back in the shadows
Mari stomped up the stairs, taking savage satisfaction in the sound of her boots striking the floor and the knowledge that her mother heard it too. How disappointing this must be for you, Mother. She released her breath in a consternated hiss at the sight of her sister-in-law standing frozen in the center of the hallway like a frightened rabbit.
“Is Ezio downstairs with the Ma– your mother?” Taline asked hesitantly, twisting her hands together, fidgeting. Her dress was short-sleeved, and, surprisingly, she wasn’t wearing a sweater; Taline always kept her arms covered. Mari had uneasily wondered over her almost excessive modesty, especially since she knew her brother usually liked to show his trophies off.
“Did you trip and fall against another doorknob, or did something heavy fall off a shelf this time?” she asked, voice acid-etched with anger and frustration as she shot a pointed look at the yellowing bruise wreathing Taline’s upper arm.
Her sister-in-law avoided her eyes and raised a hand to shield her injury from view. “He was having a nightmare – he didn’t know what he was doing. He didn’t mean to hurt me.”
She huffed a bitter laugh. “So he was drunk then. By God, you’re a pathetic liar.”
“I’m not – where’s Ezio? Can you tell me where he is?” Taline asked. She kept her eyes downcast, but there was a defiant jut to her jaw.
“No idea. Put on a sweater before you go wandering around looking for him.” She moved to push past her and Taline shrank away from the contact; the muscles of her jaw tightened, clenching her teeth until the molars creaked. She knew her mother, her uncle, and Lucia had noticed the way Taline flinched when Ezio had thrown his hands up with a laugh at something Lucia had said, the way she flinched again when he put his arm around her to escort her from the room. She didn’t want them asking her what her brother did to his wife behind closed doors. She didn’t know and she didn’t want to know. I’m not his keeper. The conversation around the table had become strained after Ezio left the room and Uncle Mario took his leave soon after. It stung that he hadn’t stayed longer on her behalf. And then her mother’s claws had come out.
“Why did you fail to rise to Mercenary?”
She almost choked on her tea. “Mother,” she protested, between chest wracking coughs.
“It’s a very simple question, Mari. What did you do wrong?” her mother pressed, eyes narrowed and disapproval rolling off her in icy waves.
Lucia cleared her throat and shifted uncomfortably beside her. Don’t you dare abandon me now.
“Al Mualim failed to appreciate my creative approach to the contract,” she said stiffly. “And he really didn’t like it when I tried to defend Altaïr.”
“Defend Altaïr from what?” Lucia asked.
Mannaggia, I shouldn’t have brought that up, Mari thought and kicked Lucia’s shin under the table.
“I sincerely doubt that Altaïr has any need for you to defend him,” her mother said and her skin pickled warningly at that silky-smooth tone.
“He doesn’t think so either, but one day I may surprise you all,” she replied. A muscle in her cheek twinged as she smiled.
“Stranger things have happened,” Lucia teased. It felt stilted and put on, like Lucia wasn’t entirely comfortable around her anymore; she hated that that had changed. Her mother hummed doubtfully as she daintily sipped her tea; she hated that that hadn’t changed.
“Kadija sent me on a solo contract, last autumn. Did I tell you? In Libya,” she blurted out and then chastised herself for babbling.
“Yes, I know,” her mother replied as she poured herself more tea. “Kadija told me when she sent you, and how the contract had gone when you returned. She was very thorough.”
Of course she was. She sawed her teeth along the inside of her cheek.
“How’s Altaïr been?” Lucia abruptly asked. “And that student he brought along, remember her, Madonna? Christ, what was her name?”
“Tārā.” Her mother carefully set her tea down on the table, adjusted the cup so that the handle was at a perfect ninety-degree angle to the edge of the table. “I believe her name was Tārā. Quite a pretty girl.”
“Quite,” Mari agreed, annoyed that her mother chose to comment on it.
Tārā was very pretty – in an exotic, last-century orientalist sort of way – and Altaïr had taken to her enough to spawn yet another round of prurient gossip. She knew she should be grateful that the gossips weren’t focused on her, for the moment, but she couldn’t squelch her insidious jealousy over how comfortable Altaïr seemed with Tārā. She knew him well enough, by now, to bristle at how much more casual and relaxed he was with Tārā than with her – his own damn flesh and blood. She hid her expression behind her teacup with a long drink of tea. She felt vaguely ridiculous for being envious of another fidā'ī’s relationship with her cousin.
“Mercenary, isn’t she?” her mother inquired coolly.
“Yes,” she confirmed through suddenly stiff lips; she knew exactly where this conversation was going. She heard Lucia’s chair creak as she shifted beside her, unobtrusively angling to have a straight shot out the door when things got ugly. To be perfectly honest, the conversation was several minutes overdue on turning ugly.
Maria hummed and picked up her tea and Mari noticed that her mother’s nails were lacquered dark vermillion, almost like they’d been painted with arterial blood. Probably to hide the stains from playing with her prey before she kills it.
“I had already risen past Mercenary, at your age-” her mother said, tone turning syrupy.
“Yes, Mother. I know-” she replied, trying not to clench her teeth or roll her eyes.
“-while you – my daughter – have the distinction of, not only failing your trial, but of being the first of your cousin’s students to do so. In front of Al Mualim, no less.” She clucked her tongue with a slow, disapproving shake of her head. “Such shame.”
Her toes curled against the insoles of her boots. “I’m sorry, Mother.”
“I’m sure you are, moosh moosh-am.”
She cringed at the pet name and hoped Altaïr’s contract wrapped up quickly; she was going to need the extra buffer from her mother that his presence would provide if she wanted to have an at least somewhat bearable visit.
“Everyone makes mistakes, Madonna,” Lucia pipped up, tapping the filtered end of a cigarette against the tabletop. Mari glanced over at the crumpled cigarette pack Lucia was clutching in a white-knuckled grip.
“What happened to your Modianos?” she asked. Lucia always smoked Modiano cigarettes, her preferred brand.
Her mother, she noted, from the corner of her eye, had gone back to drinking her tea, the palm of one hand flat against the table while she held her teacup with the thumb and first two fingers of the other. She knew behind that seemingly innocuous action her mother was evaluating the situation, mentally running scenarios and composing her next offensive. Unfortunately, that was the limit of her ability to read her mother. In some ways, Madonna Maria was even more of an indecipherable enigma to her than Altaïr or Kadija, both of whom, usually at least, had more or less clear motives. She didn’t always agree with or understand their presumed reasoning, but at least she had an idea of the reasons behind their actions.
“They got too expensive, with the rationing and all.” Lucia shrugged sharply and Mari could hear the rapid shuffle of her jogging her leg, the movement hidden under the table. “With the Americans flooding into North Africa; these are cheaper.” She shrugged again. “Better quality too. At least it’s something good to come of the infestation.”
“If you must smoke, do it outside,” Maria said, setting her teacup back down on the table and tapping her blade against it. “Disgusting habit. It’s bad enough that I have to tolerate it in the brothel, I won’t tolerate it in my home as well.”
“Yes, Madonna,” Lucia grimaced, leg pumping like a piston in a revving engine.
God’s wounds, she’s desperate for a cigarette. Mari appreciated Lucia staying with her so that she didn’t have to face her mother on her own just yet. I really should have tried to be nicer to Ezio on the way over. Her brother was only mostly under their mother’s thumb, but still, he was remarkably effective at encouraging her to make nice. Not that he’s going to be in any hurry to help me now. Damn his slippery little wife.
“Tell me about Taline.”
Lucia went absolutely still beside her. Mannaggia.
“What about her?” she demanded, internally cringing at the sullen cast to her voice.
“Don’t try to be coy, Mari. It’s unattractive when done poorly,” her mother hummed as she stirred sugar into her tea. “I’m not going to ask if you like her because you clearly don’t, but do try to think past that for a moment and manage to tell me something useful about Ezio’s new wife. She’s Armenian, isn’t she?”
“And Cathari,” she added, unwillingly stung by her mother’s casually flung barbs. Ezio can’t mean it to be that much of a secret. He told Uncle Mario, after all.
Her mother appeared unsurprised. Of Course she already knows that, why the fuck wouldn’t she.
“She looks a little unhealthy. Is she having trouble settling into her new life? Does Ezio seem happy with her?”
“He’s all over her like a bad rash every chance he gets, so yeah, I guess he’s happy with her.” She shrugged and kept her eyes fixed on her mother’s teacup to avoid the other women’s expectant gazes. “And I don’t think being pregnant agrees with her; she’s always crying and Ezio told me she throws up nearly everything she eats.”
“That doesn’t sound promising,” Lucia commented, tone artfully neutral.
“Pregnancy can be very difficult for some women,” Maria allowed. Mari hazarded an upward glance and saw her mother’s lips were pursed almost into a frown.
That’s not a good sign.
“And Kadija is well? I haven’t seen her since my brief trip to the Mountain in the autumn.”
“Yeah, Kadija’s fine,” she mumbled, nudging some breadcrumbs on the table into a little pile. Omnipotent and domineering as always, she mentally added, but she knew better than to say that part out loud. Her mother practically deified Kadija.
“Is she seeing anyone?” Maria inquired, taking a dainty sip of tea. Her mother’s table manners were pure last-century royalty. Tilt your dish and scoop your soup away from you, moosh moosh-am. Use your fork, mio tesoro; I’m not raising you to eat like savages. By savages Mari was pretty sure her mother meant Italians.
“You never ask if I’m seeing anyone, Madonna,” Lucia commented, again tapping the filtered end of her cigarette against the table in a rapid, nervous staccato.
“She wouldn’t have to,” Mari teased, jostling Lucia with a nudge of her shoulder. “You’d sing it from the rooftops for the whole world to hear if you had a boyfriend.”
Lucia’s spine momentarily stiffened before she negligently rolled one shoulder forward. Mari felt a her insides drop in a sickening plunge; she knew what that body language meant and desperately tried to will Lucia to meet her eyes.
“Six months ago, I would have said the same about you-” Lucia hummed as she picked up her tea.
Don’t do it, Lu. Please, please, don’t do it-
“-and look at how wrong I would have been,” Lucia finished with a malicious smile.
Figlio di buona donna!
“What’s this?” her mother demanded, setting her teacup down with a sharp clink of china against hardwood. “Are you involved with someone, Mari?”
She gritted her teeth and weighed her options; they were depressingly limited. She could downplay or deny her relationship with Hiro, which would only work until Altaïr arrived. Her mother would then ask him, and Altaïr would, unhesitatingly, tell her everything she wanted to know – and then some – and things would get really unpleasant once her mother had proof she’d tried to mislead her. There was the off chance that Ezio would run interference for her, but she knew better than to count on it; he had his hands full enough already with his own mess. It was obviously not the ideal moment to tell her mother about Hiro – thanks for that, Lu – but she didn’t see how she really had much choice.
“His name’s Hiro; he’s the youngest son of a Fedayin, from an Assassin family,” she grudgingly supplied. “I didn’t tell you before, Mother, because I wanted to wait and see if it was serious-” she shrugged sharply, embarrassed, uncomfortable and really resentful of Lucia putting her on the spot like this “- he’s nice, honorable. I like him.”
“What family?”
She could feel the room’s temperature dropping. “His family name is Vuković; they’re from Slunj, Croatia. Hiro says it’s in the mountains.”
Her mother’s unimpressed hum chaffed her nerves like wet leather against a blister.
“Who is he training under?”
“Ibrahim Effendi,” she replied with a flare of annoyance. So it’s going to be like this, Mother? “Kadija already had Altaïr vet him – he read through his file, his records, his medical records-” she was still annoyed about that “-you can ask him when he gets here. I’m sure he’ll be able to tell you all about Hiro, every detail, even the ones I don’t even know, like the length of his cock,” she snapped as she got up from her seat at the table. “Excuse me.”
“Our conversation is not finished,” Maria said severely. “Sit down.”
“Interrogation, you mean,” she retorted. She didn’t sit, on principle, but she stayed standing beside her empty chair.
Her mother pointedly sighed something in Farsi. Lucia inched off her seat, towards the door.
Fucking traitor.
“I’m going to pop outside for a-” she bounced two fingers against her lips repeatedly as though she were smoking “-if you don’t mind, Madonna,” Lucia mumbled, slinking towards the door. “Safety and peace.” She practically dove through the doorway in her haste to escape.
She watched her mother pick up her teacup and take a dainty sip.
“Sit down. It is poor manners to hover like that. I know you didn’t learn such rudeness from me.”
She huffed in annoyance and collapsed – intentionally ungraceful – back onto her recently vacated chair. A faint crease appeared between her mother’s meticulously groomed brows; she deepened her slouch.
“It saddens me greatly that you didn’t tell me you were seeing someone. I’m sure your brother knows, Altaïr and Kadija know, and you’ve clearly confided in Lucia… does your uncle know as well?” her mother asked, voice coolly distant and even. She set her teacup down and drew Mari’s over to her as well with a subtle curl of her fingers.
“I was going to tell you about Hiro during this visit, Mother. I was just waiting for the right time,” she lied smoothly, tone resonant with manufactured sincerity.
“Must I really ask that you not try to lie to me, moosh-am?” Maria asked as she drew her blade and tapped it against the teacups. The blade touched each with an expensive sounding tink of metal against paper-thin porcelain.
She curled the hand hidden beneath the table into a fist. “Please don’t say anything to Uncle. I don’t want him to know yet.”
“I am comforted to not be the only one you are keeping secrets from,” was her mother’s icy response as she slid Mari’s teacup back to her across the table, the movement so carefully controlled that the liquid inside hardly rippled as the cup moved. She was reminded how frighteningly good her mother was with magic.
“I keep secrets from lots of people. That’s what Assassins do, Mother,” she retorted.
“I hardly need instruction, especially from you, Mari-joon, on how to be an Assassin,” Maria replied, an envenomed something beginning to bleed through her tone.
She clenched her teeth and lowered her eyes to the steaming cup of tea before her. The especially fromyou stung, which is what she was sure her mother intended.
“He’s not like Father-”
“I am glad to hear that,” her mother interrupted smoothly. “I should hate to see you repeating my mistakes.
The muscles around the outer corner of her left eye twitched as she tried to swallow down a sudden blaze of fury. So getting married and having children was a mistake then was it, Mother? Thanks ever so for the warning.
“Don’t worry Mother, I have no intention of repeating your mistakes,” she replied in a valiant attempt at mimicking her mother’s signature icy indifference. The effect was undermined by the boiling rage bleeding through her tone, but she couldn’t find it in herself to care much in that moment.
“Mari-”
“Do you tell Ezio what a mistake having him was?” she demanded, mentally wincing at the shrillness of her own voice even as she recklessly plowed on. “Or is it just me? Am I the mistake? Is that why Father hardly even looked at me?”
“You were not a mistake,” Maria stiffly replied, posture somehow even more rigid than it had been only a moment before. “I cannot believe that I have to tell you that. You were wanted, desperately wanted. I wanted you, Mari, and I would have given anything to have you.”
Once upon a time… A beautiful woman, trapped in an unhappy marriage far from her home, was watching over her youngest son as he slept and whispered her wish for a daughter…
Her insides were moving places they shouldn’t; her heart was in her throat and her stomach was endlessly falling through the floor. No, she thought with an uncomfortably sharp swell of panic, Cesare was lying. He had to have been lying.
“Why are you telling me this?” she croaked. She lowered her eyes to avoid her mother’s piercing gaze and was mildly surprised to see that she was holding her teacup in a white-knuckled grip; her hands had gone completely numb.
… offered the woman a deal: he could compel the husband to her bed and ensure that she conceived a daughter, but the child would be his…
“Why do you accuse me of considering you, and your brother, a mistake?” her mother demanded, silken tone fraying with genuine and frighteningly intense anger. “I have done nothing but love and protect you from the moment you were conceived!”
The Maraas will always claim what we’ve been promised... Her blood was roaring in her ears. Cesare wasn’t lying. Sweet-Holy-Jesus-and-the-apostles-too, Cesare wasn’t lying.
“Is that supposed to make up for selling me?” she hissed.
Her mother’s expression went completely, carefully, blank. “What is this new madness? Of what am I now being accused, my daughter?”
She didn’t deny it. Her ears were ringing and her throat suddenly wouldn’t work properly. If there wasn’t any truth in it she would have just denied it. There was a sudden, surreal, feeling of weightlessness, like she had just stepped out of her body and was now watching herself interacting with her mother. Hysterical, incredulous laughter bubbled up her throat and out over her lips. It would serve her mother right if she got sick all over the table.
“You made a deal with a demon-”
“I did no such thing,” Maria sniffed, eyes narrowed.
“That’s not what Cesare says,” she retorted, heart furiously pounding against the inside of her ribs. She could feel the hammer of her pulse echoing inside her head, behind her eyes, very aware of once again inhabiting her own body. Her mother’s eyes narrowed further as the silence stretched. She regretted everything about this conversation, especially that it had started at all. There was a reason I wanted to wait to tell mother about Hiro. Damn it, Lucia. Why did you force the issue? The simple, straightforward answer was that, even though she knew Lucia loved her like family, Lucia wasn’t exactly the nicest person she’d ever met. Not by a long shot.
“Cesare is not a demon,” Maria finally said, tight lipped and hard faced.
She gaped across the table at her mother in disbelief. “That’s, that’s the best you can do, Mother? Semantics?”
“I have done nothing wrong.”
“You bartered me, in a shady under-table deal, with a monster who sucks the life out of people! How is there nothing wrong with that?” she demanded, vaguely noting the sound of shattering porcelain when an unthinking furious gesture sent her teacup flying.
“Think very hard before you pass judgment on me, daughter of mine. If not for my actions you wouldn’t be here to be angry with me. To say I should not have done as I did is an argument against your very birth,” her mother snapped. “I gave you life. I secured your future – tethered to a Maraas you will never be at other people’s mercy as I have been. I keep him well-fed, keep you safe-”
“My god, Mother. How many of your girls have you sacrificed in my place?” she asked, reeling under a second wave of emotion; this time it was guilt, suffocatingly thick and acerbic. Therese.
“I have sacrificed no one; they go to him willingly. They want what he has to offer. The Maraas are not the monsters you think they are, Mari-joon.”
Monsters your family has a long tradition of fucking; each generation selling the next, Cesare had crooned in her ear. She felt sick. She thought of Therese’s hollowed-out face as she had begged Cesare not to stop all those years ago. She thought of Altaïr’s possessive worship of Sirocco, of the brakish scar across Cesare’s shoulder from Ezio’s blade.
“So you’re just going to hand me over to him with a smile?” she demanded shrilly. It was starting to get hard to breathe properly, she was so frustrated, and angry, and hurt. “What happened to all that love and protection you invested in me, huh? Am I past the expiration date on those, Mother?”
“Mari-” Maria sighed, reaching one hand across the table towards her.
“No! Don’t try to tell me how really it’s all okay, because it’s not.” Her chair clattered over backwards as she sprang away from the table. “I’m not one of your whores, Mother. You can’t just promise me to the highest bidder.”
“Will you sit down and listen to-”
“There’s nothing you could say that would make this right,” she raged, storming towards the door. She stopped and turned to face her mother when she reached the doorway; Maria had gone back to delicately sipping her tea, for some reason that made her even angrier. “Nothing!” she snarled, spun on her heel, and stormed away.
Her mother hadn’t bothered to change her room much since she’d been sent to Alamūt for training. Mostly, it was cleaner, and there was a large, expensive looking new vase on the bedside table filled with Madonna lilies. Mother loves those fucking flowers. She caught herself gnawing on the side of her thumbnail as she agonized over how to phrase the letter she was writing to Hiro and half regretted promising to send him a quick note letting him know she’d safely arrived. She absently rubbed her thumb dry on her robes before digging her fingers through her hair to rub her scalp where it still faintly ached from the rushed ruthless brushing she’d given her hair early that morning. It felt a little strange, to be sitting at the desk in her childhood room writing to her boyfriendbackhome in another country. This is what it feels like to be all grown up, I guess.
“Welcome home, my bitterness.”
She jumped a little, even though she’d vowed not to, at the sound of his voice. It wasn’t exactly a surprise that he’d show up in her room. In truth, she’d been half looking over her shoulder for him from the moment she’d stepped through the mirror into Roma’s Motherhouse. He smelled like sex and the bitter green scent of wormwood, musk and hyacinth and petrichor. She very pointedly did not turn to look at him; she didn’t need to.
“Go away, Cesare,” she snapped, carefully blotting the wet ink on the letter to Hiro she’d been writing.
“Come now,” he purred from his perch on the windowsill. “Don’t be rude; it might hurt my feelings.”
“You don’t have feelings, and even if you did, it wouldn’t matter to me in the slightest if I hurt them,” she retorted, letter blotted and safely tucked away as she carefully cleaned the quill she’d been using, still refusing to look at him. Get thee behind me shaytan. She’d gotten much better at dispelling charms over the years, now it took an exceptionally powerful echoes spell for the quills she used to reveal the last things they’d written. It was a very useful spell and she was proud of her mastery. Kadija, whose approval was even rarer and therefore somehow more precious than Altaïr’s, had commended her skill with the charm.
He sighed, loudly, in response. She felt, more than heard, his movement, but she still jolted in surprise when she turned and nearly collided with him. He was wearing a three-piece suit in white with thin black pinstripes, the coat slung carelessly over one shoulder; his shirt and tie were white. He flashed her a rakish grin, bottom lip splitting down the center as his smile widened, exposing the feathery red tip of one of those things he kept beneath his tongue.
“Jesus!” she exclaimed, recoiling in horror.
“Not exactly, my darling girl. His myth isn’t nearly as old as mine, and far less demonstrably true.”
The edge of the desk cut into her thigh as she backed away from him. Mannaggia! She then tried to dodge around him but her movement was too sluggish, the air around her thickened to chest deep water.
“Why all this faux modesty, my bitterness?” he cooed, lips brushing the outer rim of her ear. “When we both already know how shameless you’ve been.”
“I don’t know what-” she started to protest as his arms slid around her ribs, suddenly lightheaded and slightly disoriented.
“Yes, you do,” he interrupted in a sibilant purr. “Remember Maria, remember…”
The cabaret was smoky, noisy and crowded, the tinkling of glassware and cacophony of laughter and chatter underlain by the swinging steady thrum of a double bass setting the dancers’ rhythm and keeping time. Zahra sighed beside her and let off nervously picking at her mascara for a moment to adjust her headscarf.
“-my family won’t approve of me being seen with him, but he’s just so nice, Mari,” she babbled, now carefully smoothing the filmy layers of her dress. “And why shouldn’t I have the final say in who I marry?”
“Of course you should,” she agreed vehemently, catching sight of Hiro and Seamus picking their way back through the crowd towards them with drinks. “Shay is a capital fellow, your parents would be mad not to want him for a son-in-law; he’s kind and loyal, he’s got a promising career that probably won’t kill him, and he’s madly in love with you – but don’t tell him I told you that. Besides, unlike anyone they’d choose for you, he’s a great dancer and smart dresser, and that counts for something.”
“Not with my parents,” Zahra grumbled.
“So don’t tell them,” she retorted, pushing a carefully coiffed curl back from her face. She’d had to use a whole bottle of smoothing serum, but her hair was hanging in perfectly silky-smooth sausage curls. Totally worth it.
“Who are we not telling what?” Hiro asked as he handed her a precariously full martini glass.
“My cousins,” she lied smoothly before taking a sip of her drink – sparkling pomegranate juice, a tart splash of lime and a kick of ginger – one of her favorites. Shay either did the ordering or told him what I like. Best Friend Ever. Naturally, the cabaret didn’t serve alcoholic beverages on the nights it hosted co-ed dances. The mostly Muslim town folk wouldn’t allow their sons and daughters to go somewhere where there were Assassins, dancing with members of the opposite sex, and alcohol being served; two out of the three was bad enough.
“Would they disapprove?” Hiro asked, grinning at her over the rim of his own glass, carelessly held between his fingers.
“The La’Ahads disapprove of Mari doing anything fun,” Seamus replied wryly as he handed Zahra her drink. “And I bet her brother would have a fit if he saw the way you two have been dancing.”
“Shay-” she protested before stopping short with a startled gasp as about half her drink sloshed down the front of her dress from the impact of someone colliding with her.
“Excuse me, so sorry,” the young woman gurgled, clamping a hand over her mouth in an attempt to muffle a sharp trill of laughter. “I didn’t see you.” She had thick, wavy, wheat-blonde hair, delft blue eyes, and a wide smile that showed far too many teeth.
“Obviously.” Mari’s eyes narrowed suspiciously.
“Wait, I-I know you, don’t I?” the interloper said, smile stretching even wider. “I do, don’t I?”
“I don’t think so.” The girl did look somewhat familiar – probably from the training grounds – but that didn’t mean much. Alamūt wasn’t that big.
“Ingeborg!” a young man with hair a few shades darker than blond gasped out as he rushed up to them. “I’ve been looking all over.”
“There you are Alain,” Ingeborg chirped. “Look who I’ve run into – quite literally, actually – doesn’t she look familiar? Don’t we know her from somewhere?”
“That’s Ezio Effendi’s sister,” Alain declared after sweeping his eyes over her in a quick examination. Her jaw clenched. Sometimes, she really hated that her brother was a Master.
“Oh!” Ingeborg’s eyes widened ingenuously. “No wonder you look so familiar-”
“Do you mind?” Hiro cut across Ingeborg impatiently as he swapped her half-spilled drink for his own. “We were in the middle of a rather personal conversation.”
“Please, accept our apologies, and let me pay for another drink,” Alain said catching hold of Ingeborg’s arm. “My friend can be so clumsy.”
Ingeborg tried to shrug off her companion’s hand and grinned at Mari. “Your brother, is he also here tonight? I’ll bet he’s a marvelous dancer.”
Warning bells chimed in the back of her mind at that seemingly offhanded comment. Ezio danced well enough, when he so chose, but the Lindy Hop wasn’t exactly his first choice of evening activities. She’s got it bad for him, she thought, suddenly placing the face to the name. Ezio had caused yet another ripple of scandal when he abruptly transferred one of his female students – rumored to be more than just an ardent admirer of her mentor – to another Master, obviously – so the gossip went – to appease his jealous wife. Isra had breathlessly conveyed the entire scandal to her with malicious delight, and had gotten hit in the mouth for her trouble.
“My brother spends his nights at his home, with his wife,” she frostily informed Ingeborg. “He’s absolutely devoted to her, you know.” He damned well better be, or Mother will flay him alive.
“That little thing?” Ingeborg laughed. “How could he be? Everyone knows he married her on a whim and can hardly haul ashes with her-”
“I think the atmosphere has made your friend lose her head,” Hiro said abruptly to Alain. “Ezio Effendi’s wife is a lovely and charming lady, whose husband will be very angry if he hears that one of his own students is spreading such slander about his wife.”
“I suggest you take your friend home before she says anything more offensive than she already has,” Seamus added flintily with narrow-eyed fury.
She appreciated Hiro and Seamus springing to her brother’s defense, even if they had to defend his unfortunate choice of wife to do it. While Hiro might have been motivated by a desire to impress her, as well as chivalry, she was certain Seamus acted out of friendship and loyalty. No matter the motivation, their combined disapproval seemed to have the desired effect, at least on Alain. Ingeborg, apparently, was absolutely shameless. And infatuated. Definitely infatuated. Jesus Christ, Ezio, always the love-struck students. Altaïr never has to deal with any, she thought, willfully ignoring the fact that her cousin’s standoffish demeanor and unapproachable personality were probably what discouraged his students from fixating on him romantically.
“Yes, of course,” Alain said hastily, unsubtly gripping Ingeborg’s arm in preparation to drag here away from them, if needed, and pulled a handful of siglos from his pocket, which he handed to Hiro. “For the drink my friend spilled,” he explained. “Please, buy yourselves another round, with our apologies.”
Hiro tried to protest and hand the money back, but Alain was already dragging Ingeborg away from them, while the two conversed in low-voiced, furious sounding German, and either didn’t see or chose to ignore the gesture.
“I thought Prussians were supposed to have nice manners,” Zahra commented before taking a careful sip of her drink; she was holding it with both hands like she was worried that the glass might suddenly animate and attack her.
“Hah,” Seamus snorted as Hiro handed him half the coins Alain had given him. “Clearly you haven’t met that many of them.”
“And you have?” she asked, her irritation at having had half a drink sloshed down her dress sharpening her tone.
“I’ve known enough,” Seamus retorted, jabbing his glasses back up the bride of his nose. “My dad fought in the Great War; he’s missing two fingers on his wand hand-”
Hiro scrunched his nose. “Wand hand?”
Seamus sighed, loudly. “Yeah, his wand hand. You know, the hand he holds his wand with?”
“That sounds like a euphuism for something else,” she snorted and Hiro’s choked back laugh turned into a cough when he swallowed the last of his drink the wrong way. Zahra looked confused; she loved how sheltered her friend had been sometimes.
“Oh, grow up Mari,” Seamus groaned. “Vulgarity is no substitute for wit.”
She snorted into her drink and prepared a retort.
“I don’t know about the rest of you, but I came here tonight to dance,” Hiro announced, stepping towards the dancefloor before turning to her in a move that almost looked like a pirouette. She wondered if he had studied ballet, when he was younger; she wasn’t used to wondering things like that about people. “Dance with me, Mari.”
“It’s getting late,” Zahra pipped up. “And we’ve all got an early start in the morning, Mari.”
“Yes, yes, mother hen,” she laughed with an affectionate wink, handing Seamus her drink and catching Hiro’s outstretched hand. “Be a dear Shay, and hold this for me while us reckless young people dance.”
“I’m not that much older than you,” Seamus groused good naturedly, trying to downplay how pleased he was to be left alone with Zahra. She caught a quick glimpse of Zahra’s glowing expression from the corner of her eye as Hiro led her towards the center of the dancefloor. She looks pretty pleased too. She bit the side of her cheek to keep from grinning like an idiot.
“Know how to dance to this, jitterbug?” Hiro leaned in close to ask, trying to avoid having to shout over the music. The band was playing something old, fast and jazzy, with jittery Charleston time, and most of the young dancers, accustomed to the rhythm of swing, looked a little uncertain how exactly they should be dancing. Honestly, she was a bit surprised; sometimes it took so long for new things to make their way this deep into the mountains she assumed everyone would know the dances from her parent’s generation.
“Of course I do! Better not step on my toes, my mother just sent me these shoes from Milano,” she laughed.
“We were just having fun! Dancing! Even Ezio wouldn’t find any harm in that,” she protested, shoving away from Cesare and stumbling on surprisingly rubbery legs, a little dazed and disoriented at the abrupt shift in both time and location. She managed to catch herself before her knees buckled. “I’d have thought that a sex demon would be above such petty jealousy. It’s terribly small of you, Cesare.”
“Not the dancing, my bitterness,” he hummed, again advancing into her personal space.
Her blood went cold in her veins and her heart quickened its already nervous tattoo. Sranje!
“Don’t swear,” Cesare admonished with a wide, unsettling smile. “Did your widow’s son teach you that? I’d call him a bad influence, but we both know it’s actually the other way around, don’t we, my bitterness?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She tried to ignore how much it unsettled her that he’d admonished her for something she’d thought, but not said, and that he’d known that she’d learned it from Hiro.
He sighed. “Why must you always try to lie to me? I know, Maria.”
Her racing heartbeat pounded in her ears. “And what is it that you think you know?” she forced herself to ask with carefully crafted nonchalance.
His already wide smile spread even wider, splitting the usually invisible seam of his lower lip, the tip of one of the long, thin, bright red tentacles kept beneath his tongue becoming visible. A violent spasm of horror shuddered down her body.
“Everything,” he replied with chilling simplicity.
Incredulous laughter bubbled up her throat as she nervously clutched the open neck of her blouse closed. “Nobody knows everything, Cesare. Stop trying to frighten me.”
He hummed noncommittally in response and hung his coat from the back of the chair she’d sat in to write to Hiro before drifting back towards the window.
Looks like he’s not planning on leaving anytime soon, she noted with despairing resignation and mentally shifted through the various things she was tempted to say, trying to decide which was most likely to hasten his departure.
“Such a shame, really, what happened to Dino Messana.”
A cold sweat broke out over her body at the way the incubus casually mentioned the name of her former would-be beau, something she couldn’t quite put her finger on chilling her through to the marrow of her bones.
Cesare tilted his head to the side as he studied something on the street below. “So young and handsome, and so much unrealized potential, gone, just like that.” He sharply tapped a nail against the windowpane and she flinched before she could stop herself. “And only just before your visit, too. How tragic.”
Her breath caught in her lungs. She was drowning, freefalling towards unforgivingly solid pavement.
“What did you say?”
He slid a sidelong look at her as his lips parted in another cruel smile. “Wouldn’t you agree, my bitterness?”
“What have you done?” she croaked, grasping desperately for the edge of the desk, the chair, anything to anchor herself. His velvety rich chuckle in response raised the hairs along the back of her neck.
“Cesare, what have you done?” she repeated, her fear suddenly melting into anger, molten hot and heavy in the pit of her stomach. “Why are you bringing him up? What do you even want from me, you monster! What the hell is wrong with you?” she seethed, charging towards him, right fist drawn back in preparation to strike. She was almost upon him when he vanished into thin air.
“My, my, Maria, what’s this? A long dormant torch flares to light again? What will your current dalliance think?” Cesare hummed from across the room. She noted that he’d positioned himself so that the bed was between them. Good.
She spun and flung a silently cast blistering hex; she’d always been especially good with those. It had no effect on the incubus. She watched in slowly dawning horror as he shrugged it off with a casual roll of his shoulders, his buttery smooth skin still pristine.
“Really, Maria?” he drawled, slowly shaking his head and tisking under his breath. “Do try not to be tiresome, poppet; you know how it bores me.”
“You know I do so hate to be tiresome,” she simpered.
He tossed his head back and laughed. “Do you? That’s certainly one explanation for the Dino Messana incident.”
Her face flamed at the memory even as something turned cold and ashen inside of her, a slow recognition of what Cesare was obliquely telling her.
It had happened just after Giulia hadn’t come back and she felt so lost and lonely without her and it sounded so inviting when Dino suggested that they duck out of training early to spend some time together alone in his room in the Motherhouse’s barracks. They had started with just cuddling and kissing, but things escalated quickly, and before she knew it most of their clothes were gone and she was giggling as Dino clumsily rolled a condom on and tried to pretend he knew what he was doing. And then her brother had shown up and all hell broke loose.
Ezio blasted the door clean off its hinges, looked at her – mostly naked, except for her panties – turned to Dino – completely naked, except for the condom – broke Dino’s nose with his first swing, and kept going.
My sister! Ezio was incandescent with rage. I trusted you, you fucking asshole, and this is how you repay me? You lying, scheming, cockroach-
Ezio, stop! He wasn’t doing anything-
Yes, he fucking was, he roared, jabbing an accusatory finger at the condom somehow still dangling off the end of Dino’s cock. What the fuck is that for if he wasn’t planning on doing anything wrong?
The spectacle Ezio made had drawn quite a few spectators. She still wanted to curl up and hide under some remote rock at just the memory of all those silent, judgmental looks.
She sawed her teeth against her bottom lip and cast about for some appropriately cutting and witty retort to show Cesare how little his digs about Dino really bothered her. In truth, she didn’t feel anything but just hollow, and she didn’t even have proper ownership over her most recent happy memories anymore; they belonged to him now.
“I have no idea what you’re getting at,” she declared with a practiced toss of her hair.
“Do you think it merely coincidence that your loving brother knew exactly where to find you, just in time to prevent…” Cesare drawled with a wide, vicious smile. “You know I don’t like other people touching my things, my bitterness.”
She blinked as her insides moved into places they weren’t supposed to be.
“You,” she managed to croak past numb lips, vision momentarily blurry and fingers prickling pins and needles. Her ears were ringing and the muscle around her left eye was starting to twitch. “That whole humiliating nightmare was your doing.”
Uncle Mario had been livid. He’d forced her to submit to a pelvic exam when they reached the infirmary, while everyone was distracted by the whirling flurry of medics tending to Ezio’s busted knuckles and Dino’s busted everything. She didn’t want to. He couldn’t have forced her if Ezio had been there for her when she really needed him or if anyone had sent for her mother, but they didn’t, and she didn’t have any choice but to submit. Virgo intacta. She hated how relieved her uncle had had been.
“Come now, my bitterness, be fair,” he playfully scolded. “And take some responsibility for your own questionable decision making. You were shocked and confused by the loss of your very best friend, perfectly understandable, really, but instead of behaving in a normal, healthy way, you decided to slip away, in the middle of training – really my bitterness, even you had to have realized that your absence would be immediately noticed – for an ill-conceived tryst with a testosterone fueled sack of meat with only three-quarters of a brain.” He sighed, dramatically. “Well, more like two-thirds after your brother was done with him, but I digress-”
“How fucking dare you,” she hissed. The hole in her heart Giulia had taken with her when she hadn’t come back had gotten smaller over time, like a piercing when one takes the jewelry out, but it hadn’t closed, hadn’t healed over; she doubted it ever really would. “I wish me and Dino hadn’t been interrupted. At least as soiled goods I’d be free from you.”
“You’ll never be free from me, Maria. That’s not how these contracts work. I’m the only one who can change the terms, and I’m not interested in being offered anything else in your place,” he replied, with chilling simplicity. He wasn’t smiling; somehow, he was even more terrifying serious. Unease prickled down the back of her neck and she couldn’t tell if she felt far too hot or completely cold.
“I don’t believe you.”
“The funny thing, with facts, is that they don’t require your belief to be true, my bitterness. Your attitude changes nothing, except to make it harder on yourself when I eventually do claim my collateral.” He bared his teeth; it didn’t look like a smile, not really.
I need to write to Shay. There must be something, some talisman or spell or something, to keep Cesare away from me. It was just the sort of research challenge Seamus would relish, and she could have kicked herself for not thinking to ask for his help sooner. Shay won’t let me down.
One of her mother’s house elves arrived with a crisp, vaguely apologetic, pop, salaaming as it signed her mother’s summons. It startled when it noticed Cesare and bowed so deeply its face nearly brushed the floor.
While it struck her as vaguely ominous that her mother was summoning her so soon after the far from pleasant conversation they’d just had – her mother habitually maintained an icy distance after they argued, for a couple of hours at the very least – she could only muster relief at being offered an opportunity to escape Cesare’s presence. A strange expression flickered across Cesare’s face and for half a heart-stopping moment she wondered if he had any intention of allowing her to leave, if the elf would even dare to protest if he contradicted her mother’s orders, but then his lips curled with something an uninformed person might mistake for bemusement as he draped himself across her bed. The edge of his shirt had come untucked from his, quite frankly, obscenely low-cut trousers, baring a flash of buttery smooth skin as he indulged in a distinctly feline stretch. Something half way between her heart and her lungs twisted itself into a knot at the sight, but it wasn’t exactly an unpleasant sensation. She didn’t want to think too hard about why or what that might mean.
“Run along now, my bitterness,” he drawled, directing a lazy upward curl of his fingers towards the groveling elf. His languorous smile was serrated and predatory and knowing. “One mustn’t keep your mother waiting.”