Hello, readers! If you’re new to The Stelnove Saga, be sure to visit the series landing page here, including the “orientation” (author’s note) page.
Your lecturer also appreciates donations for her coffee supply.
Today’s subject: The dispossession of the noble lines of Speranza, Fede, Carità, and Guerriera that occurred twenty years before our story takes place. Optional supplemental reading: the three-part short story, “The Pillars are Falling”.
The Republic of Selvascura, Speranza Peninsula, Cycle: Satempla, Year 970
On the day her family’s palazzo burned, Clemenza Giudice was playing furbizia1 in the library with her sister.
The popular Selvascuran board game was still new to her. Her parents had taught it to her over the past year, in an attempt to distract their seven-year-old eldest child from their crumbling society.
Maria slid a piece across the patterned board, not that the five-year-old understood the game very well. Late afternoon sunlight spilled in through the floor-to-ceiling windows lining the wall opposite them. Clemenza squinted against the glare it created on the polished surface.
“And my mercenary takes your rook!” Maria announced.
Clemenza frowned. The mercenaries were taking everything these days. Destroying them, rather. She moved the rectangular wooden podestà piece to the far corner of the board, leaning back in her chair and letting her mind wander as Maria contemplated her next move.
She didn’t understand it all, but she didn’t need to be an adult to know that the mercenary companies were ravaging cities across the peninsula, destroying the lives and homes of particular noble families. They’d already attacked Selvascura a number of times. Her parents had dragged her and her sisters down to the wine cellars each time, but they could still hear the shouting outside, the thundering horses, the metallic shriek of swords.
The wailing of a baby broke her from her thoughts. Marcos, only a few weeks old. Her mother’s soothing voice came from the other room. Clemenza returned her attention to the board. It only took a few seconds to analyze its setup and see at least three winning moves she could make. She instinctively reached for her doge to take Maria’s podestà, but paused and chose to move a pawn instead. A benign play that wouldn’t end the game and therefore cause any tantrums.
Now, however, she was restless and couldn’t stop thinking about the attacks against the nobles. Selvascura had been quiet today. Too quiet. The eerie kind of quiet like the last time, right before the city had been attacked.
Clemenza changed her mind. She used her doge to capture Maria’s podestà, then moved her pawn the last few spaces across the board to rank up to a second doge, blocking Maria’s strongest piece. “Check.” Clemenza stood up and dusted her hands off, leaving Maria scowling at the board.2
Her mother was in the salon across the hall. Not nearly as spacious and luminous as the library, but it was cozy. Large tapestries depicting pastoral scenes of the nearby countryside hung on two walls, and a fire in the hearth staved off the winter chill. Beatrice sat rocking Marcos and nursing him, a distant look in her eyes as she stared at one of the tapestries, right where the Guerriera symbol was woven: a gleaming sword. She had had to learn to care for Marcos without support. There were no wet nurses, at least none that would work with the remaining nobility. The palazzo attendants had abandoned them, too terrified to remain. The midwife had thankfully shown up for the birth, but hadn’t been seen since. It was hard to tell who truly bought Ludovico Guerra’s ideas that the Constellation—therefore the nobility—had failed society one too many times, and who were simply too scared to be seen associating with them.
Marcos started crying again, and this time Beatrice burst into tears too. She had had a difficult time feeding him, and it was evident in his poor weight gain. Clemenza had gone out multiple times to buy milk at the market, or supplies to make broth, but food was becoming scarce. Not only were the mercenary companies consuming all their resources, but the families who had supported the markets and helped even out expenses were powerless now.
Clemenza coughed politely, and Beatrice snapped her attention toward her. She quickly dried her tears and stood up, wrapping Marcos tighter in his blanket and rocking him.
“Yes, sweetie, what is it?”
“Maria’s boring. Why won’t Ade come over to play anymore?” Adelasia Castello of Saggezza had been Clemenza’s closest friend up until the past year.
Beatrice’s expression hardened. “It’s difficult to explain.”
“Ade doesn’t like me. She said I was a know-it-all.”
Beatrice cracked a smile at that. “I don’t think that’s it. Things are hard right now, dear. There are some different…friendships being made among the nobles. That’s all.”
Clemenza watched her mother blankly, knowing that wasn’t all, but she was sure she wasn’t going to get any more of an explanation.
“Here, I want you to have something.” Beatrice shifted Marcos over to one arm as she reached in the pocket of her skirt with a free hand. “I was going to wait until your birthday, but now seems more appropriate.…” She held out a silver, oval-shaped medal that fit snugly in the palm of her hand.3 On it was an engraved image of a winged figure bearing a sword. Guerriera, the Stelnove, the Value her family upheld: warriors of faith.
Clemenza took it. Before she could say anything, a sound outside rang warning bells in her head. Her stomach plummeted.
The sound of horses’ hooves on cobblestones. Shouting.
Beatrice and Clemenza shared one wide-eyed look, then Beatrice said in a low voice, “Get your sisters. Down to the cellars.”
Clemenza ran off, but Isabella and Giorgia were already in the hallway, having been frightened by the sudden commotion outside. Maria, however, was no longer in the library.
Clemenza clutched the medal tightly in her palm as she made for the stairs. She could hear her father in the courtyard shouting for the main doors to be closed. Clemenza’s heart pounded in time with her feet as she ran gasping to the room she and Maria shared. Her sister was no more than a lump under her blankets, her favorite spot when she was in one of her moods.
“Maria!” Clemenza threw the top cover off, but Maria shrieked and pulled it back over. “We have to get down to the cellars—the mercenaries are back.” She normally would’ve tried to be a more sensitive big sister and say it was a game, but there was no time. The shouts outside sounded much closer than they ever had.
And then clear words accompanied them:
“Down with the nobles of Guerriera!”
Ludovico Guerra had finally come for them.
“Enough of this!” Clemenza tore both the cover and sheet off Maria and yanked her wrist. “Stop being a child unless you want to die.”
Her harsh words made Maria burst into tears, but they also allowed Clemenza to pull her from the bed. They tumbled to the floor. At the same time, a crash sounded downstairs, making both sisters freeze. The shouting now echoed below them. The floor vibrated beneath Clemenza’s palms, and her heart leaped into her throat.
“Clemenza! Maria! Out, get out!” Beatrice’s panicked voice pierced the air.
They stumbled to the stairs.
That was when Clemenza registered the smell, the faint haze in the air.
Smoke.
Shaking, still clutching the medal tightly in her fist, they made their way downstairs. The smoke thickened, burning her throat and making Clemenza choke. The rest of the event crystallized in her memory in patches. Her father, coughing and beating at flames with their tapestries. The woven sword of Guerriera sparking and burning. Marcos screaming. Isabella and Giorgia dashing to the back door, bags they’d packed weeks ago in their tiny hands. Clemenza knocked into a doorframe, her shoulder smarting with pain. Heat pricking at her face. Bodies pressing in around her as she took Maria’s hand and led her to the back door with the twins.
Baby Marcos was left behind with their parents. Was Clemenza supposed to get him too? In the delirium of the moment, she couldn’t remember the escape plan they’d concocted weeks ago in preparation for something like this.
Not all of the Raiders were mercenaries or disgruntled non-nobles. She glimpsed livery collars—worn by nobility—on some, a sight that startled her in its stark betrayal. Nobles who had abandoned their Values and allied with Ludovico.
Once outside, Clemenza led her siblings down the first side street they came to, intending to avoid any roads that led to the main piazza. They had a rendezvous point.
She told herself she wouldn’t turn around, but at one point she did, still stumbling forward. She gasped at the sight of the flames through the windows, one bursting open like a demon emerging from hell. Giorgia started crying.
Then Clemenza hit someone and fell forward, but the person grabbed her. A young boy, not much older than her, with sandy hair and gray-green eyes. He looked vaguely familiar, but in her panic, she couldn’t place him. She was about to thank him when she saw the livery collar, a white bird in flight depicted on the cloth patch. An Ambizioso noble. Their families had probably mingled at some point, dined together, chatted as friends together.
She recoiled from the image of other nobles in her home, torching it right now.
The boy held a sword weakly at his side. He opened his mouth to say something, but nothing came out. Clemenza understood in this brief moment that he was perhaps supposed to be in her family’s palazzo too, that his father was probably inside.
She pushed him hard in the chest, causing him to stumble back. Then she herded her siblings toward her and dashed down the street.
If this was what the Constellation was, she wanted no part of it anymore.4
Read on to Chapter One.
Italian for “craftiness” or “cunning”, clearly inspired by chess, but the name of it is used somewhat tongue-in-cheek.
Clemenza being a prodigy at the game was something I had an idea for because I was watching The Queen’s Gambit when I first started drafting.
The medal Clemenza is given comes from a Miraculous Medal that I’ve kept in my pocket since I was fifteen.
I love this first encounter between Clemenza and Gianpaolo at the end. In such a short space, we get a clear idea of their two personalities, how they’ll conflict, and the start of the enemies-to-lovers dynamic.