Starling (112 page)

“Is it even safe to land here?” Cass asked. “Will we be dashed to
bits on the rocks?”
“Signorina Cassandra, I assure you it is safe,” Maximus said. “I
come here quite frequently.”
The fisherman did his best to moor the boat, and Maximus
helped Cass out onto the slick rocks. The fisherman turned to leave.
“Wait,” she called. “How are we going to get back?”
“Those who live here will provide transport for us,” Maximus
said.
“People actually
live
here?”
Maximus gestured in front of them. A man had appeared from a
crevasse cut into the wall of stone. He was dressed in loose black
breeches and a leather doublet that hung open, exposing his chest.
Cass tried not to stare at the sculpted muscles or the angry red scars
that adorned them. This man had been stabbed or tortured.
“Come,” the man said.
“Who are you?” Cass asked.
“That is irrelevant,” he said.
Maximus followed him, and Cass had no choice but to follow
them into the dark mouth in the rocks, even though each step made
her feel a bit more as if she were falling into a dream. What was this
place? Who had built the church at the top of the cliff ? Who would
come all the way out here to worship?
Even the island was otherworldly. She was used to the sandy soil
and meadow grass of San Domenico and the Giudecca. The jagged
rock formations that ringed the shore of Mezzanotte Island were interspersed with bursts of green flowering plants that seemed too lush
to be growing naturally. Maximus and the man in the breeches
pressed onward, and she had to hurry to keep up with them. She
picked her way across the uneven rocky ground, her hands out to her
sides for balance. In front of her, Cass could see another opening,
and light beyond it. Perhaps it was the start of the road that led upward to the church.
But when she followed the men out of the cave, she saw there was
no road. There was only a mountain of boulders leading upward into
the sky.
“There must be another way,” she said. “I cannot possibly climb
up there.”
“Those who wish to visit Il Sangue di Mezzanotte must follow the
trail,” the man said.
The Blood of Midnight,
Cass thought.
Lovely.
And then she said,
“What trail?”
With one foot in front of the other, the man with the scars maneuvered his way up the rocks with impossible agility. He stopped halfway and looked down at Cass “It is just like a staircase,” he said.
Gingerly, Cass tested her foot on the closest stone. It shifted
slightly beneath her weight, and she almost tumbled backward. “I
can’t believe I’m doing this,” she grumbled.
“You can make it, Signorina Cassandra,” Maximus said. “Be the
woman who broke her fiancé out of the Doge’s dungeons.”
The man’s eyebrows lifted slightly, but if he was surprised at this,
he didn’t comment. Cass tried again, this time picking a rock that
held steady. With her arms out for balance and her body leaning
forward, she began to make her way from boulder to boulder, doing
her best to follow the scarred man’s path. Maximus trailed behind
her. At one point, her skirt caught on the rocks and she kicked her leg