The Nascenza Conspiracy (4 page)

“It isn’t?” Adrio asked.

Petro himself wanted to cuff Adrio. He tried to clear his throat. “Yes, Elder, I’m aware. Midsummer festivities are supposed to
…
to honor the birthplace of the gods, and to give us a chance to remember those who have passed on.”

“Correct. And every year, the elders of the Insula of the Penitents of Lena and the Insula of the Children of Muro send aspirants as representatives to the High Rites, which are held at the amphitheater of Nascenza, deep in the
pasecollina
. Our representatives are received as highly honored guests and given seats near the altar. Ordinarily, I choose aspirants who have distinguished themselves academically or spiritually. This year, due to the circumstances just elucidated, I have decided that you, Cazarrino, will be our representative.”

“But it’s boring! The High Rites in Nascenza are day after day of prayer, from sunrise to sunset!” Adrio burst out, unable to contain his upset. He composed himself almost immediately, though he didn’t moderate his comments. “There isn’t even a feast! Have a heart, Elder Catarre. Petro’s already made a new mask for our Midsummer revels! He’ll miss the midnight festival! And the throwing of the charms!”

“We’ll miss,” said the Elder, smiling.

“And the fireworks!” Between midnight and dawn on Midsummer’s night, the palace of Cassaforte always provided a wonderful array of fireworks that filled the sky with color and noise. “He’ll miss the fireworks! Wait. Did you say
we
, Elder?”

“Indeed. Our insula sends two representatives. And, given that this year the outstanding characteristic for selection is the ability to induce a splitting headache, you, Ventimilla, are the second representative.”

Adrio’s head swiveled from the Elder to Petro, then back again as the truth sunk in. “Goat turds,” he finally groaned.

“Sister Beatrize from the Insula of the Children of Muro will act as the escort for the pilgrimage, as she has for many a year,” the elder continued smoothly. “Rest assured, Ventimilla, I believe that the throwing of charms is a part of the High Rites. As for Cassaforte’s feast and fireworks, there will be other Midsummers.”

Petro was still trying to sort through his own battling emotions when Elder Catarre put her hand on his shoulder. In a confidential tone, for his ears alone, she said, “Try not to think of it as a punishment, Cazarrino. A fortnight away from the insula will encourage everyone to settle back into their normal routines. Your detractors may see the trip as your comeuppance and be inclined to leave you alone upon your return. The palace can provide you as many guards as they choose for all I care, so long as they carry their own camping supplies. There are no inns or barracks at Nascenza.”

Petro thought for a moment, then nodded. “I understand, Elder.” The alarm he had felt a few moments before had left his skin feeling as tight as a drum, but now he was beginning to feel more like himself. She was giving him the chance to have a holiday from his own reputation, which was exactly what he needed. “I honestly do. I’m very sorry.”

“And who knows,” said the elder, sounding kind for the first time in weeks. “By the time you return, perhaps your sister’s woes will have found resolution and you’ll no longer need those guards.” She smiled at him briefly, then raised her eyebrows at Adrio. “Well, Ventimilla? Don’t you have packing to do?”

“Stupid High Rites,” Adrio muttered, kicking the dirt over the broken mosaic. “Stupid Nascenza. It’s not even a proper destination! It’s just an amphitheater in the middle of nowhere!”

“If that’s your attitude, I’m certain your year-mates will be anxious to learn whether your visit to Nascenza will change your opinion of its architecture and situation. A thousand-word disquisition on the pilgrimage, I think, to be read aloud at assembly.” Adrio groaned loudly, but clamped his mouth shut to prevent any further outbursts. “As for you, Cazarrino,” Elder Catarre proclaimed, in stern tones once again, “let us not cross paths before you depart. I beg of you.”

“I won’t.” Even if he had to hide beneath his bed for three days solid, Petro swore she wouldn’t hear so much as a peep.

What one piece of advice would I give to the would-be pilgrim who never before has set foot outside the city?
It would be to keep your feet dry at all times.

—Antonio di Magretto, famed for fifty consecutive annual pilgrimages to the rites in the amphitheater of Nascenza

Exactly how angry with me are you today?” Petro asked. Instead of answering, Adrio sat down on a rock near the edge of the northward-running road known as the Great Traverse. Petro sighed and attempted to clean his feet and shins with a soaked, muddy stocking. An odd little wagon, decked with woven reeds and pulled by two horses, trundled toward them. In its back lay open crates of nuts that jumped with every turn of the wheels. The driver nodded to the boys as he passed, then turned his attention toward the Cassaforte river gates where city guards were already signaling him to stop. “There are only so many times I can apologize,” Petro added.

“Then stop.” Adrio’s reply might have been more curt than he intended. Almost immediately, he added, “None of this would be happening if it weren’t for you, you know.”

Which, more or less, was the point Petro had been attempting to make all along. Ever since Risa had been catapulted into the public’s eye, being a Divetri wasn’t all merrymaking and fun. Of all people, Adrio—his best friend since their first day in the insula—should have understood this.

Down the road, one of the two city guards at the river wall called to the wagon driver, “The road is out, signor!” From where they sat, Adrio and Petro could hear the driver reply in surprised tones, though they could not make out his words. Heavy rains for the past two days had caused the Sorgente River to rise. Here, above where the river gates tamed and dammed the Sorgente before it flowed into the city’s canals, the water seemed serene enough. But it had washed deep over the causeway, preventing travelers from reaching the northeast part of the city.

“Gods, I’m filthy,” Petro said, noticing for the first time exactly how dirty he’d become. When they’d encountered the flooded road, Petro had gladly, in the name of their friendship, removed his own footwear, rolled his breeches up to above his knees, hoisted Adrio upon his shoulders, and waded across. With both their bags banging him in the face, it hadn’t been an easy crossing. Now his legs looked as if they belonged to someone with a far deeper complexion than his own. His pants and white shirt, which had been so neat and clean when they’d left the insula a half hour before, were spattered and wrinkled. Adrio, on the other hand, looked exactly as presentable as when their friends had seen them off. “At least you’re still clean,” Petro commented, trying to sound less grumpy than he felt.

Adrio said nothing at first, but the smug way he pressed his lips together would have made anyone with less patience want to shake him. “That worked out quite well for me.”

“Most people would say
thank you
.” The Sorgente’s water was too muddy to rinse in—Petro would simply have to wait for his legs to dry so that he could scrape off the caked dirt.

“Would they now?” was Adrio’s lofty reply. From his seat on the sun-toasted stone, he gestured toward the two palace guards who stood on the other side of the flooded causeway, some twenty arm-spans away. “Aren’t your friends joining you?”

“No, Pinch-Eyes and Hook-Nose aren’t coming with us. They’re waiting to be relieved,” Petro explained. Pinch-Eyes and Hook-Nose had always succeeded Mop-Head and the Mouth Breather in the evenings, and were on duty from the time Petro went to sleep until after breakfast. He supposed he really could and should learn his guards’ actual names, but on some stubborn level he kept hoping the necessity for them would simply vanish. Yet Adrio had just referred to the guards as Petro’s friends—as if he still labored under the illusion that this escort was a privilege of rank, not a burden.

“That’s a shame. Hook-Nose is kind of pretty.” Adrio craned his neck to look at the handsome female guard. “A pretty face might make this entire ordeal tolerable.”

“Even if it’s a guard’s?” Petro teased.

Adrio’s face tensed and he turned his head away.

Petro had said something wrong, he realized—if only he knew what it was. “This trip is going to be bad enough as it is. Don’t make it worse by giving me the cold shoulder.”

“Then don’t be such a snob.”

The remark stung. It was the second time in three days that Adrio had called him that, and the accusation had no basis at all. “That’s not what I meant.”

“It’s what you said,” Adrio retorted. “My family’s closer in rank to the guards than we are to the Seven, you know.”

“I was joking. Remember how we used to joke, before you were permanently mad at me?” Ever since the elder’s pronouncement, Petro had begged Adrio to restore his usual good temper. He’d pleaded. He’d cajoled, and tried to be funny, and honestly, it was getting
tiring
. Friendships needed some maintenance, he knew, but trying to get back into Adrio’s good graces felt more like enforced hard labor.

By now, the driver had begun wheeling his cart around. The vehicle was so unusually wide, flat, and low to the ground that the boys had to stand up and move off the road to give him room to pull his team in a circle. “Damned floods,” he said to them as he passed them yet again. “Hampering a fellow’s good living. D’ye know how far I’ve got to go now? All the way around the top of the bloody city to the northwest, then down through the most of it and back up this away again, just so I can make it to the Cassamagi piazza market. Is that right for an old man like me, I ask you?”

Though the man sported a bristling silver mustache, Petro suspected that he was not as elderly as he made out nor as crotchety as he pretended. He nodded at Adrio when the boy reached out to pat the nearer of the horses, encouraging him to give the mount a scritch behind the ears. “What kind of strange cart is this, father?” Petro asked him. “I’ve never seen the like.”

The driver beamed proudly. “You’ve never seen a
zattera
, have you? Not been outside the city much?” Petro shook his head—he’d been on a few excursions, but none of them very far, and certainly not for very long. “It’s two things at once,” the man explained. “A paradox, you’re thinking? No, it’s a cart on the ground, and a raft in the water. Those hinges there?” He pointed to the joints by which the four wheels were attached. His hands formed a steeple point. “They fold up. It’s faster and easier on the team to let the Sorgente carry my load downriver as we walk beside it. The river’s deep up to the rocky falls, a spell up the road there, so once we reach the point where the
zattera
scrapes the bottom, we haul it out and finish the journey on foot. On the trip back, I have the ponies drag the
zattera
upstream. It’s a gentle current above the falls, so it’s still easier on them than pulling the full load on foot.”

“I’ve never seen the like,” said Petro. “Is it enchanted?”

The old man laughed. “Not everything clever comes from the Seven and Thirty, young signor. If this be magic of some sort, it’s the kind of magic that helps an old man of the
pasecollina
get where he needs to be a dash faster, with a mite less strain on his poor team.”

“What kind of nuts do you have?” Adrio asked, jumping up onto the cart’s lowest stair.

With pride, the driver pulled back the woolen blankets covering the bushels. “Knuckle-nuts and sweet chestnuts mostly,” he said, running his fingers through the nearest basket so that the shiny brown kernels rattled. “A few pignolis and walnuts, too. Finest nuts you’ll find in all the
pasecollina
.”

“Mighty fine,” Petro agreed. Though they’d had a good breakfast before grabbing their satchels and setting out to meet the representatives from the other insula here, the sight of the shiny hulls made his stomach rumble a little. Usually it was Adrio who’d be trying to cadge a few free nuts from a street vendor, either by pleading insula poverty or by claiming that the brothers and sisters starved them. A mischievous notion occurred to Petro. “I don’t suppose,” he said, loudly enough for Adrio to hear, “that you’d have a handful to spare for the Cazarrino of Divetri?”

“You’re the Cazarrino of Divetri?” the man asked, eyebrows raised. It struck Petro that, dirty as he was, he probably didn’t look very much like one of the lower Thirty, much less of the Seven.

“No. He is.” Petro nodded to Adrio, who looked around in astonishment. “Very hush-hush about it,” he added in a whisper. “Doesn’t like people to know. Divetri pride, you see.”

The man must have still felt a healthy dose of skepticism, because he looked over at Adrio and said, “What’s your father’s name, lad?”

Petro’s declaration had so startled his friend that he had to wink and nod to get Adrio talking. “Ero Divetri, signor,” Adrio finally sputtered. “My mother is Giulia Divetri, born of Caza Buonochio. My sister is Risa
…
”

“Eat a lot of nuts at Caza Divetri, Cazarrino?” the man interrupted. He beckoned Adrio over with a crooked finger. “I wager none as good as mine.”

“Well
…
” Adrio seemed to be asking Petro for permission to continue with the prank.

“He won’t be able to tell unless he has a sample, eh?” Petro winked at his friend. He would have said anything, at that point, to cajole Adrio out of his slump.

“Hands out then, lad!” Beaming, the man scooped up small handfuls of nuts from the baskets and deposited them into Adrio’s eagerly cupped palms. “Now, you sample those and if you like, you tell your papa where he can find more. Caza Cassamagi’s bought nuts from Magnus Costa for two generations now. That would be me. Magnus Costa,” he explained, thumping his chest with pride.

Adrio was already squirreling away nuts in every pocket. “I certainly will, Signor Costa,” he assured the man. His voice had grown louder, broader, and more confident now that he was working himself into the charade. “I have no doubt that my father—the Cazarro—will find them pleasing. And I will be certain to tell him that Signor Costa has the biggest nuts I have ever seen.”

Involuntarily, Petro snorted. Magnus Costa didn’t notice. “I would be honored, son,” he said, nodding and trying to bow from his seated position.

Adrio was enjoying himself now. “In fact,” he continued, “I am certain that with one recommendation from me, the entire Divetri family will be feasting upon your nuts.” Again, Petro had to stifle a laugh. Signor Costa was tipping his hat now, so unaware of the joke that the playing of it seemed almost too cheap. “Devouring your nuts, in fact.”

“Is that right?” asked the old man, tugging at the triangle of silver hair hanging from his chin. “Think of that. Caza Divetri itself!”

“All in awe of your magnificent nuts,” agreed Adrio, in somber tones.

Petro decided that Adrio had taken the name of Caza Divetri in vain enough for the day. “All right, Cazarrino,” he told him, pulling Adrio down from the step. “Let Signor Costa go already. He has a lengthy trip this morning.”

“Farewell, signor!” called Adrio, as the horses began the last leg of their journey. “In their capable hands, may the gods clasp both you and your marvelous n—mmmmphf!” Petro, his hand smothering Adrio’s mouth, was almost certain that Adrio would whirl around and swat him, but once Adrio had freed himself, he merely whooped with glee. He positively crackled with energy as he dug into his pocket to pull out some of the knuckle-nuts. Their thin, acornlike shells crackled between his fingers as he squeezed their contents into his mouth. “Holy moons, Petro!” he said, rattling his pockets as if they contained lundri. “I told you!”