Thief's Cunning

by Sarah Ahiers

  She sighed and leaned back in her chair. And all at once she looked old. She was old, of course. Her once-black hair was white. Her skin was wrinkled and soft. She was probably older even than Marcello. But she gave off such an air of power. Of being in charge, of fairness and verve, that until this moment I’d forgotten that she was, indeed, a woman near the end of her life.

  “What happens to you?” I asked. She looked at me, eyes full of questions at the change of subject. “When you die, I mean. When I die,” I said, “I will stand before Safraella, and She will grant me a new life. A good life, if I have served Her well.”

  I thought about all the people I’d sent to meet Her, the lives I’d ended, the coins I’d slipped into mouths. Maybe I’d made a mistake by putting this necklace on, but I hoped She would take pity on me, see the work I’d done in Her name, and decide I had done enough to be worthy of a good, new life.

  But, then again, She had never been a god of mercy.

  Bedna exhaled slowly. “We do not know.”

  I left my thoughts behind and looked at her. “You don’t know?”

  “No. I will die and stand before the Three and what happens after that is a mystery.”

  I shook my head. “Why . . .” I paused, trying to tread carefully. “Why would you worship gods who promise you nothing? Who leave you in the dark? Even Acacius in Yvain offers His followers a chance to become one with the land.”

  Bedna shrugged. “We do not worship Them in order to be granted boons at the end of our lives. We worship Them because we have always worshipped Them. Because it is our way of life. And They give us daughters and sons, wealth and music, safe travels and nights free from ghosts. That is enough for us. What happens when our lives end is a mystery, yes, but one I seek gladly. The stars are no less beautiful simply because we know not where their light comes from.”

  I couldn’t decide if that kind of unknowing blindness was terrifying or comforting. But I didn’t think I would have the strength to face my oncoming death so easily, had I not known what waited for me afterward.

  Because as my death approached, I didn’t fear. I only felt sadness that I would never get to say good-bye to my family. To tell them I loved them.

  And forgave them.

  Bedna stood from the chair, groaning. “I return now to the samars. Nev will return to you soon.”

  “I’m fine,” I said, aware it wasn’t actually the truth. But I would be safe by myself.

  Bedna hummed, and left me alone.

  I closed my eyes, but a moment later the whisper of the curtain sounded and someone entered the house.

  “Allegra,” they called.

  And I opened my eyes to find my mother, bone mask over her face, no longer missing.

  thirty-six

  “MOTHER,” I SAID. “I WENT TO VISIT YOU BEFORE BUT you were gone.”

  She slid her bone mask to the top of her head and sat down on the chair next to my bed. “I couldn’t stay in that wagon for another day. I needed space. I found where you’ve been staying, though. I visited you while you were sleeping.”

  The tullie blossoms. I thought I’d imagined them.

  “You’re looking better, Allegra. It’s time for us to leave.”

  I shook my head. “No,” I said. “I can’t leave. I already told you this.”

  “Safraella will protect you. You are Her disciple. She’ll stop whatever god curse these damn travelers have placed on you.”

  “It’s not their fault,” I said.

  “Who cares whose fault it is? Just come with me now. We can take one of their wagons, return to Lovero. Start over. Be mother and daughter like we were meant to be.”

  I squinted at her.

  “What?” she asked.

  “It’s just, you’re so convinced Safraella will protect me, when you yourself didn’t even follow Her when you were younger. You told me in Ravenna how it was the grace of your other god that gave me to you.”

  My mother leaned back in her chair. “That was a long time ago. I’m devoted to Safraella now.”

  “I don’t doubt it,” I said.

  “She protected me and Val when Lea brought the ghosts to our home. She will protect you now, too. You are a Da Via. You are my blood.”

  “But I have always been devout, and when I tried to go home, I wasn’t able. I don’t think you’ll overcome that any more than I could.”

  My mother shook her head. “This is nonsense. Come now, get up. I’m your mother, I know what’s best for you.” She reached out for me.

  I leaned away. “What?”

  “You’ll come home with me and be a Da Via. You’ll take your place at my side, where you always should have been. No one will look at me with pity anymore. And the two of us will be the strongest mother–daughter pair in the Da Vias.”

  I studied her. Really studied her. She looked like me, so much like me, that I had forgotten she wasn’t actually me. She was her own person. With her own agenda. Her own goals. And that was bringing me back to her, to her life, fitting me into the life she led.

  “What if I don’t want that?” Because what she was describing sounded a lot like another cage. A gilded one, maybe, but a cage nonetheless.

  “What?”

  “I don’t . . .” I paused, trying to work through my thoughts. I coughed. “I spent my whole life as a Saldana feeling like I didn’t belong,” I said.

  My mother leaned forward. “You were always meant to be a Da Via.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “That’s what I thought, anyway. And I’ve spent my whole time here in Mornia trying to get back to Lovero, so I could become a Da Via, so I could finally fit.”

  “Yes!” she said.

  “But how is being a Da Via any different than being a Saldana?”

  Skepticism spread across her face. “Because we’re Da Vias. We live in Ravenna, the greatest city in Lovero.”

  “It’s just a place,” I said.

  “And you’ll be with family,” she countered.

  “The Saldanas are also family,” I said. “And they raised me.”

  “They raised you because they took you from me!” she snarled.

  “Yes,” I conceded. “And they lied to me. Kept me caged with them. But they did it because they loved me. Because they didn’t want to lose me.”

  “I didn’t want to lose you, Allegra. And in Ravenna you’ll be with me. Your mother.”

  All my life I’d dreamed of having a mother. And here she was before me, when I was sick, when I was dying, trying to get me to leave with her.

  Lea had taken care of me. Had taught me, loved me. What was a mother other than that?

  “It’s the same,” I said to her. “Da Via. Saldana. It’s all the same.”

  Ravenna or Yvain. Da Via or Saldana. It didn’t matter where I made my home. Who I called my Family. Whichever I picked wouldn’t change who I was. I needed to fit with myself, first. “Ravenna and Yvain, they’re just different sides of the same coin.”

  “And what is this place, then?”

  “A different coin.”

  “That’s nonsense. Come. I’ll take you home.”

  “You can’t take me anywhere,” I said. “You can’t take me.”

  Behind my mother, the curtain to the house pushed open and Bedna stepped inside.

  She paused, staring between the two of us. Silence, heavy and thick, full of deadly promise.

  My mother pulled her mask over her face.

  I exhaled. “Dammit.”

  Claudia dashed toward Bedna, unsheathing her sword so fast I barely registered it.

  “Stop!” I shouted.

  And they both did. Bedna, freezing by a chair, my mother pausing with her sword aimed at Bedna’s heart.

  “Bedna,” I said quietly, trying to keep things calm so no one ended up dead. “Please, take your seat. And Claudia, please put your sword away.”

  Bedna did as I asked, lowering herself carefully into a seat. Her eyes were wide with fear, but her lips were pressed to
gether tightly in anger.

  Claudia stared at me, her expression hidden behind her bone mask, but she did as I’d asked and sheathed her sword. Not that Bedna was out of danger. It was going to take a fair bit of skill to keep her alive for the next few moments.

  Claudia slid her mask to the top of her head. Bedna glanced between the two of us, noting our similarities.

  “Allegra,” Claudia said, her voice all at once soft and hard, speaking of anger and something else. A wistfulness, maybe. A wanting. “I came here to bring you home and that is what I’m going to do.”

  “To your home, you mean,” I said.

  She didn’t respond, but she didn’t need to. Claudia hadn’t managed to find her way to Mornia only to return me to the Saldanas, the people she hated most in the world.

  “You know I can’t,” I said. “I can’t.”

  “You’re getting better!” Claudia argued. “You’ve improved so much. Soon you’ll be fully recovered.”

  “No,” I said. “Even if that were the case, I still would not leave with you.”

  “How can you say that?” Anger leaked through her voice, but mostly it seemed she tried to disguise her pain. I’d hurt her, this woman I barely knew. She had chains wrapped around her heart, and I’d put them there and hadn’t even known it.

  Nothing hurt us more than love.

  “I’m tired,” I said, and held up my hand, forestalling her interruption. “I’m tired of everyone taking me from people, from places. I’ve always been stolen against my will. I’m done with it. No more. I make my own decisions now.”

  Claudia took a deep breath. “Then choose to come with me.” She held out her hand, palm up, asking me to take it.

  And it called to me. My fingers even twitched, begged me to slip them into her own, to lace them together. She was my mother, the mother I’d always wanted. The mother I’d desperately wanted to know. And she was begging me to do all that, to go with her. To let her be my mother. It would be the easiest thing, even if it meant giving up everything I’d ever known. Meant giving up Nev. No more arms wrapped around me in the night, whispered words in my ear that I couldn’t even understand. He’d stood by me from the very moment we’d met. We fit together. I belonged with him.

  I released the blanket I’d been clenching, smoothing it out with my fingers.

  The brightness in Claudia’s eyes dimmed. She read my answer in my face, my body. Her arm dropped to her side.

  An inhale of breath was the only warning she gave.

  Claudia yanked out a dagger and lunged for Bedna.

  I kicked at Bedna’s chair, connecting with the seat. The chair slid backward, Bedna still seated in it, until it hit a rug and toppled over.

  Claudia’s knife passed through the empty space.

  “Stop!” I climbed to my feet.

  “You’re coming with me,” Claudia snarled. “Even if I have to kill every last traveler in Mornia.”

  She dashed for Bedna again.

  I jerked the blanket off the bed and whipped it at Claudia’s feet. She stumbled, allowing Benda enough time to scurry away from the chair.

  “This is madness!” I shouted at Claudia.

  “You know nothing of madness,” she said, then yanked her bone mask onto her face.

  Weak. I was too weak to stop her. If she was driven to kill Bedna right here and now, I wouldn’t be able to stop her. Not alone. Not even with help, maybe. Claudia had held her own against Lea in the Ravenna market. Even at my peak I doubted I’d be able to slow her down, determined as she was.

  Claudia slashed at the blanket around her ankles, cutting herself free from it.

  Bedna scurried behind her kitchen table and snatched a broom. She swung the handle at Claudia’s head. Claudia knocked it away, turning to face Bedna once more.

  The warning horn sounded outside.

  We paused, listening. It came a second time.

  I looked at the curtain covering the door. It drifted listlessly in the night air. No wind. No storm.

  Pounding footsteps outside. Nev shoved his way through.

  “Bedna, Allegra we need—” He stopped mid-sentence, catching sight of Claudia before him.

  Claudia didn’t hesitate. She swung around, dagger whipping with her. Nev jumped back, but not before the dagger caught him below his throat, cutting across the jut of his collarbone.

  If Claudia had aimed a little higher, or Nev had been a little slower, she would have spilled his life’s blood.

  Instead, Nev hit the back wall with a grunt. He slipped off his feet, crashing to the ground. Claudia darted for him.

  I leaped onto her back, wrapping my legs around her waist. My hands grabbed her wrist with the dagger.

  Claudia spun. I lost my grip, slipping off her and landing on top of Nev. Claudia’s dagger tumbled to the ground. I scrambled for it. My fingers closed around the warmth of its hilt.

  I held it before me, protecting Nev. I began to cough, a hack, deep in my throat, my chest.

  “Stop,” I said in between coughs. I tried to catch my breath, tried to stop the pain that tore through me with each cough.

  Claudia stood over us. Her chest rose and fell rapidly.

  Finally, my coughing eased and I was able to take a deep breath.

  “Stop,” I said once more.

  Claudia took a step away from us. Another. Until she hit the wall and leaned against it, the fight gone from her.

  She pushed her mask to the top of her head once more and took a deep, shuddering breath. Tears had dampened her face. She wiped them away with her gloved fingers.

  “You will never be mine, will you?” she asked, her voice breaking slightly.

  I untangled myself from Nev and he scrambled to his feet, pulling me up with him. I let my arm with the dagger drop to my side, but I didn’t give up the weapon.

  “I belong to me,” I said, “and me alone.”

  She nodded once, pushing herself off the wall. “It’s unfair.”

  “Yes,” I said. Because she spoke the truth. Lea and Les had taken me from her when I was an infant. They’d thought they’d been doing the right thing, probably had been doing the right thing, really, but it didn’t mean people didn’t get hurt. That Claudia hadn’t lost a daughter she would never get back. That I hadn’t lost a mother, too, even if I’d gained another one.

  I thought about Nev, kidnapping me from my family to try to keep me safe. He rested his hand on my hip, prepared to jump back into a fight with Claudia, if needed.

  Sometimes we hurt the ones we loved the most when we tried to do the right thing.

  The horn outside blew again and Bedna lowered her broom.

  “The bol?” Bedna asked Nev.

  I stepped away from him, one eye still on Claudia, who seemed to mostly be ignoring us as she pulled her mask back into place.

  “It is not a bol.” He shook his head. “That is why I came back for you. All the samars are needed.”

  “What?” Bedna set her broom down. “Why?”

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “Ghosts,” Nev said. “An army of ghosts, coming this way.”

  thirty-seven

  GHOSTS. AN ARMY OF GHOSTS, HEADING STRAIGHT FOR Mornia.

  I should have been confused, like Bedna clearly was, as she shook her head and asked Nev to repeat himself. But I wasn’t.

  I knew what this was, had lived through it before, even though I had been too young to remember. An army of ghosts could only mean one thing.

  Lea Saldana.

  I spun to face Claudia, because she would understand the meaning of it, too, would know who drove the ghosts toward the barrier protecting Mornia. But Claudia was gone, having slipped away while I’d been focused on Nev.

  She’d heard him, though. The only question was, was she fleeing, or did she go to seek Lea in the night?

  “I have never seen so many,” Nev was saying to Bedna, who scrambled around her kitchen table to Nev. Blood coursed down his chest. He patted at it absently, winc
ing when his fingers connected with the wound. It was long, but shallow.

  “The barrier will keep them out.” Bedna pushed Nev into a chair and had him lift his arms while she pulled his shirt off, being careful around the pieces that stuck to the wound.

  Once free, she took a damp towel and dabbed at the wound.

  “No,” I said.

  They both looked at me. I squeezed the dagger in my hand.

  “What?” Bedna asked.

  “The barrier,” I said. “I don’t know that it will hold.”

  Bedna set the towel down and began to wrap a bandage around Nev’s chest. “The barrier has always stood up to the ghosts,” she said. “Culda’s song is strong. She, and the Three, have always protected us from the ghosts.”

  “The ghosts do not come of their own will, or because of coincidence. They are being driven. They come to break down your barrier, to flood your streets with the angry dead.”

  Bedna and Nev stared at me.

  “How do you know this?” Bedna’s voice was quiet, edged with fear.

  “Because it is my aunt who brings the ghosts to Mornia. She is Safraella’s chosen and the ghosts are Her wayward children.”

  Someone screamed in the street outside of Bedna’s house. She jumped, then finished tying off Nev’s bandage.

  The scream was followed by more shouts, yells. Pounding footsteps. The sound of fear working its way through a crowd of people. The ghosts were coming and people were afraid.

  “Come.” Bedna strode from her house. Nev and I followed on her heels and I was glad she was too old to run because I was too sick to move quicker than a walk.

  Nev put his arm around my waist, helping me to move. Normally I would have pushed him off. I didn’t need his help. I could walk, for now, anyway, but this was not the time for my pride. This was the time for action.

  Lea had said she would never use the ghosts as a weapon again. She had seen what it had done to the Da Vias, when she had opened the doors to their house and invited the ghosts inside. The Da Vias had turned their back on Safraella and Her punishment had been ruthless.

  A group of women and men ran past, heading southwest like us through the streets of New Mornia.