if in mid-play.
I watch him halfheartedly, distracted by my own thoughts. By nightfall, papers with my name and description on them will be pinned to the wall of every street corner. Word will get back to the capital before long. I picture Teren crumpling a parchment in his hand, sending out more soldiers to hunt me down. I imagine Raffaele getting word of my presence in Kenettra, of him with the other Daggers, plotting my downfall.
As time goes on, several others from our ship’s crew find us. They come creeping in on silent feet, exchanging nothing but quiet stares with Sergio before acknowledging me. Sergio talks in low voices to a few of them. None are pretending to be mere sailors anymore. I catch glimpses of blades at their belts and boots, and notice the way they move. Not all of them stay. Eventually, they disperse back into the forest, as quietly as they’d come. I want to address them, but something about their interactions with Sergio tells me I might be better off letting Sergio guide them, rather than trying to command them myself.
“There are others in Merroutas who want to join you,” Sergio says to me after a while. “Some have already made their way to the lands around Estenzia. You should know that Merroutas is in turmoil at the moment, as no one is sure who will replace the Night King.” He smiles a little. “Some already think that you rule there, even if no one can see you.”
“Not with this little pile of gold, you don’t,” Magiano grumbles from where he sits counting. “I’m impatient to swim in the Kenettran royal treasury.”
“It seems the Beldish queen is a patron of the Daggers,” Sergio says as he sits beside me.
“Beldain has always celebrated malfettos,” Violetta replies. “Adelina and I considered fleeing there for a while.”
Magiano taps absently at the ground. “Make no mistake—Beldain’s not here to help malfettos out of the goodness of its heart. Maeve is a new, young queen. She’s itching to conquer, and she’s probably had her eye on Kenettra for a long time. Watch. If they kill Giulietta and bring Enzo back, Enzo will be their puppet king. The Daggers will be a new branch of their army.” He winks at me. “And that means no crown for you, my love. A shame for all of us, I would think.”
The mention of the Daggers brings their faces into my thoughts again. I hesitate, then look at Sergio. “How long did you know the Daggers?” I ask. “How did you leave them?”
Sergio pulls out one of his knives and starts to sharpen it. He ignores me for a while. “At the time, they’d recruited only Gemma and Dante,” he finally says. “I was their third. Raffaele found me working on a ship as a rigger after he returned from visiting a duchess in southern Kenettra. I refused him, at first.”
My eyebrows lift. “You refused him?”
“Because I didn’t believe him,” Sergio replies. He finishes with the blade he’s working on and moves on to another. “At that point, I was eighteen and still had no knowledge of my powers. I thought of the Elites as rumors and legends.” He pauses to laugh a little. He tilts his head at Violetta. “It is ridiculous, isn’t it, what we can do?”
In this moment, there is little of the mercenary in him, and he seems like a kindhearted boy. A remnant of who he once was, perhaps. His blade sharpening speeds up. “It took Raffaele inviting me to a dinner to change my mind. Afterward, Enzo demonstrated his ability with fire. They gave me a heavy bag of gold. I suppose I became a mercenary first through them, eh?”
Violetta fiddles with a hunk of dry bread. “And so you joined them,” she coaxes him on.
Sergio shrugs, unwilling to repeat the obvious. “I learned that I was drawn to the sky, to the elements that make storms. I learned how to fight from Enzo and Dante. But six months passed, and still I could not call upon my power.” He stops sharpening his knife abruptly, then plunges it deep into the soil. Violetta startles. “Their training turned urgent, and the way they talked to me changed. After another year, I could tell that Raffaele was having private conversations with Enzo about what to do with me. Gemma and Dante had both displayed their powers so early on that they expected the same from me too.”
Sergio sighs at this point.