I blinked. “In hindsight maybe I should’ve been more worried. But I’d known Val my whole life and we shared a territory, Ravenna, so there was overlap.” I picked a speck of lint off the sleeve of my dress. “No one knew about us. We kept it secret. There was no love between the Saldanas and Da Vias.”
Alessio tugged on the pendant resting on his chest and led me down another side street. “But what about that saying I’ve heard . . . ‘Family over family.’ Doesn’t that mean you really should fraternize with each other?”
“Mm.” I pushed my hair behind my ears. “What that means is you put your clipper Family before your blood family. So if your father tells you one thing, and the head of the Family tells you another, you do what the head tells you.”
“That seems backward.”
“Everything we have is due to Family. My status doesn’t come from being the daughter of Dante and Bianca. It comes because I’m a member of the Saldana Family. Anyone who joins us, through birth or marriage or adoption, is named Saldana. That’s Family. That is more important than blood ties. It has to be if we’re to survive the way we have for generations.”
Les scratched his jaw, lost in thought.
Speaking too much about the Nine Families turned my stomach. I stopped. We were wasting time I didn’t have. “What are we doing?” I asked. “What did you want to show me?”
“This.” He stopped and waved his hand before him.
Resting on canal waters that twirled lazily before us, moored to the alley so it wouldn’t float away, bobbed a boat.
twenty
“A BOAT.”
“My boat, yes. It’s clear you don’t know anything about our canals or boats, so I thought I’d show you how to work one and map out some of the waterways.”
“I know how to use a boat. Ravenna has a seaport.”
“Canal boats are different. You steer them with a pole while standing, but they’re flat bottomed and they rock easily. It takes skill to stop from falling in.” He untied the boat and held the rope in his hand.
“I don’t have my own a boat, though.”
“Then borrow one. They’re tagged and someone will return it to its owner.” He tapped the boat and a symbol carved into the prow, declaring who it belonged to. “Returning it will accrue a debt and the common enjoy a debt.”
What could teaching me how to work a boat gain him? “Why would I even need to know this? It’s not like I plan on staying.”
“Because the canals are the best way to escape the ghosts,” he answered.
I thought of my first night here and knew he was right. Still, I hesitated.
He sighed. “Remember how I said my mother was murdered?”
“Yes.”
“I’m only half traveler, on my mother’s side, and the two of us were visiting Yvain with my grandfather. I think they were looking for my father, so she could leave me with him. When she was murdered, we had to identify her body. My grandfather wanted her to be carted home. He told me to stay at the law office and wait for him while he made arrangements with her body. And he never came back.”
“He left you there? Alone? How old were you?”
“Seven.”
I tried not to picture little boy Les, sitting on a chair, knowing his mother was dead and waiting for someone to come for him. My chest ached for that child.
“So the lawmen kicked me out onto the street. The sun had set and they were tired of watching me and there’s no love for travelers here. I hid beneath a bush, trying not to cry. But the ghosts found me. They always find you. I had to outrun them until finally I just spent the night in a canal, hanging on to the edge and swimming into the center if one came too close to me. That went on for a week or two. Then I met your uncle and he took me in.”
The boat had drifted, and he yanked the rope to bring it closer. “So now you know. When I say the canals will keep you safe from the ghosts, you can believe me.”
He gestured for me to get on the boat. My burned palm throbbed, and I tightened my hand into a fist. Any escape from the ghosts was a skill worth having.
I stepped onto the boat and it rocked immediately, threatening to spill me into the water.
Les jumped in beside me, a long canal pole in his hands. “I’m going to push us around a bit. You should stay standing so you get a feel of the boat and how easily it shifts. This canal leads to our home, and I’ll show you how it connects to your place, too.”
“Why? I already know how to find your home.”
He grinned. “In case you need another way to reach me.”
I scowled. He was too familiar with me sometimes. “So, your grandfather,” I said. “You were family. How could he abandon you like you were worse than livestock?”
Les pushed the boat roughly, and I swung my arms out to keep my balance.