"And so you would like to be." Sario smiled to see the sudden blush, put a hand upon the thin shoulder and guided him toward the stairs. "Is that so poor an ambition? I think not. I think it a worthy goal."

Ignaddio descended the stairs, twisting to look back over his shoulder. "Do you think I could be? Ever?"

"Oh, I do believe so ... but only if you survive!-mind the stairs, mennino, or you will break your neck." He smiled easily. "And that would be a terrible sorrow for both of us."

Ignaddio gripped the rail more firmly. "For me, eiha, I suppose. But- why for you?"

"Because I need you." Now the boy missed a step, caught himself. One more and he was down, and there he turned swiftly. "Why? Why would you need me?"

"Because there is much of me in you, if also a surfeit of innocence. But that can be altered . .

." He laughed softly. "Have I utterly stunned you, 'Naddi?"

The boy nodded mutely.

On the final step Sario halted. "I need your youth. I need your strength, I need your talent, your Gift, your flesh, your Luza do'Orro. Because one day mine will fail."

Ignaddio's voice rose to a broken squeak. "I'm Gifted?"

"You are."

"But-how can you know? I haven't undergone Confirmattio yet, and you've seen none of my work"

"Bassda." He touched a shoulder briefly. "It is in me to know. And I do. The Light recognizes itself in another."

"But-"

"But. Bassda. Come with me to the Galerria; if you would begin your lessons, they are best begun today."

"Merditto," Ignaddio muttered, and then reddened. "Regretto ... but- how long will it take?

To know what you know? Will I ever?"

Sario guided him gently down the corridor. "You are thirteen, no? Eiha, let me say only this: in fifteen years' time I will be thirty-five and you twenty-eight . . ." He nodded; smiled inwardly because he told the boy everything, everything, yet would not be understood. A perverse jest, and ironic. "By then, I feel certain. Perhaps later it will require fewer years, but for now, fifteen. To be safe. In fifteen years I will be irreplaceable, and Alejandro will know the truth-he must know, eventually!-but he can't dismiss me because I am irreplaceable ... and so he will learn to use me, to rely on me absolutely, to require me-and it will all become an infinitely simple matter." He looked down at the boy. "Can you wait fifteen years, 'Naddi? To be a Lord Limner?"

The boy's eyes shone. "Fifteen years is a very long time, Lord Limner."

"But such things as I will teach you require time-if you are to be me. And I am to be you."

The words within words bewildered Ignaddio. "But-I can't be you! Can I?"

"Eiha, perhaps not-perhaps I exaggerated." Sario made a dismissive gesture. "But I most certainly can be you, because I know how."

"How?"

"Lessons," Sario explained crisply. "Lessons learned from an old estranjiero, a Folio, and a few reclaimed pages of a most holy book." He smiled. "And now let us proceed to your lessons, and in fifteen years you will know absolutely everything I know. I promise it."

Ignaddio stopped short. Thrust his young, unformed chin into the air. "Make an oath of it." Sario laughed, then inclined his head. "As you would have it." He lifted his key to his lips, kissed it, pressed it to his heart. "Nommo Matra ei Filho. Nommo Chieva do'Orro."

Ignaddio Grijalva broke into a brilliant grin of such magnitude it illuminated the corridor.

It eased the soul, that smile. It will be well. It must be, and it shall be. And all of it worth it.

He cast a glance over his shoulder, but could not see the stairway. Could not see the door.

Eiha. In time, neither would anyone else.

"Lord Limner?"

Sario prodded a narrow shoulder. "Bassda. We have work to do."

Always the work. Always so much. Always so little time.

Unless one were Limner. Gifted. Chi'patro.

And willing to use Luza do'Orro, not to extinguish it.

In the absence of day is night; in the absence of sound is silence; in the absence of light: darkness.

I did not plan for this, anticipate this, dream of this. No one would, save a madman; and I can't truthfully say he planned for it at first, or even in the middle . . . only at the end. For reasons I can't know, save for speculation, though I'm certain he offers one. A single clever sentence full of explanation, of witty justification, explaining the need for such action.

No need. Save his own.

No fear, save his own, perhaps; for what I could say to one who would listen? Who might then respond with threat, with harm?

But no one will ever know. He need explain nothing, and Alejandro will never think to threaten, to harm.

It came upon me all at once. Engulfed me utterly. Blotted out my world and created another, at his behest. His requirement.

Gift. Curse. In both there was conception, gestation, birth. I was progenitor once, though now I am prey, victim to magic, to power no one, not even those who are Limners, might comprehend.

And what I-even I-can't properly describe.

Neosso Irrado. But he is more. Is other.

That some call gift, I must name nightmare.

What have you done to me?

GALERRIA 1261.

The vaulted foyer of Galerria Verrada was as coolly serene as he remembered, and as soothing in its early morning silence. But it smelled different. The current Grand Duchess, Gizella do'Granidia, had introduced a fashion from her sweltering southern home: glazed white porcelain pillars, high as a man's head and slender as a woman's corseted waist, pinhole-punctured in Tza'ab-like geometric patterns and stuffed every third day with fresh jasmine and rose petals. Set in every window recess, the pillars gave off only a faint odor now, but as the day wore on, the sun's heat would fully release the fragrance. An affectation, but he had to admit its practicality.

The hotter the day, the heavier the sweat-and the stink-of the privileged visitors. Yet the hotter it became, the richer the masking scent would become.

An elegant solution to an inelegance; still, he found it effete. Without exception-but for a few Serrano mediocrities-the pictures here had been painted amid the sharp smells of blood, sweat, semen: crude and earthy smells that permeated canvas and colors. Long gone, of course, worn away by rainy winters and torrid summers, by cleanings, by the sighs of those who stood here in awe of Grijalva genius. It was too bad; the reality of power ought to be recalled in the smell of the paintings. Then he smiled at his folly. No one but ruling Grand Dukes ever knew the source of the magic, and not even they understood its real scope. That was how it must be. He had arranged that a very long time ago.

All in all, though, he much preferred the pungent scent of paint-not surprising, as he had recently finished mixing a full array. The wax- and oscurra-sealed pots rested safely in a locked coffer of his atelierro above the wine shop, ready for use. Never again would he wait until he'd found his next host. Once, he'd been so physically weak after the bleeding that the transfer had nearly been ruined. (Although once the spell was cast, feebleness had worked in his favor; restraining the worn-out old body had been simplicity itself.) Each time since then, he had come home prepared.

He had also learned not to wait until his current host began to age. He'd made that mistake two lives ago. So contented had he been with Oaquino's posting at the elegant Court of Ghillas that the years had slipped past unnoticed. Then, one shocking morning in early spring, a hip joint stabbed so sharply that he could barely rise from his silken bed. Oaquino had been but forty-two, and the swift onset of age had caught him unawares. The journey back to Tira Virte had been an agony of physical pain and mental anguish, the relocation into a healthy eighteen-year-old cause for profound relief.

Oaquino-and after him Ettoro, who'd developed the bone-fever at the ridiculously young age of thirty-five-had also taught him to check bloodlines for early death and inbreeding. Dioniso, his current host, came from excellent stock and at forty-one looked and felt ten years younger.

This time he intended to give himself years and years to pick and choose and find exactly the right young man with exactly the right traits. Through the centuries, his specifications had become most exacting indeed.

First and foremost, the boy must possess good ancestry and excellent health. He must be an acknowledged talent, so that the slow revelation of real genius would not excite comment. He wanted a good-looking boy as well-and cringed to recall that graceless gawk Renzio, a choice that had been no choice at all due to his advanced years and urgent need. No more Renzios; he refused to be stuck again inside an ugly man for twenty years.

Recently he'd added family connections to his list of desired attributes. His first hosts had been mainly from lesser branches of the vast Grijalva tree. He'd reasoned that comparative anonymity was a good thing; he could pass more or less unnoticed as he accustomed himself to his new lives. And the fewer people intimate with his chosen incarnation, the fewer who must be deceived while he made the gradual changes of personality necessary to bring past behavior in line with his own character. Grazzo do'Filho, teenaged boys were expected to be unpredictably skittish, and adolescent artists in particular were moody entudo paletto.

But family connections had become important to him. Dioniso was of an influential line that had produced two Lord Limners and a Ducal Mistress in the last fifty years. The advantages of position were obvious-worth the extra effort to find and worth the extra work of fooling family and friends. Dioniso was on the short list for every plum assignment; when he had expressed a desire to be posted to Niapali, authorization had come within days. Best of all, whenever he returned home, he was warmly welcomed and celebrated and given the choicest rooms available.

Though when making his selection he always hoped for a personality similar to his own, it didn't matter all that much. He'd become adept at subtle alterations in character. And if the strain of acting a part became too great, or friends grew puzzled by the changes, there were two convenient options. First, he could volunteer for a few years of itinerant duty, the shit-work of the marginally talented Grijalva. Galling as it was, the bolt-hole had served him well in several instances. Time spent as an Itinerarrio earned marks for service as well as provided a cushion of years between memories of who "Zandor" or "Timirrin" had been, and who he really was.

His other option was, of course, a suggestive or even fatal painting or two done in his atelierro above the wine shop. But he disliked the trouble of collecting specimens-a disgusting process at best, and occasionally dangerous.

He paused within the Galleria's great bronze doors while an assistant curatorrio rattled through a chaotic desk for a copy of the latest guide sheet. Absent from Meya Suerta these twelve years, he wanted to know whose work was currently fashionable, what changes had come to the arrangement of paintings-and what the historians were writing nowadays about his portrait of Saavedra. An acknowledged masterpiece, a priceless work of genius, a delight to anyone lucky enough to behold it-and, he grinned to himself, the despair of student Limners who could never hope to equal even the tiniest featherstroke of his brush on canvas.

At last a page of heavy paper was given him. Beautiful work, he mused idly, expert fingers judging rag content, artist's eye approving the typeface. He hadn't exercised his paper-making skills in-oh, a century or so. Perhaps he ought to take it up again as a hobby.

Closely printed on both sides, with the Grand Ducal Seal at the top, the guide sheet began with a brief reference list of Tira Virte's rulers and the Lord Limners who had served them. He nodded his thanks to the curatorrio, thinking with an inner chuckle how shocked the youth would be to know that the greatest Lord Limner of them all, and likewise the painter of most of the important and all of the finest pictures in the Galerria, was about to take a tour of his own works.

He strolled slowly along the tiled floor, pausing before paintings with which he was long familiar, pretending studiousness for the benefit of a group of silent sanctas half the Galerria away. Every so often he stopped in honest interest before a Treaty or Marriage painted by someone he'd known. Old Bennidito had really had a way with color; he'd forgotten how Tazioni could make trees look as if a breath would visibly and even audibly rustle leaves; no one, not even he, had ever outdone Adalberto for exquisite rendering of the drape of a shawl along a woman's arm. He nodded wordless tribute to long-dead colleagues, generous in his own genius, able to acknowledge theirs. He passed the sanctas with a nod. They looked like a herd of dried-up dun cows: skinny, big- eyed, darkly tanned from incessant gardening that fed only a tiny percentage of the poor-but at least provided roses for Grand Duchess Gizella's scent-pillars. They recognized the salute with abrupt dips of white-wimpled heads, lips tightening at the sight of the Chieva do'Orro hanging from its chain around his neck.

Like all Limners who wore the Golden Key, to the Ecclesials he was an object of disgust.

Sterility was unnatural, an abomination to a Faith based on the fertile Mother and Her Son, and thus a sign of divine disapproval. He'd always wondered how the Ecclesia reconciled this with the abundant fecundity of Grijalva women and the proven virility of unGifted Grijalva men. Perhaps the attitude was merely the last fierce-held remnant of the years of the Nerro Lingua, when the Grijalvas had suffered more deaths than any other family in Meya Suerta; this had been seen as a mark of divine retribution for having sheltered the chi'patros. He lost himself in reverie of his first life for a moment, remembering that old canna of a Premia Sancta, Caterin Serrano, and her banishment of all Grijalvas from the shrines and Sanctias she controlled. Alejandro had taken care of that, but the animosity remained. To the sanctas and sanctos of Tira Virte, the Grijalvas were an affront that centuries of service to their country had done little if anything to mitigate.

Condemning them were their chi'patro origins as bastards of infidel outlaws, their rumored magic, their power at Court, and especially their scandalous personal lives-and most especially of all, the Mistresses. The family was tainted, root, branch, and stem; the Ecclesia had not changed its attitude since Duke Renayo and Duchess Jesminia returned to Meya Suerta with fourteen ladies- in-waiting pregnant by Tza'ab outlaws, the twenty chi'patro children of those outlaws, and the corpse of Verro Grijalva. As he passed the silent sanctas, he wondered what the official line would be on the reality of Grijalva art-let alone his uses of it. The thought made him smile, and the women turned away in renewed scorn of one who dared a pleasantry to those who loathed him and all his kind.

Dismissing the sanctas from his thoughts, he stopped before a Birth by Guilbarro Grijalva- or, rather, attributed to Guilbarro, for of course it was his own work. He let slip a sigh as he contemplated it. A rare masterpiece, even for him. The only daughter of Cossimio I was surely the loveliest baby ever born. Painting her and her beautiful mother had been one of the great joys of his lives. He recalled it so clearly: gambas playing softly in the recesses of the summer-shaded arborra, iced drinks served whenever he flicked a finger, Grand Duchess Carmillia aglow with happiness, her baby daughter laughing the whole time. And there little Cossima was, as sweet and lively as on the day he'd finished the last rose in the vase at her mother's elbow. The child sat on Carmillia's knee, both of them dressed alike in simple white linen and a rainbow of ribbons. A golden cage rested on a pedestal beside them; noting Cossima's fascination with the birds, at some point he had opened the cage to let them fly about the arborra. He could hear her giggles still. Delight had nearly distracted him from quick-sketching her excited little face and the smile on her mother's lips. Both expressions looked down at him now, perfectly captured, looking as if painted yesterday. Very fine work, indeed. Adorable little Cossima . . . how he would have loved to have painted her Marriage.

But she had died of a fever before her fourth birthday. And within a year of completing this picture, Guilbarro himself was dead. Cossima's Birth was the only work of his in the Galerria- and the guide sheet commented on how sad it was that so promising a talent had been lost so young.

A corner of his mouth turned down. He could have done so much as Guilbarro. Clever, handsome, with all the right connections, he'd already taken the initial steps toward becoming Lord Limner. The Birth of Cossima had, in fact, been his audition. Scenes from the past cast dark veils over the portrait of the laughing baby and her radiant mother. A hunting accident; a broken leg from which Guilbarro was recovering nicely-and then disaster. Some fool of a sancta mixed pain medication incorrectly. It was discovered within two weeks, but by then the damage had been done. He was well and truly addicted.

They'd tried to wean him from it. But even had the withdrawal worked, his ambitions were finished. No Lord Limner could be made vulnerable by addiction to liquor, gambling, sexual habits, or drugs. The potential for subornation was too great. Even if the medical establishment avowed him free of it, the danger of relapse would always be there. Neither the do'Verra-das nor the Grijalvas could countenance a Lord Limner with a drug habit in his past.

The agony of that life's ruin very nearly matched the agony of never having quite enough of the drug. He could neither think nor work in such a state. But he understood his choices all too well: he could suffer through the cure and survive and never become Lord Limner, or he could abandon this life and assume another.

Guilbarro's younger brother Matteyo saved him-and in the saving condemned himself. He couldn't bear remembering, but suffocating memories swept like thick tapestry curtains across his vision. Desperation led Matteyo to procure drugs enough to augment doses that became weaker every day in the attempted cure. Devotion caused him to bring Guilbarro his paints, a canvas, a mirror. The hell of it was that the self-portrait was Matteyo's idea. "Paint yourself into being well again," the boy said. "You're good enough, 'Barro, you can do it. I know you can."

Oh, he had. He had. Despite shaking hands and drugged dreaminess, he painted Guilbarro.

And when the work was done and the time came, he actually explained the process. And Matteyo agreed. By painting Guilbarro to the life, he had painted Matteyo to his death.

"I'm a mediocrity, all the moualimos say it. But you're a true genius, 'Barro. You deserve your chance to he Lord Limner. The world deserves to see your work. I don't matter. You do."

And so it had been done. He'd Blooded the paints with Matteyo's help, and killed Matteyo with a quick, merciful thrust of Saavedra's golden needle in Guilbarro's painted heart. Easy enough to call it suicide: despair at tragic circumstances, agony of withdrawal, and so on. Easier still to weep when Guilbarro's corpse was discovered, with Matteyo vanished from it. Selfless, generous, loving Matteyo: the only one he'd ever regretted.

Two days later, with the body safely buried, he wept while he tore the Guilbarro portrait to shreds. A month after that, within the fresh and healthy fifteen-year-old body, ready to honor the boy's devotion by becoming Lord Limner not just for himself but for Matteyo, too, he found himself under arrest. Someone had discovered Matteyo's illegal purchases of drugs; the boy was accused of assisting Guilbarro's suicide. The irony had escaped him at the time, and caused no more than a bitter grimace now. The thought of Matteyo still hurt too much.

Convicted of the lesser charge-though Matteyo's branch of the family was influential, the scandal required a name to hang it on-he was banished. The remote and arguably civilized barony of Esquita was a misery of empty hills and emptier minds, whose ruler required cosseting because of his one asset: iron ore. Not for sixteen long years did he return to Meya Suerta, not until word came that Matteyo's mother was dying. The Grijalvas appealed to Duke Cossimio I, who allowed him to come home for the death watch: the bond between mother and son was the most sacred in the Faith. As she lay dying, he found Timirrin and began the next painting- began, too, the displays of frantic grief that accounted for Matteyo's suicide soon after his mother's death. He blinked a blur from his eyes, still thinking of Matteyo, and saw again Cossima's sweet little face. Almost two hundred years since he'd painted her plump fists reaching for the bright- feathered birds. Though visitors to the Galerria sorrowed over her tragedy, they left remembering her laughing black eyes and her mother's joy. Such was the power of sheer artistic skill, nothing to do with magic.

No picture of Matteyo hung at Palasso Grijalva for the family to remember him by. A portrait existed, though no one would ever see it. He reminded himself that when next he visited his atelierro above the wineshop, he must paint another sprig of blue-flowered rosemary, for remembrance, near the section of the Peintraddo Memorrio dedicated to his loved, lost Matteyo.

He walked on past several generations, and stopped before a huge picture by the greatest Lord Limner who had ever served Tira Virte: Riobaro Grijalva. No fewer than eleven paintings here were Riobaro's. As he regarded the Marriage of Benetto I and Rostra della Marei-she of the all- powerful banking family-the smile returned to his lips. Not because the portrait was a masterwork (it was), but because every minute of his life as Riobaro had been a masterwork.

Timirrin's life had been quiet. He studied, taught, copied what he was told, and kept to himself for eighteen placid, uneventful years. The final five of them, however, he'd spent watching and marveling as Riobaro grew from talented fourteen-year-old to accomplished Limner of nearly twenty. Riobaro had been perfect from the day the Confirmattio had proved his sterility. After Timirrin's existence as a nonentity, power was calling again. And Riobaro was perfect: tall, long- limbed, heart-catchingly beautiful, with melting dark eyes and full lips and riotous black curls that didn't begin to gray until his forty-fifth year. All his line were long-lived (for Gifteds) and he had excellent connections at Court, his mother's half-brother being Lord Limner. Best of all, he was a passionate admirer of the work of Sario Grijalva. His style was as nearly identical to the revered Lord Limner's as he could make it; even in childhood he had copied and recopied all the available paintings. Happily, he was born into a time when slavish imitation of long-dead Masters was approved. No one tried to dissuade him from his ambition to be the next Sario.

His wish was granted.

When Riobaro's uncle died in 1115, Riobaro was the only possible candidate to replace him.

The widowed Duchess Enricia liked and trusted him, and was pleased that her young son's regency council now included a man who shared her own prime objective: the gold-filled coffers of the Principio della Diettro Mareia. They were determined to see Benetto married to the Principio's heiress.

Trade treaties were negotiated that Riobaro went to Diettro Mareia himself to paint. He took with him drawings of Benetto and brought back similar drawings of Rosira. The pair were in love with none but each other practically from the cradle-and he hadn't even had to use his magic to do it. Yet while everyone waited for the children to grow to marriageable age, Riobaro did use his art and his arts as necessary to cement ducal power in the provinces. Tira Virte thrived. And when Benetto reached his majority in 1122, becoming Grand Duke in fact as well as name, the Lord Limner made sure that the Grijalva selected as his Mistress was a close relation to himself. As marriage to Rosira della Marei neared, he also made sure that Riobaro's cousin Diega Grijalva sent her lover on his way with a smile and many excellent memories-even as she clutched the deed to a manor house and a large tract of Casteyan forest that had been her lover's parting gift.

Riobaro died, universally mourned, in the fifty-third year of his age and the twenty-fifth year of his service as Lord Limner. He had guided Tira Virte not only to greater prominence but to true greatness; his was a painterly gift seen once in five generations; he was beloved of all the do'Verradas and all his countrymen (with the exception of the provincial barons he'd brought to heel, but they kept their mutterings to themselves). Of all Lord Limners, Riobaro was the only one to have an official portrait within the Galerria Verrada.

Moving along to regard it now, the man who had been Riobaro let another sigh escape him for that perfect life. Too bad he hadn't been able to follow through with another one just like it, but he'd reckoned without the sexual vigor of Domaos' body and its helpless physical passion for Benecitta do'Verrada.

The daughter of Benetto and Rosira was a walking scandal from the day she first put one foot in front of the other. The terror of her servants, the despair of her mother, the torment of her younger brother, she was also the incomparable jewel of her father's indulgent heart. Gazing up at her Marriage-a painting he had not done and in which no one ever noticed her husband-he reflected once again that with her, he'd never stood a chance.

Poised to begin another brilliant career as Lord Limner, he had been completely thunderstruck by Benecitta. Bold and beautiful, nineteen years old to his supposedly mature thirty, she had decided that if her brother had a Grijalva Mistress, it was only fair that she possess a Grijalva Lover. The man who would surely be named Lord Limner when Riobaro's successor died was, to her mind, the perfect choice. Domaos-not as devastatingly handsome as Riobaro but not painful to the eyes, either-fell headlong into her trap and her bed. Knowing he ought to have known better, astounded that sex could have such powerful magic of its own, still he carried on a two- year affair with her in total secrecy. Not since Saavedra had a woman fascinated him so. The danger of discovery only added spice. Benecitta never knew of the crimes great and small he committed to ensure that secrecy, even while cursing himself for a reckless fool.

Then her father announced her betrothal to a fiercely proud baron whose attractions were measured in square miles of vineyards. Benecitta was perfectly willing for the marriage to take place-so long as Domaos was posted to her new home as resident Limner. Torn between passion and prudence, eventually he found courage enough to decline the honor. He couldn't go on bespelling or killing people who saw what they shouldn't-and Benecitta's betrothed had sharper eyes than most. But it was Baron Fillipi do'Gebatta's vast experience of women-far vaster than even three previous wives could account for-that proved Domaos' undoing. The baron's taste ran to virgins; he knew one when he bedded one; Benecitta definitely was not. The morning after the wedding, he stormed through Palasso Verrada to the Grand Ducal chambers and ripped the Marriage portrait into many, many pieces before it was even dry.

The union was annulled. Benecitta was packed off to the strictest and most remote Sanctia in Tira Virte-"I hope she learns humility, for compordotta is obviously beyond her!" as her infuriated mother put it. Domaos lived in dread for days-while frantically painting a self- portrait-before the Grand Duke finally realized the extent of his daughter's "friendship" with the Limner. Domaos was seized one midnight, taken in chains to the border, and forbidden to set foot in Tira Virte again.

Mere thought of those years made him shudder. It was one thing to travel from court to court, city to city, painting Marriages, Births, Deeds, and Wills. An Itinerarrio was an honored guest, a precious gift from Tira Virte, and well-paid besides. But an uncredentialed roving painter was shunned. Domaos eked out a marginal living in Ghillasian and Niapalese towns where anyone who could draw a straight line with a ruler became the local archivist-and who did not appreciate the arrival of a Grijalva Limner, disgraced though he was. Competition for every commission was intense, pay was despicable, Domaos was constantly watched while in the presence of young ladies (a rare occurrence; the scandal was common knowledge), and the work humiliated one who had twice reached the pinnacle of his profession.

In twenty-one years he gained not so much as a glimpse of another Grijalva. Because they were precious commodities, they did not travel without armed escort. He could not waylay one on the road. He was cut off not only from his country but from another life to replace this miserable one.

Finally, at the astounding age of fifty-three, with his health failing and his desperation growing, he wrote to Benetto's son, now Grand Duke Benetto II. The reply came back with a delegation of two Grijalvas and a sancta well-schooled in medicine: Domaos could return home to die.

As for Benecitta-she had been forgiven years ago. Her father loved her too much not to forgive her, though at his Grand Duchess's urgings he did leave their daughter incarcerated at the Sanctia for nine long years. But in 1162 Benetto was in an expansive mood-his Heir had just wed the colossally wealthy Verradia da'Taglisi-and so agreed at last to the pleadings of Count Dolmo do'Alva to free Benecitta. The count, no more proof against her allure than Domaos had been, had loved her since their youth. Theirs was the Marriage from which she flirted down at all and sundry, as captivating at thirty as she had been at nineteen.

Matra ei Filho, he thought, shaking his head. The painting was nearly a century old, he hadn't seen her since their final impassioned night together, and she'd been dead over forty years-yet he could still feel the helpless coil of desire in his belly. Amazing woman.

No, he had seen her again. She'd visited Domaos at Palasso Grijalva as he lay dying-to tell him she forgave him, if you please. So much for humility.

Odd that he hadn't recalled her visit until now. Then again, he'd been so feeble that he barely had strength to prepare his paints for the portrait that gave him Renzio Grijalva: a sixteen-year- old mediocrity in whose lanky, graceless, plain-faced body he'd spent a blissfully quiet twenty years.