The Nascenza Conspiracy (17 page)

“Berrying?” Vico repeated the word as if it was strange in his mouth.

“Picking berries from bushes. They’ll make an excellent breakfast.”

Vico narrowed his eyes, skeptical. “Berries don’t come from bushes. They come in bowls, with cream and sugar.”

Petro tried not to smile. Obviously the boy had led a far more sheltered life than he’d thought possible. Within a very few minutes, however, Vico was a believer—a grinning, stained convert to the cult of berry-picking. Along the craggy hillside they managed to find an abundance of blackberries and translucent gooseberries plumped in the sun, as well as tiny, bitter chokefruits that cleared away the sticky sweetness. A greengage tree had somehow insinuated its roots into the thin soil here, and Petro collected a few handfuls of the smooth fruit and put them in his pockets for Emilia.

It was several minutes later, when Vico was trying to imitate how Petro spit the chokefruit pits from between his teeth onto a rock several feet away, giggling at his inability to do anything other than dribble them onto his shirt, that Petro decided to ask a few more questions. “Did you ever meet your father?”

“My father is Prince Berto of Cassaforte,” the boy said with no small degree of pride. “Hero of the city and friend to the Seven and Thirty. I have not met him, though I am told that he held me in his arms on my first birthday. It is not unusual for a son never to meet his father, particularly when they are of noble blood. There are several pre—predescents in history.”

“Predescents?” Petro asked. “Oh, precedents.”

“I have of course heard many stories of his good deeds to the people before his assassination.”

“His
…
um?” Vico had obviously been spoon-fed an alternate history that was so at odds with the real thing that Petro could scarcely wrap his head around it. “Who assassinated your father?”

Vico’s eyebrows shot up into the air. “Such things are not for my ears,” he said, obviously parroting what had been said to him time after time. Less automatically, he said as he shrugged, “His jealous foes, I imagine.”

At least the would-be prince didn’t associate the name of Divetri with his father’s death. That in itself was a relief. “Who is it that told you about your father? Who have you been living with? Your mother?”

“I am my father’s natural son. It wouldn’t be right for my mother to raise me.”

“Oh, you’re a
…
” Petro stopped short of using the word
bastard
. He felt certain it wouldn’t sit well with the boy. “Natural son.”

“Yes. Many rulers are the natural sons of their unwed parents. My uncle Gustophe taught me that. Gustophe Werner,” said Vico, obviously expecting Petro to recognize the name. Petro let out an
ahhh
, pretending faint recognition. It seemed to satisfy the little prince. “It was in his household I was raised. I’m not surprised you have heard of him, even in as small and unimportant a country as Cassaforte. He is quite famous, and has eleven medals from our ruler.”

“Our ruler?”

“The Emperor of Vereinigtelände.” Vico stuck his thumb into his mouth and sucked the last of the gooseberry juices drying upon it. “I was presented to the emperor before I was brought to Cassaforte to assume the throne. He said that I was a handsome young lad and that my uncle Gustophe was one of the finest soldiers the country had ever known.” He thought for a moment. “I think I would like to be a handsome young lad
and
a fine soldier, if I weren’t to be king. Are you to take me to Nascenza so I can reunite with my uncle? I haven’t seen him in so long. Nascenza is where I’m to be reunited with my people, you know. It’s going to be a grand ceremony.”

The assertion came so unexpectedly that Petro nearly choked on the greengage he’d been eating. Should he tell the truth? It was obvious that so long as he kept on Vico’s good side, the boy would continue talking in his open and indiscriminate manner. Telling him the truth would certainly shut him down. “Yes, Nascenza was our goal. When is your uncle expecting you?”

“Didn’t he tell you?” Vico was experimentally pressing fingers together and releasing them as if he’d never before experienced the sensations the stickiness produced. Perhaps it was indeed the first time.

“Well
…
” Petro hesitated. There seemed no way to continue with the half-truth he’d managed a moment before. “I was only told to travel from Cassaforte city to Nascenza, and to retrieve you from the tent so that you wouldn’t have to be in the company of those
…
”

“Ruffians,” supplied Vico. When he curled his lip, he did indeed look like the tiny icons of Prince Berto that once commonly hung in the homes of Cassaforte’s citizens, including the Divetri’s own. “Why can’t common people be a little less common?” he asked, seeming to genuinely mean the question.

Petro felt a sudden pang of sympathy for the poor child. He had a sudden vision of Vico being raised in some remote, enormous
schloss
high in the snowy mountains of Vereinigtelände, surrounded only by his uncle’s toadies and servants, being trained to live a life of privilege and entitlement that would never materialize. He’d been raised in a lie. Petro didn’t want to be there when Vico found out how badly he’d been duped. “What is your uncle doing here, in Cassaforte?” he asked.

“Why, preparing the way for me to take the throne back from the pretender who sits upon it now.” Vico rose, wiped his hands as best as he could on his already dirty shirt, and announced, “I must void.”

It took Petro a moment to understand what Vico needed. “Oh. Void! I’m afraid we didn’t carry the chamber pot with us. But do you know how your uncle, or any good soldier, takes care of business? Behind a tree.” The boy squinted at him, as if suspecting Petro of having him on. “No, really,” Petro insisted. “Give it a try.”

Apparently the need outweighed any skepticism, because after pausing for a moment, Vico disappeared behind the largest of the nearby pines, seeking relief. Petro turned away. “I say, your highness,” he called after him, having no idea what moved him to use the title. “At that horrible camp with the loy—commoners, did anyone arrive yesterday? A group of men? They would have been with
…
”

“Yes,” the boy said immediately, before Petro could even finish.

Petro whirled around with excitement, then thought the better of it. He turned his back again to give the lad some privacy. “Did they have anyone with them? Someone my age? A boy?”

“I don’t know. I never left my tent. I was told the forest is too dirty and dangerous for one of my station. Parts of it are not too bad, though. I liked the berries. And the ants.”

Petro let Vico finish up before he threw more questions his way. “What happened to them? What did you hear?”

“One of them was loud. I was napping and it woke me up. In my uncle’s house, I’m not permitted to be loud.” Vico narrowed his eyes and looked at Petro speculatively. “May I yell out here?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

Petro wanted to get back to the loud person. “Because it would alert your father’s assassins.” Almost immediately he regretted the whopper, but Vico didn’t seem as frightened as Petro had feared. He merely nodded, accepting of the fact that assassins lurked everywhere, and returned from his new adventure fumbling at the ties of his pants. “What was the loud person saying?” Petro pressed.

“He wanted dinner. That’s what he kept saying.
I am assured my seat at the table
. Over and over again.”

“Did you hear his name? Was it Jacobuci? Simon Jacobuci?”

Vico shook his head. “Narcissus, like the flower.”

Every hair on Petro’s neck stood up at the sound of those syllables. “Narciso? Brother Narciso?”

“I am owed a seat at the table!”
The boy seemed to be imitating Narciso’s wheedling tones, but it made no sense.
“I am due that!”

“It had to be Jacobuci that you heard.” Petro was certain the boy must be confused, for why would Brother Narciso be expecting a meal? He would have been demanding his freedom, if anything. Come to think of it, hadn’t Jacobuci used that very phrase the night of the kidnapping? He’d thanked Adrio for giving him a seat at the table. Or was it just a coincidence? No, it couldn’t be mere coincidence, for his sister, Padrona Colleta, had used the same phrase.
Doing what we can, all for a seat at the table.

The boy shrugged.

“Tell me what happened to the loud person.” Petro was more convinced than ever that it had to have been Simon Jacobuci.

“They only stayed for an hour or so. I grew weary of listening to the shouting and put a pillow over my head and tried to read my book,” Vico said dispassionately.

It seemed Emilia had been mostly right. The loyalists had dragged Narciso and Adrio to the camp, where they’d stayed long enough to create some kind of uproar before moving on again. Petro itched to rush over and tell Emilia immediately. She’d only been sleeping for a half hour, though. It would be horrible to wake her before she got some rest. “Do you know where they went?”

“Nascenza. Where my uncle is. When will you be taking me to my uncle?”

“Soon,” Petro vowed. Again he had to fight to restrain himself from grabbing Vico by the scruff of the neck and racing to Emilia’s side. He’d let her sleep for a little while longer. “Come on,” he said to the boy. “Let’s collect some more berries for the trip.”

“Were the men who came to camp assassins?” Vico wanted to know.

Petro thought back to the sight of the bodies on the floor of the inn in Campobasso. The memory of it made his voice tense and hoarse as he replied, “Your highness, that is exactly what they were.”

A boy and a girl, thinking to make their fortune in the world,
left their village one morning in search of the road to the city.
But, in case they changed their minds, for they suspected they might, they left a trail of bread crumbs in their wake,
so they might find their way home again.

—The traditional opening to a Cassafortean fairy tale

Gustophe Werner! Gustophe bloody Werner?” The way Emilia spat out the words, accompanying each syllable with a stomp of her feet as she pressed them onward, made for a good marching rhythm. “The brat’s uncle is Gustophe Werner?”

“He’s not that much of a brat,” Petro protested. It was a good thing the little prince was straggling a few arm-spans behind, because Emilia’s voice was sometimes rising above the furious whisper she’d been trying to maintain for the past hour. “I feel a little bit sorry for him. He didn’t even know he could, er, urinate behind a tree.”

“The world is one giant privy to you boys, isn’t it?” She was angrier than Petro had ever seen, or thought possible after so short and intimate a time together. “You drop your breeches with the enemy, let it fly, and walk away comrades. It’s amazing.”

Mystified, Petro was moved to note, “I didn’t drop my trousers.”

“That’s not the point.” She stopped short and put her hand on her hips. They had been traipsing through the forest in an easterly direction for some time at this point, and in the late morning heat they were sweaty and more than a little tired. “You don’t know what it’s like, being female in the guards. Men make all my decisions. A few males get together, and boom! Emilia’s on latrine duty, because none of them wants to do it. Or else I’m cooking or cleaning camp, instead of the dozens of practical things that I’m trained to do. You and this
…
this
child
spend a few minutes bonding over bodily functions, and you’re extracting all kinds of information I never got from him.”

“You didn’t try talking to him!”

Just then, Vico caught up. He stopped short of where the two of them argued, then planted his fists on his hips in an obvious imitation of Emilia. “I saw a snake,” he announced. “Back there. It was black and yellow. It did not bite me.”

“Not all snakes are poisonous,” Petro told him.

“Unlike men,” Emilia muttered under her breath.

“Will you be serving my mid-day meal soon? I’m accustomed to my servants bringing it at noon.”

“I’ve still got some fruit for us, your highness, and Emilia has some stores of dried fish in her sack. You’ll like it,” Petro promised. “Do you see that rock up ahead, near the stream? Why don’t you take this water bottle and fill it up, being very careful not to get any dirt in, hmm? It’s what your uncle is probably doing this very minute. We’ll catch up presently.”

“All right.”

Petro handed over Emilia’s bottle and watched the prince disappear through the trees. When he turned around again, Emilia had quirked an eyebrow. “Your highness?”

“He likes it.”

“I like my bed back home, but I’m not there. I liked the insula, but I didn’t get to stay in it, Ventimilla.”

“He’s nine, Fossi.” Petro put as much scorn into her surname as she had on the one he’d assumed.

“The point is that you’re indulging him when you shouldn’t. Everything he’s learned about himself is a lie. He’s not a king. He’s the spawn of a loveless night between Prince Berto and some well-bred ’Lander girl with exceptionally poor judgment. He’s not going to be assuming our throne. If anything, once this is all over, he’ll be locked in a cell for the rest of his life. Or he’ll be sent to the island of Portoneferro in exile, like his father.”

“They wouldn’t!” Petro was shocked. Vico hadn’t done anything.

“You calling him ‘highness’ isn’t doing him any favors. Neither is this entire
…
charade
…
of pretending we’re escorting him to his uncle. It’s all lies, and I don’t see what good comes of lies.”

The words struck Petro like daggers, piercing his guilt as sharply and strongly as flesh. Lies had gotten Adrio kidnapped. They’d certainly not done anyone in his party any good. “Don’t you think that sometimes lying is a necessity?”

“No, I don’t.” Emilia wrestled with the strap of her rucksack on her shoulder. It must have been hurting her again.

“Well, I know for a fact that it can be,” he snapped. She blinked, seemingly startled at his outburst. “If it weren’t for lying
…
” He shook his head, almost too angry to summon the words. Once again he thought of coming completely clean to her, of telling her who he really was, but he knew he couldn’t. Even if in the end it meant that she hated him for the deception, he’d have to keep on with it, for Adrio’s sake. Now he had to turn his sentence around. “If it weren’t for lying,” he said, trying to swallow his rage, “we wouldn’t know a thing about where they’ve taken Adrio and Narciso. I wouldn’t have learned anything about his upbringing. And we’d be two leagues further back—it’s easier to have
his highness
hiking with us than having to drag him along kicking and screaming. Ordinarily I’d be in agreement with you about honesty being the best policy. One lie can lead to horrible things. Horrible. I’ve managed to draw that conclusion on my very own during my travels. You know perfectly well that they don’t teach us to lie in the insula. You’ve been there. But right now, at this moment, I can’t stop. And for another thing, you lied! On the river banks, telling those fishermen and whatnot that Amadeo was fibbing! It suited you then. You don’t want to do it now because you don’t like the prince. I think he’s a good lad. He has his moments, anyway.”

Emilia was looking at him, seemingly stunned by his vehemence. At least his point was getting through. Her lips worked as she looked him up and down. “Who are you?” she asked at last.

“What?” For a moment he had a sick sensation in the pit of his stomach, as if all his secrets had been found out. “What do you mean?”

“When I was first saddled with you, I thought you were an annoying little boy.” She continued to stare at him in that very odd manner. “That’s not what you are though, is it?”

“No,” he said with certainty. “That’s not what I am at all. Thank you for finally realizing it. So.” He licked his lips and looked her in the eye. “Are we working together now, or not at all?”

“We’re working together,” she said, just as levelly.

“Then tell me. What is the significance of this Gustophe Werner person?”

Emilia seemed to flinch at the sound of the name. She moved the rucksack to her other shoulder and scanned for Vico, making sure he was still up by the stream. Petro caught up with her as she began to walk slowly in the boy’s direction. “I only know what I’ve overheard from talk within the palace, but Gustophe Werner is a spy,” she told him. “A notorious spy in the employ of Baron van Wiestel, one of their emperor’s advisers. The fact that he’s involved makes it plausible that the brat is truly Berto’s son. Then there’s the obvious physical resemblance—this child looks almost exactly like our traitor prince, down to the nose. And then there’s the fact that Prince Berto spent nearly a year in Vereinigtelände a decade ago, in Bramen.”

“When Vico would have been
…
er, you know.”

“Conceived, yes.” Emilia failed to notice Petro’s embarrassment. She drew closer to him as they picked their way across two rotting trees that had fallen at a perpendicular angle over a hollow in the earth. She kept this proximity, murmuring close to his ear in an intimate and gossipy fashion, almost as if she’d forgotten they’d been fighting only moments before. “King Alessandro sent him there. The prince was supposed to be making a diplomatic visit in his father’s name, but spent so much of the time drinking, gambling, and whoring that eventually he was recalled. Some say that year abroad was what convinced King Alessandro to think in other directions for his successor.”

Frankly, Petro felt a little bit relieved for Vico’s sake. Considering the number of lies he’d been fed, one more about his actual parentage wouldn’t have been out of the question. That the boy might have at least some truth to cling to struck him as a mercy. “And Werner?”

“Werner was roughly the same age as Berto. He was chosen by the Vereinigteländers to shadow Berto while he was in the country and listen to every conversation he could. At first he was Gustophe the tailor, acting as the prince’s dresser and coat maker, but he managed to wheedle his way into becoming the prince’s translator—because of course, Prince Berto was too lazy to learn more than a few words of the language.” She kicked at the base of the fallen tree as they passed the last of it. A chunk fell off, revealing a world of teeming, crawling insect activity within. “When Berto was called home, Gustophe the tailor came with him, still acting as the prince’s coat maker. He was in the palace when Berto conceived of his plan to weaken King Alessandro by keeping him from the Olive Crown and the Scepter of Thorn. He was squarely in the royal residence, hearing everything the prince heard, knowing all the prince knew, and writing about it to the baron. He even returned often to Bramen for extended periods of time. For all we know, he might have suggested that scheme to kidnap all the cazarri. When Risa Divetri overthrew Berto and restored King Alessandro to the throne, though, the man called Gustophe the tailor was nowhere to be found.”

“If the palace guard knew all this, why did they let Gustophe stay?”

“They didn’t know. That was the thing of it.” They lowered their voices further now that they were closer to the stream. Vico stood next to the little trickle, staring at it as if he’d never seen water in its most natural state before. “They learned afterwards, when they found letters from the baron among the possessions Gustophe was forced to leave behind. There was also information about Cassaforte’s defenses that he intended to pass on to his emperor but never had a chance.” Emilia pulled Petro to a stop before he could go any farther. “Until Gustophe disappeared, no one knew there was a spy in their midst. And no one knows what he looks like.”

“You jest,” Petro said in disbelief. “Someone must.”

Emilia shook her head. She showed an almost giddy excitement as she told the tale, as if for the first time realizing that they were riding on the cusp of a great discovery. “No, they honestly don’t. Prince Berto led an odd and isolated life for the two years before the attempted coup. Most of the guards who made the mistake of aiding him either went into exile when he was sentenced or emigrated from the country. No one is left who remembers what Gustophe the tailor looked like.”

“It sounds like a ghost story,” Petro said, still dubious. Though Emilia obviously relished thinking about the infamous spy, it was all too much to believe. “You’ll have him jumping out at the chambermaids from behind the tapestries in a moment.”

“But what could it all mean?” Emilia was saying, mostly to herself. “This
means
something. What is it?”

Vico looked up at Petro as they approached. Somehow he had managed to get them covered with white dust.

“What’s all over your fingers?” Petro asked.

Vico shrugged and wiped his hands on his shirt. “My uncle’s servants say that drinking from a stream is unsanitary,” he announced. “They say that peasants make water and evacuate themselves in rivers and streams because they don’t know to use chamber pots.”

Petro was glad that Emilia was distracted by her thoughts, because this was exactly the kind of statement that might have set her off. “Ah, but your highness, see how close we are to the mountains? There are no villages of peasants upstream from us, so the water is nothing but the purest melted snow.”