If it weren’t for the church’s army trailing behind us like a wisp of smoke, it would have been easy to mistake this for a gathering of the five families.
“I remember how happy Mirella was at being sent to make the rounds of the five families,” I said. “It brought me dangerously close to hating her. The only thing that stopped me was the knowledge that she was being sent off to fetch a good marriage, like goods being carted to market.”
Thoughts of marriage turned swiftly, obviously, to thoughts of Cielo. I had chosen the strega for myself, and that hadn’t turned out much better. The truth scorched, so I doused it with worries about my sister.
“That’s not how it seemed to me,” Vanni said. “Mirella once said she loved seeing Vinalia that way, dancing from ballroom to ballroom. Every time she came to Castel di Volpe, it was like spring coming back.”
I had forgotten that Vanni and Mirella’s history was not as shallow as the last several months, a hurried courtship ending in a marriage of convenience. Vanni had memories of Mirella that stretched as long and deep as the riverbed of the Estatta.
“Did you ever try to court her before . . . ?” Before Ambrogio stole her away? Before she made the wrong choice and ruined her life? That’s how the Teo of a year ago would have put things. But when I looked at Luciano, his little body bundled in a lemon-colored blanket I remembered from my own childhood, life didn’t feel ruined at all.
Another thought of Cielo intruded.
I love babies. Or haven’t you noticed?
“Oh, I knew better than to court your sister,” Vanni said. “Until recently, I don’t think Mirella saw me as anything but a red-haired nuisance.” His smile faded like a tapestry that had soaked in too much sun. “I was a red-haired nuisance.”
“You are a different man now,” I said, tugging him close with my arm around his shoulders, one of the habits I’d learned in a more boyish form. “And it’s not only the throwing of light.”
“Mirella is the same, though,” Vanni insisted.
“Perfect and impossible?” I asked.
We stopped at the edge of the night’s encampment. There was no use marching until morning, not if it wore holes through our resolve. Mirella helped pitch tents with one arm, baby in the other, as if she’d been doing things that way her whole life. Between quick and purposeful movements, she gave Luciano smiles, each one like a secret that she unfolded just for him.
My sister was the same as she’d always been, and she was also different. As a child, I’d felt her holding back, always a little fearful. Beniamo had taught us that anything we loved was in danger from the moment our hearts dared to beat a little harder. My solution had been to hide, to do everything in secret. Mirella’s had been to harden the defenses of her heart. But I could see her changing now, the way she lavished kisses on Luciano.
“She is not afraid to love her son,” I said. “She is only afraid to lose him.”
I was glad that Mirella had chosen to come with us. She had my protection, even if she did not wish to acknowledge it. And she had Father, Vanni, and half a dozen various Moschella in-laws who had chosen to make the journey from Castel di Volpe. I recognized the nervous boy who’d stood across from me during Luciano’s baptism. Signora Moschella had stayed behind in Prai, declaring that she was too old for battle, and someone had to keep an eye on the priests.
When Mirella crouched to light the campfire, flint in one hand and the baby in the other, Vanni rushed to her side. “You do have to let someone else hold Luciano at some point,” Vanni said. When Mirella gave him a di Sangro glare, he added, “In the hazy, distant future.”
“You could hand him off to me,” Dantae said.
“Ha!” Vanni shouted so violently, I thought he might fall over backward from the force of it.
Mirella struck the flint, a dry chipping sound that beckoned flame. “Yes, of course, now that we’re in Otto territory I’ll hand you the baby to make your job easier. Ambrogio is probably waiting for you behind that tree.”
Even the mention of his name turned my steps stiff and wooden.
“The offer was genuine, Signora,” Dantae said.
“Why, in any ring of hell, would I let you touch Luciano again?” Mirella asked.
Dantae’s magic went to work, opening Mirella’s question like a ripe fruit so she might search for the seeds of an answer.
“You’ve borne children,” Mirella said.
“I believe I’m the only other one in this party who has,” she added.
Mirella tucked the flint back into its roll of cloth and left Dantae staring into the fire. Instead of handing Luciano to any of us, she laid the baby in a special traveling crib that Signora Moschella had given her, the posts carved into foxes.
“There are people who call you mother?” Vanni asked, sounding far too fascinated to stop himself from prying.
Mirella marched back to the fire, facing off with Dantae across the fire’s grasping orange fingertips. “If you want to help Luciano, the least you can do is change that . . . thing you’re wearing. Your snakes are drawing attention. I’m fairly certain someone recognized us in the last town because we were standing too close to your adder-skin vest.”
“Fair point,” Dantae said, shedding the vest all at once so that her breasts touched the fire-warmed air. “Is that better?”
“Don’t answer,” Vanni said, though I felt he was warning himself more than anyone else.
“The soldiers of Erras aren’t afraid to walk through the world the way we came into it,” Dantae said.
“Where does a woman sign up?” Favianne asked, sliding into the ring of light, the fire casting a little more of its brilliance on her than it did on the rest of us. Xiaodan followed, looking tired from a day of setting the pace and shepherding Father.
“We’d be too humble for your tastes,” Dantae said, with a mocking bow. “Your Highness.”
“Did you not hear my entire speech about my humble origins?” Favianne asked. “Or was it too hard with your boots stomping on the table every other moment?”
I could not help it—I grinned. Favianne returned the smile with startled grace.
“Everyone in Vinalia thinks you know a person at first glance,” Xiaodan said, nearly pasting herself to Favianne’s hip. “It’s stifling.”
“No doubt Cielo would agree with that sentiment,” Vanni tossed in. “I first met Cielo as a servant, and now our secret Malfara is about to become the king of Vinalia. These are either strange times . . . or they’re normal times and I’m not nearly strange enough.”
“Where is our illustrious new leader?” Favianne asked, making a grand show of gazing to the copse of trees in one direction and the hills in the other, even though layers of fog and darkness sifted over the land.
I thought I saw my strega’s shape tossed against the night, but it was only a long, lean shadow.
I had been waiting, giving Cielo every chance to change direction before I came up with a way to patch the crumbling plaster of this plan. But we were more than halfway to Amalia, and there had been no sign of Cielo in any form. I hadn’t felt the littlest stirring of my magic to make me think Cielo might be returning.
“If this young Malfara truly wishes to run Vinalia, he is not off to a good start,” Father muttered, his voice rising out of the darkness before he stepped into the firelight. He did not look pleased, and soon doubt rose to the surface of every expression, so thick and heavy that I half expected it to smother the fire.
I had to produce Cielo quickly.
“I’ll be right back,” I said, splitting away from the group.
“Are you not feeling well, Teo?” Father asked. Once he got hold of a question like that, he wouldn’t stop until it was answered. “Teo?”
I kept rushing on numb feet, toward the nearest rise in the hills. I was not well, and I wouldn’t be until Cielo came stridi
ng back to me. But my strega had chosen another way. And I would have to keep moving down this path, or else I had given up a great love for nothing.
The irony struck me, cold and bloodless. I had lost Cielo at the moment that I needed my strega more than ever.
These people need a Malfara, the magic corrected. So give them a Malfara.
“Can you do that?” I whispered.
The magic buzzed through me like a host of wasps.
When I’d worked reversals in the past, I had not demanded a specific form. I had given my magic a loose idea and let it fill in the details. But I had studied Cielo in painstaking detail, and as it turned out, love was a thorough tutor. I knew Cielo’s body, Cielo’s face, all of Cielo’s forms. And now I had the magic of dozens of streghe running through me. If all of that stolen magic was going to be good for one thing, maybe it was saving Vinalia.
First, I had to summon up a picture of the strega in boyish form, which was painfully easy.
Then I drew magic from every quarter of my body.
But before I could give a command, I found myself running back toward camp. When I’d left, there had been the sounds of tents being raised and food being rustled from packs, the strands of a dozen different voices spinning into a single hearty rope.
Now there was something else. Silence.
My magic worked as I ran. It knew exactly who I needed to be. It turned my feet longer and thinner, breaking my stride. My clothes sighed and popped as Cielo’s height challenged every seam. Change the clothes as well, I reminded my magic.
Lastly, Cielo’s long hair slid behind me, swaying like the pendulum of a clock. It swished with every strike of my feet—Cielo’s feet. When I broke back into camp, I looked exactly like the last Malfara. But I was still Teo.
And Ambrogio was dangerously close to my sister.
Dantae and the soldiers of Erras had drawn their bone knives, but the Otto men that Ambrogio had brought with him were holding them at a stalemate, pistols drawn. The church’s army was trudging miles behind the five families and the streghe—we’d been sent ahead to scout. Even if I screamed, and they heard me, they would never reach us in time to help. And Ambrogio might start killing people in a frenzied haste if he thought we had reinforcements behind us.
Our party was bound by the hands and feet, which meant that Mimì, Xiaodan, and Vanni couldn’t use their magic. Vanni looked on with a haunted air, and I felt certain the last few minutes had been etched deep in his mind and would never fade. On the other hand, Luciano still lay in his crib, sleeping as if nothing in particular was happening.
The Ottos had used their knowledge of the land to overcome us without a fight.
Take Ambrogio from them, my magic whispered. Take one of theirs. And don’t give the bastard back this time.
But if I used my magic—Teo’s magic—and changed Ambrogio into a barrel of slimy fish, I would immediately give away my disguise.
The entire camp, including Ambrogio and the Otto men, were staring at the figure that had just split the darkness. I had one more moment before the surprise wore thin, and I would not waste it.
I flew at Ambrogio. The fire stood between us, and I leapt when I reached it, changing to a wind. When I came back in Cielo’s boyish form on the far side, my fists were already striking Ambrogio.
Mirella ran as far as she could before one of the Otto men grabbed her and pulled her against his chest. I looked away long enough for Ambrogio to land a single decent blow, then I doubled my attack.
“That man won’t harm her,” Ambrogio said. “Why would he hurt my wife?”
Fury flowed from me like fire, eating at me even as it burned Ambrogio. My hands struck him, open and closed in fists. I did not care how I hit him as long as he was in pain. I pummeled and kicked him in places that would have made Favianne proud. His whimpers lodged in the air.
Ambrogio had come to take my sister as his prize. He hadn’t only been attempting to steal back the baby. I vowed to give him twice the pain, for trying to take two people from me after the world had already taken so much.
Ambrogio’s lovely face painted itself red under my hands, his nose cracking and his lips engorged, chin dripping with blood. I wanted to feel triumphant, but my stomach seemed to have a false bottom. It dropped away, leaving me sickened, as I remembered how Beniamo had turned a man to a mass of blood and bone.
Remember, I heard in a voice that sounded suspiciously like Cielo’s. You already killed this one, and it didn’t fix matters.
I stepped away.
My breath came back in harsh strokes. Cielo was stronger than I’d realized. The force of my intention had traveled down the long, tensed wires of my strega’s body. He was quick to dodge and quicker to strike. The truth was that Cielo could win a fight, but the strega chose not to start them.
Shame turned the last of my fire to ash.
Then Ambrogio leaned toward one of his men and through his ruined lips said, “Bring me my son.” My rage rekindled. There had to be another way to show everyone what kind of foul creature Ambrogio was.
A price that did not have to be paid in blood or death.
“You are harboring a traitor,” I told the Otto men in Cielo’s cool voice. “Ambrogio profited from the death of his father and admitted to me that he felt no loss when that great Signore left this world. All he cared to do was line his pockets with wealth, whether it was inherited or stolen.” Ambrogio opened his mouth to argue, but my voice climbed over his, stomping it out. “He conspired against the five families, betraying them at the first chance, and there is no reason to believe he will not do the same again.” I almost spat out how he had used Mirella, treating her bed as a rung on the ladder to greatness, but that story did not belong to me. And besides, there was plenty to damn him without it. “If you have wondered why there is no room for you at the table of the five families anymore, look to Ambrogio. And if you wish to keep control of these lands when I am king of Vinalia, rid yourself of him now. I would suggest digging a large pit and keeping it well guarded. If he climbs out, he will stab whoever is nearest.”
The Otto men looked to each other, and then someone thought to glance at Father. They respected his word, even if they’d tied him up with the rest. Niccolò di Sangro nodded at me. “Everything the Malfara says is true.”
The entire party of the five families and streghe looked at me—at Cielo—with approval.
I blinked, dizzy.
For a few heated moments, I had forgotten who I was meant to be. I had spoken as Teo, without giving any thought to convincing the people around me that I was someone else. But when I stared down at my blood-spattered hands, all I saw were Cielo’s fingers, the ones that had touched me with great care, and then greater recklessness.
I would never feel that again. Even if we beat Beniamo, and I let this disguise fall away, I would not have Cielo back.
“If you’ll excuse me,” I said, stumbling into the nearest tent. I collapsed under the full weight of what I had done.
I had crafted my own ring of hell, and I would be the king of it.
It took Favianne three minutes to rip open the tent flap and come after me. The sky behind her was smoke and darkness, and it clung to the deep curvature of her body in ways that banished decency.
“You’ll be happy to know that the Otto men took your advice,” she said. “They just left with Ambrogio tied in the same ropes they’d been using on us. And a few stayed on to join our little Beniamo-hunting party.”
I nodded, waiting for Favianne to leave, but she lingered.
“Aren’t you going to thank me for the report?” she asked.
“Leave me alone,” I said, the words caked with disgust. I was not in the mood for Favianne and her infinite beauties. I wanted Cielo, and the sight of someone who had tried to flirt her way past the strega and into my bed only made matters worse.
“I never pinned you as an angry sort, Cielo Malfara,” Favianne said, bent slightly to fit inside the tent’s confines. “Whimsical, irrelevant, as rude as the night is dark. But angry? At women?” She used her fingers to brush the thought away. “It doesn’t become you.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, although I wasn’t truly sorry for anyone in the world but myself. Favianne smiled in a way that made me realize she’d just worked me into the position she wanted.
“Does that mean I can stay?”
“Don’t plan on a long visit. I need to rest before the battle tomorrow.”
“Really?” Favianne asked. “I would think Teodora keeps you up well into the night.”
I looked down to escape Favianne’s insinuations, only to find Cielo’s body waiting. Memories of being stretched against it came in a flood, rushing away before I could get a decent grip on any of them.
When I looked up again, Favianne was directly in front of me.
“That was prettily managed outside,” she said. “Well, the part after you pounded Ambrogio into beef carpaccio.” She claimed the canvas chair nearest to me and sat down at one of the only two distances Favianne knew: close and too close.
“Yes, well, all I did was tell the truth,” I said. I wished that Cielo had been there to see it—how I’d stepped away, changed course.
Favianne leaned in. “You told the truth at the right moment, in the right way, to people who were willing to listen.”
“None of that should matter,” I said.
“And yet it does.” Favianne looked me over, inch by inch. It was impossibly strange to feel the hair on Cielo’s neck rise. “You’ll make a fine king.”
The Storm of Life Page 23