bloody injury, body horror via magical transformation and substance misuse are present in this chapter


Each day longer that Giorno toiled away in the Abbey, vainly hoping that Fugo might appear to end his tedium, the more unbearable it all became to him. He could not preside over a service without noticing the desperation in the pock-marked and posy faces that looked up at him; longing for salvation he could not promise them. Each time he supped with his brothers, chewed on fatty meat and hard bread, he could only think of what it might be like to be kept awake at night by the pangs of an empty stomach.

This was hardly a revelation to him, but he knew now that he had too long grown complacent. He'd been so certain. Presumed he would, eventually, go out into the world and reshape its unseemly edges―yet never found the resolve to see it through. Fugo, in this regard, had been his unlikely fire steel. He'd struck sure and suddenly, that night in the dovecote. In the weeks that followed Giorno had nursed that dying flame; burning within depths he had all but forgotten. He felt within himself a dissatisfaction that threatened to consume him from the inside out; gnawed at him with every moment that passed.

He had always longed to be an envoy for the abbey, knowing his proximity to Pucci would put him in good stead wherever he ventured. As a child, he had not known what sort of price would be demanded in return. Or, indeed, whether the opportunity would ever morph into something more than a foolish dream.

As the nights grew longer, Giorno sought to keep his own company whenever he could, and in his solitude tried to put aside the foolish notion of Fugo's crusade. Pucci would return before the year was through, and he had precious little time to sit around anticipating their arrivals as though he were some desultory mutt. And yet, for all of his certainty, he could not keep his mind from wandering. Fugo's cryptic talk of Friuli, of going off into the mountains for a purpose he refused to reveal, warm and certain against Giorno's side.

A silent pact formed in the hot brand of his kiss.

'Giovanna.'

Giorno greeted the Sacrist with a reverent bow of his head, lowering his eyes.

'You were missed last night,' Domenico told him, in a voice that neither betrayed disapproval or authority.

'My apologies. I have had much to assist with, in the abbot's absence. There do not seem to be enough hours in the day.'

Domenico was silent for a while. If he doubted Giorno at all, it did not show upon his face. His countenance did not betray even a hint of movement. He searched Giorno's face for a moment more, and then nodded his assent. 'Polpo has much more need of your eyesight and steady hands, to be certain. Do not let me keep you from him.'

'That is good of you, but I must not be derelict in my other duties.'

'You need not extend yourself too far, Giorno. If there is ever anything you need of me, you need only say as such. I would see it done.'

Giorno forced himself to smile. 'That is very kind of you, and I am grateful for your concern. But I am well and have need of nothing.'

The Sacrist lapsed into another silence. His was a face both so grave and tranquil that to gaze upon him inevitably felt as though one was gazing upon himself. As Domenico preferred tracts and inks to conversation, few were those in his confidence, though at times Giorno still wondered where he stood with him. He revealed nothing. Giorno could not help but study his face―fruitlessly―for even the slightest wrinkle in his expression that would show he already knew all. That he knew very well why Giorno had avoided both his and Buccellati's company as of late.

That he knew all of the lurid thoughts that kept Giorno awake at night. Could there be, reflected in his gentle eyes, all of the ghostly afterimages that Giorno relied on to endure his isolation? The tang of copper upon his fingetips? That molten, searing mouth?

Domenico's head listed ever so gently to the side. 'Are you certain?'

'I am,' Giorno lied. He had considered taking advantage of the Sacrist and Lector's confidence to make sense of the maddening things Fugo had alluded to, and to untangle all of the philosophy and mathematics he had been plied with. His nonsense about souls and cosmic purpose; his new fixation on legacies and tall tales.

Domenico had always known Giorno to be his brother's pet, and so would not think twice of a request to view the most prohibited and sacrilegious of materials. It would be simple to concoct an excuse. To lament the lack of a connection between himself and the common folk they shepherded, and express a wish to understand them better. To know their deepest fears and worst indulgences; each and every one of their inane beliefs. Somehow, as he stood there and held Domenico's gaze, Giorno found the entire idea entirely reprehensible. Unutterable.

'I shouldn't wish to keep you any longer,' he said, hastily brushing past him, 'please excuse me.'

Giorno left behind the lingering silence of the misercord, hopeful that he would not encounter anyone else along the way. He could hear a swarm of voices in the warming house, but at this hour the kitchen itself was still vacant. If he was quick and quiet he would be able to spend a contented afternoon in the garth with a bundle of pickled herring and hard bread, and then he could slip back into the dorter while his brothers took their supper. It irked him, to be behaving like a fugitive, but Giorno felt that as of late he had few other ways of preserving his dignity.

He knew, at least, that he could always find respite in the walled garden. Good, hard work did wonders for his mind. With the promise of Winter blowing down from the mountains there would in time be little else to busy himself with. Soon enough he would be plucking the last of the cabbages and leeks from the cold hard earth, and would only return to the gardens when Spring arrived once more.

He approached the back of the larder, past shelves stocked to the brim with jellies and cured meats, and picked up his basket. He pulled his scrip out through the neck of his cassock and gently laid his coin inside. Polpo was a deft hand at skimming off the fat, so much so that at his advanced age distinguishing the honest numbers from the forged was near impossible. The substitution of a few digits more was of little consequence.

Giorno nestled the basket into the crook of his arm and took a cursory inventory; spade, auger, and mattock. No knife. He placed his basket back on the table and laid each tool out in turn, but sure enough could see no sign of his blade. He picked it up again, rather pitifully hoping he might have been mistaken, and threw it down when he was certain. Empty, the wicker basket rolled over and off the edge of the table with hardly a sound.

He wanted to believe it was his own fault for leaving it in the pantry. To assume his knife had been used for something as harmless as splitting a plum, and simply not returned to its proper place. He rather earnestly tried to believe this, but in truth his first and only thought was of Mista and Ghirgha. Then, at length, of his arrogance during their repast only a sennight before. He puffed out a haughty, hot plume of breath and snatched his basket up from the ground.

He collected his belongings and slunk his way back through the under dorter and into the garth. They were not especially fond of him, he knew―for the feeling was reciprocal. The pair were petty creatures at worst, and gluttons at best. Giorno had neither patience nor sympathy for either condition.

He could hear them carousing as he neared the grain-store, the door propped open to allow them some sunlight and air. Giorno cleared his throat and stood before the threshold. 'Mista, do you have my knife?'

Mista fixed him with a look that he could not discern; drawn at the midpoint between contempt and bemusement. He turned his blade over in his hand, giving Giorno a good look at its conical pommel. The blade was of a length with his forearm. Then, presuming this sufficed, Mista straightened himself up and carded a hand through his curls.

Giorno ignored the way he quirked an eyebrow in challenge, and instead turned his attention to Ghirgha. 'And you?'

Ghirgha, crouched a distance away and poking furious holes in a hemp sack, only offered Giorno a dark look and disdainful little shrug.

'Giorno! Won't you be kind enough to bid us all a good afternoon?' Jonathan called from further inside. His smile was large and easy, an arm slung over his sole crutch. 'Might there be something you need of us?'

Us. They had won him over so very easily, but it was no surprise. Such had been their instruction. Giorno was, at least, glad that he seemed to be keeping them out of trouble.

'My knife was not in my basket,' he said, not deigning to move out of the doorway, 'and it did not seem unusual that it might have been employed in your...' He swept his gaze over them, tired and perspiring, and arched his brow. 'Prayer sessions?'

Jonathan looked as though he might speak, but Mista shot up before him to jab an accusatory finger at Giorno. 'You misplaced something and thought you'd better start with the whoreseons, that it?'

Ghirgha scrubbed at his nose with the back of his hand, finding enough of a backbone to keep glaring but not quite enough to speak up for himself.

'If the whoresons spend their time eviscerating bags of grain, that would seem perfectly sensible conclusion, would it not?'

Narancia sulkily stabbed another hole in the hessian sack.

Mista clicked his tongue, passing his dagger from hand to hand. 'We're learning swordplay, Giovanna. Curious, are you? No need to be so delicate about it.'

Giorno scoffed. 'My curiosity extends only as far as knowing from where you are securing your armaments.'

Ghirgha―for a moment―appeared to have something to say. Then he quickly turned his head to scratch the side of his nose, wilting under Giorno's gaze once more.
'If you would be good enough to cooperate, I can be on my way.' He tried not to sound the sulking child, stubbornly standing the doorway. Mista, however, had no such reservations.

'I told you, Giovanna. It's not here. We didn't take it. Stand there all day for all I care.'

'We couldn't have,' Ghirgha finally piped up with a caustic little sniff, scrunching up his face, 'Nero won't let us back in the kitchens.' He jabbed at the hessian sack again and a trickle of grain spilled out onto the ground.

'If he had not forbidden you both, we all may well have starved this winter,' Jonathan said with a chuckle, crossing the floor to stand between Giorno and Mista. 'And I am sorry, Giorno, but I haven't seen your knife either.'

'I see,' he said, as brightly as he could muster, 'forgive me for the intrusion.'

'Oh, please, don't be so hasty,' Jonathan rejoined, crossing the floor between them in only a few long strides. He hardly looked as though he needed his crutch at all. 'Won't you join us, at least for a short while? We shan't detain you all afternoon. I promise you.' Jonathan was alight with such infectious, effervescent energy, that Giorno was loathe to deny him. He was practically buoyant, and Giorno was glad to see it.

They all knew very well that Giorno was rarely asked for at Nones, and would not be missed in the hours between Sext and Vespers. If his wayward brothers were intending to deceive him it made little sense to turn away. Here, at least, he might yet observe a moment of folly he could later seize upon.

He stepped further inside the grain store and set down his basket. 'Very well. If you wish it.'

Mista clicked his tongue as he brushed at an apparent wrinkle in his scapular. He pushed up his sleeves, eyes lowered. Ghirgha, plainly just as enthused about this development, merely rolled his eyes. Jonathan led Giorno into the centre of the grain store and handed him a dagger with a long slender blade.

'You should be able to handle a stiletto rather easily, given your handiwork in the gardens.'

'I rather think I will make for a poor student, Signore.'

'We won't know that until you try, now will we? With a stiletto, you'll want to concentrate on quick thrusts.'

Giorno took the blade in hand and allowed Jonathan to make his corrections, moulding his stance as he saw fit. He was conscious of the eyes on his back and was determined not to waver under their petty scrutiny. Jonathan coaxed him though a series of stances and motions, and it was hard not to take heart at his enthusiasm. He lunged and jabbed at the flat of Jonathan's broadsword as instructed, circling and crossing the floor as he was bade until he was struggling to catch his breath and felt hot and damp at the nape of his neck and beneath each arm.

Jonathan was beaming at him as he clapped him on the shoulder, relieving him of the blade. 'Excellent work, Giorno. I knew you'd be a natural. Narancia?'

Giorno tucked what errant hair he could behind his ears, hot and uncomfortable but glad to have put Jonathan in such an excellent mood. It had felt an age, the time spent circling the floor as Jonathan told him to strike again and again, but beyond the grain store it was still bright outside―perhaps not long after noon. He propped himself up against the wall a few paces away from Mista and settled back to watch.

Ghirgha did not take well to instruction. To Giorno's knowledge, he never truly had. Yet Jonathan was endlessly patient with him. He repeated himself without ire or reprimand, gently tried to show him where to better place his feet or hold his arm aloft, and with each successive interruption Ghirgha's face scrunched up another notch. Giorno, having felt rather foolish himself, fought the urge to laugh at him.

'We're not all that bad, you know.'

Giorno met Mista's dark eyes. He had not thought he would deign to speak with him.

'We didn't choose to be orphans,' Mista continued, quietly, 'or monks.'

Giorno folded his arms. 'Nor did I. Does that give you leave to show such brazen disdain for your circumstances?'

Mista wrinkled his nose and raked a hand through his hair, his curls wayward and slick with perspiration. He chanced a smile. 'I'm a grateful man. But I'm no liar, Giovanna.'

Giorno had expected more malice behind his words; some sardonic lilt to his smile. Mista only sounded fatigued. Honest.

Giorno turned away to watch Narancia and Jonathan begin another bout. And then he asked, 'If this way of life is so disagreeable to you, why do you stay here?'

Mista sighed, and Giorno heard the hiss of displaced grain as he settled against one of the brutalised sacks. 'I could ask the same of you.'

Giorno bit out a laugh―a hoarse and empty little sound―and watched Ghirgha swing a broad arc with his knife, lunging decisively forward. Jonathan deflected the blow with hardly a flick of his longsword, throwing Ghirgha so violently off-balance that he went stumbling across the floor.

'You almost had it, Narancia!'

The balm of encouragement seemed to abate the sting of being knocked aside, and Ghirgha was nearly smiling as he collected himself.

'Again.'

Ghirgha, barely up on his hands and knees, went very pale.

'Mista,' Giorno said, quietly, 'you go about your devotions as though it physically pains you. Who are you to question my faith?'

Ghirgha, less confident this time around, paced a hesitant semicircle around the grain store. He still looked as though he was catching his breath, hair around his temples slick and curling.

'You're always putting on airs. As though you're better than the rest of us.' Mista was quiet a moment, watching Narancia duck under another swing of Jonathan's broadsword. 'Maybe you are.'

Giorno turned to catch his eye, but waited for him to finish.

'Though I wonder if you'd still be so devoted,' Mista said, watching Ghirgha feint and draw back―hardly quick enough to turn aside the flat of Jonathan's sword, 'if Pucci was not so fond of you?'

Giorno clicked his tongue.

'Oh, come now.' Mista's smile was terribly knowing. 'You're his little cherubin. He who can ne'er be wrong, which has always been to your advantage.'

'Perhaps I am he who does no wrong, and you simply cannot believe there are men who do not think and act as you do.'

Mista snorted, but said nothing more. They both watched Narancia dare to lunge in again, snarling, the tip of his blade deflected but a hair short of Jonathan's abdomen. He seemed to be in such a state of disbelief that Jonathan's cry of 'Excellent, Narancia! Just excellent!' seemed to be lost on him. Mista stuck his thumb and forefinger into his mouth and gave a great whistle. Narancia, breathless but beaming, face ruddy and gleaming with a sheen of sweat, collapsed to his knees.

'Sorry about your knife, Giorno,' Mista said, and it sounded sincere enough. 'If we find it, you'll be sure to know.'

'My thanks,' he said, and―sensing that this was his exit―made quick work of collecting his basket and leaving the three of them to the stifling musk of the grain store.


Shivering and clammy in the half-light of his dormitory, Giorno wrung out his washcloth and laid it on the rim of the bowl. The lather from the tallow soap had discoloured the water; filmy with oil, reeking of sage. He pulled his tunic over his head and sat at his cot, unwinding his hair. His flesh was goose-pimpled and pink, a chill creeping in through the mullion, but he felt somewhat restored after the events of the afternoon. He shuddered again as he stooped to pull his hose, linen clinging to his skin, and took up his comb.

It had unnerved him, he knew―even hours afterwards―how readily Mista had questioned him. It had come, no doubt, from an enduring ignorance: he saw irreverence all about him, practised it himself, and so presumed Giorno must do the same.

All his life, Giorno had sat shoulder-to-shoulder with so many he referred to as brother, and yet could count on one hand the few who pursued a life of servitude within Casamari's beating heart. The orphans, at least, he could understand. Theirs was a rather straightforward indulgence. Was it wrong for them to seek more of the world outside, far too young when they were cast out from it to understand its allure would fade far sooner than its cruelty might abate?

And had he, in truth, been so disapproving of Mista and Ghirgha's twilight escapades―or merely envious of them?

As a child, Giorno had longed for the day he would be trusted to venture out beyond the mountains to represent the abbey. He had comforted himself with the thought that he would one day be able to look out of a window in Scifelli or Rotabile and spy Casamari as no more than a white speck on the edge of the horizon. That was all the value that Pucci's favour and influence had come to hold for him; the means by which he would one day see the world.

A dark humour overtook him as he sat there, combing over and over, chilled to his very bones. To think he had bided his time all of these years, to content himself with only the faint promise of being granted scant and occasional freedom. Without the heart to make it a reality. Yet Mista and Ghirgha stole over the wall so frequently it was a routine that bordered on banality for them. He was ashamed of himself, then. And of his shortsightedness.

Giorno laid down his comb and stood to pull on his cassock. He felt an ache within his temples; not knowing if it was from the cold or from his tireless mind. He did not expect he would get much sleep. He shuddered again and tried to coax his pale skin back into life by rubbing rough circles into the backs of his hands. The glow of his waning candle made Fugo's golden ring wink up at him, and as he ran the pad of his thumb over it Giorno was struck by the notion that the huge inlaid ruby was far too large. Obscene, even. He kept it on all the same, hoped it might bestow him with a fraction of its audacity.

He sat down again and began to section out his hair when a hollow knock sounded from outside his mullion. Giorno paid it no mind and continued to braid his hair, until it came again. Louder. Then another. He tied off his hair at his nape and approached the window slits. Another stone glanced off the mullion and went plummeting back down to the earth. Giorno peered down to see Fugo coiling back his arm for another strike―then relenting―though he looked no less severe for having caught his attention.

Halfway up the dorter steps below, Fugo was trussed up in furs, the high points of his face kissed pink by the bite of the cold air. 'Come down, and quickly. The night is not as young as I had hoped.'

Giorno stared down his nose at Fugo, rendered so much smaller by the distance between them. 'Then would it not be wise to choose another night?'

Fugo scowled up at him, mouth twisting, and he raised his arm once more. 'Come down,' he insisted, his voice cutting through the tranquility of the evening.

'Must you shout?' Giorno hissed, conscious then of how impossible this entire scheme―whatever it truly was―appeared to be.

Fugo raised his arm a hair higher. Giorno pressed a finger to his lips, scowling down at him, and then turned away to slip on his turnshoes and pull his furs about his shoulders. He slung his scrip around his neck, nestled it between his cassock and smock. From outside, he heard Fugo's last stone ricochet off the dorter wall. Giorno snuffed his candle and slipped out of his room in the darkness, creeping his way through the dormitory corridor and down to the day stairs. Fugo gave him only a terse appraising nod as they came face to face, and set off without a word towards the edge of the garth.

'Can you climb?' Fugo asked, though Giorno knew very well there was no other choice. The gatehouse would be just as difficult to surmount, and Vespers would not yet be concluded, which ruled out the south transept. He reached out for a fistful of Poet's Ivy―certain it could not hold him―and glanced back at Fugo.

'Kneel, then,' Fugo said, none too kindly. Giorno had no time to argue before Fugo was hefting up and over―a foot on his thigh, another on his back―and wrestling his way over the top of the wall. Fugo straddled it and reached down with an insistent little wave of his hands.

'And when might I be stepping mud into your raiment, pray tell?'

Fugo exhaled through his nose, sharply. 'When you can afford to replace it. Now get up.'

Giorno clasped Fugo's hands in his own and placed a foot onto the wall. He scrabbled for purchase, the leather soles of his turnshoes useless and slippery as Fugo heaved him up alongside. He lost his footing―legs kicking out behind him―and fought to grab the topside of the wall; reaching for fistfuls of Ivy and slippery stone as his breath was knocked out of him. Fugo helped him the rest of the way and they sat at the top for a long moment, heaped together, as Giorno regained himself.

The climb had taxed him, certainly. But the patter of his heart and quickness of his breath, in truth, were the symptoms of a boundless and fervent excitement. Barely four braccia of masonry had been all that had stood in his way, and now he was sat abreast it, tucked against Fugo's side, only a short drop away from the vastness of elsewhere.

Fugo clapped him on the shoulder, urging him on, and Giorno was conscious that even at this early juncture their plans could yet be foiled. Before long Vespers would be over, and any unsuspecting Brother could chance to look out of his mullion to watch the sun fall behind the mountains. They slipped over the other side of the wall just as ungracefully as they had scaled it, and then advanced into a thicket of trees―up into the mountainside.

It was some time before Giorno felt he had truly regained his breath. He followed Fugo dutifully in the waning light; up higher and higher towards the foot of Monti Ernici, into scrub and over treacherous mounds and sloping hill, all the while quite unable to fathom how simple it had all been. He wanted to curse his lack of initiative, but as they moved onwards the lingering shroud of regret dissipated before it could truly cloud his mind. He was here, now. Out in the open. Perhaps Jonathan's romantic notion held a grain of truth, he thought, for there was surely no sweeter air than that which came down from the mountains towards them.

He stopped, then, and turned back to spy Casamari in miniature―a dark husk of a building in the fading day, only dull light burning within the nave and the rest consigned to shadows.

'Will we be returning?' he asked, watching the haze of the faraway candlelight play upon the abbey's walls.

'Only if you wish to,' Fugo called back. Giorno heard him tramp back down the hillside to stand beside him, quick-footed and impatient.

He kept his eyes on Casamari. Watched as the pinpricks of candlelight studding the dorter mullions began to wink out, one by one. 'And if I do not?'

'That is not for me to decide, Giorno. A free man can do whatever he pleases,' he came to stand before him, eclipsing all that he had known. 'What does freedom mean to you?'

That mountain peak. A quiet village. Ceccano, perhaps. You. Giorno did not trust himself to speak for a moment, Fugo's hand warm in his own. He withdrew into the sleeves of his cassock and turned back towards Ernici, quiet lest his voice betray him, 'I haven't decided that yet.'

'There'll be time enough,' Fugo said, regaining the hillside with long and tireless strides. 'Now come, we must be away. Before the night is lost to us.'

Giorno followed at his heels as the trees seemed to close around them, unkempt grass catching the hem of his cassock, every step underfoot uncertain and treacherous. The further they roamed, the greater the urge was to turn around once more. To collect in his mind every aspect of the abbey; smaller and smaller, the face of the building changing gradually as the light continued to fade. He wanted to consign it to his memory; feared, in fact, that it could well be his last opportunity to do so.

For what great injustice would it be, in truth, if Brother Giovanna were to shed his woollen cassock in this glade and cease to exist? If he wished, he could become a ghost; no more than a memory of the faithless, and the indifferent. Lingering in Casamari would have been a death all of its own. This, at least, had been his own choice.

Giorno Giovanna, from this night on, could cease to exist. Another man entirely followed behind Panacotta Fugo now, fledgling and shadowy though he was, as of yet without a name or a voice. But as Fugo himself had said―there would be time enough―time for him to uncover all of these details, to parse this exhilarating riddle piece by piece. So for the moment, at least, he was content to be little more than Fugo's shadow as they chased the setting sun.

They came out of the thicket and into a clearing. The grass stirred about them, shining a dull gold in the haze of the setting sun. In the glade the grass appeared shorter and well-trod, turning over to great patches of mud and dirt. Fugo walked some distance ahead, appraising the space, and seemed content. He shrugged off his furs and turned himself about the space once more―measuring, muttering to himself as he went.

'Are we arrived?'

Fugo looked him over―almost as though he had been startled by the question―and then doggedly went back to assessing the glade. He laid his satchel atop his discarded furs and pulled out a small knife. Giorno was transfixed to it as he broke away from the treeline.

'That's mine.'

Fugo swung his head around to glare, turning the handle idly over in his palm. He stood upright, as though to challenge him―blade held overhand and his chin jutting out defiantly. 'There was a fearsome tempest blowing, the last you saw it. And you were in such a frightful hurry to escape me. It's quite natural that it would slip your mind.' He smiled as he spoke, but he was so tense―had been so tightly wound all evening―that it made him look altogether more sinister than he perhaps hoped. 'Was I wrong to hold onto it for safekeeping?'

'Yes, you were. Give it to me,' Giorno said, eyes flitting from Fugo's severe face to the white-knuckle grip he had on the blade.

'You have waited a sennight or two, you can oblige me for an hour longer.'

'I oblige you every time we meet, and it has not gotten me anywhere yet.'

Fugo's grimace wound up another increment. 'If it were not for me, you would be a miserable little nobody rotting away in that gaol.' He turned the knife over, underhand. 'I've set you free, little godson. I've given you what you wanted. So if you have any affection left for me, you stone-heart, you will be grateful and indulge one last whim.'

Giorno slunk back to rest against a gnarled tree, his scowl deepening. 'Last?'

Fugo exhaled; long and slow, as though that sole word had exhausted him. 'Perhaps, yes.' He eyed the distance around him once more and began to approach the edge of the clearing, walking as though he were counting his strides. 'I thought you would laugh at me, if I told you. You still may. I suppose I have done you a great injustice, dragging you out of your cell without an explanation...' He struck the earth and dragged the blade down in an arc, scoring a wide earthen line around the perimeter.

'You have,' Giorno said, eyeing him warily. It would take Fugo a few good strides to come abreast of him, and he had not elected to wear his riding boots. There was scant light remaining in the day, and if Giorno could only get into the thicket once more he might easily slip away. Thinking this way―it occurred to him―was an admission that he believed Fugo knew how to use that knife. That he would dare to. But even that terrible disquiet could not yet abate his curiosity.

'So please enlighten me, and I can decide for myself if this is a laughing matter or not.'

Fugo, now on the other side of the clearing, completed another jagged arc through the soil and paused to gaze upon him. He sat back on his haunches and was still. 'Do you remember the day that we met, Giorno?'

'Of course I do.'

Fugo nodded, dropping his gaze. He adjusted his grip on the knife's handle as he ruminated, his brow clouding. 'And the afternoon I made you a gift of sugared almonds from Abruzzo?'

Giorno nodded. Bittersweet. Moreish. From across the clearing Fugo stared at him―levelly and slowly, as though there were something in particular he hoped to see―and then he turned his back once more. Giorno pulled his furs up around his shoulders.

His circle competed, Fugo stood back and proudly surveyed his handiwork, then looked again upon Giorno. 'So you will also remember, on that very day, the conversation I endured with your Englishman.'

'As I remember, it was rather laborious for him too.'

Fugo bit out a laugh; sneering. 'We are full of japes this night, aren't we?' he said, melancholy colouring his words. His expression softened. And in a quieter voice he admitted, 'But I was serious, that day. This has always been my aim.'

Giorno cast a sceptical glance about the clearing. 'To maim the earth, at the foot of the mountains? Fugo, I'm afraid you will have to consider me enlightened yet perplexed.'

Fugo huffed, crossing over the line he had drawn. He threw his hands out at his sides. 'To test my soul. The very limits of it, in fact― and what lies beyond that barrier.'

Giorno looked upon him, then, and wondered for a moment which of the Pannacotta Fugos he had entertained for the past few months was real; or, indeed, if his Fugo existed anywhere at all within those darkened, frantic eyes.

'I know I have asked a great deal of you, Giorno, but I must yet ask more.' He held out a hand. 'Do you trust me?'

Fugo had, from that first Summer's meeting in the presbytery, asked him to engage in petty acts of heresy; to take him as a friend at all had required Giorno to be plied with all manner of blasphemous instruction and action. Secreting pamphlets of the mathematical and metaphysical in his dorter, delighting in late night trysts and hours of untangling the the gristly truths that lay beneath the surface of his faith and schooling. And Fugo had asked him to acknowledge these realities; to take action against them.

And he could not―despite Fugo's innumerable (and oft inexcusable) faults―begrudge him that intention.

'I want to put my faith in you,' he said, stepping to the edge of the circle. It was lurid, to be able to use the word so freely. It exhilarated and terrified him in equal measure; knowing in fairness he could want very dearly to trust Fugo. It could be his chiefest desire in life, if necessary; yet he could not will this act of faith any more than he could for another false idol. It was not something he could volunteer.

Was not a choice, try as he might to convince himself otherwise.

'But you must explain the meaning of all of this, Fugo. I have to know if this is your aim or...' He met Fugo's gaze and the space between them seemed tremendous. Necessary, somehow. 'Or if this is merely your aim with me.'

Fugo laughed again; hoarse, humourless. 'Do you really think so little of me?' He reached out his hand again, insisting Giorno take it with an impatient motion and stern gaze. 'This is meaningless to me, if you are not to be part of it.'

Giorno crossed the threshold. He willed his heart to cease racing as he approached, feeling terribly foolish. Self-conscious and animated with a simple-minded excitement. He had already let Fugo into his heart, into his mind; he had in truth stepped beyond this boundary weeks before. This night, by contrast, was merely ceremonial.

Climbing over the wall and leaving Casamari behind had been no more than the zenith of a very gradual ascent, and he was reeling in the simplicity of its consummation. He had anticipated so much more fanfare. He could not help but to marvel at how simple it all had really been, and in how he had fooled himself that he could, eventually, have done all of this by himself. Pretend, somehow, that he had not needed Fugo quite so much.

'Then I shall partake.'

Fugo stared on at him―stony-faced yet curious, or at any rate considering―and then he turned away, digging about in his satchel. He produced a stoppered glass bottle, which he laid upon his furs, and papers that he studied while still adopting a slovenly crouch. As Giorno came up beside him, hoping for a furtive glance at Fugo's literature, he was already rising to meet him. Fugo folded them up brusquely and thrust the bottle into Giorno's hands.

'Drink.'

'What is it?'

'You said you would partake. Drink.'

Giorno rolled the bottle about between his hands, stomach roiling at the viscous slosh from within, and under Fugo's furious watch he made slow work of wresting out the cork.

Fugo snatched it from him, seeming to know that Giorno would not obey him otherwise, and drank deeply of its contents. He thrust it back at Giorno―knuckles catching him harshly between his ribs―and wiped a sticky amber rivulet of the tincture from the corner of his mouth. 'Drink,' he insisted.

Giorno hesitated a moment longer, searching Fugo's face but finding it wholly inviolate―closed off to him―and drank for himself. Puply, earthy flesh and the tang of sweet berries cloyed on his tongue. The suspension left a film over his teeth, aftertaste on his tongue. He tried to ask Fugo what they had imbibed, and the ground twisted underfoot―threatened suddenly to pull him to its barren breast.

He stumbled forwards, Fugo little more than a daubed swath of golden hair and green doublet behind his warping vision. He could hear the rabbit-quick thrum of his heart as though he were holding it up to his ear. Giorno sniffed at the bottle, unable to keep it from swaying under his questing nose, and it slipped from his grasp. 'Fugo, what―'

'The dose was nominal, you shan't perish,' Fugo said, no affectation betraying the utter lunacy of his words.

'What have you given me?' he asked, though it was not difficult to guess. Fragrant, tart Belladonna. Gristly head of Fly Agaric, still stuck to the sides of his teeth.

Fugo, though he appeared very earnestly to be trying to hide it, was just as affected as Giorno. The knife trembled in his hand as he raised it, head listlessly swaying between his handiwork and the papers he had unfurled once more. He moved around the inside of his earthen circle in a lumbering stoop, the knife an erratic extension of his determined arm―of his unwavering conviction in himself.

'You wanted to come out into the mountains with me, wrapped up in fur. I freed you and you chose to obey me. So do not pretend you did not want this. Our crusade begins here. This night we are Benandanti.'

The Good Walkers. Agrarian fools, mistaking bad dreams for prophetic visions. Confusing poor soil for the taint of witches. Giorno scoffed. So that was all he had meant by speaking of Friuli. 'Is heresy the only jape you know? You make for a poor fool, Fugo.'

He laughed―bright stinging peals that disrupted the silence of the glade―and he swung around drunkenly to wag his knife-tip at Giorno. 'Yes it is, though it is funniest when you tell it! Look at what you have become.' He laughed again and swung the knife down with a diminuendo whistle. 'So far from grace. But yet so far still to fall. How exciting for you, hmm?'

'I'm afraid I don't understand the jape, Fugo,' Giorno said, a little petulantly. Nose in the air. 'Perhaps you ought to explain it to me. You do so love the sound of your own voice.'

Fugo turned away to scrape another rune into the ground. Giorno wondered how this petty amusement would end; when the pantomime of peasantry and sorcery would cease to be so amusing to him. How much longer Fugo's patience would last.

'Fugo, you have gone far enough.' Giorno wanted to approach him, but did not trust his legs. His stomach roiled from the tincture; throat burned. 'I'm afraid I don't find this all as amusing as you do.'

Fugo laughed again, still turned away from him. As his back heaved the glittering beads on his doublet undulated like clouds at uneasy daybreak. 'I did not bring you here to amuse you.'

'Then why?'

He said nothing more, and went back to drawing his sigils in the earth. He hacked at the ground with a ferocity that unnerved Giorno; quick and decisive flicks of his wrist, hunched over and fighting the lure of sleep promised by the Belladonna.

'Fugo!' Giorno spat out, fighting his voice as though it were lodged in the back of his throat―resisting him. His mouth felt lousy and cumbersome; hardly his own. He wanted to scrape at his tongue, to spit out the poison he knew was already be lining his stomach. 'Stop this nonsense, and let us return. You frighten me, like this. You know no sense.'

'I am ever so glad of that,' Fugo said, head cocked to survey the jagged path the blade of his dagger carved through the earth. He paused, tip of the blade wavering as he studied the shapes he had drawn.

There was something wholly animal in his stoop―weight over his haunches, head inclined in such a perversely intense, inquisitive angle. One hose-clad foot was splayed out at his side, his toes flexed and sodden with grime, the other foot askew in his remaining shoe as if it were a hindrance to him. Knees streaked with dirt. His gaze sent a chill through Giorno. 'If you did not fear me, I suspect you would love me. And you can be certain that would cause you far more pain than I.'

Giorno felt his breath turn to a dense fog within him. A murky haze that weighed him down and was intolerable―impossible―to expel. He tried to master his tongue, but in truth knew he had nothing to say. Fugo was a beautiful blur of gold and green and blackest soil, and try as he might Giorno could not blink him into a coherent image.

'Ah,' Was all that Fugo could muster. A series of perplexing emotions vied to contort his features―pinching in at the brow, flaring his nostrils, pulling and twisting at his lips and tightening his jaw. 'I should have known,' he said in a low voice, something mournful lingering in his scowl. He warped and melded before Giorno's unreliable eyes, voice lilting as though it were carried on the air itself.

'I am twice the fool, then.' Giorno tightened his grip on his furs, lest he be hasty. 'Do you mean anything that you say, Fugo?'

Fugo made one final swipe with the knife and slowly―betraying the hold the poison truly had on him―rose to his feet. He cut an unnerving figure with his missing shoe and soiled hose, knife white-knuckle in his hand. His cheeks were flush with effort. Eyes wild. When he spoke again, there was a reedy, whistling quality to his words―each syllable quavering, 'You had no intention of using me too, and tossing me aside once I had served my function? No? Of course not.' He took a few faltering steps towards him, shaking his head. 'You lovely little fool.'

'Function?' Giorno wanted to shout, but it only came out in a hoarse whisper. He felt his vision cloud again―felt the hot pinprick of tears behind his eyes and wanted to believe it was the work of the Fly Agaric alone.

'I'm sorry, my little godson. Truly, I am,' Fugo said, closing in on him. 'Perhaps in another life.' And then in double, quadruple; hazy replicas multiplying around the edges of Giorno's vision until he could not be certain whom was real.

And then Fugo was too close for it to truly matter, grabbing fistfuls of Giorno's cassock and capturing his lips. Giorno's breath caught sudden and tight in his chest―burning, unrelenting―as Fugo nipped at his bottom lip. Thumb pressing into his jaw; fingers cold and dirtied with soil against his cheek. Fugo kissing him again, open mouthed and thoughtless. Giorno could taste the cloying, sticky tincture on his tongue.

He reached up to tangle his fingers in Fugo's hair; press him closer. Fugo groaned something unintelligible into Giorno's mouth and kissed him again. Hard. Nipped at his bottom lip so roughly he might draw blood, barely giving him chance to catch a breath. Fugo muttered something again, the words lost in their intermingled breath, and his hand moved from Giorno's face to grab at his wrist.

Giorno was caught off balance as Fugo pulled his arm down and aside―unprepared for the flash of pain as his own knife sliced across his fingertips. He yelled and thrashed in his grip but Fugo held him fast, Giorno's shoulder braced tight beneath his own. He writhed and bucked, the two of them tumbling to the earth. His hand felt impossibly hot—trembling, searing— and it was all he could focus on. Fugo's grip gave way and Giorno smeared dark wet streaks of blood across his doublet as he fought him off―gnashing his teeth, thrashing beneath him―before Fugo managed to catch him again. Leering over him, Fugo stole another rough kiss as he tried to control Giorno's wildly flailing arms.

His grip was so severe that the pinch of his fingernails felt like a fresh litany of cuts. Fugo wrenched his arm around to show Giorno's palm to the moonlight, tip of the knife wavering in his hand as he fought to regain control. Giorno yelled, free hand scrabbling up to claw at Fugo's neck, at his face―his struggle daubed on Fugo's skin in dark shining smudges of blood. The second time the knife pared his skin hurt far worse than the first, even though he had been expecting it. Fugo chased its sting with another kiss. Giorno's hand trembled in Fugo's grasp, the pain a dizzying mix of sharp and distant.

It was his own hand and entirely separate from him―all at once―and the woollen dryness of his tongue became cloying and sticky again under the press of Fugo's mouth.

His hand scrabbled at the neck of Fugo's doublet, not knowing if he intended to push him away or even closer still, warm rivulets of blood running down his arm. He roused the dregs of his consciousness and pushed Fugo away. He felt pathetic as Fugo easily acquiesced, drawing back to smile at him―to mock him―and stole another kiss. He wrenched Giorno's bleeding hand closer and peppered a line of kisses up his bloodied forearm. He pressed Giorno's palm against his face and held it there for a moment―coveting it. His smile was wretched, rimed with blood. The fingertips of Giorno's first and middle finger, pressed ardently to Fugo's face, were cut so quick to the bone that they splayed outwards. He was beginning to notice that the sensation in them was weakening. The wounded palm of his hand throbbed an uneasy staccato against Fugo's cheek, his chin dripping with blood.

When he finally let go, Giorno's wrist protested with what felt like thousands tiny pinpricks. Fugo ripped at the collar of his doublet―which had been so beautiful and fine, lustrous with its embroidered motifs and beading―and grabbed hold of Giorno again. He dragged Giorno's hand over his face and down his neck, his breathing as ragged as Giorno's own. With his mangled fingers splayed wide over Fugo's chest he could feel the frantic tattoo of his own heart mirrored there. Theirs was one breath; one frenetic pulsating rhythm under the watch of the silver moon.

Fugo reached across for the furs and slung them over his shoulders, and with a wavering hand raised the knife once more. Giorno felt a dumb, animal panic seize his blood―his very bones―but Fugo had only the strength to slash his own hand open from palm to wrist before the blade skittered uselessly to the floor. Giorno tried to spy where it had landed but the grass was too overlong, the moonlight not as bright as he could have hoped.

How well would he be able to use it, with his right hand in such a state?

Fugo smeared a second coat of blood over himself and was upon him again, the sticky-sweet taste of the tincture cut through with the tang of iron. He was warm atop him; a certain but unstable weight. The kisses were sporadic, coming between ragged and faltering breaths, and it made Giorno feel as though he couldn't breathe either. As though the back of his throat was closing up, hot and swollen from the Belladonna, from the raw fury of Fugo's mouth over his own. Fugo growled against his mouth, bit hard at his bottom lip. Giorno shoved him away and the blood from his own split lip overpowered the sickly herbal taste in his mouth.

Fugo's eyes were bright in his bloodied face. Gleaming. The next instant his hands were upon Giorno's neck―squeezing, cradling―and in a flight of panic he boxed Fugo about the ears, kicked up his legs with abandon. They toppled over and Giorno's head snapped backwards, the sting of Fugo's balled fist blooming underneath his skin. He rounded, scrabbling to his knees, but before he could gain his bearings Fugo had caught him round the middle and sent them both tumbling to the floor again.

Giorno bit his tongue as he fell―vision black for one sickening moment―and then all was lost in a flurry of limbs and the resonant slap of flesh upon bone as they tousled. Through one clear eye, Giorno saw his mirror in the bloodied, furious rictus of Fugo's grimace. One cheek pink and the welt already swelling. Fugo sat astride him, panting, their arms caught in a tangle. Giorno's breath whistled through his lungs; breathless and hollow. Fugo opened his mouth as if he might speak, but instead he gasped. Cried out. His shoulders lurched forward, back arching as though he might be violently sick.

Beneath him, Giorno felt every convulsion and wince as though from his own body. With each cry and squirm Fugo felt impossibly heavier, and Giorno was seized by the ridiculous notion that he would in a few moments more be crushed beneath his weight.

Fugo cried out and bent double, pressed hard against Giorno's face, the noise reverberating through the soft flesh of his cheek. He pulled away and Giorno could discern no more than his silhouette in the waning light. Addled with Fly Agaric and syrup, Giorno began to think he truly was larger―and growing with every violent convulsion. Fugo threw his head back and screamed, low and baleful, until his throat was so torn that the noise sounded entirely animal.

Giorno's heart felt as though it would surface through his throat. It knocked hard within his chest, breath taken from his lungs.

Fugo twisted and gnashed above him and cried out again into the stillness of the night. Giorno fought the stupor of the poison to wrest himself up on his elbows. Fugo's twisted figure was all fur and fury, and as he lashed his head around again Giorno thought for certain that his poor heart would fail him.

The rows of gleaming teeth, sharp and terrible, set in a gnarled muzzle. The most impossible face he had ever lain eyes upon. Giorno scrabbled to get to his feet and was waylaid by the lurch and tumble of the earth, bile rising in his throat as he turned himself over and crawled forwards one fistful of cold earth at a time.

Fugo―or what was left of him―snarled and whined from entirely too close behind, and Giorno stumbled to his feet like a drunkard. His stomach lurched again, violently, and he pressed on from tree to tree, steadying himself as he made his way blindly through the thicket and into the brush. His blood was singing. Heart a frenzied staccato high and repulsive in his chest.

Fugo howled again and Giorno swung around to face him. It was clothed in the tattered remains of Fugo's hose and doublet, panting like a hound as it stood on its hind legs. It swayed uncertainly on them, like a grotesque canine foal, and Giorno could only recall the night Fugo had chased after him in the rainstorm. Remembered the torrents washing away the bright satin sheen of his glittering emerald-green doublet into blackness. The faltering slide and lurch of his boots over the mud.

Giorno retched, dryly. His throat burned and his stomach turned over as he tripped over his feet. Pain tore through his side as he collided with a tree, head spinning as he righted himself and advanced through the thicket. His breath caught high and sharp in his throat and pain bloomed everywhere; his side, the tender flesh of his hand, his swollen face, his feet upon the uneven terrain. But he could not stop.

He stumbled down the mountainside, his senseless panic guiding him past the brink of exhaustion. Around him the thicket was dreadfully quiet. His breathless gasps were deafening; and for all he could know his lumbering dash through the brush could be heard for miles around.

But all that mattered to him was to keep running. Even as his legs began to ache and his lungs burned with the exertion, he was propelled onwards by this sheer determination―by his blind, wild panic. All he was aware of was the throb of his head and the thrum of his blood in his ears.

It was only as he climbed the first few steps of the abbey that the mist seemed to clear from his mind. He blinked in the warm glow of the lanterns and gazed up at the large doors of the presbytery, and felt tears prick hot and disbelieving at his eyes.

He took another step forwards and the world shifted out from underneath him once more, the shock of cold stone fading into oblivion.