by V. Briceland
“You do?”
“Yes. But right now you have to believe in me. Do you?”
Her confidence seemed to amaze him. His face softened as their hands pressed against each other. At last he nodded. “Just—” He stopped speaking with a shake of his head. “I believe you. I do.”
With a smile to reassure him, she reached out for the crown. After only a moment’s hesitation, she took it into her hands.
The shock sent a jolt throughout her body. Her arms felt as if they were on fire, but they did not burn. She saw the crown as it originally was: a brown, crude circlet of branches snapped from an olive tree. Centuries of visions flashed before her eyes. In the flash of a second she saw dozens of grave-faced men and women—some young, some old, some scarred with battle and others fat with feasting—seated on the high throne as for the first time they seized the crown and placed it on their heads. Phantom crowds in rich attire, bowing low in obeisance before their new monarchs, bewildered her eye. She recognized the late King Alessandro at the very last of the lightning-fast procession: a hale youth in the full flush of his manhood, his curly brown locks appearing as they did in the portraits she had seen throughout her entire life. His face was not a portrait, however. He was real, just as every other monarch she saw was real, though they all had been laid to rest decades and centuries before.
She held the crown in her hands and studied it with a sight not of her eyes. It was a fascinating work of art. It reminded her of one of her mother’s stained glass windows—thousands upon thousands of cut pieces, a jumble of color and shapes laid out and held together by channels of lead. In her training she had learned the theory behind window construction and had often made small panels of her own. She understood how her mother’s windows were made, but their sheer scale dwarfed her own tiny labors.
The crown’s energies struck her the same way. She knew instinctively that with time and study she could make sense of how Allyria Cassamagi had woven them into a remarkable enchantment. She also sensed that what she had accomplished that day was tiny in comparison. Ferrer had considered them all miracles, but the object she held in her hand was the true work of miracle. She would master it, in her own time. One day, she swore to herself. One day.
“Risa.” Milo’s voice was a whisper.
“It’s all right,” she told him, breaking out of the trance. From her shoulder she unslung the padded bag and opened its drawstring. “I was meant to have these.”
“I don’t understand. Are you—are you meant to be queen? Is that what you—oh gods!”
“No.” She shook her head. “I am only meant to take them until we find the next true king.”
“You can’t take—” He closed his mouth as he thought better of the remark. Her immunity to the crown’s destructive powers had dumbfounded him.
“I have to,” she said simply, placing the crown in her sack. She reached out and added the scepter to her treasure trove. “I’m thinking ahead, Milo. If Prince Berto appoints a new Seven, they cannot award him the Olive Crown if it is not here.” He smiled at the simplicity of that statement, then waited until she once more closed the drawstring to take her hand. “Don’t tell the others,” she warned him.
“We’d best hurry,” he told her. “Camilla’s probably having a fit by now.”
The elder Sorranto indeed seemed none too happy at the delay when they finally caught up with the others in the anteroom. “Can’t you two wait until this is all over to have your happy little romantic reunion?” she complained, spying their clasped fingers.
“I’ll remember that when we see Amo downstairs,” Milo snapped back, but without a trace of resentment. “I bet you’ll be happy to have his mutton hands all over you.” He subsided at his sister’s fierce glare, but winked at Risa. For the sake of peace, she held a finger to her lips to silence him, and followed Camilla into the northeast tower.
Their trip down the stairs was blessedly uneventful. Camilla forged the way, her ears listening for the slightest noise, her muscles tensed and ready for confrontation. They stopped at each landing to check for possible sentries as they circled their way down the tight spiral of stone. As Milo had predicted, there were none, not even at the lowest level of the castle.
“This is spooky,” he commented in Risa’s ear as they stumbled down a low-ceilinged and dark corridor of brick. “It’s almost too easy.”
“The prince is living in a deserted castle,” said Ferrer. Already hunched with age, he was finding the low passage less cumbersome than they were. “Very few guards, even fewer servants, and little concept of how palace affairs are to be run. Berto is not a man of forethought, but of fiat.”
“I didn’t say I wasn’t grateful, Cazarro.” There was a good deal of humor in Milo’s response. “After the day we’ve all had, I’m grateful the gods blessed us with a safe exit.”
“We’ve not exited yet,” Ferrer reminded him, reaching out to steady Risa as she tripped over an uneven brick. On her back, her bag’s contents jostled with a clink of metal.
Camilla cracked open an ancient, arch-shaped wood door that was reinforced with iron bands across its width. She looked out, then opened it wider. “We very nearly have,” she announced, grim triumph in her voice. Sunlight from outside poured down the long arched corridor of water and walkways that lay before them. The glare nearly blinded Risa’s light-deprived eyes. After blinking several times, she spied two gondolas moored near the iron gates at the end, beneath a low overhang of wet and moss-covered stone. Amo and Mattio stood in them, poles at the ready. She and the other escapees had reached the old water gate onto the Royal Canal, beneath the eastern bridge.
Relief at being once more in fresh air made Risa giddy with confidence. They had escaped the castle. She was amused to note the polite coolness with which Camilla greeted Amo. Had the guard exhibited any enthusiasm whatsoever at the sight of her love, Milo would have been sure to make more comments about the size of the glass worker’s hands. Risa could not show similar restraint at the sight of Mattio, however. When she stepped from the water-smoothed steps into the gondola, she hugged him fiercely around his middle.
“You’ve cut it close!” he whistled, a broad smile on his face. Then, more seriously, he hugged her back with a strength that cut her breath short. “I was worried sick,” he told her. “Your father would have had my life if I’d let anything happen to you.”
“I missed you too,” she told him, settling into his vessel with Milo. The others climbed into Amo’s craft. She noticed for the first time the sounds of distant strains of music from the direction of the square. “Are they still performing?” she asked, amazed.
Mattio nodded. “I suspect that Ricard boy will play his fingers to the bone to make amends for what he did. He took the news hard when he heard you had disappeared.” It was a touching thought. Risa swore to herself that she would think less harshly of the Poet of the People in the future.
“Gods,” cried Camilla. Her gondola rocked violently as in one swift motion, she pulled her pole from the water and dropped it into the boat with a thud. A hiss cut through the air as she drew her sword in a glittering arc from its scabbard. Baso and Ferrer and Amo all reached out to balance themselves. The others stared at her in astonishment.
Risa turned to see what had alerted Camilla. Her spirits sank when she spied the outlines of two guards running toward them down the corridor. “Halt!” one of them ordered, his voice echoing against the brick. Risa looked around wildly. The others seemed just as taken aback as she.
“That’s it, then,” Mattio growled, pushing his pole against the canal floor to propel the gondola forward. Amo heaved and grunted as he too began to punt.
Milo, at the stern of Risa’s craft, brandished his sword. He stood unsteadily on guard, using his free hand to balance as the long boat lurched forward, out of the corridor and into the canal. Only Amo’s barked warning s
aved his head from colliding with the sharp prongs of the raised water gate. With nimbleness, he ducked just in time. Then, looking back at the passage that still echoed with the shouts of the guards, he held up a hand. “Stop the gondolas.”
“We cannot!” said Ferrer. “We must make all haste!”
“Stop!” Milo commanded. Mattio dared not disobey, and he and Amo braced themselves against their poles, slowing the two boats nearly to a standstill.
Risa had been speechless during the exchange, but not now. “We can’t—!”
Milo cut off her protest with a hand. “I know how these guards think. Believe in me, Risa. Believe in me even as I believed in you.”
The bellowing of the pursuing guards made Risa want to leap into the canal waters and swim all the way home. But anxious as she was to put as much distance as possible between herself and the palace, she fought down the urge to argue. It nearly killed her to keep silent, no matter how much faith she had in her friend and in his judgment. She clung to the sack in her arms, held her breath, and tried not to panic.
“They were probably just on a corridor sweep before shift change,” Milo was saying to Camilla.
“If that’s the case, there will be only the two of them.” In the other gondola, Camilla crouched in a defensive position, muscles tense.
“We have to time this just right.” Milo held up his hand to indicate they keep the vessels still. Their gondolas were only a dozen arm-spans from the gaping entry. To Risa, he explained, “If we punt out too far, they’ll just run back and summon more bodies, and then we’ll be lost. If they think they can catch us … ”
As if on cue, the two guards appeared at the water gate. The first was running so quickly that he couldn’t stop himself; he stumbled upon the rounded bricks at the edge and toppled into the water with a cry of dismay. The other cursed audibly and looked back down the corridor, as if trying to determine what he should do.
“Wait.” Milo crouched low and held out his hand.
The first guard sputtered and surfaced for air. His cap spun beside him in the water. Chin-length black hair covered his eyes. He blinked and spied the gondolas nearby, but when he tried to flail out and swim toward them, he found his arms tangled in the waterlogged, heavy fabric of his cloak. Gargling water in his fury, he began clawing at the golden rope at his neck that held it on.
“Wait … ” said Milo again. The others looked anxious and white. Risa choked down her urge to speak, holding her breath until purple spots formed before her eyes.
The other guard, a large and muscular man, cursed at the ineptitude of the first. He also removed his cloak, undoing the knot with a single hand. His sword belt fell to the bricks with a clatter. Still looking over his shoulder for assistance that didn’t seem to be arriving, he hopped up and down as one by one he pulled off his boots. Seconds later he was in his stocking feet. The first guard, in the meantime, called his companion’s name as his soggy cloak finally sank down into the depths of the canal.
“Wait.”
The second guard seemed to find no solution at the end of the corridor. His shoulders tensed. Without hesitation, he dove from the water gate into the canal. Water plumed into the air where he struck.
The two guards instantly began swimming toward the gondolas. They were only a dozen arm-spans away. Ten. Eight. Still the party sat in the boats, motionless. Risa realized they were acting like ducks in the water, unaware of the canal serpents targeting them as prey. Six spans away. In a few more strokes, either guard could lunge forward and haul themselves into the gondola’s stern. When they were a mere four spans close, the second of the guards raised his head and shook water from his face, preparing to shout an order.
“Now!”
At Milo’s word, Amo and Mattio heaved all their weight upon their poles. The twin gondolas resisted at first, then with an even motion began to slice through the water. Inhaling caused Risa’s lungs to ache and her head to spin. She hadn’t realized that she’d been holding her breath for so long. “They’re stopping!” she said, pointing back.
Most of the others were already staring in that direction. Waterlogged by their uniforms, the two guards had ceased trying to swim after them. They were merely two rapidly diminishing spots of red bobbing on the water’s surface. Only Mattio and Amo kept an eye ahead as their strong arms punted through the water, carrying the party away from the palace.
Over the pounding of her heart, Risa did not even hear, at first, the clanging sound from the uppermost reaches of the palace. The metallic sound, faint at first, grew into a raucous crescendo as windows opened and heads began to poke out. “Alarm bell,” Milo said abruptly.
“But why?” Camilla sounded exasperated. She had crawled over the two cazarri in her gondola and stood as close to the aft as possible without interfering with Amo’s punting. “They can’t have found anyone missing yet. The two in the water didn’t cry panic. How could they know? Give me that,” she commanded Amo, seizing the punting pole angrily. Amo seemed relieved to have ceded his position; his lungs heaved as he tried to catch his breath. The splash of water drowned out the last burbled curses of their pursuers.
“Maybe we disturbed something,” said Milo. He looked back at Risa, an apology in his eyes. With a flash of panicked understanding, she clutched her precious cargo even closer to her chest. He didn’t want to give her away.
Anxiety gnawed at her as she suddenly realized how her foolhardy impulse had endangered them all. How could she explain to them that the abduction of the crown and scepter had been something she simply had to do? “I’m sorry,” she said aloud.
“For what?” Mattio wanted to know. Risa might have told all if Milo hadn’t shaken his head at her. Maybe it was better to keep quiet about the contents of her satchel.
They were finally leaving the nearly empty waters of the palace district and heading toward one of the many marketplaces on its outskirts; as they glided beneath a trade bridge, Camilla and Mattio were forced to slow their pace in order not to collide with the gondolas moored at the sides. A solitary beggar dropped the armful of gourds he had scavenged from one of them, astonished to see them pass.
“Are we safe?” asked Ferrer, looking up at the clusters of people on the walkways above them. Most of them were looking in the direction of the palace, from which the distant clamor of the alarm bells could still be heard. The air seemed full of excited babble, and no one was paying the least bit of attention as their crafts sliced through the water. “Relatively safe, I suppose I should ask?”
Risa wondered the same thing. Baso was leaning so far from the other boat’s prow that for a panicked moment Risa thought he might fall out. He was only listening, though. “Hoofbeats,” he explained, his eyes wide.
They all heard them, now. Clattering on the stones and echoing between the tall residences behind them. Risa craned her neck to see, but their gondolas once more passed beneath a bridge, deeper than most and likely under one of the smaller market squares for the neighborhood. It was maddening, not being able to see anything more than lichen hanging from the stones overhead and the lowering sun on the waters at the bridge’s far end. Every sound was dampened save for their own strained lungs and the splash of the punts as Camilla and Mattio propelled them forward.
Into daylight they emerged once more. A horse’s whinny cut through the air. Risa’s head whipped from side to side, and at last she saw a white steed skidding to a halt near a handcart at the bridge’s edge. All she saw next was a flash of dark red as the rider leapt from its back and dove into the water, nearly taking the small cart with him. The guard landed in the canal in a massive belly-flop, sending water cascading everywhere. Like their previous pursuers, he quickly found himself too tangled in the formal uniform of the palace guard to follow, and floundered helplessly.
None of them had any time to celebrate, however, because two more mounted guardsmen foll
owed, pausing only briefly to edge past the horse abandoned by the first. The walkway balustrades were crowded with the citizens of Cassaforte, startled and scampering to safety as the mounts pounded relentlessly forward. Milo pointed to a weather-worn, carved stairway leading down to the water at the bridge ahead. “We need to go faster,” he called. “We’re going to get some visitors.”
“I see that,” Camilla grunted. Her face was red from the exercise, but she continued punting. The two guards had already gained the advantage, reining in their beasts and shouting out orders to nearby tradesmen. Their capes billowed behind them as they clattered down the steps toward another cluster of parked gondolas. When Risa’s boat passed them, flying into the shade of the overpass, she could see their faces twist into snarls.
Amo had regained his wind. “Let me,” he urged Camilla, trying to take over the punting once more. She shook her head, only once, violently. Ferrer’s lips pressed together as he tried to peer through his spectacles through the darkness beneath the arched bridge.
“Faster!” Milo urged Mattio on.
“I can’t keep this up forever, lad!” warned the older craftsman. His curly hair was soaked from the sweat streaming from his temples.
He kept punting, though, perhaps frightened as one of the parked gondolas broke away from the others and began to gain on them. There was no way they could maintain their lead. Not with the combined power of two strong guards punting a single boat.
Milo’s sword glinted in the sun as they coasted out from under the bridge and began to round a curve in the canal. “Keep back,” he warned Risa. “They’re going to catch up. What can we do?” he called out to his sister.
“Nothing good,” she growled back, glancing back at the pursuing craft. “Stay ahead of us. But not too far ahead.” The two boats had been keeping pace as they traversed their way southward on the Royal Canal, but now Risa found herself gliding past her friends in Camilla’s gondola—first Amo, then Ferrer, and finally Baso at the boat’s front. Camilla grappled to keep her footing as she used her pole to slow down her gondola.