The Nascenza Conspiracy (11 page)

Still, he thought to himself, he was alive. That was something. As long as he was alive, he could try to right the wrongs he’d done. He’d chase after the loyalists and Adrio, and see what was to be done next. He might not be his sister, but before she’d become Risa the Sorceress, she’d merely been a Divetri, same as he. And a Divetri with a mission, as his mother was fond of saying, was indeed fearful to behold.

It was then that he noticed something. His left leg was completely chilled, plunged into the water. The right was warm, as if soaking in a bath. Somehow he’d waded into one of those spots in the river he’d always heard about, where the waters running warm from the sun-bathed lowland springs mingled with the icy waters of the melted snows from the Vereinigtelände foothills. The mere sensation of it made him laugh, it felt so odd. It was strange, how two things so opposite—one as cold as a knife’s edge and the other sweet and lazy—could come together as one.

A smile played over his lips. It was the first smile he remembered having in quite some time. Perhaps days. He was about to turn and summon the others into the river so that they, too, could experience this paradox of nature, when, from seemingly out of thin air, he heard a woman’s voice. It was as deep and clear and cold as the waters still chilling his left foot.

“What did you do to Aluysio Raponi and Bonifacio de Maczo?” it asked, sounding none too friendly. “Tell me now and tell me straight, with no lies, or by the gods I swear I’ll gut you.”

One, Two
Ready to fight!
Three, Four,
Stand upright!
Five, Six
Sharpen your knife!
Seven, Eight
This is army life!
—A Vereinigteländer marching song and
children’s skipping rhyme

At some point in his childhood, before entering the insula, Petro had accompanied his parents and sister to a theatrical production of
The Coach-Robbers of Longdoun
. The company’s Knave had played a villainous thief who stopped carriages in their tracks to divest their riders of all their valuables. Petro had been so entranced by the romantic figure cut by the highwayman, in his dark clothing and wild cape, that it had been a bit of a disappointment at the play’s end when Knave had been caught and brought to justice by the company’s Hero. He hadn’t thought about the production for years, but he shot his hands into the air as surely as if the woman behind him had cried out,
Your money or your life!

He felt a mantle of chill settle upon his shoulders. Standing there in nothing but his gambali, which were soaked through and probably leaving very little to the imagination, he had never before felt so exposed. “Who—?” he stammered out.

“Don’t turn around. Don’t move a damned muscle.” Petro had indeed been about to turn so that he could see who it was issuing orders, but at the sound of her command, he froze. He heard water splashing as she waded back and forth, but he daren’t move his head to look. “Answer my question,” she said. “What did you do to Aluysio Raponi and Bonifacio de Maczo?”

“I didn’t do anything to them.” Petro had no idea if his invisible assailant had a weapon or not, but he could imagine it pointing at his head. The thought made the spot just above his neck tingle with an almost unbearable tenderness.

“Liar.” Her voice was flat and strong, with a city accent. “They’re dead.”

“I know they’re dead. They—”

“Thought you could launder away the evidence, did you?” To his left, Petro finally saw his interlocutor. A girl, she crossed to the spit of land where he had flung his shirt. A wide-brimmed traveling hat hung upon her back, held by a leather cord around her neck. She was dressed plainly—almost too plainly, as if hoping to blend in to her surroundings. Her long, shapeless pantaloons were drenched from the river’s waters. “Don’t move a muscle, I told you,” she said, facing him.

“I’m not! I didn’t! I—” Petro’s jaw flapped helplessly. The girl was older than he, but not by much. She couldn’t have been more than eighteen or nineteen. Her features were strong and handsome. In experience, though, she was obviously decades ahead. The way she held her short, sharp poniard in her left hand and a long sword in her right, both pointed at his throat as she circled around him, spoke of years of training. Had Petro seen her before? It seemed that he had, but he couldn’t quite place where or when.

With the sword, she flicked the shirt from the branch where it lay so that it spun into the air. The deep pink stain still remaining on it seemed to convince her of Petro’s guilt. He closed his eyes to block out the sight—and just in time, because the shirt hit the river with a mighty splash. “That’s their blood.” She spat the words at him like cannonado balls. “Deny it if you can.”

“I don’t deny that! But I didn’t—!” Petro opened his eyes again and found himself looking directly into the girl’s face. Though slightly sunburned, her skin was fair and even a little bit freckled. Her hair, auburn and cropped short, had somehow entangled a small twig that she hadn’t yet noticed. Her nose was blunt and short, and her eyes hazel, closer to brown but with a hint of frosty green. It was her chin, though, that triggered his memory. He’d seen that determined chin before.

“I know you,” he said, remembering. “From Eulo.” Her mouth worked as if she intended to silence him again, but his observation seemed to surprise her. “You were in the crowd. You had a walking stick. And a rucksack.”

Her vigilance with the pointed weapons never faltered, but she seemed to look at him more closely. An endless moment passed before she said, “You’re one of them. The pilgrims.”

“Yes,” he said. “Who are you?”

“What did you do to the cazarrino’s guards?” she asked, ignoring his question.

They were getting nowhere, and fast. “I didn’t do anything to the guards. They were murdered in Campobasso. By someone who wasn’t me. Now you answer my question.” Petro felt nervous about lowering his arms, but he did so anyway. He waited.

“You’re the other one from the Insula of the Penitents,” the girl said slowly. She looked him up and down, as if seeing him for the first time. At least she had the decency to blink and avert her gaze from his lower half when she realized that the only thing keeping him from sheer nakedness was his wet gambali. “You’re the Ventimilla boy. The friend of the cazarrino. Where is he? What did you do with the others?”

Petro felt himself losing his temper. “For the love of Lena, I did not murder them all in their beds,” he snapped, at his most angry. “And if you don’t tell me who you are right this moment, I won’t be saying a word more.”

The girl was obviously accustomed to being in charge, and bristled at Petro’s ultimatum. Why in the world should he be telling anything to a perfect stranger, though, much less someone who was threatening him with a weapon? Only the fact that she seemed concerned for the safety and fate of the two guards indicated she was on his side—otherwise, for all he knew, she be part of the loyalist plot, if she’d been following them since Eulo and probably before.

“My name is Emilia Fossi,” she replied, after long moments spent mulling him over. “I am a member of the Cassaforte palace guards. My assignment was to guard the boy, Petro Divetri, on his travels to the Rites at Nascenza.”

“But we had two guards,” said Petro, astonished.

“For this trip, Petro Divetri had four guards,” she corrected. As if slightly embarrassed at her accusations of a few moments before, she knelt down and used her poniard to spear Petro’s shirt from the river before the current could carry it downstream. She returned it to him without apology at the dagger’s end. Since he had nothing better to do with his hands, Petro retrieved the sopping wet bundle and began to squeeze at it. “Raponi and de Maczo stayed with the cazarrino at close hand. I was one of two reserves assigned to your party, commanded to follow at a safe distance as a rear guard. Our procedures state that in the event that either of the forward guards are incapacitated or unable to continue, either I or my partner are to step in and take his place.”

To Petro, this was wonderful news. “I never knew.” The sun was fully over the tree by this point. Its brilliance once again seemed to suffuse him with hope.

“Then we were doing our job,” she said. “Now tell me why my friends are dead.”

The girl’s unstirred delivery of those words chilled Petro to the bone. As quickly as he could, he imparted to Emilia Fossi what Padrona Colleta had told him about the loyalist’s plot. She listened, nodding, “I see,” she said, once he’d imparted the skeleton details. “Then my next task is to retrieve the cazarrino from these rebels.”

She made it sound so easy. For the second time that morning, Petro thought there might be a chance to retrieve Adrio alive. “But one of the things I didn’t tell you
…
I didn’t tell you that Petro and I, that is
…
” His words trailed off as she gestured for him to collect the rest of his clothes. He scampered to the land spit to retrieve the boots and pants he’d left there, all the while using the wet shirt to cover his mid-section. Clothes in hand, he paused. “If you knew where Petro Divetri was, right this minute, what would you do with him?”

He hoped he hadn’t betrayed too much in his voice with that question. Her answer was quick and decisive, however. “Protocol would dictate he be returned to the palace immediately.”

That wasn’t the answer Petro had hoped for. “But what if one of his friends was in trouble?” She didn’t seem to understand. “What I mean to say is, what if the loyalists had taken me instead of Petro Divetri?”

“Then I should be very sorry for you, but protocol would dictate I remove Petro Divetri and the other survivors to Cassaforte, without hesitation or delay.” Perhaps sensing how blunt and harsh the word
survivors
sounded to his ear, he added, with the slightest hint of apology, “I’m certain the insula and your family would be informed. Particularly if there were the issue of ransom.”

“Ransom!” Petro echoed, not really believing what he’d heard. He’d wanted this entire charade to be over. He didn’t want to be Adrio Ventimilla any longer. The night before, he remembered, he’d sworn that today he would come clean and make an end of the stupid prank. Yet here he was, being forced to continue masquerading as someone he wasn’t. If he admitted to being the cazarrino, this guard had orders to bag him up, sling him over her shoulder, and carry him kicking and screaming back to the palace. From the looks of her, she’d do it, too.

“It’s a moot point,” she said, giving him a sideways look, probably to see if he was any more decent than he had been before. “Let’s go.”

It was while they were fording back to shore through the deeper parts of the river that Petro made his decision. “Where is your partner?” he asked.

“When I saw the Scillian candle during the night, we were camped outside Campobasso,” she said. “We responded at once, as protocol dictates, and found the inn all but deserted. Save for the bodies of our comrades.” There was an anger to her words that made Petro want to apologize, though he couldn’t. Though he kept telling himself that even had he and Adrio not exchanged identities the outcome would have been the same, he couldn’t shake the guilt he felt. “There is an outpost of guards in Colona. Giles decided to go there for assistance, and left me behind.”

“Giles is your senior, then?”

Through gritted teeth, she replied, “No. Very much not.”

He’d obviously touched on a sore point. “But he gives the orders?”

“He is under that impression.” Her chin tilted up proudly. “On my own initiative, I followed the first trail I found in the woods. Obviously, it was not one leading to the rebels or the cazarrino,” she said, not at all pleased.

“You caught up with us so quickly!”

“I had a torch. Apparently you did not.” Her lips twitched slightly. “And you went in circles much of the time.”

He didn’t mind the criticism. “If there’s another trail, the loyalists’ trail, you can follow it?”

“If there’s a trail to be found, I will find it,” she said. Petro had to admire her unswerving confidence. He’d had precious little of it in his own life.

She seemed to have nothing more to say. Petro nearly lost his footing in the river’s soft sand as they reached the portion that was knee-deep. “Is that what these loyalists want with a Divetri? A ransom?”

“How would I know?” she replied. She faltered a little herself in her footing, but regained it rapidly, then vaulted to the riverbank in three or four long steps. Perhaps she felt she’d been a little harsh, because she amended her statement with, “The only loyalists I know of had to do with Queen Poppea.”

Petro had attempted to imitate her athletic feat, but either his legs were not as long or his muscles not as taut, because it took him a dozen sloppy steps to accomplish what she had done with so few. By the time he reached the shore, he was dirtier than before he’d gone in the water. “Who?”

“Queen Poppea,” she repeated. When he continued to look blank, she sighed. “I know for a fact that they teach history in your insula. Brother Cappazo, very likely, if the old goat is still there.”