“Come down!”
He recognized the expectant note in Cat’s whine: the stupid creature was waiting for him up there. He stumbled over a pile of dirty plates to get to the ladder. His steps became slower the higher he mounted, and at the last rung he stopped altogether. He looked up warily as snow floated through the square of cold, cloudless sky. What else was up there?
Rasenna. If he could see it, it could see him. He was naked and exposed, his hand no longer hidden. They’d taken Sofia, and with her his excuse for his crimes, and without that his past loomed, a monstrous reflection.
“Starve for all I care,” he mumbled, then retreated down the ladder and crawled back under his bedsheets.
The Doctor had abandoned his perch for so long that many assumed he was dead. No one took to mourning: the quarrel with Sofia and the truth of Little Frog’s murder had sent fissures though the workshop; younger students stayed away, and older bandieratori deserted. He avoided mirrors. His shabby appearance had once been an affectation; it was no longer.
“Go away,” he growled to the knock at his chamber door.
“I need a doctor.” The girl’s tone told him that she wouldn’t leave this time.
He swore, crawled out of bed, and opened the door. “Good morning, Sister.”
“Morning was a couple of hours ago,” said Lucia.
“What can I do for you?”
“You are a doctor, aren’t you? As well as a murderer, I mean.”
“Sister, look—”
“You look!” Lucia jabbed a finger to his chest. “The Reverend Mother died to save your worthless neck. She must have had a reason—maybe it was so you could save a life worth saving.”
“Whose?”
The novice lost some of her assurance as she answered, “Someone who isn’t ready to die yet.”
Gaetano was woken by the angry hiss of snow falling on smoldering wood. He crawled out from the debris and saw the blackened shell that was all that remained of Palazzo Morello: the Dragon that consumed itself. He had been abandoned by all, but he would stay—let the snow fall as it might; he would keep a fire burning.
While clearing the fallen timbers from the workshop floor he came upon a mirror, cracked and buckled. He wiped off the ash and set it against a wall where he could see its warped reflection when practicing. When he was resting, he spent silent hours studying his new face. The scars were the climax of a career of low deeds, a liberating confirmation: finally the outside matched the inside. He would share his epiphany with Rasenna. She would see her true reflection and know her true name was Hell.
He recovered old strength with a new clarity. The weight of doubt and guilt died with his family, burned away with his home. The succession was clear. The last Scaligeri was gone, so the last Morello would rule Rasenna. He had obeyed for too long. It was time to be obeyed.
Mulling on fortune’s caprices, the Doctor walked out of the shade of the Baptistery into the bright snow-covered garden. Owning this part of Rasenna would have given him immense satisfaction once, before he’d been shown his miniature empire for the illusion it was. He’d thought himself strong, yet he had proved incapable of keeping the one promise worth keeping.
Lucia came from the chapel. “Doctor.” She had become somewhat less hostile when she saw the effect of his ministrations. The Doctor didn’t blame her for being hard on him; the Reverend Mother was the only mother Lucia had known, and in the passage of a day her whole world had changed. His sister’s death had dropped all responsibility for the Order on this slight girl’s shoulders. That might explain her obsession with saving this patient; if they could wrestle just one innocent from Death’s grasp, then the world was not completely unjust.
“How is he today?”
“Little better, still feverish, babbling all the time. He wants to make his confession.”
The Doctor rubbed his freshly shaved chin. “It’ll do him good. When the mind’s at ease, the body follows.”
“You don’t understand: he wants to confess to you.”
The Doctor frowned. “Delirious?”
“Clearly!” Lucia snapped, then continued more calmly. “But whatever miracle saved him from the buio, if this fever doesn’t break soon . . .”
“It’ll break. I’ll talk to him.”
The Doctor gave dietary instructions and reminded her to rest too. More than once he had glimpsed her shedding tears over her sleeping patient when she thought she was alone. Perhaps it was more than ordinary compassion.
In the chapel, a young novice was patting the patient’s brow with a damp cloth. The Doctor recognized the daughter of his old ally.
“He keeps asking for Sofia. I didn’t tell him she was—”
“We don’t know she is, child. Hostages are most useful when they’re alive, you know.”
“I hadn’t thought of that,” said Isabella, brightening for a moment before remembering her duties. “He’s still burning. I try to cool him down, but he soaks the water up like a sponge.”
“You’re doing a good job. Leave him with me for a while.”
He watched her go. It was good to see youth bearing tragedies that broke their elders. If they were Rasenna’s future, perhaps there was hope—for this patient at least.
“Giovanni, wake up!” he commanded.
After the Concordians left, the bridge was not empty for long. Fabbro ventured south to visit his deceased partner’s son. They left Rasenna together on what Pedro at least considered a fool’s errand.
“Maybe it is,” Fabbro said equably, “but what have we got to lose?”
Pedro couldn’t argue with that, and when they found Giovanni washed up on a bank downstream, Fabbro took it as Divine Providence.
And perhaps he was right, for that first crossing was the beginning of a flood. Under the Signoria’s watch, Rasenneisi might—would—have been more circumspect, but both Families were underground, so the Small People found reasons to cross each day, and almost immediately partnerships sprang up, both conjugal and financial, and though the results were sometimes chaotic, they were, often as not, profitable too.
It was the giddy optimism of a world starting over, and it felt wrong to hide away from it, but if nothing else, Pedro owed his father a period of mourning. He tried to find meaning in Vettori’s last words as he sat in the window of Tower Vanzetti—more cramped than he remembered—and focused his old magnifier on Fabbro. The merchant was overseeing the unloading of another shipment of wool as if nothing had changed, as if he still had a partner to weave it. Of course, Fabbro would soon find a replacement.
Some might think it strange that his father’s old partner—his old friend—just kept working, but Pedro knew it was the merchant’s way of dealing with grief. He looked around at his father’s silent looms and suddenly snapped the scope shut. Why should Fabbro find a replacement?
That morning, Pedro visited the towers of every Vanzetti worker and asked them why they had not returned to work. They told him the same thing: they had assumed there was no work to go to.
Giovanni’s eyes took a long time to focus, and his voice came from a distant place. “Doctor,” he croaked, “I need to confess.”
The Doctor laughed softly. “For what grave sin, Captain?”
“Sofia thought I was good, but I’ve got blood on my hands, Doctor. That’s why the buio didn’t take me; they recognized what I am. And now she’s—” He tried to rouse himself but fell back.
“Sofia’s alive! You’re the one who’ll die if you don’t start eating. You’re delirious; that’s what’s making you say these things.” The Doctor firmly held him down. “Listen, boy, I’ve known killers. You’re not one.”
Giovanni’s eyes fluttered, sinking under again.
The Doctor grabbed him and shook him until he became lucid. “You build bridges for soldiers to march over; that makes you an accomplice, at most. Sofia knew you better than you know yourself. You failed trying to do the right thing. I failed doing all the wrong things; be grateful you don’t live with shame like that. And remember, Luparelli saw you drown—to Concord, you are dead. I’d give anything for a fresh start like that. I’ve heard your confession. Here’s your penance: Live and help Rasenna. Are you man enough to accept?”
When Giovanni next awoke, Lucia was lighting candles around the room.
He coughed. “He thinks she’s alive.”
“It’s not possible. How can you have faith after all that’s happened?”
There was a candle in front of the window, and its flame trembled in the breeze.
“Did you know the Virgin wasn’t special, not at least in the way the Curia imagined?” Lucia said. “Her conception was soiled with Humanity, just like ours. The Lord chose her because she was strong enough to bear the responsibility—that grace made her special.”
Lucia went to the window and moved the candle. “Sofia’s strong too, Giovanni.”
When she looked at him again, he had sunk back into unconsciousness. “Madonna, give us grace,” she whispered. “We need it so badly.”