by V. Briceland
Risa stood up and took a few unsteady steps toward the window, feeling slightly dizzy at the motion. For a moment she feared another bout of sickness. After another moment, she realized that the feeling in the pit of her stomach was fear.
As she looked out the window, she realized with a sense of doom that they were near the very top of the palace; immediately outside the window were the statuary masks of Lena and Muro, smiling down toward the crowds. Below, Palace Square was filled with citizens going about their everyday business. When she tried the window’s handles, hoping to open the vertical panels and let in the air, or even perhaps to cry for help, she found they were tightly sealed.
The sun shone brightly. She guessed it was mid-morning. A midsummer’s day like any other to the people below, but to Risa it was the dark moment she had been struggling to avoid for some time.
“Baso Buonochio?” she asked, bewildered. “You told me he was acting as cazarro. That means … ”
“Yes,” Ferrer confirmed. “We are the three remaining bearers of the horns. Allyria’s ancient enchantment may allow others to complete the act of fealty for us, but our disappearances will make any candidates think twice about coming forward to risk their own lives. By nightfall, none of our cazas will be our own.”
Struck by sheer panic, Risa looked toward the exit, half-hidden behind a tapestry depicting sheep tended by shepherds. “Guards stand outside,” Ferrer said, guessing her intentions. “The door is sealed in a way that while it opens from the hallway to admit people, those of us unfortunate enough to be harbored inside cannot open it. The window is useless to us as well. Such locks are a common enough enchantment of Portello.”
“It’s unthinkable,” said Risa. As the last of the weariness from the drug wore away, her anger flared.
“Not really, my dear. The primary function of a lock, after all, is to keep people out. Cassamagi’s enchantments can only enhance the primary functions of everyday objects—”
“I know,” she replied, failing to be patient. “What’s unthinkable is that Prince Berto would dare to interfere with the country’s natural order. You were taken from your own home in the middle of the night without even a chance to resist! I saw it!” The list of the prince’s outrages seemed to grow longer by the minute.
The old man inclined his head. “To my shame, that is so.”
“I was sold to him by my own blood!”
“Men will sell more than their kin for gold or for power, child,” he whispered.
“I’ve learned that,” she spat. She gestured at Baso, motionless in his slumber. “I’m sure the prince obtained him through equally devious means. He can’t even confront us face to face!” Anger seemed useless, however. There was little she could accomplish in this confined space, and yet there seemed no escape. She noticed Ferrer’s attention focused on Baso. “Why does he not wake?” she finally asked.
The old man shook his head. “Whoever drugged the boy used too much of the camarandus oil.”
“How can you tell?” When Risa had partially woken under the influence of the oil, she’d felt as if she’d been flattened to the thickness of paper. She shuddered to think of how it would feel to receive an even larger dose.
“His sleep is too deep. I fear he has been poisoned. Without aid … ” Gravely, the old man perched on the seat’s edge, supporting himself with a wooden cane carved with vines. He sighed and shook his head.
Risa waited for him to say something further, yet he merely sat there, seemingly resigned to Baso’s condition. For several more moments she waited for him to suggest a solution, frustration causing her to clutch the settee’s velvet padding until she knew it was moist from her grip. “Without aid, what? He’ll die?” she asked at last. The old man didn’t have to say a word in response. “Then do something to help him! Can’t you?” To her dismay, her question sounded harsh.
Over the top of his twinned spectacles, Ferrer peered at her. “What would you have me do?” he asked, brandishing his cane. His voice was perfectly reasonable; he asked the question as he might have inquired the time of day. “I have struck at the door repeatedly in the hope that someone would bring aid. They are not much concerned with our health or our comfort, my child. That is the sorry truth of it.” It was not indifference that she sensed in his words, but a genuine sense of submission and acceptance.
“There must be something!”
“I possess no antidote. In every game of chess there comes a moment when one’s priests and guards have been depleted, and one’s knights no longer can defend one’s king. Checkmate is never easy to accept.”
“We’re not yet in check,” Risa told him, thinking hard. “You’re the greatest of the Cassamagi enchanters. You must be able to … ”
“My girl. You compliment my abilities, but I am helpless.” He gestured around the room. “My caza is known for its ability to enhance the natural function of objects. We can create perfumes that seduce, musical instruments that soothe even the most savage tempers, and also poisons so subtle that they work their deadly art weeks after their ingestion—though they cannot survive a Divetri-stoppered vessel charmed to keep a liquid pure,” he added with a smile. During his speech Risa did not move. Though itching to escape the cage that held the three of them, she was held rapt by what he was telling her.
“We do not fashion objects with enchantments in their very structure, as does your family,” the cazarro continued. “We cannot build walls with the blessings of Allyria embedded in every brick, as did Caza Portello. While Cassamagi’s magics can be the most dangerous because of the sheer variety of objects with which we can work, they are also the most fleeting, because we do not craft the items themselves.”
It suddenly came to Risa. “Don’t you see? That’s perfect! There must be something in this room you could use to rescue us.” But even as she said the words, she heard a voice somewhere inside her murmur, You’re perfectly capable of rescuing yourself, you know. For a moment she had a brief vision of Milo admonishing her. She banished it and returned her attention to the cazarro.
“My dear young child. Do you suppose I have not looked?” Ferrer gestured to the ornaments that crowded every flat surface. “This room contains gold and treasure enough for the average citizen to feed his family for a lifetime, yet it yields nothing suitable for my purposes. There are vessels aplenty.” With some effort he raised his cane to jab the air in the direction of a case of beautiful glass, some of which Risa recognized as a style so old that they had probably been made by her grandfather and his ancestors. “Beautiful to behold, but how can purified liquid make a door open? There are pillows aplenty upon which I could lay enchantments to enhance their comfort, but how would they aid us? That mirror over the mantel I could adjust in such a way that if we stood in front of it, it would make us both seem like creatures of rare beauty. For you it would not be a novel experience—at my age it would be quite an oddity indeed. Yet doing so would not open that door, or wake young Baso, or aid us in any way. I am not unsympathetic to your desire to quit this incarceration, young Risa,” he added kindly, smiling at her. “It is merely that I do not perceive any means of aid with which we can avail ourselves.”
For a moment she stared at him, shoulders hunched. On the cushions opposite, Baso drew a sickly and shallow breath. She stared at the youth’s skin, white against the burgundy silks. “He’s so young,” she said. “There must be something we can do for him.”
“You are a year his junior.” Ferrer’s voice crackled like a winter’s fire. “War is never kind to the young.”
“Is that what this is?” Risa demanded. “A war?”
“It will be, once the cazas fall.” The Cazarro’s hand trembled as he reached up to remove his wire spectacles. He placed them on the seat and rubbed a nose speckled and red with age. “It will be one of the greatest wars that Cassaforte has seen, pitting citizen against citizen.
Many of the people will not easily swallow the usurpation of the throne through the vile means the prince has used, and will rise against him. They will be opposed by the prince’s favorites, the families of the Thirty that hope to replace the Seven. Guards loyal to the ideals of Cassaforte will find themselves pitted against guards loyal to the prince’s ambitions.” His voice grew louder as he continued to speak, and he peered so intently that it seemed he was seeing something far in the distance. “As King Alessandro named no alternate heir to the throne—oh yes, the kings of Cassaforte may do such a thing and sometimes have, in our history, when the heir presumptive was unsuitable—but since he hasn’t, others will vie for the honor. The best men and women of our country will die, one by one, family by family, in a rising tide of blood so terrible that our descendants will regard this period as the darkest in our country’s history. Oh yes, child. This is indeed a war.”
Impatient for action, Risa took the old man’s hand in her own, surprised at how light and papery it felt. In a low voice, she made her plea: “Then let us stop it before it starts.”
28
—
I couldn’t help myself. Honestly! When I saw him in the square below my window, I had to say something to him. He must have thought me bold! If you had seen him that afternoon, shirt open and smile broad, you too might have called out.
—Giulia Buonochio in a letter to her sister, Sara,
a month before her marriage to Ero Divetri
As best she could guess, their prison was a parlor intended for those waiting for an audience with the royal family. Every item was intended to impress the senses and dazzle the eye. Her mother would have called it ostentatious. Risa was conducting a thorough inventory of the room’s objects, in the hopes she could find something for the cazarro to enchant. “Cherub?” she asked. The winged baby had been formed with plaster and painted gold, and sat with its feet hanging over the mantel.
Ferrer uttered a dry chuckle. “Dear girl, even my illustrious house can do nothing with a cherub. It serves no purpose whatsoever.”
“A painting of King Paolo the fourth and his consort, Maria?”
“Ah. Pictorial art is an interesting area of study and one that too few of the Cassamagi pursue. An ancestral depiction’s primary purpose is to be of pride to the family, and can easily be enchanted to enhance that sense of satisfaction in one’s bloodline. Religious iconography, on the other hand, has the primary purpose of being the inculcation of solemnity and prayerfulness … ”
Over the last hour, Risa felt she had received as much of an education in the primary purpose of common objects as she would during a year’s education at an insula. Her head was already reeling from the overload of information. “Firewood?” she asked.
“ … for example, the Adoration of the Handmaiden Lucia before the Shrine of Lena has unusual … Why, the primary purpose of firewood is to burn. You know well that Cassamagi-enchanted bundles of lumber keep your caza’s furnaces at a hot and steady temperature.” Ferrer seemed not in the least offended to have his monologue interrupted.
“Could you enchant it to blaze hot enough to set the room afire?”
“Easily, yet somehow I do not think it wise.”
Risa sighed with frustration. She was aware the idea was not the best, yet she was quickly running out of options. “If we produced enough smoke, the guards might open the doors to see what was happening.”
“We would be overcome and quite, quite unconscious by that point, dear girl. I commend you on your creativity, however.”
She scanned the items on the hearth. “Broom? Poker?”
“In theory it is quite possible to enchant a broom to enhance its purpose of sweeping up dust, though I have never seen it applied. I must test it with my maids, sometime, if I am granted that chance. Quite an interesting experiment. A poker’s primary use is to cause a fire to burn more brightly. It can be enchanted … ”
“What if I don’t want to use it for a fire?” she asked, losing all patience. “What if I want to use it as a weapon?” The old man stared at her for a moment. “The Dioro enchant weapons so that their blades are sharper and their arrows more deadly. Enchant this poker so I can use it against the guards!” With both hands she gripped the heavy instrument and brandished it in the Cazarro’s direction.
“That’s impossible,” said old man mildly. “Destruction is not its primary purpose.”
She gripped the poker so tightly between her hands that it felt as if the metal was tingling, changing into something cold and hard. “I could use this poker as a weapon. I could use a book as a weapon, if I wanted.” Her memory flashed back to the night before the Scrutiny, when Petro had said the very same thing.
“But that is not their primary … ”
“Your enchantments are useless! What good is such power if it cannot be used in any but the most primitive of ways?” she cried, losing all temper. Her clench on the quivering poker was now so intense that it almost seemed an extension of her arm. “I am tired of primary purposes! Every object has more than one purpose, including this one!” Angry beyond belief, she hefted the poker over her head and brought it swinging down upon the low table in the center of the sofas.
She had expected nothing more than a loud retort from the impact. Making such a noise would feel immensely satisfying, even if for only a moment. When the poker struck the table, however, a cloud of marble splinters flew into the air, stinging her face with their needle-like points. The sound was immense, like a crack of thunder.
She gasped slightly, breathless from the exertion. There before her, the solid stone table had been roughly split in half. The insides of the marble top tilted in toward each other. A white pile of dust covered the carpet’s pile and powdered the crimson of her dirty guard’s uniform. On his sofa, Baso continued his soundless slumber.
Words of apology were the first things she tried to mumble when she saw Ferrer’s expression of astonishment. Once again she had let her temper get the best of her—worse than ever. The old man was groping for his spectacles, then wrapped their earpieces onto his head. “My child!” he finally said. “Impossible. It’s impossible for you to have done that!”
The shock upon his features inspired her. She had just done something unusual. Would it save them? Jutting her jaw out, she ran with the poker in hand across the room in the direction of the single window. With a mighty heave, she swung the poker at the wood-framed glass, hoping to shatter it as she had the table. The window’s enchantment, however, was too strong; when iron collided with glass, the poker bounced harmlessly backward. The shock of the blow caused Risa to drop her weapon. Both her hands and wrists stung from the bone-wrenching recoil.
Ferrer still looked at her in astonishment. “It’s impossible,” he repeated again. For the first time since Risa had met him, he seemed utterly dumbfounded. “You should not have been able to break that table.”
Her hands were red and swollen. Red welts were rising across her palms. It would fade in a while, she knew, but at the moment the pain was difficult to bear. “Tell me how I did it, then,” she pled as tears rose in her eyes.
29
—
Every object has its natural and primary purpose. The blessings of the gods can certainly enhance that one natural purpose. But like the hands of the worker, are there not other and more versatile purposes to which objects may be put?
—From the private papers of Allyria Cassamagi
(from the Cassamagi Historical Archives)
Even minutes after Risa’s feat with the poker, Ferrer’s shock remained intense. It showed in the pallor of his face and the trembling of his hands; he had to help himself to several dippers of water from the bucket sitting just inside the door. Risa tended to him as best she could with her still-swollen fingers, all the while worried that he was angry with her. The guards in the hall had either not heard, or had ignored, the commotion
within the room, for they never investigated the source of the noise.
At last the old man clasped both of his hands around the top of his cane. “Who told you about secondary enchantments?” he asked.
“What? No one. What are they?”
“Someone must have. Your mother? No, she was never interested in the lore. So few people know. Who told you?” It took several denials before he seemed to believe that she had no idea of what he spoke. “I will put it simply for you. Allyria Cassamagi left few records of how she accomplished her enchantments, and they are incomprehensible to us. Many of our house, myself included, feel that her complex magic was the result of what we call secondary enchantments.”
“What are they?”
“Hear me out, my dear. Every object has a primary purpose that the Seven can affect in their craft. The principle of secondary enchantments is based on the notion that objects can be utilized in other ways as well, and accorded enchantments as such. The purpose of a helmet or a crown is to protect the head, and can be enchanted to ward off injuries. Yet Allyria understood that a crown is a symbol of power, and a symbol of pride as well. She was able to enchant the Olive Crown on all those levels. Just now, when you grasped that poker—it became more than a poker. You wished it to become a weapon, and … ”
“It became a weapon that could split a marble table in half.” Her voice dropped to a whisper.
“Have you done such things before?”
“No, never.”
“You must have. Think, child, think!”
Even as she denied his question, Risa knew that she had indeed once performed a similar task. “My bowl … ” she said. “My bowl. I saw them in my bowl.”
“Explain. It is important!”
“I thought it was my father’s enchantment! Not my own!” Hastily she told him how she had crafted her bowl, attempted to sell it, and later saw her parents’ images dancing among lights caught in the concave surface. He encouraged her with nods and grunts until she reached the end of the story. “I was bringing it to you last night to see if you could make it happen again, when my cousin captured and drugged me.”