Passion Blue (4 page)

The words of the prediction returned to her, words she had long known by heart:

                        
…major affliction by Saturn, and the Moon and Sun in barren signs, there is thus no testimony of marriage, or of children. She shall not take another’s name, nor shall she bear her own at the end of life, but shall…

It was a far stronger forecast than Maestro had revealed when she first visited him. Not one planet in a barren sign, but two. Not a difficult testimony of marriage—
no
testimony. Yet through Maestro, she had learned that she could fight her stars. And because she knew what was coming—because in this one thing she was prepared, as her mother had intended—she believed she could prevail. That by will and determination, she could change her fate.

From the time she began her woman’s bleeding, she had been searching for a husband. She was not beautiful, as her mother had been—her features were too strong, her body too tall and straight. But her skin was smooth, her hair was thick and glossy black, and her eyes were fine, large and dark with curling lashes and arching brows. She hadn’t lacked for chances. None, somehow, had gone farther than a few stolen kisses.

With each failure, she’d told herself that there would be more opportunities. She was young. She
had time. The talisman, sorcery, were possibilities she held in the back of her mind, a last resort if it became clear she could not change her future on her own. But now her time had run out. The stars, in their inexorable turning, had brought her face-to-face with her foretold fate.

She drew herself up. She met the sorcerer’s gaze. She was still afraid, but no longer of him. Her fear was for herself—that she might have come so far and risked so much only to fail in the final moment.

“Sir, since I was seven years old I’ve known the prediction of my horoscope. Since I was ten, I’ve understood the life it means for me. My mother is dead. I have no family. I am a nobleman’s bastard, but I was never acknowledged, so I’m a servant like my mother. An unmarried servant woman can be given away like a piece of clothing, or traded as if she were a horse. When I get too old to use my needle there will be no one to care for me. And now I’m told I must become a nun, which is only a different kind of servitude, with prayers instead of housework. I love God, sir, but that isn’t how I want to honor Him! If I marry, I’ll still be a servant, but at least I’ll have my own life, my own place, my own family. Something of my
own
, something that belongs to me. I’ve been robbed of the time to find a husband for myself. This…this is my only chance. Will you help me?”

For a long moment the sorcerer regarded her. The candlelight lit his crystalline eyes, making their blue almost transparent. At last he nodded. “I will.”

Giulia let out her breath. “I’ve got nearly fifty soldi.
Will it be enough?”

“It will.”

Giulia pulled her mother’s coins from her belt pouch and put them in his hand. It was all the money she had, but less than she’d feared the sorcerer would demand. She’d thought she might have to pay with her mother’s necklace as well.

“I will calculate when the talisman can be made, and let you know when you can return to collect it.”

“You can’t make it now?”

“Certainly not. Your desire is of the heart, and Venus rules the heart, so a talisman of Venus is what you need. To properly draw down Venus’s influence, materials she rules on the terrestrial plane must be carefully gathered. The talisman must be made on a Friday, Venus’s day, and in her hour where it falls on that day, and she must be ascendant when it is consecrated.”

“But sir, I have to leave tomorrow!” Giulia tried to control her panic. “I need it now, tonight!”

“Then it will not have the proper strength. Unless…” He paused.

“Unless?”

“Unless I draw a spirit into the talisman. There’d be no need then to wait for the stars to be propitious.”

“A…spirit?” Giulia had forgotten about the cold, but now she felt a chill. “What kind of spirit?”

“A planetary spirit, a spirit of Venus. The celestial realms are alive with such Intelligences. The great ones are beyond human understanding, but the lesser ones may be called and bound by those on Earth who
have the skill.” He smiled a little. “Many people, like your master Bruni, fear such magic, and call it daemonic. But nothing exists except by the will of God. Not magic, and not spirits either.”

“And…the spirit…would make the talisman strong enough? To bring me a husband?”

“Spirits cannot be compelled to such narrow purposes. But I will bind it to your heart’s desire. If your heart’s desire is marriage, then that is what it will give you.”

Giulia swallowed. She thought she had been prepared for anything. But a spirit…something
alive
inside the talisman…. Yet why was she surprised? Maestro had warned her.

“There’s no other way?”

“Not if you must have the talisman tonight.”

He waited, holding her in his crystal gaze. Giulia felt breathless, as if she were running much too fast down a too-steep flight of stairs. But this was her plan, the only one she had. Without it, there was nothing but lifelong imprisonment in the convent.

“Very well. Yes.”

“It will cost more. Have you something else to pay me with?”

Not giving herself time to think, Giulia fumbled off her mother’s necklace. She held it out, the honey-colored topaz gleaming, the silver links spilling from her palm.

“That should do.”

She experienced an almost physical pain as he took it from her. She closed her hands into fists and
put them behind her back.

“It will take some time,” the sorcerer said. “I’ll sing my incantations at the hour of Venus, and it comes late this night.”

“The tenth hour,” Giulia said. “I know.”

“Ah yes. You did say you were Bruni’s pupil.” He took up his candles again. “You must be hungry. I’ll tell my housekeeper to bring you something.”

The last Giulia saw, as he passed behind the curtain, were the links of her mother’s necklace, swinging from his hand.

Giulia woke with a start. She thought she’d heard something—a clanging, as if of enormous cymbals. But the air was silent now.

She lay against the wall, where she’d finally fallen asleep, wrapped in the blanket the old woman had brought along with the food. It had been a long night. The hours had stretched like pulled sugar, and the candles hardly seemed to burn down at all. Now and then, in the distance, came a thump or a thud, the sound of a voice rising in chant or song. There were smells too—charcoal smoke, hot metal, and once, briefly, an overpowering burst of sweet perfume, as if all the flowers in the world had bloomed and died in the space of a few breaths—although Giulia was not quite sure she hadn’t dreamed that.

She climbed to her feet, pushing back her disheveled hair. The windows had been blue gray with twilight when she arrived; now they were blue gray
with dawn. The candles, at last, had gone out, and the starry ceiling was dark.

She heard footsteps. The sorcerer reappeared, as calm and immaculate as when she first saw him.

“It’s done.”

He placed a small cloth-wrapped package on a table. He pulled the cloth away, revealing an oval stone of the same lustrous blue as his robe. Inlaid upon it in some orangey metal was the image of a woman in flowing clothes, her hair falling past her knees.

“This is Venus-in-beauty, the aspect most appropriate to your need. At her feet is the symbol of Venus, which no doubt you recognize. The metal is copper, which she rules. The stone is lapis lazuli, which she also rules.”

Giulia didn’t know what she had expected—a spectral glow? A vibration of the air? Somehow, she had thought it would be possible to recognize the spirit’s presence. But the talisman seemed completely ordinary—lovely, to be sure, but just a pendant.

“The spirit is inside?”

“It is.”

“Is it…can it ever get out?”

“It’s securely bound. It cannot escape until you set it free.”

“Why would I set it free?”

“Because it is a free being. Such creatures do not feel as humans do, but it will suffer if you hold it beyond the time of your need. When you no longer require its help, break the stone into pieces. That will
release it back to the heavens.”

“And it won’t be angry? At being imprisoned?”

“I told you, such beings don’t feel as humans do.” For the first time, the sorcerer showed a trace of impatience. “In any case, it is bound to your heart’s desire. Your desire is its desire now.” He looked at her. “Be very sure you know what that is, or you may find yourself surprised by what you receive.”

“I’m sure.”

“Then all will be well.” He drew the wrappings over the stone again. “It’s sleeping now. To wake it, and let it know it’s you it serves, give it something of yourself—a drop of blood, some spittle, anything will do as long as it comes from within you—and speak its name aloud. Anasurymboriel.”

“Ana—”

“—surymboriel. Thereafter, keep it on your person. Next to your skin is best.”

He placed the little package in her hand. It was heavier than she expected, as if it were made of something denser than stone.

“Have you any other questions for me?”

“Sir…” Giulia hesitated.

“Yes?”

“Why do you wear a metal cap?”

“Ah.” The sorcerer raised his hand to touch it. “According to my natal horoscope, I’m at risk of death from falling objects. I carry a talisman, but I also believe in taking practical measures.” He smiled a little. Now at last the long night showed in his face—or maybe it was just the rising light of day,
revealing the lines around his mouth and eyes. “We are all trying to cheat the stars, one way or another. Good-bye, Giulia. Remember me to your master.”

Giulia saw no one, not even the crone who had let her in, as she left the sorcerer’s house. She ran through the garden, where the trees held the last of night tangled in their branches, and slipped out the gates. All the while she repeated to herself the strange name the sorcerer had given her, fixing it in her mind so she would not forget:
Anasurymboriel. Anasurymboriel. Anasurymboriel
.

She felt the weight of the talisman in her belt pouch, and the emptiness at her throat where her mother’s necklace had been.

It was still early when she arrived at the palazzo.
The doorman grinned as he let her in.

“Out all night, eh? You won’t be doing much of that where you’re going.”

She could hear him chortling as she ran across the
cortile
.

She went directly to the attic, where she pulled her mother’s cedar box from its hiding place beneath one of the dust cloth-shrouded tables. In addition to the ruined trousseau, it held pretty stones and bright feathers she’d collected over the years, a sash she’d made out of leftover silk, a silver chain she’d found in the gutter, and the thick sheaf of her drawings.

She didn’t know where it came from, her need to draw. She only knew she had always had it, even as a tiny child. No one ever taught her; it was just something she understood how to do, an instinct familiar as her own body. Any surface would serve—a smooth rock, a patch of sand, a spare bit of linen cloth—and anything that would make a mark—a piece of chalk, a sliver of charred wood.

Giulia’s mother had encouraged her, bringing her scraps of paper, praising her efforts. But to her foster-mother Annalena, Giulia’s scribbling was a self-indulgent waste of time, and she was scolded if Annalena caught her at it. She couldn’t stop drawing, though, any more than she could stop breathing. The attic storerooms had become her sketchbook. She’d drawn in charcoal on the plaster walls, in chalk on the plank floors, in a mixture of ashes and water on the underside of dust cloths. She’d drawn things she saw and things she had never seen. She’d drawn her mother’s
face, over and over, pouring her grief into the pictures, her loss and pain. Sometimes she was able to reach a place where those things didn’t exist, where she was not a bereft and frightened girl, where there was only the unity of hand and eye and all that mattered was the images she brought into being.

Much had changed since then. She’d learned to live with her grief, and then to live beyond it, though she could always touch it if she tried. She no longer had to draw on walls—she had Maestro’s sketchbook, and the sticks of charcoal she carried in her belt pouch. She had Maestro’s study, where she was always welcome—a far more friendly refuge than the chilly attic, with its fading traces of her childhood scribbles. But the drawing…that was the same. She was more skillful than she had been—she could draw almost anything. But it was still her favored way of escaping from her life. It still poured from her as naturally as breathing.

With Maestro’s gifts, the cedar box was too full to close. But what to leave behind? There was no question of abandoning the trousseau, the only memento of her mother she had, now the necklace was gone. She sorted through her own things, setting aside all but the embroidered sash and the silver chain. Then she culled her drawings. In the end, she kept only a handful: her mother, drawn from memory, the topaz necklace encircling her throat, her heavy braid falling over her shoulder. Annalena at the kitchen fire. A portrait of Maestro. A view of his study and one of the attic. The sun and shadow in the
cortile
at noon.
The orchard, where she had loved to sit and draw or dream.

The remaining sketches she left on the table, along with the odds and ends she had discarded. Someone would find them eventually, and wonder how they had come there.

She repacked the box, putting in everything except the silver chain, then closed the lid and tied it up with cord. She removed the talisman from her pocket and threaded the chain through the copper loop at the top of the stone.

Not much light angled through the attic’s tiny windows. Even so, the blue of the lapis lazuli was as brilliant as a bird’s feather, and the copper inlay gleamed. Inside the stone, a spirit slept—a living thing wrenched from the heavens, imprisoned by the sorcerer’s will and by her own. What had he said?
Your desire is its desire now
.