She sat in a chair in the Grijalva Atelierro-so changed! so much larger!- and regarded her audience: nine Gifted Limners; an old man; a young woman the same age as herself.

No. Not the same age. Impossibility. Sario had made it so.

The other was young, the other Grijalva woman. She was not. She had added it up, once told: Three hundred and eighty-three years old.

Matra ei Filho. What had he done, what had he wrought with Gift, with Luza do'Orro, with unflagging ambition, ruthless execution of such undertakings as he believed were necessary?

With Raimon's approval.

She closed her eyes. Sanguo Raimon was dead twice over: once, by plunging his Chieva into his Peintraddo; and again, killed by years, by decades, by centuries.

Three hundred and eighty-three years old.

By far the oldest Grijalva.

Irony. And anger. That he could, that he would, do such to her.

So much time. So little reflection of it, save in the mirror he had painted into the portrait. And even less reflected in her face, her body. The child was but three days older, despite its father's death centuries before.

Alejandro. Dead.

They sent for food, and she ate ravenously, unable to deny the needs of her body newly freed from imprisonment, from the bindings of oscurra. And yet her thoughts, profligate in their haste, rebelled against such truths as were new to her: she was but three days older; the child was but three months within her womb.

She ate, ignoring their fascination. They watched and whispered, all save the young woman, Eleyna, who sat at her side. Waiting. Alejandro. Dead.

Saavedra set down her fork with a muted clatter of metal on metal. Her hands shook; she could not hold them still. Was it some rebellion of her body? Some decaying of flesh now freed from painted preservation?

Pain engulfed. Matra Dolcha- No. Not decay. Grief.

"Dead," she said, and heard the tremor in her voice. "Alive yesterday. Dead today."

Eleyna's voice was quiet. "Who?"

"Alejandro." She had loved to speak it. Now it hurt, knowing he could not hear it. "Alejandro Baltran Edoard Alessio do'Verrada, Duke of Tira Virte."

"Regretto," Eleyna murmured.

Grief might be mitigated by anger. She used it so. "But Sario is alive. And I will have my revenge."

"Sario?" It was the old man, Cabral. "Sario Grijalva? But of course he is dead. Ignaddio Grijalva painted a touching Morta of him. It hangs in the Picca."

She flinched. " 'Naddi-?" But he too was dead. All of them, dead. "What is the Picca?"

"It is a small galerria we Grijalvas use to exhibit paintings to the public."

"To the public? But-no one save Grijalvas are permitted into our home!"

"Now," the old man said kindly, "they are."

Eiha, but it hurt; they knew far more of her than she of them, and the world they inhabited was centuries beyond hers.

"That isn't important," Eleyna said crisply, offering no offense despite her tone. Saavedra liked her at once and hoped to know her better. Indeed, the world had changed; Eleyna Grijalva, an unGifted woman, stood among the Viehos Fratos. "How can you believe that Sario Grijalva is still alive?" Eleyna asked.

Despite the question, Saavedra sensed that the young woman already knew the answer. Knew more than she had yet admitted-perhaps even to herself. She rose from the table, pressing hands against actual wood instead of painted wood, and walked-Sweet Mother, to walk again!-to the huge panel set against the wall, and studied it. Examined the remains of her imprisonment.

Genius, of course. She could see it in each line, every shadow. How could no one look upon the work and not know the hand that painted it?

"Sario," she said. "My Sario." Even without her body in the portrait, the composition remained superb. "Here is the mirror," she said, indicating it. "Here, set upon the easel. A conceit of his, I am certain, as it was a conceit to paint in the Folio. Such things are of arrogance, of certainty of self, and very like him." She turned slightly, looked at the Limners, and saw they did not as yet understand. "Here," she said clearly, indicating it again. "Because of the mirror I came to understand what had been done to me, and that the world beyond my frame continued, even if Saavedra Grijalva did not." Grief tugged at her. "Not the Saavedra any of them knew."

Cabral's aged face was frozen into a complex transformation from incomprehension into bitter, and horrified, understanding.

"When I found I could move, I studied first the book-and then discovered the mirror. And in it I saw people. So many people, so many years . . .an ever-changing galerria of people, with faces and clothing far different from any I knew." She found it easier now to speak of it; she was free, and her past was no one's present. "There were times I could see nothing, trapped by darkness as if a cloth had been draped over the panel-but once I found the mirror I could see.

Sometimes I even believed I could hear their voices speaking to me, though their accents were strange-as strange as yours are now to my ears." She turned to Eleyna. "You I saw most recently, because you worked before the painting."

Eleyna nodded. "I copied you."

"And there was Sario. Always Sario. His clothing changed, his companions . . . but he was always there. To visit. Perhaps to gloat." Tears threatened; not of grief, not as they were for Alejandro, but for what had become of a boy who had promised so very much-and delivered far more. "I last saw him standing beside you."

Eleyna looked away, looked guilty-now that what she had guessed was confirmed. "Yes, his name is Sario also."

Cabral objected. "It's the fashion to name Limners after those who preceded them."

"No." Grief was extinguished. Certainty took its place. "It was he. My Sario. Matra Dolcha, do you think I don't know the man who betrayed and imprisoned me?"

"But it can't be," Cabral protested. "This Sario looks nothing like the Sario of your time. I've seen the peintraddos. I remember when Sario was born. Our Sario."

Giaberto spoke now. He was Eleyna's uncle, and clearly Premio Frato. As Arturro had been, as Ferico, as Davo. But they were men from her time, not from this time; this time was Giaberto's. "I myself recall when he was confirmed as one of our number, and when he painted his Peintraddo Chieva." He gestured sharply; he did not believe her. "You see, here is his portrait.

We brought it up from the Crechetta, to study in better light."

She moved to look at it. A man, not so different from a man of her time: hands racked by bone-fever, eyes whitened by milk-blindness. Infirmity at odds with the youth of the face.

Saavedra shook her head. "This is not the man I saw standing beside you, Eleyna. That man wore the face of my Sario." She turned. "You have already undertaken Chieva do'Sangua, have you not?"

Giaberto was startled. "How can you know that? Or of that?"

Saavedra smiled, walked slowly back to the table. She took up a piece of bread, examined its crust, its weight-bread-baking has not changed, at least!-and then turned to face them all. "I know because I, too, am Gifted." For the first time she opened her hand to display the key. She knew its weight well after so many centuries. "This key, this Chieva do'Orro, is mine. I un- derwent my own form of Confirmattio, do you see, when Sario himself forced it upon me. Thus I have earned this, and the rights with which it endows a Grijalva."

A torrent of protest, of conversation, from the men. Nothing from Eleyna. Saavedra let the protestations, the objections, wash over her, immune to their sting, their immediacy. She had heard them before. Had made them before, to Sario: "A woman may not be Gifted."

Giaberto was definitive. "Only men may be Gifted-it is a woman's duty to bear Gifted sons.

That key is no more than a symbol of the sacred bond and service between the do'Verradas and the Viehos Fratos."

Meanwhile, the only other woman in the room waited them out in silence, watching the First Mistress who had also, by her admission, confessed herself the first Gifted woman as well.

Saavedra met Eleyna's steady eyes. "Do you envy me?"

The young woman's face colored. "Matra Dolcha!-I confess it. I do envy you." And then, quietly, "Regretto."

"No regrets," Saavedra said. "Not now. Nor should you regret it. The Mother grants us such things as she chooses."

"But if you are Gifted-" Cabral stepped forward hesitantly. "I beg your pardon. Excuse me for asking, but . . . was Mechella right? Are you with child?"

"En verro," Saavedra answered evenly. "The child who would have been born more than three hundred years ago is still to come."

Cabral sighed deeply.

Oddly, unexpectedly, tears sprang into Eleyna's eyes. She turned away abruptly.

Saavedra reached out at once, without thought. "No, I beg you-grazzo, don't turn away from me! Matra ei Filho, you of them all may have the vision to understand. Would you deny me that?" Tears now threatened her own eyes. "Matra Dolcha, but I am alone here, out of my time, robbed of what and who I know-save for this child, Alejandro's child, who will know nothing at all of his father, of his mother's time, save what he is taught of ancient history." Her throat threatened to close. "You see it, don't you? You feel it? In your heart, in your head?"

Eleyna stood with her back to Saavedra. After a long moment she turned with infinite slowness. Extended a trembling hand. "Forgive me ... I don't begrudge you your Gift." Their hands clasped. "It is true you have no one . . . and if you wish, you will be as a sister to me. As much as Beatriz, who is my sister. And Agustin-" Her voice failed abruptly; she released Saavedra's hand. "Zio, regretto. I must go down to see if Agustin is awake."

"Go, then, ninia meya."

With regret, Saavedra watched her go. Then turned to Giaberto. "Who is Agustin?"

It was Cabral who answered, with anger as much as grief. "Agustin is her younger brother, newly Confirmed. He is dying because Sario burned one of the boy's Blooded paintings with lamp oil."

Saavedra flinched. Then kissed her fingertips, pressed them to her heart. "Matra Dolcha . . .

which Sario?" "This one." Giaberto indicated the painted face she did not know. "But our Chieva do'Sangua failed."

She did not reply at once. She knew how Sario protected himself.

"We have not yet answered how he did it," continued Giaberto, taking her silence for astonishment. He glanced at the portrait. "Unless this man is not truly Sario. Not our Sario." He looked now at Saavedra. "You are certain it was Sario you saw in the mirror?"

For the first time in her life-her magic-perverted life-Saavedra Grijalva used the vow that even they could not deny. "Nommo Chieva do'Orro." She saw it register. Saw their shock. "His clothing changed, but his face remained the same. As did the Chieva he wore." She felt cold sud- denly, and shivered. "Perhaps he put the mirror there to be cruel-or merciful, in his own way, for his own reasons. But I think this mirror showed me the truth-the true world, his true face.

And that world always contained Sario."

"Then if you saw him with Eleyna-if you saw your Sario with our Eleyna. ..." Cabral's face was gray. "Forgive my doubts, grazzo, but it is difficult to believe."

She spread her hands. "As difficult to believe in me."

Giaberto's voice shook. "How can this be?"

It was painful to speak; all was yesterday to her, and centuries to them. "Neosso Irrado," she said. "You don't know him as I do, as I came to know him-and still do not know him even though he had lived among you. I came to understand-too late!-there is nothing Sario will not attempt. There is no power, no magic, granted by our Gift that he cannot master and employ." She drew a breath. "There was no one in my time, and no one in your time, who was-and is-like him."

Giaberto accused now. "You sound as if you love him!"

She did not shirk it. "I loved him as much as I could love him. As I loved no one else. But there is love, and there is love-and what I gave him was entirely different from what I shared with Alejandro."

"Ninia meya." Cabral spoke the words with compassion and gentleness as he took her hands into a comforting grasp. "It would please me if you considered me your uncle, as you are to consider Eleyna your sister. You are a Grijalva, one of us, a part of me-" And he laughed. "Old enough to be my grandmother many times over, I fear, though far younger than I!"

An old man, older than the other Limners, broke the moment by pounding his cane on the floor. "Bassda!" His voice was reedy, cracked; clearly he was in the final stages of the decay that consumed Limners. "All this talk of Sario-this Sario, that Sario!-when I want to know something truly important." He stared at her harshly. "Niapali yellow-how was it made? We can only imitate it, but it lacks the quality of the old paintings. How was it made?"

Too many shocks. Saavedra laughed. "You can no longer make Niapali yellow? Matra Dolcha-then it is most fortunate I am here, is it not?"

Cabral released her hands to raise one of his own in a sharp gesture. "Momentito!"

Odd, to see an unGifted limner granted authority within the Viehos Fratos. But already she trusted him, craved his kindness, his wisdom-and she needed friends so badly. He had their attention now. "Sario is a danger not just to us, but to all of Tira Virte. If what Eleyna says is true, and Sario has painted a portrait compelling the Grand Duke's obedience to him alone. . . ." He shook his head; implication was plain. "Let us say it is true, that the first Sario Grijalva yet lives. How could such a thing be done? Only by a Gifted Limner, no? And there are none save Grijalvas."

Giaberto objected yet again. "But how can this be?"

Wearied of their quarreling, Saavedra left them. She went instead to the Peintraddo Chieva of Sario Grijalva; of her Sario. And stared.

Only days ago . . . days, not centuries. Days' ago that she had spoken with him, argued with him, knew him for what he was, what he had made himself; that she had lain in Alejandro's embrace, taken joy in their union, knowing they were meant to be together for as long as one of them lived.

She yet lived. He had died three hundred years before.

Pain welled. To escape it, to transmute it, Saavedra turned sharply to the knot of Viehos Fratos. To Cabral.

"You," she said, and beckoned. When he came, she took his hand into hers. "Of you, he would have been jealous. I understand it now, far more than I could at the time; this much his insanity has taught me." She gestured to the painting. "This man would have envied you, envied your power-"

"I have none," Cabral said stiffly. "I am not Gifted."

"En verro, your power lies in another direction. In lifespan. In fertility." She sighed. "He told me once he wanted nothing to do with children, but I believe he lied. And he told me also how he believed a Limner lived on only through his paintings-and how he would find a way to change that." She looked at Cabral. "You have studied the history of Tira Virte. How long did the first Sario live?"

"I believe he died at thirty-five."

And Alejandro-did he live a long life, or a short one? And was there another woman to share his bed, to bear his children?

Of course there was. The do'Verrada line continued to this day, three hundred and sixty-three years later. But she could not bring herself to ask. It hurt too much.

"You have asked," she said to Giaberto, "how Sario could yet live. I believe I know. I read every word in that book-" She indicated the book that lay, closed, on the table in the painting.

"-that book, which is his copy of the Kita'ab. You know it in its incomplete form as the Grijalva Folio. In it I read of a spell to transfer one man's mind, his spirit, to another man's body-"

The door to the stairwell clicked. Everyone started and spun around.

But it was only Eleyna. "Agustin is still asleep." Her face was drawn. "Perhaps it is more merciful that he never wakes, if he must only wake to pain." Her stricken gaze settled on Saavedra. "I heard what you said." She drew breath, released it. "A day or two ago I asked Sario how he knew so very much-and he said: 'because I have lived a long time.' It seemed such an odd thing to say, for a man only six years older than I." She glanced now at the others, then to Saavedra again. "I can find out if this is true. I must return to the Palasso."

"Matra ei Filho-you would do that? Risk that?"

"Impossible," said Giaberto. "It is too dangerous."

Cabral was less definitive, but his protest echoed Giaberto's. "Eleyna, bela meya, you must know that if Sario is able to compel Renayo's actions, he will certainly do the same to you."

She shook her head, infinitely certain of her course. Saavedra could not help but admire her calm courage. "He can neither harm me nor compel me." She stared defiantly at her uncle. "He has already painted a portrait of me that will leave me forever free of Grijalva influence."

Saavedra examined the young woman, reassessing her. Handsome without question, if not beautiful; young, vital; but more importantly there was a fierceness about her that stirred response in Saavedra, a familiar desire to share a part of it.

And in that instant she recognized it in Eleyna, as she had always recognized and acknowledged it in Sario. Luza do'Orro, the Golden Light.

A painter. That was what she had been doing with Sario, to know him so well: painting.