Jonathan Joestar, the shambling and devoted nobleman, was hardly ever present now that Giorno needed him most. Now, it was Jojo the Cavaliere he saw in the warming house or the dorter, the youngest of the lay-brothers captivated by his tall tales from across the waters.
Giorno was not certain when it had started. Or how, exactly, this could be the natural order of things after the pensive weeks Jonathan had spent in the infirmary or confined to his quarters. Yet he was merry and hale, and so Giorno could not truly begrudge him this new indulgence.
He brought another mouthful of watery broth—Tiziano and Squalo's handiwork—to his lips, wishing he were instead in his chambers stuffing honeyed almonds into his mouth.
'So, Jojo. Will you tell us more about the frog man?'
Mista elbowed Ghirgha in the ribs, waggling his spoon. 'He's a hermit, not a frog man,' he hissed. And then (for good measure) added, 'Idiot.'
Ghirgha scowled at him, puffing his cheeks out around his spoon. He forced down his mouthful of stew and barely attempted to swallow it before he squeaked, 'He thrashed a frog, so he's the frog man. And Jojo said he was French, anyway. Frog. Man.'
Mista hunched closer, leaning over the table. Leering at him. 'He said he was Italian, Narancia. Don't you listen? And Clovis' standard bears toads, not frogs.'
Narancia was his mirror, then; shoulders drawn up, baring his teeth. 'Frogs, toads, what's it matter to you? They're the same.'
'No, they are not. Toads are terrestrial, to begin with.'
The two of them, still eye-to-eye, turned their heads to stare incredulously at Giorno. He raised his brow, daring either of them to challenge him. They stood a moment longer, wavering under his cold scrutiny, and then silently sat themselves back down.
'You're very knowledgeable, aren't you, Giovanna? You must have a lot of time on your hands, to read so much.' Mista, now quite composed, had the gall to smile at him. Toothy, lazy, and—worst of all—arrogant.
'No more than I ought,' Giorno said, watching Ghirgha bore his gaze into the depths of his bowl.
He looked so very young in that moment; so quiet and withdrawn. Giorno knew better.
'Why,' he asked, returning Mista's smile with a deceptive one of his own, 'did you intend to extol the virtues of evening jaunts? Fresh air down in the valleys?'
Mista looked away from him then—finally abashed—and busied himself with poking around his bowl of stew. 'I hear you get plenty of that as well,' he muttered.
'More than the two of you? I would not be so sure of that.' Giorno paused to take a spoonful of broth, following it with the pantomime of a contented smack of his lips. 'Signori Joestar proposes that the air in the mountains would benefit him more than that of the garth. Might I ask your opinion on what good the air might do a man in Reggimento?'
Ghirgha coughed and quickly forced down a mouthful of stew, his face scrunched up as though he was afraid of what he might otherwise have said.
'What of the distance? Need we travel far?' Jonathan asked, oblivious. 'And what might one do in Reggimento?'
Who, Giorno considered saying, but decided to be merciful. He had thrown Mista and Girgha into the Prior's clutches not too long ago, which had seemingly taught them much. They were unusually strident about their devotions these days, and Giorno had not seen any twilight escapades from the slits in his dormitory mullion since. This evening he decided to only content himself with their discomfort.
How either of them had pulled the wool over the Abbots eyes for long enough to pass novitiate would ever remain a mystery to him. Though they were not the first to shirk their vows when it suited them, and would certainly not be the last.
'You could readily walk the distance, were you well, Signore,' Giorno said, smiling down the length of the table at Jonathan. 'Perhaps, when you are hale again, my brothers may be so kind as to escort you there.'
'I should like that very much,' Jonathan said, slurping up a mouthful of stew with much more enthusiasm than it deserved. 'For the moment, however, I think it would be prudent to simply sit and tell tall tales.'
The colour had returned to Ghirgha's face. He leant closer to Jonathan, voice dropped as low as he could muster (which was, in truth, a rather futile endeavour). 'But they're true though, aren't they, Jojo? Your stories?'
Jonathan wrinkled his nose and dug around the bowl, seemingly hoping for something that might resemble meat. 'They may be somewhat… embellished,' he admitted, quickly spooning more broth into his mouth.
Ghirgha was wounded. 'But what about the frog man? He's real, isn't he?'
'Zeppeli,' Mista said, kicking Ghirgha from under the table.
'Bless you,' he returned in a hoarse whisper, along with a swift kick of his own.
'Yes, Zeppeli is very real,' Jonathan said, reaching a placating hand across the table between them. 'He taught me how to use both my body and mind in service of the Lord. This is why I dedicate so much thought to the delicate balance between the spirit and the physical body' He slunk back on the bench, seeming to notice that he was rapidly losing his captive audience. 'And, yes, he taught me how to use a sword.'
They were rapt once more, and Giorno cast his gaze back down to his bowl, resisting the urge to find another bone to pick with them. Let Jonathan try to educate them, he thought, if that was what brought him hobbling down from the dorter these days. He would find it an unrewarding and ultimately fruitless exercise, if he truly thought he could civilise them, but it would keep the three of them entertained for weeks to come.
And, then, was Giorno himself not guilty of the same fancies of flight, each time he met with Pannacotta Fugo?
'Just like the Cavalieri di Corredo!' Mista's awed whisper was loud enough that Ghiaccio, two benches down the hall, jumped to his feet to chide him for his blatant disrespect for his brothers and their evening contemplation. Which, in its turn, initiated a wave of hushing and bickering around the hall that turned the tips of Mista's ears a bright red, his chin tucked away and his shoulders drawn up as he seemingly tried to disappear into his cassock.
'Oh I wasn't anything like a knight, Guido,' Jonathan said with a shake of his head, 'I was an awful churl, base and crueler than any man ought to be. The thought of it alone is shameful.'
'But you were protecting your brother, weren't you, Jojo? From people who wanted to do him harm? I say that makes you as good as any knight.'
Jonathan blanched, rubbing at his bad leg as though that might soothe his agitation. 'Yes, well… you will forgive me for saying this, I hope, but some of them had every right to wish him harm.'
Mista whistled through his teeth. 'He must be something fierce, your brother, if you can speak of him so.'
'And if he were, it would not be prudent for you to speculate, Mista. My apologies, Signore.'
'Oh, Giorno, please—I was the one who started all of this talk. Guido meant nothing by it, I am sure.'
Which was entirely the problem with Mista, Giorno thought, but there was no absolving him of that particular fault.
'Forgive me, Signore,' Mista said, his head bowed, casting a gloomy side-eye over at Giorno from beneath his unruly mop of curls.
'And me, Signore,' Ghirgha piped up, the sincere lilt of his voice a startling and peculiar thing.
Giorno glanced incredulously at the pair of them, excusing himself with a thin smile, and withdrew from the bench. It seemed that, perhaps, Jonathan's toil would be rewarding after all. He had turned two wild pups into slavering lapdogs with nary an inkling that they had learnt to perform this particular trick many years before.
As had they all, he was beginning to understand.
How ridiculous all of this was to him; how maddening. Winding his way upstairs to the dorter in the half-light, all Giorno could think of was the unsightly parallel the three of them made to his own efforts with Fugo. Though Fugo had made it apparent from even their first meeting that he was a law unto himself, and Giorno had then been content to merely study him in his purest form: the fearsome tempest made man.
Though how he could have ever hoped to weather such a storm, unscathed, was testament to his own foolishness.
By the time he had reached his dormitory, Giorno had been grinding his teeth so fiercely that his jaw throbbed. He scrabbled inside the ceramic box Fugo had handed him so many sennights before, hoping to soothe himself with a mouthful of sugared almonds, but all he found inside were the hardened remnants of honey. He put his finger into his mouth, trying to savour even that scant morsel, but it soured and faded on his tongue. He replaced the lid with a clatter and slunk off to his cot to try and sleep, irate and unsatiated.
Without the balance of Fugo's acerbic wit or Jonathan's companionship to distinguish each from the next, the harvest season passed him by in a haze. He was half convinced, at this juncture, that his brief and tumultuous attempts at friendship had both run their course.
Fugo did not come to light up the drab pews; Jonathan preferred to busy himself trying to educate his insolent brothers. And, so, putting out the last of the lights one evening, he was not expecting the hesitant voice that cut through the silence of compline.
'The Abbot may come to regret raising such a fine speaker.'
Giorno smiled as he snuffed out another candle. 'Speech is a fine thing, but I would prefer to be judged by my actions.'
Jonathan replied with a short sigh, but Giorno could tell it was good-natured. For a moment he anticipated a rebuttal, and was almost disappointed when it did not come. Jonathan instead waited a few paces away and made a sincere effort to appear as though he did not need to keep all of his weight upon his walking stick.
Giorno snuffed another candle, feeling Jonathan's expectant gaze upon his back. Keenly aware of how it needled at him, he began to explain himself: 'To the congregation, scripture is the same no matter which monk tells it.'
For the peasantry and nobility alike would only ever take precisely what they wanted from it, each believing that bowing their heads and giving one solemn amen could absolve them of all their transgressions. Though knowing his brothers indulged themselves in the exact same ways, Giorno supposed that every one of them was just as crooked as the last.
'To some, I'm sure,' Jonathan agreed, daring to follow Giorno around the presbytery on uncertain legs. Each strike of his crutch against stone reverberated around the empty hall.
He rarely needed it these days and Giorno had—strangely, he thought—begun to miss the sound.
'But would you not permit that, perhaps, the Lord's scripture is simply more invigorating when you recite it? You know as well as I that Pucci or Nero can intimidate far more readily than they inspire.'
'Signore, you shouldn't jest about such things,' Giorno said, reaching out for the next candle with the pewter douter. Though he knew that Jonathan was right. Pucci had given him the gift of words and the manner in which to speak them, and Giorno had known they were the keystone to fulfilling his potential.
The brothers had been subject to his words and whims, for a time, but they had become wise to him over the years and now rarely welcomed his company. But none of them—despite their unwavering contempt—had ever considered that Giorno might harbour his own ambitions. They only saw him as the implement he had been fashioned into.
And, though they begrudged him the attention the Abbot lavished on him, this meant his steady acclimation of responsibility and power was of no concern to them. He had always been Pucci's boy, the cudgel that executed the Abbot's will, and this comprised the extent of their scrutiny. If he were to oversee the ledgers, or pen a missive, they reasoned that it must only have been because Pucci had instructed him as such.
Young Giovanna had therefore always striven to be devout, astute, and wholly unassuming.
His first afternoon up in the pulpit, Giorno had seen the congregation not for the sorry collection of small-folk that they were, but as some unfathomable horde. Each set of hopeful eyes following his every breath had shaken him at first. He had feared that he might finally be tasked to test his resolve: to prove all that he was capable of. But as his nerves subsided and he began to see them for what they really were, Giorno only pitied them.
They came and went with the tolling of the bells; faded into nothingness once the service had ended. They were ghouls draped in sheepskin cloaks and woollen hats. When he was not there to illuminate the darkness, they were nothing more than shadows. Without him, they had no light by which to guide their feeble lives. And they cared little for the words he spoke or the lessons he taught. All they craved was the satisfaction of absolution, no matter how undeserving they might be.
He snuffed out another candle and moved on. Ever two paces behind him, Jonathan's crutch punctuated the silence between ragged breaths he fought to conceal.
'I did not mean it as a jest,' Jonathan said, in a meek voice that did not suit him. 'I only mean well by you, Giorno.'
'I know, Signore,' Giorno insisted, 'I only fear your new initiates may be colouring your words. You do not often speak so… carelessly.' He snuffed out the last candle in the presbyery, his own close at hand, and offered Jonathan his arm.
Jonathan was quiet as they climbed the stairs. His breath was fraught with the effort, but the slightest hesitation from Giorno would seemingly spur him on again, as unsightly and slow as his progress was. It was only as they reached the summit of the stairs that he finally conceded, pulling away from Giorno to lean against the wall of the dorter corridor and drag himself along the rest of the way.
Giorno had, on nights before this, plunged the presbytery into darkness and climbed the steps alone to find Jonathan slumped at the end of his cot—miserably trying to pick himself up after his devotions but without the strength to do so. Illuminated now in the glow of the candle, Giorno could see the perspiration on Jonathan's brow, and each fine line of quiet agony etched upon his face. Even the short distance from the doorway to his cot had stolen his breath away from him.
'I wonder if this is my penance,' Jonathan murmured into the darkness between them. The furrowed ridge of his brow was sweat-beaded and framed in golden light. 'I can hardly walk, let alone think of swinging a sword again. I shrink away from my own reflection in the basin each morning.' He scrubbed a hand over his face once, then again and over through his hair. The gaze he turned upon Giorno was exhausted and wan. 'I have tried to put good into the world, but I fear I have done more harm. I do not recognise myself these days, Giorno.'
'The balance you covet has been disturbed, and choosing to blame yourself will not mend it. You should rest, Signore. Sleep is a healing balm for every ill.' Giorno replied, softly, closing the distance between them and kneeling at his bedside.
Jonathan was silent for a long while, finding his breath once more. Giorno's candle caught the gaunt hollows of his face with each movement of his weary frame, and the scrutinising glint in his eyes. 'That is not scripture,' he muttered, and then turned his head to the side. 'Is it, Giorno?'
'It is not.'
Jonathan stared across at him, fragments of golden candlelight catching the harsh relief of his face. 'Where did you hear it?' Then his face hardened—brows furrowing, mouth drawn into a thin line. The glow of the candlelight allowed Giorno to see every spiteful wrinkle of his grimace. 'From whom did you hear it?'
'I believe you have guessed already, Signore.'
Jonathan scoffed and turned away from him, reclining onto his cot. And then, rather quietly, he asked, 'He hasn't visited you for some weeks now, has he, Giorno?'
'No, Signore.'
'And yet you recite his poems and platitudes as readily as you would scripture. You must know that he will only bring you ruin.'
He knew this—had known it from the beginning—but could not find the words to tell Jonathan how very little it mattered to him. How could he put into words the feeling that Fugo had dragged him from his waking dream, and dared him to make it a reality?
Jonathan rolled onto his side to look at him again, and seemed to take his silence as an admission of shame. 'Take heart, Giorno. You are surrounded by surer friends than he.'
Giorno wondered how long it had been since he had last seen the world the way Jonathan could. When he still believed in scripture and trusted in his brothers. When he thought that his toil in the abbey could bear divine fruit. It had been a child's dream, but a pretty one all the same, though it could not hope to compare to the dream he envisioned now.
'You're a good man, Signore,' he said, 'but I am afraid you are not the only one who lacks discernment in his choice of friends.'
Jonathan smiled through the veil of pain and fatigue, and there was something sardonic within it. 'They're still young, Giorno. As are you. I think a young man should be permitted to make mistakes, if he can learn from them. With the right guidance, he might avoid making them twice.'
'Then we are of the same mind. But know it is a thankless task, Signore. And we both know that some young men will insist on making many mistakes, guidance be damned.'
If Jonathan was perturbed by the plainness of his language, he did not show it. In fact, the harsh relief of his face softened into something more familiar to Giorno, and in the haze of candlelight his eyes shone a brilliant blue. 'I want to make amends for my past, Giorno. I've been rightly punished for it, and I do not begrudge these circumstances. Few will be grateful and give thanks, until they finally see the error of their ways. I will do everything in my power to turn others away from the path I chose.'
'Some men will think themselves beyond reproach, no matter what befalls them. Would you still insist on mending their ways? Even if they resist you?'
Jonathan was quiet for a moment, wiping the perspiration from his brow with the cuff of his shirt. 'I don't care much for your friend, Giorno. Or the way he chooses to live. But I do not think you should abandon him, either.'
Giorno knew it for a plain kindness, but wave of shame roiled over him all the same. Jonathan's eyes slipped shut.
'Good night, Giorno. And thank you, for your company.'
Giorno turned out of the room without the heart to glance back at him and stole away into the darkness.
'God is gracious!' Fugo bellowed, every admonishing word echoing around the vacant presbytery. 'What a delightful conundrum that poses.'
'And a good afternoon to you too, Signore,' Giorno replied idly, stepping down from the pulpit. He stood and watched, half-expectant and otherwise wary as Fugo advanced and draped a bundle of furs over the pews at the front of the hall.
'Giovanna. God is gracious,' Fugo explained with a wide sweep of his arms. 'Who gave you that name, my little godson? Was it the unwed maid who abandoned you here, absolving herself of any wrongdoing? Or the Abbott who desired another addition to his menagerie of bastards, orphans and zealots?'
Giorno, too tired to humour him, merely smiled. 'This is the question you have been troubling yourself with, all these sennights? This is why you have not spared the time to grace me with your presence?'
Fugo schooled the arrogant, restless arch of his brow into a mere moue of distaste and began to pull his gloves off finger by finger. 'And if I have?'
'Then it was time very poorly spent, for I do not wish to discuss it. My purpose in life is not wait around so that I may suffer insults and argue with you.' He gave Fugo an impassive once over and turned from him.
'Naturally,' Fugo said, raising his voice as Giorno drew away, 'I have far greater plans in mind for you. Greater than your own, perhaps.'
'And I have a mind to retire for the night. With your leave, Signore,' Giorno politely inclined his head, boring his glare into the flagstones. Fugo clicked his tongue, crossing the floor to reach out for him.
'You must stop running, Giorno.'
Giorno jerked his chin out of Fugo's grip, the warmth of his hand and the stern gleam of his eyes far too much to bear. 'I am running from nothing.'
'You cannot even look me in the eye.'
Giorno set his jaw and dared to meet Fugo's gaze. Held it. 'Very well. Let us speak of names and stare at one-another, if that is your whim today. Will that make you happy?'
Fugo let go of him, a smile already upon his lips as he walked away and dropped himself into a pew. He propped up a boot on the row in front and slung an elbow over his knee. 'Fugo. To drive into exile. To chase away.'
'You certainly live up to your namesake,' Giorno conceded, crossing the presbytery to join him. He swiped at Fugo's ankle with a firm hand. 'But I was expecting a more philosophical discussion. The etymological is of no interest to me. Nor to you, I suspect.'
Fugo laid his hands on his knees and watched him, a furrow sneaking into his brow.
'What was your grand thesis, Signore?' Giorno asked as he sat beside him, 'That a man's nature is belied by his name, or that of whomever named him? The first is preposterous and the second dull.'
Fugo pondered this for a moment, turning his signet ring over and over around his fourth finger in flashes of sparking ruby and burnished gold. 'Why is it dull?' he asked, sullen in a way that was peculiarly boyish. He hoisted his boots back over the pew, feet waggling back and forth. 'What is your reasoning, Giorno?'
'There is no significance to an Abbott invoking God when he names an orphan, nor to the son of a great house inheriting his father's reputation. They have no greater meaning, Fugo. They are merely circumstantial.'
'Pannacotta.'
Giorno bristled, and Fugo smiled back at him.
'Call me Pannacotta. You let me call you Giorno, do you not? We are much too close for you to still call me Fugo.'
'But what is your point?' Giorno asked, avoiding his gaze. 'A man's name may be either apt or unfortunate, if paired with his circumstances, but what does it matter to you?'
'If I said I was amused by its mordancy, would that surprise you?'
Giorno scoffed, which only seemed to embolden Fugo.
'How many little lords are named after the legacy they will inevitably destroy? How many waifs' and orphans' very names are appeals to a God that inevitably forsakes them?'
Giorno met Fugo's eyes and wondered if he might ever come to understand his fickle ways. 'So you are making light of your own circumstances. Or mine. Am I supposed to find this profound? Do you hope to amuse me?'
Fugo hummed, his eyes dark and lips pursed. From where it rested atop the pew he bounced a foot once, twice, and then he exhaled. His smile was disarming. Facile, even. 'I was an affront to my family's sensibilities, and so I had to choose between turning myself into a pious liar, like yourself, or to be exiled in Ceccano.'
'You make it sound like I had a choice,' Giorno said, taking no care to disguise the venom on his tongue.
'Back then? No. But now, Giorno? Are the circumstances you were born into those you intend to die under?' Fugo narrowed his eyes, brow furrowing into a harsh ridge. 'Disowned and cast out, I am free to pursue all that I desire. I chose to be the man my parents always feared I was, and it has set me free.'
'I hope you are not suggesting that I do the same.' Giorno folded his arms and returned his nobliumo's scowl with consternation. 'Should I spurn those who have raised me, put clothes on my back, and taught me all I know? For the paltry satisfaction that if I am to perish on the other side of the mountains, that at least it was my own choice?'
'Freedom would surely satisfy you much more than serving out the rest of your days feigning devotion, just so you may keep your belly full and your feet warm? I don't believe that is the limit of all you can aspire to.' Each phrase rose in timbre, defiling the silence of the early evening, and all Giorno could focus on was the cutting flash of Fugo's teeth as his scowl darkened.
'Men like your good Englishman content themselves with mediocrity. Consign themselves to lives that nobody will have the heart to record in annals or in song.' He was silent for a rare moment, as though truly considering the weight of his words.
As Fugo's eyes softened, Giorno was certain that he was able to see directly through him: deep into the delicately guarded confines of his chest and into each and every darkening cavity therein.
'Do you intend to live under the shadow of mediocrity, Giorno?'
No. Never. What had his education been for, if not so he might eventually forge his own path? The life of a learned man could be one of endless opportunity, if he could but one day find the strength to seize it for himself. Giorno had once thought he could be satisfied with good standing amongst his brothers, but time had worn away the veneer of that happy circumstance to reveal all that lay beneath.
Fugo seemed to take Giorno's silence as a tacit admission. 'Is this the limit of what you can aspire to?' He asked, gesturing around the presbytery with a flippant wave of his hand. 'For months now, I have endured the filth and rot of society, men with scarcely two florins to rub together, heard them pray and plead.' He ground his teeth. 'They wring their hats in their hands and beg for salvation, and not once do they see this sordid affair for what it really is.'
'This is all they know,' Giorno said, quietly. 'Why would they presume to question it?'
'And only if they would, how different the world might be.' If only you would, echoed in the silence around them, unspoken but for the gleam in Fugo's eye.
'How are men to live without an explanation for their existence, or for their toil? We cannot all life our lives for the sheer fun of it.'
'The metaphysical is not for the faint of heart,' Fugo agreed, tipping his head back. 'They would revolt. Despair, even.' He rolled his eyes up to stare into the shadows lurking in high vaunted nooks and corners, the smooth underside of his jaw and neck opened up to Giorno's unabashed gaze. 'And it would be an exceptional thing to bear witness to.'
Giorno stared at him a long, quiet moment more. And then he asked, 'Do you believe the world was made for you and your disport?'
Fugo pursed his lips and then lowered his head to look back at him. Again, Giorno could see the shadow of all Fugo would not say within the gleam of his eyes and the cautious smile upon his lips. 'No, but many other men are that deluded with self-importance. Men like my father or your beloved Abbott, who bleed the unfortunate dry to grease important palms. To keep their own pockets fat with coin. Would it not amuse you to see them squall and panic, without the threat of divinity to keep them beyond reproach?'
'I do not think retribution a good enough reason to permit the inexorable fall of civilisation.'
Fugo shrugged, running his tongue over his teeth as he thought. 'Well, were I a more sanguine man, I might argue that men would simply discover another, less divine purpose. Perhaps the fall of mankind would not be as certain as we anticipate.'
'And as you are not, we can both agree that they would find something or someone else to blame for their misfortunes, and would continue to live as they always have. Though they would resent their station far more than they do now. Toil without the promise of divine reward would be unbearable.'
Fugo rolled his head to the side so that it almost lay upon Giorno's shoulder, lips lifted into a sardonic grin. 'They'd toil regardless, then take their few florins for themselves and seek out divine reward in the arms of a local lucciole. They'll still say His name, whether they believe or not.'
Giorno huffed out something approximating a laugh, staring down at Fugo's face—flush and bright with the afternoon sun as it stole in through the windows beyond the pulpit. 'I'm quite sure most men are intimately acquainted with that particular act of blasphemy, and are not deluded into thinking of it as divine in any way.'
Fugo nodded, head heavy against Giorno's shoulder, a little smile upon his lips. 'Who knows,' he muttered, glancing up to catch Giorno's eye, 'perhaps those blasphemers have gotten closer to your Lord than we ever will.'
Giorno was, then, acutely aware of the stiff collar of his cassock, and of a disquieting heat beneath his skin. Fugo was flush against his side, his breath almost upon Giorno's neck, and the golden glare of the sun filtered through the stained glass; burning behind his eyes in dizzying shards of pot-metal blues and reds.
'Earlier,' Giorno said, turning his face away, 'you said you had something to discuss. Plans for me?'
Fugo rolled closer for a moment, humming, the crown of his head pressing unbearably against the underside of Giorno's jaw.
'Oh, that,' he drawled, as though this was of no great significance. As though ignorant of the way Giorno had seized up beside him.
He pushed past Giorno and gathered the furs he'd lain at the front of the presbytery, then threw one quite unceremoniously into Giorno's lap. He luxuriated in the sheer weight of it. He had not owned furs before, and was struck by the sure knowledge that a great many small animals had been skinned so that he could now keep himself warm. Feeling the soft pelt give way beneath his roving hands, he could not help but be put in mind of the countless eyes that watched him up at the pulpit.
'If we cannot bring about the total collapse of the civilized world, we will have to content ourselves with the confines of Frosinone,' Fugo said, still smiling.
Giorno knew him well enough by now to know there was far more severity in his words than there was mirth. The art that still evaded him was knowing which of Fugo's words lay either side of that boundary. 'So, are we to embark on a holy crusade, crudely disguised as barbarians? I had hoped for something more elaborate.'
'The rest will reveal itself in due course,' Fugo said, his smile not reaching his eyes. 'There is more yet I must prepare. I will come calling for you, once I have settled everything.'
'But what do you mean by all of this, Fugo? What is this grand scheme? Why furs?' Giorno asked, incredulous.
'The nights are growing colder,' Fugo said, 'and you will need more than wool to keep you warm as we climb into the mountains on our… unholy crusade.'
Giorno laughed and it was an ugly, hollow little noise. Fugo's expression did not change. 'The mountains? Fugo, speak sense. What is the meaning of all of this? What great change can two fools enact alone, as they freeze on the mountainside?'
'Would you believe me if I told you?' Fugo asked, though the question rang hollow. His disdain was clear on his face as he stared down at Giorno. He shook his head, softly. 'I think not. So forgive me, if I am not inclined to explain myself to you.'
Fugo's contempt stoked something indignant in Giorno; something grotesque and simpering that urged him to prove himself. To show that he was just as learned and capable as Fugo had hoped he could be. He quashed the impulse; collected himself. 'How am I to understand your aim if you will not deign to explain it? What is it you are preparing me for?'
Fugo's brow pinched, his smile waning. 'Preparing?' He bit the word out as though it pained him. 'Dare you put such wild accusations into my mouth? This is merely an invitation. And, were I to try and explain myself to you tonight, we would only argue. You'll understand when the time comes.'
Giorno tried to search Fugo's face for a trace of a jest, the gleam of a trick in his eyes or the betrayal of laughter in the upturned lilt of his mouth. He found none. Giorno kneaded at the fur in his lap in a wan attempt to abate his irritation. Fugo had only just returned to him, and once more they were at odds with one-another. By Fugo's design, he was certain. But Giorno could not recall him being so apparent about it as he was now. No sign of the pull that would inevitably follow this absurd push.
This had been Fugo's pattern from the first summer's day that Giorno had lain eyes on him, and he could not begin to fathom the purpose of it. More and more, he had started to suspect this truly was no more than a grand game to Fugo—his moods, the philosophy, their friendship, in its entirety—but to what end Giorno could not say. Why should a merchant's wayward son take such an interest in a young monk and his fraught, inept rebellion against his benefactors? He had fallen into step with Fugo—with his fickle whims and tempestuous moods—so readily that it was only now, upon reflection, that it all seemed so peculiar to him. What bothered him most was that he could not give a voice to the thoughts that consumed him.
He had no words for them. It was little more than a feeling: animal, base, and frustratingly unintelligent.
Fugo continued to stare down at him, frustration eminent in his hard-featured expression, but said no more on the matter. He crouched down so they were at a height and pressed a hand over Giorno's.
'Do not be afraid I may lead you astray. Our time is almost at hand. You need no longer follow those that you have no faith in.'
Giorno stared down at his lap, Fugo's hand over his, the ruby in his signet sparkling with golden catch-light. 'I will not replace one idol with another, though your ego may demand it.' Fugo's hand was wam atop his own. Giorno met his eye. 'I think it would be wise of me to only have faith in myself from here on.'
Fugo smiled back at him. 'You wound me, but I'll pardon you. So be it,' he said, squeezing his hand. 'Peace be with you, my little godson.'
His voice reverberated warm and close against his skin, and with nothing more than the press of his lips against Giorno's cheek he turned and left him in the waning glow of the late afternoon. Tight in Giorno's hand, Fugo's ruby ring bit into the soft flesh of his palm.
And the burning imprint of his kiss felt like a brand against his skin.
