The Damiano Series Read Online Free

he is the one who will realize he can ride to greatness along with the city of Partestrada. If he has a mind, and eyes to see, I will explain it to him.” Damiano spoke words he had been rehearsing for the general’s ears. Marco cleared his throat, spat, and turned his back on Damiano to shuffle toward the sun-warmed stones of the well.
    â€œWait, Marco!” called Damiano, hurrying after. He grabbed the greasy sleeves of Marco’s jacket. “Tell me. Are they all gone? Father Antonio? Paolo Denezzi and his sister? Where is Carla? Have you seen her?”
    Marco spun about, vermilion-faced. “Tell you? That would give you something else you could explain to General Pardo.” Without warning he swung the clay bottle at Damiano. The staff took the blow, and the bottle fell in purple-stained shards at his feet. Only a swallow had been left in it.
    â€œYour father,” called Marco, stomping down the street in the direction from which Damiano had come, “was an honest witch. Though he burns in hell, he was an honest witch.”
    Damiano stood staring at the drops of wine beading the dust, till Macchiata laid her triangular head against his leg. “He shouldn’t have said that about your father,” she said.
    Damiano cleared his throat. “He wasn’t insulting my father. He was insulting me.
    â€œBut I can’t believe Marco thinks I would betray my friends, let alone my city. He is just old and angry.”
    Damiano shook his head, took a deep breath, and jerked his sleeves from his hands and his hair from his eyes.
    â€œCome,” he said. “General Pardo is expecting me.”
    Damiano hated being reminded about his father, whom he had last seen dissolving into a green ichor. Guillermo Delstrego had died in pain and had stained the workroom tiles on which he lay. Damiano had never known what spell or invocation his father had been about, for there were many things Delstrego would not let young Dami observe, and that particular invocation Damiano had never had any desire to know.
    Guillermo Delstrego had not been a bad father, exactly. He had certainly provided for Damiano and had taught him at least a portion of his arts. He had not beaten Dami often, but then Damiano had not deserved beating often, and now it seemed to Damiano that his father would have liked him better if he had. A mozzarella was what Marco called him. Delstrego probably would have agreed, being himself a ball of the grainiest Parmesan. But after their eighteen years together, and despite Damiano’s quick sensitivity to people, the young man could say that he’d scarcely known his father—certainly not as well as old Marco knew him.
    Damiano was like his mother, whom Delstrego had found and married in Provence (it was said no woman in the Piedmont would have him), and who had died so long ago she was not even a memory to the boy. He had her slimness, small face, and large eyes. And though his nose was rather larger than hers had been, it was nothing like the strongly colored and very Roman appendage that Guillermo Delstrego had borne. Yet Delstrego had had to admit the child was his, because witchcraft did not run in his wife’s family, and even as a baby Damiano had given off sparks like a cat.
    Was Delstrego in hell? There was gossip that said a witch was damned from birth, but the Church had never yet said anything of that sort, and Damiano had never felt in the slightest bit damned. He attended the mass weekly, when work permitted, and enjoyed involved theological discussions with his friend Father Antonio of the First Order of San Francesco. Sometimes, in fact, he felt a little too sure of God’s favor, as when Carla Denezzi let him sort her colored threads, but he was aware of this fault in himself and chided himself for an apostate whenever the feeling got out of hand. His father, though, who died invoking the Devil, alone knew what… Who could be sure about him? When