by Imogen Rossi
Something glimmered on the back of his hand, and Bianca frowned. ‘What’s that you’ve got on you?’
Marco looked at his hand, and his cheeks darkened a bit. ‘Oh, um … dunno,’ he said.
‘It’s paint. And it’s quite fresh.’ Bianca grabbed Marco’s hand and dragged her thumb over the splodge of shimmering silver paint. The edge flaked away, but the middle left a matching glow on Bianca’s thumb. ‘Have you been painting? But how did you get … ’ She looked up at him. ‘Was it you? Did you help Cosimo and Lucia make the magic paint for the competition somehow?’
Marco didn’t answer, just averted his gaze.
‘Oh.’ Bianca took a step back. ‘You showed Cosimo and Lucia di Lombardi’s notebooks? But they were in his secret workshop!’
Marco sighed. ‘I went and got them, of course,’ he said flatly. ‘I was still inside the passages when I had the idea, so I went to the workshop and looked through all the books until I found the ones that had the magic recipes in.’
Bianca gaped at him. ‘You stole them!’
Marco bristled. ‘I did not! I just borrowed them. I only wanted to help. I was going to tell you – if you ever came back – I just forgot … ’
But Bianca shook her head. ‘Help? How is sharing my secrets with Lucia helping?’ A horrible thought occurred to her. ‘Marco! Did you tell her about my medallion? Did you help her steal that, too?’
‘What? How could you say that?’ Marco looked horrified.
‘You didn’t seem to have a problem taking other things from me!’ Bianca snapped. ‘It’s my workshop now! Master di Lombardi left me the paintbrush, just like the medallion and the map. He knew I had important work to do, to find my mother and save Oscurita!’
‘Yeah, but he didn’t know he was going to die, did he? He thought he’d be around to teach you and Cosimo and the others all the recipes himself!’
Bianca gritted her teeth. ‘Those were my secrets! You had no right –’
‘No, Bianca, they were di Lombardi’s secrets!’ Marco folded his arms. ‘I didn’t know if you were ever coming back, and I knew he’d want his art to carry on!’ Marco shook his head sadly. ‘Part of me thinks you just liked being the only one who could do magic. But that’s not fair. It’s not good for anyone, not even you.’
The words stung Bianca – and they kept on stinging, like angry wasps swarming over a cup of sweet wine. ‘You don’t know anything.’ She took another step backward, over the stable door threshold and into the passages. ‘I don’t want you with me. I don’t need people I can’t trust,’ she said.
Marco’s jaw dropped and he took a matching step back, into the chapel. ‘Fine!’ he said, and thrust the map at her. ‘I was only trying to help while Your Highness was busy. Here, go and save your precious dark city by yourself!’
‘I will!’ Bianca snatched the map from his grasp and slammed the door before she could change her mind.
She stopped on the other side, her hand on the doorknob – but then she heard footsteps. Marco was walking away.
‘Fine,’ she hissed to herself. ‘I will do this by myself.’ She clutched the medallion so hard her knuckles stood out white against her skin. She had di Lombardi’s gift. She’d free Edita, her mother would know how to use the medallion to defeat the Baron, and everything would be fine.
Bianca’s drawing room was empty and dark when she pushed through the black and red painted door. The blue-tinged fire hadn’t been set in the huge fireplace, and the only light came from the torches in the corridor and the soft, shifting glow of the lux aurumque flowers outside in the garden.
Bianca crept to the door and peered out into the passage.
There weren’t any guards. Footsteps came towards her, so she pulled herself behind the arch of the door and held her breath.
A woman came into the passage. From her rough, plain black dress and simple hairstyle Bianca guessed she was a maid. She was carrying a closed basket and humming a little tune. She passed Bianca’s doorway and was gone.
Bianca frowned. The castle had been taken by the Baron – she’d expected a little bit more running and screaming. Some guards battling in the corridors, maybe some rooms on fire. Not maids humming little tunes and going about their day.
She felt silly as soon as she’d had the thought. When the Baron had taken over La Luminosa, he hadn’t burned the palace down! He’d been subtle about it. Most of the people of La Luminosa hadn’t even realised the throne was being stolen until it was all over.
I bet they’ve made a painted version of Mother and they’re using her to keep everyone calm.
She had to get to the dungeon and find her real mother. Then they could expose whatever the Baron and Filpepi were doing.
If people were moving around the castle freely, perhaps she wouldn’t even need to hide – but she would need a disguise. She ran into her bedroom and dug around in the cavernous wardrobes for the simplest clothes in Oscurita colours she could find. Pulling on a black coat over the top of her rough, paint-spattered dress, she wrapped a dark purple scarf loosely over her head and neck. She wasn’t sure she’d pass for either a lady or a maid, but at least she wouldn’t stand out like a dove in a rookery.
Grabbing a crystal jug of water that’d been left on the table, she emptied it into the garden, then walked out into the corridor clutching the empty jug.
Her disguise seemed to work – the few maids and courtiers she passed barely gave her a second glance. But the castle was eerily quiet. As she descended the back stairs and passed an archway that opened onto the courtyard, a clatter made her jump and pull her scarf over her face. But it was only a couple of guards moving armfuls of breastplates from the back of an armourer’s cart into a pile by the barracks door.
Bianca abandoned her crystal jug before she started down the dimmer, twistier stairs that led to the dungeons.
She passed the alcove where she’d stolen the little bracelet, and reached into her pocket. The bracelet was still there. She ran her fingers over its smooth, cool surface. I’m coming, Mother, she thought. I’m nearly there …
More alcoves lined the stairs, each deep enough for a pedestal, a statue carved from black marble or a suit of gleaming silver armour. There were paintings on the walls too – stern portraits of people in suits of armour and dim craggy landscapes designed to inspire feelings of awe and despair at the same time.
She wondered if any of them had been painted by Master di Lombardi.
She almost walked right into the dungeons. The stairs rounded a corner and stopped, spitting distance from a guard sitting at a table, reading a book by the flickering light of a candle.
Bianca pulled back quickly and ducked into an alcove, slipping around the arm of a suit of armour and pressing herself into the darkness behind it, trying to catch her breath silently. She waited there, counting the seconds on her fingers until a full minute had passed, but there was no sound of a chair scraping back or footsteps approaching the stairs – the guard must not have seen her.
She edged out of the alcove enough to peer around the corner again. Her heart sank. She could see that beyond the guard there was another corridor, full of cells with iron bars for walls. Once she was in that corridor, she’d be out of sight of the guard and she could find her mother’s cell – but there was no way to get there except to walk in front of the guard. However good his book was, she thought he’d probably notice a girl sneaking past him.
The candle-lit room where he sat, between the stairs and the cells, was barely two metres wide. She just needed to distract him for a moment and she could make it in a few steps.
But how could she draw him out without tipping him off to her hiding place?
Her hand slipped into her pocket again, looking for the soothing edge of the tiny bracelet. But her fingers found something else – something silky and fleshy.
She carefully drew out the slightly squished lux aurumque flower, shielding its light behind her coat. One of the petals had been crushed and th
e thick golden oil flowed out when she squeezed it. Her fingers tingled oddly under the power of the raw magic.
Her eyes fell on the painting that hung at the corner of the stairs, just opposite the turning. It was one of the portraits of people in armour – this one a pale woman, tall and strong-looking with short dirty-blonde hair and a seriously unimpressed expression. Bianca guessed she was a famous general, or maybe a wartime duchess. Her armour was slightly dented and the red and yellow banner that hung over her shoulder was bright but tattered.
The plan that started to form in Bianca’s mind was horribly flawed. She had nothing to make paint with, only the raw, golden oil. And, she realised with a nasty jolt, she didn’t even have a brush. Marco had pocketed di Lombardi’s paintbrush key, and she’d driven him away … She wouldn’t be able to open the doors to the secret passages again. Bianca dearly wished Marco was here now, even if he had given away her secrets.
Very, very carefully, without making a sound, Bianca edged back out of her hiding place. She kept herself out of the guard’s line of sight as she crossed the stairs and sidled up to the painting. Then she picked the crushed petal from the lux aurumque flower and began to paint onto the canvas, using its petals like a paintbrush.
‘Lux aurumque, lux diffensis,’ she whispered, dabbing pools of oil onto the shiny places on the woman’s armour. She reached out, her chest tightening as she reached over to sweep the magic substance onto the tattered tails of the banner. ‘Animare volare,’ she breathed, sketching out a rough cycle of movement that she hoped would look at least a bit like the banner was flowing in the wind. Then she quickly took a step back towards her alcove.
As she watched, the banner began to flutter and the woman’s armour gleamed as if the setting sun of La Luminosa was shining on her.
In fact, with the magic of the pure oil, the light grew brighter and brighter, and a slightly shimmering beam crept out from the painting, across the floor towards the weak, flickering light of the guard’s room.
Bianca ducked back into the alcove and bit her lip.
Sure enough, there was a pause, an intake of breath, and then footsteps. Bianca edged forward, just a tiny bit, so she could see the guard as he approached the painting to stare at it, blinking in shock. He reached up with one hand to touch the fluttering banner, then hesitated, as if he thought it might bite him.
Bianca clenched her fists.
This is it. This is your chance. You have to go. Go!
She slipped out of the alcove, hugging the wall, got behind the guard, and then turned and hurried silently through the pool of candlelight and into the dark corridor behind.
Bianca pressed herself to the wall, out of the guard’s line of sight.
Most of the cells were occupied. But the prisoners were silent and still. Many of them wore rags and had long, matted hair. A few lifted their heads to look at Bianca, but flinched away again at once.
Bianca edged along the corridor, peering into each cell. Were these people all the traitors her mother had talked about – the people who’d helped the pretender try to take her throne? Or were some of them her allies, imprisoned by the Baron?
She couldn’t stop to figure it out now. Her heart pounded as she reached the final cell, right against the far wall. It was so dark she almost couldn’t make out the hunched figure on the other side of the bars. But there was no mistaking the fine dress or the glitter of a silver bangle around the woman’s wrist.
‘Mother!’ Bianca gasped.
The Duchess Edita was sitting in a bare cell, shivering with cold. Her hair, normally so elaborately arranged, hung limply over her face.
She looked up, saw Bianca and smiled. ‘Oh my darling, you came!’ she said, a little too loud for Bianca’s liking. ‘How wonderful!’
‘Careful,’ Bianca said. ‘The guard … ’
She turned to glance back down the line of cells, and something grabbed her from behind. She let out a yell, despite herself, and tried to wriggle away, but her arms were dragged together behind her back and tied so tightly her fingers immediately began to go numb.
A thunder-lamp crackled into life. Its blue-white light seemed almost blinding after the darkness. When Bianca’s vision cleared, she found herself looking up into the sneering face of Piero Filpepi.
‘Yes, how wonderful!’ he said. ‘It’s my old apprentice. Still in need of discipline, I see.’
Bianca struggled hard against the ropes and tried to kick out, but Filpepi held her too tight. Another figure walked into her line of sight, pulling down the hood of a black cloak. Bianca was unsurprised to see it was the Baron da Russo, a smug smile spreading across his fat pink face. He reached towards her and Bianca writhed and tried to bite his hands, but it was no good. The Baron lifted the medallion from around her neck and held it up, gazing into its obsidian depths in wonder.
‘Mother!’ Bianca gasped. ‘I’m so sorry! They tricked you!’
Duchess Edita stood, brushed down her dress and pulled her hair back into a neat bun.
‘Filpepi, if you would,’ she said calmly.
Bianca felt like the world had dropped out from under her and she was falling.
Filpepi fished a key from his pocket and opened the door to the Duchess’s cell.
‘What?’ Bianca gasped.
Stepping out of the cell, Duchess Edita turned to look down at Bianca. Her dark eyes seemed like black holes in her face – without love or compassion, only a flicker of cruel amusement.
‘I’m afraid, my darling, my dove, my sweetest … I tricked you.’
Chapter Eighteen
Duchess Edita made a clicking sound with her tongue and smoothed down her dress.
‘This would have been much easier if you’d just brought the medallion with you when you first came. But no, you had to be clever about it.’
She held out a hand and the Baron dropped the medallion into it with a little bow. The Duchess draped it around her neck and ran her fingers over the obsidian surface.
Bianca opened her mouth to speak but shock prevented the words from escaping her throat. She looked up into her mother’s face – its soft features a mirror of her own. But in her eyes Bianca saw only cruelty.
Edita smiled and turned to walk away.
‘Move,’ Filpepi said, and shoved Bianca forward. ‘The Duchess wants you alive for the moment, but I’m just waiting for an excuse to be rid of you. So don’t try to run, or you might find you tragically fall and impale yourself on my sword.’
‘Traitor,’ Bianca hissed. ‘Duchess Catriona is going to have your head on a spike.’
‘I’m no traitor,’ said Filpepi. ‘In fact, I am a patriot – a patriot of Oscurita.’
The guard stood to attention and saluted the Duchess as they passed. He didn’t seem in the least surprised to see the Baron, Filpepi or Bianca.
Duchess Edita paused at the bottom of the stairs to look at the enchanted picture.
‘Ah, still relying on Annunzio’s obsession with pretty pictures? How amusing,’ she said. ‘Perhaps you will enjoy what comes next, after all.’
Anger and confusion brought tears to Bianca’s eyes, blurring her vision. When she spoke her voice sounded like it was distant, spoken by someone else. ‘Mother, I don’t understand. Why are you doing this?’
But her mother didn’t bother to answer. Bianca was marched in a daze to the top of the stairs. They started to pass other people – maids, guards and courtiers – but they averted their eyes and their faces were grim; not one of them seemed shocked to see their Duchess leading her own daughter through the Castle corridors with her hands bound.
They entered the throne room. Edita strode up to the raised platform where the throne of Oscurita sat. She ran her fingers over its silver back and black velvet cushions, and then turned to Bianca with a smile, as if waiting for her to speak.
But Bianca could only stand there shaking. The shock had subsided, leaving only raw pain and anger – anger at her mother for betraying her, and at herself for b
elieving there was anyone in the world who really cared about her.
‘You really have no idea what you’ve brought me, do you?’ Edita said, still smiling.
Bianca stared hard at her mother, her lips pursed shut.
‘Well?’ Edita sat down on the throne, crossing her legs and holding up the medallion so it twirled and spun in the air. ‘How clever you must have felt, discovering Oscurita as you did. The truth is, my dear, in the old days the people of the City of Light and the Dark City could come and go quite easily through the paintings.’
‘But … ’ Bianca glanced at the paintings that hung on the walls around the throne room. They looked quite ordinary to her. ‘But I’ve never heard of this place. Why doesn’t anyone in La Luminosa know about it?’
Duchess Edita smiled. ‘Oh, we kept to our own lands on the whole – few true Oscuritans could stand that nasty, unrelenting bright sun of theirs for long, and the stupid, clumsy La Luminosans were almost blind in this realm. They’d cause chaos more often than not, or stumble into the canals and drown!’ The Duchess threw her head back and laughed at that hilarious idea. Bianca shuddered. ‘But we had trade agreements, treaties, envoys. There was a La Luminosan embassy.’
‘So what happened?’ Bianca asked.
‘The War of the Pretender … and Annunzio di Lombardi,’ said Duchess Edita. A look of disgust crossed her face. ‘He stole the power of the portals, and sank it all into this.’ She held up the medallion. ‘When he left Oscurita he used this to lock the city, to make sure nobody from Oscurita could travel to the City of Light. It even sucked the magic from his precious paintings, made them lifeless and dull.’
‘But I thought Filpepi –’
‘Oh yes, Oscuritan through and through,’ said Edita. ‘Annunzio didn’t go to La Luminosa alone. He brought with him the two men who he knew could stand living in that horrible sunshine. A trusted friend and advisor – that would be Filpepi, here, his chief apprentice. Filpepi brought the Baron. Both of them were already under my command. They’d sworn to be my eyes and ears in the City of Light. And they remained loyal, all these years.’