Lavanthi pulled Milena up into the saddle behind her while Savino got on with Govind and Yaday joined Azad. With a chorus of neighing and the heaving of wings, the horse-Geniuses galloped into the sky.
Nero and Gaia flew alongside the horse-Geniuses as they ascended higher and higher, gaining speed. Milena prayed to the Creator to watch over Pietro while they were gone. Please … don’t take him yet. I’m not ready to let him go.
She had no idea if her prayer would be answered, but the request gave her comfort.
* * *
“Release him immediately, soldier!” Nerezza demanded.
“I’m not your soldier anymore!” Enzio snapped, pressing the tip of the knife against Xiomar’s wrinkled neck. “I’m through playing the obedient dog.”
Giacomo wasn’t sure what Enzio’s ultimate plan was, so he began to formulate one of his own. He eyed the Compass slung across Nerezza’s back. If he could somehow get free of Zanobius, he might be able to make a portal back to the palace.
Nerezza glared at Xiomar. “You assured me the elixir would keep him under control.”
Xiomar strained against the blade at his throat. “With time … the effects wear off…”
“And you didn’t think to administer another dose?” Nerezza screeched. “I should let him cut you open right now.”
“Strozzi forbade it … Said he wouldn’t give it to any soldier under his command…”
“My Council is full of incompetents!” Nerezza complained, then turned to Baldassare. “Care to prove me wrong? Do something about your son!”
Baldassare moved slowly toward Enzio, hands in front of him like he was begging for alms. “Listen to the Supreme Creator, son. Walk away from this.”
“And turn my back on Giacomo, like you did?” Enzio spat back.
“You’re in over your head.”
“So now you’re trying to save me? Where were you when I was locked up in Nerezza’s dungeon being tortured? Where were you when Xiomar was injecting me with poison?”
Hearing what Enzio had endured made Giacomo shudder.
“I tried to get them to stop,” Baldassare insisted.
“Or were you secretly hoping I’d turn into the obedient son you always wanted?” Enzio said.
“Of course not!” Giacomo had never heard Baldassare sound so distressed.
“This is going nowhere,” Nerezza said, forcing Baldassare aside. She looked at Enzio and with a dismissive wave of her hand said, “Fine, go ahead and kill Minister Xiomar.”
“No, I’ve always been loyal to you!” Xiomar pleaded.
Enzio’s hand trembled, his face etched with confusion. “But … I thought you needed him to help you take control of Giacomo.”
Giacomo’s blood ran cold. So that was Nerezza’s plan? To control him as she did Zanobius?
“Is that what Xiomar told you?” Nerezza said with a smirk. “He likes to believe he’s indispensable, as do all the ministers.” She glanced at Baldassare. “But the truth is, I don’t need any of them. No one is irreplaceable.”
Baldassare stared back icily.
Nerezza turned to Zanobius. “Secure Giacomo, then restrain Enzio.”
Giacomo thrashed as Zanobius slammed him on top of the table and locked the wrist and ankle restraints. The metal table felt cold against his back. Unyielding.
Zanobius turned his focus to Enzio, who pressed the knife closer to Xiomar’s skin, drawing blood. “Stay back!” he shouted, his voice betraying his panic.
Zanobius closed in. With a grunt, Enzio shoved Xiomar at Zanobius and skirted around the edge of the cabin. Zanobius caught the old man, dropped him to the side, and continued his pursuit.
Backed against the wall, Enzio proceeded to slash wildly with his knife. Zanobius barely registered the cuts appearing on his forearms and hands. Zanobius lunged, and Enzio snaked through the Tulpa’s legs. He ran to Giacomo and lodged the knife’s blade into one of the shackles, trying to pry it open.
“I’m sorry we left you behind at Niccolo’s” was all Giacomo could think to say.
“It’s okay,” Enzio said. The blade snapped in the lock.
“Behind you!” Giacomo shouted, and Enzio spun around, throwing the broken knife at Zanobius. It pinged off his metal shoulder and clattered across the floor.
Enzio dove under the table and bolted for the door, where Baldassare stood.
“Stop him!” Nerezza ordered. Baldassare didn’t move.
Enzio had almost made it out when Zanobius leaped clear across the room and tackled him, pinning him to the floor.
“Finally,” Nerezza muttered. “Bring him here.”
Zanobius picked Enzio up by his collar and dangled him in front of Nerezza.
“You certainly are a defiant one,” Nerezza said, lifting Enzio’s chin with a skeletal finger so she could look him in the eyes. “I’d normally send a soldier like you in for reconditioning, but I think I’ll cut my losses.” She looked at Zanobius and flatly said, “Throw him overboard.”
“No!” Giacomo thrashed against his bonds.
“You will not take my son from me!” Baldassare bellowed. Enzio’s broken knife reappeared, now in Baldassare’s trembling hand.
Giacomo was surprised by Baldassare’s disobedience, and Enzio’s incredulous expression suggested he was too.
“You wouldn’t dare,” Nerezza challenged, seeming not the least bit threatened.
Baldassare glared back, teeth gritted and breathing heavily, like he was trying to muster the will to attack her, but in the end Nerezza was right not to worry. Baldassare lowered his arm and the knife clattered to the floor.
“I’m so sorry, Enzio,” Baldassare said, his face full of shame.
“I never thought you cared at all for your son, but it appears that you do, a little,” Nerezza commented. “Too bad he won’t be around for you to make amends.”
Having heard the commotion, Minister Strozzi and four soldiers rushed into the cabin. “Are you all right, Your Eminence?” Strozzi asked.
“Yes, everything’s under control, no thanks to you.” Nerezza looked to the soldiers. “Escort Minister Barrolo belowdecks. And make sure he’s by a window. I want him to watch his son fly.”
The soldiers led Baldassare away. Zanobius followed, carrying a thrashing Enzio.
Once everyone had left, Xiomar picked himself up off the floor and staggered to the back of the cabin. He propped his withered frame against a wooden table, upon which rested a strange contraption—a metal stand that held two glass spheres with hollow tubes running into and out of each one.
“Begin the preparations,” Nerezza ordered.
“That was a foolish bluff,” Xiomar said, lighting flames underneath the two glass orbs. “If the boy had killed me, you’d have had no way of turning Giacomo.”
“But the bluff worked,” Nerezza said. “Therefore, it wasn’t foolish at all.”
“Of course, Your Eminence,” Xiomar muttered. He leaned over the glass spheres to inspect their contents. From Giacomo’s vantage, each appeared to hold a stone. But when the light glimmered off their surfaces, he could see they weren’t ordinary stones after all; they were Genius gems.
Giacomo looked again, and the air was sucked out of his lungs. He recognized those gems. They had belonged to his parents’ Geniuses.
“Those aren’t yours!” he yelled. He wanted badly to throttle Nerezza, but his shackles held him back.
Nerezza approached the metal table and leaned over Giacomo. “Now you and I finally have a chance to talk.”
35
THE GHIBERTI GEMS
Nerezza studied Giacomo’s face closely, as if she were scrutinizing the brushstrokes of a painting.
“Your parents did a remarkable job creating you,” she said, running her bony finger down his cheek, her pointed black nail scratching into him. “Much more impressive than that monster Ugalino cobbled together. You can grow, adapt, learn…” She exhaled, and Giacomo wrinkled his nose. Her breath stank like a musty old
room. “It’s a shame they wasted their talents fighting against me.”
“Go ahead, torture me like you did Enzio. I’ll never serve you!” I resisted Vrama, Giacomo thought. I can resist you too.
Nerezza narrowed her eyes, her gaze boring into him. “Torture won’t be necessary. But your rebellious ways will end today.” She glanced in Xiomar’s direction.
The hunchback uncorked a long tube on his strange contraption and poured in a vial of green fluid. The liquid coiled down to where the tube split, funneled into the glass spheres, and dripped onto his parents’ gems, causing sparks to erupt.
Giacomo felt a burning pain between his eyes, as if the greenish solution were dripping on him. To his shock, the gems lit up, filling the glass spheres with a bright pink glow. The light began to snake through two more glass tubes that extended from the bottoms of the spheres. Xiomar seemed to have devised a way to extract whatever energy remained in the gems.
What kind of dark sacred geometry is this? Giacomo wondered.
He didn’t want to find out. His mind hunted for a means of escape, searching the room for anything he’d overlooked. Out the window, a streak of orange and blue caught his attention. A moment later, it returned and hovered, peering through the glass.
Mico …
Nerezza noticed Giacomo looking at something and turned toward the window just as Mico zipped away.
If his Genius had found him, that meant there was a chance Giacomo’s friends weren’t far behind. Clinging to his last shred of hope, Giacomo tried to buy himself more time.
“Tell me one thing,” he said, hiding his fear behind a veil of defiance. “What did you gain by killing all those Geniuses and turning artists into Lost Souls? Do you really think Zizzola is better off now?”
“Do you have any idea what the empire used to be like?” Nerezza said. But she didn’t wait for Giacomo’s answer. “Of course you don’t; you hadn’t been created yet. Under my father’s rule, there was no order. People did as they liked. It was chaos. Emperor Callisto even let ordinary citizens into the throne room to seek an audience with him. ‘The people should always have a voice,’ he taught me. But I learned there was no end to people’s complaints or opinions.”
Giacomo’s eyes followed Nerezza as she paced around the table and continued her diatribe. “By allowing everyone to share their vision of what the empire should be, my father ended up having no vision at all,” she said with disdain. “Can you imagine a hundred artists all working on one painting at the same time? It would be bedlam. Any great work of art must be created from a singular vision. The same is true in governing an empire, a fact my father failed to understand.”
“From everything I’ve heard, Emperor Callisto treated the people with respect,” Giacomo countered. “He was beloved.”
“My father was weak!” Nerezza snapped, raising her voice. “You know what his response was to every single person who came before him seeking aid? ‘The Creator provides for all.’ He had no real solutions to problems, only a blind faith in some invisible being. And he used it as an excuse to take responsibility off his shoulders.”
Nerezza had a point. Though Giacomo had always believed in the Creator, it was clear he didn’t provide for all, at least not when it truly mattered. Because if there really was a Creator guiding everything, why had he let Giacomo’s parents die? Or Aaminah’s mother? How could he have allowed Pietro to go blind or Niccolo to become a Lost Soul or Zizzola’s Geniuses to almost die out? So many tragedies had occurred under Nerezza’s rule, while she went unpunished.
“He tried to use that hollow line on me once,” Nerezza continued, her voice softening. “When I was a girl, after my mother died, he told me not to worry … that the Creator would provide for me. When I asked him if the Creator could give me back my mother, he told me to stop being such a foolish child. ‘The Creator can’t bring people back from the dead,’ he declared.”
Nerezza gazed out the window, lost in her memories. “That was the day I realized my father was nothing but a cruel liar. That was the day I stopped believing in the Creator’s power and started relying on my own.”
To his surprise, Giacomo found himself feeling sorry for her—almost. “We’ve all lost people important to us,” Giacomo said. “It doesn’t excuse all the terrible things you’ve done.”
Nerezza watched the clouds pass by. “To achieve order, sometimes sacrifices have to be made.”
“Like assassinating your own father?” Giacomo accused.
Nerezza whirled around, scowling. “Has Pietro been spreading rumors about me?”
“Is it true?”
“My father was an aging emperor, out of touch with what the people truly needed.”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
“He would have died eventually…” The corners of her frown edged up, forming a smirk. “I simply sped up the process a little.”
Giacomo’s breath caught, and he lost all sympathy for her. While he had lost both parents, she had destroyed the one she had had left. Evil had consumed so much of Nerezza’s soul, he imagined it must look like a shriveled, blackened lump.
“You don’t have any creative vision,” Giacomo said. “You just steal other people’s ideas and pretend they’re your own. You’re not a Supreme Creator, you’re a fraud.”
Giacomo’s words had struck a nerve. He could see Nerezza’s veins pulsing through her parchment-thin skin, and her lips pursed into a small red oval. “Enough!” She whipped around to Xiomar, who was collecting the glowing fluid dripping from the gems into a vial. “Is it ready?”
“Yes,” Xiomar said, swirling the luminous liquid. Giacomo’s parents’ gems, which had glimmered pink, now looked dull and gray, as if all their remaining energy had been drained.
Xiomar brought the glass cylinder to Giacomo’s lips. “Drink.”
Giacomo shut his mouth tightly and jerked his head from side to side, trying to knock the vial away, but Xiomar held it steady.
“If you won’t drink, I have other methods,” Xiomar said ominously, hurrying back to his makeshift laboratory.
When he returned, he held a long, thick needle. Xiomar plunged it into the vial, siphoned up the glowing liquid, and then brought the needle to Giacomo’s wrist. Giacomo felt a prick, and his fingers locked into claws. The needle plunged in deep. Faint red lines illuminated Giacomo’s veins, and a hot pain shot up his arm.
It felt like Xiomar had injected him with some kind of creature that was now snaking through his body, strangling him from the inside. Like when Vrama’s soul took hold of me, Giacomo thought as he gasped for air. His heart thudded. Stopped. Thudded again. Then his thoughts were drowned out by his own screaming.
Finally, a jolt of energy shot through him, and he fell silent, along with the rest of the world. The rushing wind from outside disappeared. He could see Nerezza’s mouth moving but couldn’t hear what she was saying.
A bright light filled the lower half of his vision. Giacomo couldn’t find its source until he lifted his head and saw that the front of his tunic had burned away, exposing his skin. His torso blazed with the lines and circles of the Creator’s Pattern.
36
FLIGHT OF THE GENIUSES
Milena and Lavanthi hurtled upward, gaining on the flying ships. From a distance, Milena scanned them, trying to determine where Nerezza might be keeping her friend. Soldiers lined the decks of both vessels, bows drawn and guns steadied on shoulders. But there was a crucial difference between the ships—Victoria was perched on the lead one’s stern.
Giacomo must be there, Milena thought.
She tapped Lavanthi on the shoulder and pointed to their target. Lavanthi nodded her understanding and snapped the reins, urging her Genius to speed up. The horse-Geniuses arced toward the ship’s starboard side, and the Zizzolan troops concentrated their forces to meet the oncoming threat.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
Puffs of smoke erupted from the handgunners’ barrels; archers released their arrows. M
ilena swiped her brush while Lavanthi swung her katar. In unison, their Geniuses projected square shields—one emerald, one gold—and deflected the projectiles. She and Lavanthi made a better team than she’d anticipated. She wondered how everyone else was faring. Milena glanced behind her to where Savino and the other warriors deftly repelled more attacks.
Without warning, Milena pitched forward, and her stomach dropped. Lavanthi had taken them into a dive underneath Nerezza’s ship. Milena flinched as the hull whizzed past, inches from her head. When they climbed back up, Milena saw that the deck’s port side was nearly empty—ideal for a clear landing. The other warriors followed Lavanthi’s lead.
On the starboard side, soldiers were still busy reloading their guns while the archers peered over the deck, looking for Lavanthi and Milena. A man in golden armor shouted at his troops to wake up and look behind them, directing their attention to where the Rachanan warriors were landing on the deck.
Govind and Azad slowed their Geniuses to a trot to allow Savino and Yaday to dismount, then galloped back into the sky. They circled the ship, firing off streams of light that knocked several soldiers to the deck.
Lavanthi swooped down and Milena poised himself to jump, but then she spotted Zanobius near the front of the ship, pushing a soldier onto a plank. Even from this distance, she could see that the boy in uniform was clearly Enzio.
“Zanobius, don’t!” Milena shouted. He looked her way, but her plea didn’t seem to register, and he shoved Enzio overboard.
Enzio’s screams mixed with the howling winds.
Milena grabbed Lavanthi’s shoulder, and when she turned, Milena pointed at Enzio’s plummeting figure. “We have to save him!” she shouted, hoping Lavanthi would understand the urgency in her voice if not the words themselves.
Lavanthi pulled the reins, and they steered clear of the ship, diving after Enzio. Milena clasped her arms around Lavanthi’s waist, holding on for her life. Enzio’s cries for help grew louder as they closed in. Lavanthi’s Genius raced past Enzio, then swooped under him, halting abruptly. Milena’s head slammed into the back of Lavanthi’s armor, and then she heard a heavy thump behind her. Enzio grabbed her shoulders, yanking her back.