Or, more specifically, go by canal.
We leave our horses tied in front of a tavern, and then continue on our way. The village gives way to another, bigger cluster of homes, and then soon the walls fencing in Estenzia loom out of the mist of rain, black silhouettes against a gray sky. Lanterns start flickering to life in the villages behind us. My weathered boots squish against the soaked ground. My hooded cloak is already useless against the rain, and we keep them on only to hide our features. I’d rather save my energy for when we are close enough to the city itself.
Here, the land starts splintering into fragments, disjointed islands clustered close together and connected by canals. Already, the storm has started to flood some of the canals, washing untended gondolas up to the shores. Magiano stops us here, where several gondolas have piled on top of one another at a canal’s corner. Dark canvas covers their tops, and their oars snap back and forth haphazardly in the current, absent their gondoliers.
“Lately, Estenzia has kept her canals locked in order to control the passage of cargo,” he says in a low voice. “But in a storm this bad, the canals in the city will flood too quickly if they don’t pull up some of their gates. They have to help the water drain.” He nods to the piled gondolas.
This is our chance to get into the city.
As the boys flip the first gondola over and Sergio helps Violetta into it, I stare at the city walls. The rain blurs them so that they look like little more than a fog of gray—but even in this downpour, I can make out the dense rows of dilapidated shelters huddled underneath the walls.
“What is that?” I ask Magiano, nodding toward the shelters.
He wipes water out of his eyes. “Malfetto slave camps, of course,” he replies.
My heart seizes. Malfetto slave camps? The camps wrap all the way around the wall, disappearing only when it curves out of our line of sight. So, this is what Teren has been busy doing. I wonder what kind of slave labor he has forced upon the malfettos, and how long he will allow them to live. There is no question that he is only biding his time. A dark tide swells in my stomach, bringing a scowl to my lips.
I will fix this, once I rule Kenettra.
“Come on,” Magiano urges me, snapping me out of my thoughts. He beckons me into the back of the gondola with Violetta. As I accept his outstretched hand, his eyes meet mine and hold me there for a heartbeat, unsure. His hand tightens. I cling to him, the heat rising fast in my cheeks. The kiss that had lingered between us last night is still here, and I don’t know what to do with it.
Magiano leans closer, as if about to take that kiss again. But he stops a hairsbreadth from my lips. His eyes lower, gentle for a moment. “Watch your step,” he says, guiding me into the boat.
My response is an incoherent murmur. I lower myself in carefully. The boat dips in the water as I crawl underneath the dark canvas and lie in the boat’s belly. It is already rapidly filling with water, but I’m able to keep myself up enough to breathe. Violetta’s boots are a foot away from mine, so that both of our heads are facing the ends of the gondola.
“When we get close enough,” I say up to him, “I’ll veil us. Stay close and keep an eye out for the rest of us.”
Magiano nods. Then he and Sergio give my gondola a push, and the boat jerks forward, taking me with it.
The storm intensifies as we draw closer to Estenzia. I stay low in the boat, keeping my head out of the water. I can barely see anything but the stone lining the edges of the canals, but now and then I get a glimpse of the approaching walls. Ahead of us is the start of the camps. Now we are close enough to see the dots of white scattered throughout the rows of crumbling tents—Inquisitors, their cloaks weighed down in the storm, hurrying back and forth along the camps’ dirt paths. I risk a glance behind me. There is a long distance between our gondola and the one behind us. If everything went well, Magiano and Sergio should be following us. I reach out with my energy, searching for the beating hearts of excitement, anticipation, and fear in them.
I find them. And I pull.
A net of invisibility weaves across me first, erasing me from the gondola and melting me into the wet wood, the pooling water in the boat’s belly, and the dark canvas. I do the same to Violetta, and then I grit my teeth and reach for the others behind me. It is an imperfect illusion. I can’t know exactly what the inside of their gondola looks like, and as a result, I can only make an estimate. If Inquisitors look too carefully into their gondola, they will see the figures of two hiding Elites underneath the texture of the boat’s bottom.
It’s the best I can do.