A shiver worthy of midnight crossed my skin, even though great blocks of sun fell through the Mirana’s windows. “You’re telling us that Erras’s bones are buried beneath the roads.”
Father Malfara nodded, the lines of age in his neck meeting the dark collar of his robes. “Where the roads meet the city. The power of Erras rings this place . . . if you believe in that sort of thing.”
Cielo flew to his feet, unable to sit now that he had a destination, a new line to stitch onto the map that would lead us to Veria’s Truth.
I set down my cup. “Wait,” Oreste said, his hand on the table, falling just short of my wrist. “Are you . . . in danger?”
“Always,” I said.
Father Malfara nodded again. “God walk with you.”
“He’s never kept me company before,” Cielo said, stacking three baci di dama between long fingers and disappearing out the door.
I was stuck in a whirlpool of thought, unable to break away. The Order of Prai would not have approved of what Father Malfara had revealed to us, or the blessing he’d offered, but it had not stopped him.
He was able to stand up to great power, even if he was not brave enough to stay on his feet for long. It took me a long moment to understand that I was taking Oreste’s measure, the way I had with every man I had changed for my family’s sake in the Uccelli. And while it was true that Cielo’s father was cowardly, there were worse things in this world than a disappointment.
Beniamo was one. He had killed this man’s brother. He would kill every one of us unless the right person rose against him. And if Oreste was not brave enough to stand for long, perhaps he only needed more strength to prop him up.
“What is it?” Father Malfara asked, no doubt worried by the length and depth of my stare.
There was no way the news from the Neviane would have reached him yet. The fastest messenger, traveling on foot, would still be crossing the Otto territory. Cielo and I had gotten here ahead of the miserable truth.
“The Capo is dead,” I told him, to begin with.
“Cristoforo?” The name tumbled out of Father Malfara’s lips, soft as prayer. For a moment, it turned the Capo back into what he had been at the start: a loyal brother, a bright and hopeful young man. I did not need to forgive what he had done to Vinalia—to me—in order to understand the shadows that moved across Oreste’s face. My brother Luca was gone, and my soul knew the heavy gray feeling that came with such a loss.
There were more people to save, though, and that would require a great deal of magic. I would start by changing Oreste, not into a footstool but into the next leader of Vinalia.
“What do you know about Beniamo di Sangro?” I asked.
“My brother took him on as a second-in-command,” Oreste said. “The man wished to become a strega.” He could not quite hide his disgust at such a plan. And I could not quite hide how much I pitied his fearful heart.
But in this case, he was right to be afraid.
“What Beniamo wants is power, any way that he can have it,” I said. “And now he’s brought the Capo’s army to heel.”
Oreste stared into the distance, as the steam from his untouched cup of espresso twisted through the air.
“What if there was a way for you to step back from the Order of Prai without losing a drop of honor? What if it was not a disgrace, but a call to another form of duty?”
Father Malfara seemed to follow my logic without a detailed map. “If I say no, I suppose you will reveal my past.”
“No,” I said. “I will let you die knowing that you could have done something to save thousands of God’s children, and one of your own.”
As soon as we stepped out of the Mirana, Cielo looked up at the gray sky strewn with the rubble of clouds. The sun had gone into hiding, and it was almost impossible to tell how long we’d been inside.
Cielo looked so pale, I was surprised that I could not see the working of his blood beneath his fair skin. If a single talk with his father could do so much, I wondered how long it would take before he became wispy and transparent.
Before he faded away altogether.
I put a hand to the tempered blade of Cielo’s shoulder. “No need to act defeated now that we are finally gaining ground,” I said. “We know the Bones of Erras are beneath the city, and . . .”
Cielo spun on a choppy heel. “I cannot believe you are planning to make that man the leader of Vinalia. He’s an invertebrate creature who can’t take care of one infant, let alone a nation.” Cielo paced in tight circles, as if chasing himself down. “Oreste will run away the first time Vinalia cries.”
“And Beniamo will bash Vinalia’s head against the stones,” I said.
Cielo had seen what happened at the camp in the Neviane. He’d watched Luca die at the hands—or talons—of my brother. But I’d seen Oreste’s cowardice, too, how it drove him away from Amalia in the same hour that he finally saw his child. Cielo and I stared at each other, our pasts locked in a silent battle.
Father’s words broke the stalemate.
Family is fate.
This time, one of our families would shape the fate of an entire nation, and I could not have it be mine. “You have always accused the di Sangro family of being too friendly with violence,” I said. “You don’t have to agree with my argument. You can use your own logic against yourself. Your father might not be a good king, but will he be a catastrophic one?”
“From useless to catastrophic,” Cielo muttered. “That’s the scale on which we measure things now?”
I knew the exact depths to which we’d plunged since the Capo died. All the more reason to act, before that possibility was taken away from us, along with everything else. “You know the Capo’s bloodline is the clear one to follow for succession. Otherwise the Vinalians will never accept a new leader quickly enough to stop Beniamo’s ascendance. As far as I know, the Capo has only one other living relative.” I used the oldest trick, throwing my winning card out with a careless shrug. “If you prefer to run Vinalia yourself . . .”
Cielo leapt away from me slightly, as if my words had bitten him. “Oreste it is.” But as soon as he’d agreed to my scheme, he thrust an accusing finger back toward the Mirana. “Your plan might as well be a piece of cheesecloth, though. It’s fashioned entirely of holes. You know that man won’t last against your brother for five minutes before we find him huddling in the cellars of the Palazza.”
“I’m aware of what we’ll need to keep him upright. I’ll start searching out the bone roads, but I need you to—”
“Deliver messages to the five families, the streghe, and any other allies you’ve concocted?” Cielo asked.
My hands lodged on my hips as if those were their rightful homes. “Am I that easy to predict?”
“Knowing you in many forms is quite the advantage, Teo. I can always feel the way your winds are blowing,” Cielo muttered lowly. My throat stuck when I tried to swallow, and a faint dimple graced Cielo’s cheek. “But even without the help of magic, you are predictable. I could write an epic poem on the subject, but I’m afraid all the verses would be the same.”
“You can skip the poetry,” I said. “But I will be needing paper and something to write with. And I’d rather not use magic in Prai, at least until I know it’s welcome here.” The idea of facing yet another set of men who didn’t know what to do with a strega, and therefore did whatever they pleased, was less than tempting.
“We are in the greatest city in Vinalia,” Cielo said. “You can have paper from any corner of the world. Paper of every weave, every weight, every shade, and edged however you please. Paper fine enough to eat for supper.”
Cielo walked me past a row of shops filled with furnishings and ironwork to a stationer’s, a rarefied place of dark wood and brass fittings that gleamed from constant oiling. Stacks of ledgers wrapped in creamy leather sat next to handmade paper wit
h rosemary pressed into the pages. There were loose leaves made from untouched groves across the virgin continent, while the innards of one journal came from an ancient tree in the mountain countries near Oveto. I passed squat bottles of ink in unexpected colors: a serpentine green, a violent mauve. On one shelf, the proprietors of the shop had set out little cards with samples of their work.
Cielo stopped in front of a wedding announcement. The names were left blank, to be slotted in later.
“Fine work, don’t you think?” he asked, pointing out that one. He turned to me, studying my response.
“Do you ever . . . think about such things?” I asked.
“Becoming a calligrapher? Never,” he said, looking down at his hands. “I have nice enough script, but I don’t always have fingers, which would be an impediment.”
I rolled my eyes and moved along, but Cielo was stuck on that little card, one finger touching the weave of the paper. I looked back and found all mirth cut away from the strega’s expression.
“That is not on our path, Teo,” Cielo said. “It is miles away from our destiny of changing magic.”
“It shouldn’t matter,” I agreed. And yet, from some reason, it did. Not because I’d dreamed of a wedding all my life. Perhaps it was because I’d never dreamed of one until I had Cielo, and the spark inside of me lit. Since Mirella’s wedding, the untended fire had grown into a blaze.
Cielo’s fingers moved from the wedding announcement to a nearby stack of wares, tucking away a pen, followed by paper and ink. I was outraged—and slightly relieved at the distraction from my hopeless thoughts of marriage.
“You’re taking those?” I whispered hotly. “People think streghe are nothing but magical criminals at best, and you’re stealing?”
“There are men dashing off with entire countries,” Cielo said, sotto voce. “A bottle of ink and a pen are hardly the problem.”
Another one of Father’s sayings arrived in my head. A thief steals his own sense of right and wrong first, which makes the rest simple.
“We’ll pay the shopkeeper back,” Cielo said, probably because I was still glaring at him. The spindly shopkeeper was now glaring at both of us, whether because we looked suspicious or because we were now acting that way to match, I couldn’t tell.
I imagined the basket of olives that would appear on his step several months from now.
We left quickly and worked our way over several streets before I sat down in a brightly tiled piazza, under the beatific smile of a mermaid who spouted water from her pursed lips as well as both breasts.
I wrote as quickly as I could manage, spreading the paper across my lap to keep it from growing wet or grimy on the stones. As I wrote of Beniamo’s deeds in the Neviane, and what he had promised to do next, fear sent my letters sprawling.
Cielo walked the stone lip of the fountain, back and forth, back and forth. “It’s not right to leave you here, Teo. You don’t know the city.”
“Prai is not a person with whims and ways that have to be worked around,” I said, my spoken words breaking the flow of the written ones.
“Of course she is,” Cielo said, his frown implying that I’d learned nothing in all of our travels.
“I’ll be fine here,” I insisted, although I did not like the idea of wandering Prai alone. It meant leaving myself open to attack. What if Beniamo came for me first before declaring himself the new leader of Vinalia?
No. He had promised to hurt me before I died.
It was not much comfort, but I knew that Beniamo would not skimp on any kind of torture. I was safe for the moment—but nothing else was. Cielo would be fine as a bird, I assured myself. Beniamo was no longer able to track him in the air. My brother didn’t have magic. He was limited to a single, terrible form.
“You’ll have to move as quickly as possible,” I said, handing off the first two letters. Cielo held them out for the ink to dry, since he hadn’t stolen any powder. “At my guess, we have less than a week before Beniamo reaches Amalia with the Capo’s army.”
“I’ll take all of the messages at once,” Cielo announced.
“In bird form? Is that possible?”
“I’ve spent a fair amount of time as a flock,” Cielo said. “Though streghe are not meant to be carrier pigeons.”
“And you can fly in three different directions at once?”
Cielo studied the sky as if it held all of the answers and only needed to be looked at from the correct angle to give them up. “I’ve never really tried before, but . . . three?”
“One of these is going to the five families at Castel di Volpe, and the other two are headed back toward the Neviane.”
“I’m assuming one is for the streghe we left behind,” Cielo said, rolling the first two letters into scrolls.
I bent over the third, bearing down hard on the stolen pen. “I have written one for the soldiers of Erras.”
Cielo plucked the paper from my hands even as I was finishing off my signature. He looked over what I’d written. “It’s a bit brief. And biting.”
“That woman slit our throats, and you want me to offer her my best social graces?” I asked, springing to my feet, my hands leprous with ink. “Do you think Dantae will answer the summons?”
Cielo traced a few lively steps in the piazza, and the passersby looked at him with twice as much confusion as I did. “I think she’ll dance a Celanese jig if we give her those bones.”
“I’ll have them,” I said, making one more impossible promise. I pulled three threads from the bottom of my borrowed skirt and used magic to turn them into thick twine, a change that, for once, drew no unwanted eyes.
Then I tugged Cielo in by the elbows and undid all of my attempts at invisibility by kissing my strega. I leaned over the papers so I would not crush the delicate letters as our mouths sought new angles, and great depths.
“Fly fast,” I whispered.
“So I can put us at the center of yet another festival of enemies?” Cielo asked.
“So you can come back to me.” I kissed Cielo once more, so quickly that it cast me to the clouds and back down to earth in a single, dizzy moment.
Cielo grabbed the book, turned a page, and split into a trio of birds braiding through the air. They alighted on the edge of the fountain. With shaking fingers, I tied a message to each. As the birds took to the sky, my left ear caught the beat of Cielo’s wings but I refused to watch as my strega left me.
I kept my eyes on the ground, as if they could cut through the skin of Prai, to the bones beneath.
* * *
I walked back toward the safe house, tracing our path. As I headed down the gauntlet of bakeries, I wished I had Cielo’s long fingers or reversible morals. When I was nervous, my appetite swelled. I could have eaten a dozen of the delicately layered sfogliatelle or the raised, puffy bombolone piled in the windows.
But the sugared tops of the pastries only reminded me of the snowy Neviane and the streghe I’d dragged there in the hopes of making Vinalia safer for them—only to place them in my brother’s path and then immediately storm off.
As I passed through the Evracco neighborhood, my boots hit the cobbles like flint. Hearing that hard sound in one ear and not the other left me feeling unbalanced.
I found myself missing Cielo, missing my family, missing everyone I could imagine, from my sisters all the way down to Favianne Rao.
Of course, she’d never actually become a Rao. Who would know the truth about what had happened to her after I vanished from Amalia? Vanni, most likely. The five families traded gossip with more vigor than old men before confession. I would have to ask on his return. Not that Favianne and I had been close. We’d only circled each other once or twice before I realized she was eager to use me in her endless search for power and pleasure—and the feeling was a bit too mutual for comfort.
Still, I was curious to know what ha
d become of her. We were matched in ambition, and she was the only other person I knew who had slipped the hold of the five families. What did her new, handpicked fate look like?
Was it as strange and dire as my own? Or had she kept to a well-trodden path?
When I reached the safe house, I kept walking, marking its location from all directions so I would be able to find my way back. Then I left behind the building clad in shadows and vines, pressing toward the edge of Prai. Oreste had told us that the Bones of Erras would be found where the bone roads met the city.
I walked past so many doors painted in bold shades, so many people on their daily rounds of butcher and baker, a hundred packs of wild children. All I could think was how much this place would be changed if Beniamo had his way. I felt like I was seeing two cities at once—the one that existed now, and the one that would replace it if Beniamo was allowed to rise to power.
He would bleed Vinalia of color and life. He would not stop until every one of these people was as nervous as I had been as a child, casting glances over a shoulder, afraid of the moment when he noticed my happiness and crushed it underfoot, like that crown of violets. He wouldn’t do it for his own gain, or any kind of glory. Beniamo lived for the simple delight of watching my eyes go wide, and then empty.
He wanted me to have nothing.
To be nothing.
With this much distance between us, I could see a new truth: that was how Beniamo felt every moment, and he wished the rest of us to feel it too. No matter how much he had, it never gave him satisfaction. No matter how much power was gifted to him—through his birth or his life or the death of others—it would never be enough to fill the hollow in his soul.
Prai came to a sudden halt at a neighborhood composed of pale brick and nervous mothers. They churned through errands, dunking clothes into charcoal water in wooden buckets, none of them noticing a strega skirting around the edges of their homes. I walked to the line where the city dropped away, and it felt like being back in the Uccelli, standing at the edge of the Storyteller’s Grave.
The Storm of Life Page 16
