Page 83 of Fortune's Blade

“Why else?”

“Why else? You are my daughter—”

“I am your burden!”

I had thought that I was done talking, and was content to have Ray take over. Had planned, insofar as I was able to plan anything currently, to drink enough to get drunk, and then to go back to bed. To try and forget all this.

But at his easy proclamation of the title that he had so long denied me, I snapped.

“I am the albatross you wear around your neck,” I spat. “The one you could never be free of! I am the monster you would have killed to save her that you love, only we were inseparably linked and you could not!

“I am the one you never wanted; the one you feared; the one you thought might one day swamp your daughter’s mind and take over, stealing her life away from her, away from you. I am the one you prayed to God about when you thought no one could hear, for him to excise me like the demon you thought me to be.

“I am the one you wanted gone, and when you couldn’t get rid of me, you bound me, in chains worthy of a demon lord. But I escaped them and my life is mine, do you hear? Mine, and I will not give it up! Not for you, not for anyone. And if I wish to throw it away, that is my right, too! So, get out!”

Vaguely, I realized that I’d gotten up in the midst of all that, sobbing and shrieking like a mad woman, and had backed him, the great Mircea Basarab, the father I loved even now, in spite of everything and more than anything, all the way off the balcony, through the bedroom and to the door to the hall. Which I opened and thrust him out, before he could say anything else, before I could lose my nerve and fall to my knees, and beg him to love me as he never had and never would.

And slammed the door in his beautiful face.

I fell to my knees afterward, dry eyed and shaking, and wondering if it had finally happened, if I had actually gone mad. It felt like it. And even more when I realized that he was still on the other side of the door.

I could hear him being questioned by the startled guards, whose minds he had overthrown to get in here, and who didn’t understand how a man they’d never seen enter had suddenly stumbled out of the supposedly secured room. And shut up just as quickly, because he willed it so. I heard them go silent, heard him breathing hard, in anger or something else, heard him hesitate for a long moment.

And then I heard him walk away.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

I did cry then, sinking to my knees and sobbing hysterically in Ray’s arms, because he was there, he was always there. I couldn’t speak, and wouldn’t have known what to say if I did. But I remembered—so many things.

Mircea laughing, the handsome face speckled with a multitude of colors in the front room of our little shack in Venice. He had been trying to teach me to paint, because I had begged him, curving my chubby hands around the end of his brush. He had shown me how to form the delicate petals of a flower, which I had made with his help, such a beautiful thing!

Then I tried it myself, only to find that my solo effort looked more like an old man with a huge nose, and which Mircea had quickly turned into one. Old Gurian the fruit seller, who everybody called Melanzane for his eggplant of a nose, lived down the street, and it was a perfect likeness. So perfect that we had laughed and laughed.

Or the time he had taken me to a baggatelle during Carnivale, where street performers of all types—jugglers, conjurers, and puppeteers—grouped together to entertain the crowd. He had swung me onto his shoulders so that I could see over the heads of the tall people, making me the tallest around. The puppeteer was performing at the time, and I was especially interested, as the only such shows I’d ever seen were the ones that the church put on as morality plays.

This one didn’t look very moral, as the first thing I saw was the little man puppet beating his wife with a stick. Only to see her quickly take it away from him and return the favor. I remembered clapping my hands together and laughing delightedly, while the crowd booed.

Or the time we went shopping in the marketplace for mullet. I could still smell the sea, and see the way the sunlight flashed off the silver scales of the fish laid out on their tilted tables, on the glistening black mussels in their wicker baskets, and on the rough gray shells of the oysters. But we didn’t buy any of those.

Father heard a rumor of a man selling cranes illegally off a boat by the Ponte della Carità and we went to see if it was true. The man turned out to be from Treviso and didn’t want to pay the toll for selling in the marketplace, so was offering a good deal on a meat mostly reserved for nobility. It was caught by falcons, instead of more common methods, so I had never tried it before.

He also had some of the ducks with red feet that were common in the Lagoon. They were so fat and juicy that they were my favorite meat, as our old servant would roast them above a pan filled with vegetables and the fat would drip down and flavor them, too. But the seller was trying to get rid of the cranes, as they made him too visible, and promised me a story if we bought one.

I loved stories and wavered, and the man spotted his opportunity. And launched into the tale of an aristocrat named Gianfigliazzi, a notable man in Florence, who liked to hunt. He brought down a plump young crane with his falcon one day and was quick to send it to his Venetian cook, a man named Chichibio, to roast for supper, as he was entertaining a friend that night and wanted to impress.

As the bird was cooking, a pretty young local woman named Brunetta happened by, with whom Chichibio was enamored. She asked for one of the legs of the bird, as she had never tasted crane, but was refused as it would ruin the look of the dish when presented. For the master had requested that it be served whole.

Angered by this answer, she informed the love sick man that he would never get anywhere with her if she did not get the leg, at which point he finally agreed. The lopsided dish that subsequently made it to table did not please Gianfigliazzi, who angrily demanded an explanation from his cook. Chichibio replied that cranes only had one leg, and that he could prove this.

The two men went out riding the next day by a riverbank well known for its cranes, and Chichibio was the first to spot some. They were asleep, and as usual for sleeping cranes, they stood on one leg. Greatly relieved, he pointed out to his lord that cranes did indeed have only one leg, as he could see for himself.

His master was not satisfied with that answer, however, and rode at the cranes and shouted at them, flapping his hat. Startled, the flock dropped their other legs, ran a few paces and took flight. “Oh, ho! What do you think of that, you scoundrel?” Gianfigliazzi asked, turning back to his cook. “Do they or don’t they have two legs now?”

Chichibio nodded nervously, but managed to say: “Yes, sir, but last night you did not shout, ‘Hey! Hey!’ at the crane that was served for dinner. If you had, it would have pushed its other leg down, just as these did.”

Gianfigliazzi stared at his servant for a long moment, and then laughed so hard that afterward he forgave the man his lies, and they rode back home together in friendship.

“So, you bought the crane?” Ray asked, as the story ended, for he must have been following it in my mind.

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