by Aidan Harte
Sofia skipped onto the roof of a higher tower and sat smiling on its gable; it was pleasant to think of families inside, soundly sleeping, oblivious to night visitors. Then she caught sight of light shining from the narrow windows of Tower Vaccarelli; evidently somebody else was awake, probably old Guercho, writing more windy oratory.
She looked over the rooftops, which were rust-bleached in the moonlight, and imagined other nights and better times, chasing Gaetano, him chasing her: children, innocent of simmering feuds soon to boil over. She did not feel young anymore. Once she had looked forward to turning seventeen, but lately she only worried about the responsibility it would bring.
She yawned and caught an acrid smell on the air. She leaped up, her head spinning—that light in the window!
She crossed the rooftops dangerously fast. Up close, she could see the lower stories of Tower Vaccarelli already burning. A window on the fifth floor was open. She paused to wrap her scarf more firmly around her face, then dived. She landed inside, rolling, her knife out of her belt before she’d even stopped.
A masked man looked up in the act of pulling a dagger from Guercho Vaccarelli’s chest. He picked up his torch and came for her; Sofia had no time to rise before the blow came. She blocked it with her forearm. As she flinched from the sparks, the man kicked her in the chest. When she fell back, her scarf came open.
Figuring she’d get only one chance to strike from this position, she feigned unconsciousness. When she finally opened her eyes, he’d turned his back on her and was climbing to the sixth floor. She swore and threw her knife without aiming. It grazed the back of his neck, a flesh wound, but painful, she hoped.
Sofia was about to give chase when she heard a cry from below. “Cazzo!” she swore again, and bounded down to the third story. Towers would crack and crumble before they burned, but they quickly became ovens for those trapped inside.
The family chamber was in disarray, and smoke was already rising. In the center there was a mound, covered by the family banner. Several feet stuck out pathetically.
Sofia, shuddering, pulled it back.
Donna Vaccarelli was lying dead with her sons. Their throats were cut, and they were sprawled as if they were still trying to defend her, even in death. They were just boys but good fighting stock. A knife against three flags! Whoever the southsider was, he could fight.
Sofia heard a shifting sound from the pile of blankets in the corner. She pulled the knife from Donna Vaccarelli’s chest and crept toward the noise.
The little girl leaped at her with a feral scream, but Sofia caught her by the wrist and held it until she dropped her knife.
“Isabella!” she shouted. “You know me, don’t you?”
Tears and soot smeared the girl’s freckled cheeks. At last she mumbled, “Contessa?”
Sofia lifted her up. “Come with me now,” she said, keeping the child’s face buried in her shoulder. Her tangled black curls stank of smoke already. “They’re just sleeping.”
“They’re dead,” the little girl said with chilling calm.
Sofia considered her next move. Up or down? Jumping from the second floor to the ground was their best bet, damn the height, damn the heat.
She climbed down the next flight of steps. The center of the floor was smoldering; the room below must be an inferno. She pressed Isabella tighter to her shoulder, trying to protect her from the smoke that was filling the great room. She kicked at the door, and when nothing gave, she put the little girl down, telling her to wait, and ran at it with her shoulder.
The pain from her broken arm was intense, but she willed herself to ignore it. They had blocked the door, so this was no ordinary raid; it was planned. Somebody had marked the Vaccarelli family to burn tonight.
“We’re going to die too, aren’t we?” Isabella said as Sofia lifted her in her arms again.
“Someone will see the flames and help,” Sofia said, but that wasn’t true either. They’d raided on a night when everyone was too drunk to notice.
CcraaAK!
Sofia flung herself to the wall as the burning beam just missed them and crashed though the weakened floor, starting a general collapse. She dived for the stairs and started running up as everything else fell into the fire below. With more air to burn, the flames suddenly grew higher.
She put Isabella down on the fourth-floor steps.
“Don’t leave me!” the little girl cried, looking terrified.
Sofia slapped her hard, so it stung. “Listen, Isabella, I lied. No one’s coming—it’s just you and me, understand? If we panic, we die, and if you die, who’ll avenge your family?”
The child stopped crying.
“That’s more like it. Now, I can’t move as fast carrying you, so if I get into trouble, you’ll have to start climbing yourself. You need to jump from the top floor to the nearest tower. You can do that, can’t you?”
She nodded, calm now.
“Ready?” said Sofia, looking up, calculating.
Suddenly the girl broke free and ran down the stairs into the smoke.
“No, Isabella! They’re all dead!” Sofia cried, but a moment later the girl had returned.
“Ready,” she whispered. She had a bundle under her arm: the Vaccarelli banner.
They reached the fifth floor, but the window was blocked by burning debris. Below it, old Vaccarelli’s body was smoldering black. Sofia prayed the masked man wasn’t waiting on the floor above; she could hardly walk now, let alone fight. But when they climbed up, they found the upper part of the stairs being eaten away by flames and a hole in the roof where beams had fallen in. The bastard had tried to cook them from both ends.
Halfway up, the staircase began to crumble. Sofia hoisted Isabella through the gap, then leaped after her. Thankfully, there was little to burn on the top story. The night sky beckoned tantalizingly through a skylight. Sofia looked around and saw a locker in the corner, about the right height. She pushed it as close to the hole in the center as she could get and, praying the floor would hold long enough, lifted Isabella onto it before clambering up awkwardly after her.
She was breathing smoke now and gasping. “Get on my shoulder and jump,” she rasped.
“You’ll follow me?” Isabella said anxiously.
“Yes—hurry!” She doubted she could even stay on her feet much longer.
Isabella crawled onto her shoulders and sprang up through the flames and into the night.
“Thank you, Madonna,” Sofia said, sinking to her knees.
There was a loud creak: the floor, sagging beneath the locker’s weight. This is it, she thought.
“Contessa!”
She looked up and saw the Vaccarelli banner being lowered toward her.
“It’s tied off!” the little girl cried. “Hurry!”
The rain sizzled on the ruins of Tower Vaccarelli. A column of bitter smoke rose with the morning sun, another black spectacle for Quintus Morello’s satisfaction.
Giovanni had worked through the night, oblivious to events across the river. He set out to work with a smile, expecting to be accosted at any turn, and he was looking for her overhead when he finally noticed the smoke. He broke into a run, fearing for the craftsmen’s tents in Piazza Luna, but as he got closer, he saw that the column originated across the river. A northside tower had burned—that was why Sofia hadn’t appeared. He felt a stab of dismay. What if—?
Yet if the smoke had nothing to do with the bridge, why were his foremen waiting and looking so grim?
“Turn back,” Fabbro said. “There’s no need for you to see this.”
Giovanni ignored him and pushed past. “An accident?”
He caught the import of Fabbro’s glance. “Maybe not an accident, Captain. Don’t get involved.”
“I’m already involved,” he said, and elbowed his way through the Woolsmen, hardly seeing them. The crowd thinned out on the gangway leading to the first cofferdam. The pump had been smashed, and Giovanni could see the pile driver, suspended over the pit as
normal, except for the body that was lying on the gangway underneath. A boy’s body, legs in ripped green hose, feet in clumsy old boots. The head would have been directly under the pile . . . but there was no head. Flies buzzed greedily around the red mess pouring from the neck. It had been Frog’s last night in Rasenna, after all.
“We have to get this drained,” Giovanni said, pulling off his shirt.
“Captain, someone else can do this,” said Fabbro.
Giovanni turned on him fiercely. “It’s my responsibility. It’s my bridge!”
The Baptistery door was open, as always. The Doctor received the news so impassively that Sofia knew he had anticipated Guercho Vaccarelli’s murder; he had, after all, used the old man as a mouthpiece for years. Guercho’s other task, plainly, was to be a lightning rod.
Sofia’s task was to find a home for his daughter.
The Reverend Mother appeared just as she was about to knock. “Bit old to leave on the doorstep, don’t you think?”
“You think it’s funny? We lost another tower, and she lost her family last night. Or didn’t you dream that?”
The little girl hid behind Sofia.
“Don’t worry, Isabella. She’s not a witch, just ugly.”
“I’ll protect her.” The nun took her hand. “Hello, Isabella. I remember you too.”
By midday the puddles had dried up under a burning sun. On her way back from the Baptistery, Sofia went by the bridge. Men were pacing on the bank instead of working. She pushed her way to the pit and saw him working in a kind of frenzy, waist-deep in bloody water. Before he looked up, she backed away—
—and walked, then ran back to Workshop Bardini. Vaccarelli and Little Frog were Rasenneisi; they expected this end. The engineer was blooded now for dreaming anyone could live differently. Welcome to Rasenna.
She burst into the workshop. “Bandieratori, flags up!”
CHAPTER 19
“Are we really going across?” Valerius said.
Decini assembled with bandieratori at their heads. They grew loud with the intoxication of wrath.
“We are. You’re not,” said Sofia.
“No one’s going anywhere. Flags down!”
Sofia and everyone else looked up. The Doctor stood calmly in the stairway.
“Doc, we’re getting it from all angles! We’ve got to hit back!”
“We wait.”
“For more bodies? More burnouts? How many will it take?”
He went back upstairs without responding. A raid had been imminent, but he said the word, and flags dropped. For all the affection the borgata had for Sofia, she had no chance of persuading them. She was not Contessa yet.
The Doctor sat placidly in his usual spot by the low table in the shade of the orange tree.
“The hour is now, Doc.”
“The hour’s when I say it is. I’m head of this Family, and you’re still my ward. I’m not planning a raid, and if I were, you would not be part of it.”
“Why not?”
“Because you have to rule one day!”
“You didn’t see Isabella’s family,” she cried, trying to swallow the hitch in her voice. “They were butchered.”
He looked at her. “What if a time comes when we must do likewise?”
“We’re strong, Doc—we don’t have to go sneaking around at night, burning towers. We could cross the river today, fight it out, and win.”
“You’re too old for fairy tales, Sofia. In a civil war, no one wins. I want you to understand that, because you’ll look back one day and want to know why I kept you away from”—he scowled—“the things I have to do. When we push our enemies to the wall, we have to go all the way. Are you ready for that?”
“I’m ready to fight!”
“The thing about being a Scaligeri is you don’t have to fight. Don’t throw that away because of one night’s excitement. Fight smart, not mad. Making the bridge the focus puts us on the side of Concord. Let the Empire do the heavy lifting.”
“The engineer won’t be drawn into our quarrels.”
“We’ll see about that.”
Sofia sighed disgustedly and began to descend, then stopped. “You’ve said ‘wait’ for as long as I can remember. The hour is now, but you’re too used to waiting to recognize it.”
As she went downstairs, the Doctor stood shouted after her, “Don’t do anything stupid.”
He picked another orange and looked down at the river, smiling. Red streaked away from the bridge like a comet’s tail. Things were moving along nicely.
It was evening before Giovanni had emptied the last bucket into the river; in the end the blood was thoroughly diluted with mud. Utterly spent, he had to be helped out of the pit. He’d learned something down there. It wasn’t his bridge anymore; it was Rasenna’s.
He went to redraw a schedule in which every day was precious. Hours later, a light was still burning in a window of Tower Vanzetti. As the night’s black tide drew over Rasenna, the storm waited, nursing one last tantrum before it expired.
Addled by too little sleep and too many figures, Pedro walked to the window to stretch his legs. He picked up the magnifier, remembering how superficial his understanding had been when he’d made it. The bridge would probably look even more like some great beast’s skeleton in the dark.
After a moment, he said, “Captain?”
“What? I need to finish this before dawn.”
“I don’t think you do,” Pedro said, handing him the magnifier.
Through the lashing rain, Giovanni saw it. It was a boy, most of one anyway. The clothes covering its limbs and trunk were blood-red, daubed with black. It was standing by the riverbank, looking around Piazza Luna, although what or how it saw was a mystery, for the thing had no head.
“Madonna, what is it?”
They took turns watching the specter’s aimless wandering. It seemed to be getting its bearings but stayed close to the bridge, as if it did not want to abandon that one surety. Then at last—
“It’s going north.”
But not by the chain bridge. It staggered drunkenly across the river’s surface, and wherever its boots stepped, blood blossomed for a moment before being torn away by the current.
Giovanni rubbed his eyes, hoping the vision was just some leftover nightmare, but he knew full well he wasn’t asleep. This was happening.
He wondered at how calm Pedro was being and returned to the idea he’d had since coming here; if a person could be unreasonable, a family perhaps, could a whole town? If certain altitudes inhibit respiration, might sufficient density of lunacy inhibit reason, permit prodigies, break rules supposed to be unbreakable?
Or was Concord to blame? Did Girolamo Bernoulli break something in Nature when he sent the river?
“Tell Vettori to keep the crew away,” Giovanni said, grabbing his hood.
“They know, Captain. Nobody’s going to come to work.”
And sure enough, one by one the windows of every riverside tower were being bolted shut.
Wrapped in her flag, Sofia kept a lonesome watch in the abandoned embankment tower she’d stationed herself in. Doc wouldn’t sanction reprisal, but she’d be damned before allowing raids to become nightly occurrences, though it wasn’t likely anyone would venture out on a night like this. She was thinking of her warm bed back in Tower Bardini when she saw it walking from the river to the land as if there were no difference.
After taking a few steps on land, the specter stopped, seeming to lose its resolve and direction. Sofia suppressed her dread, reminding herself that she was the front line; she was the Contessa. She shook herself awake and climbed down.
“Who are you?” she said softly.
It took a hesitant step forward, and she recognized with shock the chain around its neck stump. The Herod’s Sword that had failed to protect Little Frog.
“Damn, why are you haunting me? Didn’t I tell you to be careful?”
After a few steps away from the river and its influence, it remembered
its destination. She stood aside as it marched up the sloping streets.
“Contessa!” Someone was coming across the chain bridge.
Sofia raised her flag. “Who goes there?”
“Are you all right?” said Giovanni. “Did you see it?”
“It’s Little Frog!”
“That makes no sense.”
“I guess nobody told him—it—that. Whatever it is, it’s on Bardini streets.”
Giovanni followed her, marveling that at a time like this all she could think about was territory.
“Maybe he was right,” said Sofia, “about that blessing,”
“You think that’s why he’s roaming the streets?” he said doubtfully.
“It’s not that complicated. Frog was Rasenneisi. He wants to know why the Bardini haven’t gone south to avenge him. Hell, I want to know too.”
“The Doctor wouldn’t allow it?”
She didn’t reply, and he understood. “And you disagree?” He had to run to keep up with her and shout to be heard over the wind, “Contessa, I was neck-deep in blood this morning.”
“I don’t expect a civilian to understand.”
They followed the creature at a distance. It wasn’t difficult: it left a trail of bloody footprints and moved slowly, drunkenly lurching through the empty streets. It stopped in the Piazzetta Fontana, illuminated when the exhausted storm unveiled the dead man’s eye in the sky.
“This is where we gave Frog his send-off,” Sofia whispered.
“You think he’s thirsty?”
She gave him a look.
“I wasn’t joking! They say ghosts don’t know they’re dead, don’t they?”
“Pretty superstitious for an engineer.”
“All I know is what my eyes tell me, and that’s an unquiet spirit!”
“Brilliant deduction, Captain.”
“Thanks. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but maybe the nun can help.”
“Help how?” she said angrily.