by consensus had the ordering of the family "city." Palasso Grijalva, the sprawling cluster of conjoined buildings fed by the blood of its people moving through corridors and courtyards, was a duchy in and of itself. The Grijalvas-vas honored the do'Verradas in all ways-many of them had died for the do'Verradas-but they conducted family business independently, in perfect privacy.

And now in the midst of that privacy, that solitude, she would be punished for a transgression the depths of which even the Viehos Fratos did not know. Yes, she had burned the painting; that of itself was worthy of punishment. But she had also aided Sario, who had committed murder.

The latch rattled as she put her hand on it. She was free this hour, free the rest of the day. She supposed she could go to one of the family galerrias and study the works of her ancestors, supposed she could go out of doors into one of the courtyards, or even into the cobbled zocalo that bound all the guild quarters together, but she did not wish it. She would instead go into her tiny room and think over what had occurred, and what it meant for the future.

And so she went in, aware of a painful loneliness, and found Sario there.

"Matra Dolcha!" She slammed the door shut at once and leaned against it, as if to keep out anyone who might discover them together. "What are you doing here?"

He stood in the corner near the hinges-a slight, thin-faced boy-so the open door would hide him should anyone else inhabit the corridor. But the door was closed now, and Sario safe; he left the corner and came out into the cell, fidgeting, pulling threads from the hemming of the pocket of his tunic. "What did they say?" he asked.

She was shocked to see him, but shock wore off and was replaced by relief; she could share with him now what was required of her. "We are denied one another's company for a year."

Color faded. "They can't do that!"

"Oh, Sario, of course they can." Depressed, Saavedra sat down on her narrow cot. "They have the ordering of our lives from birth to death-they can do whatever they wish. And will do it, if they find you here." She eyed his nervousness; it was unlike him to seem so tentative. "Did they speak to you?'

"Not yet." A lock of hair obscured his eyes; he shook it back impatiently.

"They will, but they don't know where I am. They can't come get me if they don't know where I am."

"But they will," she countered reasonably; he never saw beyond what he so badly wanted to see. "If you are nowhere else, they will look for you here."

He swore beneath his breath. "Then I will say what I've come to say." He reached into his pocket and tugged forth a folded paper. "I've written it down. Here."

She took the proffered paper, unfolded it, flattened it, examined it. "What is it?"

"A recipe," he said tautly.

"A recipe?" Had he gone entirely mad?

"Tomaz told it to me."

She frowned. "But-for what? These ingredients make no sense. They are not for cooking, nor are they for paints."

"They do make sense," he said steadily, "if you have read far enough in the Folio."

She nearly crumpled the paper. "Sario, I'm not permitted to read the Folio."

"But I have. Some of it." He sat down next to her on the edge of the cot, leaning close to indicate the words scribbled hastily on the tattered paper. "These are nonsense words meant to mislead anyone who should come across them. But I know the secret to them. Tomaz told me how it was done, and this is the recipe."

She was still at a loss. "I don't understand, Sario. Why are you showing this to me?"

He inhaled quickly, noisily, then let the words come too rapidly for sense. "Because-because I want someone to know. I need you to know, 'Vedra, before I begin."

"Begin?" she asked suspiciously. "Sario, what are you up to now?"

His face was drawn, tense. Even though he clasped his hands tightly, she saw the minute trembling. "I must do something, 'Vedra. I have to. Tomaz was made to be a victim because he never understood what the Peintraddo Chieva was-until it was too late."

Neither did she. "But you do."

"I do. Now. And so I must do this-"

"Sario-"

"-to keep them from killing me." "Killing you! Sario-are you mad? Who would wish to kill you? Why?"

"Neosso Irrado," he whispered.

"Oh, no ... this is mad, Sario-"

"That is what they call me. Neosso Irrado."

Saavedra managed a laugh, albeit weakly framed. "Because you are frustrating, Sario. You break rules, talk back, question everything, refuse to do what you are asked-"

"Just like Tomaz."

It drove her into silence. Saavedra stared at the paper, at the list of nonsense words, trying to understand the cause of Sario's fear. And fear it was; but augmented by a peculiar determination.

He would do it. Whatever it was, he would do it. She knew of no one as willing as he to risk a very real danger.

"What is it?" she asked sharply. "What is the Peintraddo Chieva but a self-portrait?"

Sario's mouth jerked briefly. "A means of control," he answered. "A secret means. What we saw, you and I, above the Crechetta."

Saavedra remembered all too vividly what they had seen above the Crechetta.

"Punishment," he said tautly, "for troubling them. For improper compordotta. For being- Neosso Irrado."

"Oh, no-"

"Tomaz was Neosso Irrado."

It seemed an obvious answer. "Then don't you be!" she cried.

His face was pinched. "I can't stop, 'Vedra. I can't help myself."

"You can! Just stop. Don't talk back, don't question everything, don't break rules, accept the compordotta-"

"Don't you see? When it doesn't make sense, what they ask; or when I see another way, a better way, I have to tell them! I can't ignore what is obvious to me, even if no one else sees it... it would be dishonest. It would dishonor my talent. You know that! You know that!"

She knew that. She had felt it herself.

"They will blind me," he said, "as they blinded Tomaz. They will cripple my talent as they crippled his hands."

She had seen it done. "Sario-"

"I have to do this, don't you see?-so I may prevent them. Tomaz told me the way, though he couldn't realize it." He hitched a thin shoulder. "He told me how he painted his self-portrait, the ingredients he used ... but he painted in ignorance. I will not."

Her mouth was dry. "How, Sario? How can you prevent the Viehos Fratos from doing whatever they wish to do?"

"By outwitting them," he said. "I am young yet, too young, but surely they will test me soon.

Surely they will discover that my seed is infertile, and then they will know; it is only the final proof, 'Vedra . . . everything else is known. It lives here, in my soul." He touched his breast. "You know I am Gifted."