The Nascenza Conspiracy (22 page)

“That’s fine,” said Petro, relieved. He’d been afraid of a request for thousands of lundri, or something he wouldn’t be able to provide.

“I’ve had nothing to do with anyone dying.” Vico had obviously rehearsed this speech in his mind; the words for it came tumbling out. “I didn’t know anything about your King Milo. I haven’t had anything to do with this group of people or what they plan to do. I just want to make it plain that whatever happens at the hands of those
…
those brutes, I had no part of it.”

“We know they want our bodies to be found. Why? What’s this gesture they plan to make?”

“Let him finish, so that he’ll let us loose,” Emilia growled at Petro.

In response to the question, though, Vico shook his head. “I don’t know. They left for Nascenza hours ago, most of them. They put on peasant’s clothes and marched out as one, carrying things. The rest were supposed to bring me and
…
you three.” The way Vico spoke the words
you three
confirmed Petro’s belief that they weren’t expected to come willingly. Perhaps they didn’t even need to be alive at the High Rites.

“As a Divetri, I swear that I won’t let any harm come to you.” Petro had never meant anything more sincerely in his life. “On my honor, and on the name of my caza.”

The youth nodded, seeming to accept the pledge. “But what about her?”

“Vico.” Emilia’s voice was sharp and on edge. “You think I dislike you. What I really detest are the atrocities committed in your name. They were crimes committed by men hungry for power, not by you, and not truly for you. There is no ill will between you and me.” It was a handsome speech, but she took it further. “I swear that if any of my countrymen attempt to make you pay for deeds in which you had no hand, I’ll defend you with my life. I say that not as a guard, for as a palace guard I cannot make such promises on my own. I say it not as one of the Seven and Thirty, for I am no longer of that world. I say it simply as a Fossi, and as myself.”

“You’re marvelous,” said Petro, breathing out in admiration.

“You had best get over this infatuation if we’re going to keep working together, Divetri.” Her warning carried no real malice, however. If anything, she seemed to accept the compliment with stoic good humor.

“I know I’m nobody,” said Adrio from where he’d been listening. “But I am of the Thirty, and even if it’s of the lower Thirty, I would like to think that my voice counts for something in this matter. I don’t really know you, and you don’t know me, but if it means getting out of these ropes and away from Narciso, I’ll agree to anything.”

Vico listened to all the testimonies, then nodded. Without a single word, he unrolled the bundle he’d brought with him, revealing it to be Emilia’s surcoat. She let out a gasp of surprise and gratitude at what lay rolled within. “My weapons,” she whispered.

“I know that my hands aren’t tied like yours,” said Vico, taking the sheathed blades and setting them aside. He also set Emilia’s rucksack apart, as well as a small packet of what looked like foodstuffs and a stoppered jug of water. “It felt like they were, though. You said you were my friend,” he added, turning to Petro, “so I asked myself,
What would Petro do?
Then I gathered up all the things I thought you would tell me to gather and tried to open the tent, like you.”

That anyone should make a role model of him was astonishing. Petro turned so that the ropes around his wrists were clearly visible in the light and exposed them. “You did a good job,” he assured the boy.

The following few moments were tense as, following Emila’s orders, Vico unsheathed the poniard and sawed away at Petro’s ties. Considering how little light there was for the operation, and that Vico’s sole experience with a knife’s edge had been at hacking a two-foot gash in a stretch of tense canvas, it was probably a mercy that Petro couldn’t see exactly what was happening behind him. After several close calls, however, he felt his wrists tingle with life. The ropes slipped away, and Petro found himself pulling his hands in front of him and staring at their backs.

The wonder of his new-found freedom lasted for only a moment. Without a word he took the blade from Vico and scrambled to Adrio’s side. His friend, once relieved of his bonds, could only go limp; he rolled about on the ground, groaning as his mistreated muscles responded to their long punishment. Emilia was last, but only because Petro knew that unlike Adrio, who needed the recovery time, the guard would spring up and into action the instant the last fibers of her restraints had been sawed through.

“Ventimilla. Watch the entrance,” she ordered immediately, sending both Adrio and Petro jostling to obey her command. Not until she said, “Divetri. Take this,” did Petro recall who the real Ventimilla was. “Use it.”

When he uncurled his hands to discover what she’d placed in them, he found himself holding what at first looked like a large leather bocce ball. It was one of the mushrooms they’d picked the day before, which had lain overnight in the rucksack, slightly desiccated but still round as a fruit. “To eat?”

Emilia sighed with impatience. “Don’t you know about puffballs?” Without a word more she took it back from him and tilted back his head. “Your face is still awful. There’s blood everywhere. Close your mouth. Now your eyes.” Petro obeyed, but not before he squinted through his one good eye and caught a glimpse of Emilia breaking the fungus right above his upturned face. “Try not to breathe,” she said. “There.”

Over his face, Petro felt the lightest of sensations. Thousands of the mushroom’s miniscule spores drifted down onto his skin. Then, before he could even sputter away the thin layer close to his mouth, Emilia’s fingers followed. They deftly pushed and prodded the lightweight powder onto the bruised and wounded portions of his face, tracing over his blood-caked eyebrow and dancing over his hurt lips, until at last she grunted in approval. “That should help close them up.”

When he lowered his head, he couldn’t help but bestow upon her his daftest grin. “You care about me.”

“Divetri, you are so
young
,” is all she would say. There was genuine humor in her response, though. “If you’re done with your clumsy attempts at seduction
…
”

“Me?” His good spirits were back once more. Petro realized he might not have the sorceries of his sister at his fingertips, but wasn’t there magic in the ability to make and keep allies? For certainly that had proven more valuable this night than any mere spells. “You’re the one who can’t keep your hands off me.”

“The loyalists are planning some evil for the High Rites,”
Emilia pointed out with effortless composure. “You might disagree with me, but I think … ”

“We should go there,” Petro said, anticipating her speech. He looked at the others. Adrio nodded slowly. Vico’s face remained impassive, but he didn’t disagree. “A good guard wouldn’t run in the opposite direction of trouble. I have faith in you. We’ll discover what act the loyalists are planning, and we’ll stop it before it happens. We’re an unstoppable force.”

“An unstoppable force,” she said, shaking her head. “The wet nurse and her three suckling babes, an unstoppable force.”

He wouldn’t let her think that way. “No. The warrior,” he said, gesturing to her, and then himself. “The lover. The aspirant and the prince,” he added, including the others. “That’s your unstoppable force.”

Adrio, who had only just regained his feet, didn’t object. “We sound like cards in the taroccho deck. I wouldn’t be the aspirant, though. More like the fool.” He nodded. “I’m in. We should go to the High Rites.”

“I can help.” Vico spoke up unexpectedly. He seemed rather shy at being included in their group. If Petro was not mistaken, he was grateful as well. “Honestly. I know how to reach Nascenza.”

“How?” they all asked, anxious to know.

And thus it was they found themselves outside the tent a few minutes later, standing on a ledge only a short walk from the nearly deserted camp and overlooking a valley below. It was closer to morning than any of them could have known within that closed-up tent. The dew was so thick on the grass underfoot that it soaked their shoes as they studied the columns of smoke beginning to rise from a hundred pilgrim campfires and hearthfires. The loyalists had pitched their camp on one of the foothills above Nascenza, far from the well-traveled roads, offering an ideal vantage point to spy upon the sacred spot without giving themselves away. “Nascenza,” said Vico, offering it to them as their present. “Signor Jacobuci showed it to me when we arrived yesterday, when I was upset about my … when I was upset about something.”

“Thank you, Vico. Sincerely.” Emilia took a deep breath of the foggy morning air.

“Yes, thank you,” said Petro, putting his arm around the boy’s shoulder. “You’ve done your country a favor today.”

The blood of the boy’s traitorous father might run through him, Petro thought, but then, so did the blood of his grandfather Alessandro, a hero’s king. So did the blood of a dozen or more ancestors who had wielded the Olive Crown and Scepter of Thorn. The throne might not be a seat the boy was ever to take, but it seemed good that he should be there at this moment, aiding them.

“My country.” Vico said the words as if testing a pair of breeches, trying them on for size. At last he nodded. “My country.”

You ask why we end each group prayer with “so say we all.”
We do so not only from custom, or because it pleases the gods’ ears. There are some matters out of our own hands for which
supplication must be made as a united group.
These matters are more grave and pressing that can be
addressed through individual entreaties.

—From
A Little Catechism for New Aspirants
to the Insula of the Penitents of Lena

Four pilgrims crept into the campgrounds surrounding Nascenza that morning. Two of them were tall, two shorter and smaller in stature. All of them wore the long, gray-hooded cassocks traditional to those who set foot upon the sacred ground where, it was said, the gods had been born.
Mementos mori
decorated their chests. They crept prayerfully through the crowds, palms pressed together and pointed to the heavens, as if they were on their way to the amphitheater to join the penitents there.

Suddenly, one of the party tripped over the hem of his robe and sprawled headlong, tumbling over a sleeping pilgrim in a makeshift, single-person tent and bringing it crashing to the ground. He then banged his head against a cold kettle of old pottage. The occupant of the tent was a middle-aged man who’d been sound asleep until kicked in the ribs. He’d been so startled that once he comprehended the situation he laughed loudly, helped the boy up, and gave him an apple to show there were no hard feelings.

“Goat turds,” growled Adrio, once they were on their way. “That was embarrassing.”

“Be careful!” Petro’s heart had already been thudding hard, from the moment they’d “borrowed” their robes from among the many hanging out in the open. Here in the fields surrounding the amphitheater, hundreds upon hundreds of pilgrims had made camp for the duration of the ceremonies. Those traveling singly had pitched small, simple structures consisting of little more than oilcloth stretched with rope and peaked at the middle with wooden stakes; families or larger parties traveling together had erected larger shelters. There was little in the way of privacy here, or formality. Clothes and belongings hung everywhere, and there were no locks or keys for stores of food or other necessary supplies. Compared to whatever the loyalists were planning, stealing a few prayer robes seemed a minor transgression at best, but it still nagged at Petro’s conscience.

“My legs aren’t working as well as I’d like, from being tied up so long,” Adrio explained, catching himself before he fell again.

Now that the sun was rising and slowly burning away the fog that had hung in thick sheets, pilgrims all over the valley were rousing themselves from their slumbers and stoking the communal fires to cook their simple breakfasts. Wherever the youths passed, they looked at the faces poking from the small tents or crouching over cookfires, hoping to see a familiar set of features among them. But they met only smiles and morning greetings, as well as offers of boiled porridge or fruits or
mementos mori,
and even outright invitations to join for the morning meal.

People could be so kind, Petro realized, as he smiled and thanked perfect strangers for their offers. After so many days of watching people perform the most abominable acts in the name of their own petty goals, it was astonishing to remember that on occasion, they could also be moved to unselfish deeds. The four of them were showered with this gentle goodness, it seemed, as they picked their way across the fields.

It was at the end of the second hour, when they had walked almost an entire circuit around the encampment’s perimeter, that Adrio seemed affected by the futility of it all. “Holy hells, I never realized that this many people came to the Rites at Nascenza,” he said, pulling back his hood and wiping his eyebrow. The temperature had been rising steadily ever since sunrise, and the heat of the hundreds upon hundreds of bodies was only making them all sweatier.

“We need a different plan,” Petro agreed.

“We don’t have a plan at all.” Emilia’s countenance was a study in determination—her brow was furrowed, her eyes mere slits, and her jaw jutted forth as she ground her teeth. “That’s the problem. We don’t know what they’re planning to
do
.”

When Vico attempted to follow Adrio’s example and pulled back the hood of his cassock, Petro stopped him. It would disastrous if anyone searching for the missing prince were to see him. “Why don’t we notify the guards here?”

“Do you see guards here?” Emilia asked.

Petro had to think about Emilia’s question. He hadn’t, in fact, seen a single crimson uniform since they had set foot in the valley.

“There aren’t any,” Emilia continued. “Nascenza isn’t a town. There aren’t any inns here. No stables. No homes. No one lives here during the rest of the year. It’s just a amphitheater, set in the ground, where once a year people gather from all over the country to perform music and plays and then pray for a week. Even if Cassaforte could spare city guards, it might as well send them to every Midsummer festival in the country. There are people gathering in every village, and they can’t all be guarded. It can’t be done. And why should it? Midsummer is a night of peace.” She pinched the bridge of her nose, hard, as if fending off an impending headache. “Let’s start afresh. We’re being disorganized.”

Petro agreed. “All right. What do we know about the loyalists’ grand gesture? We know that they’re planning to make blood flow thick and red.”

“What’s that?” A pair of pudgy women, wearing very little but their shifts and scarves to tie up their hair, had been passing by them on their way down to the creek with their water jugs.

“Blood flow?” repeated the second woman, looking alarmed. She peered into the shadow cast by Petro’s cowl, then reared back at the sight of his face.

“My little brother was in a fist fight,” Emilia explained smoothly, placing her hand on Petro’s shoulder. “Over some girl.”

The second woman put down her jug and pulled back Petro’s hood to expose his puffy eye, split lip, and tender, bruised face. Though the puffball had been doing its work, everything was still painful when the woman prodded at him. “She must have been some girl.”

“That she was, signora. That she was,” Petro agreed. He flinched further when Emilia gave him a sharp pinch.

“There’s an apothecary up near me,” said the first woman. “Head that way for about forty paces and look for a plain, two-person tent with a red scarf hanging from the front pole. That’s how I mark which is ours. Then ask anyone around there to point you to Sawbones. He’ll take care of that face, boy.”

“Someone ought to,” agreed the second woman, pulling Petro’s hood back up. “Poor lad.”

“Won’t charge you nothing, neither,” said the first, hauling her water container onto her hip.

The four waited until the women had left their blessings and continued on their way. “Keep your voice down,” Emilia reminded Petro.

“I’m sorry,” he said, leading the group to a relatively unpopulated space a few paces away. The path in the tent village where they’d been standing seemed to be some kind of thoroughfare for people attempting to reach the water supply. When they were together again, he continued as if he hadn’t left off. “Obviously they’re planning some kind of massacre.”

“Which makes no sense.” Emilia continued Petro’s thought. She still was looking around as if she expected a battalion of loyalists to charge down from the bluffs surrounding the green and pleasant valley. “How many loyalists are there, compared to the number of people here? Two score at most?” Vico shrugged. “They’d be massively outnumbered by the pilgrims. And most of the ordinary people here have at least knives of some sort, and some have their own swords. No, unless there are hundreds upon hundreds of loyalists we don’t know about, they have some other scheme.”

“What about Vereinigtelände?” Adrio asked. He, too, kept giving the bluffs above a haunted look. “Couldn’t their armies attack?”

Emilia shook her head. “If the ’Landers are smart, and I think Gustophe Werner is, they wouldn’t dare be seen as a part of any incident that happened today. I’m willing to wager that both those loyalist camps will vanish by sunrise tomorrow. They don’t want anyone tracing the traitors back to them.”

“Vereinigtelände wants Cassaforte to run to them for aid, not to see them as enemies,” said Petro. His fingers played absently with the charms in his sand-filled pocket. Squeezing them for luck had become a habit over the last two days.

“Absolutely. Yet how would a few dozen rebels ever think to attack a crowd this size and succeed?”

“They wouldn’t have to kill everyone to make a point.” To Petro, it seemed bloodless and almost barbarous to be discussing death in such a way. Real people surrounded them—real people of all walks of life. Even to discuss their annihilation theoretically seemed to be inviting some kind of punishment.

“No, but they’d have to succeed at killing more than a few, if they were planning to scatter our corpses among the others.” Emilia, on the other hand, seemed to have no difficulties imagining the bloody possibilities.

“Cannonado?” suggested Adrio.

Emilia shook her head. “I didn’t see any cannonados at the camp. Nor did I see cannonado balls.”

When Petro looked at his right hand, he saw that the fingertips were discolored and almost black in color. Whatever that dirt or sand was that kept getting into his pockets, it wouldn’t go away. “I just wish we had contact with other guards.” Before Emilia could begin to bristle, Petro added hastily, “More guards mean more people at our side.”

“I’m not losing control of this situation to some power-hungry, ego-mad man.”

“Do you know what your one fault is?” Petro’s question stopped Emilia short. “It’s that you never want to ask anyone for help.”

“That would be because I don’t need help.” Almost immediately after making this statement, Emilia bit her lips. “You’re about to point out that I never would have made it this far without you, aren’t you? Or without his highness. I mean Vico.”

Petro merely smiled. He’d made his point. Adrio, feeling a little excluded, spoke up. “That’s all right. It was me you were coming after, so I don’t mind being left off the list.”

“All the protocol and punctilio in the world isn’t going to accommodate random chance,” Petro said to Emilia. He shook his head. “I might be four years younger than you, but at least I know that the only reason I’ve survived this far is because of the people I’ve met along my journey, not because of anything special I have in me. You, on the other hand, have talent to spare. It’s disgusting how good you are at what you do. Your protocol books are all very well, but think how much better a guard you would be if you mastered the unpredictable, mushy, human stuff as well. If you did that, you’d be a real leader. If you were able to gather a small contingent of guards under your command, think how impressed they’d be back home. Think how you’d impress Camilla Sorranto.”

“We don’t have any guards to command. I told you that a few moments ago,” Emilia snapped back. “Anyway,” she said, sounding slightly sulky, “what if they insisted on being in charge?”

“Fossi! You don’t
ask
to be in charge. You
take
charge.”

It felt manipulative to prod Emilia in her most vulnerable spot, but it seemed to be working. Petro could see the fire kindling once more in her eyes, even as he felt a gentle plucking at his sleeve. “Excuse me?” he heard.

When he turned, he found a small woman, more than three times his age, dressed modestly in a sand-gray cassock like his own. A wimple covered her attractive face, not a hood. “I couldn’t help but overhear. Oh dear,” she added upon seeing Petro’s face. “You look simply terrible!”