The Nascenza Conspiracy (9 page)

Petro paused to let that sink in his friend’s foole-soaked brain. After a moment, Adrio pinched his mouth shut. In the quietest voice he had, he said, “That wouldn’t be a bad thing.”

It was Adrio’s absolute lack of emotion that stunned Petro the most. “You do know what you’re saying?” he asked. “Or are you letting the foole talk for you?”

“It’s not the foole.” Word by word, Adrio was closing himself off. Petro could sense his companion drawing away from him, although he didn’t move an hair. “You obviously think you’re so much better than me. You can go to hell.”

Again, the utter lack of emotion convinced Petro that Adrio meant what he said. He shook his head and began to rise. “This stupid charade has gone too far.”

Sensing that Petro was about to disavow that responsibility, Adrio sat up and pointed his finger. “You’re the one who started it, pushing me forward to sign Brother Narciso’s book.”

“Fine.” Petro hated knowing Adrio was right. “Then I’ll be the one to end it.”

“I’ll tell everyone it was your idea.” Adrio seemed desperate now. “You’ll be the one getting into trouble. Not me.”

Petro’s voice rose in pitch. “Do you think I care about that? With my best friend—with you hating me? You actually think a punishment is the first item on my mind?” He shook his head and prepared to walk away from the table. “You’re the one who can go to hell. Tomorrow, once we’re clear of this place, I’m telling Narciso the truth.” He didn’t want to think about the consequences. Not now. They couldn’t make him feel more awful than he did at that moment. “He’ll know before we reach Nascenza.”

“Fine,” spat Adrio. “See what happens to you then.”

“Fine. I will.” There really seemed nothing more to say. Was this how friendships ended, then? Years too easily shucked away, without a thought, without premeditation? It ought to have hurt more. “Have some more foole. Stuff your face. Enjoy your guards and your last night of being a Divetri.”

Scarcely had his feet touched the stairs up to the rooms when he heard Adrio shouting out to the card players, “Deal me in, good fellows! I’m feeling the luck of the gods on my side tonight!” There was a hearty whoop of laughter. Sounds of revelry followed, but the thick oak door to the room that Petro and Amadeo were sharing with Adrio shut them out. The feather mattress collapsed with a mighty whoosh of air as Petro fell upon it, clothes, boots, and all.

He had a hard time falling asleep. It wasn’t just Amadeo’s thick and raucous snores, or the lumps of an unfamiliar mattress. In his head, he replayed the argument. Stepping through it time after time made it seem like well-tread territory. How odd, that a simple signature could ruin a friendship of four years. One silly prank gotten well out of hand.

Somewhere in the wee hours of the morning he must have managed to shut out the dim sounds of the drinking downstairs, for he awoke with a start; how much later, he didn’t know. Some terrible sound had awakened him—a mighty thump on his door that left his every muscle frozen and frightened.

Once his eyes were open, he couldn’t be certain it wasn’t something he’d dreamt. Petro shivered and listened. He could still see a thin line of light from the candle lamp flickering in the hallway, so he knew he could not have slept for long. Amadeo still snored away.

“Ad—Petro?” Petro asked the darkness, but he heard no reply.

He attempted to pad quietly to the door, and already was regretting not having taken off his boots to sleep. His feet felt like stumps. “If you’ve come to beg, it’s too late,” he said sleepily through the door. “I’m still telling Brother Narciso in the morning.” He received no reply, so put his hand on the doorknob and twisted. “There’s no use—”

Like a tree chopped in its prime, a body fell forward with a crash as the door swung inward. The door hit the wall with such force that it shuddered on its hinges, but Petro couldn’t move. The body belonged to the Bearded Lady. His entire face and mane of hair were covered with a wet, sticky liquid that filled the air with a sharp scent. As his corpse hit the floor, blood—and plenty of it—gushed freely from the carving knife thrust between his shoulder blades.

“Murder.” Petro choked the word out, then clasped his hand to his mouth to prevent himself from becoming sick. The blood was everywhere in the hallway, gleaming dark and sinister. “There’s been a murder!” he tried to gasp out, though the sound did not come.

Then he remembered that here and now, under this roof, was the last place he wanted to call attention to himself.

Naught that is good comes from the hills.

—A common saying of the Cassafortean pasecollina

When the door opposite his opened with a mighty creak of its hinges, Petro’s lungs rasped in a long and painful breath. He hunched his shoulders and widened his eyes, prepared to flee at the sight of an enemy. But the figure who loomed out of the darkness was only Elettra, pale and thin in her gown, and rubbing at the side of her face. “Adrio?” she asked, trying to blink the sleep from her lids. “What are—?”

“Don’t scream,” Petro begged her in a hoarse whisper. Urgently, he said, “Elettra, whatever you do, don’t scream. Don’t make a noise.” Her eyes opened wide as she saw the body on the floor between them. Endless seconds passed as she came to realize that the Bearded Lady’s body was not some nightmare, but real. Like Petro had, she slapped both her hands over her mouth to keep any noise from coming out. “Good. That’s right.”

At first Petro thought it was his imagination, but he was sure he kept hearing the sound of a steam kettle. Its thin, high-pitched whistle grew louder and louder until he wheeled around to see Amadeo standing behind him in his nightshirt. His jaw had dropped and his mouth formed a long O. The shrill rattle from his throat grew louder and louder, until at last Petro lunged at him and clamped a hand over his mouth. “Be quiet,” he warned. Amadeo’s eyes darted from side to side, trying to look anywhere other than at the corpse in front of him. “Amadeo,” Petro ordered, growling in his ear, “you’ve got to be quiet.”

He didn’t know where this great reserve of calm came from, or these swift decisions he kept making. Beneath his hand he felt a steady, unending vibration as Amadeo’s keenings became an outright scream. The boy’s teeth dug into Petro’s palm, but still he hung on. “Elettra, get some clothes on, quick as you can,” he whispered, hoping that she could hear him above the pounding of his own heartbeat. She nodded and disappeared back into her own room. “Amadeo, I’m going to let go now. Can you keep silent?”

Having run out of breath, with Petro’s hand inadvertently blocking his nostrils as well as his mouth, Amadeo nodded wildly. Petro let loose his mouth and stood back as the boy panted. “Now listen,” he instructed. “I’m going downstairs to see what’s going on. While I’m gone, I want you and Elettra to put on some clothes and—” He blinked. Amadeo had stopped listening and was staring again at the bloody body sprawled in their room. Before Petro could stop him, his mouth opened once more. Petro managed to cover Amadeo’s lips with only a second to spare. “Stop that!” he growled, frustrated beyond belief. “Whoever killed him might still be around.”

It was the wrong thing to say. Thankfully, the pressure from Petro’s hand muffled the blast from Amadeo’s lungs that followed, so that it was but the faintest of noises. If so much as a peep of that mighty howl had escaped, anyone left in the inn would have come running. Petro pushed Amadeo back from the door—further and further back into the room until the boy’s spine pressed against the wardrobe.

“Amadeo!” huffed Elettra, from the doorway.

Petro turned. In the dark, Elettra had somehow managed to stuff herself into some highly practical traveling breeches and a light leather jerkin, as well as her walking shoes. “He’s hysterical,” he whispered to her.

“Let me.” Elettra marched across the room and, without warning, hauled off and smacked Amadeo’s cheek with the flat of her hand. It almost looked as if she’d been wanting to do just that for a long, long time. Petro lost his grasp on Amadeo’s mouth when Elettra’s well-aimed blow smashed his fingertips.

Luckily, the slap also brought Amadeo to his senses. “Ouch!” he complained, quite reasonably.

“Shush!” she told him, jabbing her finger in the direction of the body. “Not a peep more out of you!”

“Get him dressed,” Petro ordered, his hands at the ready in case Amadeo began howling again. When it seemed as if the boy had himself under control, he relaxed, but only slightly. “I’m going to see what’s happening downstairs.”

“You’re not—!”

“I have to!” he responded. They couldn’t stand around talking indefinitely. “Ad—Petro was down there,” he explained. “He never came to bed. I have to go look for him.”

“And Brother Narciso,” said Elettra.

“And Brother Narciso,” agreed Petro. He hadn’t liked the priest, but it would be awful if anything had happened to them.

“They might be all right.” Elettra didn’t sound hopeful. “May the gods hold them in their hands,” she added, in a wisp of sound. Then she turned her back and swatted at Amadeo. “You’re supposed to be getting dressed,” she scolded. “Stop looking at
…
at that. You’ve seen bodies before. We lay wreaths for them during funerals at the insula. It’s no more than that.”

It seemed considerably more than that to Petro, as he edged his way around the dead guard. Somehow he didn’t think that insula funerals involved such terrible wounds or the tide of blood that had risen where the Bearded Lady lay. It gleamed across the floor in the candlelight from the hall, intersected by long, straight canals with rounded edges where it had seeped between the boards. Elettra was attempting to frame the guard’s death in a more approachable manner, which probably made it easier to think about than the brutal reality. Petro dealt with it by taking a giant step over the area covered in blood and not looking at the corpse, nor at the carving knife still protruding from it.

There was a wooden staircase in the insula dormitoriums that, when climbed in the middle of the night, rang out as loud and thundering as a ball shot from a cannonado. He had been taught very early on, during a run to the privies in the middle of the night, how to minimize the noise by keeping his feet at the edge of the stairs. Instinctively he did so now, as he crept down from the second story to the common rooms below. Making that simple journey down the stairs felt like the bravest thing he’d ever done.

It was still impossible to tell the time of night from the inky black outside. Downstairs, the lamps were low, as if the last patron had left hours before. The fire that had been burning brightly was now a pile of smoking ash prickled with red from the embers hidden within. He didn’t know exactly what he was looking for, though several possibilities came to mind. Finding Adrio safe and unharmed was foremost in his mind. Perhaps he could find out a clear route of escape for them all. Maybe there was an outside chance he might find the other guard, or Brother Narciso, or someone, anyone who could help them. No one was downstairs, though. The inn’s common room was empty.

Or so Petro thought, as he glided as silently as possible across the floor. Then, without warning, a bundle of shadows behind the counter took shape and moved forward. Petro’s panicked brain at first thought of phantoms or night wraiths, so dire and haunted was the face of the figure before him. When it stepped into the flickering lamplight, however, the figure proved to be Colleta, the inn’s mistress. Her head was veiled with black cloth, making her stout face all the more ghostly.

“Which one of you?” she rasped, her voice hoarse as if she’d been yelling for hours. “Which one of you?”

Though her dress was as black as her veil, something was wrong with its front. Parts were stiffer and shinier than the rest, as though they’d been intricately beaded in some random pattern. Her hands clutched at a portion, twisting it between her fingers.

“Padrona Colleta,” said Petro, taking a step backward. His hand searched for a chair, or a table, or anything that might help him keep his balance, for his legs felt made of jelly.

“He told me to spare one,” she whispered. Her eyes were wild. “To spare one of you young ones. Laughed at me, when I said I couldn’t even swat a fly. Who wrung the chicken’s necks when it was time for dinner? Never me. He knew that.” Petro didn’t know exactly what she was talking about, but there was madness in her eyes. Her pupils darted back and forth, across the common room to Petro, to the stairs, and back again, dancing everywhere but seeming to see nothing. “But which one? The girl? Simply because of her sex? Why, so she can grow up to a life like mine?” She laughed bitterly. “The little prig? Or the strong one, because he’d run home the fastest?”

“Padrona.” Petro tried to keep his voice level, as if soothing a snarling animal with a bristled back. For every step she advanced, he moved further back. He hated to think what might happen when he ran out of steps to take. “There’s been an accident. One of the
…
” He caught his breath. The woman’s hands were red, where she had been rubbing at her dress. “You’re covered in blood.”

The padrona wiped at the splatters caking the front of her garb. “It won’t come out in the wash, that,” she said, seeming as horrified as himself. “They told me it was easy, killing a man. Said it felt like cutting a melon. Well, no melon has bones. No melon damn well yanks off your arm when it tries to run.” She rubbed her wrists. “And killing a child, two children
…
how is that to be any the easier?”

The more he heard, the greater dread he felt. Petro swallowed hard and tried to keep his voice calm. “Where is my friend? Where is Petro?”

“Gone,” she said.

“Is he alive? Where is he, Signora?”

The question seemed to snap her back to reality. “Of course he’s alive. What use is a dead Divetri to my brother?”

Petro’s blood chilled. Until that moment, he’d some notion that their party was victim to some sort of attempt to bilk them of what very little money they had brought on the journey. The sound of his surname, though, spoken so casually in the dark, was more sinister than the sight of any carving knife. Desperately he began to spin a tale. “Petro
…
he told you he was a Divetri? He was lying, Signora. He’s known to be a liar. He likes to impress people, so he tells them fibs, to get drinks and attention
…
”

“They knew who he was before he came to Campobasso,” she snapped. Her ire seemed aroused. “Loyalists aren’t fools.”

Loyalists
. There was that word again. Petro felt as if he’d been plunged into the deepest and iciest point of the Sorgente, well over his head. His immediate goal, however, was to keep the woman talking. “Your brother’s a loyalist? Where has he taken Petro Divetri?”

“North,” she said, jerking her head in that direction. “Where I’ll have to go now. All the work of my life, gone overnight, for my brother’s fool cause.”

“Where is Brother Narciso?” Petro asked, hoping to distract her.

“That sanctimonious viper?” she spat. “Why should you care about him? That mealy-mouthed viper is with them.” Silently, Petro prayed that the priest was at least in a position to protect Adrio, wherever they were. The woman’s small eyes focused back upon him. “My life is over. How can I stay here, once they learn back in Cassaforte of what we’ve done? Should it be you who returns? Or one of them?” She gestured to the foot of the stairs. Elettra and Amadeo stood there, listening. Amadeo’s nightshirt had been stuffed into a pair of trousers. Petro hoped to the heavens that he didn’t began yelling again.

“All of us,” he implored. “Let us all go, Signora.”

“That wasn’t part of their plan. I was to spare only one,” she said, sounding uncertain. Her hands stopped toying with the blood-soaked material of her gown and disappeared beneath the fabric. When they reappeared, one of them clutched something sharp that shone in the light. It was a fish-knife, used for gutting and deboning. With its extra ridges for removing entire skeletons, it looked even more lethal than any carving knife, despite being only half the size. “We’re all a part of the plan. A little cog in the machinery of some Cassamagi creation.” She lifted her head and laughed, loud and long. “That’s what Simon used to call us. Little cogs. Doing what we can, all for a seat at the table. They promised us a seat at the table, you know.”