An Illusion of Thieves

by Cate Glass

All eyes shifted to Vincenzio, who stood stalwart. Noble, even.

  “I make no claims that this is definitely the object of the most honorable gentleman’s desire,” he said, rasping only a bit. “The possibility has brought me here. Hope, too. Not just for my own fortune, though I do believe this piece is a marvel of another age and that other interesting mysteries remain in the iron chest lost in the Hylides. But I also find hope in the example of Cantagna—your city’s interest in exploring our past to ennoble our future.”

  Well said, Vincenzio! Such eloquence … even from one who had always exceeded expectations. We had talked of this.

  “What of the other items?” asked a woman in an elaborately curled wig whose face was a landscape raddled by the pox. “Alessandro can decide if the bronze is what he wants. But as a whole do these things merit support? Varela won’t like Cantagnan surrogates prowling the Hylides.”

  Bastianni examined the natalés and quickly tossed them into the pile of linen. “Decent work, but no older than my shoes. This horse is”—he hefted the little sculpture, sniffed it, licked it, whipped out his magnifying lens and inspected it closely—“of Paolin!” he said, astonished. “Old, certainly, though not corresponding to the Antigonean period, if the larger bronze is indeed so ancient. Not a style I’m familiar with, but those who know more of the Land of Smoke and Silk would surely be interested. So might the Varela trade ministry. Damizella, did your father make mention of Paolin in this journal? Perhaps his boat carried more than fish!”

  The academician’s scorn bit deep, waking the harsh voice inside me. It yelled that we’d been fools to bring the horse. Trade in Paolin goods was strictly regulated.

  “N-nay, segnoré.” I stuttered, shaken as all eyes turned to me, including the lancet gaze of the Shadow Lord.

  “Indeed not, Philosophist!” said Vincenzio. The Shadow Lord’s gaze and all others fixed instantly on my brother, shocked at his sharp vehemence. “Our father was no smuggler, but a noble fisherman! He knew the weather and the tides, but nothing of history or the world beyond the sea. Pleasing shapes attracted him. He would not have recognized work of Paolin. I myself was not sure of it.”

  “Secretary Mardi signals that our time is spent,” announced Beatrice di Mesca, as several of the commissioners growled and frowned severely at Vincenzio. “Would you agree, Scholar di Bastianni, that Professoré di Guelfi has sincere reason to believe this bronze sculpture to be the Antigonean bronze?”

  “Reason enough, I suppose,” said the academician. “Sincerity? Motives are not mine to judge. To confirm true authenticity, I would need to examine it more closely, have a smith confirm the metal’s composition, and test the finish to be sure the patina is not recently applied.”

  “We’ve brought a sample of the alchemical mixture our Academie used to examine the finish,” said Vincenzio. “Tarenah?”

  I pulled a ceramic vial of testing solution from our bag.

  Bastianni waved it away as he and Gallanos resumed their seats. “Naturally I would use my own.”

  Segna di Mesca continued briskly. “Segnoré di Gallanos, do you have an opinion on Professoré di Guelfi’s application?”

  It was not difficult to judge her opinion. Her nostrils had flared at Vincenzio’s declaration, as if loyalty to a fisherman was distasteful.

  “I do. With all respect to the professoré and his sister,” said Gallanos, offering no more than a passing glance our way, “I see too little worth in the project to risk entangling Cantagna with the authorities of Varela. Yet the lost chest produced two artifacts interesting enough that the search might intrigue several collectors in my acquaintance. I can forward the professoré’s application to them if he wishes. As to the possibility of this piece being the Antigonean bronze, I would be pleased to pursue the question on my own with no investment of the city’s treasury.”

  “I move to accede to Alessandro’s wisdom,” said Segna Beatrice. Paying no mind to the mumbles from their companions, she stood. “And so it is declared. Professoré, I commend you on your application and wish you a good day. Please take your artifacts. Segnoré di Gallanos will contact you if and when it is his pleasure.”

  As by magic, the outer door opened and the usher stepped inside. The commissioners rose, some drawn to the carafes of wine set out on a table to the side, some hurrying toward a private exit behind them. The Shadow Lord and the philosophist strolled toward the open doors.

  Reason staved off disappointment; surely Gallanos’s interest and offer of recommendation meant success. I began wrapping the bronzes.

  Vincenzio murmured in my ear, “What should I do? Do we just go?”

  “Leaving too quickly will make our long journey a waste,” I whispered. “Surely he’ll wish to speak to you. He offered us references.”

  My brother stared at me oddly, then stepped uncertainly in the direction of the two men, who had paused in the open doorway. He halted at a polite distance and folded his hands at his back, as if he awaited such elevated attention every day.

  My heart raced, understanding that this was a moment that would profoundly affect our future.

  “I doubt Boscetti ever possessed the true Antigonean bronze,” said the Shadow Lord to Bastianni. “He must have concocted his theft story when he realized I’d bring you in to examine it. Or perhaps someone told him of Eduardo’s belief that he could identify the bronze inerrantly.”

  “I tell you again, Alessandro, there exists no inerrant proof of authenticity. The grand duc is lost in a cloud of delusion that masquerades as mysticism. Come walk with me; I worry—”

  Vincenzio coughed. Gallanos whirled about, startled.

  “Ah, professoré!” Motioning Bastianni to wait in the foyer, Gallanos strode back to Vincenzio. “Thank you for waiting. I get caught up in minutiae and forget my more important business.”

  Bastianni paused in the doorway. I continued wrapping the natalés, refusing the desire to gawp at their interaction lest the men think me ill-mannered.

  “I regret that the commission could not undertake your project, professoré,” he said, kinder than I would have imagined such a powerful man could be. “But I shall do as I said and pass your application on to those who might.”

  “That would be most kind, noble segnoré,” said Vincenzio, bowing.

  “As a small return for that favor, I would like to borrow this bronze so that Philosophist di Bastianni can verify its antiquity. If it is proved, I’ll pay you very well for it. If not, I shall return it undamaged and wish you well in your endeavors.”

  “You are most— I don’t—” Vincenzio burst into a fit of coughing so dire he threw his arms across his face.

  The usher drew up a chair and helped him sit. Alarmed, I dropped to my knees at his side. Even when the coughing fit eased, Vincenzio remained bent over, limp and heaving for breath. To my horror, fresh blood wet his sleeve.

  “Our regrets, honorable sir,” I blurted. “It rained almost every day of our journey from Varela, and we pushed very hard so as to answer your query in a timely manner. Vincenzio was already in weakened health from his winter journey through the Hylides, obsessed as he is with this matter. If I could just get him back to our lodgings. Vincenzio…”

  Coughs and fevers were at their worst in the spring. Papa had died of typhus only two springs past, yet still Vincenzio refused to take proper care of himself. Where would I find help in this strange city? What would I do without him?

  As I tapped my brother’s cheek to rouse him, the Shadow Lord ordered the usher to bring a litter. “Take the gentleman wherever the woman says. Fetch an herbalist or physician as she wishes at my expense, of course.”

  A hand snatched up the statuary bag from the floor beside me. The philosophist held it out to Gallanos. “Best keep hold of this, Alessandro,” he said. “Even if it’s not the Antigonean work itself, it’s accurate enough to confuse the weak-minded. If these two peddle it around, your friend Boscetti might snatch it up and double his fee yet again. If it proves a fa
ke, as I suspect, we can destroy it. Ought to destroy it anyway, as I’ve told—”

  “Padroné!” I interrupted, heart pounding at my own audacity. “I’m certain Vincenzio will approve loaning you the bronze. He has such admiration, such respect. But please understand I cannot leave it just now … on my own. It is our father’s legacy; Vincenzio’s future.”

  His hesitation sent my heart to my throat, but after a moment Gallanos set the bag back where his friend had picked it up.

  “Certain, damizella, we will continue this conversation when the professoré is better.” Crouching down to put himself on a level with me, he pressed a coin into my gloved hand. “Secure his approval and yield me the bronze by the morning after next and a thousand of these will fund your brother’s investigations for a year or more.”

  “Oh, noble lord.” I clasped my hands to my breast and dropped my gaze. “I swear it.”

  Il Padroné joined the philosophist and hurried from the chamber, leaving us alone for the moment.

  As I turned back to my brother, Vincenzio’s hand gripped mine and pulled me close. “Night’s daughters, Romy, we did it!” he whispered. “A thousand silver solets. He knows the bronze is true.”

  Romy …

  In that moment, that touch, the utterance of a name, the world shifted, a sensation as when you descend a stair, stumbling as you discover the steps are twice as deep as you believed. Blinking, I met Placidio di Vasil’s grin. As bustling servants arrived with poles, canvas, and blankets, and assembled a sturdy litter, I wrapped my arm about the duelist’s shoulders, laid my forehead on his, and grinned back at him.

  Smothering elation in mock illness and concern, we allowed Sandro’s minions to escort us out of the Palazzo Segnori. When we arrived at the Cambio Gate, Professoré di Guelfi’s vigor improved enough to stagger from the litter, and we sent our escorts on their way with a message for il Padroné: Professoré di Guelfi and his sister would be pleased to deliver him the Antigonean bronze on the morning after next and submit it to whatever additional testing he wished.

  We spoke not a word as we proceeded downward on our own, alert for any followers. Neri, his help not needed, would wait at the Via Mortua gate a little longer as planned, then meet us at Dumond’s.

  Only as the busy evening traffic closed in around us did I squeeze Placidio’s broad shoulder. “What a performance, swordsman! Wherever did you come up with the blood?”

  “A duelist always has stitches to break.” Slowing his steps, he pulled back and tugged my chin around so he could peer down at my face. “But you, lady scribe, I’ve never seen such playacting. You had me believing you were Tarenah di Guelfi. I could smell the fish on you!”

  I scoffed at his sobriety, even as excitement cooled and sent shivers to tickle my spine, stronger by the moment. Still, Placidio and I laughed at ourselves all the way to Dumond’s house, where Vashti’s tea waited to warm my weakling nerves.

  Dumond soon joined us around Vashti’s low table for jasmine tea and a full recounting of our adventure. Neri joined us soon after and we told it all again in more detail. Vashti and Neri tossed questions, and all of us laughed at Placidio’s mimicry of the pompous philosophist. Though it had finally occurred to me what made me so uneasy about the man: He was the philosophist who chased Dumond into the Temple of Atladu with a nullifier and his sniffer.

  Neri crowed at the duelist’s description of my success as a subservient sister. “Teach me how to make her do it!”

  I riposted with Placidio’s noble defense of his fisherman parent and his attempts at scholarship that kept resulting in coughing fits.

  “But he believed,” said Dumond, who had been the quiet observer. “The Shadow Lord recognized that the bronze was the true one. A thousand silver solets and he set no condition save the statue itself. No one would pay so much for mere possibility, even a very rich man. Am I right in that, Romy?”

  The figures of Atladu and Dragonis sat in the center of our circle, Sandro’s silver coin beside it—one with his own likeness on it, stamped by the Gallanos bank.

  “He paid Boscetti two hundred to find it,” I said, “with a contract for two hundred more when the bronze was in his hand. When Boscetti claimed to need more to extract it from Mercediare, he agreed to double that. But he was angry at the petty maneuver, which would not bode well for Boscetti to get paid in any event. Il Padroné is generous to those who treat fairly with him, but he’s no fool with his money either. So, yes, I think he believes the statue is the true Antigonean bronze.”

  Neri scowled. “Why did he let it go, then? It was in his hand.”

  “He didn’t want to leave it with us,” I said, thinking back to his reluctant return of my bag. “But Alessandro di Gallanos would not like to think of himself as a thief. It might seem a small distinction to those who see him as the Shadow Lord of Cantagna, but not to him.”

  “I suppose we’ll soon know for certain,” said Placidio. “Will he respond to our last message with a meeting place or a constable?”

  His good humor had vanished, swallowed up as ever by impenetrable shadows. Placidio seemed like two people trapped in one body—the intelligent, skilled man of robust spirit and the bitter twin whose eyes darkened to pitch when others dug too deep or when he let himself enjoy a moment too much. Perhaps that was the curse on those who lived with magic. I hoped Neri would not suffer the same. Dumond seemed more equable, but I had never heard him laugh.

  Placidio drained his tea, then nudged the silver coin thoughtfully. “Certain, a thousand silvers would buy a deal of ink.”

  “Not just ink,” I said. “But foundry time … or marriage portions for daughters … or perhaps a suit of better clothes and an occasional trip to a bathhouse. If we are so fortunate as to pocket such an amount while keeping our heads intact and our bodies out of prison, we would, of course, share equally what’s left after our expenses. Would you all agree?”

  “I think that calls for more tea,” said Vashti.

  We spent a cheerful hour proposing increasingly mad collaborations that might yield such a profit. Even Placidio found his lighter side once again. But it was only an hour. We still had work to do. Vashti absconded with our costumes, hoping to improve her patchwork stitching. Dumond returned to the foundry, the Antigonean bronze in hand. A single day’s turn and the new statue must be ready for Neri to place in Palazzo Fermi—the most dangerous and uncertain part of our plan.

  I left Placidio and Neri at the Duck’s Bone, with a mutual vow that none of us would drink anything stronger than cider, and strolled alone through the dark streets to Lizard’s Alley. I wasn’t sure I had ever experienced such pleasurable satisfaction. To gather with serious-minded people in a worthwhile endeavor—to laugh together while speaking of dread matters—brought back a taste of the life I’d shared with the Shadow Lord. Yet those times and my role in them were entirely entwined with him, a singularity I would always treasure. This venture was rooted in my belief in Sandro and his vision, but I had chosen the course for myself. Yet, still, there was more to my elation … to the freedom I felt on this singular night.

  I could scarce recall a thought from the commission meeting and its aftermath that was not filtered solely through the eyes, ears, and knowledge of Tarenah di Guelfi. Sandro had looked me full in the face and seen neither Cataline nor Romy. It had been no performance. Rouge, hair dye, and Paolin silk could never manage so impregnable a disguise.

  Chills had ghosted across my skin when Placidio uttered my true name. The same chills I had experienced after my playacting in the street of the coffinmakers—when Neri believed I was truly drunk. The same chills I had experienced after the bronze showed me visions and impossible certainties beyond the world I knew. When fear or anxiety or curiosity forced me to reach deep inside myself, when I chose to set Romy aside and become someone else, whether Tarenah the devoted sister or a drunken harridan, something extraordinary had happened. I had reached for strength and found my magic.

  That changed every
thing I had believed of history and myth … of good and evil … and of the power that was born in me. For the first time in my life I owned true power that was beholden to no one—something I could work on, shape to my will as Placidio had done, and use for purposes I deemed worthy as Dumond did.

  Magic. No one in the world could ever again make me believe it was evil.

  18

  DAY 3—NOON

  On the morning after our venture to the commission, my elation sagged. The risks awaiting Neri at Palazzo Fermi had woken me before dawn and raddled my nerves for every subsequent moment. A step in the alley could be condottieri coming to arrest us. A knock could be a ruse to lure us out. I tried to accomplish some work at the shop, but every time someone used one of the message boxes, the click of the key or the sliding of paper through a slot had me off my stool and checking the box marked 6—the one I’d used for my message to the commission. What would I do if Sandro sent a message that he was no longer interested in the Antigonean bronze?

  Neri, on the other hand, slept late. It was midday when he poked his face through the shop door, munching on the cold fish dumplings I’d left him.

  I quickly returned my knife to the shelf under my writing table.

  “Expecting trouble, Romy?”

  “Placidio and I must be with you tonight.”

  He closed the door behind him and perched on the stool across my writing table. “Told you, I can’t take anyone along when I walk with magic.”

  “Certainly we can’t follow you in, but we must be close by in case of trouble. You said walking through walls depleted you; so what if your magic fails while you’re inside? What if someone sees you? If you vanish through a wall in front of them, they’ll summon sniffers. You would have to fight your way out. You’re not going to face such danger alone.”

  “Good thing you bought me fighting lessons before you decided to send me into a well-defended palazzo to work magic.”

  He knew his jab would stick me where it hurt. I chose to believe the leer that followed was good-spirited.