This Rough Magic

'Back!' shouted Erik. 'Back to the inner curtain-wall!'

Maria watched as the knights charged again, making space and time for the footmen and others to pull back without endangering the wall. Benito was out there, somewhere. Rearguard, setting explosives with the Knights' bombardier. She herself had only just gotten up here, having led the women up from the wall by the Little Arsenal. Toward the end, they'd been reduced to throwing cobbles and bricks at the enemy. The arquebusiers had shot out their powder. Blades were blunted and nicked. And yet there always seemed to be more foes.

Maria closed her eyes to pray, then opened them, looking at the scene below. Already the bulk of the Hungarian forces were pouring in through the breach in the outer wall. The inner wall, which enclosed the Castel a mar and the Castel a terra, was higher than the outer curtain wall—but it certainly wasn't thicker. And the wells in the upper part of Citadel were long dry. True, they'd all taken part in the filling of the huge cisterns up in the Castels . . . uphill all the way, carrying water ewers. But when that was gone, there would be no more.

According to Benito, the water available might last the ten thousand people inside the Citadel two weeks. The cisterns had been intended for the garrison only. On wet, verdant Corfu, the wells and the two springs in the inner citadel never ran dry.

Except now. There was an evil thing out there, as the high priestess had explained. A spirit of dryness, fire and death. A thing that caused green life to wither just by its existence.

Maria sighed. First her home. Then Umberto. And now this. They were being devoured slowly. She made her way through the crowded streets and to the hospital and the Hypatian chapel, where some women and the children who were too young to fling rocks had been sent when it was realized this was an assault that might actually succeed. Stella had taken Alessia and a number of other scuolo and Corfiote children so that the younger women could go to help on the walls.

She found Stella at the chapel, looking stunned and crying. 'Alberto—he's missing! They tell me he was shot. He was with the rearguard. There was no one to bring him in. Dear God! Dear God!'

For once her children were silent. Big eyed. Scared, even the ones too young to fully understand.

Maria couldn't find words, so she simply hugged her, hard. The older woman clung to her. Maria swallowed. 'Stella. You . . . you stood by me, when, when Umberto and I were new and friendless. You were there when there was that curse and others avoided me. You've stood by me. I'll help as much as I can.'

Stella pulled away, despair warring with anger in her face. 'God's Death, Maria, don't you understand? We're all going to die here. My man. My babies. All of us. We'll either die of thirst and starvation or the Hungarian monsters will get us.'

Maria picked up Alessia. The little girl hung listlessly in her arms. 'I'll do something. I have to.'

She turned and walked out of the chapel. A horrible thought had just crossed her mind. If there had been no one to bring Alberto in . . . where was Benito? He was with the rearguard. Benito would always choose the hardest, the riskiest task. He would be in the front of the vanguard . . . and at the back of the rearguard. Maria went searching.

Eventually she found Erik and Manfred. The prince's armor was dented. His visor was now up and there was blood oozing from a small cut above his eye.

'Prince Manfred. I'm looking for Benito.'

He looked a little annoyed that someone should trouble him at this stage. At the mention of Benito's name, though, the expression eased.

'Last I saw of him was when we were returning from that final sortie. He and a couple of others—a big fellow and another man—were lighting the charges to the houses on the road. Have you seen him, Erik?'

Erik frowned. 'No. And he's supposed to report to me. Check with the gate guards. Wait. I'll come with you. That'll get answers.'

Very shortly, Maria knew the worst.

Seven of the rearguard hadn't reached the gate. Alberto and Benito were both among them.

Benito. Gone.

What little remained of the bottom of her world crumbled and fell away, leaving her hollow and utterly, utterly alone.

She turned blindly from Erik, not hearing what he said, and walked away. Alessia whimpered and nuzzled weakly, but Maria had no milk to give her. Maria's eyes remained dry. There were no tears to cry now. The time for weeping was over.

She'd lost Umberto . . . He'd not been her soulmate, perhaps, but he'd been someone she'd gone from liking to loving. And now she'd lost the man she'd truly loved, too. Benito was gone. She hadn't even had a chance to say good-bye to him, much less tell him—well, much of anything. Except that he was a fool. Which he was. And that his wildness was going to get him killed.

Which it had.

And very soon she'd lose her baby, too. Alessia was dying, slowly, of hunger; the worst of all possible deaths. Even being spitted on a Hungarian spear was better than this, dying by inches.

And that was when she knew what she had to do.

It came to her, all of a piece; not as a blinding flash of revelation, but settling over her like a blanket. Certainty. And perhaps it was folly equal to Benito's, or insanity, and perhaps her soul would be damned, or perhaps it just wouldn't work at all . . . but there was only one person here who could and would do what she was about to. Therefore, she would do it. She had nothing to lose, now. Except Alessia, and if she did not do this thing, Alessia was lost anyway.

There was only one way forward. Squaring her chin, Maria walked determinedly through the frightened crowds, onward and upward to the Castel a mar—

—to see the high priestess. To tell her that she was ready to become the bride of the master of the black altar.