Assassin's Heart

by Sarah Ahiers

  I gave the boat another push. Maybe I’d lost sight of things. My goal had to be killing the Da Vias. I looked down at Les, hidden in the boat.

  He stirred. “Where are we going?”

  “I’m bringing you home.”

  “Marcello will be angry.”

  “He’s always angry.” I paused. “Why did you do it? Why did you tell Lefevre you were the murderer?”

  Les rolled over. “It was the right thing to do,” he mumbled.

  I poled us under a bridge. He’d put me before himself. I’d never known anyone who helped people just because he wanted to help them, and yet Les did so again and again. And it wasn’t just me he helped.

  He made me want to . . . I wasn’t sure. Do something or be someone different.

  To trust him fully, anyway. It was the least I could offer him in return.

  Somehow I managed to reach Marcello’s. I helped Les off the boat, my arms aching from steering it down the canals.

  Getting Les into the tunnel was easy. Getting him up the ladder at the other end was not. His feet slipped off the rungs and he kept apologizing. He sounded so genuinely ashamed that guilty tears came to my eyes until finally I called for help.

  The tunnel room above us flared with light, and a shadow stepped into the room.

  “I thought I said you weren’t welcome here,” Marcello said from out of sight, his voice stern.

  “It’s Alessio,” I said. “He’s hurt.”

  The grate opened and Marcello leaned over us, lantern in hand, looking so much like my father. He glared at me, but then Les apologized again and I almost went berserk, prepared to scream and threaten my uncle, anything really, to make him help us.

  Marcello set his lantern on the ground. He crouched, and together we lifted Les up the short ladder into the room.

  He vomited again, and Marcello looked worried. I pulled myself out of the tunnel and into the room.

  “What happened?” he asked me.

  “We were attacked. He cracked his skull on a stone wall.”

  Marcello swore. He used his shoulder to escort Les out of the tunnel room and into their great room. He gestured at the lantern. “Bring the light.”

  We walked past the fireplace to the curtained-off bedroom area. Marcello helped Alessio to a bed, and Les sat on the edge.

  “Hold steady,” Marcello said. He bent Les’s head forward and prodded the back of his skull.

  Les flinched, but Marcello forced him still and continued to feel beneath his dark hair.

  Finally, he stood, satisfied. “The bone isn’t fractured. He’ll heal with some rest. Help me get him to bed.”

  I unbuckled his leathers and pulled them off his arms and chest, being careful not to bump his head or snag his pendant.

  When I’d seen him shirtless before, I’d stared. Now he looked so tired and hurt that there was no excitement in seeing him, only more guilt.

  Marcello tugged off Les’s boots and pants while I removed the tie in his hair. I always hated sleeping with my hair pulled back. It gave me a headache.

  His hair was soft and smooth as it slipped through my fingers. Les lay down, and my uncle covered him with a blanket.

  “Sleep for now, Alessio,” Marcello murmured, pushing the hair off Les’s face. It was a surprisingly gentle and loving gesture from a man I’d seen mostly rage and anger from. “I’ll have to wake you occasionally, to make sure you’re healing right.”

  Les mumbled something in a language I didn’t speak, and my uncle leaned closer. When Marcello looked at me with a calculating expression, I turned away, giving them their privacy.

  “Yes, I understand.” Marcello kissed Alessio’s forehead, and we left him to rest.

  I walked to the fireplace and collapsed into a chair. Fatigue covered me like a shroud. Since the fire it seemed I always found myself on the edge of exhaustion.

  I set my mask on the table and rubbed my face. My hands were filthy, but I didn’t care. It was time to stop caring about a lot of things.

  Marcello handed me a glass with amber liquor. I drank it and it burned down my throat until it settled into a deep warmth in my stomach. He took a seat, eyeing his own glass before drinking.

  I placed the empty glass on the table, and my left shoulder burned with pain. I gasped and sat back, bringing my hand to it.

  “You’re injured.” Marcello stood.

  “No, it’s nothing. I just . . .” I closed my eyes and sighed. “Can you help me remove some stitches? They’ve mostly snapped at this point.”

  He set his glass down and walked away.

  I undid the buckles of my leathers, letting them slide around my waist. I sat half-dressed, wearing only my leather trousers and my under-leather camisole, but I was so tired it didn’t matter. The fire kept the room warm, and more than anything I wished to bathe, to curl up in a bed somewhere and maybe never wake.

  My shoulder was red and inflamed, but the wound in front appeared closed, a pink scar stretching smoothly across the flesh. I looked down and gasped.

  Beneath my loose camisole and across my chest, from below my breastbone and up to my clavicles, stretched a violent purple bruise from when the giant had rammed into me. I pressed against the bone, and pain flowed across my tissue. I bit back a whimper.

  Marcello returned with a medical kit. He glanced at me. “What’s the key to?”

  I looked at my key hanging around my neck. “My home.”

  He didn’t comment. Instead he pulled out a small scissors and examined my shoulder.

  “What happened?” he asked gruffly. He began to snip and pull out the threads on the back of my shoulder.

  “I was arrow shot, crossing the dead plains. The damn Addamos were chasing me and were too cowardly to follow me past the river.”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  Oh. I sighed. “I don’t . . . I’m not even certain where to start.”

  “How about you start with how you let my boy crack his thick skull almost wide open.”

  I held back a laugh. I didn’t think my uncle would appreciate it. Not that I thought Les would appreciate Marcello calling him a boy. Or thickheaded.

  “We were training. But then he was angry at me and tried to leave, and I followed him.”

  “Les does not have a temper. What did you do to anger him so?” He clipped out another stitch.

  “I don’t know. And before I got a chance to question him further, we were confronted by a ghost.”

  Marcello’s scissors hovered over my shoulder. “In the streets?”

  I nodded.

  “How did you get away?”

  I paused. If I told him the truth, it would lead to more questions. Questions I couldn’t answer. But I knew he’d be able to tell if I lied. And remaining truthful with him was probably my last chance to get into his good graces. I couldn’t afford another misstep.

  “It vanished before it could hurt us. I can’t really explain it.”

  “It vanished in the sunlight, perhaps?”

  I shrugged, and my uncle grabbed my shoulder, holding me in place. “In the sunlight, they simply fade away. This was something else. This was violent. I sent it away, somehow. Or Safraella did.”

  He grunted disapprovingly and glared at me until I turned away. He moved to the stitches on the front of my shoulder.

  “We were foolish,” I continued. “We’d left our weapons behind and were arguing in an alley and a lawman, a crooked lawman named Lefevre, found us. He’d brought men, and they attacked.”

  “You were unarmed?” He stopped in his ministrations. He took a few steadying breaths. “How could you be so incompetent? How did you even earn your mask?”

  My turn for a deep breath. I had stay on his good side. I needed him more than ever now. “I already said it was foolish. This place, this city, it pushes against me. It makes me sloppy.”

  He snorted. “And this lawman attacked you because . . .”

  “Captain Lefevre wanted to give me to the Da Vias for
coin, and he wanted Les for his murders. I warned him away, but he didn’t listen. There is no respect for clippers in this city. No respect for Safraella.”

  He set his scissors down and I examined my shoulder. It looked much better. Marcello sat in his chair and returned to the liquor in his glass. “Well, what did you expect? That you’d come here and the people would fall to their knees at the sight of you? That they would turn their eyes to Safraella and forsake their own gods? You are a foolish child.”

  My cheeks burned. “Foolish I may be, but I am no more a child than Alessio is a boy. I am the head of the Saldana Family, and though I receive no respect from the people of Yvain, I command it from you, Her disciple. And someone who should know better.”

  He rolled his eyes and sipped his drink before he motioned for me to continue with the story.

  I took a moment to calm myself. I didn’t know this man who shared my blood. I didn’t know if he purposely aimed to anger me or if he truly meant the things he said.

  “I tried to keep Les safe. I kept him out of the fight, though I knew he would not thank me for it. But when the giant attacked me, I crashed into Les and he took the brunt of our fall. After that we had to hide from lawmen until I could get him here.”

  “What happened to the men you fought?”

  “I stopped them.”

  “How many were there?”

  “Six. Though one fled, injured. And I can’t be sure the ones I dropped were all dead. I didn’t have time to check.”

  “Six men. And you were unarmed and trapped in an alley.”

  “I had a stiletto.”

  He stared at me, then downed his drink in a single gulp. “Who was your teacher?”

  “My brother Rafeo. And my father and mother, of course.”

  “Your brother.”

  I nodded. “Matteo, my other brother, wouldn’t bother. Sometimes I would spar with Jesep, too. Or Val.”

  “Val. I do not recognize this name.”

  “Valentino Da Via. He’s my suitor.” What I said hit me like a punch to the gut. “Was my suitor.”

  His eyes widened and showed a touch of that rage I had witnessed before. “You were fraternizing with the Da Vias? Did you parents know?”

  I exhaled, trying to tread carefully. He could explode again. Throw his glass into the fire and scream his rage once more.

  “No. I hid it from them. There was no love between us and the Da Vias. I think my father had tried to buy peace between us when I was younger, but it didn’t work.”

  He took a breath. “Dante was always something of a fool, though maybe he’ll have more wisdom in his new life.”

  I bristled. “Don’t speak of my father that way.”

  Marcello smirked. He opened his mouth to counter but then seemed to deflate. “I suppose you are right. It does me no good to speak ill of the dead, even if they brought about their own demise.”

  “My father didn’t bring about his death. The Da Vias did.” And me. My fault.

  He rubbed his forehead, smoothing out the lines, before he ran his fingers through his hair. “What do you know about me, Lea? How did your father speak of me?”

  This was an odd turn of conversation. “He didn’t speak of you. Only my mother did, and that was to tell us to never bring you up.”

  He nodded slowly. “Your father was a great many things. He was my brother and I loved him, but sometimes he believed in peace too much, saw the good in people even when it was nothing more than a mirage. It was your father’s misplaced belief that the Da Vias could be reasoned with that led to the death of your Family.”

  “No.” I shook my head. “I don’t believe you. What could you know of it anyway?”

  “What could I know of it? Everything.” He settled in his chair, his hair resting against his shoulders. “The Da Vias killed the Saldanas because of me.”

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  twenty-seven

  HIS WORDS WERE A SLAP TO THE FACE. HE WAS RESPONSIBLE for the Da Vias’ attack on us? That couldn’t be true. “I don’t . . . I don’t understand.”

  “When I was younger, much younger, I was married to Estella Da Via, as you know. It was not a marriage of love. It could not be, from me, but the heads of our Families wanted a child from our union, of Saldana and Da Via lineage, and peace between us, if only for a time, and I was nothing if not obedient.”

  He shifted in his seat. “No child came, even though the years passed as they do. And any ease between us rotted away until the core was nothing but resentment and blackness. And so I found someone else.

  “He was a Maietta, and he was beautiful and full of grace and wit, and never before had I loved someone so well.”

  My uncle’s eyes sparkled as he remembered his long-ago lover. The memory smoothed his face, made him appear younger.

  “We kept it secret, of course. I was married, and the head of the Saldanas, my uncle Gio, was not tolerant of men who desired other men. But they found out, of course. My wife. My Family. Such anger from them all. My wife blamed me for the lack of child she’d been promised. Of course, how could she know who was to blame? Sometimes children are not born to a married union, and it is the way of Safraella. And I don’t think our scarcity of love for each other helped.

  “I blamed her for wasting some of my best years, for sinking her talons in and dragging me into the dark pit she had created. It was she who had driven me elsewhere. I refused to reconcile. No threats from her Family or mine would make me turn away from Savio.”

  He rubbed his jaw with the palm of his hand, lost in the tale. I thought about how it must feel, to love someone so well but to be told to turn away from them. I’d kept Val a secret purely because of that reason. But maybe it hadn’t been love between us, or at least on his part. Not if he could betray me so easily. Maybe I didn’t really understand true love, like Marcello described. Maybe love was less about feeling wanted and beautiful and more about feeling safe.

  I glanced at Les, asleep on his bed.

  “I don’t know who planned it,” my uncle continued. “Probably my wife. I do know, though, that it was her brother, Terzo, and my uncle Gio who murdered Savio. They didn’t even try to disguise it. There were witnesses, and they were in Maietta territory.

  “I’d never felt such pain. And anger and grief. And never since. My uncle Gio thought that would be the end of it. That by removing Savio, he had effectively ended the problem. So confident was he that when I approached him in our home it never occurred to him I’d come to kill him.

  “It was much easier than I thought it would be, spilling the blood of my family. Truly, I felt nothing. And I certainly felt nothing when I killed Terzo, my wife’s brother.

  “After that, things were a little . . . complicated.” He waved his hand in the air. “Dante took over as head of the Family. The Da Vias felt their honor had been damaged, and the Maiettas were calling for a blood price for the death of Savio. I probably would have left on my own if Dante hadn’t disowned me. There was nothing left for me anyway.

  “As far as I know,” he said, “Dante paid the Maiettas their blood price.”

  A blood price to the Maiettas would have been a large sum of money. Maybe that was where much of the Saldana fortune had disappeared to.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  He paused and appeared taken aback. “For what?”

  “For Savio. For the way you were treated by people who should have loved you and stood by you no matter what.”

  He grunted. “Yes, well. Family before family, of course. There was no real way to ease the Da Vias’ anger. They are quick to cast blame and slow to forget. Even if Dante tried to smooth things over, I don’t see how that would have worked. Estella felt I had personally shamed her, and nothing less than my head would’ve appeased her. She blamed Dante for letting me leave instead of turning me over to them. And the
n she started to blame Safraella.”

  “Estella Da Via is a lunatic,” I said. “And now she’s the head of the Da Vias.”

  “That’s unsurprising. She was not all that stable when I left. I heard she never did produce any children, to her eternal shame.”

  “How did you hear that? And how did you know my name and know of my brothers? We weren’t even born.”

  “Your mother sent me letters, sometimes. Though none in recent years.”

  “My mother? Bianca Saldana?”

  He rolled his eyes. “Unless you have another mother I don’t know of, then yes.”

  This . . . this flipped my world upside down. My mother had sent letters to Marcello Saldana, who we were told never to speak of. Who had brought shame to the Family. “Why would she do that?”

  “We were friends. I was glad when she married Dante and joined our Family. I had great love for Bianca and my brother. It opened a wound I thought long healed to hear of their deaths at the hands of the Da Vias.”

  “Then why do you refuse to help?” I leaned forward. “Come with me! You know what it’s like to need vengeance. You took yours but now stop mine. Give me the location of the Da Via Family home and we can make them pay for what they’ve done to our Family. I will make sure they never forget the Saldanas!”

  “At the cost of your own life, you mean?”

  I leaned back. “If need be. I’m not afraid to die.”

  He laughed. “No, of course you’re not! You’re, what, seventeen? And a disciple of Safraella. I’m sure you can’t wait to meet Her cold embrace.”

  He mocked the gods too easily. “You step awfully close to blasphemy. I am Her disciple, and I’m confident She would offer me a fast rebirth.”

  “And then what? You die and are reborn? And what of the people you leave behind?”

  “There are no people. Everyone’s dead.”

  Marcello widened his eyes in a way that said he didn’t believe me. He looked over to where Les slept.

  My stomach coiled at the thought of Les. Of Les injured in the alley, of the brief moment when I’d thought he was dead.

  “Dying is the easy part.” Marcello got to his feet. “But what you leave behind is another matter.” He glanced at Les again. “I fear you will destroy him.”