Suicide Kings

by Christopher J. Ferguson

  “What’s he saying?” Siobhan whispered.

  Diana shook her head. “Something about the book being some kind of true gospel of Lucifer. I can’t make it all out, and don’t think it matters too much anyway. Typical heretical rubbish.”

  “Might be the robes, but this lot seems a bit paunchier than I imagined. Don’t seem quite so intimidating now I lay eyes on them,” Siobhan said.

  “Well, there are nearly forty of them, and three of us.” As Diana said it she noted several more men at the periphery, unmasked and each armed with a harquebus. “A couple of them at least are armed. Besides I suspect the men and women in this room have been plucked from the top echelon of Firenze society. Merchants, politicians, lawyers…on the whole, much more dangerous for the long-term than oafish soldiers.”

  “Robes and masks—” Francesca looked over Diana’s shoulder. “—they look plenty spooky to me. I’ll keep an eye on the hallway, unless you have something you’d prefer me to do?”

  Diana shook her head. They needed someone to keep an eye out. Francesca quietly left through the door behind them.

  “So now what?” Siobhan asked.

  “That, I don’t really know. Can’t very well kill all forty of them, can we? Even if it were possible, not all of them are involved in my mother’s murder.”

  “I can’t imagine any of them are pure and innocent either. If not your mother’s murder, then the murder of someone.”

  “Either way, unless you’ve learned how to reload a firearm a lot faster than I can, it’s just not possible.”

  Siobhan frowned, having no real answer to that.

  Behind them, the door opened once more. Francesca hurried to them, breathing quickly. “Someone is coming down the hall,” she whispered urgently.

  The three of them hushed, even holding their breath. Two pistols remained trained on the door. Even with the heretical service droning on behind them, they could hear the soft footfalls as someone approached, a guard patrolling most likely. One footfall after another, creaking on a floorboard. At one point they stopped just on the other side of the dividing wall, and a loud thump startled them. Diana realized a moment later that it must have been the sound of a harquebus being rested on the ground.

  Following this a soft thump against the wall likely announced someone leaning to take a break. Moments passed, stretching on until at last the footsteps resumed down the hall and out of earshot.

  Only then did Diana allow herself sufficient breath. “I think we are unwise to have approached this situation without an established plan.” She massaged her aching temples.

  “Are we at an impasse?” Francesca asked.

  Diana nodded. “There’s so many of them, and no way to tell who is responsible for my mother’s death. I would imagine one or more of the men in white may have ordered her death, but I can’t decide which of them may be the leader—the priest leading the prayers or one of the men sitting just to the side.”

  “Ah, their masks hide their identity,” Francesca observed. “Would it help your decision to know who they are?”

  “I suppose we might be able to make a more informed decision if we knew who those men were. It’s not as if we can ask them to remove their masks so we can decide who to shoot.”

  “We could summon the hounds of your friend Savonarola,” Siobhan suggested. “He’d happily see this whole lot burn.”

  Tempting thought. “It would take hours to get back into town, inform Savonarola, for him to assemble enough gendarmes and return to raid this establishment. By then this heretical meeting might be over. Besides the last Republic botched raid led, if indirectly, to my mother’s murder.”

  “I had better resume my watch on the hall.” Francesca turned away. “Another guard might come by.”

  Diana waved her acquiescence absentmindedly, lost in thought. Francesca disappeared once again into the hall.

  “We have two shots between us. Say one for the officiating priest, another for one of the other men in white. Make our best guess and hope that God guides our shot,” Siobhan suggested, twitching a bit with energy.

  “And if we chose wrong and hit someone with no involvement in my mother’s death we become no better than murderers ourselves.”

  “These people, from low to high are all heretics and hardly deserve any better. Whatever they knew or did not know about your mother’s death, the blood of someone is on each of their hands, you can be sure of that. Besides the men in white are all clearly of high status. Is it unreasonable to suspect each of them consented in your mother’s assassination?”

  “Without evidence? I am wary of such a random killing. I do not think God would guide the hand of violence.”

  “Well, we can hardly go down and interrogate them one by one, can we?”

  Diana shook her head angrily. “I was wrong to bring you both here. We’ve gone to great risk for nothing. The best we can do is return to the city center and alert Savonarola.”

  “You yourself said that won’t work!” Siobhan protested, a bit too loudly.

  “I’ve made up my mind,” Diana replied firmly. “We’re leaving. Would you kindly fetch Francesca?”

  With a dejected look, Siobhan nodded. She moved quickly to the door and opened it. Diana could hear her voice whisper, “Francesca?” A moment passed and Siobhan repeated the whispered call a bit louder. Finally Siobhan entered the hall, the door closing behind her. Diana watched the congregation below, now slipping into a group chorus that sounded vaguely similar to the droning of monks, only with mixed sex voices. They seemed a reasonably devout lot; she had to give them as much. And against her expectations, she saw no evidence of human sacrifice or sexual orgies or consorting with winged demons. This apostasy consisted of a more mundane composition, that of ideas gone hopelessly astray from the canon of the Christian church. The penitents below had been led off course, not by an inclination toward evil, but by their own search for answers to the greater mysteries of life and death, perhaps fueled by a natural repugnance toward the behavior of Christ’s recent representatives in Rome. Hatred of others, fear of death, is that what it all came down to? Is that what ultimately fueled what had become of Christ’s message? If these heretics should burn for eternity for their specious beliefs in a benevolent Lucifer, should not Christ’s representatives on Earth burn with them for pushing them toward such fallacious ideas?

  Her musings were interrupted by Siobhan’s return. “I can’t find Francesca!” the Irish girl whispered urgently.

  “What?” Diana immediately panicked that Francesca had been apprehended by the guard. Yet she reasoned, if that were the case there would be a general outcry. Even now guards should have been pounding on their door. “Oh dear. What has the anchoress gotten herself up to?”

  “We can’t very well leave now, can we?” Siobhan observed. She settled down near the hole in the wall once more, pistol back at the ready.

  Diana shook her head, agreeing. The poor nun wanted to be helpful. Diana began to think she knew what Francesca might try. The woman’s questions had not been idle. “There.” Diana pointed to a new figure, robed as the others, making her way through the congregation. The person had pulled the hood of the robe low, hiding the face, which undoubtedly lacked a proper Venetian mask to conceal Francesca’s visage.

  Siobhan coughed out a laugh. “By all the gods of wood and stream, she’s got a pair of brass ones on her, doesn’t she?”

  Diana didn’t share in her amusement. Francesca would be more likely to get herself killed than anything else. “Keep your aim ready. Our first priority has got to be to get her out of there safely.”

  Siobhan cocked her head to one side with a raised eyebrow in response. Not terribly encouraging.

  Diana swallowed. “Nothing good can come of this.”

  Francesca, for certainly it was she beneath the robe, moved through the crowd and up to the front. She stepped forward among the men in the white robes. No longer part of the natural choreography of the cult, Francesca wo
uld not be able to retreat. They’d notice her, see she had no mask, see she didn’t belong. Bravely the young girl stepped forward, right up to the priest who stared at her, no doubt startled.

  Diana trained her pistol on the priest, resting the barrel over her left forearm. “Siobhan, I need you to protect Francesca as best you can.”

  In a dramatic swoop, Francesca reached out and snapped away the priest’s mask. A horrified gasp went up among the throng at such a sacrilegious behavior. The men in white sitting to the side of the priest struggled to their feet.

  Diana’s finger twitched on the trigger. She squinted to make out the priest’s face from the distance, in the flickering light. His mouth dropped open, and stood like a statue at the uninvited interruption. An older man, in his fifties with a scraggly beard. Not someone Diana recognized. Not a member of Firenze’s elite. Which meant, priestly duties aside, he might not have been responsible for deciding to end her mother’s life.

  Ignoring the agitated murmurs of the heretical parishioners, Francesca spun to her left, and snatched the mask away from one of the men in white who had been sitting, then the second. Then, one of the guards reached her and grabbed her hand in his own meaty grasp and pulled her away struggling.

  Siobhan’s pistol erupted just to Diana’s left. The guard took the shot in the head, his brains erupting like a geyser onto the huddled throng behind him. The gasps turned to screams, and the mass of brown and gray robes turned as one, crushing each other to get toward the door. Francesca used this moment wisely herself, to disappear into that sea of brown and gray, Diana could only hope to make her own escape.

  Diana remained focused though. Of the men in white robes, three had been unmasked. The priest she had already dismissed. Of the two men who had been seated and now were unmasked, one she did not recognize. The other—dear God it was Cardinal Michele Lajolo, the very man who had officiated at her mother’s funeral. He stood now, apparently stunned by this unexpected turn in events, his jaw slack, his eyes vacant.

  True rage surged to her temples and threatened to burst her arteries. With no doubt she knew, she just knew, this man had played a significant role in ordering the death of her mother. It was enough for her. She squeezed her trigger and found a most unholy delight, a flare of evil satisfaction of a sort she hoped never to feel again, as a burst of red marred the breast of his white robe and he toppled backward over his chair. His flailing arms knocked aside a burning lantern and this spilled its flammable contents across the floor of the home. The resultant blaze was meager in form; a determined effort could have doused it easily, but the Council and their flock were now well beyond such an endeavor The remaining men in white joined their lesser brethren in fleeing the scene, pushing for the door like a herd of sheep.

  “Satisfying?” Siobhan asked, as she coolly reloaded her pistol.

  “I hope never again to find such satisfaction in taking the life of another human being,” Diana replied tending to her own weapon. In truth, part of her felt such a relief at the death of Lajolo like a weight had been lifted. Her mother’s death had been avenged, at least in part. Another part of her remained sickened, and saddened, to find her mother’s death had left behind a dark ember in her own soul.

  “Since no one is bothering to put it out, that fire is perking up fast,” Siobhan said. “We’ve got to get out of here.”

  “Agreed!” Diana turned just in time to see the door to their room burst open. A tall, lanky man in a leather jerkin barreled in, match on his harquebus smoking. He brought the barrel down, drawing his aim on Diana. She could only stare at the barrel in surprise, waiting for the shot to hit her like a hammer.

  Siobhan moved quickly though, lunging in and striking the man’s left hand with her rapier. The bones in his wrist snapped and the barrel went up, the round discharging uselessly into the roof. Small slivers of wood rained down on Diana, snapping her out of her freeze.

  The guard cried out briefly, staring at his shattered hand before Siobhan put an end to him, driving her rapier hard through his chest until the blade came out his back. “Come on,” she told Diana as the man toppled.

  Into the hall they ran. From down below they could still hear the screams of the multitude seeking to escape the gunfire and the flames. Their easiest egress would be the way they came in. But Diana wished to be sure Francesca got out safely. She couldn’t leave her friend behind.

  They returned to the stairway landing. The bald man hadn’t returned to his post. Diana moved to descend the stairs. Siobhan grabbed her sleeve. “Don’t be a fool, there are thirty or forty of them down there!”

  “All of them intent on escape. I have to be sure Francesca got out all right.”

  Siobhan opened her mouth to speak, but at that moment a harquebus shot ran out and Siobhan’s spine arched in pain. She swore and spun round on her heels, pistol leveled. There down the hall, the bald man, his harquebus discharged. Seeing his shot hadn’t killed Siobhan he tried to turn and run, but she shot him down as he fled.

  With her assailant down, Siobhan collapsed against the wall, one hand clutching her lower back, mouth twisted in a rictus of pain.

  “Siobhan!” Diana cried in terror. “Where are you shot?” She moved to inspect her friend’s injuries, her medical mind already wondering about how serious the shot might be.

  “He shot me in the arse!” Siobhan told her through gritted teeth. “Can you believe that? Of all the places to get wounded.” She pulled her hand away from her buttocks, found it covered with crimson, and replaced it.

  Diana’s mind went through the medical texts she had read in a flash. If one had to get shot, getting shot in the buttocks was about the best place one could choose. The muscle would likely absorb the worst of the blast, a general absence of exposed organs. There might be some chance of hemorrhage, but no more than elsewhere. Diana decided Siobhan’s chances were good, and allowed herself a moment of relief. “You should be fine once we get you out of here and to a surgeon.”

  “Fine?” Siobhan repeated, outraged. “Do realize with a shot to the arse, people will think I got hit running away?”

  Diana blinked. “Well, technically we were running away.”

  “Not specifically from him!” Siobhan snapped. “Oh God, it hurts! You can’t even imagine!”

  Diana frowned and wiggled her nine fingers for her friend. “Can you walk?” Diana asked, changing the topic to something more critical.

  Siobhan nodded. “I can, just not so quickly as before. I can see myself out all right. I won’t be much use to you down below, though. I urge you to come out the window with me.”

  Diana shook her head. “I can’t leave Francesca. Are you sure you can get out by yourself? I won’t leave you either.”

  Siobhan nodded. “I’ll meet you outside. I think this lot will all be running home. No need to hide any longer.”

  Diana gave her a quick embrace. “Be safe, Siobhan.”

  “You too, Diana. Be careful.”

  With a sense of apprehension, Diana turned and began her fateful descent into the flames. She hoped she did the right thing, leaving Siobhan alone. If she aided Siobhan, she abandoned Francesca, and by aiding Francesca she abandoned Siobhan. Either choice was fraught with risk. If in the end, she chose wrong, and one of her friends came to harm, she’d never forgive herself.

  By now the scent of smoke stung her nostrils. As she took the steps down, the Council members were fleeing for the door, trampling over each other, pushing each other, cascading over each other. Any sense of shared purpose they might once have had disappeared in the urgency of self-preservation.

  She plowed into their mass without any thought for her own well-being. Her eyes searched about desperately for her anchoress friend. “Francesca!” she called out, her voice drowned out by the screams of the terrified throng. From one brown or gray robe to another, she could barely tell the difference in this mass of arms and masks. These people jostled and pushed her, not because she had slain one of their own, but beca
use she stood between them and the door. At last, she pushed her way through them and their whirling gathering slid past her like a rough winter wind. She turned back to watch them for a moment, pressing each other to get toward the door and safety. She didn’t see Francesca among them.

  Just through an archway, the reception area burned. The flames had gone up and across the far wall now, spreading easily through the rotted wood despite the cold. Heat flowed copiously through the doorway. She could still see the outlines of the two dead men, Lajolo and the guard, flames coating their bodies now like a blanket. No sign of Francesca.

  “Diana,” hissed a male voice from behind.

  She spun to find herself face to face with one of the figures in brown, a serenely smiling Venetian mask hiding whatever emotion might lay behind. Lowered against one leg he held a wheelock pistol much like her own.

  Diana brought her own pistol up, resting it across her left forearm. She hesitated to fire. Dressed in brown, he wouldn’t be one of the important leaders.

  “I’m the one you want,” the man said, his voice low, raspy, unidentifiable.

  “What do you mean?” she shouted, conscious of the growing inferno behind her, crackling wildly now with the sounds of splintering wood.

  “I’m the one you’ve searched for. Let the others go back to their lives. I killed your mother.”

  Diana sobbed instantly, blinking away tears at the words. “Why?”

  “I’m sure the Boar told you. Only he didn’t know she told one other of her intentions. Me. She trusted me and I poisoned her so as to protect my own future. I didn’t mean for it to be the way it was for her. I had no idea nightshade would have the effect on her it did. I intended her death to be peaceful. Believe that at least.” She could see his eyes only through the mask, and beheld in them something like true sorrow.