The Nascenza Conspiracy (10 page)

With his hand that was closest to the staircase, Petro gestured to Elettra and Amadeo, hoping they might see it and join him. At the same time, he kept his attention locked upon the padrona, praying she would forget about them. “You don’t want to hurt anyone, Signora,” he said, praying that his voice didn’t quaver as much as his insides. “Let us go. All three of us. We’ll let it be known you didn’t have a part in this.” Even as he made the promise, he knew that it was a lie. He would have to tell someone about the Bearded Lady, and how he’d died.

“It won’t matter,” she said, shaking her head. She rolled the fish knife back and forth between her fingers. “Campobasso is finished.”

When she began to advance in the direction of the stairwell, Petro called out, “Wait. There was another man in our party. Burly. One big, bushy eyebrow across his
…
”

The distraction worked. The padrona stared at him for a moment, then walked over to the door that led to the kitchens. She tugged at a string that led through a hole carved into the door’s uppermost plank. It lifted a handle on the other side, allowing her to kick the door inward. When it swung open, its motion was arrested as it bounced into something. When the door’s shuddering ceased, Petro heard Elettra’s sharp intake of breath. A boot lay on the floor beyond, its toe pointing straight down as if still occupied by the foot to which it belonged. Its owner lay facedown on the floor, his dark silhouette sprawled and lifeless. “The fireplace poker done him in. I couldn’t use the knife again.” She was panting in obvious distress. “Simon told me it was like cutting a melon. It wasn’t like a melon at all. The bones
…
”

Finally, Elettra had noticed Petro’s impatient gesture. She grabbed Amadeo and, before he could peer around the corner into the kitchen, yanked him across the room until all three were standing together.

“Killing’s not easy,” Petro said, feeling sick to his stomach and not wanting to revisit the subject of the bones again. As if by instinct, he held out his arm to protect the other two from the padrona. But with what, he wondered, as he noticed the motion. His bare hands? The woman had a knife, had killed twice at least, and was a lunatic in the bargain. Even if they all tried to overpower her, one or all of them would end up injured or killed. “You don’t want to kill any more.”

“I don’t,” she said. She sounded as if she were crying, but it was too dark to tell for certain.

“No, you don’t,” repeated Petro. “You’ve done your part.”

“I have,” she agreed, still agitated. “Everything he told me, all for the prince.”

“So put the knife down.” Petro made the suggestion gently, though he could hear an edge in his own voice that betrayed how urgent the situation was. “Put it down, and we’ll leave through that front door and never, ever come back.”

“I don’t know,” she said.

It was enough that she was thinking the proposal over. “We’ll run straight back to Cassaforte city,” he continued. “We’ll give them any message you want. We’ll tell them you took Petro Divetri—for what? For money? Is that what you want?”

Those had been the wrong words. She tightened her grip on the knife even as her voice grew steelier. “We did this for the prince,” she said. “The real prince! Not that pretender who sits on the throne now!”

“All right, all right,” said Petro, wheedling. “Money is the wrong thing. Your cause is more noble than money. You don’t want to spill any more blood for it. So put the knife down.”

“What real prince?” Amadeo asked, sounding hysterical. “Prince Berto is dead.”

Elettra shook him. Louder than he’d spoken yet, Petro assured the padrona, “We’ll tell whoever you want that the real prince should be sitting on the throne. The Divetris. The king—the pretender king, anyway. The palace. Anyone.” Again she seemed to be listening to him, so he ventured another try. “You’ve done your part, Padrona Colleta. Show some mercy.”

“Mercy,” she repeated. Her eyes wandered up to the ceiling as if she were invoking some personal prayer, or thinking back on her past. After a long, silent moment, she shook her head. “He never showed me mercy. Not once.”

The argument seemed lost. The padrona let out a wild cry and raised her arm into the air, as if preparing to lunge across the room and cut all their throats. Petro heard Elettra and Amadeo alternately tense and duck, even as he pushed them back and away from the woman against the chairs at the room’s edge. Instead of attacking, however, the innkeeper let the knife fly from her hand. It flew through the air in a sideways arc, end over end, until it struck one of the wall’s timbers, three arm-spans away. The point lodged deep within. The rest of the knife shaft vibrated from the impact. “Go,” she said in tones so low they sounded almost manlike. “Leave this place. Before I change my mind.”

“We thank you, padrona,” whispered Elettra, with a stunned curtsey. Amadeo murmured similar thanks.

Petro, on the other hand, said nothing. His heart raced as he followed the others out the door. Not until it had slammed behind them did he stop looking over his shoulder. As if thinking with one mind, the three ran to the far side of the Campobasso clearing and into the woods. It felt safer, somehow, beneath the low pines and firs, even only slivers of light from the two half-moons filtered through the boughs.

“I don’t have my bags,” Amadeo said. It was a statement of fact, not the whine they expected.

“None of us do. We’ve got nothing,” Petro said flatly. “No supplies, no changes of clothing, no one except ourselves. It will have to do.” How they would cope, he didn’t like to think. For now, it had to be enough that the three of them were alive. Finding Adrio would be the next thing on his list—though how in the world they would do that, he had no idea.

“We’ve got these.” Elettra pulled close to him and opened her hands. In the moonlight, Petro could only see things by looking at them indirectly, but after a moment of peering and feeling the long objects she held, he understood. She had found the Scillian candles that had been in the Bearded Lady’s breast pocket. But to retrieve them, she must have
…
“Don’t ask,” she said when he opened his mouth. “Please. Don’t make me say.”

“It’s all right,” he assured her, patting her back. “Give me one and put the others away.”

“You can’t set them off now,” she protested. “Someone will see.”

“That’s exactly what we want,” Petro replied, dropping to his knees at the edge of the woods so that he could dig in the dirt. He rapidly scooped together a little mound of dew-damp earth, into which he plunged the long tail of the little candle. “They had these to signal someone, or something, for help. If there’s any time we need help, it’s now.”

“But won’t the loyalists see it, too?” Amadeo pointed out, not without justification.

“They won’t be coming back,” Petro asserted, trying to sound as if he believed it. “If they do, by the time they arrive, we’ll be long gone.”

“Back to the city?” asked Amadeo. He sounded as if he were begging.

“No. North.” Petro fumbled with the candle. If it were a device from the Cassamagi workshops, it might have a self-lighting fuse. “To get Petro and Brother Narciso. We’ll follow the river.”

“But you said we were going back to Cassaforte city!”

“Amadeo, be quiet,” Elettra commanded. He obeyed her. More seriously, she asked, “Do you think we can find them, Adrio?”

“I don’t know,” he said softly, then paused a moment to look up at the skies. Against the enormity of the stars above him, and the immense height of the trees, he felt especially small and helpless. “But we have to try.”

The Scillian candle indeed proved to have a small portion of its tail that, when twisted, caused the fuse to fizzle into life. All three of them leapt back from the pyrotechnic as it sparked, then launched from the ground to the air with a silent whoosh of air and the slightest of whistles. The smoke it left behind was so dense that it caused them all to cough. Its nose flared brightly and illuminated the ground below. For a few seconds, Petro could see Elettra’s and Amadeo’s faces, porcelain in the pale light, as they stared at the heavens. Then the flare flickered out.

“May someone see it,” Elettra prayed, her palms pressed together.

“May the right person see it,” corrected Petro, also clasping his hands. Despite all the stops that Brother Narciso had made before Eulo and Campobasso, despite all the shrines in which they had knelt, this simple prayer had been the most sincere Petro had made the entire journey.

Will you be home for the harvest-week break? Your father and I could use the extra help, and I will make your favorite tarts. Do not cluck your tongue at your poor mama when she confesses that she misses your angel face, every day. You are my only child, and I am entitled to gush. Listen to your tutors, and think of your mama once in a while.

—Cyntia Ventimilla, in a letter to her son, Adrio

Dawn came slowly that morning. For hours, Petro worried it might never arrive at all. Events at Campobasso had been so grim that he wouldn’t have been surprised if the world had remained in an eternal midnight as some sort of retribution for what they’d seen—mere sunlight could never redeem that dark and sinister night. It seemed an endless distance that they struggled through the woods in an attempt to reach the river. Their pilgrimage had been so wayward that none of them could retrace their steps to the Great Traverse. Without a map, the river would be their only sure course.

Petro took the lead, using a stick to forge a path. Elettra proved surprisingly clever at spotting the many moonlit areas where they could catch their bearings, and for keeping them pointed west. Amadeo’s primary talent seemed to lie in barreling into tree trunks, but at least after the fourth or fifth collision he did so with little complaint. They were fortunate that the northern forests were largely made up of needle-bearing evergreens that provided a soft bed for their swift feet, and the occasional mattress to fall onto when one of them stumbled. There were enough low-lying dry boughs, however, and dead branches and brambles about their ankles that some stretches of their flight felt as if invisible arms were reaching out to snag and delay them.

Dawn did arrive, however, as they arrived within sight of the river. The woods here were sparser, and rockier underfoot, and mossy where the banks began sloping down to the flat plain on either side of where the Sorgente bent beyond the tall trees. “Let’s stop here for now,” Petro suggested. The blood racing through his veins had kept him on the move for the last few hours, but suddenly he seemed painfully aware of every muscle, sinew, and bone in his body.

Elettra leaned over with her hands on her knees. Her chest was heaving. “Gods, but I am dog-tired.”

The sun had not yet made its way over the trees, so the world was bathed in a blue-green light. Both of his companions looked terrible. Elettra was dirty, and the front of her jerkin was coated with grime, or dirt, or blood, or all three. Amadeo at some point had acquired a massive knot over one eye from one of the many trees he had collided with, but he seemed blissfully unaware of how mangled and raw his face looked. “What?” he asked, seeing both Elettra and Petro’s horrified expressions.

“You’ve got a
…
” Petro winced and touched his fingers to his brow.

Amadeo touched the side of his skull opposite where the knot was. “What?” He looked at his fingers, as if expecting to find flecks of blood. “What did I do?”

“I’ve got bandages,” said Elettra, her hands automatically flying for her rucksack. Then, remembering that it still lay in the inn in Campobasso, she sighed. “No, I don’t. Maybe I can clean his wounds with moss.”

“What wounds?” Amadeo still wanted to know.

Petro, in the meantime, stood with his hands on his hips, peering up and down the river. This stretch of the Sorgente had several long, narrow islands that were barely more than spits where ancient trees had stubbornly taken root and stretched skyward. Their length split the river into several small streams in the center. Briefly he thought of having them swim there, to hide among the trees. But what was the point? Though the few hours of fleeing from Campobasso had not yet shaken the sensation of pursuit, it seemed unlikely at this point that Padrona Colleta could have followed them through the darkness, much less any of the other loyalists. Any river traffic they might encounter should be of the ordinary sort—farmers moving their wares to market, fishermen out to catch a day’s netting, or tradesmen on their way down to Cassaforte.

But of course, Petro had never suspected that there were enclaves of dissent, against King Milo, within the
pasecollina
. Two days ago he’d had an idyllic view of country life that consisted of apple-cheeked old men and ruddy, happy farmer’s wives; this view had definitely been erased by the pit of vipers they’d encountered in Campobasso. Perhaps erring on the side of caution still might be the wiser course. “Let’s stay up here, among the trees, until we decide what to do,” he suggested. “If we encounter anyone, let me do the talking.”

Until now, the others had accepted his leadership role without argument. Why they did so was a question Petro could not answer. Elder Catarre hadn’t been the only one to notice how able he was to talk his way out of nearly any situation, but he’d never been known for leading teams in sports or taking charge in the crafting classes. Fading to the background had always been more his forte. But now Elettra gently cleared her voice and touched Petro on the shoulder. “Adrio,” she said, “If you were to encounter anyone—anyone normal—in this state, they’d be running for the guards.”

“What do you mean?” he asked, painfully aware that he was echoing Amadeo’s dense self-ignorance of a few moments before.

“You look
…
frightening.” At Elettra’s words, Petro felt his face, and found nothing wrong beyond a great deal of crustiness that didn’t seem to have been there before. Rusty flecks came away in his hands. The front of his shirt, however, was indeed a sight. Somehow, perhaps in those confused first moments before he’d realized the Bearded Lady was dead, he’d managed to implant a bloody handprint on his chest, and to wipe it all the way down the length of his shirt. More blood stained his sleeves, and his boots were covered with the stuff. “You look as if you’ve murdered someone. Oh,” Elettra said, catching her breath. “What a thing to say. Poor Bonifacio. Poor Aluysio.”

“Who?”

The way Elettra stared at him made Petro feel like the crowned king of half-wits at the spring fool’s festival. “Aluysio and Bonifacio. The palace guards,” she said. “Didn’t you know their names?”

“Aluysio Raponi?” supplied Amadeo. “Bonifacio de Maczo?”

Not once during the night before had Petro been tempted to cry. His cheeks reddened now, however, as she continued to stare at him with absolute amazement. Tears began to prickle at his eyes. “Surely. Of course I did,” he mumbled, unable to look at either of them. His face felt warm, and his chest beneath the bloody shirt even hotter. “I should wash up.” He turned before they could see his humiliation, and began to stumble away.

“I can’t believe he didn’t know their names,” he heard Elettra say.

“They weren’t his guards,” Amadeo reminded her.

“But they were his friend’s,” she countered.

Amadeo had nothing in reply to that. “Are you tired? You can sleep if you want,” he offered. “I’ll keep watch.”

With feet like lead, Petro stumbled to the riverbank, where he trudged out into the water until it covered the tops of his feet. For a moment he stood there, hopelessly trying not to let his emotions overwhelm him. How utterly, completely shamed he felt. Of course One Eyebrow and the Bearded Lady had names. He’d never assumed otherwise. Why had everyone else known what they were, however, and not him? Why hadn’t the very person the guards were protecting known that they’d been called Aluysio Raponi and Bonifacio de Maczo?

“Even now I don’t know which is which,” he muttered, stomping his way to one of the little islands, feeling mortified. Off came his boots with a savage yank. He kicked them away as if they’d been the ones to offend him. “Stupid, Petro. How stupid you are!”

He yanked off his stockings, too. Off came his vest and shirt and pants, until he was standing only in his gambali, the close-fitting woolen leggings that hugged him from the tops of his hips to a hair or two above his knees. The stretch of mud was scarcely wider than the span of his arms, but it was enough for him to sit on the banks and plunge his shirt into the waters of the Sorgente. He grabbed a handful of sand and rubbed it over the blotches with great force, aware that even the rough grit wasn’t purging the inky stains from the linen. His leggings were beginning to get wet from the cold water, but he didn’t care.

Everything Adrio had said about him was true. Petro Divetri—the real Petro—was a heartless and arrogant snob. He’d taken for granted the lives of two men who’d been assigned to protect him. He’d given them funny nicknames, simply because he was too high and mighty to be bothered to learn anything real. Those men had sweethearts, wives, lovers, entire families, who would never know how bravely they’d protected an ungrateful brat of the Seven. A brat whose practical joke had backfired in the most unimaginable manner possible.

It wasn’t only the guards on Petro’s conscience. Adrio, too, had suffered for Petro’s stupid prank. Simon Jacobuci and the loyalists had wanted Petro Divetri, not some tanner’s son. Adrio probably had no idea what was happening to him right now, wherever he was. “Everyone I touch ends up hurt,” Petro said aloud, letting the river flow over his feet. Gods. If they killed Adrio
…

He couldn’t let himself think about that. Guilt already weighed too heavily upon him. He had too much to atone for already without the loss of his best friend. His ex-friend. Why had they even fought? If Petro hadn’t lost his temper, if he’d just stayed downstairs and eaten
soldatos
and had another mug or two of the raspberry foole, everything might be different. People might be alive still, he was convinced. Although somewhere in the recesses of his mind he knew that even if he’d been there, there would still have been more than enough men to overpower them, and that the result would have been the same. There might even have been an extra body—his. He didn’t care to reflect upon that reality, however.

“Right,” he said, pulling the shirt from the water. The first rays of sunlight were appearing over the trees to the east, from the direction of hated Campobasso, where two bodies still lay unmourned. The sun caught the individual droplets streaming from his clothing back into the Sorgente. The stains weren’t as obscene as they had been, but neither were they coming out completely. Scrubbing any harder would only put holes in the shirt. “Damn,” Petro swore. He resisted the temptation to throw the bundle of linen as far as he could, and instead wrung it out and tossed it over a low-hanging branch to dry. “Damn, damn, damn!”

His face was wet, and not from the river. When he wiped his cheeks onto his bare shoulder, they came away damp from the lukewarm tears that had flown without him even being fully aware of it. That wouldn’t do, though. Elettra and Amadeo were counting on him. Adrio too, whether he realized it or not. Petro hunkered low and splashed some river water over his face to wash away whatever was left of the previous night, then scooped handfuls of liquid over his hair until it felt cleaner. He was drenched all over now, but he didn’t care. He stood up and took a few steps away from the little islet, into the broad expanse of the Sorgente, letting the water flow around his knees. Standing there by himself, surrounded only by water and woods and touched by the sun’s earliest rays, he had never felt so alone. No one could ever have felt so alone.

Perhaps it was the sun, warming his skin, or perhaps it was simply the streaks of bright color beginning to reach fingers across the sky, but something began to give him hope. His sister had been alone during her time of trial. Petro himself had deserted her, the day that he had been selected for the insula and she had not. Somehow, though, she’d managed to save Cassaforte from total collapse.

He wasn’t Risa, though. She was
…
she was
Risa.
Risa the Sorceress, or Risa the Witch, depending upon one’s enthusiasm for her. Risa could
do
things. Petro was just
…
Petro Divetri, the Thoroughly Ordinary. Petro the Dependable. Petro the Unnoticed. He sighed and shook his head. “Useless,” he murmured.