Chapter Text
“Higher, Caterina!” Eduardo Dellamorte calls her daughter.
She does not get a straight stab.
Her arm was not taut enough, the dagger would barely pierce, and the direction of the strike was wrong. Her stance is falling apart too. They have been practicing all morning and she is getting worse.
“Fine! Caterina! If you are not taking this seriously, I will help you to find the motivation you need.”
Caterina—fifteen years old now—sheathes her weapon. Her body is exhausted; she has been on this drill for so long that the dagger almost drops from her hands. How often do you need to stab anyone for four hours? Your target doesn’t survive for that long, she thinks, but she knows her father has never been one to leave her failure unpunished.
She watches her father approaching her, with his cane tapping on the ground. Caterina closes her eyes and waits. She knows what is coming.
But… not this time?
Instead, as she opens her eyes she sees her father smirking at her. It is not a warm smirk, it is a malevolent one where even the eyebrows taunt you, and there is nothing but cruelty behind it.
“Caterina,” he says calmly.
She knows his words are a prelude to something coming her way. Her father's mind stopped feeling a long time ago. He is a successful assassin who never hesitates to deliver. There is nothing inside his brown eyes besides blood. His mind drips with the pride of an Antivan Crow, and he had let go of all his humanity to get to the top long ago.
The smirk stays.
“I keep telling you how to do this, and you do not listen. Excuses in your head,” he continues.
Caterina listens, but the body is another thing. Her body does not want to do it anymore. Her muscles are full of lactic acid, her head buzzes with all the spent energy, and her heart is trying to pound out of her chest. The dagger drops on the ground with a resonating thang as her tired hands have missed the sheath.
She only has a chance to see the crow’s head handle rising before the pain hits her on her shoulder. She cries out as the sharp pain travels along the nerves to her fingertips. She receives another hit on the same place as a punishment for reacting. A howl is about to escape her mouth, but she stops it at the last moment. She feels her eyes water and her father notices it immediately. She gulps and stands up.
“Antivan Crow does not cry, Caterina! The tears are reserved for the families of our targets!”
Edouardo Dellamorte is a drunkard, beats his children up for fun, and fondles the staff as a pastime–and he is proud of it. His legacy of blood is earned, he has conquered his fears and doubts long ago. He lives and breathes the divine cause of daggers at the throats of the targets. Caterina is a decent daughter to follow him on the path, but she feels too much. Yet again her tears disappoint him, and when he is disappointed, the urge to hurt rises and presses on his backbone until he has seen her punished for such idiotic emotions.
She will learn.
He paces back and forth in front of Caterina, who pathetically snivels in front of him. She has fear in her eyes. Her sister is a weakling, good only for marrying away to other houses to gather intelligence. His other children, two boys, are womanizing louts who are better at parlor games than being a Crow. Caterina is his last chance to have a successor worthy of their name. But she needs discipline. She needs to silence what is in her head like he himself did. She will become the silent death of the long arm of the Crows, which she cannot become if her head rails against orders.
“I want you to stand here until tomorrow. You do not move. Your two feet are on the ground each moment, and you’ll make no sound,” he says, punctuating his message with a thump of the cane against the stone.
Caterina hears his words.
She has two options. Either she can cry over these terrible prospects, which will get her punished further, or she can pretend it does not concern her. She knows what the right call is. She steels herself, even though her insides scream. She is only standing because of the thought of returning to her warm bed after the drill, which will not happen now.
She feels weak.
Her body musters itself not to show her anguish, it raises from its lurch, and her chin perks in defiance. Caterina sees his father’s face betraying a moment of approval. It is all she needs: to feel she did right by her father. She takes a stance on the courtyard she thinks she can hold unmoving, hoping the passage of time will turn her into stone. In that position, she watches as her father walks away, without saying a word, and the last sound she hears is the cane tapping on the ground—tap tap tap— her father’s footsteps create not even a shuffle.
The Dellamorte Villa is one of the grandest in Treviso, yet it is a monument to her pain. Standing still, she can feel the blisters of her feet from hours of training today. Her over-strained joints throb as they are forced to keep her in the same position. The acrobatic movements overextending her knees and preventing them from doing so is a muscular strain of its own, and for that bit of mobility, she pays now dearly. Caterina’s hands have held weapons for years and her fingers curve naturally as their tendons have shortened. Some mornings she cringes when they attempt to extend fully, and she feels the wear and fluids in them all hours of the day, now more than ever.
To make the time pass faster Caterina thinks of the family opera house looming ahead of her. In its grand tragedies, where the singers are harvested by the Crows dressed in black, every story ends the same. She knows why: her life is death; she either serves or succumbs to it, and she can choose at which end of the blade.
She will not live to be old. His father has foiled several attempts on his life only this year. None of that matters now, she is not a perfect weapon yet and that is why she stands here, with her body sending stinging sensations all over her.
As she stands unmoving, Caterina’s face receives a gentle comfort from the wind. It soothes her now cooling skin. The day is darker than usual in the Antivan summer. The kind caress by the wind is a barbed comfort as she sees the rain clouds approaching from over the rooftops. They will bring their greetings to her soon enough. Caterina’s knees throb, and she has a twinge of pain in her back that shoots lightning behind her thighs and to her toes. How long has she stood here?
The courtyard of the Villa is now devoid of movement, and Caterina knows it is because her father has told everyone to stay away. He does not want to remind her she exists; she is now dead until she learns. He has ordered curtains closed in the house, in case anyone might get ideas to comfort her. He does this to teach her to learn to focus. Will she learn? What will this pain teach her in the end? Her father knows it works, he wouldn’t do it otherwise.
Time passes, darkness is finally coming, and she needs to relieve herself, the wind that now runs through the courtyard is cold, she has no sleeves, and her clothing is light. The cold air incessantly bombards her bladder. She holds as long as she can, but the pain increases as the need to urinate grows. She will be able to keep it for only a while longer. She knows what will follow: a momentary warmth until her clothes turn into a cold blanket.
Caterina swallows her tears.
How did it come to this? Why didn’t she do better? It was only a dagger, a constant companion of hers. She knew how to wield one, yet she did not do what her father simply asked; she only needed to hold it higher and keep it level to pierce the target.
What he asked was so simple.
She does not decide to let go of her bladder control, but the urine escapes her as her constitution fails. The warmth on her clothing feels as she foresaw warm, comforting, and like a hug caressing her aching knees.
As the air cools further as night is nigh, the wet clothes feel despicable against her body. The rain sets in. Caterina swallows as she feels the despair creep in. She will not cry. She cannot give her father the pleasure. She knows without turning that he is watching her with his wine glass in his hand, through the stained glass window behind her. He is no doubt smirking at her, reveling in the pain she goes through. Yet in some twisted manner, he is pleased with her suffering and atoning for her errors.
She only wants to make her father proud.
The rain lashes her with its fierce intensity, her body has long since stopped aching, she feels like past her head and neck her body is no longer there, and her head only takes the beating from the raindrops. A strand of hair falls on her face, tickling and irritating in its boldness. She must not move. Father might be watching if he is conscious anymore, but she cannot risk it. She is so hungry her stomach rumbles like a dragon about to launch fire. Still, It is only one ache among the others.
Did she deserve this? Does it matter? The dagger was not held right. Caterina is cold; a shiver rattles through her body and her teeth clack together like a training sword against a shield. She tells herself not to move. Her father might see it. Her body obeys this time.
Caterina feels her joints shaking. Her back feels like embers are burning on its skin and the muscles are about to give in, her ankles are swollen, and her knees want to buckle. She needs sleep, but she cannot do that by standing up. If she collapses, she will move. That will result in another punishment. How far is the morning? It is still dark and she is uncertain if time is passing at all. She will never become like this if she has children, his father is supposed to look after her. Maybe her father is only ensuring she will survive to have kids of her own and to live. Perhaps, this is all an expression of his love for her?
Caterina feels a tear running down her cheek, but she needs to do something. She cannot cry. She shakes her numb cheeks. She needs to close off her mind. Ignore the pain, ignore her wet clothing and the rain. How? How? She attempts to catch rain without moving with her tongue. Thirst is gnawing at her. Her hunger evaporated long ago. She tries not to cry, but she despairs.
She swallows. That much is allowed.
She envisions a box, a tiny one, with a golden filigree, maybe it is blue, or red? The color of blood. She holds it in place with her mind. Caterina molds the pain in her limbs into a ball. She takes the box, places the ball of pain inside, and closes the lid. Then she focuses on her creation. Traces the edges of the design in her mind. Her mind caresses her box of pain and feels its smoothness, no—it has a rough surface. Rough like her—she will become a better Crow now. She admires the box and feels no pain.
Eventually, she hears the birds.
Finally.
Morning.
“Caterina,” her father arrives.
Caterina places the box into her pocket in her mind.
Her joints scream again, but she can face him.
“Here is your food. You may move and eat now,” his father says and walks away.
Tap, tap, tap.
She is afraid to move, but after he is gone Caterina takes the tray slowly into her shaking hands. If she moves too fast her knees will give in, or her hands may drop the precious food her atonement has earned her.
She paid the price for her failure.
She eats the food and feels it almost returning up, so she has to take small bites to negotiate with her empty stomach. Freshly squeezed orange juice from the trees of the estate tastes divine but is harsh on her belly, her stomach churning on every gulp.
As she sits there with her tray on her lap, Caterina can smell herself—the urine, the wetness, and even the pain, which until now she thought had no odor.
She is uncertain she will get up from the ground when she’s done eating, but she tries and succeeds, and enters the grand mansion that is her home—now and always a monument to her endurance.
“Well done Caterina!” She hears her father's voice filled with pride as she completes her drill.
Father was right, she wasn’t focusing.
She tries to turn off the pride by putting it away into her beautiful little box as it distracts her.
“Your backflip is lazy!” Caterina hisses at her grandson.
She walks over to him as he hunches on the ground after hours of practice. The dark eyes under messy hair look at her in fear but she sees resignation in them too.
The boy shows such weakness.
He doesn’t do as he is told, so she raises her cane—her father’s—and watches coolly as Lucanis covers his head with his raw and tired hands.