There had been no nightmares that night—no sleep at all. It's the heat, I thought, fanning my linen nightshirt as I stood by the window. Maybe I could sleep if I went and lay down next to one of the fountains in the garden. I laughed a little at the thought.
I liked my room fine during the day, but at night the palace was too quiet. The stone walls deadened sound in a way that cloth tent walls hadn't. Living in the Lupi encampment, I was always surrounded by thousands of people, and some nights I thought I could hear most of them snoring. Even at the conservatory, except for the three-month gap between Lia and Mira, I'd always had a roommate. Mira had talked in her sleep on occasion. Lia had snored.
After a while, I blew out my candle and curled up in the window seat. It was strange, but sometimes I wished I could have just gone on living with the Lupi. Not that I would have wanted a never-ending war, but if I could have somehow created a village of my closest friends and allies, and spent the rest of my life living in a tent— well, it was a strange thing to find appealing, but I would have liked it better than court. Of course, once the war was over, the Lupi had scattered. The ones with homes had returned to them. Of the others, some had gone to resettle villages like Doratura, as I'd suggested. A few had settled in Cuore—Giovanni and Lucia, of course, and Michel, who was still the Emperor's bodyguard. There were the Cantatori, of course, and some Lupi had joined the city guard. But for the most part, my army was gone.
I felt guilty for feeling such a loss; we'd won the war, after all, and they had the right to enjoy the fruits of their struggle. Still, as I drifted off to sleep in the cushions of the window seat, I wished I could hear birds, at least, and the wind through the trees.
∗ ∗ ∗
“Let's run away,” Mira said. “You've got your violin with you, I've got mine. What more do we need? We could just jump over the wall and go.”
I looked out over Bascio. But instead of the tiny village I remembered from the conservatory, I saw the Imperial gardens and the tightly packed buildings of Cuore. “Run away?” I said. “But everyone I know is here. Lucia and Giovanni, the Emperor—”
“‘If you would journey with me,’” Mira quoted, “‘Turn your back on your home, on your comforts, on all that you know. Then follow me.’”
I shook my head. “I don't know.”
“It would be an adventure, Eliana!” Mira said. “We could see the world together.” She clasped my hand and fell silent, looking into my eyes. My heart started knocking in my ears as I returned her gaze. Then she dropped my hand and clambered over the wall. “Let's go.”
I started to follow her, but my feet wouldn't move. I couldn't cross the wall. Mira was already heading down the road. “Wait!” I called after her, but she didn't turn back. I knew it was useless, but I called again, “Wait! I want to come with you!”
∗ ∗ ∗
I woke in the darkness, convinced beyond reason that if I hurried, I would find Mira waiting in the garden below. Unwilling to question my own conviction, I threw a light cloak over my nightshirt and thrust my bare feet into my boots. My heart pounding, I eased my door shut and ran down the stairs and out into the garden.
No one was there. I sat down at the edge of the fountain and waited for a long time, listening to the splash of the water. I finally made my way back up to my room just before dawn.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
There is no greater love than that of the one who gives his life for his friend.
—The Journey of Gèsu, chapter 45, verse 29.
It was perhaps a month later that I first heard the rumor from Giovanni. The heat had eased somewhat, and we had met early in the morning for a practice session at the enclave training ground. This was not a part of the enclave I'd ever seen as “Daniele,” but noblemen could practice their skills as swordsmen in the comfort of an enclosed courtyard. Giovanni tossed me a sword and we worked together for an hour or so, stopping when the sun rose high enough to really get uncomfortable. Sitting down in the shade, we drank cooled tea and watched some of the others who were still at work. By virtue of regular practice, I was—according to Giovanni when he was feeling magnanimous—almost as good with a sword as he'd been when Placido had kicked his ass back in his early days as a student.
“I don't know why I do this to myself,” I said, putting down the cup of cold tea and stretching until my back cracked.
“It's for my scintillating conversation,” Giovanni said, slouching next to me and refilling his cup. “Or else you're keeping yourself in good form in case you get to lead another war. I can't decide.”
“Maybe it's in case I ever have to fight a duel with Placido.”
“Better have me fight it for you, if this comes up anytime soon,” Giovanni said. “He may look like a pig, but he's faster with a sword than you'd expect.”
“He beat you, after all.”
“Exactly. Though that was a long time ago.”
Giovanni took another swig of the tea, then checked carefully to see if anyone was close enough to overhear our conversation. “There's a rumor going around about you,” he said. “Supposedly you were seen, toward the end of the battle for Cuore, spiriting someone out of the city.”
I bit my lip and looked away from Giovanni, watching the men who were still training out in the sun. “Really,” I said, when I trusted my voice to stay even.
“Yes, really,” Giovanni said. “Who was it?”
“I don't know what you're talking about,” I said.
Giovanni stood up abruptly and went to put away the training equipment. When he returned, he sat down closer to me and said, “The person I heard it from seemed to think it was a Fedele priestess—someone you kept company with while you were here before.”
“Rather an odd way to put it, but the priestess I ‘kept company with’ was Rosalba,” I said. “She's dead, remember? We found her body in Manico.”
“That's what I told the person who told me the story,” Giovanni said.
I thought back to the night of the battle. I hadn't thought anyone had seen me, but I hadn't really taken steps to disguise myself; there hadn't been time. “What are people making of this?” I asked.
“The story I was told apparently illustrated your gallantry,” Giovanni said. His voice was sour. “Risking your life to save a lady who'd fallen in love with you, thinking you were a man.”
I snorted. “Rosalba betrayed me to the Fedeli.”
“Yeah, well, maybe that was supposed to be a lover's spat? I didn't come up with the story.” Giovanni slouched back against the wall, relaxing slightly. “I'm probably worrying over nothing,” he said.
We got up to go and walked back to my room, chatting about nothing in particular—gossip about other people, how the rebuilding efforts were going, the weather. When we reached my room, Giovanni said, “It was Mira, wasn't it?”
I didn't answer. Giovanni's face was rigid as he walked away.
The extent of my friendship with Mira was not widely known beyond my closest associates; it simply wasn't something I had liked talking about. Lia had kept it out of the songs she wrote, and fearing for Mira's safety, I'd tried to make sure only a few people ever heard the full story of my escape from the Fedeli. Giovanni and Lucia knew, of course, and obviously Isabella had known. Flavia and Celia knew that we'd been close friends at the conservatory; so did Giula, but she hadn't ever joined the Lupi, even when we'd put out a call for musicians. So far as I knew, she and her family were still living in Doratura.
Nonetheless, a week later Lucia told me that she'd heard a rumor that I had helped a mage escape Cuore. Her face was puckered with worry as she leaned back in her chair and plucked at the fabric of her skirt. “I thought you should know,” she said.
I leaned back in my own chair, looking out the window. It was dusk, and the garden was in deep shadow. “What do you think I should do about it?”
“Deny it,” Lucia said. “Find out who's spreading the story and put a stop to it.”
“The only way to k
ill a rumor is to start a better one,” I said. “Denying it, pursuing the people spreading it—these are just fresh logs for the fire.”
“I think it's Clara who's spreading it,” Lucia said. “But I can't prove that.”
“Clara's too smart to spread the rumor herself. If I were her, I'd arrange for someone who liked to gossip to overhear the most damaging information.”
“Still, it's her doing.”
“You're probably right,” I said.
Lucia's hands were twisting the fabric now. “Is there anything to the rumor?”
“Would you think less of me if it were true?”
“Of course not,” Lucia said, and then raised her eyes to meet mine. “I mean that. I know you, Eliana. If you helped a mage escape Cuore, you had a good reason to do it.”
I laughed a little at that. “You're a priestess. You should probably be telling me that I sinned and ought to go turn myself in to the Servi right now.”
“If I ever reach the point of telling anyone to go to the Servi for anything, I hope God strikes me dead.”
“Whatever would Gèsu say about that?” I tried to make my shaky voice take on a teasing tone, with mixed success.
Lucia's hands relaxed their grip on her skirt and she leaned forward. “He'd say that redemption is open to all who seek it, even Clara, and that I ought to remember that.”
I could genuinely laugh at that. “I don't think you need to worry about Clara seeking redemption anytime soon. She thinks she's doing the work of God.”
Lucia shook her head. “No. No, she's not. But I think you were. Redemption is open to all who seek it—even a mage. That's why you saved Mira.”
Had Lucia followed me that day? I turned to meet her eyes, shocked, and she simply shrugged. “I know you, Eliana, and I know what you've told me about Mira. That's all.”
I nodded a little.
It had grown quite dark while we talked, and I went to light a candle. “I would rather die than tell any of this to the Servi,” Lucia said. “But Clara is going to start asking around soon, and she'll know better than to rely on my testimony, or Giovanni's. Be careful. Giovanni's right. She hates you, and she's afraid of you. Please be careful.”
I nodded again, and Lucia left.
Outside, it had grown quite dark. I settled into the window seat; I could see a few stars and a sliver-thin moon. Back at the conservatory, when the Fedeli had come to investigate, Mira's secret ensemble had met and sorted out what to do—to deny, to keep our secret. I could seek out my friends at the enclave and ask them to lie on my behalf—to give each of them a consistent story to tell Clara. They would do it, I was fairly certain. I mulled over that possibility for a while, and then discarded it. The truly damaging information—that I had smuggled someone out of Cuore—was already common knowledge. I had no idea who it was who had seen me, so I couldn't very well ask them to change their story. Clara was no idiot; she knew when she was being lied to. A unified brick wall from my friends would only convince her that I was hiding some terrible secret. The truth was bad enough, I thought, but I had no doubt that Clara could twist it into something even worse if she wanted to.
Clara came to visit me a few mornings later. I poured tea for her as she settled into a chair, her fan of black feathers flicking back and forth. With a look of grave concern, she told me that people were saying that I'd helped a mage to escape the fall of Cuore.
“Are they,” I said. Clara was toying with the jeweled cross she wore, and my own fingers strayed to Bella's cross, which I wore around my neck now on a silk cord.
“You don't seem surprised,” Clara said. “Is there something to this rumor?”
“I first heard this story a few weeks ago,” I said. “I know how gossip travels on the lips of the malicious. It's said I helped someone to escape, so naturally there are some who assume the worst.” I tightened my jaw to keep myself from spitting out my suspicion that it was Clara herself who had started the rumor that the lady I'd helped was a mage.
Clara relaxed slightly into her chair. “Then of course you'll welcome an investigation,” she said. “To clear your name.”
“For you to investigate this slander will only give credibility to it,” I said. “Is that what you want?”
“Do you have something to hide?”
“Are you going to tell me next that ‘innocence doesn't need to hide?’” I asked.
Clara wet her lips. “I'm not going to quote the Book of the Lady to you,” she said. “But it does seem to me that if your conscience is clear, then you'll know you have nothing to fear from me.”
I met her green eyes. “It hardly matters whether I approve or not. You're going to investigate the story regardless.”
“It's for your sake, Eliana,” Clara said. “We can't have people believing that you, you of all people, would be planning to create your own Circle to depose the Emperor.”
Create my own Circle? Depose the Emperor? I had turned away from Clara; now I whirled back to face her. “For the love of God, Clara, if I had intended to depose the Emperor, wouldn't I have made my bid for power before the Lupi were disbanded? An army would have been a hell of a lot more use to me than one mage, don't you think?”
“I agree completely,” Clara said, with a smile as full of false warmth as the midwinter sun. She stood up and put a friendly hand on my arm. “And I'm confident that's what my investigation will find.”
“You were right,” I said to Lucia over lunch. “Clara has decided she needs to investigate the rumors. Apparently now the story is that I've created my own Circle to depose the Emperor.”
“That's absurd,” Lucia said.
“Oh, I agree,” Giovanni said. “But this is a game Clara can't lose. Even if she ‘clears’ Eliana of all suspicion, the fact that Eliana was investigated at all will be reason to distrust her.”
“Do you think she knows about my friendship with Mira?” I asked softly.
Giovanni shook his head. “No. None of your old friends have joined the Servi. Right now, Clara—and Placido, I'm sure he's in on this—are just trying to stir up suspicion and distrust. You have influence, popular support, and the Emperor's ear; if they can erode any of those even a little, it's well worth their time.”
I nodded, then lowered my eyes. Of course, the “worst” was true—I had saved a mage from the fall of Cuore, though not for the reasons that Clara had implied. Maybe I should flee, I thought. Clara was highly unlikely to send people to hunt me down. But if I did, everyone, not just Clara, would assume that I really had saved at least one mage, maybe more, in an attempt to create my own Circle and take power for myself. My reputation would be utterly destroyed, but more important, so would that of all my friends and allies, from Giovanni and Lucia down to the young ladies who dressed in men's clothes and refused to wed.
If worse came to worst, I thought, I could confess— that I had saved Mira because I was in love with her. I wasn't sure what punishment would fall on me for that, but I was fairly confident that at least my friends wouldn't suffer for my carelessness in allowing myself to be seen.
∗ ∗ ∗
A few days after my conversation with Clara, Flavia came by my room for a visit. Along with a fair number of the Cantatori, Flavia had remained in Cuore. As Flavia had done throughout the war, the Cantatori wore gray robes styled like conservatory clothes. Though initially the Cantatori were made up solely of musicians and dancers who had served with the Lupi or the Imperial Army, now they were attracting members who had not joined during the war. Those who had served with the Lupi or the army belted their robes with a red sash, like Flavia had; those who had joined after the war left their robes unbelted. Flavia's sash was red wool, but in the heat of the summer she wore a linen robe rather than a wool one. I invited her in and poured wine for both of us.
We chatted first about the outposts that were being set up in the wasteland. Flavia and the other Cantatori were eager to participate but reluctant to put themselves under the control of the Servi. �
��We're thinking of building our own,” she said. “Do you think we'll be able to persuade the Emperor to supply us with food like he's going to supply the Servi?”
“I don't know,” I said. “Sometimes I think he doesn't like Clara any more than I do, but he often does as she says, even so. And certainly Clara won't want him to.”
“I don't understand it.” Flavia fidgeted with her wine cup. “We're talking about outposts in the wasteland. Why would Clara want to control something so remote, somewhere so desolate?”
“Well, she's not going down there,” I said. “And this is Clara: if she could control the moon and the stars, she would.”
Flavia laughed, but averted her eyes. “Speaking of Clara,” she said, her voice heavy, “she summoned me yesterday. She wanted to ask me questions about you.”
“That's not surprising,” I said. “What did you tell her? If you don't mind my asking?”
“I don't mind you asking,” Flavia said. Her face was red. “She wanted to know how you felt about the Circle, first of all. I told her you hated them. Everyone knew that. The story going around, that you tried to set aside your own Circle—the only person less likely to do that, I think, would be Lucia. And I told Clara that.”
I nodded, and Flavia's flush deepened.
“So then she asked if you'd ever known a mage. I figured that I'd better not lie about this—if she already knew about Mira, she'd think you had something to hide. So I said yes, there was a mage hiding at the conservatory. Mira. We all knew Mira; Mira was the one who organized the first group of secret Redentori.”
“Mira didn't organize Redentori exactly,” I said. “We were just playing the music….”
Turning the Storm Page 28