Chapter 26 #2
“It’s difficult not to look away, isn’t it?” He stares hard at one particular spot before turning back to me. “When you’re done, come find me. Don’t be long.”
He hurries through the darkened doorway at the back of the spherical room and disappears.
I wait for Kali to leave too, but instead she watches me in silence.
I point at the statue. “Can you tell me who this man is?”
She considers me a moment longer before answering. “Februus, the Italian God of purification. He resides in the underworld.”
“Like the Greek god Hades?”
She nods once. “Your comparison is apt.”
“I suppose that explains his epitaph, then: in igne et in morte sumus puri.”
“In fire and in death, we are pure. Ancient Italians considered fire a purifying agent. Cremation was thought to cleanse the soul before it passed on to the afterlife.”
I peer around at the jars on the walls.
“Are these all… ashes then? Of dead order members?”
She nods. “Whose bodies we could recover, yes.”
Morbid. I swallow hard.
I nearly ask about her brother, but decide against it. I do not know her well enough to bring up such a sensitive subject.
“If the rumors are true about you, a few of your own relatives are up there as well.”
I tense. I’m not ready to admit that truth to myself yet, much less talk about it with a member of the order—the same order my ancestors helped create.
Instead, I stray to another topic. “How did you come to join the Order of Cavendi?”
A side of her lips pulls up. “You wonder how I could possibly choose this life?”
I search her stony expression. “Honestly, yes.”
Holding my gaze, she gives nothing away. “Some come here to serve a greater purpose, while others have nowhere else to go.”
She doesn’t expound beyond that, and I let it go. I wouldn’t want to share my woes with a complete stranger either, and clearly that’s all the information she’s willing to part with.
“You should go,” she says finally. “I imagine Anders chose this back way into the Archives because it is not a place you’re meant to be, given your current situation.”
I sigh. Does everyone here know that I haven’t pledged myself to the order yet? I have to imagine word gets around in such a small place.
“That makes sense.” I bow my head slightly. “It was nice to meet you, Kali.”
I move to turn toward the entrance to the Archive, when what I could swear is a slight Irish accent echoes from down the tunnel I came through.
“There you are, Kali. I nearly tore the whole place apart looking—”
The tallest woman I’ve ever laid eyes on walks into the room.
She clicks her jaw shut when her attention lands on me.
Wearing a black tunic with the sleeves sheared off over tight black pants, her white skin appears even lighter than it actually is.
Black combat boots complete the ensemble.
Her hair is similar in color to Kali’s, but slicker and straighter and pulled away from her rigid face in a high ponytail.
Her small eyes are a shocking blue above a slightly-bent nose.
“Oh.” She eyes me from the top of my head to the tips of my toes and back with open disdain. “So, this is the outsider Ansaldo allowed into our midst.”
Ignoring the bite in her words, I hold out my hand. She doesn’t take it, choosing silence instead. Clearly, she’s uninterested in any sort of pleasantries. I shrug and cross my arms over my chest.
“Most people call me Mel. And you are?”
“Xiomara.”
A Spanish name. I wonder how far the order went to pluck her from obscurity.
“You’re Irish?” I decide to ask.
She laughs. “No, I’m from Newfoundland.” She says this as if it’s a crime to be from Ireland. Or any other country besides her own.
I raise a brow. “My mistake.”
She moves on quickly. “Ansaldo might be willing to wait until you decide to take the oaths like the rest of us did the first night we were brought here, but that doesn’t mean we have to like it.”
A trickle of fear and unsurety tingles down my spine.
Though no part of me wants to escape anymore, I still don’t plan on receiving any tattoos.
I refuse to add something permanent to my body that’ll give me God-like powers I can’t begin to understand.
Once I do that, there’s no going back—I’ll belong to the order.
And while I’m coming to terms with the fact that this may be my fate, I’m not ready to go through with anything yet.
Kali sighs. “Mara, be kind. She’s a guest of Ansaldo’s, and her relatives were once order members. She has not yet made any sort of oath or pledge to the order, but I have no doubt she will.”
“Could be,” Mara concedes. “But she knows about us, knows our secrets. And there’s nothing to stop her from telling people on the outside.”
Sweat starts pooling under my arms despite the coolness of the underground stronghold.
“What makes you think Ansaldo would ever allow me to leave this place without pledging myself to the order?”
Mara takes a step toward me. “From what I’ve heard, you’re very capable of barely escaping bad situations by the skin of your teeth. What’s to stop you now?”
I bite the inside of my lip. She’s not wrong. I don’t feel like I owe them an explanation, either.
Kali’s eyes meet mine, an apology written across her brow. “Come on, Mara, let’s spar for a while. You always get so ornery when you haven’t punched something.”
Mara grumbles something intelligible but does as her friend bids her.
Before she follows her down the tunnel, Kali turns and bows her head in a farewell gesture. “Until we see each other again.”
I return it but she’s already disappeared down the corridor, as if she were never here.
“And here I thought I’d left my high school days behind me,” I mutter, uncrossing my arms.
Following the path Anders took into the murk, I forget about what happened with Mara.
Instead, I think about Kali’s brother, potentially a part of the order as well and presumed dead.
About my ancestors, whose burned corpses are displayed on the walls of a secret fortress.
About how many people have fought and died for the order’s religious creed.
Ever since leaving Ansaldo’s office, I’ve tried to make sense of what happened. Why he would deceive me. It couldn’t all be because of my mother, could it?
Despite Ansaldo’s crude plan of trying to forcefully recruit me, I find myself torn between leaving this place behind after the blood oath, and staying to pledge my life to the order.
Can I ignore the chance of making a difference in the world, while being able to do the very thing I’m good at?
If the Order of Cavendi is in the business of subverting fascism and its many agents, then I can’t write them off yet.
My ancestors must’ve seen good in them once to stick around for so long.
I might feel differently about the order if I wasn’t being forced to join against my will. The condition of having to take a blood oath and pledge myself to them, or stay trapped in this place until they decide to kill me, has thrown a wrench into the whole ordeal.
At the end of the corridor, a single oil lamp hangs on the stone wall, illuminating the next turn I need to take. It’s colder here than anywhere else in the stronghold, and I swear my breath fogs up in front of me.
Once I turn the corner, though, I forget about all that.
Entering a long, great room with soaring, rough-stone ceilings and shelves carved out of the rock wall, I gasp softly at the sight.
Ancient scrolls, tomes, and labeled boxes are piled haphazardly on every inch of available space, with lit oil lamps stationed in random alcoves.
Rolling ladders perch atop the high railings along the shelves.
Giant candlelit chandeliers hang low over the middle, illuminating dark wooden tables.
I stare at the shelves. Is the entire contents of the Library of Alexandria stored down here? Excitement pulls at my limbs at the thought, begging me to read everything in here until my eyes fall out of their sockets.
The sound of voices pricks at my ears.
Searching for the source, I find Anders, which I expected. But I’m surprised to see Cec, Bes, and an older woman as well, all four of them crowding around the end of one of the long tables in the center of the room.
I haven’t seen the older woman around before now.
Though that’s not shocking given I haven’t been here long, and barely looked around the only time I’ve been in a room with the other members currently residing here.
As I slowly approach them, she listens intently to Anders as he speaks, wrinkled face scrunched.
Once he finishes, she throws up her hands, swearing colorfully in Italian.
Cec puts a hand on her shoulder. “Nonna Alessa…” She shrugs him off, glaring and pursing her lips.
So, that’s Nonna Alessa. She doesn’t remind me of Ansaldo at all: while his nose is more pointed, hers bulges out slightly at the end, and her eyes are wider than his beady ones.
Ansaldo looms tall and imposing, but this woman looks to be the same height as my nonna, which is around five feet.
When Bes murmurs something to her and she smiles up at him, though, I can see Cec in her.
She must be Cec’s nonna on his mother’s side.
Once I’m closer, I hear Nonna Alessa speak, her accent heavy. “The information I have comes to us from one of our contacts in Austria.”
Bes crosses his arms. “And you trust them?”
“Si. They’re Kali’s contact.”
Bes motions for her to continue. She opens her mouth, then closes it when she notices me.
“Chi é?” she asks Bes, then yells at me before he can respond. “Who are you?”
Cec, who’s still wearing his training clothes, isn’t startled by my presence. He must’ve heard me coming. Bes and Nonna Alessa, on the other hand, appear alarmed.
Anders waves me over, and I approach them. “She’s alright, Alessa. This is Amelia Hawkins, the woman we told you about.”
Nonna Alessa regards Bes and throws his own question back at him. “And you trust her?”