Turning the Storm (26 page)

Quirino groaned. “With wine. Lots of it. ‘She must think I'm such a fool,’ he said. Again and again.”

“I have to admit that it was hard not to laugh when Ulisse got misty-eyed at the mention of my name, but how was he supposed to know? If Ulisse had been able to figure it out, someone else would have, too. And I was trying pretty hard to avoid that.”

Quirino nodded. “Still, I wish I'd known. I'd have helped you in any way I could.”

“I couldn't put you in that sort of danger.”

“Valentino's here, too,” he said.

“Despite Clara?”

Quirino shrugged. “She seems to have dropped her grudge. Go figure. I'm sure it's just a matter of time be
fore Valentino gets himself in trouble again. Ulisse's gone to join the Lupi. I think he's planning to disguise himself, to avoid humiliation.”

“As a girl? Oh, don't tell me. I don't want to know. Quirino—” I gave him a sideways look. “There
is
a way you can help me now. We need musicians.
Lots
of musicians …”

∗    ∗    ∗

Giovanni and I left in late morning. More dust-covered and saddle-sore nobles had arrived, some accompanied by guards, others by servants. Clara and Michel were finding room for them in the barracks; another building would be needed soon. As I made my way through the crowd, a bony hand gripped my arm. A chill ran up my spine, and I turned. “Amedeo,” I said.

“Watch yourself,” the madman said distractedly, jabbing my arm with his long fingers. “Clara, she's trouble. Placido, he's trouble too. Watch yourself.”

“You think I need a prophet to figure
that
out?” I said. “Thanks, old man. I knew that already.”

Amedeo nodded vigorously. “You do know, you do. What did I tell you? You don't need me—you can see clearly for yourself, if you open your eyes.” He stepped in close to me, gripping his hands into fists. I started to draw back, but he laid his fists gently over my heart. “Two hearts beat here, Eliana. Two hearts beat in your breast: one for your cause, one for your friends. Sooner or later, you'll have to choose. Be ready.” He dropped his hands and walked away.

G
iovanni and I were spotted by one of the perimeter guards as we rode in toward the Lupi camp. He had been lying just at the crest of one of the brown hills, his dirty tunic and trousers barely visible against the dust. He stood up and came running down the hill to meet us. It was one of the Lupi who had disappeared after the defeat near Pluma a few months earlier, returned now that victory seemed possible. Back in the heart of the camp, Lupi were lining up for their evening meal. Lucia greeted me with a warm embrace, and Giovanni and I told her about our trip to court over tea in my tent.

As I stretched out that night under my blankets, I found myself thinking about the conservatory. Flavia and Celia were probably still there; they'd be almost ready to graduate. Domenico, my teacher—undoubtedly still there. I wondered if they ever thought about me, if they had any inkling that the Eliana in the ballads (I was certain that the ballads had found their way there) was me. As word started to circulate that the Lupi needed
musicians, it was possible that some of them would come join us. Flavia, at least; I thought that Flavia might.

Lucia was already asleep; I heard her murmur something in the dark and turn over. But Giovanni, on the other side of Lucia, wasn't snoring yet. “Giovanni,” I said softly.

“Yeah?” He rolled over to face me.

“What do you think the Circle and the Fedeli will do when they get word that we're recruiting musicians?”

There was a pause, and then a long sigh. “They'll probably round up all the musicians they can find and hold them in Cuore ‘for their own protection.’ They may not really understand yet how we do what we do, but if we're looking for musicians, they'd be idiots to assume that we were looking for after-dinner entertainment.”

“We'd better send messengers tomorrow,” I said.

“Good idea,” Giovanni said, and settled back into his blankets.

I heard Giovanni begin to snore a few minutes later, but I still couldn't sleep. What if something happened to the messenger I sent to my old conservatory?
Very well then
, I thought.
I'll send two. Three
. I tried to imagine my own reaction to the message. Would I have grabbed my violin and headed for the wasteland? I liked to think that I would have. Certainly Bella would have, and thinking it over, I decided that even without Bella there, even without Mira, I'd have gone to join the ragtag army to the south. Flavia, too. But Celia? How would Celia respond to the message from a stranger? And Domenico? I desperately wanted my old teacher to join us, I realized. What if he didn't believe that the Eliana behind the message was me?

Very quietly, I got up and dressed. I would have to
go myself.
It won't take long
, I thought. A few days to ride there, a few more days to walk back. Celia and Flavia would come if I asked, and Domenico; maybe a few others. I could handle this. The Lupi might be gathering to my banner, but I'd returned only recently from Cuore and they were quite capable of functioning without me. But I didn't think Giovanni would see it that way—or Lucia—so I dashed off a quick note and left them sleeping in their beds. Within the hour, I was riding east. The moon was waxing and nearly full, and my horse cast a faint gray shadow in the moonlight.

Giovanni caught up with me an hour later, furious. I wheeled my horse around to face him. “You must have woken up right after I left,” I said.

“What in hell do you think you're doing?” he demanded.

“I'm riding to the Verdian Rural Conservatory,” I said.

“You're needed with the Lupi.”

“You all did just fine without me while I was in Cuore. This is only going to take me a week or two. Giovanni,
I
need to carry the message. The musicians at the conservatory know me. They trust me.”

“Actually, when you're carrying an unpopular message—and trust me, Generale, this is going to be a
highly
unpopular message, ‘join us or sit in prison in Cuore’—it's usually best if they
don't
know you.”

“They're my friends,” I said. “I'll know what to say to convince them to come.”
And I have to at least try to protect them
.

“You couldn't have woken me up to discuss this with me before you took off?”

“I knew you'd make trouble.”

“I should have brought your bodyguards to drag you back.”

“You think they would?”

“I could ride back now and get them, and give it a try.”

“You'll never catch up with me again if you do.”

Giovanni met my eyes in an exasperated glare, then shrugged and looked away. “Then I'm coming with you,” he said. “You're not doing this without someone to protect you.”

It would have been pleasant to retrace my steps exactly—to pass through Doratura and visit Giula and Rafi, then through all the towns to revisit the families who had offered me hospitality on my way home from the conservatory, but it would have been far too risky. We would ride east through the wasteland, and then due north, or close to it, to reach Bascio.

We spent that first day riding across wasteland hills, stopping occasionally to rest on the hard brown earth and to feed the horses (we had three, since I had brought a pack horse). I wished that I could have done this entirely alone: Giovanni couldn't always be trusted to make a good impression. And I so desperately wanted to convince everyone at the conservatory to come with me.

The weather was dry, thank goodness, and my nightmares stayed away even after we crossed out of the wasteland. We had to spend one night in fertile territory, and it was a part of Verdia that was too thickly settled for us to camp discreetly. We would attract curiosity and suspicion, riding north from the wasteland, but we would attract far more if we skulked in the woods instead of asking for hospitality. We asked at an isolated farm, and were greeted with wide, nervous eyes; clearly, they knew we were Lupi, sashes or no sashes. Giovanni went out of his way to be charming at dinner, but the entire family seemed to be afraid that if they said
the wrong thing, we were going to pull out knives and cut all their throats. There was an awkward pause at the beginning of the meal, and it occurred to me afterward that this was probably a family that made the offering to the Lady, and that they were too afraid of us to do it. It made me sad to realize this. If they wanted to make the offering, I certainly didn't mind waiting a few extra moments to eat, but I was too nervous to think to say anything until it was too late. Giovanni and I slept in the attic of the stable, with the sacks of apples, onions, and turnips the family had stored for the winter, and traded off watches.

During the long, dark hours of my watch, I tried to plan what to say when I spoke to Flavia and Celia.
Think of Bella
. That would be the point to hammer on, unless Celia had managed to justify Bella's murder to herself out of her own loyalty to the Lady, in which case I wasn't sure I wanted to recruit her anyway.
The famine was caused by magery; everything the Fedeli did here, everything the Circle has done since then, has been to cover this up. They don't want us to know what magery does, and they don't care how many people die to conceal their secret. Think of Bella—one more death was nothing to them. Bella was on the verge of discovering how to do the old sort of magery. If it had been you, it wouldn't have mattered if you'd fallen to your knees and sworn eternal fidelity to the Lady. They'd have found some excuse to cut your throat, just like they did to Bella
.

Flavia will come, I thought. Domenico will come. I was less certain about Celia.

It was still quite early when we reached Bascio the next day. “I remember this town,” Giovanni said.

“What do you mean?”

“I came here to spread that song, The Wicked Stepmother. I was only here a few hours, though.”

“That was you? My friend Bella saw you come in. And, it was my teacher you sang to. I think I told you, though, we never did figure out what it was about.”

Giovanni shrugged. “If we'd made it explicit, it wouldn't have been a very good song, would it? ‘La la la, don't do magery. La la la, that's what created the wasteland.’ Not to mention the fact that the Fedeli would have hanged everyone they heard singing it.”

“How long did it take them to figure it out?”

Giovanni grinned with a great deal of satisfaction. “I set out in early autumn spreading it. They figured it out … oh, sometime after Viaggio.”

“We thought maybe the Fedeli had written it, and the poison honey referred to a heresy.”

“You actually thought the Fedeli would be that creative?”

“Hey, until they showed up at Mascherata, none of us had ever actually
met
a Fedele. Except for Mira. And she didn't object to the theory.”

“Mira must have known what the song was about. She just didn't want to tell you.”

“I'm sure you're right.”

Bascio was located on a hill, and the conservatory was at the very top of the hill; the road wound around the hill like gut around a tuning peg. I could see the Bascio townspeople coming out of their homes to check us out, but they were used to strangers coming through because of the conservatory, and we attracted curiosity but not suspicion.

The conservatory gate was closed when we reached it; on the other side, I saw the Dean of the conservatory, Biagio, and a group of teachers, including my
old teacher Domenico, and Nolasco, Bella's teacher. Domenico's eyes went wide when I threw back my hood, then he turned to Nolasco. “I told you we'd see Eliana again before long,” he murmured as I dismounted. Beyond them, farther up the hill, I could see clusters of gray-robed students. We had been watched; we were being watched now.

I handed the reins of my horse to Giovanni and walked up to the gate. “Can we come in?”

“What if we say no?” Dean Biagio said sharply. “Will you batter down our gate and enter by force?”

“Does it look like we brought our army? Unless you've been building up your wall, we
could
just walk around to the back and hop over it. That's what Bella and I did when we went to Bascio on a dare.”

The touch of humor worked. Dean Biagio smiled a little in spite of himself, and I hoped he was thinking,
well, so it is our old Eliana, and not some strange Maledore with her face
. He swung open the gate, and gestured for a servant to come take our horses. “Come, both of you,” he said. “Whatever it is you're here to say, we'll discuss it in my study.”

I could see gray-robed students watching me from windows as I followed the Dean; I shaded my eyes to try to see faces, to see if I recognized anyone, but I couldn't make them out. Inside, the flagstone floor was cold under my boots. As we turned down the corridor that led to the Dean's study, I saw a student flatten herself against the wall to get out of our way and realized it was Flavia. But no flicker of recognition crossed her face; she was looking at Giovanni, not at me, and he clearly made her nervous.

The Dean's study was warm and smelled strongly
of toasted bread and fresh tea; I could see a steaming cup on the edge of his desk, placed by one of the servants. His desk was clean and neat, and his shelves were stacked with musical scores, some brown with age. Along the back wall, there were instruments held neatly on racks: a lute, a violin, a flute, a drum. His window was glassed in, and the winter sunlight caught the dust flecks that spun up in the air when he sat heavily down on the cushion on his chair.

“Sit,” Dean Biagio said to Giovanni and me, gesturing at the two chairs facing his desk. Domenico closed the door and took a seat off to the side. “We know you are the leaders of the Lupi,” he continued, his voice heavy. “Why have you come here?”

“We need musicians,” I said.

“By ‘we,’ you mean the Lupi, of course.”

“I mean all those in the service of Emperor Travan. Lupi and Imperial Army both.”