by V. Briceland
“Is something wrong?” Risa asked.
“That’s what I mean to ask you.” Mattio gestured to a collection of clear glass sheets. “Pretend we’re talking about the inventory. Is everything all right with you and that boy?”
A hot flush began to creep into Risa’s face. “What do you mean, all right?”
“He seems a little more worried about you than a guard ought to be in the line of duty.” Mattio’s grumbly voice lowered so that no one would overhear. “Like he’s taking an interest in you, that’s what I mean.”
“He’s a friend,” Risa immediately rejoined. “That’s all. Boys don’t think of me in that way.” Her face once again reddened as she remembered Ricard’s earnest protestations of infatuation just a few hours before. If that was love, she wanted none of it.
It was different with Milo. Her presence did not inspire him to poetry, or make him rapturous with song. He did not live his life as if he was on the stage of some imaginary drama. The words that came out of his mouth were sometimes playful, sometimes annoyingly blunt, yet always honest. He had no misgivings about pointing out her errors, but he did not embarrass her in public. He didn’t tease, like a brother. He was just … comfortable to be with. It was as if she had known and liked him long before they had actually met.
Across the room, Milo was looking about with obvious interest, as if full of curiosity about the workroom and its equipment. It was with respect that he watched Amo shape a rotating white-hot gobbet of glass with a heavy pair of metal tongs. Milo enjoyed learning about things. He was not content merely to make them up, like Ricard.
“You’re at an age, love. Boys will start liking you soon enough, if they haven’t begun already.”
“You sound like Papa. You’ll be saying I’m only good for bewitching men’s hearts, next.”
“Your father’s a bit blind when it comes to all the things a woman can do,” Mattio said. “You’ve years to go and plenty to learn here before you start a family of your own. You’re a Divetri. Glass is in your blood.”
If what Milo had suggested was true, the gods had foreseen that Risa would be needed in Caza Divetri during this time of crisis. But when it was over—if it ever ended—of what good would she be then? By the time of the next Feast of the Two Moons, she would be twenty-two. Far too old to be scrutinized and enter an insula for the first time. Would saving the caza mean having to forego learning the enchantments of her family’s trade?
Though Ferrer Cassamagi had called those enchantments insignificant, part of her railed against the unfairness of being left without their use. She was the first Divetri to be denied, without choice or say—and she had been burdened, unasked, with doing the work of a cazarra without any of the benefits.
She could choose to leave the caza. She could walk out that very moment and hide until it was all over. The caza would fall and her family would lose its small magics, but she would be no worse off than before. For a moment she felt vengeful. Let the others see how it felt to do without!
In her heart, however, Risa knew she could never do any such thing. As best as she could, she would defend Caza Divetri and raise its flags high every night. Her family’s horn would sound at her lips. Sacrificing the training of the insulas was the price she must pay so that her family could continue in its craft and responsibilities.
“Sometimes I think I’m being punished,” she told Mattio in slow, measured words. “Why does everything have to be so hard for me?”
He hugged her until she could not breathe, as he had countless times since she was a baby. “I think you’re walking a different road from the rest of us right now,” he said. “A rockier one, to be sure. But sometimes the gods give us rough traveling so we can enjoy the destination more when we get there. You just keep moving ahead, girl, no matter how tough it gets. You hear?”
From across the room sounded a roar of voices. “What in the name of Muro d’you think you’re doing, you fool!” Amo bellowed.
Both Risa and Mattio turned and rushed across the room. “You’re the fool!” Fredo was saying, in tones no less heated. In his hands he still held the long metal rod upon which was suspended the glass they were working. Already the white-hot semi-solid at its end drooped out of shape. “A real craftsman wouldn’t overreact.”
“A real craftsman! You call yourself a real craftsman? If I hadn’t moved, you would have burned off my face!” Amo was plainly angry. His fists clenched into balls at his side. “Where I worked, my masters would have you skinned alive for such an idiot trick!”
Seething with anger, Fredo’s thin nostrils flared. “This is my workshop. My family’s! Not yours, you low-born, unknown … ”
“Fredo!” Mattio raised his voice in warning.
Amo carefully felt the reddening spot on his forehead, where it looked as if he had sunburned. It was not blistering, but it still appeared painful. “I am disappointed to find that in the famed Divetri workshops a craftsman would be so careless as to—”
“You do not belong here!” Fredo’s voice cracked as it spit out the venomous words. He brandished the hot glass at Amo. The man backed away, hands up, plainly ready to defend himself. Milo had leapt to his feet. Behind Fredo, Emil stood motionless.
Silence fell. In a low, angry voice, Risa spoke first. “Cousin. My father would never treat a guest with such disrespect.”
It was with wild eyes that Fredo turned to face her. The lump of glass sagging from the end of the rod deepened in color as it cooled, but it was still hot enough to disfigure any object or flesh it touched. “Yes, Cazarra,” he said at last, unmoving. The words struggled out, as if he begrudged them both. “Of course, Cazarra.”
It took only three strides for Mattio to overcome his rage and reach Fredo’s side. “That’s enough,” he said, plainly upset at the antics in his workshop. He pulled on a pair of gloves and seized the iron rod. He handed it to Emil, who scurried to return it to the hole in the furnace wall in which the molten glass simmered. “Take off your apron and cool down. We’ll do without you until tomorrow.”
The reprimand caused Fredo’s eyes to open wide. He looked at Risa in appeal, but she merely nodded. For a moment she feared he might burst into tears; the thought of someone as self-contained and remote as her cousin blubbering like a baby made her uncomfortable. “Just take the afternoon off, cousin,” she said at last, trying to feign a smile. “Try to relax. We’re all upset today.”
“My apologies, Cazarra,” Fredo said at last. His voice was low and quivered with emotion. “This workshop is everything to me. I would not know what to do if it were lost.”
Everyone drew a collective sigh of relief when Fredo removed his protective clothing and hung it on the hook by the door. Without a word more or even so much as a look over his shoulder, he stalked from the room. Emil and Milo immediately began to talk over each other, trying to win Mattio’s attention.
Emil was apologizing. “I’m sure it must have been an accident. Fredo would never, ever … ”
“I saw him!” Milo was saying. “He deliberately—”
Mattio, however, had his eye upon Amo. “What are you doing, lad?” he asked as the craftsman removed his gloves and heavy apron.
“Going home.”
“Why?” It was a question Risa wondered as well.
“I’ll not be wanted here, after all that.” Amo’s large, broad face was wreathed with disappointment as he lifted a neck strap over his head.
“That’s for the cazarra and me to decide, lad. Get your gear back on. There’s work to be done.”
Milo seemed relieved that his friend was not being dismissed. Any further defense of Amo vanished from his lips. Mattio gave him a wink.
Emil scuttled to Risa’s side. “I really don’t think Fredo meant to burn him, Cazarrina,” he said. Then hastily he added, “I mean, Cazarra.”
�
�I’m sure it was an accident,” Risa said. She had her own doubts. Fredo had been acting as cazarro of the household, and she had taken that position away. Who knew how he might react if only a few short hours later he felt his place in the workshop to be on equally shaky ground?
“It must have been accidental. It simply must have been. He has been very upset, you know.”
“I know,” said Risa. Upset was too mild a word to describe the look on her cousin’s face, short moments ago. “Don’t worry.”
“He should have been cazarro,” Emil blurted out. Risa let out a gasp of astonishment that made Emil hastily backtrack. “He thinks that, I mean. No offense, Cazarra, but your father would have thought so as well.”
“I see.” Risa did not think Emil was being deliberately malicious in his statement, but she felt as if she had been slapped in the face. It was perfectly true that her father would have much preferred a man. How many more people would agree with him?
“Quiet your tongue!” Mattio barked at the nervous young man. The master craftsman scowled. His glance at Risa was meant to apologize for the incident, but already she had turned her back to hide the grim expression disfiguring her mouth.
22
—
When all else is dark, let work be our solace.
In the daily work of the hands, in the bend of the back
and the sweat of the brow, there is salvation.
—From the Prayer Book of the
Insula of the Penitents of Lena
Cazarra?”
The whisper was tentative and barely audible. Risa stopped at the sound of it, her heart pounding. Her back was hurting from shifting large boxes of glass sheets all afternoon; even with Milo’s assistance, they had been heavy and awkward. Until that moment, steeped with sweat and weariness, she had wanted nothing more than to return to her chambers and immerse herself in a tub of cool water.
“Who’s there?” she asked. Behind her, she heard Milo tense.
A figure hobbled slowly out of a shadowed niche. He was a frail man, with wrinkled skin that clung to his bones. In the stippled light cast by the arbor vines above, he seemed nearly skeletal.
“Dom?” Risa asked. Her pulse still raced. The old beggar had startled her.
His hand trembled as he held out fists clenched together. For a moment she was struck by how his posture, in profile, resembled a script capital S. His knees were bent forward, as if he staggered under the weight they carried, and his head projected out. He looked as if he were stooping under a low-hanging ledge. Dom’s eyes were fixed upon Risa like a hungry man’s upon a feast.
“What is it, Dom?”
“Cazarra,” said Milo, his voice polite and businesslike. “You should return to your chambers.”
“It’s just Dom,” she said to him, slightly out of sorts at his intervention. Then in a lower voice she added, “What’s wrong?”
He shook his head and whispered back, “Something just doesn’t seem right, here. I’ve been feeling it all afternoon.”
“You were the one who suggested I take the poor man in,” Risa reminded him.
“I know.” Milo nodded. “But—”
“He’s harmless,” she told him, almost laughing. After all she had been through in the last twenty-four hours, the sudden appearance of an aged servant should have been the least frightening event of the day. “What is in your hands?” she said to Dom, kindness in her voice. The man’s hand trembled as he once more held out his upturned fists. “Is it for me?”
Dom nodded, then opened his lips. Breath issued from between them. “For you.” A light breeze from over the sea wall ruffled wisps of white hair around his head like a cloud.
His fingers unfurled from around a round object. In his withered hands lay a fruit with a wine-red rind. “Oh, a pomegranate. How lovely! Thank you, Dom. It’s just what I wanted.”
A spark of static electricity passed from his hand to her fingers when Risa took the ripe fruit. The sensation startled her for a moment, but then she smiled again. From behind her, Milo cleared his throat. “Cazarra … ”
It was not until she had watched the old man disappear back into the shadows and they had walked into the residence that she spoke again. “Milo, what’s wrong?”
“I just don’t like people lurking in dark places around you,” he said. From the way he blurted out the words, she could tell his usual good humor had been replaced by anxiety.
“It’s only Dom,” she repeated. “No one is going to harm me within my own caza.”
“We don’t know that,” he said, then placed a hand on her shoulder to stop her. “This is serious business, Risa. We guards don’t have any orders to keep people out of the caza except at night. Anyone could pretend to be a friend or tradesman and cross those bridges if they wanted to see harm come to you.”
“You’re being ridiculous.” She resumed the trek to her chambers.
“I don’t want any ‘accidents’ like the one in the workshop. That could have been you with a burned face. It’s my duty to protect you.”
“You’re overreacting.” Even as she rebuked him, though, Risa felt a chill in her bones. He was right. She was at risk.
“Perhaps I am. Perhaps not. Just promise me you’ll not go haring off on your own, Risa. It’s best you not stray from my sight for the next few days.”
“Mattio will think you’re just saying that because you like me, you know,” she joked.
His face was utterly absent of expression at her remark. For a moment, she panicked at the thought she might have offended or repelled him.
“I’m sorry. I promise,” she said at last. She had reached her chambers on the upper story, and she took the latch in her hand and pushed open the door. “Would you care to inspect my room for assassins?”
Milo remained silent. He seemed to take her question seriously, and it frightened her a little. She watched as he entered her chambers with his hand at his sword sheath. He looked into the tiny tiled room where she washed. He then peeked under her bed and investigated the large wardrobe that contained her dresses. He inspected a number of small objects laid out upon a table. Even when he found nothing out of the ordinary, he still looked wary.
“Am I safe?” she finally asked, impatient to sit down after several hours of standing and stooping. She tossed the pomegranate into the air and caught it again. “I don’t mean to rush you, but I am tired.”
“I suppose,” Milo said with genuine reluctance. “Should I have them bring you a dinner tray? You look starved.”
Shaking her head wearied her muscles too much. “I’ll eat this for now,” she said, holding up the fruit. “After the rite tonight I’ll have something else. Just now I want a rest. Please?”
“I’m not moving from this hallway,” he warned her. “If you need anything just call.” Wordlessly he took the pomegranate from her, scored its thick rind with his knife, and then handed it back.
“I’m sorry for what I said. About you liking—”
“Don’t be,” he said abruptly, pulling the door closed. “Rest well, Cazarra.”
Slowly crossing the room, Risa dug her nails into the pomegranate’s scored rind and began to tear apart the fruit’s inner membrane. Juice from the fleshy seeds within spilled onto her hands, soaking them with their sticky fluid. She plucked some of the juice-laden sacs from the fruit and thrust them into her mouth, sucking the sweet pulp. The fruit’s astringent aftertaste refreshed her. For a few moments, she felt almost revived.
Near her balcony, upon a low table set before the reclining sofa, she noticed a quantity of little gifts set out. Many were bedecked with ribbons or bright paper. There was a bundle of oranges tied with a ribbon, and a satchel of ground cioccolato beans that could be steeped into a bitter and aromatic hot drink. A small pot, when opened, revealed a spicy mixture of olives, garlic, and oils.
There were small sugary raisins and a pot of stuffed figs. Some of the delicacies had small tags attached. Thank you so very much, from Natella, read a small scrap of paper attached to a compote of berries, donated by one of the kitchen servants. Had she been hungrier, she could have indulged in quite a feast without leaving her room.
You saved us all. Blessings upon you. Marcello, read a note from one of the gardeners. It was rolled between the legs of an adorable tiny dog whittled from a block of wood. A lovely music box sat beside it; when Risa opened the lid, its delicate mechanics began to tinkle forth a folk tune from the hill country. She knew it well, and smiled at the sound.
As she sank deep into the sofa’s cushions, her muscles relaxing against its downy softness, she listened to the melody chiming from the music box. The little gifts touched her. From the handmade wooden dog to the extravagance of the ground cioccolato—a concoction so rare that she had only once before tasted it in her life—to the simple pomegranate given her by Dom, the display of little gifts truly moved her heart.
She lay back lazily on the sofa and enjoyed another cluster of juicy sacs from the pomegranate, and then another. The sweet song from the hill country lulled her eyelids lower, and lower. With a start, she realized she must not sleep … she was tired enough to slumber the night through, if she closed her eyes.
No, she would just relax and enjoy the breezes that blew in from the balcony, and think about … She wondered what Milo was doing, out there in the hallway. And where was Camilla? Had she found Ricard? She had been gone since before noon.
A yawn stretched Risa’s jaw out as far as it could go. Tears formed as her eyes squeezed shut tightly. She blinked several times to clear them, but found it difficult to keep them open. The music was so sweet and calming …
Her face was burning with pain, as if set afire. “Stop it!” she found herself screaming. A hand dug into her shoulder, while another shook her roughly. When she pried apart her eyelids, they felt heavy and crusted over. Risa cried out in protest once more, not even able to comprehend what was happening.