Anatole’s Apprentice Prologue, Interlude 1: Do Not Stand Over My Grave And Weep, Part 3
✴︎ PART 3: LEAVES FROM THE VINE ✴︎
3.8k words. In which everyone has to confront something they lost.
CW: Recollections of mild violence towards the end.
Characters featured: Cassiopeia Cassano, Consul Valerius/Valeriy Radošević -Cassano, Louisa De Silva, Aelius Anatole
Lore guide: ‘Toly’ and ‘Lily are nicknames the R-C use for Anatole. ‘Lily’ comes from Little; “Up the steps” is Vesuvian slang for rich people/people who live in the Heart district; “Chainmails” is slang for the Guards
What to catch up with Anatole’s Apprentice series? You can do that here.
With this piece, Anatole’s apprentice adventures end, for now. Thank you very much for reading about them ♥
Two voices spoke in within his darkened bedroom in the Palace as Anatole slowly came back from his fainting episode. How embarrassing. It had been at least a year since the last time he passed out because of a poorly attended migraine, but he would take fainting in public before riling himself up into a panic attack.
He began to stir himself awake, feeling the after effects of the migraine still in his temples.
The voices did not go; they were in the room then. He didn’t want to alert them of his rousing, but the more he tried to make out what they were saying, the more obvious it was to him he needed fresh air and a gallon of water. He made a vexed, pitiful sound as he tried to sit on the bed and the room around him went quiet.
“It is better if I left,” one of the voices said.
“The least you could do—”
“Don’t tell me how to handle this Cassiopeia—”
Cassiopeia snorted. “You handling anything would be the real surprise here.”
“You have no idea what I’m going through, so why don’t you keep your opinions to yourself?”
Recognition danced around Anatole as he feared the owner of the voice would slam the door shut. By the whisking sound of cut air, he was about to, but decided against it on the last minute. Anatole felt eyes on him, but when he tried to turn to look, all he could see was the door closing very carefully, with a quiet click. If Anatole was more awake he’d say it sounded like someone who didn’t want to leave. He wasn’t, however, so instead he focused on sitting up.
The voice that stayed, Cassiopeia, brought a chair close to Anatole’s bed, the legs of it scraping against the floorboards. She was a handsome woman, with a wide smile, deep brown skin with a bronze undertone; had there been more light in the room, Anatole would’ve been able to see the freckles on her face very much resembled his own. She had expressive eyebrows, and her tight curls were put together in an up-do, with jewellery accents clipped on the side of her head.
Anatole recognised her as the woman he had seen in an echo the day he arrived at the palace, the one wrapping her arm around a younger version of himself in encouragement. She had looked happier there; now she looked tired behind her welcoming, warm, smile.
She offered him water. “I figured you would like something to drink, does this happen often?”
Anatole accepted the drink, taking tiny sips from it. “It hasn’t happened in a while. I live with it just fine, most of the time…”
“There’s no need to be embarrassed. Now, I’m not trying to trespass any boundaries, so you don’t need to explain anything you don’t want to, Toly— I mean, Dear, but if this happened to my daughter, or say, a nephew of mine, I would ask them if there’s any medicine I could procure for them.”
“How did you just call me?”
“Hm? ‘Dear’, is that alright by you?”
“No, you called me ‘Toly’. My, I know... there was someone who called me that, but I can’t remember.”
Cassiopeia acted none the wiser. “Dear, you’ll make yourself indisposed once again.”
Anatole stared at her, until he begrudgingly accepted his defeat and drained his glass. “You needn’t worry, I promise I can handle it myself, I’ve already interrupted you enough.”
She insisted, her voice resonating with fondness Anatole didn’t know how to receive. “I know you can, but I care, we care. The Council is at your disposition, you know? Even if the Consul—”
Anatole grimaced as he remembered his confrontation with him. It had gone the opposite of how he wanted to. Running his hands through his face, he groaned into them, though he soon regretted it as the sound didn’t please his headache. “The Countess is going to be so angry at me.”
“I don’t think she will, and either way, I would gladly vouch for you. He shouldn’t have done that, even if he’s carrying a terrible weight, it was wrong,”
she paused, looking towards the curtained windows, focusing on a tiny beam of light that came when the outside breeze moved the drapes. “I closed them for you, I didn’t know if light was something you’d appreciate it or not right now. Would you like me to open them?”
“Please. Sunlight makes me feel better.”
Anatole thought he heard her say that she knew it did, but he didn’t acknowledge it, suspecting Cassiopeia would deny it again.
“I’m not trying to justify my cousin, but Valeriy has been through a lot lately. He isn’t the same man he was four years ago, and the Gods know we have our hands tied.”
As recognition dawned on him, his headache became worse. It moved right between his eyes, a piercing pain accompanied by the laughter of a child hanging from a tree branch as they threw themself into the arms of a man with long, soft hair.
He hissed in pain and before he could stop her, Cassiopeia was preparing him a migraine tonic. Later, when Anatole was left alone once again, he would realise he never had to explain to her his late Aunt Paris’ recipe for migraine tonics. Cassiopeia already knew it.
Right then, however, the knowledge slipped from his mind.
Before he could strain himself any further, Cassiopeia told him to lie back and drink his medicine, compelling him to rest. Anatole insisted it was fine after taking all of the concoction with one swift chug.
“I’m used to it. I promise it’s fine. Asra has always been there for me since this happened to me,” he said with a vague hand gesture, avoiding any further explanation about his memory loss, migraines were safe enough, memory loss? He wasn’t sure. “But I’ve also been well, mostly on my own. With Antu. Asra does what he can and we fend for each other.”
Anatole petted Antu’s fur; Cassiopeia told him the Raccoon, whom she affectionately called “little beast” refused to leave his side.
They sat in silence as the tonic began working it’s magic, until a sob came out of Cassiopeia. She promptly excused herself, trying to calm down. Anatole was almost reminded of himself and the echo of a woman about his age, that looked a lot like Cassiopeia only both her eyes were green. Her name danced in the tip of his tongue.
“You don’t know who I am, do you?”
“No,” Anatole apologised.
“That is most alright, you ought not to apologise, Anatole. I am Cassiopeia Cassano, councilwoman of this City, and know that if you ever find yourself in need of a friend, I am here for you.”
Cassiopeia looked at him with sorrow. He could feel it too, inside himself, as something told him these people had once been very important to him but remained unable to recall how, why or when. Not knowing was going to drive him crazy, so against his common sense telling him not to do things that would make his headache worse, he asked:
“The person who was with you when I was waking, was it… was it the Consul?”
She hesitated.
“Yes, that was Consul.”
Anatole felt like he did after he had talked to Asra in the fountain and that man had called his name — those feelings of sorrow and disconnection taking hold of him again, as whatever had happened to him slipped through his fingers once more. “I knew him, didn’t I? I knew both of you.”
“I shouldn’t,”
“Cassiopeia, please. He looks like me when I’m angry, and, and I keep seeing echoes of myself when I was younger, a being younger that I don’t remember, but you’re both always with me and we look—”
“Happy?”
“Proud. I walked into the Palace and everyone knows my name, but acts like I shouldn’t be here and I saw you both walking me in and you looked so, so proud of me. This is not the first time I’ve had a dèja vú like that.”
“We were” she said with a defeated sigh, tears once again threatening to overflow her waterline. “When it came to the Court, you were our rising sun.”
Cassiopeia stood up. “You ought to rest, I have talked too much. I’m sorry, I know how much you hate not knowing but I need some answers for myself, too.”
He didn’t know what had compelled him to speak, which he was used to by now even if he hated it —he liked knowing what was about to come out of his mouth, thank you very much. He didn’t regret it, though, because he could tell Cassiopeia wouldn’t think ill of it, nor use it against him.
Anatole could do little more than thank her, taken aback with the intensity and sincerity of her words. Yet, despite her original word, Cassiopeia betrayed herself and said:
“Is there anything else you almost remember?”
“So many things I cannot name, nor place, nor put to shape. How am I supposed to carry out an investigation, if I myself barely know where I came from?”
Councilwoman Cassano walked back to the side of Anatole’s bed like he was on fire and she had to put him out. Forgoing the chair completely, she kneeled by the bedside and took his hands in hers. She was crying now; Anatole found himself crying to.
“The moment you feel overwhelmed you stop me, is that clear Young Man? Good. Your name is Aelius Anatole Radošević De Silva, you were born in Bgraz, in the Federative District of Ilvaska, in Balkovia, during a Civil War. Your family is as Blakovian as it is Vesuvian, but also have blood from the Alzoreños because that is where your mother was born. And you will be able to do this because you’re not alone, and because we will not leave you alone, and because you have always, always found your way.”
She left the room shortly after, leaving Anatole to realise that his name on her lips felt the same way it felt when Asra said it: full of sorrow but also full of love. Nadia arrived not five minutes after, so Anatole would have to think about that later.
Cassiopeia couldn’t go home yet, she had worked to do. She did try to find Medea, but she was nowhere to be found. She remembered her and Anatole were almost attached at the hip when he had first been alive, so perhaps she would know something. Some dreadful feeling found its way to her gut, because that was indeed her nephew, the one who had died. She knew it in her heart, she knew it like she’d known the guidance of the Moon and the protection of the Sun.
She didn’t know enough about resurrections and necromancy, but Valerian did. She’d have to speak with the old Cassano patriarch as soon as she was home, maybe he’d know what to do, and it would all sort itself out. For now, though, she continued her day knowing that at the very least, her wonderful nephew was alive.
At the other side of the City, Doctor Louisa De Silva was going through her day. It was one of those days when she simply had to move, unable to tolerate being cooped up inside. Seeing people, talking to people, anything to feel like a real human again.
She had to admit those weren’t the only reasons. Walking and running errands helped her think, and she had much to think about.
Amparo was hiding something from them. Call it motherly intuition on Louisa’s part, but she knew she was. She might be depressed, and she might have been incredibly absent from the world around her for longer than a year after Anatole had died, but Louisa had never been stupid. She had suspected it for a while, snippets of conversation and certain behaviours drawing her attention. Then, Antu had gone missing almost permanently and whenever he came back, the raccoon seemed oddly chiper. Too chiper for a creature that had been wallowing in it’s own sorrow.
Then, certain things went missing from Anatole’s rooms. Books, clothes, quills, beddings, his harp. How Amparo had managed to relocate it without anyone noticing, Louisa didn’t know, but she knew her son’s harp was gone and it seemed suspicious that both Amparo and Valerian had had an explanation for it. Lastly, there was the issue of Vlad having claimed to see Anatole two days ago.
Louisa knew about magic like one knew of history. While she could’ve learnt, she had never felt the need: Paris was the magician out of the two of them, and there was always Vlad, even if, as an alchemist, his tether to magic was different than for most people’s. Be that as it may, Vlad had been “seeing” their son for a while now, even if recently it had stopped. It began with sleepwalking, Vlad covering lengths of the Palazzo, because ‘Anatole needed him’.
Once he made it to the street, crumbling when he was told what he had done. He thought he was losing his mind, something Louisa understood. Nothing would ever compare to the pain of losing Anatole, but Vlad’s sleep walking seemed like a cruel twist of the universe. Her husband acted as if compelled, saying he could hear Anatole in his dreams, needing to go find him, because his boy needed him. Louisa thought it was just nightmares at first. Now, she wasn’t so sure.
Someone bumped into her in the South End apothecary she was in, pulling her out of her thoughts.
There were plenty of Apothecaries around Vesuvia of varying qualities and exclusivity, though Dr. De Silva had her favourites, this being one of them. Today it was particularly busy, the humdrum and talk in both accented common, and half-and-half (the way Vesuvians called the back and forth change between Dialect and Common tongue) hitting her with full force now that she had become aware of them, people’s voices around her and the sounds from the streets no longer white noise.
A middle aged lady was gossiping with another of the Apothecary’s clients.
“So I told the wife, you wouldn’t believe whom I saw Maz’ Ilya with, and bet you what, she didn’t believe me. Remember the Radošević boy?”
“Who?”
“You know, the Cassano’s blond new blood, whatever was his name… the one who worked with Mr. Stick-up-the-ass— Councilwoman Cassano’s nephew, you know the one… Aleli, Anar??”
“Anatole?”
“That’s the boy!”
“Are you sure you weren’t drunk? He’s fucking dead.”
“Tell you he isn’t! He’s alive as the two of us, walking around with Ilya D—”
“Don’t say his name, you idiot.”
“No one’s listening, relax, anyway— he was walking around with… you know, just like they did before the plague. I know surviving that made us all a little loose up here, but I know what I saw. Alive as you and me, I tell you. Nothing mortal can kill the bastards they said, and I’m starting to believe it.”
“And what? You’re going to tell me you reached the fucking Cassano so you knew him personally, and that’s why you’re so sure? They’re better than most of that lot, but they left the ‘Grave long ago. You’re imagining things.”
“Listen, my brother knew him. I described the guy to him, and he said that was either Aelius Radosevic or someone who looked a lot like him. He’d know what I was talking about, he’s part of the union—”
“You know the ‘Nothing mortal can kill a Cassano’ is just a saying right? They’d have to be witches or something.”
“How do you know they aren’t?”
“How do you know a dead man went around walking?”
“I bet he was never dead, and they had to hide him from the Goat voiced fuck we had for a Count.”
“Take out the ‘o’ and you’re spelling him right out. If you were in the Raven you were drunk as hell, am willing to bet. No other witnesses, I fucking bet.”
“The chainmails got in, the bird sang.”
“Of course, Tilde,” the person the lady, Tilde, was talking to said. “Tell you what, if the man’s alive I’ll eat my shoe, but be ready to take a fall about that because I am willing to bet he was just like every other Up the Steps bastard in the end, if he is in fact alive. Chickened out, like his coward uncle and—”
“Hey!” Louisa yelled. If she didn’t startle herself with the volume of her own voice, it was only out of how angry she was, the more she heard this person go on. “That’s my son you’re talking about. Anatole was my son.”
She acted on impulse, anxiety and anger making her blood shake and her pulse rise up. There was a lot she could understand from others, but not this. Not the defamation of her son’s character, not when Anatole had given his life away for Vesuvians, not when Anatole had arrived shaken and yelled at by the Courtiers so many times, not when she could remember how his shoulder bled that one time Pontifex Vulgora dug their gauntlets on his skin.
Not when Lucio’s neglect had murdered her son. She had already lost enough to tyrants to withstand this.
The shop around her went quiet as the middle aged lady recognised her.
“You’re Doctor De Silva! You’re that woman who—”
The person she had been speaking to before interrupted her. “Was he? So is he dead or is he alive?”
Louisa’s reply died in her mouth. Did she really know the answer? She thought she did. She thought that awful letter from the nurses of the Lazaret had been enough proof of the death of her son, but if he was alive, then how? Anatole would never run away, she knew her son, running away from love and duty was not something her son would ever do.
Something broke inside of her as she remembered how Anatole had fit between her arms. Angry, hot tears began rolling down her cheeks. Whatever way she looked, it made the person backtrack.
“Lady, are you okay?”
“What kind of question is that? How dare you offer me pity after you have the audacity to speak of my son that way. You should have more respect for those who gave their lives to save others amid the Red Plague.”
“Oh, is this about gratitude? Isn’t it always with you high and mighty bastards?”
“Hey!” Someone else intervened. “The Cassano are on our side, and you know that, leave the Doctor alone, she heals our children for free. Aren’t you going to apologise?”
“No,” the person said.
“I don’t need them too,” Louisa added, shooting them a deadly glare before turning to the other lady, Tilde. “You must have been mistaken, my son is very much dead and buried in the Lazaret, but it is nice to know someone still thinks about him.”
“I don’t mean to poke, but are you sure, Miss? There’s talk about him working directly for the Countess now, so it made sense to me. About your height, scar over his nose, looks a lot like the Consul and a lot like you too. Same front teeth.”
The other person scoffed again. “You saw his teeth now?”
“Shut up,” Louisa barked at them. “Sorry, Tilde, you might be mistaken.”
“I know I’m not, you should look into it, Miss. Ask my brother about it, he has a shop three streets down.”
As the argument ended, the shop’s awkward silence gave way to the same humdrum as before. Louisa received her order and left the place, not without stealing a look at Tilde’s direction, who was offering some leeches to the Apothecary to examine. They swung their head towards Louisa, making Tilde turn: with her thumb, she pointed left, in the direction Louisa could only assume was her brother’s shop. With so many things in her life, Louisa’s body knew what the right thing to do was before her brain could catch up, and only like a mother who knew the right way to love her child could, she asked on every shop three blocks to the left of the Apothecary until she found Tilde’s brother.
Amparo would have so much explaining to do.
* * *
He no longer knew who he was. After Amparo came forward to all her family and his nephew’s friends, per theirs, Milenko’s, Cassiopeia’s and Louisa’s insistence, he had seen Milan summon Asra Al-Nazar from the pond in the Winter Garden. Well, not “summon”, that was a strong word, but rather called, and Al-Nazar had answered.
He had to listen to them confirm what he had been dreading: that the apparition in the shape of his Anatole, the one he had thrown wine to under the hawke-like gaze of the rest of the Courtiers, and who then had confronted him, knowing information about Valeriy who no one outside their family knew, was not an apparition. He wasn’t witchcraft. He was real. Real as they all were.
Asra Al-Nazar, against everything Valeriy thought the magician would consider forbidden, made a deal with an entity to give half his heart to Anatole, so he could live once again. The cost had been his memories, locked away deep down into himself.
Yet, Asra had crumbled into Milenko’s arms as he explained how somehow he remembered, but he couldn’t make him remember. “I only make it worse,” he had said.
Instead of staying in the room, Valeriy had walked away. When there was nothing more to say and Cassiopeia asked him if he saw it now, he had felt his throat close. As fast as he could he got away from the scrutinising weight of his family, as the man he used to be and he had wanted to bury resurfaced.
Valeriy Radošević had begun agonising with his nephew’s death. The last tendrils of control he had slipped away. So when the Devil offered him a way out after years of looking at him over the shoulder, waiting for him in the lonesome hours and cold dead-ends, he had struck the final blow to the man his family expected him to be, and the uncle whom Anatole had once loved.
He had always been a difficult man, but what he had become now, if his family knew… they would never forgive them. It seemed easy before, when Anatole was dead: what a better way to self-destruct, what a better way for his life to slowly end. Let the grief that had always been part of him eat him up and spit back the cruel carcass of the monster he was starting to become.
Now, as the realisation that Anatole was indeed alive, Valerius realised this mask he had crafted for years, the mask which was nothing but the coffin of the man he once could’ve been, was starting to break. Out of it, Valeriy Radosevic began to resourface, like an overflowing well, a spring, or a reminder of dawn.
Did you name yourself after the Sun?
Yes, Uncle Val. Do you think it’s fitting?
Very much so, Lily, darling. You’re my favourite sunrise.
He found an empty remote room, slamming the door behind him. In the room there was a mirror and when Valeriy looked into his own reflection, he didn’t see his eyes but Matilda Cassano’s. Instead of the sandy-grey eyes he had inherited from one of his grandparents, he saw the unforgiving yellowish of his dead biological mother.
Though he was four when she died, part of him could remember enough: the abandonment and the constant tension between Matilda, Valerian and Iovanus, or between Matilda and Mircea and Florentino. The former was a Radošević, the brother of Matilda’s husband, Valeriy’s biological father, Kresmir. The latter was a Cassano, Matilda’s first cousin. They had married each other and only a year older than Matilda herself, had stepped up where Vlad’s and Valeriy’s biological parents had failed.
Though he was four when both of them died, he knew enough. The cruelty, the anger in his brother’s eyes. His brother, the father of his nephew, had taken better care of him as a baby than his parents ever did. If Valeriy had survived during his first infancy when no other adults were around, it was because of Vladislav and Vladislav alone.
In the mirror, a cruel half-ram creature with the eyes of his mother smiled back at him. It spoke back to him in his own voice: “Proud, at last, of what you chose to become?”
Valeriy took his hands to his face and so did the creature. While he only touched his soft, human skin, the monster in the mirror touched fur. Making himself of the first blunt object he could reach, he threw it to the mirror and as it broke, he broke down with it.
