by Cate Glass
He would not permit a refusal. Years of listening behind the painted screen had taught me every nuance of his speech, and certainly he could read me just as well. No matter what had brought him to this meeting, I had to control its progress and its outcome.
“Perhaps we could sit inside, Padroné. I’ve been out for a walk. My feet are tired and I’m chilled from the rain.”
“Certainly, I’ve no wish to make you uncomfortable.” Coolness had crept in. Good. Had he expected me to fall at his feet weeping? Waiting at the message boxes, he’d not likely seen me walking with Placidio.
I unlocked the shop and lit a small lamp on my writing table. If Neri walked past, he’d notice I had a visitor and, I hoped, stay at a discreet distance. No doubt the Shadow Lord’s bodyguards, Gigo and Ettore, lurked nearby.
While I hung my sodden cape and scarf on a hook by the door and took Sandro’s dripping cloak to hang beside it, he took quick inventory of the room: shelves laden with stacks of parchment, the jumble of uncleaned pens, empty flasks, half-eaten cheese, and half-written pages—the detritus of three hectic days.
“So this is your house?”
My hand offered one of the two stools.
“I work here,” I said, taking the stool across the table from him. “Writing work for lawyers and private citizens. Even some for you.”
I slid my copy of the city’s latest regulations for fire buckets and sand reserves across the desk. “It’s something of a family business.”
It pleased me that neither anger nor bitterness tainted my reminder of the occasion that had changed everything. But the lamplight caught the recognition in his eye. As I expected, he reflected no discomfort. His judgment had been more than fair, considering the law, and that particular law was not in his power to change even if he wanted. Not yet.
“The occupation is useful and satisfying,” I said.
“Evidently it suits. You look well. I’m glad for that.”
The moment stretched uncomfortably.
“What brings you here, Padroné, if I’m permitted to ask?” It was not to review my health. “Are you considering a message box system for the rest of the city?”
No use avoiding the subject. Though perhaps we should have stayed outdoors. The weight of his presence in the small room was suffocating.
“Tarenah and Vincenzio di Guelfi. Are they friends of yours?”
No subterfuge in the question—no sarcasm. An encouraging sign. But certainly a deep curiosity and a determination to satisfy it. That was the dangerous part. Distraction or subterfuge wouldn’t work.
“They are recent customers of the shop who rented a box here—as you clearly know. Number six. I was checking to ensure they’d not received any stray messages, as they returned their key and left the city this afternoon. They told me they had completed their business with very important people. So that was you?”
He propped his arms on the table, hands folded, and leaned forward with easy intimacy. “They brought me the Antigonean bronze.”
He had fooled many people with that ease.
“Truly?” I said. “After your long search? You must be very pleased. I’m happy for you and pray it serves as you hoped.”
A slight hesitation in his breath.
Had I misstepped? Too quick to recall a matter we’d spoken of only a few times? Too familiar, speaking about his designs, caring about his hopes? Had he expected me to curse him?
“I do not wish you ill, Padroné. Many who have been privileged to hear of your vision for Cantagna pray for its fulfillment, no matter our personal circumstances.”
“That is … gratifying.” The slight rise of his brows signaled irony—the kind he often directed at himself. “So do you know where the brother and sister di Guelfi might be found? I’ve a question for them about the bronze.”
“They had no plans to remain in the city. I know that. Nor to return here, I believe. They asked me to forward any messages to the Philosophic Academie in Varela.” More than anything at that moment, I desired to ask what was his question, but I dared not demonstrate too much interest. “A question so urgent as to bring il Padroné into the Beggars Ring on a rainy night sounds worthy of a post messenger. You still have a few, I presume.”
He smiled. Only a vision of my father’s chopped hand and Neri’s wrists tied to a stake in my house prevented it melting the desk between us.
“I’m here because I need answers from you, Romy of Lizard’s Alley.”
The world slipped nauseatingly askew at hearing that once beloved voice pronounce that once despised name. I stayed silent lest I spew out the remains of our victory feast, but I opened my hand in invitation for him to continue.
“I needed to see whose hand held the key to the message box numbered six. Until you opened it, I could not reconcile what I knew with what I’ve experienced, with what I’ve been told. With what I never in the least could have imagined until I started thinking about it. Once I allowed the possibilities…”
He settled back in the chair as if it were lined with velvet cushions. One hand cupped his chin, a long finger tapping his jaw, as ever when he was working out a complex problem. “The circumstances surrounding the statue have been curious. You may recall Merchant Boscetti, the antiquities dealer, who claimed to know its location?”
He waited for my nod before continuing.
“Boscetti chose to allow Rodrigo di Fermi’s bid for the bronze to outweigh my multiple donations to his coffers. Rodrigo believed that the bronze would open the grand duc’s ear to his grievances, especially those with me. I like to think Eduardo is a better man than to be swayed by a small-minded swindler, but Rodrigo can be very persuasive.”
“But then … you said the di Guelfis brought you the bronze.”
“Indeed. The strangeness began four days ago when the statue Fermi bought from Boscetti disappeared on the very same day my wife visited the Fermi house. Gigo and your Micola were accused of stealing it.”
“They would never! No house could ask for two more loyal and honest servants.”
Though I knew of the charge already, my horror was unfeigned. Had they been employed by a different segnoré, they could have died for such an accusation, no matter that the law required a magistrate to hear the case.
“My response was the same,” Sandro said. “They both remain securely in my employ.”
“I’m very glad to hear that.” Especially for Micola. Gigo had been Sandro’s servant since they were boys, and his bodyguard and indispensible right arm since they had come to manhood. No other servant, no matter how faithful and competent, would ever own the same regard.
“Matters grew stranger yet. Two days after the statue went missing, Professoré di Guelfi and his sister, bearing the most reputable credentials, brought several treasures before the Public Arts Commission, including a statue they believed to be the Antigonean bronze. Ah, it was gloriously beautiful! Dragonis’s wings, Atladu’s musculature … you could feel the life in them. And it was most certainly of the proper antiquity, if not the original, then perhaps a copy by the same sculptor.”
I resisted the urge to either overdo my reactions in response to his or remain entirely reticent. Cataline had always been curious. “Strange indeed. Did they steal it from Fermi?”
“I was tempted to have them questioned, but the professoré was ill, and the sister…”
A long pause rattled my bones with cold shivers that had naught to do with damp hair or sodden shoes.
“… she was so worried about her brother, so modest and yet so forthright in her admiration of him and her concern for her family’s legacy.”
He shook his head and laughed off his own bemusement. “You’ll think I’ve tumbled into the swamps of sentiment! I offered to let her bring the statue to me when the brother was fit again.”
By the Unseeable … the magic had truly hidden me from him. He had believed. Why did that realization draw tears from these eyes that had abjured them for so long? Fortunately Sandro was
lost in his own thoughts long enough for me to blink them away.
“Certainly a risky choice to let it out of your sight,” I ventured. “But, then, you’re not easily duped.”
“Mmm.”
Despite the noncommittal response, his hands dropped to his lap, and he focused on me again, more settled in mind.
“The next curiosity occurred the following day when I had sunset coffee with Gilliette. She had taken to her bed since her outing to the Fermi house and the accusations that followed. Before I could tell her I was happy she felt well enough to join me, she blurted out that Paola di Boscetti had visited her that afternoon and reported that several of Paola’s servants and neighbors would swear they had seen you lurking about Palazzo Fermi on the day of Gilliette’s visit, the day the statue went missing.”
“Me?”
“You and a younger man who resembled you closely.”
My spine straightened as if I stood in a witness box before a judiciar of the Philosophic Confraternity. “And this would be four days ago from today, you said?”
“Yes.”
“Would you like an account of the clients I visited on that day, Padroné, or those who visited me?” I erased every coloring of emotion save indignation from my voice. “I keep meticulous entries in my journal. And if the implication is that the ‘young man’ was my brother—who has been scrupulous in his adherence to your parole over the past year—and that somehow we were involved in the loss of this statue, you may query his employer at the Duck’s Bone tavern as to his work hours on that day and evening. I’m not sure which is more insulting—the implication that Neri and I would violate our parole for any reason, or that we would be stupid enough to hand over the spoils of that violation to strangers so they could present them to the very man who holds our lives in his hand.”
I was tempted to rise and offer him the door, but decided against, lest my jellied knees give way. Stupid, stupid little wife.
Sandro did not stir, nor did my cold fury rouse any hint of embarrassment in him. He had come down here in the middle of a rain shower. He’d no reason to believe I had stolen the statue. But he suspected something.
A twitch of his hand displayed unconcern. “There’s no need for me to investigate your whereabouts on the word of Boscetti’s wife. And I have never, nor will I ever, accuse you of stupidity. Or ill intent.”
He paused just long enough for those last three words to make me blink.
“I told my wife that I did not heed rumors from the wives of those who attempt to cheat me or rumors that grow from … needless, childish frets. But then the story takes yet another turn. On that very night a group of—what shall I call them? Thieves or mercenaries, perhaps?—breached the walls of Palazzo Fermi and attempted to steal the very statue which had been reported lost! Though unsuccessful at removing it from the palazzo, they battled fiercely and escaped. Curiously, not one witness to that battle or that escape—not even Rodrigo di Fermi or the grand duc of Riccia-by-the-sea who observed the entire encounter—can tell me how those four got inside the walls or how they got out, unless it was by the personal intervention of Lady Fortune…”
Or by magic, he did not say, though the words hung in the air between us.
“So the bronze was at Palazzo Fermi all along,” I said, discipline staving off dread. “Truly a cautionary against hasty judgments!”
His hands opened in acknowledgment. “Certainly someone inside Fermi’s house could have taken it on the day of my wife’s visit and hidden it away for these conspirators to fetch later, perhaps in hopes of forcing me into regrettable actions. I’ve given the whole business a great deal of thought since this morning—the strangest day of the four. At dawn my wife burst into my bedchamber full of apologies, insisting that the rumors of Mistress Cataline’s presence had been disproven and that she prayed no harm had come of her reporting them and that she would absolutely never, ever let childish frets rule her judgment again. At mid-morn the di Guelfis returned as promised with their Antigonean bronze. Not an hour after that, Fermi and Boscetti arrived, preening, with their Antigonean bronze.”
“A second one! And after all that, which statue was the true one?” The grand duc had been so certain, yet dread thundered so loud in my ears, I could scarce hear my own question.
“The two were very like. To this moment I could not pick out one from the other. But—as I began this tale—Professoré di Guelfi and his sister had brought the true one. Eduardo had insisted all these years that he would know it inerrantly, and so he did.”
He leaned forward and widened his eyes in good humor, as if to tell me the latest story from his old groom Alfi—the silliest man I’d ever encountered. “I tested him three times, switching them around, and he always knew. Something about the curvature of the wings, he said, or the position of the god’s feet—one of the characteristics of artworks attributed to Sysaline, which, as you know, I’ve always considered so subtle as to be suspect.”
Was it possible Eduardo di Corradini didn’t know what the touch of magic evoked from the statue? That was difficult to believe. But then, even the grand duc of Riccia-by-the-sea was subject to the First Law of Creation.
“Fermi must have been livid,” I said. “And Boscetti…”
“Boscetti will not be plying his trade in Cantagna for at least fifty years, nor will he be able to grasp his artworks or his money to his satisfaction. Both his market license and his thumbs have been revoked.”
“According to the law,” I said, revolted at another reminder of bloody axes and mutilated flesh.
“According to the law. All else seems to have fallen out exceedingly well. My wife has promised to perfect her judgment. Rodrigo di Fermi insists that he was suspicious of any merchant who offered to violate a contract and was planning to serve Boscetti up to me once we had proper identification of the statue, and by the way, could he offer his support for the new theater I’ve been badgering the Sestorale to approve at their next meeting. And Eduardo will ride out tomorrow with a treasure he has yearned for since he was a young boy.”
“Why is the grand duc so fixed on that particular artwork?” I said. “I know he is a scholarly man, but of all things, why that?”
It was likely not the proper time to satisfy my own curiosity, but somehow the quiet night … the pool of soft light … this wandering conversation that could be a dream for all its likelihood … put us outside of time. When would such a chance come again?
“A sad bit of history. I likely mentioned that the sculptor Antigoneas was said to create his art in the drowned kingdom…”
“At Atladu’s forge in Sysaline. Yes.”
“When Eduardo was a boy, his elder brother—a beloved elder brother—leapt to his death from the walls of their father’s castle into the sea. From that night, Eduardo says, he has prayed for Sysaline to be real, thinking that perhaps his brother found his way to the city under the waves, rather than plummeting into the Great Abyss.”
The Great Abyss where suicides and the unvirtuous were tormented by demons left from the Wars of Creation … or perhaps to a lonely abyss of the spirit torn by demons he could never quite escape.
“Very sad, indeed,” I said, tucking away the story I had no right to know. “Thus, a satisfactory resolution for the grand duc and for you. Yet something nags at you.”
Foolish to pry, perhaps, but he’d not have come here simply to tell me this story, as he would have in the days I awaited him on the far side of his closet. As if he had never declared me dead. Alessandro di Gallanos, il Padroné, did not exempt himself from the consequences of his judgments.
“A number of things nag at me. Certainly the startling coincidence that the young professoré and his sister rented a message box from one Romy of Lizard’s Alley. Most definitely the mystery of the thieves who invaded Palazzo Fermi so efficiently, fought bravely—and yet abandoned their prize so easily, while escaping in such inexplicable fashion. And then there is the incontrovertible fact that the false statue was m
ade—or at least finished—after the di Guelfis appeared before the Commission on Public Artworks.”
“How was that possible?” I blurted the question without thinking how bald it sounded. As if I’d been thinking about the matter for days. “I mean if it was hidden at Palazzo Fermi all along…”
“Have you something to drink, Mistress Romy? All this talking.”
Something to drink? Mother Gione come rescue me!
“I have wine. Not the quality—”
“I care naught for the quality, only its existence.”
Indeed his eyes sparked with the kind of excitement that made everything taste, feel, or sound brilliant. He was enjoying this conversation, which was not at all righteous.
Thank the Sisters I had a clean cup and a flask of the Duck’s Bone’s best. I poured him a swallow that emptied the flask and slammed the cup to the table in front of him, annoyed that he could be amused while I feared for my life.
He drank, and as distraction is wont to do, the activity revealed something more. As he focused on his cup, a trace of sadness doused the spark in his eyes, as sure as the lees followed the pungent liquid. Was it that I had displayed the same pique a thousand times in response to his teasing?
I dropped my gaze, unwilling to see more. “Go on, then.”
“On the night I first met the di Guelfis I did something that would be unforgiveable in the eyes of an antiquarian,” he said once I was seated again. “I wanted to ensure they brought back the exact statue I’d seen, so I marked it—a subtle scratch in the patina under Dragonis’s wing—not deep enough to show bare metal, just enough I could identify it. And indeed the statue they brought that last morning—the bronze that the grand duc identified as authentic—bore that same scratch. But what challenged my imagining was that the forgery Fermi brought me—the one abandoned by the purported thief at Palazzo Fermi—displayed an identical scratch.”
An added mark! I’d never even considered he’d do such a thing. And Dumond had not had time to catalogue the bronze’s every detail before I whisked it out of his hands for our meeting with the Arts Commission, so he dutifully made sure that his forgery included every mark on the original. The forgery had to have been finished between the meeting of the Arts Commission and the “theft” at Palazzo Fermi. As it had been.