A familiar voice spoke in a concerned tone. Suddenly Sal realized who it was that had handed him the cup. Shoulder-length blond hair, and eyes like the calm before a storm.
Vinny put a hand on Sal’s shoulder and spoke again: “Salvatori, can you hear me?”
“I can hear you, yeah. Not my ears that’s bleeding.”
Vinny flashed a strained smile. The other man, presumably Vinny’s father, let out a sharp laugh.
“Even on your deathbed,” Vinny said, shaking his head. “We need to get you to a mender. You’re letting blood like a stuck pig.”
Vinny’s father scoffed. “Just where do you expect to find a mender? Talents don’t go around the city advertising their trade. Be scant few left if’n they did.”
Sal opened his mouth to speak.
“I’ll find one,” said Vinny. “There has to be someone that can help. What of the mender that put Antonio back together?”
“Look here,” said Vinny’s father. “Ain’t no way you’re going to find someone this time of night. It can’t be done. Most you can do is give this man something strong to drink and let him enjoy his last hour in a warm bed.”
Sal thought about telling Vinny’s father to go and bugger himself over a wine barrel but reconsidered, as the old man had saved him only moments before.
“Luca—we have to stop—we have to stop Luca. Get Valla and Odie, warn them. Bartley, he—” Sal tried to tell Vinny, but the words wouldn’t form.
Vinny shushed him. “Mender, that’s the first priority. We need to get you a mender.”
“Bart—Bartley, he’s dead,” Sal blurted.
Whatever Vinny had meant to say next vanished in one sudden exhalation. “Bart, dead?” Vinny shook his head. “No, not now. We need to get you to a mender, fast.”
“Alzbetta,” Sal said, as the pain struck in throbbing pangs.
Sal’s mind went hazy, as though a thick fog had set in, but he did his best to tell Vinny where to take him. When Vinny lifted Sal from the bed, the pain of moving overwhelmed him, and darkness consumed his consciousness.
A sweet, tangy smell of incense hung in the air. Sal blinked and quickly adjusted to the soft candlelight. He breathed easily as he processed his surroundings.
“A cruel place to stab a person,” said Alzbetta. “Wanted you to die slow, I imagine.”
Sal’s hand went automatically to his side. He was naked from the waist up. Where earlier there had been an open wound, only a faint scar remained.
Alzbetta smiled.
“Where’s my shirt?” Sal asked.
The old woman motioned to a table beside the cot. “The jerkin will be all right if you get it stitched and you don’t mind a little blood; you’ll want to burn the shirt.”
Sal slipped two fingers into the hole that went clean through his wool jerkin, padded doublet, and blood-sodden linen shirt. All three layers of cloth had proved less than a match for Dellan’s dagger.
Yet Dellan’s wool and boiled leather had proved even less of a match for Sal’s weapon, a bolt of lightning. It had been magic—true magic, a spell of storybook legend, and it had come from the locket. Like a miracle, the lightning bolt had been unleashed in the nick of time, and had it not been for that miracle, Sal would be as dead as Bartley.
Bartley —the thought of his friend tugged at his heartstrings, a twinge of sharp pain that dulled to a throbbing ache.
“Vinny, where is Vinny?”
“The pretty long-haired one?” Alzbetta asked. “Told me he had things to take care of after he dropped you off. Claimed you’d understand.”
Sal put his feet on the ground and felt a strange stretching in the spot where he’d been stabbed.
“Not so quickly,” said Alzbetta. “You ought to stay off your feet for a tick, give that wound some time to heal. I’ve stitched the flesh up tight, but that doesn’t mean it can’t tear right back open if you’re not careful.”
“I’ll have to risk it. There isn’t time for rest. Listen, I need another favor.” Sal searched through his pockets and pulled out the hair he’d taken from Luca. “I need a tracer.”
“I have that skill, but I will need time. I’ve not prepared the ingredients, you see, and I’ll need to check that I have tellicumin,” Alzbetta said, shuffling to a cabinet. “By the way, you wouldn’t recall the pretty bauble I had on that shelf last you were here?”
“The, uh, flasher, wasn’t it?”
Alzbetta nodded and continued to rummage through the cabinet. “Strangest thing. I’ve not seen the little bauble since I last saw you,” Alzbetta said, and turned to fix him with a level stare.
“Strange indeed,” Sal said. “Might you commission another?”
“Afraid not,” Alzbetta said, turning back to the cabinet. “The last one was given me by my dear friend Pavalo, rest his soul.”
“Pavalo Picarri?”
“Why, yes. Were you acquainted?”
“We crossed paths a time or two.”
“Aha, here we are!” said Alzbetta as she spun and held up what looked like a pale root, shaggy like a spider’s leg.
She crossed the room, root in hand, and took the hair from Sal. She then instructed him to cut a swatch of fabric from the linen shirt he’d been wearing, insisting it was going to be thrown in the fire by night’s end regardless.
While Sal attempted to find a clean patch of linen to cut out, Alzbetta placed the hair and root together and began crushing them to a pulp with mortar and pestle.
“Do you know anything about Pavalo’s death?”
Alzbetta paused, pestle in hand. “Poor man, he was found dead in his home. Murdered, if the rumors are true. I told him, more than once, mind you, never to get involved with princes and their affairs.”
“Princes—what princes, what sort of affairs?”
“Oh, the ducal sort, I imagine. As to what princes, why, it must have been Matej, or Andrej, or any one of those royal bastards that is allowed to leech about the High Keep bearing that name and seal.”
“Your depth of information is staggering,” Sal said, his words dripping with sarcasm.
“The specifics hardly matter. Pavalo was always vague about those in any case. The specific prince, what this man wanted of Pavalo, none of that is of consequence. What is of true import is that Pavalo stuck his neck in ducal business, and now he’s dead.” Alzbetta gestured for the square of linen Sal had cut, scooped the gray pulp into the cloth, and slammed a palm upon the square, flattening it to the tabletop. She muttered a few words that Sal presumed to be a binding, and placed the swatch of linen into Sal’s hand.
“How does a tracer work?”
Alzbetta only smiled.
Slowly the tracer began to warm, until he feared it would be too hot to hold in his hand. However, before the thing grew hot enough to burn, it started to cool until the little swatch of cloth was cold and damp with the sweat of his palm. Once the tracer had cooled, Sal felt an inkling, an urge, that tugged at him—guided him.
Without thinking, he began to move toward the door. As he left, Alzbetta wished him luck and reminded him to be careful.
The torrent of rain had not let up since Sal’s encounter with the gang of street urchins. He found himself appreciating the storm as the rain slapped his bare torso beneath his jerkin, drinking in the rainfall as though it were life-sustaining manna. He felt energy flowing back into his body. The locket hanging from his neck pulsated with rivulets of electricity.
Touching the locket reinvigorated Sal’s sense of urgency. Luca had Lilliana, and Sal would do whatever he must to make certain Lilliana was safe.
He gripped the locket tighter, the sixth sense provided by the magic tracer guiding his every step. He needed to move faster. His feet beat a rhythm of rolling thunder, rapidly slapping the rain-slicked cobblestones. He ran with all the urgency he felt, and still it was not enough. He needed the locket and the power of the storm stored within.
He had ridden the lightning in the past, used the locket to trave
l long distances in the blink of an eye. Still, there was much and more he didn’t understand about the thing, including how to bend its magic to his will. He’d done it before but hadn’t managed to unlock the secret, and there were plenty of times the locket had failed him when he’d tried.
He’d come to believe the locket had little concern for his own needs. His need for a magic intervention when facing Dellan had been no different than when he’d encountered the thugs in the alleyway as Nabu was being beaten.
What had been the difference? What was the one constant each time the locket’s magic had been unleashed? Then it came to him like a flash of lightning.
Skeev.
The very first night with the locket, the night he’d ridden the lightning through his window, he had smoked a cap with Bartley, and it had been Sal that had crumbled the mushroom cap into the pipe. The night he’d blinked himself out of the river and up across the rooftops, he had once again been the one that had crumbled the cap of skeev. The one constant, the key to unlocking the power of the locket, lay in the skeev.
It was clear to him now. It mattered not what the stakes were, nor how hard he willed the locket to yield its power; it was the drug that made the difference. So simple an answer to a problem that had vexed him for so long.
He looked at his hands and realized they’d been scrubbed clean—by the storm or Alzbetta, he couldn’t be certain.
Sal slipped the tracer into the pocket of his jerkin, forced his mind from the path where it had been guiding him, and set off in another direction.
When Sal reached the Hog Snout, he saw two men running from the front door, arms burdened with as much as they could carry.
Sal shouted at the backs of the looters, wanting to chase the thieves down and give them their proper comeuppance, but realized he had no time to waste.
The smell of meadowsweet did not give him a pleasant feeling as it once had. Rather it brought to his mind an image of two corpses, naked and lying facedown in pools of their own blood. As he climbed the stairs, he felt sick with the thought of going back into Bartley’s room, knowing what awaited him within. Yet he had no choice; Lilliana’s life depended on it.
At the top of the stairs the hallway was dark, all three wall lamps snuffed out. Sal felt for the door handle in the darkness, opened, and stepped in.
As of yet there was no smell of rot, though the overwhelming stench of cooked meat, burnt hair, and vomit lingered in the small room.
Sal doubled over, tears welling in his eyes and saliva steaming from his mouth as he heaved, over and over, but there was nothing left in his stomach to disgorge.
Somehow he found the strength to press on. He pushed himself upright and held his breath as he stepped into the room. It was dark, and difficult to see by the moonlight alone, but among the scattered belongings on the floor Sal spotted the carved ebony box and breathed a sigh of relief that the looters had not taken it. He went to the box and saw it was open, its contents nowhere to be seen. Frantically Sal looked about, but there was no trace of the pipe full of skeev, nor any of the golden-brown mushroom caps.
Sal’s throat tightened and his heart sank to the pit of his stomach. He cursed and threw the ebony box across the room so that it crashed against the opposite wall. He dropped to his knees and pounded the ground with his fists, tears streaming down his cheeks, curses flowing from his lips.
He shouted until he was hoarse, his throat raw. How could his luck have turned so bad?
He slammed his fist to the ground once more, lying flat on his stomach, breath shortened by the grip of panic. Then suddenly, through tear-filled eyes, Sal spotted something golden-brown beneath the bed. He reached for it and felt a spike of elation as he realized what he’d found.
Sal crumbled a piece of the skeev cap between his thumb and forefinger, allowing the grainy residue to coat his fingertips. Putting the remains of the cap into his pocket with the tracer, Sal darted from the room, down the stairs and out of the Hog Snout as quickly as his legs would take him. The moment his boots touched cobblestones, Sal grabbed hold of the locket and focused upon the farthest rooftop he could see.
There was a crack, like a deafening clap of thunder.
Sal was pulled off his feet and tore through the sky like lightning. He landed feetfirst upon the rooftop.
Fingers stiff with the cold, Sal grabbed hold of the locket and willed himself to the next rooftop that caught his eye.
A jolt of lightning, vertigo, and his feet landed upon another roof.
Sal dropped flat to his belly, arms and legs splaying out upon wooden shingles.
He caught his breath and allowed his heart rate to slow. The night air was cold on his sweat-beaded skin. He crawled on his belly up the steep roof until he was able to sit straddling the ridge. He focused on another rooftop, the tracer guiding his direction. He grasped the locket and willed himself forth.
Lightning, vertigo, feet taking root only long enough for him to spot another target before he rode the lightning to his next destination.
He continued to bounce from rooftop to rooftop another four times until he found himself in the Lowers, looking upon Luca’s safe house.
23
Requiem
W ith no windows, it was impossible to see what was happening inside the safe house. Luca must have wanted Lilliana for a ransom. Why else kidnap the daughter of one of the city’s richest nobles? Surely Luca wouldn’t dare hurt her, as that might decrease his chances of collecting the ransom.
The front door wasn’t much of an option. It was too visible an entry. If Sal was going to get in without being spotted, he would need to use the cellar and hope that Luca had not barred the rear door.
Sal put his hand on the locket. Energy flowed into him, but when he willed himself to the alley behind the safe house, nothing happened. His fingers had been washed clean in the rain. Sal dried them as best he could, then crumbled some of the skeev between his thumb and forefinger. Again he grabbed the locket, and held his breath as he was ripped from his feet and shot through the air. A boom of thunder, a rush and a touch of vertigo, and his feet landed upon cobblestones.
The cellar doors were secured with an old brass padlock. To Sal’s relief, the lock was of the single-arched swing-shackle variety. He pulled the pigsticker from his boot sheath and used the butt of the knife to bash upon the weak point of the lock where the pipe met the arch. It took time, but with steady, concentrated strokes, Sal managed to cave in the corner of the pipe. He wedged the blade of his pigsticker into the arch and pried until the old brass gave way with a click. Sal tossed the broken lock aside and opened the cellar doors.
There was a flight of stairs cut into the earth, which Sal descended into darkness. When his boots landed on the earthen floor, he was forced to find his way by touch. At the other end of the cellar, a glimmer of hope: a sliver of light at the base of the safe house rear door. He continued to feel his way through the dank, dark cellar, then up the flight of earthen steps which lead to the door.
Sal pushed on the door, ever so gently, doing his best not to make a sound. As the door budged, he breathed a sigh of relief. Luca had left it unbarred. By the Lady’s luck, things were looking up. It seemed favor had finally turned a forgiving eye in Sal’s direction. He pushed the door harder, but when the hinges creaked, Sal cringed and held his breath, listening for signs that he’d been heard.
The only sound aside from the rain was a wet, rhythmic slapping.
Sal pushed the door a bit more, and again it creaked, but Sal pushed on and hoped against hope Luca would not hear.
The rhythmic slapping noise was accompanied by muffled grunts like a man with labored breathing.
The elation Sal had felt the instant before at finding the door unlocked melted away as his heart jumped into his throat.
He pushed hard, and the door swung fully open to reveal Luca standing at the foot of one of the cots, naked from the waist down, pumping at the hips. A pair of slender legs hung over the cot, limp and lifel
ess.
Luca pulled back as the door slammed open, his member swollen and wet, a look of savage fury in his eyes.
Sal charged before Luca could fully grasp the situation. He closed the distance in a matter of seconds, throwing a punch while his feet still moved. His fist struck Luca’s jaw with a dull thud. Sal threw a second punch, directly to Luca’s nose.
Luca grunted and his head dropped back.
Sal grabbed hold of the locket, but just as his fumbling fingers clasped the cold metal, Luca’s head whipped forward.
Blood spurted, and Sal cried out as Luca’s forehead cracked into his nose with a sickening crunch. The blow jarred him so badly that he yanked the locket, snapping the chain and sending the locket skittering across the floorboards. His vision went black, and pain bloomed like fire as he staggered back.
He shook his head and blinked. When he opened his eyes, he saw the blur of Luca’s fist just before it cracked into his jaw, buckling his knees and dropping him to the ground.
Sal rolled to his back and slipped his finger-knife loose just as Luca lifted a bare foot to stomp him.
Before the foot fell, Sal lashed out with the finger-knife.
Luca screamed and staggered back, both hands grasping his crotch as blood spurted.
Sal slipped the pigsticker from his boot and stabbed up hard as he rose, putting all of his strength behind the thrust. The long, thin blade penetrated deep into Luca’s naked torso, just beneath the arch of his ribs.
Luca huffed and Sal pushed the blade deeper, twisted it, and cut down toward the man’s navel with both hands.
The pigsticker was ripped from his hands as Luca slumped to the floor, gasping and moaning as he writhed in the bloody rushes.
Sickened by the sight of the dying man, Sal rushed for the cot where Lilliana lay, her delicate legs still hanging lifelessly over the edge of the cot, her sex exposed, her face a bloody, swollen mess.
And yet she breathed.
Sal covered her nakedness with a sheet and did his best to steady his breathing as he laid a hand on her brow.
The Hand That Takes Page 22