by Aidan Harte
Sofia kissed him. “Tano, I don’t love you.”
He swore and raised his banner to strike.
She didn’t flinch.
He lowered his weapon and gave that same constrained martial nod. “Thanks to your Concordian friend, Rasenna’s coming together, so their way or our way, it’s happening.” He held up the letter. “And you can let them rip it apart again, or you can put duty above your feelings and bind it forever.”
“I don’t care what Doc’s letter says. I’m not marrying you or anyone else,” she said, knowing that he couldn’t hear her and that there was nothing more to say.
He watched her walk away, back into the engineer’s arms. Was this fidelity’s reward? He’d been raised in intrigue; he knew what to call it.
Betrayal.
As hard as that first week of full-contact sparring had been, Sofia realized as the training went on that Lucia had been holding back. Still, she managed to defend herself and, after another week, actually land a blow. It was sufficient to keep her motivated.
“So, can you see the future or what?”
“It’s not that simple. We can’t choose what’s shown to us. We merely stay aware of Time’s current and hear echoes others are deaf to, and when the current shifts, we see possibilities.”
“Impressively vague. Prove it: What’s my future? Will I be married like a fairy-tale princepessa?”
“I told you, we see only ripples. It is said adepts experience the whole current before death, but for us, usually, it’s just a feeling—it’s not much, but an intuition about what an opponent will do next can mean the difference between victory and defeat.”
The sun, low over the river, threw the crew’s shadows across Piazza Luna as they headed home.
On the bridge’s north side, Giovanni waved to Sofia. “Just doing a final check.”
“Me too.”
“We’re fine,” he said, waiting till she came nearer to continue. “The Morello haven’t interfered lately.”
“They’re keeping a low profile because if they behave, they get me. I come with a hell of a dowry.”
“I heard about the proposal,” he said, crouching to examine the balustrade, either very preoccupied or trying hard to give that impression.
“I’m not going to be bought and sold like that.”
He looked up suddenly. “You don’t want to marry Gaetano?”
“I never do anything I’m told to.”
“Well, that seems to be level,” he said, not hiding his smile very well. “All good here. I should be—”
“Walking home? I’ll escort you.”
“I’m not in danger anymore.”
“I just want to walk with you”—she raised her voice—“if that’s all right with you, Captain.”
“Oh,” he said, getting flushed, “I’d be delighted.”
“Avanti!”
The bandieratori circled. Gaetano waited a moment, let his focus sharpen, then took a step back and, keeping his eyes on the front two, jabbed his stick backward, where it connected with the face of the third.
“You could have taken me if you’d coordinated. Now I’ve got a chance.”
“Do you really?”
Gaetano looked up to the second floor. Valentino stood in the door of their father’s study, smiling sympathetically.
“Don’t let me interrupt,” he said, descending the stairs.
That was impossible; Gaetano’s choleric younger brother intimidated the students more than he ever could.
“So, Bardini accepted our proposal but the Contessa refuses to dance?”
“Shut up.”
Valentino paced around the training square, oblivious to the twirling banners around him. “Unless! Ah, here’s a thought—”
Parrying the attacks of the two students in front, Gaetano received a side jab from the third. He dropped his flag and grabbed the one who’d gotten lucky, pulling him into his fist. That left two.
He whipped around and parried their joint attack while sliding a foot under his own fallen flag. He kicked it into the air and caught it, twirling each flag until they balanced.
“Unless?” he grunted.
Valentino sauntered between the nervous bandieratori. “Unless the Contessa likes forbidden fruit as well.”
Gaetano roared and went for the last two. They struck back, too fast, off balance. He rotated his stick, caught them in the chest together, and pushed them off their feet.
“But unlike you, she gets to taste one.”
Gaetano swung but pulled up short.
Valentino laughed. “I’m not afraid. That’s what the Concordians taught me. Train with these boys all you like. You need to be ready up here”—he tapped Gaetano’s forehead—“for what’s coming.”
“And what’s that?”
Valentino went back upstairs, shaking his head with exaggerated grief. “War, Brother. War.”
“Flags up, boys,” Gaetano said.
Sofia and Giovanni walked south in easy silence. The evening retained the day’s heat yet, with no whisper of impending autumn’s funeral march. In the once-deserted piazza, Rasenneisi mingled around the workers’ food stalls. The life that appeared with the bridge came so easily that it went at first unnoticed, like the passing away of summer.
They walked from the piazza through narrow streets lined by towers—and they too were different as overhead neighbors leaned from windows exchanging worries: the legion, the tribute, the prospect of peace, and, of course, the bridge, which one neighbor called a godsend while another cursed it. That was another difference: silence may be better than whispers, but argument out loud is better yet.
The expiring sun painted dark towers blinding white, and Sofia had to squint to see beyond the shimmering cobblestones in the heat. White-glowing seed heads from the surrounding contato floated lazily through the streets like bubbles in a slowly moving stream. She imagined the street was the drowned heart of old Rasenna, that that was the reason they walked so slowly.
The first Giovanni knew something was wrong was when Sofia raised her flag. He looked up and saw shut windows, heard the silence.
“Let’s go.”
There was no point trying to get back to the bridge; they were nearer to Tower Vanzetti now.
She turned a corner to find five bandieratori waiting, all masked but one.
“Stay behind me.”
“Should we run?” he said.
“I don’t turn my back to pigs like these. Who sent you, Tano?”
“No one.”
“’Course they did. You’re just too dumb to know it.”
Gaetano held back as four gold flags went forward. Sofia tried at first to defend and keep an eye on him, but that was impossible, so she focused on bringing the flags down efficiently. When she turned back, Gaetano thrust a threatening flag toward her with one hand; his other held a knife to Giovanni’s throat.
“Idiota! You can’t kill a Concordian engineer. The consequences—”
“Damn them! I should have done this months ago!”
There was no talking to him; he’d come to kill—nor was there any way to reach him in time or stop him fast enough if she did.
In a moment, Giovanni would die.
And that too was impossible; there was no way she’d let that happen. And believing that, Sofia saw that the time it took to cross the distance didn’t matter. She just had to get to the point where she could stop Gaetano, even if she had to move faster than a blade could cut air.
She watched the moisture drops in her exhalation, then inhaled and
m o v e d
Gaetano’s body slammed against the wall. Sofia stood several braccia from where she had been a moment earlier. The blade clanged noisily as it struck the ground.
“Giovanni, come on!” Sofia shouted.
“How did you—?”
“No idea, but I feel drunk.”
“Tower Vanzetti’s back there.”
“First place they’ll look.”
“Where, the
n? I can’t climb like you.”
Her curse echoed in the narrow streets. She had never realized how constraining those streets could be.
“The bridge will be guarded too. Where’s the last place anyone would look for a Concordian?”
Gaetano’s men searched fruitlessly for hours before returning to Palazzo Morello. Quintus had panicked when Valentino revealed Gaetano’s likely intentions; a second dead Concordian—an engineer—would seal their fate irrevocably.
“How could you be so reckless?”
Gaetano took his admonishment in sullen silence; he could scarcely explain it to himself.
Inside the Palazzo della Signoria, Giovanni picked up the Speaker’s mace, feeling its weight. “I can’t go back to Tower Vanzetti?”
“Not tonight,” Sofia said. “Not until Quintus Morello gets a leash on Tano.” She paced between the rows as if she had lost something important there.
Giovanni put the mace back. “He cares for you, doesn’t he?”
“That’s how Love looks in Rasenna, exactly like Hate. I hate this town.”
“Why don’t we leave?”
“And go where? Ride south and join a Company?” she said in exasperation. “Would you fight paesani?”
“I’d fight for Rasenna.”
“Oh, stop!” Sofia snapped. “Just stop. This is just dreaming—that’s all Gaetano and I did when we were children, and now look at us, all grown up and can’t be enemies, can’t be friends.”
She sat down in the Doctor’s usual chair. “There’s nowhere to go, nowhere you could escape your country or I could escape my name. You can’t understand what it means to be a Scaligeri . . .”
“It’s your decision,” he said quietly. “You’re the one who’s going to have to live with it.”
Everyone else told her what to do; they all wanted her for something. She never had to think what the right decision was, just do the opposite. He was asking her to decide for herself, and that was scarier than any approaching army.
She left after an hour, ordering him to stay hidden until she got back. “If they find you, they’ll kill you,” she repeated, somberly. “I’ll figure something out.”
She knew there’d be no waiting this one out, however. Gaetano was a Rasenneisi, new to love but well practiced in hate. He’d keep coming until one of them was dead. Unless she thought of something, Giovanni wouldn’t live to see his bridge open.
Lucia wiped the blood from her nose and bowed low and, for the first time, with respect.
After she left, Sofia said casually, “Less bad?”
“I’d go as far to say good.” The nun studied her. “You’re different somehow.”
“I think I used Water Style last night. I was attacked. It was strange—”
“Strange that you needed it; you’re already a match for any Rasenneisi.”
“One of them had Giovanni, and a knife—”
“And you were frightened?”
“I—”
“And, best of all, for another!” She sounded almost excited.
“You act like getting ambushed was a good thing.”
“You care for him?”
“Sister, if a second Concordian is killed, an engineer especially, Rasenna’s going to be in serious trouble.”
“Perhaps more than care . . .”
“Perhaps you’re getting imaginative in your old age.”
“As you like. Whatever the spur, it was the fear you’ve been avoiding. This is a start. We must go further.”
“Can’t we spar for a little longer? I’m finally getting good at this.”
“You still don’t understand that fighting is secondary, do you? No matter. I’ll show you.”
When she closed her eyes, she could hear the nun warning against haste, but she wasn’t sure if it was real or imagination. The twilight was pleasant; she felt as if she were floating in warm water.
“I can reach your mind because you are near. You cannot stay on the surface and learn.”
Reluctantly, Sofia swam down until she could feel the Water’s coldness, its immensity, its power. She could hear the nun’s voice still, but now it was distant.
“Yesterday you felt dizzy, yes? That was Water, pushing back. Fear pushes back too. You must learn to go toward it, and that means seeing it as it truly is. You must go
d o w n
Sofia went deeper into the pit; water so chilly should freeze, but it just drained strength and speed from her limbs. She could not hear the nun but realized she was not alone—death was a breath away. This was the farthest point one could be from life and yet live.
In the darkness below, the water became, impossibly, still colder; there was something there—not in the darkness; it was darkness. Fear, the Dark Ancient, boiling furiously like a black sun, took shape. She felt paralyzing ice obstruct her blood’s flow, dead bone fingers enfolding her timidly beating heart and squeezing.
It was when she decided to flee that she heard it—a voice, calling from behind the Darkness. It wasn’t the Reverend Mother’s but a young woman’s; it was music, a song, but not a siren’s.
Sofia.
Before she could answer, the Darkness felt her presence and reached out. Its cold tentacles touched her flesh, and she was back in that moment: Giovanni had a knife at his neck, and this time she knew she would never reach him in time. It was too hard, too far, too dark.
A voice, small, distant and weak: Sofia, wake up!
The Reverend Mother pulled her back. She was in chapel. And safe.
“Madonna!” The nun’s face was ashen. “I’m sorry, child; you were not ready. It’s just that there’s so little time left.”
Sofia’s heart was beating as if she’d been in a fight. “What was it? A buio?”
“More—and less—than that. There is a power that connects man and buio, land and water. We see one face of it every day in Nature, but the dark face prefers to hide. It is in you, in all of us, and we nourish it with doubt and despair, with hate. It is the sum of a life lived in fear, and one day you must face it again.”
“It almost killed me!”
“It impedes your progress. If you dive deep enough, you leave behind History and reach the infinity of what might have been and might yet be. Giovanni’s machine may restrain buio, but when I was a girl, water needed no restraint. Because Man is fallen, we made the buio fall; bit by bit we will corrupt the whole world until all is rotten and mad or until things are set right.” She sighed. “Rest, child. Tomorrow we go deeper.”
Sofia was still shaken by her vision. She stopped at the doorway. “The world is the world. How can I change it?”
“Your life’s only worth something if you give it away,” the nun said.
Sofia heard and knew what she must do.
CHAPTER 34
When Sofia told Giovanni he could safely return to work, she did not mention the price. If being a leader meant anything, it meant sacrifice.
“I’ll marry Gaetano.”
The Doctor was surprised to see her on the rooftop. They hadn’t spoken since he had made her deliver his response.
He smiled. “Then we shall have peace.”
“Doc, I know your peace. All this time I wanted to be just another Bardini, and you wouldn’t let me. I understand why now, but you have to let me be my own woman. I won’t be Morello’s, either. I need you to promise you’ll give this alliance a real chance.” She did not mention the other reason.
“You’re growing up, Sofia. It’s hard to let go.” He rubbed his chin. “I promise!”
That morning she practiced with passion. She even pushed Lucia out of the square a few times.
The nun remarked on her improvement during meditation. “Lucia’s my best student,” she said, watching Sofia, “and she’s studied for years, but you can already defeat her.”
“Which fight were you watching? She still wins most times.”
The nun chuckled. “Ah, but you’ve been holding back, haven’t you? You could beat h
er—you could even beat me if a lack of faith didn’t restrain you. You’ve embraced hate for so long that now you’re its prisoner.”
“I came here to learn fighting, not be converted. What’s faith got to do with anything?”
“That’s what it takes to drop your flag. Lucia has it. Do you know how she came to be here? Her family was killed in a raid, just like Isabella’s.”
“But she’s a southsider.”
The nun let her realize the implication.
Sofia’s hand went to her dagger. “If that were true, she would have killed me on the first day. I couldn’t have stopped her.”
“Is it so unbelievable?”
“Bardini don’t hide in shadow like Morello. We’re fighters, not butchers.”
“You’ve let yourself be sheltered from the truth.”
Sofia snatched up the glass and threw it. “Liar!”
The nun avoided it effortlessly, but it smashed the window, and harsh daylight invaded the chapel.
“I only went along with this nonsense to learn Water Style!” Sofia kicked the table at the nun.
The old lady moved gracefully out of the way, then went on the attack. “Foolish girl. You hide your skill, but you cannot conceal your thoughts.”
Sofia blocked a barrage of kicks, backing out of the chapel to get some space. The nun didn’t let up, advancing on her, whirling her sleeves the way she had before.
“The Doc’s right: you’re either traitors who knew the Wave was coming or liars who didn’t.” This time Sofia wasn’t distracted by the nun’s sleeves; she dodged and then grabbed one, pulled the old woman forward, and kicked hard. The nun staggered and grabbed a branch to prevent herself from falling.
“I know what Doctor Bardini thinks of me! When your father died, he refused to let me teach you Water Style. So I waited. I know how proud the Scaligeri are; the only way you’d submit to learning was if I beat you.”
“That’s why you broke my arm?”
“Reverend Mother!”
Sofia turned. Lucia had appeared at the entrance of the Baptistery, drawn by the noise.
“Here’s your little acolyte; why do you need me? You remind me of the Doc, you know that? I’m sick of being manipulated by old men and old women.”