by Kirby Crow
If he listened to instinct, he was finished. A rat would chew a leg off to escape a trap, but a rat couldn't anticipate infection or bleeding to death. A rat only knew to get away and live for the moment, whatever the cost.
With a supreme effort, Marion freed one hand to claw at Remo's eyes. Remo wailed as Marion wedged a finger in his eyeball, but he didn't let go.
Marion’s arm flopped to the street and he groped over the surface of the cobblestones, fingers hooked, searching. He curled his hand around a loose cobblestone, braced his shoulder, and swung his arm like a hammer.
The flat stone smacked Remo high on his temple.
The sound of the impact was muffled by the pulse drumming in Marion’s ears, but it must have been loud. Shouts rose and warmth sprayed his face. Remo toppled over.
Marion coughed and rolled away onto his belly, clutching the stone. He nearly swung it again when Jean turned him over.
“Marion?” Jean glanced to Remo, who twitched and stared at the sky, a large dent in place of his brow bone. “I think you did for him.”
Marion sat up, holding his aching throat. The front of his shirt was awash with blood. “No, I was just...” His protest faded. The dent in Remo's temple turned to a crimson well, and then the blood ran into the street, a pulsing gush of it.
Marion felt sick. “I would’ve offered mercy.”
“You’d have more luck petting a shark.”
“Can you help him?”
Jean hauled Marion to his feet and brushed dirt from his back. “What? Hell no, he's done for. His brains are stove in. I’ll help him later, if he's stupid enough to keep breathing.”
Marion’s knees wobbled. He rested his forehead on the ridge of Jean’s shoulder, fighting a wave of nausea. “You will?”
“Yeah.” Jean’s fingers patted the back of Marion’s neck. “I’ll help him right over the seawall.”
Marion felt like weeping. “I only wanted to get him off me.” He knew it was a lie the instant he said it. Surviving wasn't much of a trick. Any alley-cat could do it. Aureo expected more. If he'd offered Remo mercy and Remo had accepted, Aureo might have killed them both.
Jean glanced over his shoulder. “Here he comes. Get that look off your face.”
Aureo's swaggering gait opened a path through the cheering throng of men and boys. He wore a silk shirt of bright yellow, the wine glass cupped between two fingers, like he was attending a picnic.
Marion couldn't stop staring at the blood. A little river of it ran from Remo's ear, over the cobblestones, between the cracks, seeping into the sandy earth below. Another thin stream ended at the sole of Marion’s boot.
Aureo towered over them, an easy grin fixed squarely on his face. His golden hair had acquired streaks of gray in recent years. He drank more and his fury was slower to kindle, but deadlier.
“Marion,” he crooned, a voice like thick cream. “Lovely Marion. We’re a killer now, are we?”
Marion could not agree, but he couldn’t disagree either. “As padrone says.”
“Is he hiding someone in his pants?” Jean sassed. “Who's this fucking we?” His fingers dug into Marion’s shoulder, willing Marion to speak up.
“Don't be jealous, dearie,” Aureo sassed back. “We're just talking.” He slipped the sunburst pendant from his neck and turned it to show Marion the words etched deeply into the gold. “Do you know what this says?”
Marion nodded his head, numb. Everyone knew.
“Non omnis moriar,” Aureo intoned. “Not all of me shall die.” He put his finger under Marion's chin. “Remo’s your first man. He’s going to stay with you a while. Right now, your legs feel like they can't hold you, don't they? Sound is distant. Your mouth is dry. You don't want to think about what you did, but you can't stop thinking about it. Tonight, you won't be able to sleep. If you were a man grown, you'd go lusting after a whore. Instead, you'll lie awake on the roof and look at the stars, and wonder why it was him and not you.”
He pinched Marion’s cheek hard enough to leave a bruise. “But that's all. In a month, you'll wonder what the fuss was about, and by next year, you'll be a proper butcher.” He dropped his hand heavily on Jean's shoulder. “Like my captain here. Il principe!”
Aureo lifted his cup in a toast to the crowd. “Marion and the Prince!”
The watchers cheered and red wine sloshed onto Jean's neck, staining his skin.
That's all? Marion thought. There was blood on Aureo's boots, and he never even looked at Remo. If it was me lying there, he'd be the same.
A coldness settled in Marion’s chest. Aureo would have thrown him to the fish and gone to supper without shedding a single tear.
He had seen evil before, and he'd survived in the Zanzare long enough to know that he was not seeing it now. Aureo wasn't evil. He was nothing so formless as that. He was a walking husk filled with rage and pride and greed, and above all: vanity. Like a storm or a wild beast, he savaged all who were near to him, set on his own purpose, crashing over anything in his way.
Aureo was a great vessel bearing the lives of orphans and men who had no better master to look to, drawn only the blazing light of his malice. Wherever his followers were headed, they were helpless in his grip, bound to him with hope and horror and innocent blood. Even if they jumped ship, Aureo's wake would destroy them all.
There was only one thing for Marion to do.
He gave Aureo a bloodied smile.
JEAN
Aequora, Quarto
(Day 4)
Morning crept in with dreary fog, weather not uncommon for late summer. The drab light set the obsidian panes in the windows of the Black Keep to glowing with dull blue light. Brief storm clouds scuttled in the sky, gray against the rippling green banners of the city, while below, lamplighter youths in tall hats scurried through the narrow alleys to extinguish the gaslamps. Heliograph messengers jogged up and down the streets, carrying important communications from the sun towers, their bright yellow tabards blooming out of the fog like flowers. Telegraph messengers in blue were fewer in number, but more would come out at night, when heliographs could not operate.
In the highest room of the Black Keep, Jean Rivard looked down on his city and tried not to hate.
Marion couldn't choose a man from the Zanzare, no. Not even one from the Martello or the Arsenale. Marion—mi scuzi, Highwarden Casterline—had to have the only son and heir of the magestros himself. Tris Sessane was a Silk prick who’d never starved a day in his life, who wouldn't know a sword from a rolling pin.
But he knows how to make Marion his family.
Jean sighed and turned away from the window, pausing to rummage through the messy stack of papers on his desk. His office was musty with the smells of boots, candle wax, and beer. He'd spent too many nights up here, working until dawn, carding through information gathered from all corners of the city. He had spies in every quarter, even the docks, where Dominique Sessane reigned supreme as Captain of the Arsenale and protector of the city shores. Dominique had five hundred well-trained city soldiers at his command: the soldati.
There were four district wardens and one Highwarden. Jean was Southwarden, which put him in charge of the Zanzare, though no one had truly been in charge of the Zanzare for years. The Consolari prayed for the day it would simply sink into the Mire, but like a tough barnacle, the Zanzare endured.
He scanned a message from one of his many spies about strange cargo arriving in the Arsenale. Heavy crates of odd metal parts marked for the blacksmith forges, but in the informant’s words, the parts were too fine and well-made to serve as scrap. “They seemed like finished things,” he had written, “but their original purpose was not known to the stevedore unloading the Solari ship.”
Jean marked that message to forward to the Gaol. Stevedores were Dominique’s business and cargo manifests didn’t interest him. Let the jailer attend to it.
Silvere, Northwarden of the noble Citta Alta, had sent an invitation to be his partner at a dinner party in the Myrtles
. He read the address and realized that it was Marion’s house. An engagement party. Jean tossed the invitation aside with a curse and read the next memo. Yves, Westwarden of the plebian Martello, had sent only a scrap of a note with an ink-scrawl: Cervo.
Jean tapped the note with his index finger, thinking about how fine Marion had looked in his highwarden’s coat, standing outside Cervo’s bookshop on the edge of the Canal Fiore. Cervo dealt in rare books and paintings, and sometimes in narcotic herbs. Jean had been there himself to buy erba. What dealings could the learned Cervo have with the Zanzare?
The Island of Thieves was a thorn in the sides of the Consolari. The island inhabitants contributed very little to the city and the district was a hotbed of political dissent and violence. Every misfit, drunkard, brute, thief, or loafer seemed to wind up in the Zanzare, where they became Jean’s problem.
Jean knew the Zanzare in a way that Kon Sessane never would. The men down there were angry and hungry and tired of being treated like scum, and no matter how many reports Jean read or how many spies he paid, he kept arriving at the same conclusion: a war was coming.
Another goddamned war.
He shoved the note in his pocket and began the long walk down the stairs.
The Black Keep was ten stories of gray stone, far less than the Gaol, squatter and rounder, a sturdy, looming barbican symbolizing the strength and unity of the Wardens. The casements were lined with panels of obsidian in various grays, deep blues, and blacks, held together with lead in diamond patterns. When the sun struck the glass, the effect was the iridescent wings of a raven brushing the tower.
Ravens were birds of omen. They tended to inspire caution.
Few wardens were in the darkened halls. Jean passed no one on the stairs, though he heard laughter as he passed the cavernous dining hall. Outside, the air was humid. Most of the men had left to make their rounds of their assigned districts in the Citta Alta, while others waited on sandoli to take them across the Canal Catena, into the Martello. A dozen black-coated wardens milled in the inner ward at the foot of the tower, chatting and smoking. Only the Zanzare wardens did not report back daily to the Black Keep, but to Jean privately inside the Zanzare, and none of them would agree to patrol the slums after dark while wearing a warden’s coat.
The men saw him and nodded in respect, calling greetings. Two of the younger ones bowed, and Jean ignored them utterly. He exited the gate and wandered between tall buildings and through narrow, paved streets, wind whipping the tails of his coat. Foot traffic was sparse, and the men he encountered greeted him as he passed and murmured “messere”, or “onorato”. No few of the younger men winked and brushed shoulders with him, vying for his attention. Jean ignored them, his mind still on Marion.
He shouldn’t have been surprised at Marion’s announcement. The Sessane boy was prime real estate, a property that every ambitious man of the Silk would have been vying for in a few years. Marion had just beaten them to the punch. Predictable, really. Who else would Kon have allowed to steal his precious boy? The kid looked just like Kon, too. Looks were luck of the draw at the orphanage of the Villa Merlo, but Kon probably saw those gray eyes and decided that Tris was his to adopt. Who would dream of refusing Kon-fucking-Sessane?
He stopped at the canal that would have taken him to the Bailey. Blue-painted sandoli for hire drifted on the water as he pondered. He sucked air between his teeth impatiently and decided against it. The Bailey was good for a quick coupling, an easy way to slough off aggression and whatever bad dream was chasing a man, but he wasn't in the mood for that. If he was being honest with himself, he was in the mood for Marion, but Marion had lost all taste for him.
Fifteen years, and I get thrown out of bed for a kitten. His head ached. He rubbed his forehead and changed direction for the Falena. A drink, then. Maybe more than one.
A pair of smiling young men linked arm-in-arm passed him on the street. One was dark, the other golden. They were not cortigianos, but lovers on their way to some destination known only to them.
Jean stared at them and ached for the past. That could have been Marion and me, once, he thought. But we never looked like that. We never had that kind of peace.
A cortigiano sang without accompaniment in the back of the spacious hall of the Falena tavern, beyond the tables littered with food scraps, mugs, and foraging cats. Sawdust rasped under Jean's boots as he made his way past the grand staircase of pavonazetto marble with its flamboyant black banisters of wrought iron.
The barkeeper gave him an arch look. Jean shook his head. He wasn't in the mood for the oily happenings in the lofts and tower rooms. The cortigiano looked promising—a blond with tumbling curls and an apricot mouth—but he was bound to be expensive.
The cortigiano sat on a low table, his bare legs swinging gently, a gown of azure silk slipping from his shoulders. His legs could have been sculpted by a master artist.
Jean pulled up a chair and the courtesan tilted his head back to soar through the last notes of his love song, ending on a soft laugh. He winked at Jean.
The wooden chair creaked under Jean’s weight. “Good morning.”
“Messere Rivard.” That blond head dipped and the curls swayed forward. Eyes fringed with hay-colored lashes assessed him boldly.
He felt himself warming under that look. He wasn't surprised the boy knew his name, either. Few in the Colibri did not. “What do they call you, bellissimo?”
“Cardellino.”
A finch, Jean thought. Perhaps the one with golden wings. “You sing very well, little bird.”
Cardellino slipped off the table and into Jean’s lap, folding his bare legs easily around Jean's waist. The heavy silk was cool on Jean's skin, a fold of it slipping around his arm like syrup. “I could sing for you alone. Upstairs, messere.” Cardellino pressed his soft cheek against Jean's and named a figure that was roughly a fourth of a warden’s monthly wages.
His desire flared in synch with his frustration. It was not an unattainable price, but he had other expenses, more important ones. What must it be like to be Marion these days? The house in the Myrtles cost more than Jean would earn in two lifetimes. He cupped his hand regretfully on the round curve of Cardellino's shoulder. “And worth every coin, I'm sure, but—”
The courtesan flattened his palms on Jean's chest and sighed. “But you don't have so much.”
“I don't, sorry.”
With another gentle sound, Cardellino pushed himself up from Jean's lap. “Good day, bell'uomo”.
The name stung. Beautiful man. That's what they called Marion. The cortigiano was lovely, but not as lovely as the Sessane boy, and Marion would have Tris Sessane every night for free. The Bailey was starting to look better.
Jean bellowed for a beer after Cardellino had ascended the stairs, not caring that heads turned at the bar. “Birra!”
“Sì, signore. Una birra.”
He drank the morning away, watching the doors, seeing who came in to buy a drink or beg one, who went upstairs, and who was watching everyone else. He recognized one of Paris's spies; a furtive little bootlicker who’d been in Aureo’s branco and never earned his brand. Franny liked to be called Granchio now. The Crab. He claimed he’d earned the nickname from the Teschio, and the Teschio weren’t around to call him a liar.
There was no sign of the man Jean was really looking for, but Jean didn't have the faintest idea what he looked like anyway. There were no descriptions of the Archer. It occurred to Jean that maybe Cardellino would know. An expensive piece like that would have fawning patrons from both upper city and lower. Asking a cortigiano for information of any kind was dangerous, though. A whore would be just as likely to sell the question, along with the inquirer's name.
Jean smoked until he was out of cigarettes, then played with the matches, lighting one after another on the silver match safe Marion had given him as a present years ago. The case was engraved with J&M in curling script, one of Marion's many romantic gestures. He couldn't recall if he'd ever made any of
those sweet overtures in return. Likely not.
So he liked to drink and fight and fuck. What man didn't? But maybe he'd gone too far. Too many nights staggering home or into the Bailey for some rough fun, too many mornings where Marion found his side of the bed occupied by another, too many fights, too much beer, too many orgies. Just too much.
Jean had to admit he had a way of wearing on people.
The air in the tavern turned stale as the day warmed and the usual gang of libertines swelled the hall. From his vantage point, Jean could see the crowd outside turning thick. Music wafted in, the sound of a flute and strings. When the barkeep came back, Jean passed him a few coins and stood up, making for the doors with a wobbly gait.
The sky was gray, but no rain. Jean found he wanted it to rain. Wanted it to storm. He wanted lightning and high waves, thunder and winds to shake the rafters, an aqua alta to flood the streets. He could not command the weather, but maybe he could deliver the Archer's head on a platter to Marion. Then Marion would look at him again with pride in his eyes. We’ll see how the Sessane boy measures up then, he thought.
He’d had worse arguments with Marion, but the mention of Aureo Marigny had laid him low. There were bad nights when Jean lay awake and tried to convince himself that it was all a frightful dream that never happened, that Kon had never seized control of the city, that Marion had never given that final order.
Not that Aureo hadn’t deserved it. The bastardo deserved it ten times over. It was just that they owed Aureo so much. They would have starved if not for him. Did the fact that Aureo raised them mean anything when measured against his many crimes? Marion claimed it didn’t matter.
“He may have fed us,” Marion had said, “but he used us, too. He turned us into killers.”
Jean wondered if he was a killer simply because Aureo had taught him how or if he had possessed that talent all along. He was nineteen years old when he secretly pledged his loyalty to Kon Sessane's red banner. Would he have done that if Marion hadn’t sworn first?