The Boy Who Wept Blood

by Den Patrick

Recollection

  – Settembre 314

  Dino had progressed no more than a dozen steps from his apartment when he heard the now-familiar scuff of feet. It was Stephania, of course, clutching her school books to her chest, attempting to run in a dignified fashion. Not easy given the increasingly elaborate gowns her mother insisted upon. Duchess Prospero had eyed Stephania, just seventeen, and made a challenge of her ripening figure to any man with a pulse. Dino, fast approaching twelve, couldn’t see what all the fuss was about. Camelia assured him that in just a few short years he’d notice girls, and then he’d have difficulty noticing anything else. Boys of his own age made various comments that ran the gamut of inappropriate to crass; Dino remained none the wiser. That Stephania had become fascinated by an Orfano six years her junior was a constant source of annoyance to the young blades among the nobility. Dino, however, had not been fooled for a moment.

  ‘I’m sorry I’m late.’ Dark hair fell in a confusion of ringlets about her face. She wasn’t of course. Dino had left early but omitted to mention this. He also failed to mention there were more direct routes to the classroom.

  ‘It’s wonderful you receive private lessons,’ she said.

  ‘Hmmm.’ The syllable was non-committal at best. ‘I was expelled.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘There was a brawl. One boy’s nose was broken, another suffered a fractured rib.’

  ‘How is that your fault?’

  ‘They were attacking me when it happened.’ Dino shrugged. ‘Cherubini decided my education might progress more smoothy if I don’t have to best every other boy in the class.’

  This was how Dino found himself being privately tutored and in turn being escorted by House Prospero’s dark-eyed daughter.

  Stephania’s campaign had started innocently enough with random encounters in the halls of House Erudito. The young noblewoman always took time to greet him, and Dino was glad of the exchanges. Few if any in Demesne made an effort to put the Orfani at their ease. At best he could hope to be insulted a minimum of three times a day, although never to his face. Strega or witchling were the preferred terms of disparagement, but harsher terms were never far from the lips of his tormentors. Lucien had no better time of it, nor even Golia, who was not to be riled for sport. Only Anea seemed to escape the worst of the whispered unkindness. Many in Demesne believed she wielded arcane power and were loath to insult her lest she look on them with the evil eye. Stephania by contrast hadn’t succumbed to the prejudice. And for good reason. Her mother intended her to marry an Orfano, which in turn had precipitated her interest in Dino.

  What had begun with ever more frequent meetings after classes in House Erudito evolved to include a sudden interest in his fencing lessons at House Fontein. Next were unannounced visits to his apartment. He’d been baffled at first, then oddly complimented, before confusion combined with a dose of irritation. Finally he’d accepted his new companion, developing patience when questioned by Stephania on her favourite subject.

  Lucien.

  Where was he? How was he performing with weapons? Why did he have such awful pets?

  ‘Does he spend an unseemly amount of time with Anea?’

  Dino laughed until he was quite breathless, pausing in his haste to reach the classroom.

  ‘No one spends “an unseemly amount of time with Anea”.’ Dino suppressed another round of laughter. ‘She’s almost a recluse, more enamoured with books than people. She tolerates Professore Russo. And me, I suppose, but only just.’

  Stephania’s questions regarding Lucien continued. She had the wit to bury them within innocent conversations, but sooner or later the topic always focused on Demesne’s most wayward Orfano.

  Lucien ‘Sinistro’ di Fontein.

  Duchess Prospero had not concerned herself with anything as delicate as subterfuge. She intended Stephania, blood of her blood, to wed the most troublesome of boys her own age. Dino wondered what the duchess’s true agenda was. Lucien rarely refused to spend time with Stephania, largely to keep the peace with the duchess, but neither did he seek her out. Now, so close to his his final testing at eighteen, Lucien had volunteered for additional lessons from Maestro di Spada Ruggeri, which took up a great deal of his time. The rest he spent with Professore Virmyre, whom Dino was journeying to see himself.

  ‘Master Dino.’ Virmyre had not commented on Lady Stephania Prospero’s appearance. She’d no need to be there. The women of Landfall did not study the sciences. At least until Anea had come along. The silent Orfano had almost pulled House Erudito down, stone by stone, during one of her trademark rages. Maestro Cherubini wisely changed policy at that juncture. So now not just Orfano ladies, but all ladies, were allowed, if not encouraged, to study the intricacies of physics, biology and chemistry, should they so wish.

  Virmyre’s classroom was a dusty place of solid workbenches with a high ceiling that saw pupils freeze in the winters and boil in the summers. The wooden floor was unvarnished, threatening a host of splinters to any who tripped. Virmyre had built a backdrop of oak shelves that were monolithic in scale, home to minutiae and oddities beyond counting. Books in languages known only to a handful of scholars competed for space with broken timepieces and jars of specimens. The worst of these were organs rank with corruption, bloated in cloudy fluid, promising only noxious fumes should they be opened. And there was the urn full of ashes that none dare ask after. The centerpiece of the numberless curios was a cat shark which lay at rest in a tank of preservative. Virmyre was obsessed with sharks. He never failed to use them in some metaphor or other that only the truly eccentric can ever achieve with any aplomb. It was after one such lesson with Virmyre that Dino almost lost his life.

  They had come for him in a rush; this was the first difference. Beatings were always presaged by posturing. It was the ritual of bullies everywhere, the mark of aggressors, even petty ones such as these. One did not simply do violence without verbal escalation.

  ‘Strega.’

  ‘Witchling.’

  ‘Figlio di puttana.’

  ‘What are you looking at?’

  ‘You think you’re better than us?’

  Dino had learned it all by rote, knew the boys would only commit to the physical once the verbal assault had provided the vanguard. It made the attack that day all the more shocking. They approached from behind, catching the Orfano and the noblewoman in a stretch of seldom-used corridor. The attackers were older than him by a few years and spoke coarsely, jackets unbuttoned, shirts untucked. Their close-cropped hair indicated allegiance to Maestro Superiore di Spada Giancarlo, or simply that they aspired to the levels of thuggery he espoused. They drew closer until it was all Dino could do not to walk backwards so as to be able to keep watch on them. He didn’t see the third of them until he’d been punched in the stomach. The boy had emerged from a side corridor, obviously having lain in wait for some time.

  The strike knocked the air from the Orfano’s lungs, and was accompanied by an unexpected sting. He staggered and reached for his blade. Reluctance to draw his weapon conflicted with numerical inferiority and his duty to protect Stephania. He got no further than closing his hand over the hilt. The trio ran off, not laughing or jeering, instead committed to fleeing the scene. Stephania shouted after them but Dino urged her to pay them no mind.

  ‘I’ve suffered worse beatings.’ A single punch to the stomach was no great hardship after all. Stephania pressed one hand to her mouth and fell silent, eyes widening. A dark stain of deepest red was spreading from a tear in his jacket.

  ‘It was only a punch,’ said Dino. A frantic moment to unbutton the garment revealed a white shirt soaked with blood. The sight of it staggered him, shock undoing his knees, ushering a cold sweat. The floor lurched toward him. A hand struck out for the wall, clawed for purchase on a side table, then darkness.

  The rock and sway of walking. His legs motionless. Being carried. Dino forced his eyes open and saw ash-grey robes. There was a smell of dust. The arms that held him were
like iron. And above the vast slab of a chin, weathered skin, the ragged hood concealing eyes.

  ‘I …’ His throat was too dry for other words, mind stumbling.

  ‘Hush now,’ droned the Majordomo. ‘Be still, rest.’

  Dino did just that.

  Dottore Angelicola’s face greeted him, all too close, shaggy eyebrows fixed in a frown beneath a bird’s nest of wiry grey hair. The man’s breath was an affront; a light dusting of white clung to the shoulders of his threadbare suit. There was a litany of complaint and half-whispered grievances, silenced every so often by a sharp word from the Majordomo. A damp cloth tended to Dino’s brow, provided by Stephania, her face taut with worry. Her immaculate gown was now smeared and unclean. The dottore mumbled something, reassuring him the wound was not fatal in anything but soothing tones. Somewhere in the confusion he’d lost his shirt, and in losing it had been exposed. The tines. He could feel her eyes on them in the scant moments she allowed herself to look. They began just after his wrist bones, tines of deep blue chitin that punctured the skin and angled back along the limb, pointing toward the elbow. There were thirteen of the tapering barbs on each forearm, some almost as thick as his smallest finger; all wept with a clear tasteless fluid that required him to bind them up before bed each night.

  This was Dino’s mark, his heritage as Orfano. His tear ducts were also affected, causing him to weep blood on the rare occasions he gave himself over to tears. Golia had the same tines, combined with great size and strength. Lucien lacked ears and his fingernails were a shiny midnight-blue; he also benefited from agility and a certain resilience. Dino hoped he might develop these same benefits in time. He’d certainly have use for resilience if today foretold his future. Only Anea’s marks remained hidden. That she was never seen without gloves made Dino suspect she had the same blue-black fingernails as Lucien. Few if any knew the nature of the deformity she hid beneath the veil, and none spoke of it. When people did pass comment they discussed her great intellect.

  The Orfani, twisted children of Demesne, strangelings of Landfall.

  How Dino hated those tines. How many hours had he spent binding them? How many shirts had snagged and torn on their points? They grew longer with each year: soon he’d need to bind them during the day, or else walk about with sleeves rolled back to his elbows, his disfigurement plain to see.

  There was a fiery pinprick of pain as the dottore began to sew the wound.

  ‘Take this.’ Stephania proffered a thimble of brandy, which burned all the way down his parched throat. Dino lost track of how long he lay there, the ill-tempered dottore working at his gut, the pull of thread closing up the slender wound. Lost count of the times Angelicola told him how fortunate he was the blade had missed his entrails. Lying there with the full extent of his otherness revealed, Dino felt anything but, only a deep and excruciating shame. A shame that would in time harden to a cruel hatred of House Fontein. He felt the corners of his vision grow red with blood. He would not cry.

  The only thing worse than tines were tears.

  6

  To Speak Ill of the Dead

  – 13 Giugno 325

  ‘Don’t you think it’s hypocritical?’ Dino was unpleasantly warm as he plucked at the collar of his formal attire. So much black on such a humid day. The dark interior of the carriage was stifling. ‘No one spared him a thought until he died, now this clamour to attend his funeral. It’s horse shit.’ A pothole in the road caused him to rock forward on his seat.

  Anea stared at him, jade eyes immaculate amid the fine lines of kohl. The Silent Queen looked especially imposing behind the black veil she wore.

  ‘And I suppose we’re paying for the bastard’s casket?’

  Anea’s hands flickered, the movements short and sharp. Virmyre is paying for the funeral, if you must know.

  ‘Why does Virmyre care where the old bastard is buried?’

  He said something about closure. He and Angelicola have history.

  ‘What history?’

  He declined to elaborate. Perhaps you should ask him?

  She picked up her fan and pulled back the curtain to look through the carriage window. Dino clenched his fists, then stretched his fingers with frustration. Demesne was riddled with secrets. Legions of pretty deceptions and unwholesome inventions, all huddling together and breeding more of the same. He wondered if they inhabited the deep places below the castle, threatening to erode the foundations.

  The day had started brightly enough but sombre clouds had drifted in from the east. There had been a storm in the small hours, haranguing the grey sea.

  ‘Did the thunder wake you last night?’

  Everything wakes me.

  ‘Did you get any sleep at all?’

  A little.

  Dino found himself hoping for rain, anything to leach the humidity from the sultry air. The carriage slowed and drew to a halt. The driver tapped on the roof. Dino opened the door and jumped to the road, looking around with a hand on the hilt of his blade. Anea stepped down, taking his free hand as she did so.

  ‘Angelicola was always a complete bastard to us,’ said Dino, voice subdued, ‘Lucien particularly.’ His anger had departed, leaving him maudlin. She caught his eye then pulled him close, the embrace all too brief. They were seldom given the chance to be siblings; the isolation of being Orfani weighed on them keenly.

  I promise we will head to San Marino when things are more stable.

  ‘There’s no guarantee I’ll come back if we go.’

  The same thought had occurred to me. Her jade eyes twinkled with amusement.

  Another two carriages stood empty at the side of the road, horses bored and restless, tails switching at flies. The coachmen idled, smoking moondrake leaf from pipes. One of their number spotted Anea, prompting them to remove their three-cornered hats. Deeps bows were made across the dusty road. Dino nodded back to them, noting the wariness in their eyes.

  They do not trust me, signed Anea. Even after everything I have done, I am still the strega princess.

  ‘Don’t let it concern you, they’re Fontein men.’

  I will have to win them over one day if I am going to survive.

  ‘We could always bring back hanging.’

  Anea rolled her eyes and her shoulders shook with a giggle.

  Time to bury Angelicola, she signed, then resumed a poise of rigid formality, green eyes alert, bronze headdress creating a halo above her corn-blond hair. Dino presented a hand and she rested her own atop it, looking straight ahead, confidence emanating like a nimbus. Her gaze was set on the black iron gates of the cemetery, yellowing bindweed clinging to the metal. The hinges had long since rusted, the portal yawning open, death’s invitation to the living. Anea’s black silk fan beat a steady rhythm as they walked. Numerous gravestones awaited them inside, each a monument to one who had served Demesne – and had the coin to pay House Prospero stonecutters.

  ‘What do cittadini do if they cannot afford headstones?’ asked Dino solemnly.

  Wooden markers. But not here; these plots come at a premium.

  The lesser houses opted for delicately pointed slabs or morose angels sporting pious wintry gazes. The great houses had mausoleums in which to inter their dead, as befitted the nobility. Those who had stood against Anea were buried at sea, an edict she had passed soon after taking the throne. Dino found himself admiring the elegant simplicity of her thinking. There would be no shrines for assassins.

  ‘I didn’t expect so many mourners for an outcast dottore.’

  Many of these people owe Angelicola their health. Some were even delivered by him.

  ‘There’s a terrifying thought. Imagine if Angelicola was the first person you’d seen as you came into the world.’

  Anea began to sign, thought better of it and stopped. The Orfani walked on.

  The mourners were by the graveside on the far side, in positions appropriate to their station. All waited for the Silent Queen’s arrival, a hushed reverence upon each of them. Only Lady
Stephania had lingered at the the centre of the cemetery to greet Anea, a retainer at each elbow. Stephania wore a gown of lavender silk with black lace detailing, the colours declaring her for House Prospero. A matching fan occupied her hand, poor insurance against the heat. Her hair was concealed beneath black gauze, suitably solemn for the occasion.

  ‘My Lady Diaspora.’ She bobbed a curtsey to Anea, her maid did the same. She’d taken on a personal messenger of late, an unsmiling man who sketched a deep bow.

  ‘Lord Erudito,’ said Stephania, another curtsey. Dino forced himself not to roll his eyes, the veneer of titles and dusty ceremony made his teeth ache.

  ‘My lady,’ he nodded, ‘Are you well, Stephania?’

  She favoured him with a smile from behind her fan. ‘Yes, my lord. Better than Angelicola at least.’

  Dino smiled. Perhaps Stephania wasn’t so dusty after all.

  The two women and Dino conversed as they approached the grave. Lady Stephania had taken pains to master the silent language the moment Anea and Dino had finished devising it. Booted feet crunched in the white gravel, the grass neatly trimmed on each side of the path. The oak and willow of the woodland behind the cemetery whispered and swayed while the sun maintained its golden vigil amid the clouds.

  ‘It’s strange to think he’s been living outside the castle walls this whole time. I’d not seen him since …’ Stephania trailed off, unsure how to finish.

  ‘Since he nearly lost his mind keeping the king’s unholy secret,’ said Dino. Anea glared at him.

  Virmyre stood with Russo, the Domina. Ten years ago they’d been the bright stars of the House Erudito. Now they were the right and left hand of the Silent Queen. Russo was dressed in deep scarlet, shunning the drab grey of the old Majordomo along with his title. She’d retained the staff associated with the office; hers was silver and unadorned. She was a striking woman, long-limbed and auburn-haired, lips painted a sombre purple.

  She looks especially sad today.

  Stephania nodded

  ‘It’s been a long time since I’ve seen her smile,’ said Dino.