Turning the Storm (37 page)

I nodded a little.

It had grown quite dark while we talked, and I went to light a candle. “I would rather die than tell any of this to the Servi,” Lucia said. “But Clara is going to start asking around soon, and she'll know better than to rely on my testimony, or Giovanni's. Be careful. Giovanni's right. She hates you, and she's afraid of you. Please be careful.”

I nodded again, and Lucia left.

Outside, it had grown quite dark. I settled into the window seat; I could see a few stars and a sliver-thin moon. Back at the conservatory, when the Fedeli had come to investigate, Mira's secret ensemble had met and sorted out what to do—to deny, to keep our secret. I could seek out my friends at the enclave and ask them to lie on my behalf—to give each of them a consistent story to tell Clara. They would do it, I was fairly certain. I mulled over that possibility for a while, and then discarded it. The truly damaging information—that I had smuggled someone out of Cuore—was already common knowledge. I had no idea who it was who had seen me, so I couldn't very well ask them to change
their story. Clara was no idiot; she knew when she was being lied to. A unified brick wall from my friends would only convince her that I was hiding some terrible secret. The truth was bad enough, I thought, but I had no doubt that Clara could twist it into something even worse if she wanted to.

Clara came to visit me a few mornings later. I poured tea for her as she settled into a chair, her fan of black feathers flicking back and forth. With a look of grave concern, she told me that people were saying that I'd helped a mage to escape the fall of Cuore.

“Are they,” I said. Clara was toying with the jeweled cross she wore, and my own fingers strayed to Bella's cross, which I wore around my neck now on a silk cord.

“You don't seem surprised,” Clara said. “Is there something to this rumor?”

“I first heard this story a few weeks ago,” I said. “I know how gossip travels on the lips of the malicious. It's said I helped someone to escape, so naturally there are some who assume the worst.” I tightened my jaw to keep myself from spitting out my suspicion that it was Clara herself who had started the rumor that the lady I'd helped was a mage.

Clara relaxed slightly into her chair. “Then of course you'll welcome an investigation,” she said. “To clear your name.”

“For you to investigate this slander will only give credibility to it,” I said. “Is that what you want?”

“Do you have something to hide?”

“Are you going to tell me next that ‘innocence doesn't
need
to hide?’” I asked.

Clara wet her lips. “I'm not going to quote the Book
of the Lady to you,” she said. “But it does seem to me that if your conscience is clear, then you'll know you have nothing to fear from me.”

I met her green eyes. “It hardly matters whether I approve or not. You're going to investigate the story regardless.”

“It's for your sake, Eliana,” Clara said. “We can't have people believing that you, you of all people, would be planning to create your own Circle to depose the Emperor.”

Create my own Circle? Depose the Emperor
? I had turned away from Clara; now I whirled back to face her. “For the love of God, Clara, if I had intended to depose the Emperor, wouldn't I have made my bid for power
before
the Lupi were disbanded? An army would have been a hell of a lot more use to me than one mage, don't you think?”

“I agree completely,” Clara said, with a smile as full of false warmth as the midwinter sun. She stood up and put a friendly hand on my arm. “And I'm confident that's what my investigation will find.”

“You were right,” I said to Lucia over lunch. “Clara has decided she needs to investigate the rumors. Apparently now the story is that I've created my own Circle to depose the Emperor.”

“That's absurd,” Lucia said.

“Oh, I agree,” Giovanni said. “But this is a game Clara can't lose. Even if she ‘clears’ Eliana of all suspicion, the fact that Eliana was investigated at all will be reason to distrust her.”

“Do you think she knows about my friendship with Mira?” I asked softly.

Giovanni shook his head. “No. None of your old
friends have joined the Servi. Right now, Clara—and Placido, I'm sure he's in on this—are just trying to stir up suspicion and distrust. You have influence, popular support, and the Emperor's ear; if they can erode any of those even a little, it's well worth their time.”

I nodded, then lowered my eyes. Of course, the “worst” was true—I
had
saved a mage from the fall of Cuore, though not for the reasons that Clara had implied.
Maybe I should flee
, I thought. Clara was highly unlikely to send people to hunt me down. But if I did, everyone, not just Clara, would assume that I really
had
saved at least one mage, maybe more, in an attempt to create my own Circle and take power for myself. My reputation would be utterly destroyed, but more important, so would that of all my friends and allies, from Giovanni and Lucia down to the young ladies who dressed in men's clothes and refused to wed.

If worse came to worst, I thought, I could confess— that I had saved Mira because I was in love with her. I wasn't sure what punishment would fall on me for that, but I was fairly confident that at least my friends wouldn't suffer for my carelessness in allowing myself to be seen.

∗    ∗    ∗

A few days after my conversation with Clara, Flavia came by my room for a visit. Along with a fair number of the Cantatori, Flavia had remained in Cuore. As Flavia had done throughout the war, the Cantatori wore gray robes styled like conservatory clothes. Though initially the Cantatori were made up solely of musicians and dancers who had served with the Lupi or the Imperial Army, now they were attracting members who
had not joined during the war. Those who had served with the Lupi or the army belted their robes with a red sash, like Flavia had; those who had joined after the war left their robes unbelted. Flavia's sash was red wool, but in the heat of the summer she wore a linen robe rather than a wool one. I invited her in and poured wine for both of us.

We chatted first about the outposts that were being set up in the wasteland. Flavia and the other Cantatori were eager to participate but reluctant to put themselves under the control of the Servi. “We're thinking of building our own,” she said. “Do you think we'll be able to persuade the Emperor to supply us with food like he's going to supply the Servi?”

“I don't know,” I said. “Sometimes I think he doesn't like Clara any more than I do, but he often does as she says, even so. And certainly Clara won't want him to.”

“I don't understand it.” Flavia fidgeted with her wine cup. “We're talking about outposts in the
wasteland
. Why would Clara want to control something so remote, somewhere so desolate?”

“Well,
she's
not going down there,” I said. “And this is Clara: if she could control the moon and the stars, she would.”

Flavia laughed, but averted her eyes. “Speaking of Clara,” she said, her voice heavy, “she summoned me yesterday. She wanted to ask me questions about you.”

“That's not surprising,” I said. “What did you tell her? If you don't mind my asking?”

“I don't mind
you
asking,” Flavia said. Her face was red. “She wanted to know how you felt about the Circle, first of all. I told her you hated them. Everyone knew that. The story going around, that you tried to
set aside your own Circle—the only person less likely to do that, I think, would be Lucia. And I told Clara that.”

I nodded, and Flavia's flush deepened.

“So then she asked if you'd ever known a mage. I figured that I'd better not lie about this—if she already knew about Mira, she'd think you had something to hide. So I said yes, there was a mage hiding at the conservatory. Mira. We
all
knew Mira; Mira was the one who organized the first group of secret Redentori.”

“Mira didn't organize Redentori exactly,” I said. “We were just playing the music….”

Flavia waved her hand dismissively. “Mira knew what she was doing. Bella was the first one of us to really convert, but don't try to tell me that any of us were
just
playing the music. Anyway, I told Clara that, and her face—well, it was like I'd just given her a present. Eliana, I have a terrible feeling that I gave her just what she was looking for.”

She probably had, I thought, but I shook my head. “She would have found out from somewhere. You were right; if you hadn't told her I knew a mage at the conservatory, she'd have found out from somewhere, and then she'd have figured that I had something to hide, and that you were hiding it.”

Flavia shook her head. “Yeah, but I thought about it later, and who else would have told her? Celia's moved back to her family's farm, Demetrio and Nolasco went back to the conservatory, and I don't think Clara would have gone all the way down to Verdia to question them. I was afraid she already knew, but clearly she didn't. I wish I'd talked to you, before I talked to her.”

“Would you have had time?”

“Not really. But—oh, I should have come over here
when I first heard the rumor. I should have guessed that Clara—”

“How were you supposed to know?” I said. “Was that all she asked you about?”

“Then she wanted to know if you had any special connection to Mira. And I told her no, you didn't. I figured if she didn't already know you two were roommates, I wasn't going to be the one to tell her.” Flavia paused, and sighed. “She had me swear that on the cross. I did it. I figure Gèsu probably understands about lying to human scorpions like Clara.”

Valentino was the next of my friends to give Clara a piece of the puzzle. I heard about it from a thoroughly disgusted Quirino, who couldn't believe Valentino would have actually volunteered this information. “To
Clara
, of all people,” he snarled, flinging himself into the chair by my fireplace. “Valentino! After all the times the Servi went after Valentino, I would have sworn that the only way Clara would get information out of him would have involved hot irons.”

“Maybe that's what he was afraid of,” I said.

Quirino rolled his eyes. “He might have at
least
waited until they were heating them instead of spilling everything he knew as soon as Clara had him alone.”

“What did Clara ask him about?”

“The story about you, of course. Valentino fell all over himself trying to convince her that you never, ever would have freed Rosalba. ‘She was the one who turned Eliana in to the Fedeli,’ he said. ‘Eliana never would have freed her.’ Never mind that Rosalba was
dead
by the end of the war; if I know that, Clara certainly knows it and Valentino ought to have known it.”

I nodded. “Did Clara leave it at that?”

“Of course she didn't. This is Clara. She wanted to
know how Valentino thought you'd escaped from the Fedeli. He said that he'd heard that after you vanished, the Circle said it was a priest—someone like Rosalba— and the Fedeli said it was a member of the Circle. And Clara pounced on that. ‘A member of the Circle, Valentino? Think carefully: did you ever see Eliana meet with a mage?’”

I thought back—somewhat frantically—over my months in the enclave. Could Valentino have known about my meetings with Mira?

“Valentino said no, of course not. So then Clara asked about the priestess, and he said that she wouldn't have been the one who freed you, since she was the one who turned you in in the first place.” Quirino sighed. “I think that was basically the end of the conversation. Valentino said that the thing that really worried him was that Clara seemed so pleased.”

I lowered my eyes.

“Eliana?” Quirino said. “How
did
you escape from the Fedeli?”

I poured Quirino some tea, to give myself time to think about whether I should give him the honest answer, then took a sip from my own cup. “Well, you know, I think Rosalba rather regretted turning me in.” I remembered her prayer, her shaking voice, and her pale face.

“Was she the one who helped you, then?”

I shook my head. “No. Valentino was right. It was a mage, Mira.”

“Why would a mage have freed you?”

“The Circle ordered her to. They were afraid the Fedeli wouldn't be able to break me, so they planned to follow me back to where the Lupi were wintering.”

“But that didn't happen.”

“No. Mira warned me. And she told me how to defeat magefire.”

Quirino shook his head. “A mage told you that? Why?”

“That's a long story,” I said. “The short version, I guess, is that we were friends.”

Quirino went a little pale, and swallowed hard, but he nodded, and drank the rest of his tea in silence.

Ulisse was the next of my old friends to come by for a visit. He had avoided me since our victory; apparently time hadn't significantly eased his humiliation at discovering that his old drinking buddy was actually the lady he longed for, in disguise. Still, today, he seemed to have regained a little of his old confidence. “Clara was asking me questions about you,” he said as I poured him some wine.

“She's been asking lots of people questions,” I said.

“Yeah, well, she asked me—” Ulisse lowered his voice to barely above a whisper “—about
Mira
. Miriamne. The renegade mage. She wanted to know if you and Mira had had any contact while you were spying in the enclave.”

Ulisse had carried a message for Mira once—a sprig of winter jasmine that had meant,
meet me
. I knew, looking at him, that whether or not he'd known at the time, he knew
now
who he'd carried the message for.

“I told her no,” Ulisse said. “Absolutely not, you hadn't.”

I felt my face go hot and then cold. How would Ulisse have known for certain that I
hadn't
had contact? He was a student—he hadn't even lived in the enclave. To make such an emphatic denial, he had to be lying, and I knew Clara would reach the same conclusion.

“Thank you for being such a loyal friend, Ulisse,” I said softly, and let him out.

Late one afternoon a few days later, I heard Clara's voice in the corridor outside my room, and stiffened, expecting a knock. But she was not coming to see me; a moment later I heard Lucia's voice and realized Clara was speaking to Lucia, in the room next to mine. “Good day, Priestess Clara,” Lucia said, her voice very clear. “What a pleasure to see you. Please come in.”