The Dark City (8 page)

‘If you can't deal with a little insubordination from the youngsters, it doesn't seem like this is going to be a very good job for you,' said Lucia. Bianca took a deep breath, allowing herself to briefly fantasise about dunking Lucia head first into a bucket of really strong paint remover.

‘Well, I promised Duchess Catriona I'd try,' she said, and turned away to pick up the teetering pile of paperwork. ‘I don't want to make more work for Gabriella, so I'll be over here, trying to make our supply accounts add up.'

She sat at a nearby bench and sighed at the big pile of receipts and invoices and lists and columns of numbers. They meant little to her except she could recognise that all the numbers seemed intimidatingly large. She was going to try and do this job, and do it properly, if only to spite Lucia. But still, there was a small voice in the back of her head that nagged and tugged at her.

She's right. Even if I could do the job, they'll never let me do it properly.

Maybe it was best for everyone if she gave up trying.

‘Did you get the cat hairs?'

Marco was waiting in the palace courtyard when Bianca arrived with the last purple rays of the setting sun. He held up a small leather pouch. ‘I've got about twenty!'

Bianca shifted the leather bag on her shoulder, and the ingredients inside clinked in their pots. ‘And I've got the rest. Come on, let's use my studio in the palace. I don't want to take this to Filpepi's house.'

Marco raised his eyebrows, but he didn't say anything until they'd passed the guards at the door and the lamplighters working on the glowing golden orbs that hung in the halls. When they'd climbed the wide stone steps and turned into the long corridor to the courtiers' apartments, Marco spoke. ‘Don't you trust them? Filpepi's apprentices? Do you think they're still working for him?'

‘I almost wish I did! No. I'm pretty sure they're not traitors.' Bianca sighed. ‘They just hate me.'

Marco furrowed his brow and raised his hands as if about to protest.

‘It's OK, I can deal with it,' she said, with a lot more confidence than she felt. ‘But I'm not leaving anything of mine there for them to mess with.' She put a hand up to her neck and twisted a finger under the bright blue string that held the obsidian medallion, tucked securely under her bodice.

Marco blew out a heavy breath between his teeth. ‘I dunno. I think I'd still swap with you. I'd rather be hated than pitied.'

Bianca winced as she let them into her rooms. ‘That bad?'

‘Father can barely look at me. He keeps saying he wishes he knew how to help me get over it. Because
that's
helpful,' he added, rolling his eyes.

‘Well, I'll think of something. But right now, let's make a
storia
!' she said, tugging one of her hairs out at the root and holding it up with a flourish.

‘Whatever that is,' Marco added with a grin.

Bianca lit all the lamps around the room until the shadows were chased into the corners, then pulled di Lombardi's letter out of her pocket and unfolded it carefully. ‘Ugh!' she groaned. ‘Lucia's torn it!'
Or maybe I did when I grabbed it back
. Either way, it was Lucia's stupid fault.

‘It's all right, I think I can still read it,' said Marco. He smoothed down the ragged tear along the middle of the paper and held it up to the silvered mirror on the wall.

‘Read it out to me,' said Bianca, pulling a large ceramic bowl down from a shelf and setting out a steel spoon and an iron stirring stick.

‘One bottle of
lux aurumque
,' said Marco. Bianca fished in her bag and pulled out the bottle.

‘I hope we get this right,' she muttered, as she uncorked it and let the thick, glowing golden liquid meander its way out into the bowl. ‘I'd never normally use a whole bottle! I don't know how much more of this we've got, and all I know is it's made from some kind of flower  … '

Bianca caught her breath, wondering how she hadn't realised before. The glowing golden flowers! The ones that grew in the gardens and around the statue of di Lombardi in Oscurita!

There
had
to be a way back to Oscurita. How else would di Lombardi and Filpepi have been able to keep making their magical paintings? They had to get fresh ingredients from somewhere  … 

‘Bianca? Are you all right?' Marco said. Bianca blinked.

‘Fine.' She tried to think how to explain Oscurita to Marco without sounding like she'd gone a bit mad, but he gestured at the
lux aurumque
.

‘Only, your paint looks like it's trying to climb out of the bowl.'

‘Oh!' Bianca picked up the iron stirrer and tapped gently on the ceramic to make the swirling, shifting
lux aurumque
settle back in the bottom of the bowl. ‘Thanks. What's next?'

‘Add a spoonful of ani  …  ani  … '

‘
Animare
,' said Bianca, pulling the last of the batch out of the bag.

‘ …  to a mixture of fifty/fifty water and
ether
, and then add to the
lux
.'

‘Oh, hang on, I need another bowl.' Bianca grabbed a second bowl and carefully measured out the
ether
and the water. They glittered and steamed as they mixed together. She caught Marco staring with wide, fascinated eyes.

‘This is so weird,' he said. ‘This is like sorcery or something!'

‘Well, it basically
is
sorcery,' Bianca admitted, with a smile. She'd forgotten just how magical it all looked when you hadn't seen it done before. ‘It's just that we use it to make paint.' She fished in a drawer and handed him a pair of shaded goggles. ‘Here, put these on. We don't know what's going to happen when we mix all this stuff together!'

She carefully picked up the single long, brown hair and lowered it slowly into the bowl.

At once, the mixture stopped bubbling and settled. The hair lay on the surface for a second, then fizzed and melted away. Without Bianca even stirring it, the paint turned a glassy silver colour like a mirror, its surface more flat and perfectly reflective than the actual mirror on the wall. Bianca leaned over it and gazed into her own face.

‘What now?' she asked Marco.

‘Two crushed, fermented Indigofera leaves.'

Bianca used a pair of tweezers to remove the flower petals from the smelly purple liquid they'd been pickling in. ‘I guess this is for colour,' she told Marco as she dropped them into a mortar and ground them up quickly. ‘These are just normal ingredients. We use them for making indigo paint.'

She scraped the crushed leaves into the mixture and stirred it up with the iron stick – and yes, it slowly turned a deep, metallic blue colour.

‘And a single flake of gold leaf,' Marco went on.

Bianca very carefully removed the silk covering from a sheet of gold that'd been pounded so thin it was like a piece of tissue. The corner flaked off at the lightest touch of her tweezers and she held her breath so it wouldn't blow away before she could drop it in the mixture.

‘And now, Nimbus's contribution,' Marco said, holding out the small bag. Bianca reached inside and carefully separated two of the short black hairs from the clump that clung to the sides of the bag.

She dropped the hairs in, and they fizzed and melted into the paint just like her own hair had, but instead of silver, the mixture instantly turned a deep, glistening blue-black with strange highlights of green and purple, just like the shell of a beetle. Or like the surface of the obsidian medallion.

‘Now just add some ground bone for texture,' Bianca muttered, carefully stirring in a few spoonfuls of the grainy white substance. ‘And then speak the words  … ' She peered over Marco's shoulder and he held up the letter to the mirror so she could read them. ‘Argh,' she muttered, ‘they're right on the tear!'

She pulled the torn halves of the paper together, held it up to the mirror and squinted at the words:

‘Mio cario, narrare storia
.
'

The paint didn't change. Marco leaned over and peered into the bowl. ‘Did it work?'

‘Only one way to find out,' Bianca said. She lifted a fresh canvas onto the easel, pulled out di Lombardi's magical paintbrush and carefully dipped it into the paint. Then she hesitated. ‘But what should I paint?'

‘How about me?' Marco suggested, striking a heroic pose with his nose in the air. Bianca laughed and put her paintbrush to the canvas, drawing it across and up in a sweeping line that would form the dramatic turn of Marco's chin.

‘Hey!' Bianca almost dropped the paintbrush in shock. The paint was moving by itself! It crawled up the canvas, into the top left hand corner, and formed itself into a group of thin vertical lines.

‘Wow  … ' Marco dropped the pose. ‘What's it doing?'

‘I don't know!' Bianca tried again, painting a circle in the centre of the canvas – but again the paint crawled away, like raindrops running down glass but in reverse, to join the picture that was forming in the corner of the canvas. ‘It  …  it doesn't want to stay where I put it. It's like it has a painting already stored inside itself!'

‘Amazing!' Marco peered at the picture as the paint settled. ‘It looks like a street and a canal, but there's something weird about it. All the buildings are black.'

‘Oh,' Bianca breathed. Was this it? Could it be? ‘Oscurita!'

‘Huh?' Marco asked.

Bianca quickly added several more large brushfuls of paint. The picture filled out. It was definitely a picture of a street in Oscurita. The areas of canvas where the paint left gaps shone out as bright lights and patches of reflection on the canal.

‘I need to tell you something,' said Bianca, as she hurried to add more paint, the picture growing until it almost filled the canvas. ‘Remember when Filpepi and the Baron escaped into that painted trapdoor? Did you see what was on the other side?'

‘It just looked dark to me,' Marco shrugged.

‘It was a city, just like this one, except there's no sunlight, and everyone wears black. I think I've been sleepwalking there.'

‘What? How?'

‘I don't know. At first I thought I was dreaming. But the other night I actually brought something back with me. Look!' Bianca fished in her pocket and pulled out the tiny silver bracelet with its pattern of twining flowers.

‘This is weird,' Marco muttered, turning the bracelet round in his hands. ‘I mean, even compared to your life normally, this is pretty weird!'

‘That's all of it,' Bianca said, running her paintbrush along the bottom of the bowl and touching the last drop of paint to the canvas. ‘I bet this is a way through to – Oh!' She gasped as all the paint moved once more, running and swirling together and then splitting to form another picture. This time the street was pocked with holes and full of swirling smoke. ‘Maybe not,' she said. As they watched, a glob of paint arced across the picture and hit one of the buildings. A chunk of painted masonry crumbled and fell into the canal.

‘It's under attack!' Marco breathed.

‘Look!' Bianca pointed as the swirling lines of smoke parted and a shape ran through. It was a woman, her skirt and her long dark hair rippling as she sprinted along the street. Bianca just had time to notice that she was clutching a small bundle in her arms, before she ducked into a doorway and the whole painting swirled away again, splitting and re-forming into a scene in a courtyard. A man, wrapped in a dark cloak, turned as the woman ran in. His beard was shorter and his face less wrinkled, but Bianca still recognised him – it was Annunzio di Lombardi.

‘Isn't that –' Marco pointed.

Bianca nodded.

The woman and di Lombardi ran to each other and he put his hands on her face and kissed her forehead. Tears ran down the woman's cheeks.

Bianca recognised the woman. It wasn't quite like looking into a mirror – it was more like when Duchess Catriona stood next to the portraits of her mother.

The woman put her bundle into di Lombardi's arms and he peeled back a flap of blanket. The paint wriggled on the canvas: a squiggle of a mouth that opened into an O and closed again, two fringed lines for closed, thickly eyelashed eyes. Bianca could almost hear the baby's squalling. Di Lombardi pulled the blanket back and looked up at the woman. The paint shimmered, giving hints of colour to the picture – the deep purple of di Lombardi's cloak, the green ribbon that edged the baby's blanket, the woman's blue eyes, just like Bianca's.

Then something weird happened – half the picture seemed to lose its power. The paint dripped lifelessly down the page on the right hand side, while the other half kept swirling and moving as di Lombardi took a step back and held up an object  … 

‘My medallion!' Bianca gasped. A flash of light seemed to burst from its surface. The dead half of the painting sprang back to life just in time to show shadowy figures recoil from the light of the medallion.

‘What was that?' Marco wondered.

‘Maybe we got the mixture wrong,' Bianca muttered. She pulled out the medallion, which she'd been wearing hidden under her dress, and clutched it until her knuckles went white.

On the canvas, the paint was still telling its story. It showed di Lombardi stepping out into the bright daylight of La Luminosa; sweeping a low bow to someone who must be the Duke, Catriona's father; settling the baby down in a crib beside him as he worked at an easel. Years seemed to pass in a moment: sketchy visions of his masterpieces came and went on the easel. A young man studied at his side.

‘That must be Filpepi!' Bianca gasped.

The crib vanished. Patches of the picture froze a couple of times, but the passage of time was clear enough: the baby grew into a toddler, chewing on a paintbrush, and then a little girl with paint on her face. Di Lombardi's beard grew and his back hunched. The apprentices appeared – first as young children, then growing quickly until Cosimo and Rosa were as tall as di Lombardi himself. The girl who had been the baby turned and looked straight out of the painting.

It was unmistakably Bianca.

‘You didn't know any of this?' Marco asked.

‘He told me I was a foundling someone left on his doorstep!' Bianca said. She looked down at the medallion. ‘You realise what this means? I'm not from here at all  …  I was born in Oscurita!'

‘That woman has to be your mother,' Marco said.

‘I think so,' whispered Bianca.

The story hadn't finished. Bianca's eyes prickled with tears as she realised that the painting of her was growing older. They were looking at a version of the future, as di Lombardi had imagined it. He'd painted himself, alive, alongside her as she grew up. The painting showed the now-adult Bianca and di Lombardi embracing, and then she walked away. Then the scene switched back to Oscurita, the paint flooding back to the top of the canvas to show the black sky. The painted Bianca walked through the front gates of the castle and up to one of the twisting circular towers  …