Lord of the Last Heartbeat Read online

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  Tibario loosened his grasp once we were inside the Duomodoro. No one else was in the hall. Ivory linings lent the cathedral a mausoleum-like air.

  Sniffing scornfully, Tibario seized my tray and dumped it behind a pillar. Those poor glasses. If he’d known how I’d fought for them. He tossed the silver disc aside with a clang then dusted his hands. “All right. What in hell were you doing with him in the corner? I told you to stay in sight where it was safe.”

  Tibario and I didn’t look greatly like brothers; we both had Mamma’s delicate nose and fair eyes, but he was burnished as an olive, hair equally rich. And he, not having my condition, looked unmistakably male. Proper muscles and all.

  “I wasn’t trying to—”

  “Dammit, Mio, do you know how much danger you could have been in? That man looked like he wanted to eat you with minuet sauce.”

  “He—” I was going to say that he’d saved me. But then I would have to say from what he’d saved me. And if he recognized the lord as a moon-soul, he’d probably lecture me on the bad influence of superhumanly strong immortals. “He kept me company.”

  “Never mind.” Tibario sighed, and wrapped one arm affectionately around my narrow shoulders. “I’m here now.”

  “Thank you, brother.” I allowed myself to lean into him.

  “Mamma has him in the meeting room.” Tibario retrieved the silver tray and used its reflection to adjust the swirl of his pompadour. “Warm up your voice. It’s just about time.”

  The tension in my chest would bow to no warm-up. I nodded anyway. “I’m ready.”

  He kept his arm around me protectively during the approach. The false acolyte and the witch’s serving boy, holding on to each other. The two of us and Mamma, cornering a man of the cloth to break his will for the cause. Like a family.

  Well. Like our family.

  Papa would have joined in the bonding himself, but he was overseeing his soldiers. No worry. Failure was never acceptable, but with Mamma at the helm? It wasn’t even possible.

  I began to hum a little tune, more to comfort myself than for practice. The only melody I could think of was a dirge.

  We were admitted into a habit-blue room spotted with festival lights. Tibario closed the door behind us, and at once I lost sense of how I had gotten there. The room was like the enclosure of a dream, marking out a world of its own against the celebrations outside. A priest, garbed in azure, sat by the stained glass window. There, the room’s dreamlike aura thickened, but not around him. It was around the woman seated across from him, who charged the air with possibilities.

  Queen of the illicit phylactery trade in Vermagna, witch nonpareil, and mistress of the power of occhiorosso. My mother, Serafina Gianbellicci.

  She smiled at me, the ruby glint of her left eye a dagger’s point. Her magic and mine touched and mingled like two instruments finding harmony.

  His Grace—Pater Donatello—was a reedy man who would have looked heartbreakingly ordinary if not for his blue chasuble, and the knowledge that he might soon be one of our country’s leaders. This was going to be hard. “Signora Gianbellicci and I have been having the most fascinating discussion. Do fetch some wine for the good signora,” he told me.

  “Oh, no, really, thank you, Your Grace. I abstain.”

  Of course she abstained, like almost all mages. Unlike most mages, she never wore any periapts, jeweled mediums that armored the fragile magical organs. She forbade me to wear them either; to her, they were signs of shame. When I became a witch like her—a mage capable of working one’s natural magic into spells—she’d said I’d have to control unassisted the magic that pulsed through my body like blood.

  Mine was awakening from my humming. Every mage had a part of their body in which their magic dwelled. Mamma’s was in her left eye, but mine was in my throat. Music opened a new plane of my senses. Emotion, thought, intention, my heart picked up all these vibrations like a tuning fork. Through that magic link flowed the purr of the priest’s discomfort, and Tibario’s eager tension. A heavy beat thrummed under it all—Mamma’s elation with her caught prey.

  “Pater, I’d like to introduce my son Mio.” She indicated me. I felt a strange urge to do something exhibitory, like dance for him, but resisted. I was already going to sing.

  “Ah, how do you do? How novel to have a child in service. But war has changed much for us all.” He shook my hand.

  “His Grace was just telling me what he planned for laws of magic when he’s elected consul.” Mamma directed this at me, as if sharing a small gift. This is my magic son. He does tricks.

  “If I am elected consul, signora.” He chuckled. “I hope to see a future with more freedom for your kind. The church feels no qualm against mages or witches so long as they do not stray into sorcery—after all, magic which manipulates the wills of others must be anathema to any sane being.”

  The subject made me queasy. My childhood had been rife with tales of other countries in which mages were institutionalized, subdued with drugs that slowed the mind and numbed the body. Our once-feudal country had never had quite the same traditions, and the teetering new government had no power to enforce such a thing. But magical arts were either treated as commodities, or harshly policed by officials. His promises didn’t exactly kindle my optimism.

  “Sorcery truly is a repugnant practice. Don’t you agree, my son?” She tilted her head.

  I stared.

  “Quite.” Donatello nodded primly. “The mind is a sacred boundary. I believe laws should focus on fighting sorcerers and not inhibiting theurgy that benefits society.”

  “You see, Your Grace? You have secured my confidence.” She blinked so quickly that for a moment she appeared lidless. “And the number of votes I can assure you.”

  He shook his head with a sufficiently abashed laugh. “I appreciate the public support, signora. But my understanding was that neither you nor your husband possessed a seat on the electorate.”

  But the tune of his apprehension rang clear to me beneath his politesse. At first, I’d hoped she would try to bargain with him, her influence for his obedience. She already controlled puppets in both houses of the government. He could simply volunteer to be one—and I would be the last resort if he refused.

  But I should have known better. She played much simpler, more ambitious games. Of course she wouldn’t give him a choice.

  “Indeed. I do not possess a seat on the electorate.” She smiled, an acid-and-honey streak across her face. “I possess several.”

  His thoughts were chimes against my senses. Like me with my strange lord, the signs were coalescing into a pattern for Donatello. The fact that she’d asked him here in secret, at such an unusual time and place. Her hypnotically cryptic remarks. And a thousand chilling rumors of a witch with a red eye.

  She was toying with him, showing him her hand. Proving that it was far too late to fold. I’d wondered how many people actually knew that Mamma had exerted dominion over members of the governing seats. But the taste was in the air, the city’s stones reeking of sorcery—magic that controlled the mind. Donatello was no doubt beginning to recognize that taste.

  His rapidly uncoiling fear sent a chill through me, made me wish to close the link. But the inner music continued its soft flooding of my skin. I felt the vibrations so delicately now that I might have been able to tell apart every particle of my flesh; each note was capable of changing me on a physical level. Often after singing, I found that scratches and bruises on my body had spontaneously healed.

  I wouldn’t be healing anything tonight.

  “Signora... I’m afraid I have no means to unravel such riddles.”

  Mamma’s resonance trilled sharply. She stood and gazed out the window. Festival lights mottled her face as if numbering her countless sins. Our countless sins. She swung the gold chain up against the glass. “Do you know the most valuable c
urrency in our fair city, Your Grace?”

  Nerves made him speak quickly. “The economy struggles, true, but I intend—”

  “Loyalty. No coin weighs more than loyalty. Money itself is but a symbol of loyalty, a trust in the value of a nation. That loyalty can be bought is no failing, but a need. Elsewise new trusts might not be forged.”

  I wondered what kind of secret Pater Donatello would have. I hoped his was mortifying, filthy. A child killer. A rapist. A slaver or a brutalizer. If he was rotten to his core, perhaps I would come away feeling I had helped Mamma cleave a path for justice.

  “That may be true, signora, but I assure you my loyalty is not for sale.”

  He was taking a stand. The feeling of his resolution firming made me nauseous.

  Please, please let him just be terrible.

  “Oh, Your Grace! I am not asking to buy your loyalty.” Mamma laughed, turning to face him. With one slow movement, she pressed the gem against the glass and dragged a scraping cut down its length. “I intend for you to pay for mine.”

  Donatello surged to his feet, intent on the door. Tibario barred his path.

  “Apologies, Your Grace.” Tibario produced a pistol from his belt, then locked the door with a snap. “I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to take your seat.”

  The priest obeyed with hands poised on his knees. He was still holding on to his strength inside, assuring himself that if she wanted him dead, she’d have him killed in a way that could not implicate her or her son.

  I hated this, too. I hated how I could hear their internal struggle every single time.

  “What do you wish for me to do, then, signora? I have no power that would satisfy you. And even as consul, I would not command the entire country.” His voice, admirably, did not shake.

  Mamma gestured me forth. Her occhiorosso was already glowing. It looked hungry for secrets, for purchase into his mind. I came to stand before him. “All I want you to do,” she said, very slowly, as if explaining something to a child, “is listen to my son sing.”

  Confusion rattled through him. Before he could ask, she took me by the chin and kissed me lightly on the nose. “Now, Mio.”

  I looked at Donatello. His heartbeat marked my time, set a rhythm I could spin a ballad out of with ease. And I knew by that cadence that whatever shadows he had in him, none of them were as terrible and ugly as I hoped. I couldn’t do this again.

  “It’s all right, my boy,” she breathed in my ear. “Never fear.”

  Never fear.

  I began to sing.

  It felt morbid to pick out a piece for each victim. If I chose a threnody, it would only compound the horror of the violation in their memory. A mattinata, and the cheer of such music would be polluted forever in their ears. For him, I had selected an aria. Lifting my voice to its height, I composed the theme to Pater Donatello’s undoing.

  I strung the beats into place, slipping gently into a contralto, and as my tempo mounted the song rose like floodwater around him. The vibration of my heart rushed out with it, the link fully opened. This aria had no story for me, no lyrics or theme. The story would come from him.

  He sat back in the seat, breathless. The melody became like hypnosis, only instead of mesmerizing him, it opened the gate in me that would connect us. Tibario and Mamma swirled within the notes, but I discarded them. Of all the harmonies that struck my inner strings, I plucked Donatello’s out and followed it.

  Flashes, the fingerprints of his memories, pattered on my insides. I felt the meaning of that blue cloth, the shelter the church had given him. He had been not much older than Tibario when the war had ended. Like many not part of the wealthiest families, he had only hoped starvation would not finish him.

  The aria took on lightness; I found things I admired about him, or would have, given time. He was shy. He worried as he lay awake at night if he would ever be the right kind of man, if God was pleased with him. When he prayed, his mind wandered, and it embarrassed him. I should absolutely not know these things. If I caught them on a whisper of magic, in private, I could carry them away and promise to keep them safe forever.

  But I had other promises to keep.

  Mamma’s magic had a catch to it. She needed a secret, one that shamed him, for her occhiorosso to invade his mind. The one thing that should never be hers to take—only that would let her chain his will to hers. I adjusted the pace and tone of my song, and by shaping it, I altered the harmony he had with me. I heard secrets in him—ones that brought tears to my eyes, that I hated myself for seeing. But none yet that she wanted.

  Maybe he didn’t have any. Maybe I could just stop this. Refuse to go on. Mamma’s sorcery wouldn’t affect him if she didn’t know his emotional weaknesses. Donatello watched me with eyes streaming, as he felt me unwinding his heart. Only Tibario’s threat kept him still.

  If I refused, Tibario may be commanded to kill Donatello. And Mamma would never forgive me.

  Donatello cried out, covered his face. They all resisted, with everything they had. I only got through because I was not a knife. I did not try to break their resistance. All I did, as their pain ravaged me, was sing.

  At the crescendo, I found it. His pearl.

  The face of a boy. Tan and limned with sea dark, surrounded by a haze of refracted morning. My age, perhaps older. For a moment I was him, an image in Donatello’s memory. He was a youth who tended the gardens at the Duomodoro. He, too, had nowhere else to go when the revolution had drained us, because the orphanages could not sustain their wards. One night in Donatello’s bed, he had laced a flower through the older man’s hair and thanked God for their meeting.

  Grimly, I sealed the final verse from his memory:

  I hide you from even God to see. My boy, my love, my Avonici.

  I clamped my mouth shut and fell to my knees. The song lingered in the air like a butterfly cloud turned venomous. Donatello sobbed into his hands.

  “Avonici!” Mamma crowed. “What an absolutely beautiful name. I am certain you love him very much.”

  I whirled to look up at her. I couldn’t just watch, but it was too late now. My mouth worked, the voice inside dying its slow self-inflicted death. Too much magic was still in me.

  Her eye steamed red. “Look at me, Your Grace.”

  “No!” He threw himself on the floor, held an arm over his face. “Not the occhiorosso! I won’t let you!”

  Mamma, please. Don’t make me. I want to keep loving you. None of it came out. I thought the words, tried to speak them, but it was as if my throat could only produce rasps. This silence happened to me often after I sang.

  “Hold him.”

  Tibario obeyed, pinning the priest to the side of the sofa and angling his head up at Mamma. Donatello clawed at his face, tried to close his eyes, but Tibario forced them open. This wasn’t even necessary. She didn’t need eye contact, only the entry wound of his shame.

  She looked into him, the crimson ring of her occhiorosso growing brighter. The secret-ravaging eye pierced him like a spearhead, skewering him with her thieved knowledge. After a moment, red reflected in his gaze.

  I sat by, useless, as he stopped struggling.

  Mamma sniffed. As if moved by an alien urge, Donatello lumbered awkwardly to his feet. She would have to learn the nuances of another new mind to control. “Sit,” she said. He dropped to the sofa.

  “Go to sleep.” As if she had switched him off, he collapsed limply into slumber.

  “Well, Mamma,” Tibario said. “You have yourself a pet consul now.” His voice held no inflection. The music danced through me still, but I could not bear to listen in on his psyche. He knelt, removed his chasuble, and wrapped it gently around my shoulders.

  It was so perverse I could have laughed. I’d just raped a man’s mind in front of them, and it was me who received sympathy.

  Mamma touched my back. “Don’t feel
too badly, Mio,” she said. “You have made your mother very proud.”

  Chapter Two

  RHODRY

  There was nothing funny about coming home to a dead boy on your lawn. In the shrubbery, maybe, depending on how the body was positioned, you could allow yourself a chuckle and chalk it up to hysteria. But the lawn? Really.

  I caught the scent at the gate—dead and, embarrassingly, just the tiniest bit delicious. A laugh gurgled in my throat, but I choked it down. Hysteria.

  He was sprawled in front of my front door, as if my house had chewed him up and spit him out. I took a step forward, crumpling the paper in my hand with its wine-dabbed message. I saw the fey creature from the night before, towheaded and wide-eyed, imploring, Stop me. Please. I saw him mute and stiff at my feet, eyes unable to ever properly close—

  —I saw broad shoulders and a graying tan. It wasn’t him. Relief almost knocked me over. Fucking hell. I couldn’t have taken that sad-faced boy appearing on my doorstep the very next morning. A painful rush of dearness sprawled through me, remembering his helpless expression, the delicate lemony shade of his hair. The familiarity of his voice, like the spirit of the opera stage come to stand before me. At least my aid hadn’t condemned him to this doom.

  Not that this poor little shit’s anonymity did him any good.

  A pale shadow loomed over his body, and congealed into arms, shoulders, a head. Rosemary. Her face came into focus, all concerned frown lines. “My lord.” She could have been the voice of the air. “Forgive me.”

  I patted my jacket for a cigarillo. “Don’t. It’s not your fault.” As ghostly groundskeepers went, Rosemary was the best, but she couldn’t do a thing against the curse. Supposedly that was my job, but the power of the bear spirit who’d resurrected me seemed a little lacking in the face of this particular curse.

  I lit my cigarillo and took a steadying draw. Time to see who I was burying now.

  At first, I had wanted to avoid looking at their faces. I thought I could let their identities die with their voices in their frozen throats, some kind of privacy in recompense for how mechanically my curse had destroyed them. It didn’t work. Whenever my wife came again, each slain soul would be there, waiting, crying out, hoping that this time I would hear them, and save them.