Read The Boy with the Porcelain Blade for Free Online Page B

with his eyes.’
    ‘Trouble? How so?’
    ‘The place where your tears come from…’
    ‘Ducts,’ supplied Lucien, a rare flash of biology coming to him. Virmyre would be proud.
    ‘Yes, well, they don’t work. Dino’s tears are blood. The poor little thing. Fortunately he’s a stoical boy and isn’t given to crying too often. We have to keep giving him milk and ground beef to build him up.’
    Lucien scrutinised the infant some more. He’d not met any Orfani other than Anea and Golia. Everyone knew of the reclusive Orfani who lived with House Prospero, but he’d never bothered to learn her name, just as she’d never bothered to leave her apartment. He imagined her in an attic somewhere, talking to herself in a made-up language.
    ‘That said,’ continued Camelia, ‘he reminds me of you in a way. You used to sit right there when you were his age, good as gold, staring at folk, oh so serious.’ She smiled at Lucien kindly and he reciprocated with a touch of embarrassment. Camelia had always been someone he’d gravitated to. He invariably ended up lurking in the kitchen, getting in the way or peeling potatoes for want of an excuse to remain. Better busy in the kitchens than alone in his apartment. She’d sat through the night with him a few times when the pneumonia was on him, and sometimes to read to him, which no one else did except Rafaela.
    ‘I suppose you’ve come down here for gossip and tittle-tattle,’ said Camelia after a moment.
    Lucien leaned on the kitchen table, one hand resting under his chin. He looked at her blankly.
    ‘Surely you’ve heard?’ she asked. ‘A new Orfano was found outside of House Erudito. They’re saying it’s lucky he survived the night. It was dreadful chilly under the stars on those stone steps. They’re calling him Festo.’
    Lucien shrugged. D’arzenta hadn’t mentioned it.
    ‘There’s quite a fuss over who will look after him,’ continued Camelia. ‘Someone suggested Duke Prospero adopt him. Porca misèria , can you imagine? It took them an hour to get Duchess Prospero down off the ceiling.’
    Lucien wondered where the Orfano materialised from but knew better than to ask. He’d received more than his share of stern looks for making such enquiries in the past. He pushed the tip of his thumb into the corner of his mouth, testing how sharp his teeth were. He thought back to when he was three and found his memories of those times sparse, the few available to him cloudy and indistinct. Something didn’t quite fit.
    ‘Ella hasn’t always been my nanny, has she?’
    ‘What makes you say that?’ said Camelia.
    ‘Just a feeling. I mean, she’s much too young. She would have only been seven when I was a baby.’
    Camelia grinned and paused a moment, regarding the growing pile of shredded potatoes. She set down the grater with a clatter.
    ‘I see those lessons are paying off.’ She rested one hand on her hip and looked down at him. ‘Rafaela’s mother died when you were just four – it was she who looked after you when you first came to us. She was a lovely lady. Kind and patient. Rafaela looks just like her. Uncanny it is. Sometimes Rafaela walks through that door and, well, it’s like her mother never passed on. Of course, you’re probably too young to remember.’
    Camelia wiped her hands on a cloth.
    ‘Rafaela had been raised to see the care of the Orfano as a great privilege. She petitioned and schemed and argued for the right to keep on looking after you. She’d always helped her mother, you see?’
    ‘And they turned me over to a eleven-year-old girl? Just like that?’
    ‘Not exactly.’ Camelia broke some eggs and fetched a large wooden spoon from a dresser further down the kitchen before continuing. ‘You just about screamed the place down for about a month. You were unbearable. In the end they gave in to Rafaela. She was the only one who could do anything with you. I thought Mistress Corvo was going to throw you out of the window one