He forced himself to pay attention to Marin Djivo. “We will receive an escort tomorrow or the next day, that happens with Jaddite merchants, so I thought I’d speak today. We will, as you likely know, go our separate ways in the city.”
“What? Why?” said the youngest of the Seressinis. He wasn’t, it appeared, one of those who likely knew.
Djivo said patiently, “You’ll be escorted across the strait to the other shore where Seressinis and other Jaddite merchants have their warehouses and reside. Dubrava has a . . . different relationship. We are permitted to remain in Asharias itself.”
“How convenient for you,” said the young one. His name was Guibaldo Ferri, and Pero didn’t like him.
“It can be,” Djivo agreed equably. He grinned. “You’ll find pretty women on your side, too. But the guards do watch you. They watch all of us.”
“So I’ve heard,” said the oldest of the merchants. “How closely?”
Djivo looked at him. “That’s what I wanted to talk about. I do this as a courtesy, you understand. What happens to you doesn’t really affect me or my goods, but we have travelled together.”
“We have,” said the older merchant, one of the Grilli family.
“And so I urge you to say nothing at all, even when you think you are among friends, of what happened on the road. And impress this on your servants, if they want to get home.”
“Oh. Skandir, you mean?” Ferri’s voice was too loud. Pero looked quickly towards the road.
Djivo kept his expression grave. “Yes, that. Please understand. They will imprison you, and torture you for information, and then kill you if they learn you were present when soldiers died.”
“Kill Seressini merchants? Travelling with safe conducts? I think not.”
“Trust me,” Marin Djivo said. “It is worth your life.”
“And yours?” Ferri grinned.
“And mine,” Djivo agreed. “And your family will never trade with Asharias again. Think on it, signore.”
That had an effect. Marin Djivo, thought Pero, was an impressive man. He’d be sorry to part with him, but his own journey would continue differently now.
“Was there anything more?” Nelo Grilli asked. He was paying close attention.
Djivo hesitated. “One thing, yes. I offer this as another courtesy, signore. Please believe me, I imply nothing at all. Understand that they will search us carefully, our persons, our goods, our rooms. If it has occurred to any of you that you might secret some trade items to avoid the tariffs, I urge you to think otherwise. The tariffs are high, but Osmanlis punish our people heavily for offences—and more so in wartime.”
“I have no such goods,” Grilli said. “But I understand what you are saying.”
Djivo looked briefly at Guibaldo Ferri and at the last merchant, of the Bosini family. Ferri shrugged, Bosini nodded.
They dispersed to their meals. Pero was turning to do the same—he saw that Tomo had set out food—when Djivo called him back.
—
HE LIKES PERO VILLANI, and is fairly certain the artist will die here.
He doesn’t think that means that he will himself, but there are no certainties in Asharias. They are far from home, and whatever Dubrava might do to stay safe and accepted, they are among enemies here, and there is an army in the field. It is, in fact, why these journeys can be so lucrative. Profit measured by risk. Skirting around the edges of a war.
The two of them are alone. Marin says, in a grassy field by the road, amid purple and yellow flowers, “I am uncertain if we will see each other once inside the walls.”
“I understand that. I am grateful for your guiding us here.”
He hesitates, still. You can like a man and be wrong about him. Then he decides he isn’t wrong. He says, “Signore, I am leaving this party tonight. I’ll be going ahead with my servants and goods. We will reach our next inn before sunset. I will leave in the dark.”
Villani stands very still, thinking. In Marin’s experience, Seressinis tend to be quick, too sure of themselves. The artist isn’t. Eventually, he says, “Why are you telling me?”
The right question. Marin says, “Because I am inviting you to come with me. I believe . . . I have no knowledge, but I believe that at least one of the others will likely be in difficulty once Osmanli guards arrive as escorts.”
“Hidden goods?”
He nods.
“You warned them.”
“Yes. Merchants try to avoid tariffs. Sometimes it succeeds and foolish men hear that and decide to risk it. I think you may be endangered if you are with them when you enter the city, given your own tasks.”
He says tasks, deliberately. He doesn’t say painting.
“Going into the palace, you mean?”
“To the khalif. And . . .” He needs to say it, Marin realizes. There is no point to this conversation otherwise. “Perhaps with a purpose beyond a portrait?”
Villani goes pale. Not surprising, really.
Marin says, “I mean you well, signore. I have no knowledge, only some understanding of the Council of Twelve, and perhaps the world . . . and from observing your servant.”
“Tomo?”
“Yes. It is possible he has his own tasks. Is not just serving you. And that you might also be at risk because of those. I am sorry to say it, but I am not certain the council would value your life over . . . other things.”
Villani looks shaken but not, Marin judges, entirely surprised. “The life of the khalif, for example.”
“The end of that life, yes.” He does lower his own voice, saying those words.
“And Tomo . . . ?”
“Is he a true servant?”
Villani frowns. “He knows what servants do, but he is . . .”
“More?”
“Perhaps. Yes. How much more, are you thinking?”
This is such a dangerous conversation. He shakes his head. “I am not the one to say.”
“Shall I?” asks Pero Villani. He smiles faintly.
“Not to me. I don’t matter.”
Villani shakes his head. “Are you not also at risk if someone you journeyed with tries to kill the khalif?”
Marin can’t help it: he looks quickly around. They are still alone, far enough from the road and from the other merchants.
“I might be. But I am not Seressini.”
“You could even warn them.”
“I could. I won’t. It is not how I see myself.”
Villani nods. “Thank you. Again.”
Marin clears his throat. There is another thing he needs to say. “They will search your paints and supplies, Signore Villani. Before you are anywhere near the palace complex. Signore, you should understand that in Asharias they know . . . they are very familiar with poisons.”
The man grows pale again. He says, “I only desire to do a portrait, as best I can. And then go home. What you suggest . . . it is not how I see myself, either.”
Marin says, “I imagine that is so. Others might have placed you in such a role?”
They hear laughter from the road. The birds are singing now. There had been a hawk. It must be gone. Marin doesn’t look for it. He watches the other man.
Villani says, “I will come with you tonight. I will be . . . I am honoured that you have offered this.”
Marin nods, manages a smile. “Perhaps you’ll paint my portrait one day, if we both go home.”
“Another honour, gospodar,” the other man says. “Let us both contrive to go home.”
“Let us,” Marin says.
Inwardly, regretfully, he still doesn’t believe the other man will do so.
—
PERO VILLANI WAS NOT AN INNOCENT. You couldn’t live in the tannery district of Seressa among the cutpurses and the canal-side poor, the artists, the whores of both sexes, the
particular friends he had, and remain sheltered in your view of life.
Still, he was shaken by the conversation with Marin Djivo. It was as if he’d come all this way through Osmanli-ruled lands and not considered certain things at all. Which, at this moment, seemed foolish beyond words. Djivo had been calm (he usually was), not judging, only . . . being a friend, it seemed.
And putting Pero to a difficult decision. Not about leaving in the night. That he had known he’d do the moment the offer was made. He was Seressini. If he arrived in the company of others from that widely mistrusted city and they did, indeed, try to conceal goods from the officials, his own fate could easily be bound up with whatever happened to them, and it was unlikely to be pleasant.
No, his decision concerned his servant, and the paint pots they’d carried across Sauradia, carefully wrapped, on one of the pack animals. One ceramic pot, in particular. He was bringing lead white paint with him, already mixed—it was used for undercoats and sometimes to alter another colour’s intensity. He had three full containers of it. Well, two full ones, in truth.
The third had a sealed alchemist’s vial of white arsenic hidden in the thick paint. The outside of that jar had two scratches on it, not quite parallel to each other, very faint.
It had not been suggested, by the clerk to the Council of Twelve who’d advised him on this added dimension to his mission, just how Pero was to place poison in the food or drink of the Grand Khalif Gurçu. Evidently, assassins deployed by Seressa were expected to use initiative in such matters. And to accept the near certainty of their death. It was hinted (delicately) that Pero might wish to save some of the arsenic for himself if he proceeded with this. Should such an action come to pass successfully, he was told, his name would long reverberate with honour in the republic and his family be supported by the state for generations.
“I have no family,” Pero remembered saying.
He’d asked why Seressa would want the khalif dead. And, to be fair, the clerk did answer. When khalifs died there was chaos in Asharias and among the army leaders. Successions were never smooth if more than one son was alive, and sometimes even if there was only the one. Others might think themselves better suited to the throne. The djannis often rioted in the city and in garrison towns, demanding extravagant gifts from whoever succeeded, in return for continued loyalty. Rebellion might also emerge among restive tribes in the east, chafing under rule from Asharias.
There was, in brief, extreme disruption. A new khalif’s siblings, the ones who lost any power struggle, were invariably killed. Living brothers were a bad thing for khalifs. Various wives, viziers, and eunuchs would also need dealing with, or disposing of.
Trouble in Asharias tended to mean peace in Jaddite lands. No Osmanli army of forty or fifty thousand pushing northwest in the spring. That interlude might end when the new khalif felt a need to show his prowess. But in the interval, trade was safer by land and sea, and for Seressa it was always about trade. And it was entirely possible that whichever son (there were two alive, it seemed) followed the Destroyer might be less ferociously bent on conquest in the west.
Which would be good for Jad and his children, wouldn’t it? Pero remembered the privy clerk asking him that. And thus: two nearly parallel lines marking one of his paint pots.
Pero had noted that nothing was said by the clerk about vengeance against the man who’d conquered Sarantium and had the last emperor and his family in the city killed, heads displayed to rot on pikes by the triple walls.
His own city, Pero Villani recalled thinking, was many things, but those in or near power had limits to their pious sanctimony. You could call it a good trait if you wanted to.
In the meantime, right now, as they came to a large inn late in the day, Pero needed to decide what to do. What his father would have done—which was how he often dealt with such moments. Although there had never been a moment like this in Viero Villani’s life, he was quite certain.
In the end—the thought came strongly—he was a painter, not a man who killed. Even if killing someone might save lives, or avenge, in some small way, the thunderous fall of Sarantium. Even if an aged empress had spoken to him of that, as well.
It wasn’t cowardice, he told himself. And that felt to be true. It had to do with how one wanted to walk under the sun, through a life. Rasca Tripon could not live without his battles. Neither, Pero thought, could Danica Gradek.
He was not such a person. And if what Djivo said was correct, he was never going to be anywhere near the khalif without everything he owned being very carefully inspected.
No westerners ever stood in the presence of Gurçu. It was known. They never even entered the palace complex. But Pero would be there, it seemed, and soon. So this inexplicable commission for a western-style portrait would put every guard and palace official into a panic-stricken state of vigilance.
Pero Villani, artist of Seressa, son of an artist, was not an assassin. And would never be allowed to become one here. Both were true things, he thought, and he made his decision outside a roadside inn.
He sent Tomo to prepare his room. He asked him to supervise hot water for a bath and a change of clothes. That would take time. He called Marin Djivo over and walked the man away from the others, towards the stables where their animals were being taken. They stopped outside. Djivo looked at him. A tall man, neatly bearded, even after this long journey. Pero said, “I needed a reason to linger a moment here. Thank you. When do I meet you tonight? Where?”
“Right here,” the other man said, his voice betraying nothing. “At blue moonrise. Is your servant coming with us?”
“No,” said Pero Villani. “I will enter Sarantium with you alone.”
“Asharias,” said Marin Djivo.
Pero looked at him. “Sarantium,” he repeated quietly.
Djivo frowned. “I understand. But only in your mind and heart. If you want to live.” He turned and walked away.
Pero went into the stables, found the donkey with his supplies strapped to it. Artists knew how to deal with ropes, knots, sealed pots, canvas. There was light from the open doors, the smell of animals, dung, straw. He unwrapped his gear, found the kiln-fired paint pot with two scratches on it. He lifted it out. Rewrapped everything else, carefully. Tied it back on the donkey. Made himself move slowly. There was no danger here, he told himself.
There was, probably, but he’d be awkward and rushed if he let himself think that way. His heart was beating too fast as it was.
He walked back into the stable yard and then away towards poplar trees and a stream behind the inn. To the west, a willow dropped its leaves towards the water. The sun was going down. It was pleasant, warm at the end of spring. Flowers on the riverbank, drone of bees. He saw a fox run past on the far side.
He pretended to be relieving himself in the stream. He heard birdsong, and someone’s servant shouting off to his right. Smoke rose from the main chimney of the inn. Dinner being prepared. He heard laughter over that way.
Pero took his knife and pried open the pot. He hesitated, then began pouring the thick paint out into the water. White lead was not expensive, this was not especially wasteful.
Jad’s dear love. I really am a Seressini, he thought. As if the cost of the paint mattered in any way at all.
The apothecary’s tube, tightly wrapped, stoppered, appeared at the neck of the jar. Death in a vial. His own death, most likely. He thought about lifting it out, opening it, spilling it in the grass by the willow tree. He realized it wasn’t necessary, could even be dangerous. Arsenic could kill on touch, he’d heard from someone. He didn’t remember who had told him that.
He poured the rest of the jar’s contents, including the sealed poison he’d carried all this way, into the rushing water at his feet. He saw the vial for an instant, then didn’t see it any more.
He tossed the empty paint pot in as well and went back to the inn.
—
TOMO KNEW HE’D been deliberately sent away with those instructions as to clothes and a bath. He had a pretty good idea what the artist would be doing, after his conversation with Marin Djivo. The exchange they’d thought no one could follow.
There were difficulties coming now. For one thing, Guibaldo Ferri was not only foolish, he was dangerous—could get other men killed.
Ferri was carrying twenty small gold-plated sun disks in the false bottom of a clothing chest. His principal servant, a talkative fellow, had told Tomo as much early on their journey.
The duty on Jaddite religious artifacts brought into Asharias for sale was forty percent. You could still make money, but you could make a lot of money if you dodged that tax, and Ferri had evidently decided that if others could, by report, so could he and his family.
There was a ready market here (on the far side of the strait, where Jaddites were allowed to live and trade) for such items, and people paid handsomely so far from home. Distance equalled profit, if you didn’t get undone by the taxes.
Or death, Tomo thought. He really didn’t want to pass through the city’s walls in the company of a man smuggling goods. Religious goods. In a time of war. Yet he now knew, being rather more than an artist’s servant, that his own man and the clever Dubravae intended to slip away tonight—leaving Tomo with the Seressinis.
Not a good development. He had his own assignments here. There had been an awareness within the Council of Twelve that he was unlikely to have any chance to perform some of them. But if Villani was permitted, or required, to dwell inside the palace grounds and allowed to have his manservant with him (unlikely, but . . .) then Tomo Agosta would be the first trained spy in there since the fall of Sarantium.
It was worth a great deal to the duke and the council, and so to Tomo—in silver and gold—if that happened and he returned to the canals with whatever he’d observed. He had his ambitions, did Tomo Agosta. What man of spirit did not?
Children of Earth and Sky Page 39