by Sarah Ahiers
“She took you from me,” Claudia said.
The world slowed again, seemed to freeze as these words sank into me. “No,” I said. “She saved me from the ghosts.”
“She took you before the ghosts even appeared. She walked into the Da Via home, killed your father, her own brother, and stole you from your crib. She used the ghosts as a diversion to escape with you.”
I shook my head. “No. You’re lying.”
Lea hadn’t done it. She hadn’t stolen me, and she certainly hadn’t killed my father. He had died in the fire with the rest of the Saldanas. She and Les had gone into the Da Vias’ home to rescue me and Emile and Marcello. It was the Da Vias who had stolen us.
“I suppose she told you we had stolen you and she was only taking you back?” Val asked.
I focused on my hands as they gripped the tablecloth. The Da Vias were the villains. The Da Vias had turned to another god and killed the Saldanas.
“I would never have given up my child,” Claudia said. “She stole you from your true Family. She is a child thief, and she hid the truth from you with lies and secrets.”
“No,” I said, but my voice was barely a whisper. “You don’t know anything.”
Liars. They were liars. But she looked so much like me, Claudia. I couldn’t deny the familial resemblance. No one could. And Lea and Les had kept secrets from me, had not wanted me to come to Lovero, had left that side of my family tree blank.
And this made sense, what Claudia and Val had told me. This answered everything, revealed all the secrets surrounding me. Explained why I’d never fit.
Everyone knew the Da Vias were liars. But no one said they were the only ones.
“We were there, Allegra.” Val leaned back in his chair. “We saw everything. If you don’t believe us, just ask someone else. Ask Lea, if you want, or that bastard husband of hers. He was there, too, even though I’d done my best to put my sword through his heart.”
I released the tablecloth. “You were the one who killed him?” I asked, staring at Val.
Even the common knew the story, of course. The Da Vias had killed Lea and Les in battle. Then Lea had stood before Safraella Herself and been granted a true resurrection, a return to the life she had left behind. And Lea had accepted, if Les could be brought back, too. And they were and it was a miracle and yet we still had to hide who we were in Yvain since they followed a different god.
“Yes,” Val answered. “I killed him. I’d do it again, too.”
I threw my wine in Val’s face.
He spluttered, the red wine dripping onto his expensive silk. I ran from the table.
“Allegra!” Claudia shouted. But I didn’t turn back, didn’t look over my shoulder, just fled east, away from the Da Vias.
My heart pounded, filling my ears with its sound. But that was fine, that was good. If I focused on the sound of my heart, then I couldn’t hear what it was whispering to me, trailing across my neck. You don’t fit. You don’t fit. Don’t fit. Don’t fit.
That maybe what the Da Vias had said was the truth. That maybe here were the answers to all of Lea’s secrets, if I was just brave enough to see her for what she really was.
nine
I RAN THROUGH THE STREETS OF RAVENNA, SHOVING past the revelers who’d emerged, not caring how angrily they shouted after me.
I ran until my side ached with sharp pain and my chest heaved for air. I ran until all my tangled thoughts and emotions had burned up, drifted away from me and left my head and heart empty.
I stopped, hand pressed to my side, gulping. A woman passed by me, dressed in red velvet, wearing a half mask that covered her eyes with leather ivy.
“What city is this?” I managed to gasp at her.
She glared at me, and I knew what she saw: a strange girl, out of breath, wearing outdated fashions, hair loose and tangled about her face, barking questions.
She sniffed, and deigned to answer “Lilyan” before she strode away.
I closed my eyes, relief easing the tension in my limbs. I was safe from the Da Vias. They couldn’t reach me here.
I walked forward, letting my body cool, my heartbeat slow, the stitch in my side ease.
But it wasn’t the stitch that was the source of my pain.
Liars. The Da Vias were liars.
But I’d long been privy to the fact that Lea was keeping something from me, keeping secrets. And the Da Vias, Val and Claudia—if that was even her real name—had been the only ones who had offered me any sort of explanation for those secrets surrounding me.
I found a wall and leaned against it, clenching my eyes shut.
I thought about Lea and Les and Emile, back at our house. Enjoying the festival, maybe. Or each other’s company. Fitting together.
I couldn’t face them. Not now. Not yet. I couldn’t look in their eyes and search for the truth, ask them if they’d lied to me for my entire life. Ask if my mother was alive. If Lea had stolen me.
If I was a Da Via.
Because if I did, I would find the truth there, whatever it was, and I wasn’t ready for it.
I needed time. The Susten Day celebration was just beginning. Now that I was safe in Lilyan, I could take in the sights until I was ready to see my Family again. Until I was ready to ask them questions.
My stomach growled. I’d never gotten a chance to eat at the restaurant with Val Da Via. Food always made bad situations better.
I followed the crowd, heading east. After a few blocks the street opened to a market area. The festival wasn’t, say, one specific festival, but instead multiple little parties and revelries that ebbed and flowed throughout the streets of Lovero, and congregated where the food and music and entertainment set up shop. But in this market I couldn’t help but think I’d stumbled across one of the hearts of the festival, or perhaps a heart of Lovero itself.
The size of the square meant there were dozens of stands with food and drink, lines and crowds of people at each one. Stilt walkers made their careful way through the crowd, fire breathers found corners to practice their trade to oohs and aahs. Children gathered around puppets, cloth and shadows alike, and I took note of the shows that seemed to attract the attention of adults, too.
The market square stretched farther south, but the crowd was so thick in that direction I couldn’t see what secrets and delights it held.
The ache in my heart eased some at so much excitement, and I allowed myself a quick smile. Everything could be fine. I was in a different city, a different country! This was one of my dreams come true. I was seeing the world.
I had some money, enough for food and maybe something else. I headed to the nearest stand and stood in line. I didn’t even know what kind of food I was waiting for, but judging how my mouth watered at the salty smell that wafted from the flames behind the stall, it didn’t matter.
The crowd shifted and a girl in front of me jabbed her elbow into my chest. She turned and looked me up and down. She was very pretty, with dark skin and black hair twisted on top of her head in the Loveran style, a few tendrils artfully free to frame her delicate face.
She had two friends with her, and they, too, turned.
Elbow clearly didn’t like what she saw because she sniffed once and her left eyebrow raised haughtily. Much of her prettiness fled. “I would appreciate it if you would keep your hands to yourself.”
I blinked as my stomach flopped. I was trying to escape from my bad thoughts, not to find them somewhere else. “I’ll keep that in mind the next time you decide to flail your elbows like a hooked eel.”
Though it was hard to see in the dark night and past her dark skin, her face reddened ever so slightly. Her friend to the right couldn’t control herself and let her jaw drop open. Guess they were used to getting their way.
Elbow narrowed her eyes and examined me up and down again, this time exaggerating it to almost comic effect. I stilled. Let her look. I was nothing if not proud.
“It must be hard for a country churl like yourself to understa
nd the social niceties that come with a festival like this.” She sniffed. “I mean, leaving your hair down and wearing such a simple dress? You poor dear.”
My smile stretched thin and tight but before I could retort, or slap her across the face, which was what I really ached to do, a man shouted from an alley to our right.
The man raced into the crowd, shoving people aside in his haste, ignoring their cries and complaints. Behind him a shadow emerged from the alley, right on his tail.
I caught my breath and leaned forward. The man dashed, running alongside our line, and the clipper chased him, his cloak flaring out behind.
My heart raced. The clipper didn’t care about the crowd or witnesses, he only cared about his mark.
The mark shoved past a woman and, seeing an opportunity, I stuck my foot out, catching the mark around his ankle. He shouted and fell to the street with a whumph.
The clipper wasted no time. The dagger was in his hand and with a quick jab the fleeing man was dead, the street collecting his blood.
Most everyone averted their eyes. Even Elbow and her friends, shocked though they seemed, dropped their eyes to their shoes.
Purple thorns decorated the clipper’s mask. He studied me like Elbow had, but his bone mask lacked a sneer.
I inclined my head. “Allegra Saldana, brother.”
His eyes met mine and he bowed his head.
“Sister Saldana.” His voice was surprisingly soft behind his mask. “Welcome to our home. I hope you’re enjoying the festivities.”
The dead man’s blood crept closer and I took a step away. No need to stain my boots. I glanced at Elbow and her friends, who kept their gazes locked on their shoes. “It’s still early.”
“That it is. You will be at the fealty?”
The fealty. The whole reason we’d come to Lovero in the first place. It was a ball, with food and dancing and maybe clippers trying to stab each other in the back.
Of course, who cared about what other clippers wanted to do when it turned out it was one’s family who wielded the sharpest knife.
“Sister?” the Caffarelli clipper questioned.
I’d slipped into my dark thoughts. I nodded to him and smiled. “I will.”
“Then I will see you there. Enjoy the night, sister.” He crouched over the body of his mark and slipped a coin in the man’s mouth, a signal to Safraella that this man had been murdered in Her name. Then he returned to the alley. Everyone gave him a wide berth, though they greeted him with respect and a touch of awe.
Elbow and her friends stared freely at me with a mix of horror and something else I couldn’t quite decipher.
“It strikes me as strange,” I said conversationally, “that you’re so rude to strangers you meet on your streets when any one of them could be clippers. Do you value your life so little?”
Not that I would kill some stuck-up Loveran girls for simply playing to their stereotype, but still.
“We apologize so deeply, Lady Saldana.” Elbow clutched her hands together and bowed her head. The other two followed her lead. “It’s just, usually clippers are more . . .” She paused, unsure how to continue.
“I have my hair up all night behind my bone mask. If I want to leave it down, then I leave it down.” Not that I needed to explain myself.
“As is your right and privilege.”
To show her true and utter support of me, Elbow reached behind her head and unpinned her own hair. It tumbled to her shoulders in a free wave. It didn’t necessarily make her prettier, but it did make her seem friendlier. The girl on the left immediately copied Elbow, but the one on the right widened her eyes in shock. She glanced at me once before staring at Elbows and her other friend.
“Mebba,” Elbow snapped. The remaining friend unclipped her own hair and let it fall around her shoulders.
“Next!” the man at the food stand yelled. Elbow and her friends were next but they ushered me forward. I wasn’t going to complain. I was starving, and any chance to get food sooner was an opportunity I was willing to take. It turned out the stand was selling skewered fish, fried in oil. But when I went to pay, the man waved my money aside. “No charge for clippers.”
When I turned around, Elbow and her friends had vanished and I wouldn’t have been surprised to see them later, hair carefully repinned.
Two cleaners appeared beside the dead body and loaded it onto a stretcher. They would identify the body and contact his family. Loveran death was quick and efficient.
I headed south toward the heavier crowds of the market, blowing on the pieces of fish on the wooden skewers, willing them to cool so I could ease the pains in my stomach. Finally, burned tongue be damned, I bit into the fish.
My mouth filled with steam, but the fish was meaty and flaky and tender and the oil made the skin crunch between my teeth.
I finished the rest of the skewer and the next one, trying to savor the fish as much as possible while fighting the urge to shove it down my throat as quickly as I could. I was mostly successful, though, and wondered what kind of food I could find elsewhere in the market.
To my right a loud roar filled the night. People screamed and jumped. I turned and before me, separated by stakes and ropes from the rest of the festivities, was a traveler menagerie.
Travelers hailed from the country of Mornia in the east, and were called travelers because their gods let them travel across the dead plains unharassed by the angry ghosts. They were menagerie people and some of them visited different countries and cities with their exotic animals.
The roaring came again from deep within the menagerie and my feet carried me to the entrance. A man watched the crowd dispassionately. He was tall, like Les, and shared the same sort of olive skin and black hair, but outside of that they didn’t look much alike. The man smirked at me. He held up a single finger for the price and I didn’t even hesitate, fishing for the coin in my purse and handing it over. The man swept his arm forward, ushering me inside.
I took my coin purse and shoved it down the bodice of my dress, then used my scarf to hide my necklace. I knew from Les that travelers worshipped Boamos, a god of thievery and wealth. Better to be safe.
The menagerie was set up with what seemed to be portable cages, the backs and sides made of solid wood and the front metal bars latched tightly together. Whether that was to keep the animals in or the people out, I couldn’t be sure. The cages pointed away from the marketplace, no use giving the crowd a free look, and snaked around, creating little pockets of different sights and types of animals.
Immediately I found a cage of colorful birds. They were no bigger than the canal sparrows in Yvain, but each was a different color: jewel green, bloodred, night black, bone white. They flitted around, making little peeping sounds. I watched them for a few moments and then drifted to the next cage. More birds, loud parrots that screeched and squawked and snapped at each other. I didn’t linger.
I continued past the birds and found monkeys with humanlike faces, their eyes wide and sad. A child to my right flung a piece of fruit into the cage and the monkeys raced for it, all seeming humanity erased as they hissed and screamed at one another, fighting for the food.
Loverans ambled around, drifting from cage to cage at their leisure, spending more time in front of the animals that caught their eyes. And travelers stood guard, seemingly bored with the entire thing, though Les had told me travelers often made enough from a single menagerie to support several families for several years. Once the money ran low, the families would gather their animals and head out for another city to earn money.
I skipped past the lizards since I could smell them from a distance and didn’t relish getting closer. There was a ring of horses, each one exquisitely bred. Lea would’ve appreciated them more than I did.
My stomach flopped. I moved away from the horses. I didn’t want to think about Lea. I was here to enjoy the menagerie, to take my mind off my Family. Off everything.
A crowd bustled in the next alcove. I slipped past people so
deftly they barely even noticed until I’d reached the front and the animal that had drawn so much attention.
A tiger paced in the cage, mouth slightly open, panting, yellow eyes staring at the crowd. It walked back and forth, back and forth, its eyes unseeing, lost in its own thoughts, maybe.
What did tigers dream of when they were awake and trapped in a cage? I couldn’t even imagine.
I swallowed.
Les had told me about them, how their stripes were orange and gold and black. This one’s stripes tapered to white on his chest and stomach, his cheeks, and the end of his tail, which flicked every time he turned. And he was so beautiful. But as I watched him, my chest tightened, and I blinked my eyes rapidly at the tears that crept up on me.
I couldn’t stand to see something so beautiful, something that only longed to be free, trapped and caged like he was.
I slipped back through the crowd, not even pausing when the tiger roared. Even if it seemed like he was roaring at my retreating figure, I knew he was roaring at something only he could see.
A home and family lost, maybe. Or his freedom.
ten
I FOUND AN ALCOVE OF MENAGERIE CAGES THAT WERE blessedly empty of Loverans and I caught my breath. It was cooler without so many bodies pressed together.
The animals, while distracting at first, were losing their hold on my thoughts.
These cages in this alcove were smaller, some even stacked on top of one another, and there were no bars, but instead tiny, thin wires, woven together to make a sort of lace big enough to see through, but too tiny to fit even my smallest finger through the gap.
Tiny cages, like mine, growing smaller every day.
I leaned closer.
A snake struck at me, smashing against the wire lattice. I jumped back and the snake coiled around itself, yellow eyes watching me as its tongue flicked in and out.
“Do not be scared,” an accented voice said behind me. “He cannot hurt you.”
I turned. The traveler boy had hazel eyes. It was the first thing I noticed about him, mostly because they were at the same level as mine, but also because they were striking, set against his olive skin. He wore a strange, red-and-blue cloth hat, circular, that sat close to his scalp, allowing room for his dark hair to be tied at the base of his skull.