The Painted War by Imogen Rossi Page B

Falling’s different from drowning.’
    â€˜Yeah, worse!’
    â€˜We haven’t actually got it working yet,’ Domenico cut in, probably sensing a full-scale battle about to erupt. ‘And even when we do, we can’t test it. There’s no way to get it to the canal. It doesn’t fit through the door, and I don’t know how we’d lift it out of the windows up there.’
    Bianca frowned. ‘Think of all the inventions Master di Lombardi planned out but never built. We have books full of them. But he built this one, so he must’ve had a plan for eventually getting it into the canal.’
    â€˜Let’s look around again,’ said Marco. ‘Think about it; what if we need to take the Duchess away, somewhere safe and secret? This might be the only way to travel through the city without being seen.’
    Bianca nodded. ‘I see your point,’ she said grimly. ‘All right, let’s have another look. There might be something in one of the books, or another way out we haven’t found.’
    Bianca walked to the nearest wall and started to search along it for any sign of a hidden opening. In di Lombardi’s old house she’d once found a secret compartment by running her fingers over the wall, so she tried that, but she didn’t feel any sudden difference in texture or temperature. The huge, rough bricks didn’t seem to be hiding anything.
    Bianca was just starting to think they wouldn’t find anything when she heard Sebastiano calling her name.
    â€˜Bianca, come and look at this,’ he said. He was standing next to a pile of crates, staring down at the floor. She walked over and looked down, trying to see what it was about that bit of floor that had interested him. Sebastiano nudged a crate aside. ‘I think there’s a painting under here. It’s painted right onto the floor.’
    Bianca blinked. She could see it now – there was a corner of something dark and smooth-looking poking out from under one of the crates. At first she’d thought it was just a big gap between the wooden floorboards. ‘Help me move the crates,’ she said. Marco and Domenico hurried over and between the four of them they shifted the boxes aside. It was definitely a painting – and a rather odd one. It was a square, as long on each side as Bianca was tall. Its surface was dusty and scratched, but under the layer of dust there was a deep darkness, with a shifting, glinting light reflecting back at them.
    â€˜You found it!’ she said to Sebastiano, with a grin. Sebastiano blushed a little but looked really pleased. ‘This is a painting of a window onto the canal.’
    â€˜There’s no handle to open it up,’ said Marco, walking around the edge of the painting.
    â€˜You’ll have to paint one,’ Domenico said, with an eager grin at Bianca.
    â€˜On one condition.’ Bianca folded her arms. ‘You promise you will never make me get in that thing! Drown yourselves without me.’
    â€˜I promise,’ said Marco. ‘Unless it’s “an emergency”.’
    Bianca stuck her tongue out at him, but she went to find the magical paints anyway. Master di Lombardi had a whole store of them, ready-mixed and labelled, which Cosimo and Lucia were sorting through. Lucia looked like she was going to make a fuss when Bianca asked if she could use some of the
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, but Cosimo handed it over with a smile.
    â€˜You shouldn’t be so hard on her,’ Bianca heard him whisper to Lucia. ‘This all belonged to her grandfather, after all.’
    Bianca didn’t want to let on that she’d heard him, but she smiled to herself, touched by Cosimo’s words.
    She picked out some white and brown paints and sat on the floor by the painted window. It wasn’t a complicated shape, but it was always tricky to paint a handle because it didn’t just have to look right – she had to get the