by V. Briceland
Risa turned in her seat, worried at their sudden change of pace. “What’s she going to do?”
“I don’t know,” said Milo with a shake of his head. Even at this tense moment, he still managed to spare her a grin. “But I’m sure it’s going to be good.”
Camilla’s voice rang out across the water. The chasing craft was closing in fast. “Let us pass,” she begged, her voice surprisingly weak. She even sounded as if she might cry, which to Risa’s ears sounded strangely out of character. “Please. We didn’t mean to do anything!”
“You should have thought of that earlier, traitor,” snarled the guard at the gondola’s prow, letting the other guard slow down their craft. “Lay down your arms and halt in the name of the prince!”
“Fine, fine!” Her right fingers still wrapped around the gondola’s punt, Camilla reached to the hilt at her left side and, with her free hand, pulled out her sword. She dropped it behind her in the bottom of the boat. Milo took her cue and knelt down, dropping his sword into the unoccupied space between himself and Mattio. Then he stood up unsteadily, showing his empty hands. “We’re unarmed.”
“She’s easier than you thought she would be, Vercutio,” said the guard at the other gondola’s stern. They were a mere arm-span away from Camilla’s gondola at this point, and inching closer.
“The women always are,” said the guard who had addressed them first. When he smiled with triumph, Risa saw that one of his incisors was made of gold. She also thought she noticed Camilla bristle silently at his next remark. “Pretty things. Shouldn’t be made guards, though.”
“Or given swords,” laughed the other.
The iron ferro at his gondola’s prow nudged against Camilla’s boat. Obviously intending to board, the guard swung a foot out. Risa suddenly understood, from his gleeful expression, that he did not realize Camilla had deliberately allowed them to catch up. He began to pull himself into her gondola.
Suddenly, Camilla’s heavy wooden punt cascaded up and out of the canal. Droplets of water formed a perfect arc in the air as she arched the pole over her head and brought it straight down on the guard’s arm. The loud crack of wood against bone made Risa squeeze her eyes into slits.
“I don’t need a sword,” Camilla declared. The guard toppled into the water and began screaming in pain—a piercing squeal like a pig being led to slaughter. With both hands clutching the center of her pole, Camilla drew it up into the air again. Without hesitation, she plunged the end of it squarely against the middle of the man’s forehead.
The squeal ended instantly. For what seemed like an endless moment, the guard swayed up and down in the gentle motion of the waves, stunned. His eyes rolled back in his head.
“Go,” Camilla shouted to Mattio, urging him to punt at full speed once again. A circle of cherry red puddled on the guard’s brow where the pole had struck him. His eyes were sightless and dulled. Then, with one smooth motion, his body slipped beneath the water.
Camilla looked sick to her stomach. Choking on bile, she handed her pole back to Amo. When she reached her seat, she leaned over the edge of the gondola and vomited into the water. She’s never killed anyone before, Risa realized. Even in the name of duty, it could not have been easy to end a man’s life. A chill crept over her. How many more lifeless bodies would there be before day’s end?
“That’s one down,” Milo said to himself, his words grim.
33
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A country is more than its standards, more than its fortifications. From the highest to lowest, a country is its people.
—Orsino, King of Cassaforte, during the Azurite Invasion
We need a new plan.” Milo pointed to the south, where the Temple Bridge loomed before them.
Had Risa been looking at it from her familiar perch on the caza balcony, surrounded by family and the men of her father’s workshops, this longest and broadest of all the spans in Cassaforte would have been beautiful in the fading sunlight. But she could not now admire its five graceful, ornate arches, for she was astonished by what she saw underneath: dozens upon dozens of gondolas had been moored under and around the arches, completely obstructing the waterway.
Risa’s first panicked thought was that the guards had managed to outpunt their party and were conspiring to block their route. As she looked at the collection of boats, however, she noticed that they were filled with huddled people wearing worn shawls and cloaks. Ropes tied between the gondolas’ ferri had been hung with drying laundry. Even from a distance it was impossible not to hear the squalling of infants in their mothers’ arms, and sounds of laughter and argument from the people crowding the floating island of boats.
Risa looked back at Milo in shock, but he seemed unsurprised. “You must never have traveled this way near nightfall,” he told her, still looking over the stern to keep an eye on the one determined guard still in pursuit. “The gondola people moor here for the nights. It’s a nuisance.”
“Gondola people?”
Ferrer had been tense and quiet for the last few minutes, but he spoke across the short distance dividing them. “Many of the city’s poor and outcast live in their boats, my dear. I had no idea there were so very many of them.” He shook his head.
“But how can we get through?” Risa knew she sounded hysterical, but there was simply no clear passage ahead. They drew nearer, speeding toward the bridge at a rate alarming to some of those in the stationary gondolas. Several men were already standing up and shouting angrily at them, warning them to slow down.
“We can’t.” Milo set his jaw. “We’re going to run across the flotilla—yes, jump boat to boat—and commandeer a vessel on the other side. Camilla, you take care of the old man. No offense, Cazarro,” he added with respect.
“None taken,” said Ferrer mildly.
“I’ll do the best I can to guide us across, but everyone, keep your eyes open. Hold on tight.” Grabbing the pole from the exhausted Mattio, Milo thrust it against the canal bottom. Their gondola began to sweep into a circle, spinning out of control toward one of the bridge’s stone supports. His sister followed his example. Dizzy and confused, Risa watched as Camilla’s gondola began to rotate away from them. Behind them, the guard still giving chase cried out in astonishment and furiously attempted to slow down his own craft.
A great outcry arose from the assembly of boats beneath the bridge. From behind her, Risa heard the shrieking of women and the angry bass shouting of men. “Hold on tight!” Milo cried again, with such command that Risa immediately braced herself.
As their boat collided into the outermost of the moored mass of gondolas, the impact nearly knocked her off balance. Its force spun them once more, into another craft, jarring Risa so thoroughly that it felt as if she were an insignificant bundle dropped from a very great height. Finally, their gondola smacked into a stone pillar. The hostile guard’s craft rammed into theirs, which sent him sprawling, face-forward, into its bottom. They all fell forward at the impact.
An angry man with a thick mustache was shouting at them when they rose to their feet, all trying to keep their balance low so the gondola did not tip. When Milo drew his sword, the man stopped shouting, noticing for the first time that both Milo and Risa wore uniforms of the city guard. Only when Milo leapt into the man’s gondola from their own did he object. Milo leaned over and held out his hand to Risa. “Come on,” he urged, ignoring the man’s astonishment. “Just follow me.”
Risa had crossed from one boat to another many times, but never so many and never under such tense circumstances. Each of the gondolas was stacked with a bewildering variety of clothing, bundles, boxes, and even coops of chickens or rabbits. With every step, Risa feared trampling on a family’s entire possessions. “Sorry,” she told a woman eating a pepper, who swatted at her legs with a towel as they stepped into her boat. “Sorry!” she repeated to a dirty-faced girl who sucked her finger and
impassively watched the three of them lurch over the plate of bread that was her dinner.
As tightly parked together as the boats were in the dark of the bridge, there was little chance of them capsizing. In many spots it was easy to hop from one planked seat to another, but often some of the leaps they took were perilous. Risa found herself cringing when she stepped into a basket of eggs and received a lifetime of curses from the old woman who had just set them down. They were moving slowly enough that she could see the others. Under the next arch, Camilla and Amo were assisting Ferrer through the maze of people and boats; they would intersect with Risa’s party in a matter of moments. Baso seemed to be picking a path of his own, behind the rest of the group.
From behind her Risa heard a woman’s scream, followed by a splash of water. “Muro’s toe,” Mattio cursed, several vessels away. “He’s close.”
The hostile guard had dragged himself up and into one of the gondolas. Water from the bottom of his craft had soaked his uniform. Anger fueled his every move. With amazing strength he scrambled across several seat planks in one desperate leap. A deep-chested man rose and began to shout at him, but the guard dealt him a savage blow to the middle and kept stalking toward his prey.
“Now we can deal with him,” Milo growled. “Get down.” He pushed Risa onto a seat, where she found herself face to face with a girl who regarded her with barely veiled hostility. Though the girl was obviously her own age, Risa was astonished to see that she had a baby suckling at her breast. Milo vaulted in the guard’s direction.
“I’m coming,” Risa heard Camilla cry. She shouted an order for Amo to keep Ferrer moving toward the southernmost perimeter of the bridge. Milo grabbed a gondola pole from its crook at the boat’s side and held it with two hands, close to its center. The girl across from Risa glared at Milo, and then at Mattio as he scrambled to snatch a punt from the next gondola over, and then back at Risa. She continued to nurse the baby, jostling it up and down in a gentle rhythm, not seeming to care about the impending clash a few boats over. Risa wondered if brawls were a common occurrence among the gondola people.
At the sound of the chasing guard’s cocksure laughter, Risa tore her eyes away from the girl’s smudged and pock-marked face. The guard had grabbed a pole of his own. He feinted at Milo. With dexterity that dismayed her, he twirled the pole, stopped suddenly, and thrust it forward so that its ends nearly struck both Milo and Mattio’s faces. Milo ducked in time, but Mattio had to dodge to the side, his head banging a pillar. He clapped a hand to his face, groaning. Risa turned to the girl. “Help us,” she begged.
“Help you?” The drab scoffed. Her voice was hard as flint. “There’s a laugh. What you’re wearin’ don’t fool me. I’ve seen you. You’re one of the Thirty, ain’t you? You’ve never helped me. Why should I help you, high and fine as you are?”
Swiftly, Risa made some calculations in her head. These people were unlikely to aid them, and she could understand why. They had invaded their only homes, trampled their food, and endangered their few possessions. Her group was on their own. “Fine,” she snapped at the girl, with more severity than she intended, and seized a hefty fishing rod from the bottom of the gondola. “I’ll bring this right back,” she spat out, ignoring the girl’s yowls of protest.
She hopped toward the center of the underpass. Clack after clack of wood resounded as Milo and the larger guard began a barrage of blows and blocks. Her fishing rod was made of a sturdy length of wood; she hoped to get close enough behind the guard to prod him off his equilibrium.
“You damned fool,” Mattio barked, behind her. Risa turned to see him removing his hand from his nose, blood staining his fingers. “She’s not one of the useless Thirty. She’s Divetri. Cazarra of Divetri!” The girl mouthed the words after him: “Cazarra of Divetri … ”
When she heard a high-pitched shriek from Milo’s direction, Risa for a moment feared he had been injured. But the noise came from a young girl who cowered behind him, crying and covering her head. Milo, too, heard the scream, and swiftly turned to see.
His attacker took advantage of his momentary distraction and delivered a forceful shove with his pole—a shove that sent Milo toppling and nearly made Risa shriek. But before Milo landed on the helpless youngling, he thrust one end of his punt against the gondola’s bottom, did an acrobatic flip into the air and over the girl, and landed in the next vessel over.
Although the motion set the girl’s boat bobbing, she was out of harm’s way, Risa noticed with relief. A woman snatched her from an adjacent boat and scampered out of their path.
“Cazarra of Divetri? Risa?” She was so astounded to hear the dirt-encrusted girl pronounce her own name that she nearly halted in her progress toward the guard. “Tessa!” the girl called to a woman in a nearby gondola. “Did you hear that? I had Risa the glass maker’s daughter in my boat!”
She was close enough, now. Could she do it? She quailed for a split second—fighting was not something she was used to. Then again, she had already spent a morning performing impossible tasks. One more should not be beyond her.
The guard’s bulk eclipsed Milo from view. Risa waited until he had lifted the punting pole. Using as much force as she could muster, she rammed the fishing rod into the small of his back, as hard as she could, with a mighty grunt.
“You don’t say!” replied the woman, two boats over. “The one from the song?”
It was like trying to topple a palace wall with a blade of grass. The guard did not fall forward. He merely leapt sideways, keeping both Milo and Risa in his sights. With a grin, he used one hand to seize her rod and twist it from her hands. She yelled out in pain when the rough wood left scrapes across her palms.
“The very same. In my ’dola.” The girl sounded smug at the fact.
“Risa! Get back!” Mattio was scrambling toward her now, his face bloodied and wet. He tumbled into the young mother’s boat, his leg tangled in rope. Risa had no intention of backing off, however. She began to look around for some other weapon, so that she might try again.
Camilla had managed to cross closer to them, but was still out of reach. Risa could barely watch as Milo and the guard continued to do battle with the wooden poles; both guards seemed equally skilled. They alternated attacks in a manner determined to bash skulls or pierce the other’s midsection.
“Risa of Divetri? I love that song!” added a man several boats away. He leapt from his own gondola into one closer. The short sleeves of his tunic exposed brawny forearms. In each hand he clutched a tomato. “You shouldn’t be picking on Risa, the glass maker’s daughter,” he shouted at the guard, throwing one of the vegetables with great force. It hit the side of the guard’s head, catching him unawares and sending him reeling. With great satisfaction, the man hurled the other tomato so that it exploded in a juicy mess against the guard’s cheek.
A pepper flew through the air from a distance away, then an egg. Without warning, the air was filled with shouts and heckles and a bombardment from every direction. Fruit, vegetables, eggs, mugs, candles, stones—all soared beneath the Temple Bridge arches in the pursuing guard’s direction, causing him to cringe and attempt to ward them off. The pole dropped from his hands and clattered into a neighboring gondola as a second wave of artillery was launched from all sides. These items were cheap to her, she knew, but precious to these people who had next to nothing. Risa felt a catch in her throat to see the dirty girl, baby still pressed to her breast, rise to her feet, and with a great jeer, toss a wadded-up roll of old ribbon.
With the guard defenseless and unable to see, Milo took the advantage to bring the pole crashing over his head. The guard clutched his skull and fell to his knees as Milo brought it down once again, harder. The guard fell face-forward, arms outspread, in a heap over the side of the gondola. A great cheer went up from the immediate vicinity, though from the outlying areas of spectators vegetables still flew, pummeling the man�
�s unconscious body.
Instantly Risa began to make her way back toward Mattio, so she could help him disentangle himself. The girl regarded her as if she were an old friend come to pay a call. “I know it weren’t the fancy magic you people of the Seven do, but that was right fun for us common folk,” she said, jiggling the baby.
Risa could only gape at her words. In the last hour alone, they had all experienced more fear and danger than most people encountered in an entire lifetime. She had witnessed one of her friends kill a man. She had witnessed utter strangers, those who should have despised her for her wealth and title, defend her. Though full of wonder at how they had all risen to her aid, all she could feel was a bittersweet sadness that events had come to this sad state.
As she stood, she felt the power from the Olive Crown and the Scepter of Thorn still humming in the sack she carried. All around her, however, she sensed power of another sort—intangible, yet equally compelling. Some came from Camilla and Milo, so brave and willing to fight for what they believed. More came from Amo and Mattio. And from the crowd came even more energy, strong and as palpable as any enchantment. It was fearlessness. It was devotion.
“No, you’re wrong,” she told the girl. “What each one of you did just now was magic.” In a sudden impulse, she reached out to take the girl’s hand in her own. She vowed to herself that when all this was over, she would not only remember the girl and all the brave people without homes who sheltered at night under the Temple Bridge, but she would see what could be done to help them. “Magic is just easier to take for granted when it’s there all the time.”
34
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It is a pity that these strange people, these Cassaforteans, with all their indulgences and easy reliance on enchantments, sadly lack the qualities we in more civilized lands take for granted: resolve,
