Sketch: Magaritte
from Our Better Wolves. Freedom Edition.
7773 AS, Winter; Perta, capital of the Vericanti Republic.
It is the strangest thing to feel nothing in the bright of day.
She sat in the Grove of Libitina on a stone bench among the oaks. The citizens of Perta clamored through their daily business, but their noise hardly touched her in these garden walls. Within the Sanctuary, beyond the poppies blossoming bright as paper flowers, through the stone doors, on a slab, there was a silence stitching together the minutes like a maid with her darning. Mago Tenente Magaritte Aseni sat in an antechamber of Death, waiting for her father.
Her mind sank into the fountain’s purling and the flowering vines that draped the lych-gate in vivid green and scarlet—flower of battle, for this was the funerary grove for the Cagne of Perta. She collected the sensations like precious gems of light and sound then plastered their qualia over her emptiness. The flower of battle rose to her mind.
She touched the color Red and its easy associations, then turned it over to find its shade of Scarlet before it disappeared into Black. Such a simple thing, to hold a vision of the world in your cells. She didn’t need the myriad diagrammatics locked in her mind for this; nor did it require much of her will, as limp as a dish rag inside her; and it need only delight her passions, a simple prospect. She held out her fingers to admire the work. A smear of deep red flooded her fingernail. She found yellow and a little dot emerged in the center, then she surrounded it in white starburst.
As if to remind her of the nature of the place and the purpose of her visit, stinging nettle crowded the bench and pricked at her satin sleeve, setting her teeth on edge. She folded her hands across her navy dress and stretched her chin up from her high collar. She sat upright and breathed.
There was no one to keep her company but the statue of Libitina, silent and unworshipped goddess that she was. Magaritte had already set her gold piece at the feet of the statue. A priest would come to collect the offering once no one was there to witness. Not even the superstitious were convinced anymore, but the priests maintained the mystery. Magaritte, tutted to herself, then sighed. Even that old, bemused bitterness about religion couldn’t break the great blankness she felt.
Garibald had offered to come with her, but he had a meeting on the Seventh Mount with the Capitano of the Dodici, the royal guard.
Besides, this was a quick errand, she told him—and herself—before attending the Senato. There was an important vote on the war budget that Magaritte wanted to witness. It would be nice to know if she and her Sarks would be paid for this venture upriver: the Cagne, along with all the Free Companies of the Free Cities of the Republic, had been on the western and northern fronts in Turael and the Obet for the past year.
They worked for the highest bidder, often in the mercantile interests of their condottierre —mercenary would be a course word for it, to Magaritte’s half-sentimental mind. There was an honor and a love (and a contract, of course) that bound them to serve their own people. They were the Cagne of Perta, the Acula of Nido, the Martella of Roccaforte, and so on, a Company for every Free City. Magaritte still felt that love and honor—they were all desperate to get out there with their comrades—but honor doesn’t put food in your belly. It does not put a well-forged sword in your hand nor hone your spellwork. Honor would get you used.
To wit, this war would likely get them killed if Arkas came down to defend its vassal in Turael. We can only live in the future now. It better have plenty of gold.
The nettle scraped along her sleeve. She edged away as far as she could but did not rise.
She hadn’t asked Vernia to join her either. Vernia had plenty of business for Ministro Arolio. He’d be at the vote today—the budget bill was his crafting. What did he have in store for this salvo? Arolio and the Cagne’s Condottiere Pigozi sat the Consiglio di Guerra opposite each other. They were not friendly, and Pigozi already chafed at the Consiglio’s strategy. His communiques to Garibald did not encourage any of them.
Magaritte had wanted to pry Vernia’s brain about it, but not before the vote. That would be crass to their friendship. If it were bad, Vernia would’ve warned her. It’s not as if she could do anything about it—Magaritte was Mago Tenente to the Scarlet Sarks, 7th Division of the Cagne of Perta, their elite, but still far below Arolio in the Republic.
Her rank and reputation could open doors, not ears. She could take the way of the hungry and dispossessed: she could simply kill him, she mused.
A little pebble in the sea of the Republic’s politics, maybe. It’s not that bad yet. Or is it? The Sarks had been overseas for almost three years and had only returned to Perta two days ago. She’d yet to acquaint herself with the mood in the capital. Magaritte meant to pick over the Republic’s treacherous political landscape with Vernia when they met later: there was nothing like a war of aggression to open fissures.
And on a larger scale, beyond their own petty politics and expansion west? No, there were already assassinations in the Weibesreich, south; Za’ahee pirates let loose by the Dominion in the east—the Sarks knew well—and on the northern continent, always that great evil Arkas, crouched beastwise on its shores.
Too many ripples make a tidal wave. One the Republic could scarcely afford, now that it was on the march. No, Arolio would have to live for now.
The nettle pricked at her again.
The stone doors of the Sanctuary scraped over the Cagne’s parcel of Pertani bedrock. She heard feet shuffling along the pebbled, winding path. A priest of Libitina approached. She could see the wrapped momento in his hands as he passed through the trees.
She hadn’t noticed the well of spittle that had collected in her mouth—no, she noticed and ignored it and that little self-revelation threatened to upturn her. Her twisting gut told her the moment approached. She spit into the nettles before the priest came into view, or risk vomiting at his feet. She sat upright and breathed.
In the Arcanium, you learn control. It is the only way to progress, to not be some half-mad sorcerer but a wizardress of Perta. The will is contracted to a needle-eye focus, and you learn to thread that focus, while the passions are allowed to wander for associations. Without that focus, the qualia of the world become too much to bear, too much to tame once you open them to a ravenous will and the passions. No mother and no father to speak of, it had taken Magaritte a long time to master herself.
Her will was threatened here. The passions, to be sure, were the ground of all arcane ability—and her people were certainly passionate—but the ground must be stoned, turned and furrowed before the will could sow new phenomena into the world. The land must be conquered. She sat upright and breathed.
The priest approached and she fixed her eyes on the signet ring on his hand—laurels around a wolf’s head—cradling the brown cloth wrapping. It bobbed along with the old priest’s gait. The salt of the Ocean and the Mare dell’Ore hung in the air and gulls wheeled above.
Grief, if grief it were—how could she feel grief for a man she hardly knew? …No, it wasn’t grief she felt.
She rose, with her hands clasped at her belly, as the priest stopped before her and offered the only keepsake she now had. “Tenente Magaritte Aseni, I present your father, Caporale Sepolto Aseni, in honor and devotion. He is entered into the Eternal Lists, and rests with his comrades in the 37th.”
As he held forth the relic and pulled aside the wrapping, his ring tinked across the crystals. They were a sparkling crust of white over the dome of her father’s skull. A silver coin was fixed to his forehead—minted last year, in the year of his death, and stamped with the Lupo Reale. In his eyes, rough red beryl gemstones had been grown, and dark sapphires lined the orbital, as if her father had been some great mage with power in his eyes.
He had risen to caporale till he lost his leg, a fisherman till he lost his boat, and then a netmaker for that long last stretch. They hardly saw each other then. She was already grown.
Embarrassment, that was it. What kind of daughter did that make her?
She sat upright and breathed.
The priest bowed, and she thanked him, and he let her be, alone in the garden. She sat down again as she cradled his face, as if it would give an accounting of his life. The fountain waters splashed until they were drowned out by the stone doors grinding shut. She knew the moment had truly arrived and would remain, that implacable accusation she could not confront. She sat upright and breathed.
The bone itself had been polished, though it felt light and brittle. Malnutrition. Emerald, enchanted, etched along the sutures of bone like a vine; small flowers of battle blossomed along the sutures. The remaining teeth had been gilded.
The rest of him lay in the deep darks beneath the city, among the ossuaries of comrades squared into their units in long parades down cavernous halls, circumscribed with the Eternal Lists and the whole of the Cagne’s history. Nearly five thousand years were chiseled into the heart of Perta, an unbroken sentence written into the layers of the city. Deeper than the city.
No one else knew, Magaritte liked to tell herself, but there was a secret down there. She had read of it once in a scroll in its own lost vault of the Arcanium. It was scribbled by the hand of some forgotten antiquarian. His name had crumbled with the rest of the scroll. Maybe it was just a fantasy—the lost places of Perta had always been a fascination for her, their absence still present if buried. There is only mystery at those depths.
Her father had been a man of the Cagne. That much she was certain of.
Magaritte imagined herself following that little antiquarian, hobbling on a crutch with no defense but a torch, never turning back to her, shuffling her living feet across that garden path and through those stone doors, through the funerary theatre where the sisters ply their trade and priests tally their coins; then into the necropolis, where the Vericanti Republic, Magaritte’s own epoch, clambers at the doors.
They would trace the history of the Estrangement with their fingertips in the Grande Armeria, where the Cagne’s relics wait to be taken up once again in service to Perta. Further back and down into the Anarchia and all the deeds that broke their people in that brief one hundred years; among cataracts in the gloaming and the Cenotaphs of the Lupi Morti, hollow in their glory; beneath the Twelve Apostati, forever gibbeted for the Pantheon Wars. Five thousand years deep, they would go, she and the antiquarian, into the cradle of the First Empire, and past the Palazo dei Condottierri, where the greatest of Vericanti men were still made to stand in their armour.
Deep beneath those legendary men, another two thousand years before the Cagne was formed, scrawls the myths of the first Vericanti, disappearing down into the Sounding Wars. If she could one day steel herself and follow the tongue of her people like the mortar seam of history down into the foundations of silence so complete as to feel nothing, there is a grotto.
In this grotto far below the Grove of Libitina, Vericanti history begins at the threshold—that much the antiquarian was certain of. The grotto itself, however, is circumscribed with rough-hewn runes and filigrees that would be wholly alien even to his own primogenitors. In that absolute darkness, churns a springhead of sea water. Within that pool, atop a driftwood pyre, lay a cist. It too was patterned with strange symbols, and strange the bones within of some long-forgotten goddess.
The nettle pricked at her sleeve again.
Magaritte lifted the porcelain cup to her lips. She cradled it awkwardly in her palm with her fingers splayed, one through the handle. She tipped it up with her other fingers, misjudging the angle. She dribbled espresso down her chin.
Vernia watched. Two fingers braced her temple with her elbow planted on the café table like a flying buttress. Magaritte didn’t want her pity today. It wasn’t the time for it.
Her father’s skull was turned away from the scene to the legislative battle below them in the Camera Alta, beneath the open rotunda of the High House of the Vericanti. They sat in the Piazza d’Accordi just above the public galleries—there was no public today in the sunken tiers—and looking down on the senatori peacocking on the theatre-in-the-round.
The winter’s day felt like early spring even up here, high on the Sixth Mount in the government district. Honeysuckle bloomed early on the white rotunda columns and shaded the two wizardress of Perta. Lime trees lined the Piazza without blocking the views beyond the sheer drop—the sea, the strait, the pale Rocca de Vergine beyond, waters lapping, the city sprawling down the tumble of hills into the golden fields of Perta. At their backs was the hulk of the Ministero, carved into the cliff wall rising to the Seventh Mount. It was a bright day, Magaritte thought, as she dabbed at her chin with the cloth napkin.
Vernia’s grey eyes were exasperated, as was her tone. “Heal yourself already, my love. Or drink with the other hand.”
“I have jewel-weed back in my quarters,” Magaritte assured her. Vernia was right though, Magaritte was being stubborn.
Vernia only gave her a doubtful exhalation in reply.
The nettle rash bubbled across her fingertips. The itching was bad enough without the scalding porcelain against the stinging fibers still in her skin. Why she insisted on looking a fool in the Piazza d’Accordi while ministri and senatori bustled by was beyond Magaritte. There is nothing but mystery down there. Mago, heal thyself already.
Magaritte rolled her eyes over to the woman she had known since their university days in the Arcanium. Her black hair was going grey at the temples. Was four years abroad truly so long?
She searched her memory for the nettle’s diagrammatic, like tracing a vine down the kingdom flora until she came to the brambles. It was a tangle of nettle species, but one would do as well another. The magic would be forgiving. She plucked it, considered its components, looking for relief. There was the two-faced culprit.
She held the diagrammatic in her mind—she let it slip for just a moment—then located it in the skin rash. She removed the histamine compound from the tangle of signifiers, and it evaporated from the welts as the last fibers fell from her fingertips.
“Good.” Vernia sat back, preparing a bite of scone. “May I enjoy my friend’s company now?”
“You may.”
Magaritte focused on the closing debates below. She waited for the breakdown by company at the final reading. They would be niggling at the bits for a couple more hours—annual production rates and who could get paid for what provision. Family fortunes could be broken here, joint ventures capsized, and neighbors beggared. The High Families of the Vericant and the Condottieri were accustomed to war and its logistics, but mostly for their own private interests which largely funded themselves. They rarely needed to be so united in their aggression. They could rot as long as the Cagne received its due. Pay me.
It was simply a question of how things would shake out for the Cagne considering the envy and enmity that existed among the Free Cities; between Arolio and Pigozi; the High Families and the Sovrano; the High Families and everyone else. The vote itself was a forgone conclusion—it would pass, for what else could they do with their soldato already in battle—so Ministro Arolio had yet to appear.
“I wasn’t asking you.” Vernia nibbled from her scone and placed it back on its plate. Her sharpness caught Magaritte’s attention. Vernia’s hands folded over each other, pendulous over her father’s skull as he watched on. “I saw him a couple years ago. He actually remembered me from that one time we met.”
“Who?”
“Your father.”
“Oh.” The senatori were shoaled into partisans, bent over their scribes scritching and scratching the language to their own perfection as the representatives on the floor took hatchets to each other’s arguments. There were maybe ten different groups down there among the two hundred senatori; and plenty of flitting back and forth, sniping looks of consternation, recrimination and triumphalism.
Arolio was having his baby butchered, it seemed. But the man was clever, Magaritte had to admit. He knew the cuts that would come and gave his bill plenty of padding, feints, poison pills, and red herrings. Much changed in the give-take—he set them against each other—but it would still be precisely what he wanted. His own kind of savant alchemy.
The only people not moving among the black-haired Vericanti were not Vericanti. A Curaelian man sat alone up near the galleries. He was older, auburn-haired, beardless, watery eyes, with his shoulders draped in a fur-lined cape of green paisley. He tried to focus on the chaos but nodded off frequently.
The other was a cold and matronly Estruani woman, Magaritte’s age, sitting lower in the tiers, nearer the dais—or simply closer to an exit. She had the rust red hair and dusky skin of her people, her garb was fashionable enough for the city.
She knew what these people would think of her no matter how well she dressed for them—she would capitulate only so far. She wore a necklace of lion’s teeth, white feathers, and snake rattles over a wrap of wolves’ hide, and probably more symbols dangling from her ears and wrists and ankles, just so each of the Free Cities knew what she thought of them. She probably presented it as a compliment, which they gladly believed. The woman’s opinion of the proceedings was clearly severe—perhaps it was her first taste of civilized politics. Magaritte liked her.
Two Estruani men guarded her. They wore simple, unmatched boiled leather jackets and pants. The Estruani eschewed uniforms even in the field, much to the chagrin of the condottieri and captains.
“Who are those two?”
A sigh escaped Vernia’s mouth as she sat back. Magaritte knew without looking that Vernia was glaring a hole into her, but there was nothing Magaritte could do about it. There was nothing to say on the matter of her father.
“Our vassals now have a seat at the table. They can’t say a damn thing, but they can sit.” Vernia nodded toward the man. “He is Prince Iamchóras. He’s a prince, you know.”
They both laughed at that. When the Republic conquered Curael nearly one hundred years ago, the old Sovrano magnanimously allowed the dispossessed aristocracy to keep their honorifics and local governance. They meant absolutely nothing to their new Vericanti overlords.
It didn’t seem to matter to the Curaelians as long as southern trade passed through their borders. Lake Curael was also the staging ground for the push west, up the Aldono River. The new shipyards and garrisons were a boon to the locals. The people were hard workers, industrious. And they didn’t hold much of a grudge.
Estruey, their closest neighbor—and the worst kind during the Estrangement—they were another matter. But really, it was bad history all around. Magaritte’s people were wrathful.
“And her?”
“Bodevecca Scatenato Ardon-sut of the Greyline clan. Her great-great-grandfather was a high druid during the purge; her aunt is clan leader. She’s cousin to Capitano Beroza, I believe. You know how their bloodlines are.”
“You’re keeping an eye on her?”
“Of course. I have a pretty file for her. It hasn’t grown much. Seems Estruey is all in. Promises were made for after the war.”
“Do you believe that?”
“Their allegiance or the promises? Neither, but I do believe the Sovrano is acting in good faith, at least. These, however.” She waved her hand at the senatori. “Who knows how they’ll feel when the time comes.”
The Sovrano had been bolstering the Guild House and the Lower House, but the High Families had thoroughly bound the Republic to the High House two generations ago. Their fingers were deep in the Guilds, as well. As for the Lower House: they called it the Shit House for a reason—festivals and sanitation did not ensure alliances, to Magaritte’s mind. What could the Sovrano do when the time came?
“A year’s time,” Magaritte said. That’s the timeline they were told to button up Turael. They both had a laugh at that too.
Turael had been a part of the old empire. It was west of Curael, separated by a steep mountain range and the Forest of Sam, dangerous and impassable on foot, so they could only force-sail up the Aldono—news of that catastrophe had reached the Sarks abroad.
There was a northern pass, as well—less deadly than the Forest, but long and treacherous for an army. They were both foolish choices, so the Consiglio chose both. Pigozi wasn’t happy. He had wanted to go south, far away from Arkas, which was smart, less costly, but less lucrative.
The First Empire couldn’t hold Turael once Arkas began its expansion from the northern continent. Arkas waxed and waned over the millennia, but it always returned to Turael. Somehow the Republic was expected to retake it and keep it.
Arkas had no navy on this side of the globe, nothing to challenge the Republic. But, to Magaritte and others, it seemed like opening a front on the southern continent was enough inducement for Arkas to strengthen what it had. It could reach a claw down and pincer the Republic with its talons within ten years; twenty if it actually expected to challenge the Vericanti navy.
The Senato leadership and the rest of the Consiglio, however, thought Arkas was a senescent heap at this point. Magaritte doubted that. Some tigers can lie.
“In a year’s time we’ll all be richer,” Vernia quipped—or at least the senatori and condottieri would. They sipped their espresso.
They talked about Garibald, of course. And Rabia—there was still that twinge in Vernia. The doings of the Sarks; and the workings of the Ministero.
Vernia told her of the assets and caches she’d sown in Estruey, Curael, and in the Forest of Sam—not even Arolio knew about that one. “But don’t go there unless you absolutely must. Our messengers no longer stop on the river east of Temura—too many have gone missing. And be careful in Temura. You’ll read the reports soon enough. Feritz says your allotment will be to your liking. Right by the river.”
“And the mosquitoes.”
At that point, a brawl broke out on the floor. Five senatori had each other by the throats and the scruff, and fists flailed in tantrums. Artless bastardi.
Vernia folded the brown wrapping into a cushion for Margaritte’s father to see better.
Magaritte leaned over as well. Prince Iamchóras had startled awake, and Boudavecca grew bored then left. The Presidente banged the speaker’s stone, and the Alta Guardia separated the five senatori with blunt polearms.
Capitano Mascella rushed in, even on his stiff leg. He wore a silver-gleaming chest plate and greaves over white linens with grey piping; his rapier not yet drawn. He must be nearing sixty now, Magaritte guessed. He had done the handsome thing and shaved his head completely since last she saw him. His beard was fully white except for the two remaining black streaks at the corners of his mouth.
They sent the senatori sprawling on the marble as the Presidente lectured from the Dais and handed down fines. His voice barely made it into the rotunda for all his yelling.
“At least the senatori are ready for battle,” Magaritte said.
Vernia tutted at that. “Barely a third of this class have served in the Companies. They’re all bleating for glory and honor and unity when they make speeches back home. On their own terms, of course. But there will be bravi out tonight in Perta. The Families have started hiring them for their little feuds again. There will be a crack-down soon, from on high.”
Full conscription or death for every bravi caught dueling. Magaritte wasn’t sure how to feel about that—she had one former bravi to deal with already; but the Cagne would need replenishment. The Eternal Lists already grew.
The men picked themselves up, each party exiting their respective doors. And within minutes they had scrappled up the sunken stairs into the Piazza, a running band of fisticuffs—at least they weren’t allowed weapons on the Sixth Mount. Below, the senatori were uproarious with each other and the Dais. Capitano Mascella openly threatened any other senatori who would like to break decorum. His voice was a barrage into the sky.
“Oh, gods, Vernia,” Magaritte exclaimed. “By all the armored tits of Zhoatlicue, you’ve let the place slide.”
“We shall all sup at her tits, in a year’s time.” She raised her espresso. “It’s only the second fight this season.” She looked down at the Capitano. “He really is one of the last great men still holding it together. I love that man.”
She was much more relaxed with it than Magaritte. A lesson to herself: the Sarks were used to failed regimes, a bit of a specialty, and all that attended them. So, this is what it’s like in your own home. The politics were always harsh, but regular bouts on the floor? murderers sent around as proxies? And if fortune spins back around to bite them now? Better now, before we deplete ourselves.
Magaritte looked over at the ruckus, which began rolling across the paving stones, a tangle of weak fists. So, this was how her Republic lurched toward a second empire, a ten-tongued, two-hundred-armed monstrosity.
The Guardia in the Piazza chased after the senatori, but Magaritte had had enough. She focused a bit, tossed a little casting, and the scrum broke apart, screaming and scratching. A little nettle rash for them if they weren’t going to get her paid.
Vernia turned toward her. “You’re positively glowing, my love.”
Magaritte held out her hand and sure enough, a fuscia aura was on her skin. The Piazza’s defenses had marked her, as had a young guard.
He approached, and they laughed anyways. “Signora Vernia.” He nodded to her with respect and some fear as well.
“Rudalfo,” she said demurely, and he flushed. He was very handsome and didn’t truly know his peril. Magaritte knew that posture of Vernia’s.
“Tenente,” he looked to Magaritte’s glowing skin, and the rank on her epaulets.
“I apologize to the House, signor.”
“It was merely an amusement for the old soldato.” Vernia stroked the skull’s crystal hairline.
That was enough for Rudalfo. His flush deepened and all he could do was nod his acceptance. He needed to get out from under Vernia’s presence, Magaritte surmised, but not before a prolonged bow.
The two women laughed some more when they believed his pride was out of earshot.
The Presidente closed debate and called a recess; then the vote—those men would not get one. Had Arolio counted on that? His time was soon, and Magaritte had never wished him so much good fortune. The relative gains to the Cagne almost didn’t matter now. Almost. Pay me.
The senatori retreated to their cloak rooms beneath the feet of the two wizardress of Perta. The scribes collected their day’s work and disappeared into the backrooms. Arolio came to his place at the Dais with his papers. He often liked to magically appear to the senatori when they re-entered. Ministro Arolio was already prepared and planning his next move. Though he was no wizard, simply a ministero of war, meek and bespectacled. Sublimely professional in his grey cloak and blue cravat.
He sat without acknowledging the Presidente, and the Presidente ignored it concertedly.
“I spent some time with your father. A few afternoons on the Colanna Verdi,” Vernia began and Magaritte knew from her tone that she would not stop.
“We were at the docks inspecting the new sails for the Aldono Fleet and he was there. He sewed the canvas for the Golden Barge, actually. He was proud of it because he knew it was for the Sarks… you. He wanted to know all about you these last years. I showed him your one letter. I didn’t even redact it.
“I made sure his file was updated with your post—I hoped you wouldn’t mind. And he’d let his pension lapse somehow. He took care of it, though. I had to scold him. But he received the back payments, so he would go eat steak once a month at the veteran’s hall.
“He wrote his own piece for the Lists. He joked about escaping the Cenotaphs—"
She sat upright and breathed. “Not here.”
“No, you’re right. Not here.”
The sun dipped toward the bright horizon in the west. The shadows grew long across the Piazza, and a chill set in. The senatori filed in for the reading of the bill.
The Segretario della Camera returned from the backrooms with a pristine new War Bill. When all had settled, she began her reading. It took almost an hour, and there was a fair bit of grumbling, but the body remained calm.
“Is it to your liking?” Vernia asked.
“It will do, I suppose.” In truth, it would barely slake Pigozi’s thirst. And other officers had already been pressuring him to call for a renegotiation of terms with the city.
“You can thank the Sovrano, but don’t get too comfortable. Arolio is surpassing Pigozi on the Consiglio, and Pigozi has been testing Arolio’s patience.” Eventually, Magaritte read between Vernia’s words, one of them would force the Sovrano’s finger onto the scale and Pigozi wasn’t making friends.
“That explains Pigozi’s mood.”
The voting began. The scribes walked down the aisles, presenting each senatore with their personal ballots. They marked their votes, sealed them with their signet rings, and placed them in the gilded boxes carried by the next scribe, their eyes never leaving the slips as they passed between hands to box.
The ballot boxes were gathered at the Dais, broken open, and the ballots sorted and counted silently as the Segretario watched on. She was a study in composure as the count became clear and she reported it to the Presidente.
The little man nodded to her, exchanged some words, and without any announcement, the Segretario went back for a recount. It must be close, Magaritte thought. How could it be close? When that was done, she returned. The Presidente was not pleased. He sat back in his chair, sighed.
“The bill does not pass.”
Immediate uproar as they all pointed fingers. The stone came down and the Capitano followed it with a salvo of curses. Even Magaritte and Vernia stood should they need to flee his wrath. They were far too dignified to shout their offense into the Alta Camera.
“Gods, I really have let it slide,” Vernia said in a small voice.
“Please say the Sovrano will step in.”
“I wish he could. And so does he. He’s almost done with the High House, and so is everyone else. But he pruned so many flowers for Dockside—there’s not much to move them if they won’t move themselves. So, the remedies might be worse.” The Anarchia loomed like the darkened rotunda.
When the Capitano had cowed them enough, the Presidente spoke again. “We will reconvene in three days, at which time I expect this body to do its duty to the soldato of this Republic.”
The stone came down and that was that. The senatori began filing out, hardly a whiff of shame about them. Lucky for them the public wasn’t here.
Arolio was composed, still seated on the empty Dais. Magaritte wondered what twisted recompense he might exact on the senatori. He could not view the ballots himself, but he could divine well enough where this went wrong, with whom this went wrong; and as a political alchemist, he had all the tools required to transmute these shits for brains into gold for the Companies. Work your magic for us, you little weasel. Get me paid.
His neck craned ever so slightly up to Vernia.
She nodded in acknowledgement. “Arolio will be weeding the hedges tonight. I’ll throw some dirt into the beds, I guess.” She let out a long sigh. “Well, my love, I have some gardening to do.”
It would be a long three days in the Ministero. For the second time today, Magaritte realized, she felt robbed of someone. She could do nothing about it, her pride now incensed at the senatori; and her grief—yes, there was nothing else to call it though it felt so much like an unmooring fear, and Magaritte was most certainly not afraid nor could she afford to be unmoored; and Vernia certainly didn’t have time for that now—Magaritte’s grief chiseled deeper into her heart. She stood, awkward as Vernia turned to her. Her own expectations for Magaritte’s confidence evaporated with her call to duty, and Magaritte felt relieved.
“I’ll see you at the parade, my love.” Vernia put her palm to Magaritte’s cheek, and kissed her lightly on the forehead, at her left eye, her cheek. She bent down and put her forehead to the skull of Sepolto Aseni, like a true daughter.
“Take him, Vernia. Just take him. No need to drag him to another war.”
Vernia lifted him with the wrap falling over her hands and presented Magaritte’s father to her. “It can’t hurt him.”