I am so excited to share with you all the first chapter of my Italian Renaissance-inspired fantasy heist, Of Constellations and Clockwork!
Blurb from Amazon below:
A city-state crumbles into ruins. Ancient values are erased. For clockmaker Clemenza Giudice, once a noble, restoring her family's standing is all that matters—even if it costs her soul. A determined young woman, her ambition could lead to salvation or ruin.
Her chance? A daring plan to steal illicit technology for the very man who ruined them. But this isn't just a simple theft; it's a desperate gamble in a labyrinthine game of political maneuvering that could shatter her world and reveal deep-seated betrayals.
As Clemenza embarks on a perilous journey into a corrupt capital, she's joined by a rival clockmaker, an ostentatious smuggler, a pleasure house slave, a clever thief, and a mysterious architect. Controlling this disparate crew proves much harder than controlling clocks in this intricate Italian Renaissance-inspired world, where advanced clockworkartistry defines society, yet also poses grave dangers.
Amidst the power struggles and impossible choices, Clemenza must confront the darkness within. To protect her family, she may have to become like the man she despises, wrestling with her convictions in a world teetering on the edge of its faith.
Will she save her city, or succumb to its shadows? Perfect for readers who enjoy high-stakes fantasy novels that blend intricate world-building with profound moral questions, akin to A Golden Fury by Samantha Cohoe or Secrets in the Mist by Morgan L. Busse.
You can find the whole book here.
Want to support the Stelnove Saga further? Consider joining my street team and following the Kickstarter for the sequel. If you join the street team, you can get an ebook copy of book 1!
Note: I have annotations throughout the text in the form of footnotes. These are things I loved, fun facts, and bits of research. I am currently annotating the entire book to collect these notes in a behind-the-scenes guide that will be available via the Kickstarter for book 2.
There was something satisfying about the way in which the tiny wheels of the clock whirred together, each tooth fitting snugly against its neighbor. Harmony. Alignment. Each one knew its place, where it belonged, and was content to be there. Nothing more, nothing less.1
Clemenza Giudice held the clock up to eye level to better see the wheels moving through the glass pane on the side. The clock itself was square, with the dial placed on the golden top, and each side was made of clear glass, allowing the privileged owners to admire the mechanical work. Each edge resembled a creamy marble column, a miniature version of the same columns that held up the magnificent buildings of Selvascura. A horizontal table clock.2 Perfect for sitting on a marble table in a noblewoman’s sitting room while she sipped expensive sweet wine and played cards with a friend.
There were those who got to admire the clocks, and those who made them. Clemenza turned the clock to see it from its other angles. Those who were the wheels, moving and working, and those who were the pretty golden casings.
Yet time passed the same way for them all.
They used to be one and the same. The clock’s movement: a word in the singular to describe all the different pieces that made it run.
Clemenza’s eyes followed the wheels. After ten more rotations, she would march over to the Clock Master’s office.
One, two, three. Click, click, click. She tapped a finger against her leg to match the even rhythm.
Four, five, six. Click, click, click.
Seven, eight, nine, ten. Click, click, click, click.
She made to set the clock down, but her hand jerked back. No, five more rotations. But now she had missed one as she moved the clock, so make that six more rotations.
One, two, three, four.
Five, six.
Might as well watch four more for an even ten.
Seven, eight, nine, ten. Tap, tap, tap, tap.3
Clemenza unlatched her fingers from the clock and stood up. She wiped her hands on her skirts. It worked. No more stalling.
The bright chatter from the morning had fallen silent in the clock shop, the others tired from having worked for seven hours. Metal clinked together. Wheels and pinions and arbors scratched and clicked like an alleycat’s nails on a wooden gable. Occasional muttered curses and whispers threaded through the mechanical sounds like wind through a loggia whistling between the house wall and the open pillars facing a courtyard. And the ticking. The constant, never-ending ticking. A sound that had haunted Clemenza’s waking and sleeping moments for the past six years. It was always a gamble with the clockmakers over what would take them: insanity from the ticking, crippled hands from minute finger-work, or poor eyesight from having to peer at tiny objects in close range for so long.
Clemenza wound through the maze of desks. An owl automa, one of the most common and useful commissions for sending messages, sat on one. Someone else was putting together a clock movement for a mechanical jewelry box that lay open beside her.
Late afternoon light smudged the room, as if the sun were tired too. When she passed by Benigna Donato’s desk, the young woman glanced at her, then scooted her chair back purposefully. Clemenza dodged the wooden legs with practice and swung out a hand to knock over her tower of wheels. Benigna hissed, but made no further moves.
Once in the hall, Clemenza withdrew the letter she’d received and crumpled it. Her steps became more purposeful, moving in time to her pounding heart.
Remember your purpose. This is for your family. Remember Maria. Isabella and Giorgia. Marcos. Daniela. Mimi. Luciano. Fabrizio and Vittorio. Noelia. Donato.
And Giosetta.
She’d never met Giosetta. She’d been gone too long.
If the ticking was loud in the workroom, it was deafening in the Clock Master’s office. Two tall clocks leaned against the wall on either side of his broad mahogany desk, the complex network of wheel trains clinking and pinging away within. Smaller clocks hung suspended from the ceiling, the glass casings revealing the interlocking wheels. Some didn’t even have glass casings, the naked parts revolving and moving in synchronicity. The uniformity and calm, predictable rotations always put Clemenza at ease.
The weighty, cloying stench of aether hung in the room. She scrunched her nose. Gaspare Mazza didn’t even look up as he said, “Make it brief, madonna4 Giudice. I have correspondence to finish, and have to prepare for an architect coming in tomorrow to survey the building for repairs…” He dipped his pen in the pot of ink and continued writing. His brown hair was mussed on one side, as if he’d run his hand through it; otherwise, his beard was trim, the brocade fabric of his giornea pressed and smooth. That summed up the Clock Master: impeccably turned out except for one out-of-place detail.
Clemenza slapped the crumpled letter down on his desk.
The Clock Master glanced up, eyes flashing. “You have concerns about your new assignment? You should consider it an honor, since your place was earned by the groundbreaking weapon you designed.”
A sharp pain lashed through her chest. She couldn’t think about that. She’d come undone if she did.
Yet she was still not good enough to get into the Clockmakers’ Guild. The thought of those fools constantly rejecting her applications made her even more annoyed.
“Undertaking dangerous missions to serve a man who took everything from me was not in my work contract,” she spat.
“I’m assuming you’re referring to Rettore Ludovico Guerra.”
“How could you?” Clemenza’s hands curled into fists at her side. “How could you possibly work with him?” To think that this man, who had been her mentor for the past few years, who had given her purpose and a secure job, could ally with that monster…
Oh, she’d known Gaspare and Ludovico had been talking more over the past couple years. She didn’t know any more than that, since Gaspare tried to be secretive about his outside correspondence. She had assumed the talk had been mere business since Gaspare bought some of the aether for his clocks from the Accademia, which controlled the city’s legal supply, and some Accademia graduates came to apprentice at the clock shop after their studies. But she hadn’t known they were close enough to coordinate a mission together.
“Madonna—Clemenza.” Gaspare paused, closing his eyes briefly as if he were searching for patience. “Things have changed. I can’t explain everything, at least not yet, because the information is quite sensitive, but my first duty is to the success of this workshop—”5
“And I have a duty too,” Clemenza cut him off. “To my family. That duty keeps me here. Not on a journey to the Caina Republic of all places.”
She had found the sealed letter hidden under the clock she was working on on her desk yesterday. It was typical Gaspare behavior to deliver a letter instead of calling a meeting in person. He was a quiet man who kept to himself.
The letter had been perfunctory, to-the-point. A group was to be sent on a mission to steal an experiment on some sort of innovative aether weapon. Clemenza didn’t recognize the listed names, other than her rival clockmaker, Benigna, and an infamous smuggler who did business with Gaspare. Then a note that someone from the Accademia would accompany them. They would travel north, traversing most of the peninsula, and accomplish a few tasks along the way to aid them. Their destination: the Caina Republic, sometimes shortened to just CAP, so oddly named for its three regions that circled around each other like a bull’s eye: Caina, Antenora, and Ptolomea.6
Not that it could rightfully still be called a republic. If the corruption of their nobles, based on a system of wealth and power, wasn’t enough, their tyrant king, who had taken over during the war against Serpana thirty-some years ago, sealed it. The Caina Republic was a danger to the peninsula, a hibernating bear that shouldn’t be poked.
Yet that was apparently what Gaspare and Ludovico planned to do. Not that Clemenza had much right to judge anymore.
He finally finished writing and looked up from his papers. “Is there a problem with the destination?”
Clemenza looked at him incredulously. “Where do I begin?”
The Clock Master drummed his fingers on the desk now as he studied her. “Rettore Guerra and I have come to an arrangement. The success of this mission could mean a stronger alliance between us and the Accademia of Selvascura.” Power. To be aligned with the Accademia would, on the surface, mean an easy conduit for more apprentices to trickle into the clock shop. But it also meant a connection to an influential man and the place he ran.
“The same Accademia spewing the poison that stripped my family of our nobility.”
Gaspare sighed. “You should let it go, Clemenza. The world has moved on. I never came from any sort of nobility.” The pointed ending to that remark hung in the air: And look what I accomplished.
“Right. And this new society has only benefited you,” she said sharply. He took the new corrupted uses of aether and turned them into a thriving business.
He held up a hand. “I am more fortunate now, yes, but all because I learned to play the game. The world is a furbizia game, Clemenza. Don’t you forget it.”
Clemenza stiffened. It was a well-placed remark for the woman who had made a small name for herself around the city by winning numerous games and tournaments with the popular strategy game. A game she used to play with her sister, long ago…7
She smiled. “You’re right. It’s all a game of furbizia. And I have a move to make now. I will go on this mission if you set up a meeting between Ludovico Guerra and me. To have a chat about my family.”
Gaspare lifted a brow. “That’s all you want? To talk to him? Is nine thousand Selvans not enough?”
The money was certainly nice, but it wasn’t the point. The point was to regain the nobility they had lost. Regain their pride. And Clemenza would do that by finding something on the mission to leverage against Guerra. Ideally, the weapon itself.
But all she said was, “He’s a difficult man to approach. Always in meetings with students or surrounded by guards—”
“With former nobles like you out for blood, can you blame him?”
It wasn’t strictly true, and he knew it. There were few dispossessed nobles who had remained in the city of Selvascura after the Raids. The Raids had occurred all over the peninsula, of course, but this was the very city where Guerra’s initial ideas had cut through people’s minds like oil in water. Which was why Clemenza’s family had moved so far away after.
They had no power, though. No one dared attempt an uprising, not after the couple of failed ones after the Raids. The remaining nobles were too cowed and terrified to help the dispossessed, or otherwise bought into Ludovico’s nonsense.
Clemenza pounded a fist against the table. “He will listen to me.”8
“If you’re trying to convince him to reinstate your family, you’re sure to be disappointed,” he said with a smirk. “He would never compromise his beliefs for the whims of a young clockmaker.”
Clemenza’s vision went red. “I’m sorry, Clock Master, I wasn’t inquiring as to your opinion on the success of this proposal.”
Gaspare smoothed his hair back. “If a meeting is all you want, I am sure I can arrange one after a successful mission.”
Clemenza smiled tightly. “Fine.” She spun on her heel and started to leave the room, but he stopped her.
“Clemenza.”
She turned around.
Gaspare paused, then said, “You’re my best, Clemenza. I wouldn’t ask you to go if I…if I didn’t think you could gain something yourself at the end of it.”
She wasn’t sure what to say. What could he mean by that? Tears were pricking her eyes though, because he was only making his betrayal worse. So she turned and left.
On her way out, a tiny clockwork owl automa whirred by. She swatted it out of the air, and it hit the floor with a ping.
###
Clemenza was still shaking by the time she returned to the workroom. No one acknowledged her as she came in, except for Benigna, who cut a look at the letter Clemenza still clutched in her hand. Benigna probably had no qualms about the mission due to its enticing reward. Nine thousand Selvans was nothing to balk at, and this was the woman who’d steal a loaf of bread from a Carità donation box for the poor because she wanted a snack.
Clemenza stood at her workstation, staring at it and taking a few deep breaths to calm the tension in her body. Someone had lit her aether lamp for her, as the light from the round windows was even dimmer now. The plates and wheels teetered in stacks, along with the sheets of metal and panes of glass. Her round magnifiers perched on the upper left corner of the desk—not the upper right corner, in case they fell off and hit the ground. The dials rested in a small wicker basket she’d gotten from the market, set in the upper left center of the desk.
Clemenza’s workstation was the neatest workstation in the clock shop.
She reached out and straightened the magnifiers. As she did so, her hand brushed the watercolor forget-me-not tacked to the back of the desk.9 Her sister Maria had made it and sent it a long time ago. There was a note written on the back Clemenza couldn’t bear to read anymore, not so much for the contents as for the pain of seeing Maria’s familiar, looping script. She dropped her hand. Then she shut off the aether lamp. She was leaving early, and dared Gaspare to say anything.
Clemenza fastened her dark gray mantello around her neck and stepped out into the chilly, late fall air. Across from her in the piazza, the multi-tiered fountain had already been turned off for winter, a pale, dry monument to an older time. The hundreds of fountains sprinkled across the city seemed representative of impotent relics people would rather watch rot away, like the ruins in the other part of the city, rather than use them as foundations for something new.
She glanced behind her at Selvascura Clockworks as she entered the late afternoon foot traffic. The building was a marvel, made of clockwork, the wheels rotating around each other to create the illusion the building itself was shifting like a cluster of bees in a hive. When the sun was out, the gleam of light made the moving iron shimmer. There were three enormous dials, in decreasing size, set at the top of the building: the top and largest displayed the time, the middle one marked the days of the week, and the bottom one was for the nine cycles of the year, with forty days per cycle. It was designed to attract, to impress, and Clemenza had to admit she’d fallen for it her first day back in the city, when she’d come to interview to be a novice clockmaker.
“You have to know, madonna Giudice, the work we do here is not considered…suitable for many people.”
“I understand.”
The Clock Master drummed his fingers on the desk. The uneven beat bothered Clemenza.
“We work with aether here, to be frank. Since the Accademia learned how to condense it into a liquid form, it has provided many more uses. Including improving clockwork.”10
“I already know that, messer Mazza. I am prepared to do whatever it takes to help my family.”
Whatever it takes.
Clemenza stumbled on an uneven cobblestone and swore under her breath. How many times she’d reminded herself of those words over the years. Through bouts of aether poisoning, cut hands from sharp clock parts, sharper retorts from disagreeable colleagues, getting kicked out of room after room because she couldn’t afford the rent since she passed on most of the money she made to her family. The clock business was the biggest economy on the peninsula. It did mean fast-tracked apprenticeships to keep up with demand, but if you could do it well and didn’t have moral quandaries with the questionable use of aether in clockwork, it paid decently.
Whatever it takes.
Clemenza sometimes wondered how she could react with disgust at the way people abused aether now or how they so obviously cheated each other every day, and yet participate in the same things herself.
Because I have no choice. Because we deserve to get our status back. Because fighting for what’s right is what I was raised to do.
The problem was, what was right was becoming muddier and muddier.
Even if her family got their status back, she wasn’t sure what kind of life they would lead, stripped of the purpose they once had. What was the role of a noble family, if not to publicly witness to their assigned Value?
The late fall air bit at her in a rush of wind, prompting Clemenza to pull up the hood of her mantello. She passed under a tall, rounded arch that connected two buildings made of the same creamy stone as most of the buildings here. As she wound through the cobblestone streets, the familiar smells of spices brought by traders from the rugged countryside filled the air. She stepped aside as a group of black robed Accademia students shuffled by, deep in a spirited conversation. They spoke in a different dialect, a softer, breathier accent from the southern city-states. An accent Clemenza shared, having lived in the south for most of her life. The rounder, richer sounds of Selvascura were almost foreign to her, mementos her parents had kept but all their children knew not to use, in order to blend in with their rural, southern village.
She crossed over the Tre Bestie11 bridge and paused at its apex, staring down at the Eunoe river below. She couldn’t look at those rocky banks anymore without seeing the bloated body spread out on them, the body of Signor Donatello Benedetti of Saggezza who was well known to have a political feud with Signor Leonardo Velia of Ambizioso. The latter was the one who had purchased Clemenza’s innovative weapon six cycles ago. She gripped the stone banister before her. A balestrino12, or small crossbow, that utilized aether and clockwork.
Clemenza pulled her mantello closer around her, closing her eyes. Using aether in a weapon—sickening, unthinkable, heresy. When she had been asked to design a clockwork weapon, she knew of course it would be used to hurt or kill. So she shouldn’t have been surprised to see Benedetti’s body that day, and her balestrino—so burned out it was hardly recognizable—left on this very banister. A negligent move, but it must’ve been accidental. And who had been that man she’d seen the day the body was discovered, the man with the Ambizioso livery collar who’d run off at the sight of it all? Velia’s son, or another Ambizioso family?
How do you live with the guilt?13 The dark voice had been whispering this for the past six years, louder now since she’d made that device.
Clemenza reached into her pocket, feeling the medal she always kept there, with the tiny winged figure in relief. She ran her thumb over the ridges, focusing on the sensation and calming herself because she was shaking now. That abominable device was the reason she’d been chosen to go on the mission, Gaspare had said. Why?
She felt despicable. She kept walking, her thoughts still turning. Why did she want noble status for her and her family when their role in society would be a shadow of what it once was?
If she was honest, the true desire was to validate herself. Make the guilt go away.
Clemenza had picked up her pace, but slowed now as a crowd swelled up before her in the next piazza. She skidded to a halt. She’d come upon the student district, dangerously close to the Accademia. Taverne pockmarked the streets here, black-robed students swirling around like reapers.
Someone was singing. It was a pure baritone, the lovely space between the deep tones of a bass and the floating notes of a tenor. Clemenza pushed her way through the crowd, avoiding the sloshing of wine and beer from the wooden cups in some of their hands. She could’ve gone around the piazza, but it would’ve taken much longer.
She found the owner of the beautiful voice, and the subject of most of the attention in the crowd.
He was a young man, close to her age or a couple years older. Too old to be one of the Accademia students. His skin was olive-toned like hers, and he had thick, caramel hair. Gold wire-rim spectacles14 perched on his straight nose, with stems resting over the ears to keep them in place, a new invention from the southern city-states. The contrast of the expensive spectacles to his worn hat was laughable. He stood proudly and confidently on the bottom tier of the fountain, holding a cup of wine in one hand as he belted out the lyrics of an opera to the great amusement of the group of young men closest to him.
But it wasn’t this sight alone that was most striking. It was the livery collar hung over his shoulders. Comprised of modest, thin black cloth, the square patch that hung over his chest with a matching one on back marked him as nobility.15
Specifically, the white bird stitched over a blue background, its wings outstretched in flight, head turned upward, identified him as from a family associated with the Ambizioso Value: ambition tailored to the common good.
She inhaled in recognition.
The Ambizioso lines were the most involved in the political sphere. Clemenza couldn’t imagine why in all the world and Empyrean16 one of them was disrespecting his position in such a way. A position she and all the dispossessed coveted.
The noble families were supposed to keep the others in check. If she still had her status, Clemenza could’ve walked up there and yanked him down and given him a scolding.
But it was more than the fact he was an Ambizioso noble—he was the one she’d seen on that bridge the day Benedetti’s body had been discovered. The man who’d run off.
The same ridiculous man who was drunkenly singing opera now.
The lyrics picked up tempo, creating a beat people clapped and stamped along to, which would send the composer rolling over in his grave. Clemenza stopped in front of the man, close enough to see the floral detailing in his brocade gonnella, the careless scuffs on his buckled, leather ankle boots. His expensive, fur-lined wool mantello lay in a heap behind him in the dry fountain, another affront to his status. Rage curled like a flame in Clemenza’s belly.
The man shifted his weight, the slightest twinge to his lips as he sang the only sign of his amusement. His cheeks flushed from cold, his face clean-shaven in the preferred style of nobility. As he shifted again, his foot slipped and he stumbled off the fountain. He caught himself, but his hand holding the cup shot forward, red wine sloshing over Clemenza’s bodice.
His companions burst out laughing and Clemenza, stunned, could do nothing but fix him with a hard stare.
“Oh, madonna, I’m so sorry, let me…” The rest of his words trailed off in thick Selvascuran dialect, further muddled by his drunkenness.
She should’ve been able to understand him.
She should’ve been wearing a livery collar.
He fumbled around his person for a handkerchief. Clemenza didn’t say anything. Her head buzzed, her palms grew hot.
He laughed then, his cheeks growing pinker, as he realized he didn’t have anything. He said something else in thick dialect to one of his companions. Clemenza felt her own face burn. Why did she feel like the fool in this scenario?
Her eyes went to his mantello still in the fountain. Nobility didn’t used to keep such expensive clothing. Or, at least, not for long; they usually donated such items before they got worn out.
She strode over to the fountain and scooped up the mantello, pressing it purposefully to her stained front. “You know what? It’s fine. I’ll take care of it.” She smiled tightly at the nobleman, whose mouth had dropped open. His companions laughed. Clemenza strode off purposefully through the piazza, still clutching the mantello. He didn’t follow.
She couldn’t help but smile to herself once she was gone.
Continue to CHAPTER TWO.
Amazingly, this line has remained unchanged since the very first draft. I still distinctly remember sitting down to a blank document and typing it up, wondering where the story would take me.…
I looked at early clocks in Museo Galileo in Florence when thinking about the table clock Clemenza was working on.
Clemenza struggles with obsessive compulsive behavior (note: not at the level of “disorder” so not technically OCD). This was taken from my own struggles with anxiety-induced compulsive behavior.
When using “madonna” as a title for non-noble women, I didn’t feel comfortable capitalizing it because of the use of “Madonna” by Catholics for Mary. So that’s why it’s always lowercase—and then I did the same for “messer” for consistency.
I’ve always really liked the dynamic between Gaspare and Clemenza. He really does care for her, which we get a hint at at the end of the scene, but neither of them are good at showing care for people.
Caina, Ptolomea, Antenora…taken from Dante’s lowest circles of hell.
In earlier drafts, Clemenza’s backstory with furbizia was much more detailed and important to her character. It ended up getting indirectly cut during developmental edits, which saddened me, because the way the game affected her and contributed to some of her trauma was really interesting.
Clemenza is so tunnel-visioned in the beginning. She only has two concerns: her family’s well-being, and regaining their nobility. In a sense, neither of these are bad, but when taken to such narrow extremes, they have corrupted her.
The forget-me-nots are a nod to my mom and grandma, who both loved the flowers.
This is emblematic of one of the bigger themes regarding the tension and balance between science and religion, philosophy and theology.
See the opening to Dante’s Inferno.
My husband gave me the idea for the balestrino. He loves medieval and early Renaissance history.
Someone in college said this to me upon learning I was Catholic. At the time, I gave a snarky response and brushed it off, but it came to haunt me years later as I was writing this. I actually published a blog post on Blessed is She about this.
Gianpaolo’s glasses came from my husband’s—and I promised my husband that was the only thing they had in common, hahaha.
Another Dante reference!