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five.
Viago is five years old the first time his mother – smelling not of cheap wine nor the lingering of elfroot – tells him he must keep himself covered. “Your father has enemies, gioia(joy),” she murmured, fastening fine (too fine, far too fine for what she should be able to afford) gloves at his wrist and tugging down his shirt-sleeves. “You must always be prepared for them to strike.”
Mammina(Mommy) never sounds so firm, Viago realises – so this is something he must take seriously forever, even though the gloves pinch at the webbing of his fingers and feel too snug around his fingertips.
“Ti prometto, mammina(I promise, Mommy),” he chirps, his dark eyes wide with the innocence that only children can muster.
Mammina(Mommy) coos over him for several minutes more, but then he is relegated back to the care of the steward that tucks him in and brings him his favourite biscuits at bedtime. He knows Zietto (uncle) better than Mammina(Mommy) anyway, so when he asks him about it, he trusts his answer.
“Your mamma is looking out for you, little master,” Zietto (uncle) Matin says sweetly, tucking one of Viago’s ink-dark curls behind his tawny ear. “It will bring her peace to see you wear the gloves, hm?”
And when Mammina(Mommy) is at peace, she doesn’t smell as sour and sad.
Viago wears the gloves.
Mammina(Mommy) nods approvingly at breakfast the next morning and treats him to a rare smile.
fourteen.
“Again.”
The blade clatters in front of him.
Viago is doubled over, gut burning, cheeks scalding, gasping for breath, and Alessandro leans lazily against a broken crate. The same crate he had, only moments before, put Viago through as though he were no more cumbersome than a fennec.
“You lack finesse,” Alessandro notes, kicking the blade closer.
Something else lands next to the blade.
A new set of gloves.
These are far finer than anything Viago has owned up until now – his mamma had squandered what little money she still had on cheap wine and cheaper thrills until one (or both) had taken her years earlier; there was nothing left for the bastard son of the King and his spurned courtier, not least the one who had embarrassed him at court in years past.
They are thinner, but well made. The leather is not ram or ox, but… gurgut, perhaps? Less porous than anything Viago could afford himself, and far more durable. The gloves are made with dexterity in mind as well as protection.
Viago stares at the gloves.
His heart thunders in his ears.
They could be a trap. They could have a caustic paste of deepstalker spit and aqua regis within. They–
He picks up the gloves.
Removes the bulky, poorly made pair that he had sewn himself by candlelight.
And puts on the new ones.
Alessandro never asks.
Viago never tells.
But he knows that his Talon sees more than he says.
For his discretion, Alessandro de Riva gains not just a Crow – he gains a protégé.
twenty.
Matin puts a hand on his shoulder.
No one else would dare, save for Alessandro.
But Alessandro is in Antiva City and Matin is in Salle.
So, Matin dares.
“We have him in the cells below,” the steward says, the heat of his hand half comfort, half crushing.
Viago nods sharply, his eyes lingering on the discarded gloves on the floor – what remains of them.
Acid has eaten through the well-tended leather – acid that would have eaten away at his hands had he held the accursed vial with his own bare skin. The damage it had done to his knee is more than enough – if it had been his hands, his future as a Crow would have been gone in an instant.
“Interrogate him.” He barely recognises his own voice – it isn’t the voice of the young man who had grown up on Lagos di Novo and sought out blackberry brambles, nor the voice of the fledgling who kept getting up after being knocked down time and time again.
“Your knee, Signore,” Matin tries.
Viago shakes his head.
“Interrogate him. I want to know who sent him, why, and how he tampered with my stabilisers.”
His alchemy kit, usually his pride and joy, is now strewn across his workbench. Half of it is damaged beyond repair, and the rest… will have to be disposed of regardless. Viago is already mentally tallying the cost to replace the various regents, herbs, crystals, and potion bases. More gold than he has, certainly.
Matin nods once and leaves.
Viago adjusts the new pair of gloves, securing the buttons at his wrists with practised ease.
thirty-one.
“The gloves stay on.”
His voice is tight as he pulls his hands away from hers. Her slim fingers linger on the wine-dark leather and Teia…
Teia simply smiles and lays back on his bed. Her umber skin seems unnaturally warm even through the leather that he never sheds. She is the sun, an unquenchable flame, and he… he is the dark of the night, the cold, drawn to her warmth like a moth.
Teia Cantori is beautiful and dangerous.
Too dangerous to be touched.
But he will – just a little.
They have gone back-and-forth, to-and-fro, for far too long, and finally they are here. In Rialto, on a warm night, too many glasses of wine pulsing through their veins.
Teia Cantori is a risk.
Viago does not like risks.
Teia might be worth it.
His lips ghost across her bare skin – just hers – as he worships her; he will not let her leave this bed unsatisfied. He won’t leave physical marks on her though his mouth plays at them (but, he thinks, she has left indelible marks on his soul).
“Tell me,” he says lowly. “If I do something you do not like.”
“Vi,” she murmurs. “I don’t think you could if you tried.”
And if he never wears these gloves again, just to ensure the leather retains her scent…
No one needs to know.
thirty-six.
The leather will not come clean.
Ashara is asleep in his bed, only feet away, as Viago desperately scrubs at the wyvern-leather in the washing bowl. But her blood– and Illario’s – are too deeply soaked into the grain. He left them too long in his panic.
As he looks at the broken little bird in his bed, Viago thinks he made the right choice.
He already wears new ones, the pristine leather creaking as he flexes his fingers, only moments before he hears the tell-tale whimper of fear from his uccellina(little bird). The damaged gloves are forgotten in an instant as he makes for her bedside.
The gloves can be replaced.
Ashara de Riva cannot.
forty-two.
Dark hair.
Dark eyes, a hint of moss.
“Your daughter, mio Rei,” murmurs the midwife, handing over the little bundle before busying herself with bringing la Reina some much-needed water.
She looks so pink against his own russet-brown chest, but he knows her skin will likely lighten to a tawny-bronze in the days to come, like her siblings before her. Already, his littlest bird has a mop of dark curls so like her mothers, but he can see his own sharp cheekbones and bow-shaped lips scowling up at him.
Emma Campana lets out an almighty wail of disgust as she is deposited in her fathers arms, but she quiets as he wraps her in a thick, teal blanket that Ashara had spent hours knitting in the past few weeks.
Her cheek is warm against his chest.
His heart thuds.
Ba-thump, ba-thump ba-thump.
One tiny hand reaches up, and Viago is entranced – he always is, but these first moments moreso, somehow. Emma’s little fingers wrap around his bare index finger, her grip surprisingly strong for someone only minutes old, and Viago Campana remembers what it is to fall in love again.
“She is perfect, Ashara,” he says quietly.
His wife groans from her birthing bed. “She best be – twenty-nine hours I laboured her!”
He laughs and cuddles Emma closer, walking to join Ashara on the sweat-soaked bed. His Rook, his darling wife, his uccellina(little bird), looks beautiful even with dark bags beneath her eyes and hair awry.
Emma doesn’t let go of his finger, but she does press her face against his chest. He leans down, inhales the downy smell of her hair.
He does not wear the gloves.