Arcadia Awakens (49 page)

Every word, every breath was a struggle. “You know that I’ve informed on you to the judge. And you still want me to help you?”

He nodded. “But first I will help you. You’ll be needing it. You’re only seventeen. Florinda’s advisers and business managers will soon be clustering around you like flies, trying to take advantage of you for their own purposes. There may be one or two of them who can be trusted, but the rest are a pack of bloodhounds without a shred of conscience.”

“You fixed the whole thing. All of it.”

The old man came closer, shaking his head. “Much of what Cesare Carnevare did has turned out to be useful in retrospect. But that had nothing to do with me. I merely took my chance when it presented itself. The fact that Remeo was there and could do what he did … well, sometimes you also need a little luck.”

“Zoe and Florinda … were they at that tribunal at all? Or were they already … elsewhere when we met at the palazzo?”

“A body dead for several hours doesn’t feel like that, my child. Of course they were there.” He nodded toward the lifeless Zoe. “I liked your sister. For a long time I thought she might be the one to … but she doesn’t have your edge, your tough mind, your determination. And then there was that business with the other girl. Unfortunate.”

She had to force herself to go on asking questions as she looked for a way of killing him. Here and now. Even without a weapon. Slowly, she straightened up until they were facing each other over Zoe’s body.

“And Florinda? What was it about
her
that didn’t suit you any longer?”

“Her bitterness. Her uncontrollable rages. The way she assessed many deals—well, let’s say emotionally, thus wrecking them. Your father ought to have led the Alcantaras, but he insisted on leaving Sicily with your mother. Florinda was never fit for the position.”

“Nor am I, any more than Florinda. And I don’t want it, either.” She could hardly open her lips. Her tongue felt cold and hard, as if frozen.

He wagged his raised forefinger at her. “You just don’t yet know that you do want it. Or maybe you don’t want to admit it to yourself.” He took a step closer, and was now right in front of Zoe’s body, not six feet away from Rosa. “You and I have what it takes to stand up to the Hungry Man.”

“Me!” she exclaimed scornfully. “Oh, sure!”

“You and I,” he repeated. “You as my right hand. Because deep down you have moral standards that Florinda lacked. The reborn Lycaon can’t be fought with cruelty and brutality; he and his supporters have more than enough of that themselves. But conviction, and a kind of sense of justice that has nothing to do with the fatuous ideals of your friend the judge … those are valuable weapons to use against him.”

“Nonsense,” she whispered, and let the wind carry the word over to him. She looked down at Zoe again, and welcomed the cold spreading through her body. By now she had no sensation at all in her arms and legs. That felt good.

“TABULA,” she said quietly. “Maybe they have the right idea.”

He smiled. “I’ll teach you things about them, too. And about the gaps in the crowd. There are answers to such questions, did you know that? The answers to everything lie deep down in the sea.”

Have you ever wondered who’s in the gaps in the crowd?
That was what Fundling had asked her, in the car on the way to the harbor where the yacht was moored.

A voice whispered, “Rosa?”

Zoe’s pale hand moved up Rosa’s calf. Her voice was so faint that the sound of the wind almost drowned it out. But it
was
her voice, too weak to give Rosa much hope, yet all the same—

“Poor, persistent little thing,” said Pantaleone, drawing a pistol.

“No!”
Rosa leaped across her sister, charging at him. Even as she jumped, the cold overpowered her. Finally became one with her.

Ice crystals ran through her blood vessels. Frost covered her eyes and then faded away again. After that, she was someone else.

Pantaleone smiled.

Only very briefly. Almost proudly.

His eyes widened. Turned dark. The pistol fell to the ground. He was also changing.

Then she was on him.

I
F THERE HAD BEEN
anyone else in this place at the end of the world, close to the precipitous drop of the deep ravine with the cave tombs on the far side of it, he would have been presented with an astonishing sight.

Two animals lying motionless on dusty asphalt. They are not far from a jagged, broken edge where the road once led to a bridge. Today it ends in nothing, in a fall into a canyon of fissured rock.

One of the creatures is a snake almost nine feet long, with a body as thick as a human thigh. Her scaly skin is the color of amber, patterned with brown and yellow and deep, dark red. Her head lies on one side, her eyes are wide-open—the slits of the pupils are a glacial blue, unusual for a reptile. She has two fangs, long, curved, sharp as daggers, and a forked tongue.

The snake’s body winds in a spiral around the other animal, a mighty wild boar with a gray coat and only one eye. He lost the other long ago, and the eye socket gapes open like a knothole in the branch of a tree. He lies lifeless on the asphalt, legs slack, muzzle with its huge tusks open. His tongue lolls out, not delicate like the snake’s, but coarse and gray. His body is covered with old scars. Death has only just taken him, and the flies don’t yet dare to settle on the corpse. Several of his ribs broke when the snake wrapped herself more and more tightly around him, crushing the life out of his lungs. It took him a long time to die, but now it is over at last.

And while three eyes stare at the stormy sky, a transformation suddenly begins. The shape of the boar distorts in the huge snake’s embrace. At the same time his coat disappears under his skin. His muzzle flattens, turning inward, and is smoothed out; his forelegs become arms. One of his broken ribs pierces his wrinkled chest, because human skin will not stretch enough to cover the splintered bone. His tongue retreats between split lips, the yellow tusks disappear. Soon no more of the boar can be seen.

And now the snake’s own metamorphosis begins. Her body grows shorter, thickens in some places, becomes more slender in others. The eyes change shape, their glacially bright blue intensifies. The ends of the forked tongue merge, and the fangs disappear. Finally the scaly skin on the snake’s head divides into strings that swiftly split again, first into strands, then into separate hairs. Soon a wild mane of blond hair surrounds the head of the girl who, only moments ago, was a snake. There is nothing left of the reptile except a few dry scales on the asphalt.

Rosa wakes and blinks at the daylight. Naked and weak, she crawls away from Pantaleone’s body, finds the cell phone, presses a key with shaking fingers.

“Quattrini,” she whispers, without raising the phone to her mouth. “You can have the old man now.”

Zoe’s life ebbed out of her in a single long breath. Rosa had been kneeling on the ground, cradling her sister’s head and shoulders in her lap, gently stroking her long hair. Zoe’s eyes sought hers, but she could see that they were barely able to take in any of her surroundings.

“Was it us?” Zoe managed to gasp.

“Don’t talk now. Help will soon be coming.”

“Was it … us?”

Rosa saw one of her own tears drop, as if in slow motion, on Zoe’s cheek. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Were we … the traitors?”

“I went to a judge. I broke the law of silence.”

“Not that.” Zoe’s lips quivered. “TABULA,” she whispered.

Rosa’s memory lay hidden behind a wall of pain and grief, yet something stirred slightly in her mind. One of the families had given the Arcadian dynasties away to TABULA—the Alcantaras, Cesare had said.

“It could have been anyone, maybe even the Carnevares themselves.” She listened to her own words; it kept her from losing her mind then and there.

Zoe coughed up blood. “You must … must find out.”

“Why?”

“Because…” She broke off, her breath coming noisily as she relaxed her face muscles. “Because of Dad,” she whispered.

Rosa shook her head. “Listen, now you must—”

“Because of
Dad
, Rosa. Because of him and TABULA.”

Then Zoe smiled, and died.

L
IFE-SUPPORT MACHINES HUMMED AROUND
Fundling’s bed. His head was bandaged, and propped on white pillows to keep it from tipping over sideways. Someone had shaved his black hair off. His lids were closed, but the eyes under them moved feverishly.

Iole had put a photograph of Sarcasmo on the bedside table. The dog seemed to be laughing; his eyes shone. She and the black mongrel were crazy about each other. Ever since moving into the Palazzo Alcantara, Iole had shared her room with the dog, and never left the house without him.

This afternoon, five days after Zoe’s death, Rosa was the only visitor in Fundling’s room. Wearing a black coat from her sister’s wardrobe, she sat beside him. Out in the hospital grounds, a stormy wind shook the tall oak trees. Fundling’s condition had stabilized, but no one could say whether he would ever come out of his coma.

“You know, don’t you?” She was looking not at him, but at the garden outside the window. “You knew more than most people all along. About TABULA, and about those … gaps in the crowd. About the Hungry Man. And the laws of Arcadia.”

She got to her feet and leaned over him, very close to his face.

“Where do you really come from? And what were you doing as a baby, alone in the hotel that the Carnevares burned down?” With her fingertip, she touched her lips and then his forehead. “One of these days you’ll tell me the truth. One of these days you’ll tell me everything.”

Outside in the hallway, she met the judge.

Quattrini had seen to it that no legal proceedings were taken against Rosa. The death of Pantaleone had been a setback for her. She had hoped that, once arrested, he would provide information about the extensive network of Cosa Nostra’s business deals, and perhaps details of the bloodbath at the Gibellina monument as well. Much of that would now remain unexplained.

The greatest mystery, however, was Pantaleone’s death itself. Rosa claimed to have pushed him over the edge of the precipice in self-defense after he murdered her sister. But no one could explain what had caused a spiral of hematomas all around his body as he fell.

“How is he?”

“No change,” said Rosa. The judge seemed even smaller than on their earlier meetings. She had to look up at Rosa, but that didn’t appear to bother her.

“I was told I’d find you here. I’m afraid I have bad news.”

Rosa looked down at the floor briefly, and then met the judge’s penetrating gaze. “You’ve found Florinda, I assume.”

“You don’t seem particularly surprised.”

Pantaleone had called her the new head of the Alcantara clan, and he certainly had his reasons. “I broke the oath,” she said. “It was bound to happen.”

For a moment the judge seemed genuinely distressed. “I’m sorry. About your aunt, and that stupid oath.”

“Don’t apologize if you don’t mean it. You guessed what would happen.”

Quattrini looked over her shoulder. Stefania Moranelli and Antonio Festa, her two bodyguards, were standing in reception at the end of the hall, staring at them. “There were indications of conflict between the families,” she said, turning back to Rosa. “I didn’t have to be a prophet to foresee that blood would flow. But what I am still not clear about is your own part in all this. And the boy’s.”

“Fundling?”

The judge shook her head. “You know who I’m talking about: Alessandro Carnevare.”

“Ask him yourself. I haven’t seen him for days.” She added, more coolly, “I imagine he has a lot to do.”

Quattrini nodded, as if confirming something that she had known for a long time. “I
will
ask him, don’t worry.”

“Where did you find Florinda? And what had happened to her?”

“She was shot. Not with the same gun as your sister, and probably some hours earlier. Her body was washed up on the shore of Panarea.”

“Panarea?” asked Rosa, only for something to say. Her voice sounded husky.

“Panarea is one of the Lipari Islands, north of Sicily. Did your aunt perhaps set out on a sea voyage a few days ago?”