The Young Elites (6 page)

There are four places where the spirits still wander . . .
the snow-covered Dark of Night, the forgotten paradise of
Sobri Elan, the Glass Pillars of Dumon, and the human mind,
that eternally mysterious realm where ghosts shall forever walk.

—
An Exploration of Ancient and Modern Myths,
by Mordove Senia

F
or a week, I never leave my bedchamber. I float in and out of consciousness, waking up only to eat the pastries and roasted quail brought daily into my room, and to let the maid change my robe and bandages.

Sometimes Enzo checks in on me, his face expressionless and his hands gloved, but no one aside from him and the maid visit. No more information about the Dagger Society. What they’ll do with me now, I have no idea.

More days pass. Prosperiday. Aevaday. Moraday. Amareday. Sapienday. I imagine what Violetta is doing right now, and whether she’s wondering the same about me. Whether she’s safe or not. Whether she’s searching for me, or moving on with her life.

By the time Prosperiday comes around again, I’ve recovered enough to go without bandages. The chafing on my wrists and ankles has faded into faint bruises, and the swelling in my cheek has disappeared, returning my face to normal. I’m thinner, though, and my hair has turned into a mess of knots, the spot where my father pulled at my scalp still tender. I study myself in front of the mirror every night, watching how the candlelight splashes orange on my face, how it illuminates the scarred skin over my missing eye. Dark thoughts swim in the far corners of my mind. Something is alive in those whispers, clawing for my attention, beckoning me deeper into the shadows, and I am afraid to listen to it.

I look the same. I also look like a complete stranger.

Voices outside my bedchamber pull me out of my sleep and into the gold of morning light. I lie very still, listening to the conversation that drifts in through the door.

I recognize the speakers immediately. Enzo and my maid.

“—business to attend to. Mistress Amouteru. How is she?”

“Much better.” A pause. “What should I do with her today, Your Highness? She is well now, and growing restless. Shall I take her around the court?”

A brief pause. I imagine Enzo tightening his gloves, his face turned away from the maid, looking as disinterested as he sounds. Finally:

“Bring her to Raffaele.”

“Yes, Your Highness.”

The conversation ends there. I hear footsteps echoing down the hall outside, then fading away and disappearing altogether. A strange disappointment hits me at the thought that Enzo won’t be around. I’d hoped to ask him more questions.
The court,
that’s what the maid had called this building where we’re all staying. What kind of court? A royal estate? Who is Raffaele?

I stay in bed and wait until the maid bustles in. “Good morning, mistress,” she says from behind an armful of silks and a bowl of steaming water. “Look at that! So much pink in your cheeks. Lovely.”

How odd, someone complimenting me all the time and catering to my every whim. But I smile my thanks. As she scrubs me all over and then dresses me in the white and blue shift, I comb strands of hair across my missing eye. I wince when she runs a brush along the injured part of my scalp.

Finally, we’re ready. She guides me toward the door, and I take a deep breath as I step out of my bedchamber for the first time.

We head down a narrow hallway that branches into two. I study the walls. Paintings of the gods adorn them, tales of beautiful Pulchritas emerging from the sea and young Laetes falling from the heavens, the colors as vivid as if they had been commissioned only a week ago. Veined marble outlines the ceiling’s arch. I stare at the hall for so long that I start to fall behind, and only when the maid calls for me to hurry do I turn my gaze away and quicken my steps. As we walk, I try to think of something to say to her—but every time I open my mouth, the maid smiles politely at me and then looks away in disinterest. I decide to stay quiet. We take another turn, and then abruptly stop before what seems like a solid wall and a line of pillars.

She runs a hand along one side of a pillar, then pushes against the wall. I watch, stunned, as the wall swings aside to reveal a new hall behind it. “Come, young mistress,” the maid says over her shoulder. Dumbstruck, I follow her. The wall closes behind us, as if nothing had ever existed beyond it.

The longer we walk, the more curious I grow. The layout makes sense, of course. If this is a place where the Young Elites stay—assassins wanted by the Inquisition—then they wouldn’t have a door you could simply enter and exit straight from the street. The Elites are a secret hidden behind the walls of another building. But what is this court?

The maid finally stops at a tall set of doors at the end of a hall. The double doors are elaborately engraved with an image of Amare and Fortuna, god of Love and goddess of Prosperity, locked in an intimate embrace. I suck in my breath. Now I know where I am.

This place is a brothel.

The maid pulls the double doors open. We step into a gloriously decorated sitting room with a door along its walls that likely leads into a bedchamber. The thought reddens my cheeks. Part of the room is open to a lush courtyard. Translucent lengths of silk drape low from the ceiling, stirring slightly, and trails of silver chimes sing in the breeze. The scent of jasmine hangs on the air.

The maid knocks on the bedchamber door.

“Yes?” someone answers. Even muffled through the doorway, I can tell how unusually lovely the voice is. Like a minstrel’s.

The maid bows her head, even though there’s no one but me to witness it. “Mistress Amouteru is here to see you.”

Silence. Then I hear the soft shuffle of feet, and a moment later, the door opens. I find myself staring up at a boy who leaves me speechless.

A famous poet from the Sunlands once described a beautiful face as “one kissed by moon and water,” an ode to our three moons and the loveliness of their light on the ocean. He gave exactly two people this compliment: his mother, and the last princess of the Feishen empire. If he were alive to see who I’m now looking at, he would add him as a third. Moon and water must love this boy desperately.

His hair, black and shining, drapes across one of his shoulders in a loose, silken braid. His olive skin is smooth, flawless, glowing. The faint musk of night lilies envelops him in a veil, intoxicating, promising something forbidden. I’m so distracted by his appearance that it takes me a moment to notice his marking—under canopies of long, dark lashes, one of his eyes is the color of honey under sunlight, while the other is the brilliant summer green of an emerald.

The maid nods a hurried farewell to us both, then disappears down the hall, leaving us alone. The boy smiles at me, exposing dimples. “It’s good to meet you, mi Adelinetta.” He takes my hands and leans down to kiss me on each cheek. I shiver at the softness of his lips. His hands are cool and smooth, his fingers slender and encircled with thin gold rings, his nails gleaming. His voice is as lyrical as it sounded through the door. “I’m Raffaele.”

A movement behind him distracts me. Despite the dimly lit bedchamber, I make out the smooth outlines of another person turning over in his bed, his short brown locks catching the light. I glance back at Raffaele. It’s a brothel, naturally. Raffaele must be a client.

Raffaele notices my hesitation, then blushes and lowers his lashes in a single sweep. Never in my life have I seen such a graceful gesture. “Apologies. My work frequently continues until morning.”

“Oh,” I manage to reply. I’m a fool. He isn’t the client at all. The man inside is the client, and Raffaele is the
consort.
With a face like his, I should have known immediately—but to me, a consort means a street prostitute. Poor, desperate workers selling themselves on the sides of roads and in brothels. Not a work of art.

Raffaele looks back at his bedchamber again, and when it seems like his client has fallen back into a deep slumber, he steps outside and closes the door without a sound. “Merchant princes tend to sleep late,” he says with a delicate smile. Then he nods at me to follow him. I marvel at the simple elegance of his movements, fine-tuned to perfection in the way I suppose a high-class consort would be. Does this entire sitting room and courtyard belong to him?

“Sensing your energy this close is a bit overwhelming,” he says.

“You can sense me?”

“I was the one who first discovered you.”

I frown at that. “What do you mean?”

Raffaele guides us out of the sitting room and into the hall, until we reach a large courtyard of fountains. The breeze combs through his hair, revealing several brilliant sapphire strands glistening under the black, jeweled lines moving against a night canvas. A second marking. “The night you ran away from home,” he says as we walk, “you paused in Dalia’s central market.”

I recoil at the memory. My father’s rain-washed face, split into a menacing grin, flashes before me. “Yes,” I whisper.

“Enzo sent me to southern Kenettra for several months, to find those like you. I could sense you the instant I arrived in Dalia. Your pull was faint, though, something that came and went, and it took me several weeks to narrow my search to your district.” Raffaele pauses before the largest fountain in the courtyard. “But the first time I
saw
you was in that market. I watched you ride off into the rain. Naturally, I sent word back to His Highness right away.”

Someone had indeed been watching me that night
. A boy who can sense those like me—like
us. That must be his ability, just like Enzo to fire, myself to illusion. “You recruit Young Elites for the Dagger Society, then?”

“Yes. They call me the Messenger, and the hunt is always an adventure. Of every thousand
malfettos,
there’s that
one.
After a potential recruit falls into the Inquisition’s hands, though, it’s difficult to save them in time. You’re the first we’ve pulled straight from their grasp.” Raffaele winks a jewel-toned eye at me. “Congratulations.”

The Reaper. The Messenger. A society full of double names and hidden meanings. I take a deep breath, wondering about the other names I’ve heard rumors of.

“No one told me this place was a . . . a brothel,” I say.

“A pleasure court,” Raffaele specifies. “Brothels are for the poor and tasteless.”

“A pleasure court,” I echo.

“Our clients come to us for music and conversation, beauty and laughter and wit. They dine and drink with us. They forget their worries.” He smiles demurely. “Sometimes outside the bedchamber. Sometimes within.”

I give him a wary, sidelong look. “And I’m hoping I don’t have to become a consort to join the Dagger Society? Not to offend you, of course,” I add in a hurry.

Raffaele’s gentle laugh answers me. Like everything else about him, his laughter is perfectly refined, as lovely as summer bells, a sound that fills my heart with light. “Where you sleep is not who you are. You aren’t of age, mi Adelinetta. No one at the Fortunata Court will force you to service clients—unless, of course, such work interests you.”

My face burns at the suggestion.

Raffaele leads us around the side of the courtyard. Out here, the wind brings with it the sweet scent of spring. I can tell that the brothel—
pleasure court
—is situated on the side of a rolling hill, and when we reach a good outlook, I glimpse the city below. I catch my breath.

Estenzia.

Redbrick domes and wide, clean roads. Curving spires, sweeping archways. Narrow side streets overgrown with colorful flowers and vines. Towering monuments that gleam in the sun. People bustling from building to building, horses pulling carts loaded with casks and crates. Marble statues of the twelve gods and angels, their feet draped with flowers, line the main squares. Hundreds of ships pull into and out of the harbor, fat galleons and thin, quicksilver
caravelas,
their shining sails brown and white against the deep blue of the sea, their flags a rainbow of kingdoms from all over the world. Floating gondolas glide between them, fireflies among giants. A bell chimes somewhere in the distance. Off at the horizon, the misty outlines of a chain of islets appear before the flatness of the Sun Sea. And up in the sky—

I gasp in delight as an enormous creature resembling an ocean ray glides lazily across the city’s harbor, its fleshy wings smooth and translucent in the light, its tail stretched out behind it in a long line. Someone—a tiny speck nearly lost from sight—rides on its back. The creature lets out a haunting note that echoes across the city.

“A balira!” I exclaim.

Raffaele glances over his shoulder at me, his gesture so smooth and regal that one could mistake him for royalty. He smiles at my joy. “I would think you’d often see them shipping cargo in Dalia, given your location near the waterfall arc.”

“Never this close.”

“I see. Well, we have warm, shallow waters, so they gather here in the summer to give birth. You’ll see your fill, trust me.”

I shake my head and continue to take in the scene. “The city’s beautiful.”

“Only to a newcomer.” His smile fades. “We are not like the Skyland nations, where the blood fever was mild and where their few marked people are celebrated. Estenzia was devastated by the fever. She has suffered ever since. Trade is down. Pirates plague our routes. The city grows poorer, and the people are hungry.
Malfettos
are the scapegoats. A
malfetto
girl was killed just yesterday, stabbed to death in the streets. The Inquisition turns a blind eye.”