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Illario poked his way through cupboards and under tables, searching for any sign of Lucanis. He wasn't in any of the usual spots.
Ever since the Velardos had come and he had left home to live with his grandmother he had dogged his cousin's steps like a tall, dark shadow. House Velardo was gone, grandmother - Caterina, she said, since any grandmotherly aspect had been buried behind 'trainer' - had told them. Still, when Lucanis disappeared and left Illario checking hidden corners in the strange, large villa, he felt the choking nausea of fear clawing at his throat.
"Hide now, Illario, and wait. If anyone finds you you know where to put your knife. Use all your strength. Remember that you are a Dellamorte."
Mama, on her knees in front of him, enveloped him in her arms. His face pressed against her shoulder and he breathed in her familiar smells - leather, that all pervasive animal skin and tanning oil that he so associated her with, and metal, like copper, like knives. And underneath, nearly obscured by her dueling outfit, the cloying, tangy-sweet scent of cherries lingering from where she'd been picking them in the garden.
His brother was hiding in the next room. If he hadn't been doing the same and waiting Illario would have protested at the unfairness of it, that he couldn't follow behind Mama and Papa when he had been working so hard at his knifework - and he was better at target practice than his older brother too! But they had both impressed on him that this was his job, his position to hold, that he was to follow his brother if it came to it, and so he would do exactly as they asked, be strategic, conserve his strength until the right moment. "A Crow knows how to listen before they can lead," Papa had told them, and one day he was determined that he would lead.
Lucanis played the role of brother now. Lucanis, who could hit a target with half the practice Illario needed. Lucanis, who brightened the scowling eyes of Caterina when they were all she turned on him.
Lucanis, who had told him not to worry and sat with him until he could consistently hit his targets. Lucanis, who hadn't even been too cross when Illario'd pushed him in the canal over the last pastry. At least, not too cross after he'd offered to split it.
Lucanis, who had disappeared.
It wasn't the first time, or even the second. Every time, Illario felt the ancient, gilded villa close around him oppressively, too quiet, its distant mothball smell acrid to his nose. There was no one to joke to, no one to laugh with, no one to be teased by or to follow behind.
Once, left on his own he'd managed to flood one of the too-large sitting rooms with soot from the fireplace. He'd had trouble sitting down for a week after but he'd borne it without a peep, refusing to give Caterina the satisfaction. It had been more of a struggle to hold his face steady after the next time when all of the potted plants in the hall had become unpotted, casualties of his lonely game.
Illario padded down into the kitchen, where delicious, spicy and sweet smells were beginning to waft from in anticipation of dinner. Inside it he found no trace of his cousin, only the servants, some with hands covered in flour, some stirring at pots on the stove. He managed to wheedle a cookie out of them and continued back upstairs.
Illario set his jaw and stood up straight, shrugging out of the tightness and desperation of his mother's hold and wiping his eyes with the back of one hand. Perhaps if he had known that it was the last time he'd see her he would have stayed longer. Perhaps he would have kept more than the smell of leather and iron in his memory. He gripped the handle of the dagger at his side, which on his small body hung more like a shortsword.
"My brave little crow," Mama said, kissing him on his forehead between his eyes. "Handsome and fearsome." Then she had disappeared from the room and he heard the tumbling of the lock from the outside of the door.
Illario did as he was told and waited. He waited while he heard fighting and screams. He waited through thuds and the clattering of broken pottery. He waited when he heard the triumphant shouts of House Velardo when they found his brother in the next room, and all the while he prepared, his dagger handle slipping in his clammy, shaking hand.
Rounding a corner, Illario very nearly bumped into his cousin padding quietly down the hallway and leaving a trail of wet, muddy footprints behind him.
"Where've you been off too?" he asked, crossing his arms and looking down his nose at him, a bitter edge to his voice.
Lucanis lowered his shoulders sheepishly.
"Nowhere," he said, eyes downcast.
"Nowhere smells pretty rank."
Lucanis met his gaze and stood taller after the insult as if to defend himself, though there was no defending the canal-silt stench on his clothes. His brown eyes gleamed sharply.
"I was in the tunnels," he declared defiantly. "Did you know-" he started to say, excitement creeping into his voice.
"That they're horrible and wet and musty?"
"Well yes, but I also found-"
"The secret ingredient in a stink bomb?"
Sighing deeply, Lucanis rolled his eyes and mirrored his cousins's crossed arms, leaning his weight onto one leg.
"Nevermind. If you get over your fear of standing water I'll show you."
For a moment Illario's heart jumped at the chance to be asked to follow after him, disgusting tunnel or not. The insult to his pride was too great though, and if Lucanis really wanted him around he would have asked before and not just when he was cornered. He wouldn't have abandoned him and left him behind.
"I'm not afraid of anything! Its more fun up here anyway. If you stuck around you'd know."
"Your kind of fun always seems to end with a sore bottom."
"Suit yourself," Illario said, plastering on an arrogant smile to cover any trace of quivering on his features. "You're missing out, you'll see."
When the door finally opened Illario did as he had been instructed, stabbing at full force, expecting a knife to the gut when his own blow was deflected as if it were nothing.
Looking into his grandmother's hard eyes, her face and clothes splashed with blood, he knew with a bone-deep intuition that he was alone, the last of his family.