Assassin's Heart (Assassin's Heart, #1)(47)

“Alessio!” a man shouted, and Les waved at him.

“A friend of yours?”

He shook his head. “No friends. Only me and the old man. People don’t stick around.” He cleared his throat and suddenly seemed older.

“How old are you?” I asked.

“Nineteen. You?”

“Seventeen.”

He nodded. “I’m sure you had a lot of friends left behind. You’re just short of royalty there.”

I shrugged. “I learned very young they were more interested in what I was than who I was. Maybe they’re hoping for favors from Safraella, or from a Family. Maybe they’re more interested in the wealth and power. And even if they aren’t, it can be difficult to keep any friendships because, try as they might, the common can’t fully understand. My brother Rafeo was my greatest friend. Then my cousin, Jesep. And my suitor, Val. I spent a lot of time with him.”

He paused so slightly it was barely noticeable. “Suitor? You must really miss him.”

“No.” I brushed the sides of my dress. “He was a Da Via. I’d rather avoid seeing him again for the rest of my life.”

Les paused and watched me. His study made my nerves twitch, and when I was nervous I blushed.

“Was he there?” he asked. “The night of the attack?”

I stepped over a cracked cobblestone. “I’m not sure. I didn’t recognize anyone. I didn’t even realize they were Da Vias until Rafeo told me. I confirmed it with the king.”

Les tripped. “Did you say the king?”

I nodded.

“I was mostly joking when I compared you to royalty earlier. . . .”

“Well, any clipper can speak to the king. He’s a disciple of Safraella too. And my father and Costanzo Sapienza were good friends since childhood. My father helped put him on the throne.”

Les nodded, his eyes wide as he took this in. “How would a relationship with another clipper work? I thought the Families were all at war with one another.”

“Some of the Families have good relationships. Gallo and Zarella, for example.”

“But weren’t you always worried your suitor Val was planning something?”

I blinked. “In hindsight maybe I should’ve been more worried. But I’d known Val my whole life and we shared a territory, Ravenna, so there was overlap.” I picked a speck of lint off the sleeve of my dress. “No one knew about us. We kept it secret. There was no love between the Saldanas and Da Vias.”

Alessio tugged on the pendant resting on his chest and led me down another side street. “But what about that saying I’ve heard . . . ‘Family over family.’ Doesn’t that mean you really should fraternize with each other?”

“Mm.” I pushed my hair behind my ears. “What that means is you put your clipper Family before your blood family. So if your father tells you one thing, and the head of the Family tells you another, you do what the head tells you.”

“That seems backward.”

“Everything we have is due to Family. My status doesn’t come from being the daughter of Dante and Bianca. It comes because I’m a member of the Saldana Family. Anyone who joins us, through birth or marriage or adoption, is named Saldana. That’s Family. That is more important than blood ties. It has to be if we’re to survive the way we have for generations.”

Les scratched his jaw, lost in thought.

Speaking too much about the Nine Families turned my stomach. I stopped. We were wasting time I didn’t have. “What are we doing?” I asked. “What did you want to show me?”

“This.” He stopped and waved his hand before him.

Resting on canal waters that twirled lazily before us, moored to the alley so it wouldn’t float away, bobbed a boat.





twenty


“A BOAT.”

“My boat, yes. It’s clear you don’t know anything about our canals or boats, so I thought I’d show you how to work one and map out some of the waterways.”

“I know how to use a boat. Ravenna has a seaport.”

“Canal boats are different. You steer them with a pole while standing, but they’re flat bottomed and they rock easily. It takes skill to stop from falling in.” He untied the boat and held the rope in his hand.

“I don’t have my own a boat, though.”

“Then borrow one. They’re tagged and someone will return it to its owner.” He tapped the boat and a symbol carved into the prow, declaring who it belonged to. “Returning it will accrue a debt and the common enjoy a debt.”

What could teaching me how to work a boat gain him? “Why would I even need to know this? It’s not like I plan on staying.”

“Because the canals are the best way to escape the ghosts,” he answered.

I thought of my first night here and knew he was right. Still, I hesitated.

He sighed. “Remember how I said my mother was murdered?”

“Yes.”

“I’m only half traveler, on my mother’s side, and the two of us were visiting Yvain with my grandfather. I think they were looking for my father, so she could leave me with him. When she was murdered, we had to identify her body. My grandfather wanted her to be carted home. He told me to stay at the law office and wait for him while he made arrangements with her body. And he never came back.”