Starling

by Fiona Paul

  “A woman for hire,” Belladonna said plainly. “And the women we culled from the parties, not much better. All of them attending willingly, hoping to be feasted upon by vampires or predatory men. These are crimes, you understand? Why have them executed by the Senate and see their bodies tossed in shallow graves if mankind can benefit?”

  “You’re mad.” Cass couldn’t even believe she was having this conversation. She turned away from the bars, eager to put distance between herself and Belladonna.

  “Perhaps,” Belladonna said. “But I am not the one in a cage. Think about it. You don’t have to follow in the footsteps of your parents.”

  Cass spun back around. “What do you know of my parents?”

  “Don’t listen to her, Cass,” Falco said. “You can’t trust her.”

  But Cass barely heard him. For the last five years she had wondered about her parents. She had felt responsible for their deaths. And when she found the pages torn from the Book of the Eternal Rose, the pages that made it seem like her parents’ death had been connected to their membership in a secret society, Cass had been torn between denouncing them as monsters and seeing them as defenders of goodness—righteous agents who infiltrated the Order to bring about its destruction.

  Belladonna’s eyes seemed to glow in the candlelight. “So now you wish to talk?”

  “Tell me about my parents.”

  “They came to Florence when my father was still alive, under the guise of learning from him. Taking his knowledge back to Venice. Foolishly, my father let them view the Book of the Eternal Rose.” She scowled. “They stole pages. Names of our members and benefactors.”

  “So you killed them,” Cass said.

  Belladonna lifted her shoulders slightly. “They gave us no choice. Pity, really. Your mother’s blood contained the purest humors I’ve ever seen.” She smiled to herself. “Aside from yours. Think about what I said. You don’t have to die. If you were willing to continue supplying us with blood until we found alternative sources, you could join us.”

  Cass watched Belladonna leave, her head a mess of conflicting emotions. Clearly she wasn’t going to relinquish her blood so that Belladonna and Dubois could dole out immortality to those they deemed worthy, but if she pretended to acquiesce to their demands, it would mean staying alive longer. And that would increase her chances for escape. But just the thought of pretending to work with the Order made her heart rage inside of her. She kept seeing Minerva’s pale, frail body slumping ever closer to the ground.

  “I think she likes you,” Falco said.

  “Please tell me you are not going to joke at a time like this,” Cass seethed. “A woman’s been murdered right in front of us, and by all accounts we will be next.”

  “Mi dispiace. Sometimes that’s how I handle things, by making light of them. It’s better than the alternative.”

  Cass balled her hands into fists. The alternative was to admit that both she and Falco were going to be tortured and killed.

  Unless they could escape.

  “I’ve been thinking,” she said. “If there were just one guard, one of us could get him to come inside our cell and somehow overpower him and get the keys.”

  Falco looked dubious. “Even if we were to escape, where could we go?” he asked. “We’d have to flee the country to escape them.”

  “We’d find the book,” Cass said. “Piero said Belladonna has it. Did you hear her tell him to insert his latest notes?” Cass pointed at the table where the piece of parchment still sat. “I bet it’s here, in the workshop. If we find it, they’ll all be arrested, Falco. And we’ll be free of them. Forever.”

  “Even if we found it, what makes you think the Doge or Senate would so much as glance at it before executing you?” Falco asked. “You’re a fugitive. I’m a petty criminal. No one would listen to us.”

  Cass hadn’t thought about that. Despite everything she’d seen over the summer, a part of her still wanted to believe in justice, that goodness would be rewarded and evil would be punished. But Falco was right. Regardless of what the book’s pages contained, she had committed crimes against the Republic, crimes for which she might hang.

  “Feliciana would surrender the book for us,” Cass said. “She was going to help me look for it at Palazzo Dubois, but that’s when I was taken by Piero.”

  “How convenient. Perhaps she’s been working with them the whole time.”

  “Funny. Luca said the same thing about you.”

  Falco’s eyes narrowed. “Did he now?”

  “I don’t believe it,” Cass added quickly. Luca had never even spoken to Falco. All Luca had seen was a man who had willingly put Cass’s future at risk. Falco might be reckless, but he wasn’t evil. Cass knew that much.

  Falco’s expression softened. “It’s all right. It’s not important. If we’re going to die here, I don’t want us to do it fighting.”

  “We’re not going to die here,” Cass said.

  Falco got to his feet and stretched his arms over his head. He turned away and walked to the far side of his cell and then back again. “Well, in case we do,” he started, “I want you to know that I’m sorry for all of my harsh words. I’m sorry for not believing you sooner.”

  “I know,” Cass said. “You say things you don’t mean when you’re angry. We both do.”

  Falco nodded. “Some of it I did mean, but it’s because of things that happened to me a long time ago. Still, I had no right to try to force my beliefs about the Church upon you. I can see that you derive strength from your faith, even now. I should never have tried to take it from you.”

  “I don’t understand why you would choose not to believe,” Cass said. “You could embrace faith and feel strong just as I do.”

  Falco shook his head. “It isn’t a matter of choice, Cassandra.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “When I was fourteen, I fell in love with a girl I had known my whole life. Her father was a shoemaker; mine was a cobbler.” Falco smiled to himself. “It seemed perfect, really.”

  Fate, Cass thought. A wound opened up inside her. When she had first met Falco, it had seemed so inevitable, a destiny handed down by God. But now she knew that wasn’t it at all. Perhaps meeting him had been random and meaningless, or more likely it had been to teach her about the sort of person she was, and the sort of person she wanted to become someday.

  “Ghita was unusual,” Falco continued. “She excelled at hunting and trapping, things at which most women had no skill at all. She wore her hair short. She enjoyed playing with the boys of the village instead of staying at her mother’s side and learning to cook and sew. As she got older, she grew incredibly beautiful, and many of the village women did not like her.”

  Cass could almost see the girl, sprite-like, frolicking in the woods with the town boys. Pale skin. Dark hair and eyes. A devilish grin. A girl who might pass for a boy from a distance, but was still very beautiful in her own right.

  Falco laced his hands together and squeezed. “I loved her, though. I thought I would marry her, but before I had a chance to ask for her hand, our village was ravaged by a mysterious disease. Overnight, it seemed as if half of the villagers had fallen ill. Two days later, our village was rife with dead. Bodies piled up in the streets. My mother forbade any of us to leave the house. My father didn’t even go to the shop.” He paused for a moment, his face contorting as if this part of the memory was particularly painful for him. “Ghita’s whole family died. She came to my parents’ house and begged us to let her in, but my mother refused, saying Ghita was tainted with sickness—she had to be. I will never forget the sound of her fists banging on our door, the sound of her cries as they gradually faded away.

  “But somehow she didn’t fall ill.” He looked down at the floor. “The villagers began to say there was something wrong with her. That if she were not a witch, she would have contracted the di
sease like the rest of her family. The villagers decided the only way to stop the deaths was to offer Ghita up as a sacrifice. Women went from home to home, saying that Ghita was evil and the illness was punishment for our village letting her live.” Falco shook his head. “I know it sounds like madness, but I suppose when people are falling dead around you, it’s easy to cling to any solution, however absurd or insane.” He sighed. “Some of the afflicted went to Ghita’s house. They drove her out into the street. And then”—his voice broke a little—“for the first time in days, the villagers dared to creep from their dwellings. Ghita was surrounded. Our village priest was even there. When I learned what was happening, I disobeyed my mother and fled to Ghita’s aid, but by then it was too late. She had been killed by people I once believed to be friends.”

  “Falco.” Cass’s throat was raw. She could almost see it: the town square, the broken body of the woman he had loved, the surging crowd.

  “I left home the next day,” he said, as though he hadn’t heard. “It was years before I forgave my mother for not offering Ghita sanctuary. I know she was only trying to protect her own children.” His face hardened. “But I will never forgive the rest of those monsters for stoning her to death in the street, like a sick dog. I will never believe that any god, anywhere, would have allowed such cruelty.”

  Cass had no words. She stared at her hands, blinking back tears. The story explained Falco’s distrust of religion and his loathing of all things supernatural. How horrible it must have been for him to lose someone he loved in such a manner.

  “That’s how I ended up in Venice,” Falco continued. “Originally I had planned to go to Florence, to study the works of Michelangelo and da Vinci, but it felt too close to home. So I came to Venice instead.” He looked up at Cass, his blue eyes caressing her skin. “And fell in love again.”

  “Oh, Falco,” Cass said softly. “I am so sorry for this disaster. If it weren’t for me, you never would have ended up here.”

  “It’s all right, starling.” Falco twisted his fingers through the bars until they were wrapped around Cass’s hand. “There’s no place I would rather be.”

  “Fire rages neither for good nor evil. A neutral force, it destroys everything in its path.”

  —THE BOOK OF THE ETERNAL ROSE

  seventeen

  Cass slept fitfully. She dreamed she was on a great ship with billowing sails that reached all the way up into the heavens. She stood on the top deck between her mother and Belladonna. Belladonna reached out for Cass with her deformed hand. Four fingers tightened around Cass’s wrist. “The world needs you,” she said softly. “You are the key.”

  “No.” Her mother pushed Belladonna away. “She won’t give herself to you. She’s stronger than that.”

  “It is a strength she owes to the world,” Belladonna said. “It is her duty to share.”

  Cass turned from her mother to Belladonna, stunned, unable to speak. The way they stood, the way they spoke, it was as if they had once been friends.

  The sky rumbled. Rain began to fall, making the sea wild and the deck slippery. With each pitch of the boat, Cass slid back and forth between the two women.

  “You don’t care about the world,” her mother told Belladonna. “You only care about those close to you, the rich and powerful.”

  A rogue wave tossed the ship sideways, and Cass fell, tumbling toward the edge of the deck. Her mother and Belladonna both dived toward her, each grabbing one of her hands. She wrapped her fingers around theirs as the boat twisted her body left and then right.

  Another pitch. More sliding. The ship keened sharply, and her body rolled from the hard deck onto nothing but air. Cass opened her mouth to scream, but no sound came out. She was dangling over the edge, held fast to the boat by nothing but her grip on her mother and Belladonna. Cass didn’t know where the ship was headed, but knew that she would die if she didn’t make it to her destination. She would die if either woman let go of her. Her hands grew slick with sweat.

  And then came the spiders. They trickled from Belladonna’s cuffs, one after the next. Cass felt their tiny legs on her flesh and shrieked. She let go of Belladonna’s hand. Above her, her mother cried out. She couldn’t hold Cass by herself. Belladonna looked down with her wide feral eyes. She flicked a spider from her hand down onto the bare skin of Cass’s cheek. Cass screamed again. Her body twisted violently.

  And fell.

  She plummeted toward the black sea.

  “Signorina. Signorina, wake up.”

  Cass’s eyes snapped open.

  The guard stood in front of her cell, his mouth twisted in a grimace. “Everything all right?” He turned and left without waiting for a reply.

  A thin shaft of daylight spilled into their makeshift prison through the doorway that led into the rest of the workshop. She was relieved to see Falco right where he had been the previous night. Even in the worst of circumstances, Cass was grateful not to be alone.

  She went to the bars that separated her from Falco and watched him sleep, soothed by the rhythmic rising and falling of his chest. The wounds on his face had swollen and discolored overnight. She didn’t know if he was going to be able to see out of either eye today, but she prayed that he would. They would need all of their senses if they were going to escape. Today might be the day Piero’s spiders arrived and he began to take their blood. With each bloodletting, Cass and Falco would grow weaker, and the possibility of survival would grow slimmer.

  Falco groaned and rolled over onto his side, but didn’t wake. Cass stared at his back, at the muscles in his shoulders that pulsed gently with each breath. She slid as close to him as the bars would allow.

  Her eyes flicked over to the empty cell. For a moment the pile of blankets seemed to move, as if Minerva were still alive and yesterday had been a nightmare. But Cass had watched the courtesan’s body turn gray. Bloodless. A shell. The bowl filling up, and then the chalice. She wondered what had happened to Minerva’s blood, whether Belladonna had bathed in it as she had bathed in the blood of Tatiana de Borello in Florence.

  ~

  At midday, the guard brought food. When he unlocked Cass’s cell to hand her the tray, her skin itched at the thought of freedom. But once again, it wasn’t the right time. She and Falco might escape the guard only to go out in the hallway and find Belladonna and Piero blocking the door. Besides, today he stood at the door with the tray. Cass needed to get him farther into her cell to try to incapacitate him with the technique Seraphina had taught her.

  Falco paced back and forth, awaiting his own tray of hard bread and sour ale. His eyes were bloody and swollen, but his head turned to follow the guard’s every move. Cass knew he was also thinking about escaping. She was just glad to see him up and walking around. There would be no way they could run away if she had to carry him.

  When the guard left, Cass and Falco huddled close on either side of their bars as they ate. Cass ripped her stale bread into small pieces and consumed every last bite. She was so hungry, the guard could’ve given her a bowl of dirt and she probably would have choked it down. The ale tasted better today too.

  “We’re going to get out of here,” Cass said. “You know that, right?”

  Falco nodded as he swallowed hard. “Either that or we’re going to die trying.”

  They finished their food and sat there, together. Neither of them spoke. They didn’t need to. As much as Cass wished Falco had not been captured while looking for her, she couldn’t deny she felt stronger with him than she would have felt if she’d been alone.

  When the guard came to take their empty trays, Piero was with him. “Just checking to make sure both of you are all right,” he said. “Bella was worried you might try to kill yourselves in the night.”

  “Perhaps you should kill yourself, Piero,” Falco said. “Before Bella does it for you. She’ll dispense with you the moment you’re no longer useful.”
>
  Piero ignored him. He stood with his arms crossed as the guard retrieved Falco’s tray.

  “Where is Belladonna today?” the guard asked as he secured Falco’s cell with the padlock.

  “She’s attending a function at Palazzo Domacetti.” Piero rolled his eyes as if he couldn’t imagine anything less worthwhile. “Certain elements of the populace have taken to linking Bella’s name to Joseph Dubois, and now that he’s been accused of corruption and conspiracy, she’s trying to make certain the city knows they are not working together.” He turned to leave.

  “No one will believe that,” Cass said. “The truth will come out eventually.”

  Piero paused, resting one hand on the door frame. Then he spun around. “Signorina Cassandra,” he said. “The truth is, now that the new spiders are waiting for me down at the quay, tomorrow it will be your turn to donate to the Order’s noble cause.” He leaned back against the wall, his curtain of dark hair falling back from his face. “Would you like me to bring them by for a visit after I retrieve them? I remember how much you like spiders.”

  “Vile little beasts,” Cass spat. “Just like you.”

  Piero smiled. “I’ll spend the rest of today extracting their venom. But I’ll be back bright and early tomorrow, and then we’ll finally be able to make more working elixir.” He approached the front of her cell, and Cass stepped back out of his reach. He leaned close, so close she could smell the metallic scent of blood on him. “I wonder how much I can draw from you without stopping your frail little heart.”

  Falco viciously kicked the bars of his cage. “If you touch her, I will kill you.”

  Piero arched an eyebrow at Falco. “Is that so? You don’t even look like you could swing a fist right now. Are you planning on painting me to death?”

  Falco clenched his right hand. “Why don’t you come in here and we’ll see if I can swing a fist?”