I looked to Vanni, who I knew was ready to back me. He didn’t want the Eterrans running over the country, claiming Moschella lands. And besides, I got the sense that he was eager to test out his new magic. “Teo is right,” he said. “We’ll be up in the mountains, untouchable.”
“I’ll go,” Mimì said without hesitation.
I wanted to ask why, but I was afraid it would make me look bewildered by her confidence in my plan. I would have to store my questions for later.
“Elettra?” I asked, turning to the glamorous singer, trying to imagine her as some kind of soldier and falling short. “I know this isn’t your homeland, but . . .”
“The Eterrans invaded Vinalia at the first scent of magic,” Elettra said, turning pale under her powder. “They’re coming for us. Of course I’m going to fight.”
“What of the Capo’s troops? Aren’t they waiting to recapture you?” Lorenzo asked me, breaking his fast of words. He usually let everyone else argue themselves out and stepped in only when he had something of the utmost importance to say. His eyes slid along my neck. “The Capo might care more about getting you back than he does about winning this battle.”
Lorenzo was as close to a friend as I’d made in Amalia, but I knew that his concern was only partly for me. If I was taken, no doubt Mimì would be added to the ranks of the Capo’s streghe against her will.
“We’ll send Cielo ahead to scout every step of the trip, so we’ll make it to Zarisi of our own free will. When we win this battle and stop war from spilling into Vinalia, the troops will be turned to our side. The Capo’s might has always been his army. Without them, he will have nothing but a title he made up.”
“And then what happens?” Pasquale asked with a snort that must have punished his nose as much as it hurt my ears. “We’re at war over who should rule Vinalia after he’s deposed.”
“That sounds dangerously like you prefer the Capo,” Father said. Pasquale ducked his head, acting as though Father had pitched a well-aimed stone at him. “Teodora’s plan is sound because if it works, it rids us of the Eterrans and the Capo in one stroke.”
“The Capo started this war himself,” Signora Moschella declared. “Let him end it.”
I hooked her by the arm and led her to a spot where she could look over the battlements. “These are the fields that will be trampled if the Eterrans break through. These are the first towns that will be taken, the first lives that will be claimed. And they will not be the last.”
I hadn’t wanted to do this, to make the threat this sharp, but it was pressing on all of us, whether we paid attention or pretended it wasn’t there.
My fears drew panicked looks. A shared moment passed, and I could feel a decision settling over the group, like a cloak being cast over my shoulders for a long journey. “The five of you should leave today,” Father said.
My triumph lasted as long as it took me to count. Cielo, Mimì, Vanni, Elettra . . .
“What about you?” I asked, the cry sounding far too much like a daughter’s, and not nearly enough like a newly minted general’s.
“Someone has to stay and run the five families,” Father argued.
“I’ll do it,” Pasquale offered, far too quickly.
Fiorenza spun toward the Rao boy on the heel of her boot. “That won’t be necessary, seeing that you gave our daughter up to the Capo at court.”
“After she turned me into a common object!” Pasquale cried.
“If it helps, I can make it uncommon this time,” I said.
Father’s head went heavy at our squabbling, lowering inch by inch into his waiting hands. I had seen him do the same thing a hundred times with the petty lords and merchants and priests of the Uccelli.
I turned away from Pasquale, putting my di Sangro training to work against the man who’d given it to me. I acted as if Father were the only person on the battlements. I walked forward until I took up his whole view. He’d taught me to do that. Give a man nowhere to look but your face, and he will have nothing else to trust.
Niccolò di Sangro was armored against everything but his own logic. “Come with us,” I said.
“Impossible.”
“No,” I insisted. If Father was going to deny me, I was not going to make it a simple task. “What you did last night was impossible. You snatched me off the path that leads to death. You brought me back safely.” There were glassy scratches in my voice, the memory still cutting me inside.
“I don’t want to speak about this, Teodora,” he said.
“Father, we’re marching into a war where both sides are against us. We’re going to need a healer.”
“No, you aren’t,” Father said, forgetting what I knew—when he acted most certain, those were the nights doubt untethered him from his mind, when he wandered the castle and muttered until I woke to the sound of his fear echoing down the stone halls. “If you are truly my daughter, you’re not going to get hurt.”
* * *
We left the Moschella castle after supper, during which I encouraged the streghe to eat as much of the oily, fried lake fish with capers and onions as their stomachs would allow. Vanni had no trouble with this concept, but Cielo glared at the fish as if it owed her a great sum of money, Elettra squared off the tiniest possible bites, and Mimì leaned over to me and muttered, “Fish should come from the sea.”
Signora Moschella provided more of the olive oil cakes from the wedding and stuffed a bag full of them for our travels. She would have laden us with half of the castle’s provisions if I had let her. I had to point out, several times, and with increasing force, that we had to travel on foot into the highest reaches of the Neviane, and we could take only what we could carry.
She asked if there were any spells to make our backs stronger.
By the time we started out, the light was the heavy gold of late afternoon. Lorenzo and Mimì made the most of the bittersweet loveliness, kissing each other good-bye in the shade of the Moschella family’s beloved pear trees.
Cielo stood apart as Father and Fiorenza pulled me into embraces that choked as much as they comforted. When I turned to Mirella, she had already pasted a kiss to Vanni’s cheek and was hurrying back inside to Luciano.
“I suppose that’s all the good-bye we’re going to get,” I said, and led my small band of streghe away from the castle. At least, I led most of them away. We had already crossed the bridge into the village before I realized that Mimì wasn’t with us.
When I looked back at Castel di Volpe, I found she was still engaged in a vigorous round of kissing, Lorenzo’s hands on her back, pulling her so close they looked like one figure in the distance.
“Aren’t you going to order her to catch up, General di Sangro?” Cielo asked.
I thought about how I would feel if someone pulled me rudely away from a moment like that. My magic would most likely have taken down the bridge in order to give me another moment with Cielo before we parted.
“No,” I said. “It’s safer this way.”
The walk to the mountains took us past the hobbled branches of the Moschella family’s grape arbors, along roads thick with travelers. On a mild day in November the Moschella lands swarmed with people, all of them shouting at us to see where we were headed.
“North,” I said, because that much was obvious. I felt the double edge of a blade at my back—we needed to get to Zarisi quickly and be prepared for a battle by the time we arrived.
That night, we stopped to camp. “I’ll make the fire,” I said, gathering little sticks from the ground. Elettra trailed behind, helping and hovering in a way that made me think she had something to say.
“What is it?” I asked.
“If I’m going to stay with you . . .” She must have seen fear leap onto my face at the idea that we were already about to lose one of our small company. She shook her head, tightening her hold on her sticks until one of th
em cracked like a delicate bone. “I would rather have you use my real name. Elettra is for singing.” I let out a small, overburdened breath. Of course she had a Vinalian stage name.
“What should we call you?” I asked.
“Xiaodan,” she said.
“Will you call me Teo?” I asked. It was my childhood nickname, and yet it seemed to stretch and change. Years after I’d first chosen it, Teo held the vestiges of a di Sangro daughter, a dash of the boy in the capital. It was the name of a powerful strega and Cielo’s beloved.
Me, in every sense.
Xiaodan nodded as we circled back to the rest of the streghe and handed over our sticks to Mimì. She licked her fingers and put them to the dry wood. With a sizzle, it went up in smoke, and then orange flames unraveled into the night air.
I sat the streghe in a loose circle. Cielo hovered, still on her feet. “I’ll fly ahead to make sure there’s no one coming down the road for twenty miles or so. That should mean a sound night’s sleep without anyone needing to stay awake and play sentry.”
Before I could nod my agreement or kiss her good-bye, Cielo was flicking a page in her book and flapping dark wings.
“I know everyone is tired,” I said, “but I need to see the magic we have at hand so I know exactly what is in our arsenal when we reach the pass.”
“I have an idea,” Mimì said, with a few brisk claps. “Let’s have a rissa incantata. I don’t know about any of you, but a fight would help me get rid of this nagging worry I’ve had since the wedding.”
“Rissa incantata? I’m not familiar with strega terms, but it sounds like you want to stage a magical fight,” Vanni said. “And I’m already covered in aches and bruises.” He started to roll up the leg of his pants, most likely to display the ripest of his blue marks, but I held up a hand, and Vanni stopped in his tracks.
“The rissa incantata is an old strega tradition,” Mimì said. “It was kept alive on Salvi, if nowhere else. We care about the old ways.”
I tossed a handful of wood in the fire, and it hissed at me. “We care for them in the Uccelli, too, but I can’t have my streghe fighting each other.”
“Your streghe?” Mimì asked, putting me in check as smoothly as sliding a piece across a game board. “The rissa isn’t about seeing who comes out on top. It’s a matter of matching strength to strength, and both growing stronger.”
I had never heard this approach before. I’d only seen people hide their magic or steal it through death. “The Capo had streghe fighting each other,” I said, and even though I’d warned a hundred streghe about what I’d learned in Amalia, the words still came out flecked with dark feeling. “He wanted them dead, and their power channeled into a single strega he could . . . use. Control.”
Xiaodan shivered, the fire and the shadows turning her bright and dark in turn.
“Who has that magic now?” Mimì asked.
Vanni gulped, giving me a sideways glance. “Teo does.”
My magic seethed inside of me, reminding me that it was ready. I didn’t doubt that. I only doubted that I would be able to use it wisely. I was used to having a precise, limited power. I tried to calm the crash of waves inside, the power as glinting and unfathomable as the ocean by night. “All right, now that you know about my magic, let’s see yours.”
I had been there when Vanni’s magic was born and used against the soldiers of Erras, but I could barely guess at the powers of the two girls. I got to my feet and pointed out places for Mimì and Xiaodan to stand.
Even though I’d just convinced them to come with me and attack an entire army, I checked over both shoulders before we used magic openly, a sticking worry left over from the time when strega magic was hidden. Anyone who came along the road now could see us and know that we were both powerful and real. We were part of the landscape of Vinalia as much as the grape arbors, the crowded cities, the clang of church bells.
I nodded to Mimì and Xiaodan.
“Begin.”
Mimì bowed deeply at the waist.
Xiaodan’s hands started up a little dance, back and forth, back and forth. “You feel very sure of yourself,” she said.
Mimì spat into her palm and fire rose into the sky in a great rush. Then she knelt down, grabbed a double handful of earth, and tossed it toward Xiaodan, turning it into a wind so strong that the opera singer was blasted off her feet.
Mimì was an element changer.
Vanni coughed, trying to hide his words. “Doomed. She’s doomed.”
“Nicely done,” Xiaodan said, getting up without a hint of frustration in her movements. In fact, she looked invigorated. “Growing up in the opera house, surrounded by musicians and set painters and those who sew fine costumes while their own skin grows thick as horn, you become used to seeing people who know their work—know it as well as their own bodies. But it is rare to encounter the work of a true artist. It does not simply look right or sound beautiful. It travels through your skin. It sinks its teeth into your soul and does not let go.”
“Are you saying I’m an artist?” Mimì asked. “Or that you are?”
“I will let you decide.” Xiaodan’s hands moved lightly, the same sort of motions that she used when she was singing—only there was no song. It was gesture, stripped of words, a subtle dance of emotion.
Mimì grabbed at the air, and it became earth in her hands. But instead of throwing it at Xiaodan, she made more and more and more, completely focused on her efforts.
“Are you making her do that?” I asked, thinking of Cielo’s mother, Giovanna, who had been able to spin someone else’s feeling toward action. It was the single most dangerous ability I had ever seen.
“I have no control over body or mind,” Xiaodan said, her hands still shaping the air like clay. “All I do is sense what Mimì is feeling, then bring it to a peak. Simple, really. She was very taken with her own magic.”
Mimì smiled at the earth as it poured over her. She laughed at her own power, completely uninterested in the fight she was supposed to be winning.
“Stop,” I said, cutting it off before I had a strega choking on her own magic.
The movement of Xiaodan’s hands died down, like winds fading back into the calm sky.
Mimì looked around, dazed. When she realized what had happened, she kicked at the mound of earth and it dissolved back into air.
“Do we . . . fight each other . . . next?” Vanni asked me, tripping over the question in so many places I worried he would never right himself.
“Yes, let’s see that,” Mimì said, plunking herself down to watch.
I hesitated even as the magic roared through me, or perhaps because it roared through me. “I don’t know if it would be right to pit Vanni against me for his first rissa.” Our magic had both taken paths through the soldiers of Erras—mine by way of the strega Father had killed in front of me, and Vanni’s through the strega Mirella had killed in front of him. Vanni likely had a great deal of power, concentrated over generations. We might have been fairly matched a year ago, but since then my magic had grown out of proportion, doubling and tripling when Delfina and Azzurra died.
I was carrying them with me—their violently gathered magic, their ruthless ends. There should have been a way to save them from the Capo and I hadn’t found it. Instead, I had let both sisters be sacrificed to the plotting of powerful men. I’d walked away stronger, yet still afraid I could not stop anyone when it was most needed. This was all more than I could hold.
This magic. This war. This moment.
I felt a breath of wind on my neck, and then it took the shape of a warm kiss. Cielo had come back, sliding into her rightful place at my side. I closed my eyes without meaning to and melted backward into her touch. Being with Cielo was the one thing that felt bigger than I was in the best possible way.
“I miss Lorenzo,” Mimì said with a rough sigh.
“I wonder if Mirella misses me,” Vanni added, a wistful thought that I felt like he wouldn’t have shared in different, more masculine company. Or perhaps the Moschella heir was shedding the nervous, boastful ways I’d seen in Amalia. Maybe he was coming to see that he could be honest, and show feeling, and still be counted among men.
Xiaodan stayed quiet—but it was the kind of quiet that grew thick, filling the air with thorns. “We’ve been having a rissa incantata,” she finally said to Cielo. “Do you want to try your luck?”
“There is hardly any luck involved,” Cielo said, “and no.”
“Why not?” Xiaodan asked with a slight frown.
“Because I would sweep you all into a dustbin, slap my hands clean, and then where would we be?” Cielo walked off, content to sit with the sack of olive oil cakes for company, licking her shiny-stained fingers after each bite.
“What would happen if you two fought?” Xiaodan asked.
“We fight all the time,” I said. But I could see what she meant. What would happen if Cielo’s magic and mine were paired against each other in battle?
My magic hissed, fighting itself inside of me. It wanted to rise to this terrible new challenge. It also wanted to keep Cielo safe. It had always been attached to the strega, even before I was.
I walked over to Cielo, and she wrapped me in her arms and fed me bits of cake as Xiaodan drifted back toward camp. An hour later I could see that she was still awake, her knees gathered to her chest, her neck tipped back to take in the rise of the mountains.
That night I slept in Cielo’s arms, as the merciless Neviane loomed above us, filling my dreams with avalanches.
Our little party walked five miles the next morning and each step seemed to take us straight into the sky. The rocks beneath us pushed up in ragged chunks. As if that weren’t enough, a thin coating of snow slicked every surface.
At one point we stopped, for breath as much as for food and water. We handed around the water skins, and I waited until last, so by the time one reached me I was shaking free the last musty drops that tasted more of leather than water.
The Storm of Life Page 8