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The body was wrapped in salt-stained canvas and ropes knotted by fishers. As a young girl Caterina had watched the men with their nimble fingers mending nets and tying rigging, and admired their dexterity. She had begun to practice her own knots, first in embroidery and needlework; then with nooses. At nine, she could tie a fully functioning (and tested) slip noose faster than fledglings more than half her age. But she never forgot the fishermen and their many knots for many occasions.
Her fingers were far older and stiffer now, robbed of their deftness by age. But she could still find where to unravel each knot. These ropes were old and crusted with salt that sprinkled the table as each knot gave way. And then, only the canvas remained between Caterina and the body beneath.
“Caterina.” Illario rushed to her side. “I cannot believe… of any of us…”
“Hush, Illario,” she told her remaining grandson. She did not look over at him, did not want to see the similarities in his facial features that would remind her of Lucanis. Caterina took the edge of the canvas in hand. She had never shied away from viewing the dead, not even the bodies of her own children and grandchildren. “I summoned you an hour ago.”
“I went to the villa first. I thought you’d want–”
“What I want is for my Crow to obey his Talon. And if he feels he is too good for that, then for my grandson to listen to his grandmother. I clearly said to come here.”
A swish of samite and the creak of new leather sounded as he shifted his weight beside her. “ Mi dispiace ,” he muttered. He edged forward. “Do you want me to…”
She held out her cane, barring him. “I must do this.”
“As you wish, First Talon. Grandmother.” Illario took a step back again, and when she dared a glance at him, he was standing with feet shoulder width apart, and hands clasped behind his back. He lowered his eyes in deference when he caught her looking.
Caterina leaned on her cane more heavily than she usually did. Sometimes the humid Treviso summers made her hip ache, recalling the break that had removed her from field work; sometimes age made her lean more often. Now the ache was inside of her chest, a gnawing pit of darkness that made her want to crumple to the floor, and she did not know if the cane would be enough to hold her.
She had never given in to the grief that accompanied the deaths of her children and grandchildren years before. But now it mingled with something else, something oily and insidious. Something cold.
Guilt. Regret.
Caterina clutched her crow-headed cane with one hand and the edge of the canvas with another. She never hesitated, but at that moment she did. Because so long as the canvas remained over the body, Lucanis was still alive. So long as she did not view the body beneath, Lucanis could come through the doors of the Cantori Diamond, or Villa Dellamorte, perhaps a bit worse for wear, but alive, and kiss her cheek before retiring. So long as she hesitated, her boy could still come home.
She peeled back the salt-stiff canvas, revealing dark hair and sallow skin stretched over high cheekbones and a defined nose. The lips were bloodless, but she knew the curve of the mouth, and how it could quirk into the tiniest smile. Caterina’s hand hovered over the dark hair with its distinctive widow’s peak. She couldn’t look away, but wanted nothing more than to turn and retreat. She closed her eyes, remembering her boy, her Luca, the way he’d been before he’d left on this contract, but now that image in her mind was replaced by… whatever this was.
Illario approached. “It is him. I never thought… Of all Crows, surely Lucanis never would have fallen. I wish…” His voice caught in his throat and his breath trembled.
“We are Antivan Crows, Illario. We deal in death, and weeping will do no good.” She had told Lucanis that once, decades ago. Caterina inhaled, centering herself despite the scent of decay that clung to the body. When she opened her eyes again, she squared her shoulders and fixed her eyes on the corpse. “Illario, remove the sheet.”
“Grandmother?” Illario sniffled. “You do not have to do this. I can send for the lay sisters to come for him. Give him the final rites he would have wanted.”
“I do have to do this. He will have his rites in time. There is no rush. He’s dead, isn’t he?”
Illario knew better than to answer. He dabbed his eyes with a silken kerchief before folding the sheet back to Lucanis’s hips. “Reports are that the ship was attacked and sank. Do you think he drowned? Do you think it was quick?”
Caterina’s practiced eye scanned the body. “Lucanis was an excellent swimmer.” She steeled her emotions and peeled back one eyelid so she could examine the milky eye underneath. “No signs of drowning, or suffocation.”
“He must have died before he hit the water.”
“Roll him over.”
Illario stared at her with one eyebrow raised. “Grandmother… First Talon,” he added when she met his gaze and waited, unblinking, for him to comply. “What does this prove?”
He could not soften the desperate edge to his voice; he had always been an emotional boy, but that was why he and Lucanis had worked so well together. Illario’s passion and Lucanis’s methodical, almost clinical proficiency made them the perfect team. Without Luca to temper your passions, to teach you patience… Illario, I fear for you . But instead she told him, “Do you remember your opera training?”
Illario paused, one hand on the body’s shoulder. “I remember that Lucanis preferred the opera.”
“He may have preferred it, but you were both trained in it. You still have a lovely baritone.” She fixed him with a gaze sharp enough to pin him like a butterfly to a board. “Do you remember Madrigalia? The one where Queen Madrigal survived at the end?”
“Because someone else was killed in her place. Yes, and the legend that she went to live in Rivain with her lowborn lover while Antiva mourned her. What does this have to do with Lucanis? And if you ask me to sing Agostino’s aria now, you may be disappointed.” He shoved the body onto its side. “No puncture or blade wounds. Poison, most likely.”
Lucanis would have known too well to check for poisons. “A refresher, then. Madrigalia made use of a particular conceit opera aficionados have coined il corpo sbagliato. It was used in a few of composer Gugliemo’s other operas. ”
“ Il corpo sbalgiato,” Illario repeated, rolling the phrase around his tongue. He trained his gaze on her. “You think this is the wrong body?” He let the body fall onto its back again, but not before Caterina had noted the distinct lack of a particular scar along the spine. One she knew well, because her own cane had left it. “What would the other Crows think if they heard their First Talon succumbing to grief this way?” Illario asked, voice a shaking whisper. His dark eyes glistened.
“I do not succumb to grief. I did not succumb when your parents and sister were killed. Nor when any of your aunts and uncles and cousins fell to the Velardos’ blades. I remain your First Talon, and your grandmother.”
Illario jerked the canvas back over the body, covering the face. “Yes, you are my grandmother, and I am your only grandson. Lucanis is dead , Caterina. Morto . You see his body.” He reached for her, then thought better of it. “ I am still here, grandmother. Why cannot that… why cannot I be enough?”
Caterina rested both hands atop her cane as the weight of her guilt and grief threatened to crush her. Yet, pulsing beneath that relentless darkness was hope. She knew what she had seen. She knew what she had not seen. “Illario. We will take our evening meal at the villa and remember Lucanis together, as family. And then we will allow the Crows their own remembrance.”
Illario inhaled, held his breath, then let it out. He blinked and cleared the moisture from his eyes. “I am sorry.”
“Thank you, Illario. Thank you… my boy.”
As she turned to leave, she found Andarateia and Viago waiting. “Oh Caterina,” Teia murmured. “I am so deeply sorry.” Her lip trembled and she held a hand to her mouth to cover it. Viago wrapped an arm around her shoulders and she leaned into him. “You will have the use of the Diamond for the funeral,” she announced.
“Thank you, Andarateia. House Dellamorte appreciates your generosity.” Caterina offered a smile, which Teia took as sad; Caterina supposed her exhaustion gave everything about her that air right about now.
“I will send for the lay sisters at the chantry,” Viago offered. “You have suffered a grievous loss. You and Illario both. Let us tend to these matters.”
When she departed, Andarateia was already counting how many windows and mirrors, and debating how many yards of black velvet draping would be needed; and then she was asking, “Did Lucanis even have a favorite flower?”
Lavender, Caterina thought, but said nothing; instead she began the slow walk through Treviso, back to Villa Dellamorte, humming Queen Madrigal’s aria.