Ascendant (6 page)

“Yes.” Melissende smirked. “It’s especially easy when he lives on a different continent.”

More giggling. I ignored them and returned to my work. The day after Giovanni’s revelation, I’d visited Marymount International School to see about registering for classes and was told succinctly, but not rudely, that they’d begun accepting applications for this term last January—before anyone knew anything about unicorns at all—and that it was far too late to consider me now. But if I brought my parents in, maybe they would work something out for the spring semester.

I got a similar response at three other schools, then gave up. Perhaps Cory and Neil could find room in the budget for a tutor. Maybe Phil would suggest we both go back to the U.S. to start a North American Cloisters.

And maybe Bonegrinder would decide to give up ham hocks for broccolini.

Finished with the blade, I took out a leather cleaner and started working on the wrapping over the hilt. It had aged poorly, cracking in several places, and there was only so much leather oil could do to improve its condition. I wondered when we’d get a real weapons expert into the Cloisters to—if not repair our entire stockpile—at least give us some tips on how to keep things in good shape.

As careful as I was with cleaning, the leather was unraveling. I tugged on a frayed end and bits came off in my fingers, revealing tarnished metal underneath.

“Oops,” I said, and held up the leather pieces.

Grace shrugged. “Probably time to replace, anyway. I’ll look for some swordmaking hints about leather hilt wrapping.” She tossed me a rag and a pot of polish. “Good opportunity to clean underneath, though.”

I unraveled the rest of the hilt and began working the crud out of the nooks and crannies of the metal. As the silver began to brighten beneath my fingers, I saw a pattern emerging on the hilt, one of curves and right angles. Roman block letter script. I scrubbed harder.

Bonegrinder began to growl again, and this time, when we looked up, we saw that Neil and Phil had entered the courtyard with a black-robed priest.

Neil cleared his throat. “Ladies, this is Father Guillermo, and he’s here from the Vatican.”

I tried to catch Phil’s eye, but she was smiling cheerfully at all the girls and wouldn’t focus on me.

Which, in my experience, was a bad sign. It meant she was in “donna mode” and would be pretending, for a little while at least, that being her cousin afforded me no special privileges. It was an attitude she adopted under two circumstances: when one of the other girls had complained about the cliques and whenever what was about to happen would upset me very much.

Now I looked to Cory, whose gaze was boring similar holes in Neil’s direction. Like Phil, his face stayed placid, his attention directed toward the group as a whole. In her corner, Bone-grinder tested the security of the chain binding her to the wall until Zelda issued a sharp command and she slumped down. The zhi knew she was no match for a courtyard full of hunters.

“Buon giorno,”
said Father Guillermo, and bad as my own Italian remained, I detected something awkward in his syllables as well. “It makes me so happy to be welcomed into this beautiful convent, to see so many young women devoted to doing the work of God.”

Cory put down her book.

“As you all probably know, the Order of the Lioness in these Cloisters has long been a vital and treasured part of the Church. We were so sorry to see it die out in the nineteenth century and are thrilled to witness this revival now.”

Ilesha folded her knees up to her chest and rested her chin on them, watching Father Guillermo curiously.

“And of course,” he went on, “we have been watching this rebirth with much interest. The renovation of the Cloisters has given us much joy. The recruitment of Sister Lucia from her own convent to be your cook, the tacit approval of the monks who live next door …” He folded his hands in front of his robe and smiled at us. “We feel that until now, we have been supportive and yet unnecessarily distant.”

Cory grumbled under her breath, “Fantastic. They wait until the heavy lifting is done then choose to stick in their oar.”

“We wish to offer you whatever help we can,” Father Guillermo continued, “though we are aware that this incarnation of the Order of the Lioness—well, it’s not a religious order at all.”

I looked at the other girls. He could say that again! In searching for eligible hunters, Neil already had enough of an uphill climb without requiring that they be Catholic as well. In fact, I was pretty sure only Rosamund, Melissende, Ursula, and Dorcas had any claim to Catholicism, and of those, only Rosamund was devout enough to attend mass.

“Had we been consulted,” the priest said, his smile somewhat faded, “we would have encouraged you not to utilize the trappings and name of a Church organization. But,” he said with a sigh, “we were not.”

Cory’s hands balled into fists.

“However, we are very happy to offer our assistance, even in these unusual circumstances. I suppose”—and here he placed his hand on his large stomach and gave a little chuckle—”that you could call it the opposite of a faith-based initiative. For you are a secular organization receiving Church funds.”

Phil’s composed smile was now frayed at the edges.

“I will be the liaison between your group and the Church, and I look forward to assisting you and seeing you work these miracles firsthand.”

“That sounds like a pretty dangerous idea,” said Grace, cleaning under her fingernails with an alicorn arrowhead. She shot him a crafty smile, then pricked her fingertip with the point. A single drop of cherry red blood welled and plopped to the cobblestones before the wound knit together.

Bonegrinder, who’d been lying on the floor pouting that she wasn’t allowed to eat the priest, raised her head and sniffed at the scent of blood in the air. Father Guillermo took a few steps back.

“Besides,” said Melissende, “we aren’t miracle workers.”

“Nonsense,” said Father Guillermo. “Your skills in battle, your gift of healing—what are they but miracles from God?”

“Sorcery?” Melissende suggested with a shrug. Rosamund scowled at her. “What is your word for pagan magic?”

Phil’s smile had completely withered and thunderheads were brewing in Neil’s expression. Ursula tossed a polishing rag in her sister’s direction to shut her up, but Melissende was on a roll.

“Our hunter gifts were bestowed on the line of Alexander the Great by the ancient goddess Diana,” she said. “Certainly you know that.”

Father Guillermo didn’t miss a beat. “Certainly I know what the old pagan myths say. They are very pretty stories, to be sure, and they were all the ancients had, since Christ had not yet been born. No, my dear, trust me: your gifts are miracles of God. The powers you wield, the Order of the Lioness, are like the Pantheon—an ancient pagan artifact that has long since been refocused to give glory to the one true God. I will pray that you glorify Him and that He keeps you safe on your next mission.” He made a sign in Melissende’s direction.

The real miracle, if you ask me, is that Father Guillermo shut her up.

He nodded as if the matter was settled. “Now I want to take a few moments to discuss a few policy adjustments we’ll be instituting in the coming days.” He took in our shocked faces. “Don’t worry, my dears. This is nothing drastic. We’re not requiring you to take holy orders. There are simply a few things we at the Church think will better reflect our core values.”

I shook a few fold wrinkles out of the material and turned around to face Phil. “Well? How do I look?”

My cousin bit her lip to keep her grin contained. “I think it’s … cute.”

“Cute?” I snapped, and my headscarf slipped down over my forehead. “I’m wearing a camouflage
habit.”

“But a cute one,” Phil pointed out.

All up and down the dorm hallway, I could hear the other hunters groaning as they tried on our new hunting uniforms. The outfit consisted of thick, polyester, camouflage-patterned split skirts that fell all the way to our ankles, a long camo headscarf, and matching long-sleeved, high-necked jackets.

Cory stomped into the room, the hem of her skirts dragging several inches in her wake. “I’m melting,” she whined. “Literally and figuratively.” She gathered up some of the extra material. “Who did they make these things for, Amazons?”

Valerija followed her, wearing the split skirt and a grubby, V-neck white undershirt.

“Amazons are pagan,” I reminded Cory, and scratched at my neck, where the stiff material of my jacket irritated my skin.

Phil folded her feet up beneath her on my bed. “Certain religious sisterhoods are required to wear particular clothes at all times—even during day-to-day activities. These uniforms have been adapted from those nuns’ hunting outfits.”

“But I thought we didn’t have to become nuns,” I said.

“And you aren’t,” Phil replied. “But the Church would prefer that we aren’t gallivanting around Rome in tank tops and shorts, that’s all. Think of it like going to Catholic school: you don’t have to be Catholic but you still have to wear the uniform.”

Cory groaned and fell back on her bed, dislodging her headscarf.

“I like it,” said Valerija, doing a few practice squat-thrusts on the shag carpet between Cory’s bed and mine. She stroked her recently healed jaw and hiked up the waistband of her skirts. “It is roomy.”

Zelda appeared in the doorway. “They aren’t so bad. Not high fashion, but sturdy. I’ve torn holes in the knees of most of my trousers. These will hold up better.”

“You should see what I have to wear,” Phil said. “I don’t even get a split skirt.”

“Is yours camo, too?” I tried running in place. The split skirts were much heavier than the microfiber cargo pants my mom had packed with me to come to Rome. Still, in the thrall of hunter magic, sprinting after my prey, would I even notice them flapping against my thighs?

Phil brushed her bangs off her face. “Why would I need camo? I’m not a hunter.”

“Why would
we
need camo?” I asked her. “We’re not hiding from unicorns when we hunt them. We can’t.” The monsters had the same magnetic sense of our position as we did of theirs. This was why untrained unicorn hunters were a danger to themselves and others. For some reason, unicorns were attracted to hunters—we drew them in like sirens drew hapless sailors.

Oops, there I went with the pagan references again.

Cory sat up abruptly, her headscarf askew and her corkscrew curls sticking out from her head like wacky antennae. “I’m going to talk to Neil. There has to be another option.”

But the conversation proved fruitless. “I’m sorry, Cory,” Neil said to her later, when it was just the four of us. “But the Vatican has been quite explicit about their expectations for our behavior if we want their financial support. The habits are just the beginning.”

“What?” I said. “What else is coming?”

Phil sucked air in through her teeth. “Let’s just say it’s a good thing that Giovanni went back to New York.”

“No boys?” I asked. “So we’re back to that, then.” And I’d be back to sneaking Giovanni around when he came to visit over Christmas.

Neil cleared his throat. “You have to understand their position. We moved into their sacred space and turned it into a summer camp.”

“They were using it for storage!” Cory smacked her hand against the upholstered arm of her chair. “It was a ruin. Some sacred space. The art was crumbling, the catacombs were filled with rubbish, the scriptorium was burned to a crisp. We paid them their going rental rates, and we restored some of its former glory—”

“And they appreciate it,” said Neil. “Which is why they’re looking the other way at some of the more unorthodox policies we adopted. They accept that in this day and age we cannot limit the Order to Catholics or to young women willing to take lifelong vows. But you must expect that they would like to have a say in what happens with their money. Are some skirts and kerchiefs really worth all this fuss?”

Cory folded her arms across her chest.

I couldn’t blame her. When she’d first sought to reclaim the Cloisters and gather together a new Order of the Lioness, Cory had put all her trust in Gordian Pharmaceuticals, and for the most part, they’d let her have free rein. But then everything had gone south, and Cory had defended Gordian’s actions longer than anyone. When they took away our archery trainer and left us without weapons, she’d found a way to justify it. When we couldn’t reach Marten and Giovanni told us that the Gordian CEO had been trying to sabotage Phil and me all summer, she hadn’t believed it. I still wasn’t sure how much of Cory’s attitude was due to actual denial and how much was her fear of losing the control their patronage had afforded us.

After all, today it was “some skirts and kerchiefs.” But what was next?

As the argument dragged on, I slipped out of the office and out into the courtyard. Father Guillermo was still there, admiring the mosaics and watching as a few of the girls practiced target shooting. Our weapons still lay in a heap all over the walkway, and Bonegrinder panted near an empty water bowl. I shook my head, refilled her bowl, and went back to cleaning my sword. After a few more swipes with the polishing rag, I could actually read the inscription.

DOMITARE UNICORNE INDOMITUM

Where was Giovanni when you needed him? He’d spent half the summer reading Latin transcriptions on ruins and artwork. He’d be able to translate this for me with no problem. Well, the “unicorn” part was pretty obvious, at least.

“Are you Astrid Llewelyn?” said a voice above my head. I looked up at Father Guillermo.

“Yes.” I wiped polish from my palms on my new camouflage skirt, then stuck out my hand. He grimaced. Oops.

“I have heard that you are particularly blessed,” he went on.

“You heard wrong.” I inclined my head toward Grace, who was currently kicking butt at target practice. “She’s above and beyond the best here. And the most dedicated as well.”

“Modesty is a very noble trait, Señorita.”

“You’re not Italian, are you?” I asked.

“No. At the Vatican, priests come from all over Christendom. I am from Peru. We have no unicorns there.”