Assassin's Heart (20 page)

His eyes widened and showed a touch of that rage I had witnessed before. “You were fraternizing with the Da Vias? Did your parents know?”

I exhaled, trying to tread carefully. He could explode again. Throw his glass into the fire and scream his rage once more.

“No. I hid it from them. There was no love between us and the Da Vias. I think my father had tried to buy peace between us when I was younger, but it didn't work.”

He took a breath. “Dante was always something of a fool, though maybe he'll have more wisdom in his new life.”

I bristled. “Don't speak of my father that way.”

Marcello smirked. He opened his mouth to counter but then seemed to deflate. “I suppose you are right. It does me
no good to speak ill of the dead, even if they brought about their own demise.”

“My father didn't bring about his death. The Da Vias did.” And me. My fault.

He rubbed his forehead, smoothing out the lines, before he ran his fingers through his hair. “What do you know about me, Lea? How did your father speak of me?”

This was an odd turn of conversation. “He didn't speak of you. Only my mother did, and that was to tell us to never bring you up.”

He nodded slowly. “Your father was a great many things. He was my brother and I loved him, but sometimes he believed in peace too much, saw the good in people even when it was nothing more than a mirage. It was your father's misplaced belief that the Da Vias could be reasoned with that led to the death of your Family.”

“No.” I shook my head. “I don't believe you. What could you know of it anyway?”

“What could I know of it? Everything.” He settled in his chair, his hair resting against his shoulders. “The Da Vias killed the Saldanas because of me.”

HIS WORDS WERE A SLAP TO THE FACE. HE WAS RESPONSIBLE
for the Da Vias' attack on us? That couldn't be true. “I don't . . . I don't understand.”

“When I was younger, much younger, I was married to Estella Da Via, as you know. It was not a marriage of love. It could not be, from me, but the heads of our Families wanted a child from our union, of Saldana and Da Via lineage, and peace between us, if only for a time, and I was nothing if not obedient.”

He shifted in his seat. “No child came, even though the years passed as they do. And any ease between us rotted away until the core was nothing but resentment and blackness. And so I found someone else.

“He was a Maietta, and he was beautiful and full of grace and wit, and never before had I loved someone so well.”

My uncle's eyes sparkled as he remembered his long-ago lover.
The memory smoothed his face, made him appear younger.

“We kept it secret, of course. I was married, and the head of the Saldanas, my uncle Gio, was not tolerant of men who desired other men. But they found out, of course. My wife. My Family. Such anger from them all. My wife blamed me for the lack of child she'd been promised. Of course, how could she know who was to blame? Sometimes children are not born to a married union, and it is the way of Safraella. And I don't think our scarcity of love for each other helped.

“I blamed her for wasting some of my best years, for sinking her talons in and dragging me into the dark pit she had created. It was she who had driven me elsewhere. I refused to reconcile. No threats from her Family or mine would make me turn away from Savio.”

He rubbed his jaw with the palm of his hand, lost in the tale. I thought about how it must feel, to love someone so well but to be told to turn away from them. I'd kept Val a secret purely because of that reason. But maybe it hadn't been love between us, or at least on his part. Not if he could betray me so easily. Maybe I didn't really understand true love, like Marcello described. Maybe love was less about feeling wanted and beautiful and more about feeling safe.

I glanced at Les, asleep on his bed.

“I don't know who planned it,” my uncle continued. “Probably my wife. I do know, though, that it was her brother, Terzo, and my uncle Gio who murdered Savio. They didn't even try to disguise it. There were witnesses,
and they were in Maietta territory.

“I'd never felt such pain. And anger and grief. And never since. My uncle Gio thought that would be the end of it. That by removing Savio, he had effectively ended the problem. So confident was he that when I approached him in our home it never occurred to him I'd come to kill him.

“It was much easier than I thought it would be, spilling the blood of my family. Truly, I felt nothing. And I certainly felt nothing when I killed Terzo, my wife's brother.

“After that, things were a little . . . complicated.” He waved his hand in the air. “Dante took over as head of the Family. The Da Vias felt their honor had been damaged, and the Maiettas were calling for a blood price for the death of Savio. I probably would have left on my own if Dante hadn't disowned me. There was nothing left for me anyway.

“As far as I know,” he said, “Dante paid the Maiettas their blood price.”

A blood price to the Maiettas would have been a large sum of money. Maybe that was where much of the Saldana fortune had disappeared to.

“I'm sorry,” I said.

He paused and appeared taken aback. “For what?”

“For Savio. For the way you were treated by people who should have loved you and stood by you no matter what.”

He grunted. “Yes, well. Family before family, of course. There was no real way to ease the Da Vias' anger. They are quick to cast blame and slow to forget. Even if Dante tried to smooth things over, I don't see how that would have
worked. Estella felt I had personally shamed her, and nothing less than my head would've appeased her. She blamed Dante for letting me leave instead of turning me over to them. And then she started to blame Safraella.”

“Estella Da Via is a lunatic,” I said. “And now she's the head of the Da Vias.”

“That's unsurprising. She was not all that stable when I left. I heard she never did produce any children, to her eternal shame.”

“How did you hear that? And how did you know my name and know of my brothers? We weren't even born.”

“Your mother sent me letters, sometimes. Though none in recent years.”

“
My
mother? Bianca Saldana?”

He rolled his eyes. “Unless you have another mother I don't know of, then yes.”

This . . . this flipped my world upside down. My mother had sent letters to Marcello Saldana, who we were told never to speak of. Who had brought shame to the Family. “Why would she do that?”

“We were friends. I was glad when she married Dante and joined our Family. I had great love for Bianca and my brother. It opened a wound I thought long healed to hear of their deaths at the hands of the Da Vias.”

“Then why do you refuse to help?” I leaned forward. “Come with me! You know what it's like to need vengeance. You took yours but now stop mine. Give me the location of the Da Via Family home and we can make them pay for
what they've done to our Family. I will make sure they never forget the Saldanas!”

“At the cost of your own life, you mean?”

I leaned back. “If need be. I'm not afraid to die.”

He laughed. “No, of course you're not! You're, what, seventeen? And a
disciple
of Safraella. I'm sure you can't wait to meet Her cold embrace.”

He mocked the gods too easily. “You step awfully close to blasphemy. I
am
Her disciple, and I'm confident She would offer me a fast rebirth.”

“And then what? You die and are reborn? And what of the people you leave behind?”

“There are no people. Everyone's dead.”

Marcello widened his eyes in a way that said he didn't believe me. He looked over to where Les slept.

My stomach coiled at the thought of Les. Of Les injured in the alley, of the brief moment when I'd thought he was dead.

“Dying is the easy part.” Marcello got to his feet. “But what you leave behind is another matter.” He glanced at Les again. “I fear you will destroy him.”

“Me?”

“He is too kind to you. He thinks if he is kind, then people will like him. And if they like him, they won't leave. But that is not the way of things. You are a flame and he is a moth, drawn to you, unaware if he gets too close you will burn him up.”

He'd struck dangerously close to my own thoughts
regarding Les. But I wasn't the only one to blame. “And you? You've given him a sword and taught him only enough to be dangerous with it, but not when to back away.”

“Things were fine before you arrived,” he countered.

“Were they? You never fought about it? You never threatened to leave, never held that over his head?”

Marcello was silent. He couldn't deny it.

I sighed. “Truly, Uncle, we're both at fault.”

He nodded slowly. “We're Saldanas. Sooner or later we destroy the ones we love. Come, let's pour you a bath.”

He walked behind the fireplace to another section of the room. Maybe he was right. It would be cruel, abandoning Les when he'd already lost so much. But I couldn't stand the thought of someone else dead because of me. And I couldn't let the Da Vias get away with what they'd done.

No. I had to continue with my plan. It was kill or be killed. If I did die, hopefully any grief Les felt would be lessened by the knowledge that I'd died on my own terms, confronting the Da Vias instead of waiting for them to take me in the night.

Still, I thought about Rafeo and my Family. My uncle wasn't wrong. Living, being the person who stayed behind while those you loved left, was not an easy path to take. Not at all.

Marcello and Les had a large copper tub hidden behind the fireplace. It didn't take long for Marcello to fill it, and while the water was lukewarm at best, the closeness of the hearth
heated the tub and the water the longer I sat inside.

Before I climbed in, Marcello disappeared and returned with a stack of folded papers.

“Here.” He handed them to me. “These are some of the letters your mother sent me.”

I took them gently. Marcello left me to my privacy and I climbed into the tub, careful to keep the letters dry.

I could feel my mother in each piece of paper, sense her spirit as she chose what words to tell my uncle.

I read of her happiness when my brothers and I were each born, how eager she was to expand the Family. And her pride at Rafeo's marriage and the birth of Emile.

And then a final letter of grief, describing the plague that had swept the city, telling of the deaths in the Family, the loss of Jesep's parents, who I realized Marcello would have known, would have loved. Jesep's mother was my father and Marcello's younger sister. And Rafeo's wife, taken by the sickness just when it seemed it had finally abated.

The Family had been so weakened, she wrote, she didn't know how we would ever recover. And we hadn't, of course. The Da Vias took advantage of our weakness and destroyed us when we were too few to stop them.

Throughout the letters, though, my mother spoke of her love and pride in her children. How, even when Rafeo joked too much, he could always make her laugh. How Matteo's almost blind devotion to tradition and rules made him a precise and proficient clipper. And how my willful
nature and stubbornness expressed itself in loyalty to the ones I loved.

The last line was brief. Just a mention of me, earning my mask, and how proud she was, and how she knew someday I would be the best clipper of them all if I could focus on what was important.

I turned the letter over, but that was all.

I set the letters on the floor and sank below the water. My mother had never spoken such words to me. She'd never told me how proud she was, and yet the letters had been filled with the eloquence of her love for me and my brothers. For our Family.

My heart and stomach twisted around each other, squeezing me with pain until I popped out of the water, choking for breath. It was an ugly trick of fate, to learn of my mother's love for me only after she'd left me behind.

I scrubbed at my hair and my skin, cleaning every inch until my flesh was pink and sore before I climbed out of the water.

Marcello had given me Les's clothing, a cotton shirt and pair of pants, to wear. Though they were freshly cleaned and folded, they still smelled like him. I held the shirt to my face, breathing in his cinnamon scent.

I had to roll up the pant legs and the sleeves and they were still too large, but the garments were clean and comfortable and I was happy to have them.

On the other side of the fire, my uncle slept in his chair. I
let him rest, walking quietly past the tapestries blocking off the bedroom.

Les slept on his side, the blanket pushed below his arms, his dark, wavy hair resting on his shoulders.

I sat on the floor against the bed, my back to Les. I closed my eyes.

How had things gotten so confusing? It shouldn't have been this way. I should've gotten the information I needed, killed the Da Vias, and been done with it all, one way or another. But instead my uncle had told me the truth about our Family, and with Les, I had found something to ease my pain.

I closed my eyes against the tears falling down my cheeks. I was so tired of crying, and yet I couldn't seem to stop. I couldn't seem to do anything right. I wished Safraella would tell me which path to take.

“Don't cry, Clipper Girl,” Les said quietly. He shifted in his bed and brushed my hair behind my ears.

I rubbed the tears off my cheeks and faced him. “I didn't mean to wake you.”

He smiled tiredly. “Master said I needed to be wakened anyway.”

“I'm sorry,” I whispered. “I'm sorry I got you hurt.”

“It's not your fault. I was in the way. I should've trusted you knew what was best in the fight.”

“I should've trusted you to help,” I said. “I should've trusted you.”

“It doesn't matter.” He closed his eyes and yawned, then shifted deeper into his pillow. His breath came slower as he sank toward sleep.

“Les,” I whispered.

“Hmm?” he answered, barely awake.

“What does
kalla
mean?”

He gave a little smile. “Beautiful.”