.:I see with stolen light, and paint with stolen sight:.

mood: frustrated

I don't know what to be more upset about. Should I be more upset about the fact that I couldn't save him from my sister, the fact that he wants to go to hell, or the fact that going to hell might be better than what will happen (for him, specifically, not just for the world in general) if he doesn't go to hell?

If Amadeo gives me that look again I swear I will explode myself. Anyone in my life who thinks I don't need to drink is lucky I've never shown them all of my reasons.

Ercole gave me a book of poems by some Armorican named Vigoreux, saying he thought I'd like them. Why he thinks I want to read the poetry I know he mentally dedicates to Dracaena Leffoy is beyond me entirely, but that's beside the point. Vigoreux is small beer who thinks he's whiskey. I could show him a few things worth crying about, too.

Alma's up there. And I can't even say that's the worst of it. Where in Hell or on Earth did all these damned black feathers come from, anyway? I always figured Ignacio knew what he was talking about when he told me the angels were vicious bastards. Not that I believe for even a minute that he's in the good place.

mood: worried

It's strange to be here with Amadeo and stranger still to be unafraid. Sometimes I still think I will see Carmela or Ignacio over my shoulder if I am not careful. Past and future and present, they all run together like colours on a palette sometimes and become something formless and brown and uncertain. I don't like that. I like it when the colours are bright and clear and the stories make sense. But nothing makes sense right now.

I haven't heard from Almita. I'm worried about her, how can I not be? They say they will release Adelina tomorrow. I don't know where she is going to go. She would not want to go to the Rochfords even if it were possible. She does not particularly want to go to her sister-in-law, whom she thinks is a pagan (and justly so, but so am I), and she has almost nothing, and I have very little. Ximena did not come with me to Britannia. Maybe Doña Aranxta will be kind to us. I don't know. I will promise her that I will take care of Ercole.

Delgardie and Saunders are snapping at one another. Delgardie is angry with Doña Aranxta for jilting him, even though he will not admit it, and jealous, a little, of Ercole that he still has as strong a hold on Saunders as he does, even though he can hardly deny that Ercole needs friends. But it was always me that Ercole held closest. Once I very nearly got him out, but they stopped us. I don't know why Ignacio didn't kill me. I cannot love him so. He no longer belongs to Doña Aranxta, but he still belongs to the sun that is burning within him and longs to be free. Not me.

Amadeo is very tired. I wish he would listen to me.

Amadeo has not yet been here a week but you would think it was a month or more to see him. Everyone told him not to go back to the fighting, everyone. I don’t know why he thinks he must do it when there is work for him in Londinium, but that is Amadeo. Of course he is trying to convince me to come back with him, because as badly as they want his life twice over they want mine, and Esozi, whom he calls Serafina, has supposedly been asking after me. If he had not said that I might believe it. There is nothing that could convince me Esozi cares if I live or die. Esozi always said that I was a maketo who fought for my own reasons and not for the right ones, because I thought it was romantic and I wanted to make great art. She was probably right about that, but I have (as Carmela, may she burn in Hell forever, always said) always done things for my own reasons. If I am damned I am damned in my own cause.

With Carmela, Ignacio, Fernando and so many others dead, we should have taken Borgoña without any trouble. But they came from everywhere—from Italia, from Eire, everywhere the benandanti ride to battle. It happened exactly as I saw that it would. Ximena says they will all believe me now. I don’t know what good that will do when we have nowhere else to run. They have got rid of my family in England, all except Adelina who was never a threat to anyone, and even her mad husband has died. But here, there is no doubt that my family has won, even the little that is left of it. All we can hope to do is get away. So Doña Aranxta may lose her seer in Spain, and I may lose my Sight and my sight. I will never forget her little bronze blade at my throat and her voice: with which eye do you see me? I think she would have killed me if she had not thought she could make use of me, for I have two eyes that she can blind but not the third, and I saw those two raise the storm.

I am going to go now and get drunk, and perhaps get Amadeo drunk as well. He has a woman in Londinium, but that is just the beginning of what he can learn of the world now that at last he embraces it.