by Cate Glass
“Aye. If I’m kilt or arrested, ’tis no great loss. That’s the way Capo sees it. He don’t let me know where his crew are quartered. They don’t let me know their true names—just Lizard and Vole and such, and Capo, of course. I don’t even know where this place is to tell the constables or wardens nothing.”
“That’s awful, Nis. Truly. Maybe we could make a bargain.”
“I won’t set you free. Can’t.”
“I understand that. All I want is for you to deliver that message to my father instead of the Confraternity.”
“Why?”
She was sitting up now, as if to make sure I understood she meant it. “Because my father will pay the ransom, even if he has to sell his house or his honor. The Confraternity, on the other hand … I think they would be very happy if I vanished. Dead … a slave … they won’t care which. ‘Poor Livia, abducted by slavers,’ they’ll say. Your capo will have solved their problem.”
“Them as want you married to the lackwit would do that? That’s crazy.…”
“If I marry him, they believe they can control me—what I say and what I write. And they will for a while. There are reasons why it suits me to live in that house, and you can be sure I’ll take advantage. But, all in all, they’d rather me be out of the way with no hint of scandal on their part. They’re likely thanking Lady Fortune for you every moment.”
I looked at what she’d said from every direction. Dangerous, sure, to go to one house instead of the other. Capo would go loony if he found out. But if the ransom truly got paid, Da would forgive most anything. Maybe he’d even believe what I said about Capo.
“Risky,” I said. “What would I get for it?”
“I’ll tell you whatever you want to know. And maybe—if we can make it work, and I know that’s no sure thing—maybe I could get you out of this.” Her hand waved around the cellar. “I could use a maidservant who was loyal to me. Who was brave enough to try.”
You’ve nothing to lose, daughter. And perhaps everything to gain. Even Mam thought it sounded fair, though neither of us believed this girl could get me away from Da. Mam had tried it. That’s why she was dead.
A glance at the sun and I sidled back under the roof. We had maybe an hour till Capo was back. She had put the cup back where I’d first set it and moved back to the wall. I poured another mouthful and retreated to my seat.
“It’s a deal,” I said. “So why did you run away?”
“I had to leave off some important pages with a secret friend who would keep them safe. And I had her send a message for me.”
“To your lover?”
“Yes. I had to tell her not to wait for me.”
“I can see that. But pages? Like writing work? That’s the reason they’d as soon see you dead as married?”
“Yes.”
“What writing work could make them leave you for dead?”
“It started when my father sent me to the Academie to study.…”
I’d never heard such an adventure as she told me … Strict schoolmasters. Exasperated parents. A scoundrel uncle who relished birds, beasts, and mountains, and talking to tribesmen, priests, and scholars while stealing their books and treasures. Traveling in caravans, on donkeys, on foot. Forbidden books. A secret library …
Everything was bottled up inside her, so that once she started talking, she almost couldn’t stop. Seemed like she forgot who she was talking to. But the sun shifted, and I had to stop her. I took the cup and flask, and promised more when I could do it safely. She told me exactly where and how I needed to deliver the ransom message, and I swore to keep my word.
“You never told me what was wrong with the milksop,” I said.
“He’s a coward. A paralyzed mind. He memorizes all the right things to say, but doesn’t dare put two thoughts together for himself. We were at the Academie together for a few years when we were children. Other boys hated him for being a director’s son and accused him of getting the best placements and having special tutors. They called him tartaruga and threatened to crack his shell. Sometimes they did, and he would scream at them that they were beggars or thieves or half-wits until proctors came. But always Dono the turtle would crawl back into his shell, deeper every time. When he was about fourteen, an older boy named Guillam de Fere flew into a rage when Dono trounced him in a debate. He and a few special friends dragged Dono off to a study room and beat him. The fight was so vicious a heavy shelf collapsed and knocked Dono and a younger boy insensible. The younger boy died of a cracked skull, and Dono woke with a broken arm. Dono accused Guillam of using sorcery to collapse the shelf.”
“Demon sorcerers! In the philosophists’ school!” I couldn’t imagine such a thing.
“Sorcery is nonsense,” she said. “The tartaruga retreated into his shell. Students hated him more than ever. Papa said they kept Dono out of school for a whole year. You know, like some families hide their ugly or deformed children. Or their disgusting cowardly ones.”
That made some sense to me. I’d have to think on it. “And now you’ve got to marry him.”
She folded her arms across her chest and her eyes flared like a solstice fire. “Papa failed to mention that little circumstance at the time.”
“One last question,” I said, as I got up to go. “What’s her name? Your lover?”
She looked at me hard, then shook her head. “No. She’s no part of this bargain.”
“That’s righteous,” I said, grinning. “Maybe I can trust you.”
I climbed the rope ladder, pulled it up, and made sure to leave it just the way Capo did.
Footsteps scuffed the dirt behind me.
My heart near exploded. Before I could turn, a hard hand covered my mouth, and an arm wrapped around and dragged me back from the rim of the cellar. A grizzled cheek brushed my ear.
“You’re safe, Romy. You must have had an interesting time.”
13
TWO DAYS BEFORE THE WEDDING
EVENING
“Interesting wasn’t the half of it,” I said, still breathless as Dumond and I walked briskly across the bluff in the growing twilight. “She believes the Confraternity wants her dead! She begged me to take the ransom demand to her father, not the Confraternity. And I know why she ran and why she risked going back despite that belief. It’s the library. The Athenaeum. Evidently they have every sort of writing there—books, scrolls, clay tablets, rubbings from gravestones and cave walls. They’ve collected them from all over the world. That’s what her traveling uncle did; he worked for the Confraternity, gathering, buying, stealing evidence of the Creation stories or alternative beliefs. The director advocates—most recently Bastianni—buried all of it in the Athenaeum where they can limit access. Where they can study it. Where they can control what’s taught, what’s known, and what’s forgotten.”
“So she wants to know what’s hidden,” said Dumond.
“Yes. That’s everything to her. The knowing. She doesn’t care what use people make of it. Purposeful ignorance and limits on learning infuriate her. But she showed no interest in the consequences of her actions on the city or even her family.”
My mind felt like a boulder-sized knot. I couldn’t just drop Nis like a soiled gown, as I had my impersonation of Mistress Cataline. I had to keep the words Nis had heard in a semblance of order and separate her interpretations from my own.
Dumond knew not to push, though I could feel him ready to burst with questions.
“There was another small thing, about the contract. Mantegna said Piero didn’t entirely recall signing the contract, but believed it true because he’d been so consumed by anger and grief at the time.”
“And the signature was his.…”
“Yes, and the two witnesses were called in to confirm the event. But the contract specified that if Donato was dead, then the girl would marry the next younger brother and then the next. But even Silvio, the second eldest, wasn’t born twenty-one years ago. If the Confraternity was trying to ensure future influenc
e over the steward, why wouldn’t Bastianni have made the just-in-case groom one of his nephews or cousins? And Livia told a story about Donato from when they were both students at the Cantagnan Academie; she would have been something like twelve years old. The story is fascinating in itself. But at the time, when she and her father talked about the incident, her father didn’t mention that Donato was her contracted husband. That seems very odd.”
“Certain, if the contract was forged, that would be a fine outcome,” said Dumond. “Maybe when you get back to the city, you could inquire who were those witnesses…”
“… and we could figure out how they might be persuaded to recant.” Any glimmer of possibility that did not involve convincing Donato to refuse his father’s wishes seemed worth pursuing.
“Where’s Placidio?” I said.
“Watching over Neri. We’ve been alternating keeping an eye on the two of you and ensuring no praetorians are sneaking up on us. Last time he looked, Donato had eaten the food you left and returned to his state of … whatever you call it.”
“Departure?” I offered. “Livia says he just leaves.”
“So she thinks of it as purposeful discipline, the way the swordmaster does.”
“In a way. She doesn’t think him as devious, just entirely lacking in imagination or courage. The story she told involved a bitter fight with an older boy and his friends that got one child killed and Donato’s arm badly broken. Donato accused the older boy of using magic to bring down the shelf that injured them.…”
I paused, wishing Nis had asked Livia what had become of that older boy—Guillam de Fere. Had the directors believed Donato’s accusation?
“Anyway, since then Donato’s been so afraid of violating his father’s rules or displeasing him in any way that he’ll not read, eat, think, or believe anything that’s not prescribed for him. When she spoke of the library, she said that after a few years of obedient marriage—while having full access to the Athenaeum—she would find a way to publish what she wants.”
“Changing the young man’s loyalties certainly doesn’t sound likely.”
“True. But she deems Dono so infinitely predictable that she can work around him to learn what she wants to know—which is everything about everything.”
“Hmm. Not an easy life. So what did you do to get all this out of her?”
“I promised to keep her alive.”
We paused in a little stand of spindle-shaped cypress trees. Just beyond it lay a field of boulders and building rubble, dotted with more of the small belowground chambers like Donato’s. Placidio had surmised they were used to cache jars of oil, grain, and other stores in case of a siege.
“Are you steady?” said Dumond. “I should make rounds and then get back to make sure the lady doesn’t get out of the new shackle. We should meet at moonrise to decide how we proceed. I can hear the rest of this interesting conversation then.”
“Yes to all that. I’ve got my own legs back.” I waved him on his way and approached Donato’s cell quietly.
A rhythmic clattering noise grew louder as I drew near.
“Where are you, devil? Left me here with a dead man.” Neri’s croaking bravado echoed in the night’s quiet. “Is that what this is? A grave? Din’t do nothing to you or yours.”
Placidio was stretched out flat between a scrubby thicket and a rubble wall. His chin rested on his hands as he observed the scene below. I stretched out beside him. He nodded in satisfaction when I pressed palms to my head and spread them as if my skull had swollen with information.
Another clatter. “Told you my da’s hanged and my mam threw me out years ago. Are you up there watching, you gods-cursed prick?”
Neri sat back to the wall to our right, a thin blanket wrapped about his shoulders. He was launching pebbles at the stone wall directly across from him, where Donato sat in the same posture I’d seen hours ago.
His finger signing me to stay put, Placidio rose, picked up our provision bucket, and walked around to the path, only making noise when he was well away from me. He marched toward the rope ladder, singing in his robust baritone.
Damizella, damizella, come and have a feast with me.
No fish nor fowl nor pig will tell the landlord what they see.
We can roast them in the firepit, while we wrestle in the hay.
With bellies full and pleasure sate, we’ll laugh the night away.
“Are you ready to grovel, new boy?” he said, tying the bucket to the rope. “I reckon it’s been a day since you stuffed that belly of yours. Maybe two, if you can count that high.”
The bucket bumped the stone wall as Placidio lowered it into the cellar.
Neri aimed his next rock at Placidio. With only his left hand to throw, it fell far short. He curled over his knees, not quite muzzling a groan.
Placidio snorted. “Ah, poor lad with a tender slice out of him. Tell me who’ll pay to see you home again, and I’ll send you some tasties and a flask—maybe even a needle and thread for the hole in your shoulder. I ween you’ve a gammy or an uncle still thinks you’re better’n dog meat, even if them as spawned you don’t. My partner said you had a good knife on you. Too bad his was quicker in the using.”
He swung the bucket like a fisherman dangles a worm.
“My kin got nothing you would want,” snapped Neri.
“Well then, it’s a waste feeding ye.” The bucket clattered against the wall as it rose. “That other fellow down there ain’t dead, by the bye. He enjoyed the tidbits I sent down earlier. You’ll enjoy watching him eat whilst you starve.”
From the rim above the rope ladder, Placido let fly a small dark bundle. It landed on a sandy spot in the middle of the pit. A waterskin. Neri threw off the blanket and scrambled toward it as best he could with one arm and two legs. It lay just out of reach.
“Wake up, you friggin’ corpse!” he said, gripping his arm and panting with unfeigned agony. “Maybe you can reach it.”
Be strong, little brother. If he doesn’t speak by morning, we’ll have you out of there.
As night wiped away the lingering twilight and filled the cellar with blackness, Placidio whispered that he was going to walk the cramps out of his legs. Before too long an almost full moon would be rising in the east. I was counting on the moonlight to guide me back to the city.
After a pause of quiet, Neri began spewing such an unceasing and inventive stream of curses that even I, who knew him best, was astounded. It went on and on with no signs of abating.
A stirring of clothes and limbs and the clinking rattle of a shackle signaled movement … and the unmistakable sound of someone relieving himself. No grunts of effort. No change in the profane litany. So it wasn’t Neri. Good to know something could draw Dono out from behind his screen.
The movements quieted. Neri’s fetid commentary continued.
“Would you mind stilling your foul tongue?” A polite, well-modulated request. Tones not at all fearful or tremulous. Donato di Bastianni might have been asking his manservant for an extra pillow. “No need to make this ridiculous situation worse.”
“Maybe your arm’s not half sliced off. Your righteous arm. Feels like the blade’s still in there. A little ditty helps get my mind to a different place.”
“I can appreciate that. Just would prefer you do it at a lower volume. Unless our gentleman jailer put you down here as an additional insult. Or to spy on me. You can tell him that I move, speak, eat, and relieve myself, and will take exceptional pleasure when I see him and his masters hanged for this. You alongside him, if you’re his instrument.”
“None could pay me enough for this,” Neri grumbled. “It’d be a fair stupid instrument who let his partner slice his arm off to diddle a prisoner.”
“Maybe not that. But I’m beginning to think the bombastic fool and his needle-tongued woman are not what I believed.”
Still cool and even. Thinking. Logical. Showing no anger or fear. Showing no emotion at all, though I knew he was afraid. I had seen his han
ds trembling both here and at the villa. Who had he thought we were? Someone testing him, someone who knew his secrets? Nis hadn’t paid enough attention to Livia’s tale. Something connected all these glimpses, fragments, dropped words, and furtive glances. They were like splotches of ink on a page that would flow one into the other and create a story that made sense.
“These villains pinched me in the middle of a memorial processional down by the coliseum. You know … from the earthquake. Best day in months for a fellow with clever fingers to make a good day’s living, if you know what I mean. Blackguards figured I had kin amongst the crowd. So where did they snatch you?”
“Not thieving.”
Not human, Livia had said. One might easily believe that. Discipline, Placidio had called it. But to what purpose? How in the name of sense were we going to persuade this person to forgo the marriage his parents demanded?
“Night’s already freezing cold. Cripes, if I had two arms working, I’d climb out of here. Rocks will break the shackle. Why don’t you?”
Donato didn’t answer, and soon both of them fell quiet. When growing moonshine faded the stars in the eastern sky, it was time for me to go. I hated leaving. Placidio and Dumond would have to take turns sleeping, watching for marauders, and watching over our prisoners.
The moon seemed to leap from the horizon. As its light reached into the cellar, I took one last glance and slithered backward. Only to stop and creep back again. Had something changed?
Neri lay huddled in his blanket. Donato was still sitting, but he had curled up over his knees, his short cloak wrapped over his head. The waterskin yet lay between them.
I couldn’t figure it out.
TWO DAYS BEFORE THE WEDDING
LATE EVENING
Quicksilver and I had a fine understanding. The aging mare carried me along the moonlit road, and I let her take her own time about it. Though urgency knotted my gut—about Neri’s wound, about my brother and my partners sitting atop a bluff with two captives that could get us all hanged—it would not benefit anyone were I to ruin the horse or break my neck. My partners and I had agreed that I would compose and deliver the ransom message to Villa Giusti. I’d send another message to Lawyer Mantegna, asking who were the witnesses to the marriage contract and pointing out the oddities—the brothers unborn and Livia’s testimony that her father said nothing of any marriage agreement when Dono was involved with a boy’s death.