“What are you doing?” I asked.
“It looks like he’s shooting at his own baby,” Dantae said. “You’re sure this is the man you want to steal it back for?”
The sound of feet on the stairs grew into thunder, and then Mirella burst into the temple alongside Vanni.
“Mothers,” Dantae muttered. “Every. Damn. Time.” She cast off, her little boat disappearing into the dark mouth at one end of the underground river, leaving the second boat to fend for itself.
Vanni’s hands shattered the air with trembling as he loaded a new ball into the pistol and pushed the snout back in place. “I can’t,” he said. “I can’t hit the man without hitting the baby, and I can’t . . .”
Mirella pulled the pistol out of Vanni’s hands, held her arm out at full length, and went as still as an eternally perfect statue. Only one finger moved, sliding the hammer back, pulling the trigger.
The man holding the baby stumbled backward. The ball must have stuck deep in his gut because he clutched himself just below where Luciano was cradled.
In the moment after Mirella killed him, there was only a slight tremble of shock moving through the temple, touching us all. Then the other two soldiers of Erras—one on the boat and one on the shore—leapt to grab Luciano. The man on the shore managed to wrest him away before the dead soldier fell, swallowed by the rushing water.
Without the bone knife or Dantae to interfere, my magic was mine again. The pieces swirled inside of me, blurring into something stronger and more powerful than I could stop. For the first time in months I did not want to stop. The fear of losing Luciano rose above every other fear, leaving me with a single purpose. Magic lashed through me like powerful rain, and I looked up to the crumbled ceiling of the temple as if turning my face up to the skies, welcoming the storm.
“Leave the baby,” I whispered. “You can have your way with the others.”
My magic lashed out, toppling the man who held Luciano. It crumbled him to ruins so he would blend with his surroundings. In less than a day, no one would know he had been human.
Cielo ripped into rushing wind form, arriving just in time to catch the baby and drift him slowly, carefully, to the ground. Luciano landed with a small murmur of delight. He was already done crying.
A di Sangro, through and through.
The second soldier of Erras had moved when I loosed my magic, and now he pitched himself headfirst at Luciano. Frantic, I called on my magic again, but before I could give it a direction, the light in the dim underground cavern flew toward Vanni—followed by everyone’s stares.
Light pooled around his hands, and when he turned them over, it spun in threads of pale gold. With a cry of mingled confusion and fear, he flung handfuls of light at the soldier of Erras who had remembered his charge and was grabbing for Luciano.
The light hit him square in the chest, and the look on his face was extinguished. He blew out like a candle flame, his body wavering and then falling to the ground.
Mirella ran to the baby, throwing herself down with a cry that filled the temple, a wild prayer to a god even older than the ones this place was dedicated to.
I turned to find Vanni with his eyes wide and his fingers crosshatched over his chest, as if something delicate had taken root there. The brilliant death had done its fickle dance, and the dead soldier’s magic had chosen Vanni for a partner.
Cielo brushed past me, a wind that shaded back into a boyish body, his side brushing against mine as he whispered, “I suppose you have your high-ranking Moschella man, after all.”
Any guilt I felt at this twist in Vanni’s fate was overwhelmed instantly, swallowed by the rushing waters of my plan. I had what I needed to convince the five families to fight the Capo.
Cielo strode to Vanni and clapped a hand on his shoulder. “Let me be the one to welcome you to an existence of magic, loyalty, and death. How do you feel about very cold mountains and very harsh generals?”
Vanni’s eyes went a notch wider as his legs wilted at the knee.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “You’re in good company.”
He fainted just as I was about to call him a strega for the first time.
Two
In the Mouth of the Wolf
The morning after Mirella’s wedding was drawn in every shade of gray, from the tainted white of the sky to the smoke that rose from the chimneys of Castel di Volpe in great tatters. In the distance, beyond rolling fields and a swollen river, rose the dove-gray rocks of the Neviane.
I stood on the castle’s northern battlements as the wind pestered me, flinging my hair in great handfuls. The stones beneath me felt solid, but I clung to the corner of the nearest swallowtail stone, aware of how eternal my own home had looked before it was taken apart by a vengeful strega.
“Surely you aren’t afraid of heights,” Vanni said, studying my white fingers on the beige rock. “Why did you want to come up here, again?”
“Strategy,” I gritted out.
I had wanted Cielo to come with me, but when I suggested it, the strega burrowed deeper into bed, flickered into girlish form, and insisted that she needed another trip to the thermal baths far more than she needed another tumble with the five families. Cielo had snuck into my bedroom after we returned from the abbey, but for all our talk of wedding night trysts, the only thing we’d had the will to do after nearly being killed by the soldiers of Erras was sleep in a brittle, tense embrace.
“I think you and I are facing the same sort of trouble,” Vanni said.
“You mean magic and what to do with it and how to protect everyone we love?” I asked, looking out over the stretch of Vinalia with a fierce sort of adoration, as if I could fold the landscape, gather it to my chest, keep it safe.
“Yes, that, but . . . I was talking more about the aftermath of last night. You’re not the only one Mirella is furious with. She won’t even look at me. Of course, she won’t look anywhere but at Luciano.” I thought of my sister, dark hair dipping low like willow branches, curtaining her child from the world.
“She must have some feelings about your sudden dive into magic,” I said.
Vanni nodded. I had never seen him look less certain. “I tried to talk to Mirella about what I’d done, how it felt. She wouldn’t answer. And when I told her about your plan, well . . . she said I could do anything in the world as long as I kept you away from the castle until she felt safe again.”
I felt that slap down to my bones—and most of the pain came from knowing that it was perfectly fair. My sister had lived through Luca’s death, the destruction of the di Sangro castle, and now this. She had every right to cast me away. I was the common ingredient in all of her life’s worst disasters.
Vanni looked up at the blanketed sky. “I wonder . . .” he said. “Since this magic seems to need a source of light . . .” The night before, Vanni had grasped handfuls of torchlight and turned them into flashing bombs. Now he turned his hand over and over slowly, as if carding wool. Threads of sunlight stuck to him, gathering in his palm until he had enough to fling into the moat below us. A splash the size of a small cannonball rose.
Vanni looked down at what he’d done with the faint traces of a smile.
“That is quite the ability,” I said.
“And this happened because . . . what? I stood too close to a strega?”
“We’re not contagious,” I said with vigor. “And magic doesn’t pass to just anyone,” I added, forming the conviction as I spoke.
“You think it . . . chose me?” Vanni asked, looking both pleased and terrified. I knew the weight of those emotions. I had lived under their double yoke since I was nine years old. But I hadn’t had someone at my side to explain them, to guide me through a world grown lovely and treacherous with magic. I wondered how much it would have changed.
“I just wanted to keep Mirella and the baby safe,” Vanni whispered. “
That was all that mattered. To keep anyone with foul intentions away from them.”
His words latched to my heart, but before I could figure out why my chest was pounding in double time, steps rose on the stairs at the center of the tower. I turned, hoping for Cielo, and found nearly everyone else in the wedding party. It looked like half the contents of the castle had been poured onto the battlements. I had invited them, little cards slipped under their doors with hastily scrawled invitations. Father and Fiorenza, Lorenzo and Mimì, Signora Moschella with her white-streaked hair, and Pasquale with a glower that smeared his entire face. Favianne, his betrothed, was still absent. I’d included her on the card, and yet she wasn’t here.
Perhaps they were no longer engaged—but then what had become of her? Was she back in the southern provinces, hunting for a new nobleman?
Elettra wafted up the stairs last, in a slightly less ornate gown than the one she’d worn at the wedding, but still dressed as if she were about to launch into a series of arpeggios instead of a meeting with the five families.
“Did you need something, Elettra?” Vanni asked. “I want to apologize again for what happened last . . .”
“No need,” Elettra said, a little too brightly. “I came up here because a girl asked me to. Tall, black hair, talks in abundance?”
Hope glimmered at the edges of my thoughts. Cielo had asked Elettra to come. The strega knew about my scheme to stop the Eterran army—and also knew we would need every strega we could find.
“Teodora, please tell us what this is about,” Fiorenza said.
Calling all these people here and pretending I knew what was best, promising I could cobble them together and lead them to some kind of victory, was either boldness or madness. I was leaning toward the latter as I looked around at my small collection of powerful Vinalians.
“This is the first meeting of the streghe of the five families,” I said.
Father’s lips tightened against the accusation. He’d been revealed the night before, because he had to save me. I was the reason he had to face his magic in the open. I had taken the life he’d so carefully constructed and dashed it to pieces.
“We’ve learned the truth about Signore di Sangro here, but there are more of you unnatural types?” Pasquale asked, crossing his arms tight over his chest, as if that simple motion would keep a strega’s magic from striking him again. He did have cause to worry: I had turned him into a shoehorn once, and if he spoke out of turn too many times, I couldn’t promise that I wouldn’t do it again.
Pasquale took a brisk and measuring look at each of us, immediately starting a hunt. “Lorenzo is a strega,” he said. “I should have guessed.”
Mimì stepped forward and curtsied to Pasquale, her motions graceful but her face pure steel. “I am the strega of the Altimari family, she who bears the inheritance of the foremother, changer of states, bringer of fire and singer of rain, keeper of the earth and kin to the air.”
Lorenzo turned to Mimì. “. . . You are?”
Mimì looked back at him with a tiny valley of annoyance between her eyebrows. “Do you tell me every little thing that goes on with the five families? No. You do not.”
“This hardly seems little,” Pasquale said, wedging into their conversation.
“Shut up,” Lorenzo and I offered in chorus.
“I’m a strega,” Vanni said, pulling himself up to his full height, which still fell short of his mother’s. “Well. As of last night.”
Elettra spread her hands over her skirts and took a deep breath. “As you can probably guess from the fact that I’m here, I have magic as well. In Oveto, I wouldn’t be called a strega, though. Magic is known as the silver sea, and to use it, you have to be . . . well, it translates to something like a strong swimmer. But I’ve spent my life in Vinalia since I was eight years old. My magic grew to its full strength here. I suppose that makes me a strega as well.”
“That’s quite the biography, girl,” Signora Moschella said. “All that, and your voice sounds like an angel on the wing.”
Elettra winced, then corrected herself with a smile, like brushing velvet against the grain and smoothing it quickly.
I waited for Father to explain his magic like the rest, but he stayed quiet. “You know that Cielo and I are streghe, and my father is a healer.” Niccolò di Sangro looked angrier than ever in the stark light of morning, and I wondered if the revelation of his magic had grown worse when he found that the five families, for all of their scowling, had not thrown him from the ramparts or tried to exile him for being a strega. He’d been keeping his secret longer than needed, and that could not be an easy bite to work down.
I swallowed and kept on. “I have also invited a member of each family who is not a strega, to be sure that the interests of the five families are fully represented.”
“Four families,” Vanni corrected.
“The Otto family has not been removed from our numbers,” Father said, his diplomacy cutting into the last remnants of my calm. “They are simply not here today.”
“Yes,” I said. “One of them has simply betrayed us and done his best to destroy my sister’s life for his gain.” I sped on before Father could slide a pretty coat of polish onto such a foul truth. “As representative from Salvi, I have chosen Lorenzo Altimari,” I said. Lorenzo nodded his acceptance, though his bewildered eyes were still on Mimì.
“From the southern provinces, I have chosen Pasquale Rao.” I wished there had been anyone else to include from the Rao family. Pasquale’s hatred of streghe was so strong that it grew pungent, wafting over the entire gathering. If Favianne had been present—and finally married to Pasquale—I would have chosen her instead, though she probably would have staged a coup before I could finish a sentence.
“From the Uccelli, I have chosen Fiorenza di Sangro,” I said. Father nodded before Fiorenza had the chance. I was glad that he’d given his blessing, and molten with rage at the fact that she needed it at all.
“And from the northern provinces, I have chosen Signora Maria Moschella.” The woman looked at me like I might still be slightly drunk from the festivities the night before.
I waited for an argument to swirl to life, for someone to bring up the untraditional choices I’d made, giving two women the power to speak on behalf of the families. But silence reigned over our gathering. With so many of our men dead—claimed by war and treachery and violent acts of patriotism—apparently women were finally allowed to step into the blank spaces.
“I can promise I’m a family member and not a strega,” Signora Moschella said. “The only magic I’ve got is keeping this castle from crumbling into the lake and stopping my children from killing themselves with pure foolishness.”
“Those are no small things,” Fiorenza assured her—and I thought of our own home gone, and Luca dead.
“If you want assurances that streghe are safe in the five families and our lands, you have it from me,” Lorenzo said. “I’m betrothed to a strega. Apparently.” He looked to Fiorenza. “Any advice?”
Fiorenza looked like she wanted to adopt Lorenzo at once, but all she said was, “Keep your wits about you.” I realized I had not seen my stepmother’s face crack with surprise once since Father was revealed at the wedding party. I wondered how long she had suspected his abilities.
Everyone looked to Pasquale next. He was the link that might break this new chain before it was fully forged. Pasquale’s lips shifted, slow and thick with a pout. No doubt he wanted to rage against the disgusting nature of streghe—but with so many present, he had to fear for his own safety. “It doesn’t matter what we promise today if the Capo or the Eterrans take all of Vinalia by storm tomorrow.”
“Pasquale is right,” I said, confused to find those words leaving my mouth. “I believe we can stop both of those threats at once if, with your blessing, I take a small band of streghe to the Neviane.” Actually, I would have prefe
rred to take hundreds of streghe to the Neviane, but as Cielo and I had learned in our travels, they were as easy to herd as hornets.
Signora Moschella stepped right into the middle of the circle. “My Vanni isn’t heading into that battle if the Capo has streghe ready to point their magic at you like those leather-bound bastards just did.”
I waved away her fears. “The soldiers of Erras don’t believe in the Capo’s fever dream of a Vinalian empire. They proved it last night.”
“You mean while they were slitting your throat?” Pasquale asked.
My hand flew to the crusted line of blood at my neck. “It’s only a trade to them. They’re not true believers. They’re using the Capo.”
Vanni kicked at the nearest battlement. “I’d say well done if they hadn’t just pissed all over my wedding and tried to steal my son.”
Father cleared his throat, and everyone turned to hear the verdict of the great Niccolò di Sangro. I waited for Father to say I had officially gone mad, and he would find me a nice warm spot as soon as the castle was rebuilt where he could lock me away for my own safety. Father’s eyes gripped mine and did not relent. “What is your plan, exactly?”
This was the moment I’d been climbing toward, but I knew from experience that the top of the mountain is the sum of its dangers. Besides leaving a person exposed to the elements, the wrong step in any direction meant a long and deadly fall.
I took a breath and treaded carefully.
“The pass at Zarisi is the only place the Eterrans can break through into Vinalia unless they’re willing to sacrifice most of their troops to ice chasms and bottomless snow pits. They’re counting on being stronger than us, so they don’t believe they have to be smarter as well. They’ll keep to the pass.” Father and Signora Moschella nodded, as if they’d reasoned their way through this much already. “Magic will allow us to attack them from well above the city, without putting us in the path of an invading army.”
The Storm of Life Page 7