by V. Briceland
Before he could stop the man, Nic found his hands being stuffed with forest nuts, their shells roasted and split to reveal the red husk and green meat within. Hastily he thrust them into his pockets before anyone else saw. “Thank you, signor. I am sixteen. Seventeen in a few months.”
“You’re older than I thought. What’s your name, then?”
“Nic, signor. No surname.” Nic’s voice had remained quiet. His eyes darted in the direction of the main room, looking for some avenue of escape.
“You’d best not let the Drake find you talking to his boy like that, signor,” called out a passing serving wench as she waltzed by, two flagons in her hands.
“And why not?” said the man, still sounding cheerful. “Are we not all free men—and women—of Cassaforte, able to speak with whom we please?”
“You and I, maybe,” said the wench. She gestured with a flagon at Nic before disappearing into the public room. “The boy? No.”
“Saucy girl,” said Signor Arturo, watching her flounce off. Then, in a more confidential voice he added to Nic, “And pretty, eh? But don’t tell the wife I said so,” he added with a wink, once he caught Nic’s involuntary grin. He had pointed to his finger, around which lay a gold marriage band. “So, lad, what is it you want to do with the rest of your life?”
It was impossible to resist the man’s infectious good spirits. “I—I don’t know, signor.” He shook his head. “I do what my master bids.”
The expression with which the signor regarded him was kindly, yet his eyes narrowed. “You’re indentured, no? But that won’t last forever. Don’t you have a dream, lad?” he had asked, crossing his arms and regarding him curiously. “Something you’d like to do once you’ve worked out your debt? Nothing to make your soul sing as you get through the dark days? Hmm?” No one had ever asked Nic about his wants before. They weren’t discussed in the servant’s quarters of any of the houses where he’d worked. Wishing was something other people did. For a moment he gawped at the man, trying to think. “What has that master of yours done to you?” asked Signor Arturo. His hand reached out. Before Nic could stop him, he had removed Nic’s cap, exposing a purple knot the Drake had left with a well-aimed blow. The man also took in Nic’s blackened left eye, which he’d been attempting to conceal. “It should be a crime, beating the dreams out of a boy before he’s dared to dream them.”
Gruffly, Nic snatched his cap back and shoved it back onto his head. “Sorry,” he said, knowing the man hadn’t meant any harm.
“It’s me who should be apologizing, boy. It’s just that when I saw that bruise—”
“Oy.” The serving wench entered through the kitchen door and gave a whistle to Nic. “He’s on the move, looking for you.”
Every nerve that had relaxed around Signor Arturo jangled with alarm. Nic adjusted his cap, made sure he had the packet of tabbaco di foglia in his hands, and turned to apologize. Signor Arturo, however, had vanished without a word. His disappearance turned out to be well-timed, for mere seconds later, the Drake met Nic at the closer of the two kitchen doors. His eyes had darted around the premises, searching for something. “Where the devil have you been?” When Nic had held up the packet of dried pipe weed, the Drake had snatched it away and peered into the busy kitchen. “Tell me, boy, and be truthful, or I’ll snatch your tongue by its roots.” Nic swallowed hard and held his breath when the Drake’s face loomed close, smelling of sweet wine and decay. “Was anyone in here asking you to help him cheat at cards?”
The question was so far removed from what Nic feared that all he could do was shake his head. “Who would ever ask me that?” he finally said, when the Drake stared him down.
“Yes,” said the Drake, grabbing his collar and pulling him out into the public room. “Who would ask such a thing indeed?”
It had occurred to Nic at that moment, dragged into the smoke and commotion of the noisy room, how silly he’d been, frightened to admit even to himself that he’d indulged in a harmless bit of dreaming. Not even that—a scrap of fantasy about whether or not he should be permitted to dream. Of all the ridiculous things to worry about! If Nic had been sleepy before, he felt wide awake now. “Ho, my friend!” a hearty voice called out, cutting through the room’s din with practiced ease. Both Nic and the Drake turned to see Armand Arturo standing in the doorway of the private room. “You’re missed at the table.”
Nic knew that Signor Arturo had to have exited through the kitchen’s far door, then circled around to the private gaming room. The Drake obviously didn’t. He kept blinking at the space between themselves and the still-swinging kitchen door they’d just exited, as if it were impossible to conceive of any other route.
“Come, man,” called out Signor Arturo. “I’m sure you’ve more lundri for me to take.”
“Oh, will you now,” breathed the Drake, so softly that only Nic could hear. In a loud, challenging voice he replied, “I believe you must be mistaken, my friend. ’Tis you who could stand to lose a few more pounds … of coin.”
The crowd laughed. “Oh, I see, I see,” said Signor Arturo. He patted his waist. “A jibe about my weight. I see. Very good. Very good, sir. Well then.” He cleared his throat loudly. “Perhaps the Drake would care to open his coin purse as boldly as he does his mouth and join me in a special two-man hand of taroccho. Unless, that is, the esteemed signor is too busy beating his servants to beat such a one as me.”
The Drake’s fingers had dug into Nic’s collarbone. With a roomful of witnesses, however, anything more violent would only justify Signor Arturo’s taunt. It took a great deal of deliberation for the Drake to loosen his grasp and make his tone pleasant and conversational. “Oh, I believe I could best you, signor,” he’d sneered, eyes pulled into slits. “In one of any number of things. Cards included.”
“Very well then. I’ve a wager you’ll not be able to resist, then,” said the other man, beckoning with an open arm. “Particularly if you aren’t afraid to play for stakes higher than mere markers.”
“I fear nothing. What are we to speculate?”
“Privately, if you will.” Signor Arturo had nodded in Nic’s direction.
After a moment’s consideration, the Drake pushed back his servant, so roughly that Nic gasped when he hit the wall. “Stay until you’re called,” growled the Drake.
Nic slid down to the floor to wait, legs curled. He’d watched as Signor Arturo talked in the doorway, and as the Drake listened and at last nodded. Neither of them looked in his direction as they disappeared into the gaming room.
For long minutes he marked time. He’d watched as the innkeeper ordered more trays of dried fruits and sweet wines be taken in to the gamblers, and kept out of the way of the inn’s mistress and her ever-busy broom. He counted the logs waiting to be thrown into the blazing fire, and the jars of pickled limes sitting on a shelf. All that long while, while he waited and waited for the evening to be over and for his master to emerge from that back room, pockets bulging with coin, he wondered to himself. What exactly would he do with himself, if one day he were to escape from his indentures? What made his soul sing? To someone who’d never really considered the matter before, it was a daunting question. Nothing stirred him—and yet, given the opportunity, anything might.
In the end, it was not the Drake who returned from the back. Signor Arturo emerged after a half-hour’s play, his face sober. Hands on his hips, he looked around the public room until at last he spotted Nic in his position against the wall. “All right, lad,” he said, striding over and offering the boy a hand up. “It’s time we’re on our way.”
“But my master …”
“Is me. No,” Signor Arturo said, in response to Nic’s look of incomprehension, “it’s true. I’ve won your indentures from that vile, loathsome … well, that’s neither here nor there. You’re stuck with me, now. And the rest of the Theatre of Marvels, of course.”
“And it wasn’t easy!” said the man. “I had to put up the deed of my theater against your indentures. Still. Two knaves and two kings beats a handful of triumphs every time. Let that be a lesson to you, lad. Think big and wager large!”
Nic still refused to believe what the man was telling him. He was free from the Drake, and the Drake hadn’t even expired? Perhaps all that talk about his curse had been utter nonsense, after all. “You wagered your theater for me?”
Right then, the friendly serving wench stepped out of the back room and grinned broadly in Nic’s direction. “Congratulations, love,” she said with a wink. “And good night, Signor Arturo.” She blew a kiss in his direction.
It had to be true, then. Nic had a new master—and one who was infinitely more congenial than any he’d had before. “Well.” Signor Arturo coughed into his hand. “Indeed. Shall we, ah, yes? Go?”
With a hand on Nic’s shoulder, he gently escorted the boy in the direction of the exit. “You really won me?” Nic asked, incredulous still.
“Yes, and I’ll keep you on, on three conditions.” Nic nodded, but not until they were outside in the night air made cooler by the deep canals did Signor Arturo speak again. “One. Dream a little for yourself.”
Nic nodded and, for the first time in ages, allowed a grin to cross his lips. It felt unfamiliar to smile, but now that it had started, he didn’t want to stop. “All right, sir.”
“Two,” said the man, counting off his fingers. “You’ll have to have a surname. Pick one you like, if you haven’t one to call your own. How many can say they’ve had that chance?”
What other name could he pick than the one belonging to the only friends he had? “Dattore,” he had announced, without hesitation. “I’d like to be known as Niccolo Dattore, sir.”
“And so you shall. Done. Now let’s get back home, Niccolo Dattore. Come on.” The man’s voice was gruff as he thrust his hands deep into his waistcoat. “We’ve a bit of a walk ahead of us.”
Nic’s step had turned into a scamper as he kept up with his new master. “But what’s the third condition, signor?”
“Oh! That.” The man had laughed. “The Signora might not take it well if she found out I’d been gambling the deed to a theater that …” He coughed again. “Well. Doesn’t technically exist. So. Word to the wise, eh? Just between us men.” What Signor Arturo didn’t know, though he might have suspected from the sheer width of the smile crossing Nic’s face, is that he would have kept any secret of his new master to the very grave.
Another thing that neither Signor Arturo nor Nic knew was that even as they walked down the canal path in the direction of the city’s center, two men were waiting in the shadows for the Drake to emerge from the Viper’s Sting. They were servants of the member of the Thirty whom the Drake had so rudely unseated not two hours before, and in their hands were daggers.
When the Drake’s body was found three days later, floating on the shore, his face was so unrecognizable that his corpse was never identified. It eventually was buried in a pauper’s grave. When the master failed to come home for some time, the Drake’s disreputable creditors assumed the worst and quietly dissolved the household. To the servants they gave their due, then claimed the rest for themselves. Although it was to be a long time before Michaelo and Renaldo Dattore ever saw Nic again, they remembered him fondly, and often wondered what had become of the lad whose curse had made their freedom possible.
The Cassafortean Theater is quite unlike what civilized patrons of the arts encounter in other countries. The actors play the same roles from play to play—broad archetypes such as the Old Man or the Ingenue—though of course the plots vary. And my dear, most scandalous of all is that they allow actual women to perform female roles upon the stage!
—Dama Carolynn de Vere,
in a letter to her sister, the Honorable Grubb
When Nic awoke after the destruction of the Pride of Muro—and he did awaken, though with a head that seemed three times its normal size and the sunlight forcing tears from his eyes—it was with a mouthful of sand and an overwhelming certainty that he was dead. He was not, of course. He had been kept afloat during the night, saved by the buoyancy of Sea Dog’s Deceit, which accumulated clusters of air bubbles within its dense tendrils. Entangled in the weeds and unconscious, Nic simply had drifted to the shore of one of the Azure Isles, that archipelago of small islands avoided by sea vessels and civilized men. On the sands he had lain, lapped at by the tides, until at last he had forced open his crust-covered eyes and stared with disbelief around him.
Nic spent a moment staring at the bushels of soggy seaweed he’d dragged ashore with him, and then at the carrion bird circling hopefully overhead. His head hanging, he studied the flotsam on the beach, and watched an unafraid crab skitter sideways across the sands. His eyes took in the horizon before him. It was vast and beautiful, true, but also endless and empty … and likely to remain so.
“Well then,” he said at last. With a great deal of stiffness, he pulled himself to his feet and began to take stock of his new situation.
Away from the beach, a wall of stone rose a dozen arm-spans in the air. Its crumbling face was visible only when Nic stumbled closer to it, for tree trunks were growing between the strata of rock, digging in and clinging on to the cliff as if for sheer life. Their trunks grew out and down, covered with oval leaves and heavy with a scarlet, shiny fruit that looked almost tomato-like, but which lay easily in the flat of his hand when he plucked one from a low-hanging branch. He sniffed at it cautiously, then broke through the skin with his nails and tasted the juice. When it didn’t cause his throat to swell or his tongue to go numb, he took an experimental bite. The fruit’s sweet flesh and astringent juice would have been refreshing under any circumstances, but to his starving stomach it was a gift from the gods.
There was enough fruit here to keep him fed for weeks, he noted with some satisfaction. As he ate, he walked along the sand in front of the stony outcropping. The dense foliage might protect him slightly in a storm. Three fruits later, when his face was sticky and his belly sated for the moment, Nic came across a dark opening in the rock—a low entrance leading into a hollow within which he could almost stand up. It was deep enough that he could crawl to the back and be completely sheltered by the overhang. Yes, he decided, the little cave could easily be his home for now.
With his legs a little stronger, he ventured back to the beach. Nowhere on the horizon could he see the blackened outline of the Pride of Muro. In truth, he had no idea in which direction it might lie. The restless sea, however, bore the evidence of its destruction. Scattered along the beach was wood from the ship’s wreckage, some of it charred from the explosion he had caused, the rest broken and splintered. At first he thought only splintered remnants of hull had washed ashore. Then as his eyes became more accustomed to the sun’s glare from the sands, he noticed something gleaming from atop a section of hull slightly over an arm-span round.
Racing as fast as his unsteady limbs could carry him, he found the short sword he’d wrested away from the pirate the night before. “You again!” he said, laughing. Its blade was half buried in the wood. Only by planting his feet on the planks and tugging with all his might did he eventually loosen the weapon. The human hair hanging from its handle was stiff from salt water and sun, but once it was his again, Nic tossed the weapon around in his hand. It was a horror, lovingly made as it was. The hilt of polished bone sported a leering skull at its end. Still, a blade could be useful for cutting firewood, or gutting fish, no matter how hideous. As for the section of hull it had been buried in—well, Nic had some definite ideas of how it might be useful.
Ignoring for the moment the other little trinkets and commonplace treasures he was beginning to spy among the flotsam, Nic salvaged a length of rope floating in the shallow waters. Within minute
s he had fastened the rope to the circular section of hull and turned it into a sled that he could drag along, very similar to one he had used when he had been apprenticed to a farrier. That sled, however, he had used to transport horse droppings from stable to dung heap. On this one he piled wood and boxes and whatever scraps of sail or rigging he could find, before dragging it up to his cave in the rock cropping. It was dirty work, but hard labor was exactly what he was used to. What was more, it kept him from having to think overmuch on his situation, which was exactly the last thing he cared to do.
The sun moved from the east to overhead, and then from its noontime height to a lower position in the west. It was not until it was round, red, and swollen over the horizon that Nic stopped to take stock. He had covered the cave’s front with planks of wood and sections of hull to protect it from the elements. He’d then draped it with armfuls of the dried seaweed that littered the beach, and finally covered them with a layer of brush from the trees hanging overhead. The effect was not unlike the game-hunting blinds he had constructed for the master he’d had not four years before, who had supplemented his income as a fence of stolen goods by poaching in the royal wilds north of the river gates. Using a tinder box he had found entangled in Sea Dog’s Deceit, he created a small fire outside the cave to keep him warm after dark. He’d considered building a larger bonfire on the beach in order to attract the attention of a larger boat and perhaps rescue. However, instinct told him that the pirates might still be in the area—or worse, the pompadoured noblemen of Pays d’Azur. Theirs was not the attention he wished to draw.