Disclaimer: everything belongs to Rick Riordan, except the poem which is written by Petrarch, and the character of Arsène Lupin, present for a few chapters already, which is a tribute to Maurice Leblanc.
At the end of the chapter, you will find some names of magicians from the Eighth Nome.
The events of this chapter globally cover those of chapter three, with a more detailed focus on a character, but will exceed those of chapter nine, stretching therefore from 1918 to 1923. (To help you a bit with the messy timeline.)
X. How I made a living (1)
Giacomo Bellini
No need for logic when making big decisions in my life. The bowels know; your body speaks to you, the magic sings if you know how to grasp it. When I first saw him at the First Nome (I'll always remember) my insides spoke to me like never before, in a long alarm sound. They were questionning soldier magicians one by one. I wasn't worried. Oh there was certainly reason to be, since Julius Kane, patriarch of the infamous Narmer family, presided over the tribunal. The Kane were Horus' servants, as were dozens of other families. There was between us and them, the same immeasurable distance as that separating the soldier from the artist. We didn't like the Kanes, but we didn't care much about them. All our hatred goes to Sforza, there is no room for anyone else.
At the great trial of November 1918, when they questionned the Champollion boy (as the French called him) I was still present in the room. Julius Kane was pissed off. It was probably, because it had just been my turn. I should say that, as the fourth son of a five boys and two girls, I was the best at infuriating people. What's more, magician-combatant families are so predictable. The Bellini have never imposed a magical specialty on their members. We learned everything, were capable of anything, and of course, and were all trained in combat illegally.
Champollion I immediately thought, here is another comedian. I watched the interview with curiosity. Desjardins came in his French military uniform and not in Egyptian clothes, which was in itself an insult to the assembly. When asked why, he shrugged. "I didn't have time to change." He then made himself remarkabe with his extreme laconism. The Ninth experts had gathered enough evidence to bring him down anyway. The only one who had more problems was myself. Not that I cared. Magicians, over the centuries, had come to tolerate the Bellini takings some liberties with the law, thanks to a tacit agreement where we in return agreed to get our hands dirty for everyone when necessary.
Like the Kane, Mazrui, Sforza or even Hogan, we descended from the blood of the pharaohs. But while their ancestors succeeded each other on the throne of the two Egypts, ours, sons of slaves and courtesans, served in temples and deserts the gods Set, Sekhmet, sometimes Bast. We were mages of chaos in the triumphant time when Egypt did not fear its own mages, when laughing, disheveled and free, it celebrated its own shadows on the altar of all truth.
What did he know about it, Julius Kane the Elder, he, whose glorious lineage had like any others blazed with chaos, when he finally asked one of the philosophical questions of which he had the secret and which were of no use except to his secret plan, and to which it was enough to give the expected answers? What did he think, he, who was the first to serve us this watered down soup of Lower Empire, these halves of myths, these fantasies concerning the so-called divine order? He spoke in Demotic of course, Alexandrian Greek was the only language he admitted:
"Do you believe in Ma'at?"
My Frenchman raised his head and with disarming honesty replied simply:
" Sometimes.
- Sometimes ? Kane repeated.
- Sometimes. "
In truth, he won me over at that precise moment.
"I don't know what you are looking for, with your investigations, your questions, your trials ... Find out who's guilty? Say what is fair or unfair, who is right and who is wrong? Restore the truth about things, peace, fairness? Is that what Ma'at means?
- Develop. "
He lowered his head, whispered softly:
"Sometimes chaos wins and that's it. And it doesn't matter who really died for what, and what the living did, and what treatment will win their souls at Osiris Palace. They no longer have a language, they no longer have a face. If only you knew how easy it is to tear your face off a man ... "
Desjardins was convicted of misuse of magic in service of national interests, rebellion, high treason and nationalism, the main charges against the veterans. It was more a rhethorical trial than anything else. Most magicians and particularly European magicians faced a conflict of loyalty between their Nome-country and their attachment to the supra-national Per Ankh that prohibited any form of confrontation between its magicians, even in times of war. This dual allegiance was responsible for most of the Nomes' wars, the internal wars that had raged in Europe for nearly two thousand years. After every war, Iskandar would reaffirm the House of Life's supremacy over national interests and internal quarrels. No one really considered condemning the Baron de la Roque or Count Alvensleben, the leaders of the Fourteenth and Sixteenth Nome.
My grandmother Lucrezia Bellini pulled some strings and I was acquitted. I returned to Venice, and a few months later I heard his name mentioned again. On Iskandar's orders, Desjardins had fled, tracked Sekhmet across Europe, to Siberia, where the help of the Eighteenth had enabled him to locate and then banish her. The feat earned him a pardon from the Chief Lector, as well as a certain celebrity. As for me, I returned to France for the first time since the great war at the invitation of Abdias Kane, who wished to make contact in the greatest secrecy with my family. As I had some connections at the Fourteenth, Grandmother sent me to negotiate in Paris, with my cousin Gian.
To our dismay, indeed, the leader of Nome du Eighth, Bonifacio Voiello, was Bartolomeo Sforza's brother-in-law. The Sforza therefore controlled the Italian territory, where Abdias had become persona non grata, since their alliance with the Hogan family. I was to meet him in a neutral territory.
Why me ? Why not one of my older brothers, Duccio, Maurizio or Cosimo? It's very simple, they were already married. I was next, and we really needed a big dowry considering our finances. But hardly had we made an agreement that Abdias disappeared, somewhere in the French countryside. He was quickly replaced by his brother Jabari, less conciliatory, more suspicious. Gian had returned to Venice to explain the situation to our grandmother Lucrezia. In truth, Abdias' death was fixing our affairs. On the one hand, Gian had been the only witness of the scene, an information that was worth its weight in gold. Even more, Jelila Kane, his only daughter, became Jabari's direct rival in Julius Kane's succession. Jelila, whose hand had been promised to me. But when I met Jabari, in 1921, on the French Riviera, everything changed again.
We knew Iskandar was watching over us. There were too many stakes, too many secret transactions for him not to send his spies. The Chief Reader had informers in every country in the world, and the Eighth and Fourteenth Nomes were among the largest inside the Per Ankh, almost small states. A whole network of agents worked there for him, allowing him to keep the stranglehold on large families and regional governments.
We also had to deal with a band of demigods and Celts, led by a war veteran, Jean d'Aubigné, who was starting to make himself known in the area. As it seemed, those people were obsessed with two things: to oppose the Romans and Olympus. The Greek gods had their own spies among us. Personally, this gang was quite sympathetic to me. Why ? The Romans have always been allied with the Sforza. I had a fairly simple and practical way of reading the world, I must say. I can't say the same for poor Jabari Kane, forced to mate with a family of Sethiens, against his own principles.
Nice was the ideal location for a convention of conspirators. Anne de Montpensier lived in Marseille, and nothing escaped her vigilance. But Nice had been an Italian land, it was a neutral, open territory, and its numerous villas were so many places to organize receptions and make agreements.
The arrival of Alexandra Menchikova, was the show's highlight. Indeed, my former master in elemental magic in Cairo, Anna Menchikova, who then still bore her maiden name, Assilmuratova, had contacted me by shabti / carrier pigeon, warning me of her imminent arrival. This was apparently in the plans of the Russian Nome's Sem priest, Vladimir. Furthermore, Anna and Alexandra's enmity had been common knowledge among the Per Ankh for decades. It was now reaching new proportions. Vladimir had just made an agreement with Lenin's government and his sister had deserted the Nome in protest.
Anna asked me to monitor Alexandra's actions, and to make sure that she did not meet Jabari Kane. Of course you are now getting to know me, I introduced her to Jabari, to see how things would develop. A small internal war among the Menshikovs was never to displease anyone.
I was in my element then. To laugh, to party, fight, drink, plot, betray, all for the greatness and entertainment of the Bellini house. Gods, how naïve I was… And blind too. When I met Michel, during this great feast, in the house of a Ligurian bard, I thought he was Iskandar's spy. It was easy, it was obvious. There was still nothing wrong with sleeping with a spy, especially young and handsome, and scandalous.
And so, that fatal night in June, just after the reception at Cap Ferret, we found ourselves lying next to each other, breathless, in a hotel room near the sea. The air was hot. The crickets were singing. Our clothes were strewn on the wooden floor. He was sleeping, lying on his stomach in the crumpled white sheets. His back was marbled with large, irregular scars, bumps, hollows, red and purplish lines. I stroked them gently, whispering to myself:
I' che temo del cor che mi si parte,
Et veggio presso il fin de la mia luce,
Vommene in guisa d'orbo, senza luce,
Che non sa ove si vada et pur si parte.
Cosí davanti ai colpi de la morte
Fuggo: ma non sí ratto che 'l desio
Meco non venga come venir sòle.*
I pulled myself together and silently picked up my clothes. I left before dawn. That night, let it remain circumscribed in the time of the dream, and after years, the bitterness will perhaps pass. It's only desire. It never passed. I came back as if nothing had happened in Venice. Esme, my bastard cousin was waiting for me at the Bellini Palace, in my apartments. In an emerald green dress, capped with raven feathers, she stared at me with a half-smile.
Esme was the adulterous daughter of my uncle and the Lindor de Borja y Centellas' sister, head of the Madrid Nome. She served as a combat magician in the Fifteenth Nome, that of Spain, but had spent more time with us. Bastards were generally frowned upon, except in my family. We had studied in Cairo together, then she in Rome, while I had the privilege of studying for three years at the Two Hundredth Nome, that of the Vatican.
« ¿Cómo estuvo Francia? »
Sitting in a low chair, made of lacquered wood, she blew the blue smoke of her long cigarette on me.
« Interesante.
– Oh, sé lo que significa… ¿Qué hay de nuevo? ¿La guerra?
– La boda. Voy a casarme.
– ¿Tú?" She inhaled and exhaled a new blue cloud. "¿Quién es la niña infeliz?
– Che povera opinione hai di me…" I switched to Italian.
"Non sei l'uomo più perverso nella Casa della Vita?
– Tutto questo è un ricordo del passato. Jelila Kane.
– Che destino crudele! Perché la sorte si accanisce su di la famiglia Kane?" she mocked me.
"Credevano che i loro dei li avrebbero salvati. la guerra verrà dopo. Questa è l'occasione che stavamo aspettando...
– Sforza, hmm ?
– Il vincitore vince tutto.
– Vae victis. Esme concluded with a laugh.
Oh power sure was a fun game. I could marry Jelila Kane. Get into the political secrets of this powerful family, perhaps invest in Jean's gang to cut the grass under Sforza's feet. It was all distracting, but soon enough, I had other distractions: inventing motives to return to France. Jelila was one of them. Under the pretext of meeting her I lived almost two months in the capital, where I actually spent more time in Michel's house than with the noble magicians.
"It's strange that I didn't meet you when I came to Paris a year ago, I told him one day.
- I was on the Somme side, I was cleaning the territory of the bad energies and magical traps accumulated during the war.
- But you're no longer with the elementalists now?
- No, I'm on leave, he said simply. I work with Arsène Lupin."
He explained to me that he was tracking Jean d'Aubigné's gang, identified on a photograph communicated by Chiron. It surprised me, given that combat magicians usually dealt with this sort of thing.
"I know Jean well, he said simply, since childhood. It gives me an advantage.
- How's that since childhood?
- It's a long story. My mom… my mom put me in some boarding school for a year when she ran away from my father. Just long enough to work and save some money. Also because she wanted to hide me, so… It was kind of a re-education facility for difficult kids. There were a lot of demigods in fact, Romans too, their magic hid mine.
- Oh, I just did, remembering he was a Champollion. Did you sympathize?
- We were trying to dig a tunnel to escape, but yes, we hit it off like that. After that I left with my mother for Paris. A friend of my grandfather welcomed us in his establishment.
- Did you see him afterwards?
- Yes."
He gathered his thoughts for a moment, as if he didn't quite know how to explain.
"My mother fled the marital home. She did not have custody rights. And then the Fourteenth was stalking us. My father… he wasn't exactly a good person. When he found us, he handed me over to Nome, to Lupin. I ran away. We found each other again, at the Gitan's. We fled. Somehow we managed to get back to Figeac where my great aunt Zoraide lived."
I silently recorded the information. Zoraide Champollion was a sort of legend in the House of Life. She would have been as brilliant as her father, more discreet though.
"You went to Figeac? Did you stay there? "
- A year. But a friend of hers took Jean to New York. They have a demigods training camp there.
- I know, I said. "
A billion questions rushed to my lips, I didn't know where to start. What did he know about his mother's family? Why had he learned magic so late? How did he get along with Lupin, if he had spent his childhood running away from him? What was Iskandar's part in this?"
"We saw each other during the war one last time."
The conversation ended there. We avoided talking about the war. We had lived it, we had survived, period. There was no point in counting our wounds endlessly.
"And Alice, where is she come from?"
- She's a childhood friend, from Paris, not from Grenoble. She came back from the United States when I was finishing high school.
- Why ?
- Dunno, she was homesick.
- You had a brother too, right?
- Yes. He is dead. Are you finished with your interrogation?
- Almost. Why are you studying literature if you are already a magician?
- Because I'm not a annuitant like you are and I don't have a palace in Italy.
- That's not what I meant. Being an active magician is a full-time profession. And besides, if you had to do all your magician's education in three years, how did you find the time to study Greek?
- I got by. Actually…" He paused for a moment.
"I didn't choose to be a magician, I wasn't really given a choice. They didn't want to have any Champollion descendants roaming outside the House. I suppose that my studies, working with my father-in-law… it was also a way to continue my former life in spite of everything, not to give up what initially interested me.
- You say that, but you're good at ancient languages. Though, it is true that Egypt is not Greece.
- Oh it wasn't Greece that interested me.
- Is that so ?
- Mesopotamia" he said me most seriously.
I started to laugh.
"I swear to you, my dream was to get a scholarship to go dig into a ziggurat.
- And now, you're growing flowers.
- You really don't get the level of complexity you need to put in your spells to obtain a beautiful flower. It is subtle magic. "
Sometimes it was difficult to understand each other. Michel reasoned in terms of individuals, I tended to see them as their last name first, as part of a large alliance network. Michel was interested in what they thought, me, in what they wanted. Often, he made me talk, listened to me attentively, staring in silence, with his little detached look, as if studying me. This surprised me the most. Not so much the fact of being stared at, I was used to act, to shock, to astonish, to arouse approval or hatred, but the neutral and curious calm of his gaze was something unknown to me.
His ignorance of other things was confusing at times. He had hardly any notion in magical statuary, was unable to develop a decent amulet. He knew the Egyptian language well, though he had just learned it in a grammar, and was not so bad at spells since his training received in Algeria, but couldn't yield a khopesh or a sword. "Give me some pistol or a bayonet, and I'll do it." He knew the theory of forces' basics, but nothing about conjuration, execration, invocation, chaos theory. Sometimes he had some very specific knowledge on some very specific subject, which was quite confusing. Most of the time he explaned it like this "I read that book" or "this person told me". Before long I had also become this person, who explained to him the workings of the Per Ankh's policies, or how to make a functional concealment amulet. It was also from that moment that things started to get out of hands.
"You're screwing up Giacomo, completely." Esme had warned me. "He's a Champollion, he necessarily works for Iskandar, if only to save his own skin. He's using you, cant' you see it."
My sister Laura, the only one else who knew, had joined her : "I get it, immoral relationships are your thing : getting laid with men, kissing priests ... I understand that a Champollion must be some kind of paradise for you; but wake up! We may get caught! Your depravities, apply them to someone who is safe. "
I just veiled my eyes to everything, to Abdias Kane and Sam Keane first, Desjardins and Lupin then. They are going to sell him to Julius Kane for money and a pretext to butcher Sforza, I finally understood what I did not want to believe. My dear family. You pushed me into war like you push me into marriage now.
Because my cousin Gian knew, Gianini was the only one who could prove everything about this mess. A litlle piece of shit he was, when we were children, he joined forces with my elders to make fun of my little brother Orfeo and me. All of this was old history though. A murderer, I had been one for a long time. We were the pharaohs' assassins, we were those of Per Ankh, I had been the time of a war that of a country. But that… that was something else.
"Oh, noble houses, they're all a bit the same, arent they after all? They don't want money or power so much as they want survival. They're just caught in a gear, where they're forced to kill, hurt, and put themselves in danger in order to survive.
- Vendetta. The system maintains itself. You got the problem.
- They're not really evil, they just make me sad. They are sad. Well, of course, I'm part of that gear now. " Michel ended with gentle resignation.
His voice gave me the effect of an electric shock. Not you, it's not… it's not fair. We were in Rome, in the large rose garden, closed to the public at this time of year. It was snowing in the city.
"It's none of your business!" I screamed. He looked at me taken aback. "Internal wars, nobleman's quarrels... You are an elementalist anyway, I hastened to add, politics is none of your business."
He turned to me, a weird, amused expression on his face.
"Really ?"
I did not answer. The red rose to my cheeks.
"That's right, he scoffed. I am only an earth magician after all. I just know how to plant flowers."
A rose in front of me began to bloom, scarlet. Then a second, then a third, and all the roses hatched, big drops of blood on the snow.
"The colors of your family he told me."
A last rose grew in his hands. He offered it to me. Colors of chaos I thought. And never, never again did I want to leave. But he turned his back on me with a farewell gesture and left the garden under the snowflakes. And I wanted this rose to never fade. So I killed my cousin.
Vae victis! I thought about it as I buried Gian's body in the cold hard ground. Woe to the vanquished! Actually, woe to the dead, guai a tutti noi per cui viene la notte! I ran to the first portal, then down the halls of the First Nome. I found him near the Hall of Ages, grabbed him by the arm, pulled him into a room.
"Listen to me, and do as I tell you. Go back to Paris, burn any compromising document, any order, any communication, any letter from Iskandar or de la Roque. Burn everything, and they won't be able to prove anything. Tell Lupin… tell him that I want, that I'm going to cooperate… "
He understood.
Then I remember walking circles for hours. On my instructions, Lupin, Desjardins, and other agents of the First Nome stormed the Eighth Nome, to proceed to the arrests of my two brothers, Duccio and Maurizio Bellini, as well as of my uncle Ignazio, but also of Horatio and Bartolomeo Sforza, as well as his daughter, Desdemona. Alicia Hogan and Melody Keane, cousin of Jabari, were also arrested at the same time.
After the arrest, we found each other, behind the Nome palace. He'd put his suitcase next to him, smiled at me sadly.
"You can get your life back," he said to me. "Iskandar will sort it out.
- So that's where we leave ... When are you leaving?
- I'll catch the 5pm train, he just said. For Paris."
After a short silence he added.
"We shouldn't see each other again, it's safer.
- Yes, I conceded. It's better." I squeezed his hand a little awkwardly.
I returned slowly, walking by the Tiber river. At the Bellini Palace, my rooms were cold and empty. I sat down, opened a book, dropped it. Everything was false, and so cold, so empty, gods!
I got up, put on my coat, slammed the door behind me, and ran across the city, breathlessly, from bridge to bridge, to the station. I kissed him on the platform, not really caring, neither people, nor my grandmother's snitches, I kissed him as the train pulled into the station with a roar of steel, as hats flew in the current of air and rushed travelers were flocking from all sides. Then, I grabbed his luggage, and got on the train for France. We rolled night and day, and how many times have we prayed that this train would never arrive.
* The verses are from the 18th sonnet of Petrarch's Canzionere. Here is their translation in English:
« I fear lest my heart parts from my self,
and seeing the end of my light nearing,
I go like a blind man, without light,
who knows no way to go, but must depart.
I receive so many deadly blows
I flee: but not so quickly that desire
does not come with me as is his wont. »
Spanish:
¿Cómo estuvo Francia? : How was France? :
Interesante. : Interesting
Oh, sé lo que significa… ¿Qué hay de nuevo? ¿La guerra? : Oh, I know what this means... What's new ? The war?
La boda. Voy a casarme. : The wedding. I'm getting married.
¿Tú? : You ?
¿Quién es la niña infeliz? : Who is the poor girl ?
.
Italian:
Che povera opinione hai di me… : What a poor opinion you have of me ...
Non sei l'uomo più perverso nella Casa della Vita? : Aren't you the most perverse man in the House of Life?
Tutto questo è un ricordo del passato : It is all in the past.
Che destino crudele! Perché la sorte si accanisce su di la famiglia Kane? : What a cruel fate! Why is fate so harsh on the Kane family?
Credevano che i loro dei li avrebbero salvati. la guerra verrà dopo. Questa è l'occasione che stavamo aspettando... : They believed their gods would save them. The war will come later. This is the opportunity we have been waiting for ...
Il vincitore vince tutto. : The winner wins it all.
.
Latin:
Vae victis. : Woe to the vanquished!
Mentioned characters :
Lucrezia Bellini, matriarch of the Casa Bellini
===Cesare Bellini her son
===Rosetta Cavalli: Cesare's spouse
.
Their Children :
Duccio Bellini
Maurizio Bellini
Laura Bellini
Cosimo Bellini
Chiara Bellini
Giovanni Bellini
Orfeo, Bellini
.
Lucrezia's other kids:
.
Daniela Bellini
Antonio Bellini
Ignazio Bellini
.
Others:
.
Esme Sabbia: Ignazio's daughter, bastard
Gian Bellini : Antonio's son
.
Bartolomeo Sforza: Head of the Sforza family
Desdemona Sforza: his daughter
Boniface Voiello, son beau-frere, leader of the 8th Nome, Rome.