by Cate Glass
I’d done so, for he was so gloriously beautiful—long and lithe, hair of deep red-brown that floated on the smoky wind like strands of silk, skin of golden bronze, eyes kissed by the sun. His voice had threaded my veins with fire like magic itself as he told me of his hopes and dreams.
I wrapped my arms about my chest. Beneath my clothes, my skin burned. What were his hopes? Though I had comprehended his words in perfect clarity, they escaped me now, for they were formed in a language I did not know.
The cart jogged down the cobbles toward the Beggars Ring and the city’s North Gate and the next stage of our venture. Placidio’s strong back on the horse and Dumond’s broad shoulders on the driving seat of the cart made me feel safe. So why could I not let go and sleep? Anger simmered in my gut. My clenched hands trembled. What was wrong with me?
A hard bump jostled Neri and he rolled onto my legs. Rage blistered me; to resist shoving him over the side required all my remaining strength.
Horrified, I huddled deeper into the corner of the cart, crushing my hands beneath my arms. I must tell the others about the dreams.
11
TWO DAYS BEFORE THE WEDDING
SUNRISE
Sunlight through a slot of broken stone pried my eyes open. I brushed dirt and grit from my cheek, meanwhile noting the unyielding jags and bumps beneath the blanket that separated me from bare ground. I was not outdoors. High above me thick trusses supported a square, mostly intact roof and some dangling floor timbers, most of which held only remnants of actual floor. Yet inside hardly applied either. A crow squawked and landed on one of the walls’ numerous gaps and holes open to the wakening sky.
Down on my level beside a broken stone staircase, one of those wall gaps opened onto a wasteland of scrub, dry cedars, and more broken walls. Perdition’s Brink. Exactly as Placidio had described it.
Neri!
In the same moment I realized the name of the place where I was and why I was there, I also realized the source of the boulder-sized heaviness inside my chest—Neri’s awful wound. All that blood. The morning was quiet, save for the complaints of the birds, and neither brother nor partners were anywhere in sight.
As I scrambled to my feet amid a jumble of blankets, the rest of my reasons for concern pummeled my sore shoulders as if the dangling timbers had decided to release themselves all at once. Our captives. The strange gap in time while I hid in the hay store. The dreams …
The jostle of the cart over city cobbles and rutted lanes had left me numb and unobservant upon our arrival in the last pitchy hours of the night. My partners had guided me up a steep path and through a forest of sharp pinnacles and tree skeletons. When they’d pointed at a blanket spread on the ground, I’d dropped and fled into restless, tangled sleep. No dreams that I could recall … but remembering dreams upon waking didn’t seem to be the usual way of things anymore.
So where was everyone?
An ale cask, a hammer, bundles of blankets, rope, and pots, and bags of fruit and other foodstuffs had been piled against one wall of the square tower. This must be the old fortress keep. Its identity was confirmed the moment I stepped outside to search for the others. Despite the gaping holes, the thick side walls yet supported the tower’s slate roof. Likely it would take Dragonis himself to flatten the squat structure.
Leery of shouting, I wandered through broken remnants and courtyards of a more expansive house, more decrepit, though not quite so old as the keep. Just outside the keep, a courtyard that might once have been pleasant was now a rubble of broken planters, columns, benches, and a stair that plunged steeply downward into the dark heart of the rock beneath the ruins.
A string of curses and a muffled groan of effort burst out just behind me. Turning back, I met Neri just as he staggered up the last step of that plunging stair. He carried a bucket of water with his non-wounded arm, and he looked like death itself.
He mustered a weak grin. “You’re awa—”
I caught the pail just as it slipped from his grasp and him just before he collapsed on top of it.
“What are you doing, idiot child?” I said, guiding him, stumbling, back into the keep to the jumble of blankets. Some of them were bloody. “And what are our damnable partners thinking to let you haul water?”
“Just knackered,” he mumbled. “Don’t fuss. Let me sit.”
Once he pressed his back to the wall and slid to the ground, I reached to untie his dirty bandages. They were still damp.
“Ow! Stop.” He sucked his teeth and batted my hand away. “Jus’ give me a bit.”
“Looks like you’re still bleeding,” I said, annoyed at his dismissal. “I need to see—”
“Not now. Hurts like the devil, and there’s naught to do till Dumond’s back.”
“I need to look at the wound. Don’t be a fool.” Every word he spoke was like a thorn pushed under my skin.
“Stop calling me that.” Angry, he shoved my hand away again.
“I’ll stop when you show some sense.”
“You’re not Da nor Mam. And you don’t know everything. Leave me be!”
“Sleep then. Let it fester. I’ll come back and see to it when you’re out of your head.”
I stormed out to fetch his water bucket from the courtyard.
Half of a broken stone bench provided a seat while I scooped a handful of the water to cool my overheated face. Naught could soothe the sour taste of my hateful words.
A shadow blocked the streaming sunlight for a moment. Placidio had come around the corner of the keep carrying a good-sized metal chest.
“Fortune’s benefice this fine morn, lady scribe.” His thick fingers tapped the chest. “Dumond says this box is for anything birds, vermin, or other creepy-crawlers might find tasty.”
He disappeared into the keep long enough to set it down.
“Where have you been?” I demanded when he returned. “Napping again?”
“Only one’s had any sleep is you. But I’m on my way to do just that. I’ll confess I’m like to carry something off the cliff if I don’t take an hour. Dumond’s just come from the city with more supplies and thinks to head straight back soon as the cart’s emptied. Now you’re awake, maybe you could help him unload. Leave the casks for me to fetch later. Our captives are both yet dozing.”
He wouldn’t get off so easy. “I found Neri hauling water up this stair. His arm is still seeping, and he was near collapse. How could you allow—?”
“Told him to give it some rest. But being wounded’s extra hard when you’re young and had a rough night, and certain, he’s got wounds beyond the arm, if one gives a thought to what happened last night. Dumond’s brought some kind of healing salve for the wound. Maybe it will still your frets as well. I doubt anything but keeping busy’s going to soothe the boy’s other hurt.” He threw a blanket over his shoulder and headed into the skeletal forest of chimneys and archways and broken columns.
Spirits … Neri had killed a man last night. His first. No wonder he was unable to sit still or sleep easy or believe his own hurts were of any importance. And no sleep for Placidio and Dumond … and on the night before the snatch, while I had dozed for a few hours, they had come up here to prepare accommodations for our captives. They’d been two overlong days without rest.
Halfway repentant, I called after Placidio, “After you sleep … I’ve things I need to tell you.”
Certain, it wasn’t just worries about Neri or the mission had me so snappish. It was the dreams.
* * *
It took two trips up and down the path for me to shake off that tempestuous waking. By my third visit to the foot of the path, I could fully appreciate the placement of Perdition’s Brink. Silhouetted against the morning sky, the squat, square outline of the tower keep provided the only clue that human hands had played a role in shaping the jagged granite prominence. Someone had wanted limited access and an unobstructed view of the rolling landscape. The only path up was steep and one person wide, and the view was excellent in every dir
ection.
It was easy to imagine the folded land skirting Perdition’s Brink was cursed. The morning light that streaked the nearby hillsides highlighted the ranks of brown, curled scrub and the skeletons of grapevines. Everywhere else was pale, sorry dirt and spiky grass that stank of tar and lacked any semblance of moisture. Yet beyond the relics of stone walls and rowed cypress trees so often used as estate boundaries, the angled light crossed hills mantled in healthy greens, autumn golds, and the orderly dark green patches of precious vineyards.
With multiple bags hung from arms and shoulders, I grasped a crate of bread, sausage, and cheese with one hand and a tied bundle of shirts in the other. Dumond was checking harness and promising the horses that this next would be their last trip to the city for a while.
“When are you going to sleep?” I said, shamed at my lingering annoyance when I considered all Dumond and Placidio had done to get us settled.
“I’ll doze for a while at the woolhouse, then take a stroll about town listening for news before I head back out. Back here early afternoon, I’m thinking.” He nudged a small brown bag dangling from the crook of my elbow. “This is the honey salve Vash sent for Neri’s wound, and some clean linen to bind it. She says get it on right away, and check it every morning and evening.”
“Maybe he’ll heed Vashti’s advice better than mine.” Just because I felt guilty at weakness and spooked by nightmares didn’t mean I wasn’t right to be upset with everyone.
Dumond hefted the last small cask from the cart and set it at the bottom of the path with two others for Placidio to haul up. “Neri’s a good lad. And you and the swordmaster have done well by him. But he’s got a canker in his gut drives him. It’s healed some, but still bites. Likely will forever.”
“The canker is our da’s hand,” I said. The lopsman’s blow, the spurting blood, and Da’s terrible cry would certainly live in my mind forever. “And not knowing whether Da or the rest of the family survived it. Exiled who knows where.… they could have starved to death by now.”
Spirits, this world was a cruel and terrible place. And now my little brother had a dead man weighing on him, too.
Dumond climbed onto the cart seat. “Boy shouldn’t forget things like that, but you want them built into his bones, not left open to poison.”
“So how do I make that happen?”
“That’s the mystery with tending young ones, yeh? Keep steady is my way.”
A good way, seeing how he was with his daughters—strong, calm, constant. I’d never heard him yell at or argue with them. “Maybe I’ll try that.”
The cart rolled away. As circling hawks mocked me, I trudged up the steep path with my load, this new worry about Neri, and our present dilemma. How were we going to deal with our two captives, currently sleeping off the last of Vashti’s powerful potion?
Certain, Donato’s bedchamber could not have given us less of a clue about what the man might value or fear enough to cross his parents’ wishes and forgo the marriage. Before we could present any proposal, we had to know him better.
And Livia? I had met her father, the city steward, numerous times. A good man, fair and honest. Not the most adventurous or imaginative mind, but excellent at balancing the needs of the city, the deployment of workers and funds, and the imperious demands of important people—including il Padroné and his dangerous, ever-present shadow self. I’d been vaguely aware the steward had a daughter. Ever jealous of happy families, I had assumed he doted on her. But perhaps not.
Certain, she seemed difficult. Perhaps that’s why Piero had sent her traveling with her uncle. Should we tell her that we were allies right away or keep our secrets and try to learn more of her plans while she felt threatened? I could argue either way. Dumond would say we should tell her all. Placidio wouldn’t trust her; he was the one nursing a knife cut on one hip.
“He’s waked up.” Neri, wan and hollow-eyed, met me at the top of the path, a narrow strip of level ground that skirted the fallen gatehouse.
“Placidio? Already?”
“No, the bridegroom.” Neri relieved me of the bundled shirts, wincing as the firm bundle pressed on the wounded arm strapped to his chest. His black tunic clung in the way that suggested more seepage. “I went to see where he was.”
For the moment, I attempted to keep steady. Calm. No reprimand. No smothering. “Did you speak to him? We agreed not for a while at first.”
“Nah. Maybe he’s not actually awake. He’s sitting up, but his eyes are closed.”
We threaded the fallen stones and the charred, rotting timbers of the gatehouse and crossed what remained of the old bailey.
“When we took him, he was sitting up in his bed,” I said. “Maybe he has some illness like brittle lung or gut churn that makes him sleep sitting up. Sisters, I hope he doesn’t die out here.” Though Neri’s own condition was much more worrisome.
Neri fumbled the bundle and dropped the shirts on the weedy flat. “Sorry.”
He squatted to gather them again, favoring his wounded side and wobbling a little as he stood.
“Soon as I stow these things and set them to rights, we’ll rebandage your arm,” I said, stripping out any hint of lingering argument. “Vashti sent some clean linen, a salve, and another Cavalieri tunic that won’t stink so bad as the one you’re wearing. Placidio believes we should let our captives sweat a bit in their confines.”
“Sweating should be no problem.”
Indeed, the autumn sun was already baking this pile of rock. At least being up so high with the soaring hawks, we caught a goodly breeze. The sheen of moisture on Neri’s forehead unsettled me.
“Where in all the bowels of the universe are we, you infernal scum?” The complaint sirened from the southern end of the bluff, accompanied by the raucous clatter of a chain on stone.
We had put Livia in an old cellar room at the southern extremity of the ruin and Donato in a similar one at the northern extremity of the ruin on purpose. We didn’t want them to be able to speak to each other or even to know the other was captive.
“Sounds as if the lady is awake, too,” I said, tossing the bags of food into the metal chest. “But first things first. Let’s pile these blankets over here where I slept. And we’ll make this crate our medical store. Now, sit.”
This time, Neri didn’t argue. To the music of Livia’s extensive vocabulary of complaints, I peeled away the blood-soaked tunic and the unrecognizable remnant of my Academie student’s gown we’d used to bandage the wound. Keeping steady, I told him about Donato’s bedchamber and the contrast with those of his three brothers while I blotted the very ugly gash in his upper arm and shoulder. Still seeping blood, it could surely use a stitching, but we’d no implements. The flesh around it was red and tender.
“This will help. Truly,” I said as, despite his best efforts, he flinched at my every touch. “I’ve always heard a honey salve was best for preventing sepsis, and Vashti knows how to make it, which I do not. It’s like cooking, I suppose. My biggest failing.”
“Ow!”
“Oh Sisters, Neri, I’m sorry.”
I’d not thought Neri’s deep-hued complexion could get any paler. Besides the usual dirt and blood from his fight with the villa guard, every bruise and scrape glared at me.
By the time I had the wound bound and a glass of wine poured down his throat, he was drowsing. “Sorry,” he said, slurring a bit. “Useless brute. Oughta throw me in a pit, too.”
He curled up atop the pile of blankets, even as I sat up straighter. He’d given me a fine idea.
Carefully, I set aside the bucket of water he’d hauled from the spring, and the rag I’d thought to use to clean the dirt from his face.
“Not useless,” I said dragging a thin blanket around his bare shoulders. “Not ever. Hear this and believe it. This mission is worthy. If we give this girl a future, her ideas could change everything for people like us. Set us free. Save countless lives. You’re helping us make that happen.”
Likely he�
��d not heard me. I wished him dreamless sleep and hurried off to find Placidio in the warren of broken rooms beyond the tower. I wanted to share my new idea.
He was sitting upright in a shady corner, his chin dropped to his chest. The hot breeze ruffled his tangled hair as he snored, slow and relaxed. Like Donato, Placidio often slept sitting up or slouched in corners. Placidio said it kept him alert. Easy to wake. But I doubted the incurious son of a Confraternity director had the same reasons to wake easily as a professional duelist who had been the target of multiple vendettas over his career. I left him be.
Meanwhile, Livia had grown quiet. That worried me more than the noise. We had never decided whether to reveal our true purposes once we had her away from the villa. But I tended to agree with Placidio. She had returned to the Bastianni household and we didn’t know why. It would take some certainty of her reasons and her plans going forward before I trusted her with any hint of our identities, our magic, or our partnership with her vicino-padre.
Not wishing to give notice of my coming, I moved stealthily along the scuff of bootprints leading to the old cellar. When I neared the spike of an ancient chimney, I crept forward on my belly and peered over the edge of Livia’s dungeon—four stone walls the height of three tall men, a floor of dirt and broken flagstones, and a fallen slab of stone that provided half a roof. Her accommodation was roughly twice the size of my Lizard’s Alley hovel.
The young woman had somehow got loose of the shackle that had been locked about one ankle. Her long bedgown shed in favor of her chemise, she had piled every flat shard of rubble from that pit into a perfectly balanced pile at the base of one wall. She was now approximately halfway up the wall, clinging to the mottled stone with bare toes and fingertips like a great lizard with a mop of unruly red hair.
In an instant’s blur, she missed a fingerhold and slipped, landing on the dirt floor with naught but a quiet expulsion of air. She reset a few rocks that had been knocked aside, tested the steadiness of her stepstool, climbed up, and started up the wall again.