by V. Briceland
Steel began spinning madly without warning. Camilla and Milo battered away at him with their swords but he held them off, slowly backing down the hall. The sound of blade against blade echoed shrilly in the stone passageway, bringing tears to Risa’s eyes from the sheer volume of it. Then the guard began to surge forward, driving the siblings back in their direction.
Behind her, Risa felt the bones of Ferrer’s fingers pressing against her shoulder, drawing her away. She resisted, resenting his interference. Although part of her wanted badly to turn and run, she knew that flight might take them into an even worse situation. It was impossible not to admire the sheer artistry of the Sorrantos’ athletic lunges and parries—it was like watching master craftsmen hard at work. Despite her fascination, however, she knew that upon the Sorrantos’ skills rested all of their fates and lives. Even as she was unable to tear her gaze from the melee, she feared every blow dealt by the older guard’s sword.
Camilla stumbled and fell onto a torch stand in her path. Like an acrobat, she turned the error into a tumble and somersaulted backward, using her blade to assist in the leap to her feet. Without even a sideways glance at her, Milo’s rebuffs against the guard doubled in intensity, and he managed to fend off both of the attacker’s blades without hesitation. He dodged and ducked and feinted, meeting blow for blow and even seeming to stop the man’s onslaught.
Into action Camilla whirled, with a shout that welled from deep within. Her sword glittered as it swung in circles on either side. To Risa it seemed as if she passed her blade from hand to hand in a complex pattern that rendered her unapproachable from any angle; the maneuver certainly surprised the guard, who flinched and shied away as she came closer.
With the guard’s attention distracted, Milo made his move. Like his sister, he began the same intricate sword-spinning and hand-passing pattern. It was bewildering to the eye; Risa was dazzled at its intricacy. Then, with the utmost of masculine grace, he suddenly stopped, twirled around, and balanced the point of his sword on the ground. He leapt up and kicked backwards into the air. The heel of his boot met squarely with the guard’s jaw, lifting the heavy man inches into the air and sending him sprawling onto his back. There was a terrible crack as the man’s head hit the stone floor.
With the same athletic polish, Milo landed back on the ground in a defensive stance, his sword once more at the ready. Camilla assumed the same attitude, ready to attack should the man try to rise. The guard, however, was utterly unconscious.
It was impossible for Risa even to breathe after such a spectacle. She had no idea that either of her friends had such extensive skills. Had she not witnessed it with her own eyes, she would never have believed that Milo could have overcome such a large and determined opponent. “How did you do that?” she breathed, all awe.
“That Catarre book on swordsmanship was a good read.” He delivered the words with such understatement that Risa thought he might be joking with her. “It’s the ugly one,” he added, to Camilla. “I told you he was suspicious.”
Camilla rose from her brief inspection, panting as hard as her brother. “We’ll shut him in the parlor. A just reward for imprisoning three cazarri in there for so long, don’t you think?” She took hold of the guard’s leg and with great effort began to drag him in the direction of the Portello-enchanted room.
Milo sheathed his sword and moved to assist her. “What if the other guard is on his way back from the square? He’d be coming up the southwest turret.”
“We’ll have to take another route.” Camilla looked grim as she pronounced her decree.
Risa once more felt her skin squirm in alarm. “What other route?”
Milo twisted open the handle to their former prison and grinned at her. “Don’t fret,” he said. “This is just the part where it gets a little dangerous.”
32
—
Of the rumor that the current line of Cassafortean monarchs are descended from a dog thief, I could find no hard evidence.
—The spy Gustophe Werner, in a private letter
to Baron Friedrich van Wiestel
Four men could lie lengthwise across the treads of the Petitioner’s Stair, point their hands over their head, and still not touch the feet of the man lying ahead of them. So broad was each step that the same men could spread their arms wide and still not touch the edges. The Petitioner’s Stair sloped upward from the first floor of the palace’s grand entrance hall, passing through floors of gilded splendor until it reached the famed formal throne room at its peak.
Each of its tall risers was carved with a relief illustrating historical and mythical figures, their grandeur increasing with altitude. Fully visible from a full story below was the monarch’s glorious gold throne. Even the most disheveled of beggars, when seated upon that engraved and radiant seat, would look like the most powerful of men. Those desiring an audience with Cassaforte’s monarch would arrive at the summit of the Petitioner’s Stair much awed and humbled and—as Risa had long suspected—too out of breath to present themselves with anything but humility.
Sunlight still fell through the massive throne room’s glass dome. At this time of day, with light sparkling on its panes, the dome could be seen from leagues distant. Risa’s group, however, was wrapped in darkness. In the tiny enclosure in which they stood, breathless and silent for fear, the only light came from the tiny slits cut slantwise into the richly carved surface of the Legnoli gilded-wood screen that encircled them on the uppermost dais. Lines of white like brushstrokes fell upon their faces.
With the utmost care not to jar the shards of glass that lay within the sack slung over her shoulder, Risa leaned forward so that she could peer through the nearest opening. Beside her, Milo and Camilla already peered through slits cut into the eyes of smiling cherubs. The room had once been a place of concealment for the king’s bodyguards, so that they could watch over their charge and spring in an instant from hidden doors to defend him with their lives. Now the chamber held five renegades just trying to cross the palace to the northeast turret.
The prince’s long fingers tapped on the arm of the throne, his nails striking the surface with the beat of a snare drum. “I grow tired of waiting,” he announced, every syllable clipped.
“You need be patient only a while longer,” said another man, dressed in the raiment of the Thirty. Risa did not recognize him. “Then the Olive Crown will be yours to command.”
“To the demons with that! What good is a thing when it cannot be grasped?” Prince Berto held up his left arm so that it was visible in Risa’s limited view. She barely suppressed a gasp—at the end of his limb, the prince displayed a hand withered into a claw, its skin charred and blackened beyond recognition or use. The sight sickened her. She knew there had been a reason he’d concealed his hands that morning at the Divetri docks.
The prince’s minion recoiled as well, then rallied. “Your Highness, the crown and scepter’s healing powers will—”
“No more promises of miracles! It was the crown’s curse that so afflicted me. Cassamagi’s dissolution will be my revenge.” Behind the screen, every word was audible. Risa felt, rather than heard, Ferrer shift uneasily behind her.
“One hour more only,” said the man, bowing low. “Then all will be yours.” As he moved closer to the prince, the courtier moved out of Risa’s view, revealing the pedestals holding the country’s two most sacred objects: a crown of gold fashioned to look as if it had been woven from olive branches, and a staff shaped to represent a heavy branch from a thorn tree. Beside them lay a horn—an exact duplicate of her own caza’s. It was the palace horn, which for centuries had been blown on the rooftop above them to signal the rite of fealty. Rays from above made all three objects shimmer with light. Risa could feel their energies even from a dozen arm-spans away; they seemed to call to her with a song she felt certain none of her companions could hear. It gladdened her heart, that song. Its jo
yful refrain seemed to reassure her that all was right and as it should be.
Yet all was not right. She should have been well on her way back to the caza by now. Instead she was stuck inside this dark and depressing closet of a room, shoved there by Milo and Camilla during their flight across the Petitioner’s Stair when they detected gallery noises from the direction of the prince’s private chambers. The plan was sheer insanity. It was only thanks to the guards’ lightning-fast reflexes and familiarity with the palace that they all, including the slow-moving Baso and Ferrer, managed to hide before they could have been spotted.
“But where are the other guards?” Risa had wanted to know.
Milo had told her that there were few guards remaining within the palace, and those that were there seemed to be concentrated at the entrances and within the prince’s own chambers. “The prince is not popular,” he had whispered. “Those who disagree with what he is doing simply disappear, most by their own choice. The ones still here would do anything for a chance of promotion or power. Anything,” he had repeated with meaning. Risa was reminded of Ferrer’s prediction that in the upcoming war, if the prince had his way, guard would fight against guard for the future of the country.
“That fellow who brought me that chit of a girl. The sycophant. What was his name?” The prince’s tone was so cold that it chilled Risa from her own thoughts.
“I do not recall, your highness. He was a Divetri.”
As she listened through the face of a carved cherub, her heart skipped a beat at the sound of her name. “Yes, the bothersome one. From a most bothersome family. Presuming that I would name one of his kind to the new Seven. Have we shown him the hospitality he deserves?” Risa did not like the nasty undercurrent to his words.
“We stripped his body before disposing of it in the canals.” The courtier’s voice was smug. He reached inside a pocket of his coat and withdrew a familiar silver box. Opening it, he recoiled at the scent of the tabbaco da fiuto, then tossed it on the floor. “It will be difficult for anyone to identify him … should they wish to.”
“Very good.” In the dark she felt a hand grope for her own. It was Milo, trying to give her sympathy. It was the last thing she needed or wanted, though she appreciated the comfort of his touch. The news of her cousin’s death only filled her with a steely determination to succeed and to thwart the prince at his own game. Fredo had betrayed her, it was true, and had she the power to get rid of him herself she would have—but through exile, not summary execution.
The prince was only an arm-span away from where she stood within the enclosure. It would have been so easy to step out and attack him, right then.
Something in her movement must have betrayed her thought. She felt Ferrer’s hand restraining her shoulder, and Milo squeezing her own fingers more tightly. Relaxation was difficult, but she managed to release her shoulders while determining inwardly that she would succeed against the prince at any cost. “And the Buonochio servant who so kindly helped us find the boy?”
“He has also been taken care of,” the minion said smoothly. Corpses plundered of their valuables and clothing were not uncommon sights in the canals in some areas of town, Risa knew. It was only by her intervention that the old beggar, Dom, had avoided a similar fate.
The prince chuckled without humor. “Very good. One hour, then. I can wait.” He rose from his chair, his purple cloak rustling as it collected around him. She noticed that he kept his shrunken arm well concealed within the long left sleeve, curled close to his body as if he nursed it. “See to it that the cazarri are given what remains of their hospitality provisions for their evening meal. I want the stubborn fools to enjoy full stomachs as they watch the last of their precious houses fall.” With a look of aversion at the Olive Crown, he moved in the direction of the long gallery leading to the east wing. “I think they should enjoy their last meal as cazarri. Does that make me a sentimental old fool, like my father?” The prince’s laughter, as his minion began to scurry down the Petitioner’s Stair, sounded like the mirth of a madman. In the dark, Milo squeezed Risa’s hand. In her fear for her parents, she clutched his with equal strength. They all had to get back to their cazas, so that the imprisoned cazarri would not lose all hope.
A door slammed in the distance. Its echoes reverberated down the painted stucco ceilings of the gallery and faded into silence. They all waited in the close air and darkness for a moment, scarcely daring to draw a breath. At last Camilla cracked her panel and peeked out. “We have to move quickly.” It was an order, not a suggestion. “There’s no predicting how much time we have.”
As they had been the last to gain the safety of the darkness when forced to hide, Baso and Ferrer were the first to follow Camilla from the bodyguards’ closet. Perhaps the stress and agitation of their flight had expelled the last of the camarandus poisoning, for the Buonochio boy moved past the throne and in the direction of the northern passage without once stumbling. Ferrer moved as fleetly as he could upon his cane and old legs, while Camilla walked ahead of them both with her blade drawn and at the ready. Milo and Risa slipped out last. With a barely audible chink of metal, the elaborately decorated screen snapped shut. The silence of the throne room made Risa’s stomach queasy. They began to tiptoe across the marble floors.
How many years had she gazed upon the palace, night after night, and wondered what lay beneath its vast dome? After the cramped closet, her city’s throne room seemed to be the most vast and silent space into which she’d ever stepped. Story upon story it towered, its upper reaches higher than any temple. At its farthest side, down the stairs, were the famous gold doors which, when opened, admitted formal audiences; they had been cast centuries before with the visages of the gods, visible even from their distance. A woven carpet of royal purple ran from the entrance in their direction, up the incline toward the throne. Flanking the entrance, on walls the color of lapis, projected the balconies from which the Seven and Thirty were allowed to observe court events, perfect half-moon balustrades extending over the floor below. One of them closest to the floor, Risa knew, was assigned to her own family. She had never stood behind its white marble balustrade, however.
Neither Milo nor Camilla nor Ferrer seemed as overwhelmed by the throne room as she. No doubt they had seen before its banners—dozens of yards of brown and purple silks hanging from standards that ran nearly the chamber’s entire height—and studied the statuary in its many alcoves. What other explanation was there for the way they seemed not to be awed by the sheer scale of their surroundings? Risa’s head began to spin as she gaped at the dome above them, painted around its edges with a mural of both Lena and Muro reaching from the heavens, fingertips outstretched to touch the hand of a lowly mortal by the water. In the dome’s center was a rounded apex of leaded glass, so distant overhead that she couldn’t even make out its intricate pattern. One of her own forebears had fashioned that window, she realized, and she’d never known it was there.
“Careful,” said Milo in a whisper, steadying her with a hand at her back. She jerked her head down, blinking rapidly. “Are you all right?”
“Yes.” Some sensation fluttered in her chest. For a moment she worried that she’d given herself vertigo. Dizziness wouldn’t leave her feeling so exhilarated, however. What was it, tugging her in its direction? “I’m fine.”
“This is the opposite of quickly,” Camilla hissed as she marched onward. “Come on!”
Once Camilla had turned around, however, Risa looked back. Behind her stood the king’s throne, impossibly large in scale. Its back alone was taller than Ferrer, and fashioned with an ornate and beautiful relief of massed branches. Anyone sitting upon that mighty chair, she realized, would look almost as if he was framed by an orchard of golden olive trees. A smaller chair sat nearby at an angle, gilded and sumptuously cushioned. Risa guessed it belonged to the prince.
On the pedestal before the throne, however, lay the Olive
Crown and the Scepter of Thorn—the symbols of the king of Cassaforte. She didn’t know how, but they thrummed joyfully at her as she passed by. Even after centuries, their golden brilliance had not dulled or faded. She stopped to stare at them, enthralled by the vibrations they seemed to be sending her way—vibrations much like those of the window frame and her shattered bowl, but abundantly stronger. What she would give to be able to study them! Though more valuable than all the gold in the country, these two objects were not covered or concealed—the palace did not fear theft. Only the rightful king could seize either object and remained unharmed. Memory of the prince’s ruined hand made her shudder. And yet …
“Risa!” Milo’s shock drew her back to reality. His hand gripped her arm, which was outstretched in the direction of the crown. He had stopped her only a finger’s length away from it. “What are you doing?”
“It’s too much to explain,” she told him in the lowest possible whisper. “Things have changed since last night, Milo. I’m different now.”
He shook his head. “Think, Cazarra. You saw what a single touch did to the prince!”
The Risa of the day before would have resented his interference, but at that moment she only admired him for it. Like a buried spring of cool water released to the ground above it, joy sprang up from deep within her. She wanted to sing it to the world. He honestly cared for her! “I’m not the same person who argued with you yesterday,” she told him once more, holding both of his hands with hers. “You saw me in the glass this morning—I did that, Milo. I made it happen. There’s so much I can do now. I know why I was kept from the insulas! I know why the gods brought us together, and I know I want you worrying and fretting over me for a long time to come.”