by Cate Glass
Nis’s promise to Livia would remain unfulfilled. I wanted to know if she was right that the Confraternity would not pay for her return.
The watchfires on Cantagna’s walls gleamed in the distance. Not long till home. A little time to write out our demands, an hour or so to see them delivered, and then sleep. Dreamless sleep, I hoped.
Before leaving Perdition’s Brink, I’d detailed my conversation with Livia for Placidio and Dumond. Dumond was of a mind that we should tell Livia about her friend’s murder right away, but I still chose not. Not yet. Clearly the girl realized the dangers of the Confraternity—perhaps more starkly than we had—yet I could not help but believe her terribly naïve. She assumed she had outwitted her captors, yet her bookbinder friend lay dead. She assumed her father would compromise his honor for her, which he very well might, but she showed no grasp of how a compromised steward could harm the city. She believed she could survive being married to Donato while actively working to expose truths that would undermine his beliefs. I had lived a deception for nine years in much easier circumstances, and events had still conspired to end it. Determined as she was to have her own way about her future, with no sense of the consequences, I wasn’t easy with entrusting her with Chimera secrets.
And yet, I had no reservations about our mission. Never had I imagined that a challenge to the First Law of Creation might arise from a prickly girl of nineteen with a bent for natural philosophy. The origins of mountains … mountains that had once been seas. Who could imagine that? But she’d seen mountain rocks containing the bones of sea creatures. And matching layers at various heights in differing locales, and some pressed into rock like that found around volcanoes. Only bits and pieces of her theories had been sprinkled through her tales, but enough to illuminate the brilliance of her intellect and the breadth of her vision. I could understand her hunger for the secrets hidden in the Athenaeum. There could be secrets of sorcery there as well—truths that the four of us could not even imagine. Livia could be the key to knowing. So how did we keep her alive and free to learn more?
Unmasking Donato’s oddities might benefit her more than anything else we could do. Despite Livia’s intelligence, I was beginning to think her estimate of him much too simplistic.
As Quicksilver plodded onward, I tried to parse some sense of the person beneath Donato’s exchange with Neri. Most of it was a playscript: This is what I ought to say in this situation; no emotion required, nothing revealing. His uncertainty about us, his captors, fit with his questions about testing. Not until he’d made the “not thieving” comment had I heard something new. Was there a touch of irony in his response to Neri’s question? Something like, You were being wicked, stealing from mourners’ pockets, while I was sitting in my bed being invisible to the world, and yet here we are sharing the same fate. Irony, perhaps, and despair.
Two words. Ridiculous. Here I was trying to fill an empty shell—a purposefully empty shell—with unsupported theories. We needed to raise the pressure on our tartaruga. Crack his shell so we could convince him that he did not want to marry Livia. Scare him, maybe. Would true magic do that?
My mind wandered off into possibilities as Quicksilver’s steady walk lulled me …
… into memories of wonder. A fiery sunset in the ice-clad mountains, a palace of sculpted ice, glittering with reflected starlight. I followed trails of light in the sky made of colors I could not name … feeling my muscles lengthen and my shape smooth as I plunged into the sea … a forest of color and life and darting creatures and below it the mystery of cold and beckoning darkness … until I leapt upward, shedding the salty mantle, and took wing on the airs of autumn …
“State your name and business.”
The hail startled me and I clung to Quicksilver’s neck. My musings fled, leaving me bereft … or had I been asleep? Another dream? Yet I felt no anger. No unsettling lust. Only longing.
Torches glared from just ahead of me. Cantagna’s North Gate, manned by two gate wardens and two praetorians, as well as the warden leaning out of the gatehouse window shouting at me to dismount. I gathered my wits and sat up straight.
“I am Gwynnever di Fortissi, returning home from my mistress’s errand.” The four circled and closed in like vultures to a dead sheep.
“A woman!” crowed one. “What kind of woman appears in such unwomanly attire?”
Another warden bawled, “What errand takes a woman out in the night watches? And armed? Do you know how to wield that sword or did you steal it?”
More serious questions than usual. Less lusty banter.
“Who is your mistress, Damizella Gwynnever?”
My hand rested on the sword hilt. “I know very well how to wield my weapons, praetorian. But only in good service to my mistress. She has various requirements for those in her employ. Protection from … predators … of all kinds. And alas”—I proffered a cloth bag stuffed with madder, bedstraw, and plenty of the tar-smelling grass of Perdition’s Brink—“plants which must be gathered at midnight to provide the certain efficacy useful in making inks and washes and implements for use in her artworks.”
“You’re talking of Segnora di Agnesi, the paint slinger,” said one of the Gardia wardens through clenched teeth. “You’re one of her harridans.”
Doing my courtesan’s best work to provide a smile of mystery, I made a shallow bow of acknowledgment. “Vivienne di Agnesi refuses such appellations as segnora or damizella and resents those such as harridan or paint slinger. The women in her service do the same. May I pass or must I protest to your superiors that you are hampering a weary servant of the renowned muralist whose works celebrate our city’s grandeur?”
“Does this Agnesi woman believe these plants are somehow imbued with supernatural properties at midnight?” The questioner stepped from the gate tunnel. His red robes bore the badge of the flame. A philosophist advocate, then. Bastianni’s man.
“Nay, I understand ’tis the natural cooling of the plant in the night is the need,” I said, my tongue spewing the first nonsense it could find. “Think of flowers and herbs which spread their aroma when heated by the sun. These same will often curl their petals at night, withholding those vital essences and developing more to be spread on the morrow. So too with certain grasses and leaves. I am but a bodyguard, honorable philosophist, a fighter, no botanist or natural philosopher to explain the workings of plants. Are weedy matters of concern to the Confraternity these days?”
“We are concerned with seditious rogues who skulk about in the night. Did you meet other travelers on your road?”
“Only a few shy bucks. Are those of interest?”
He didn’t appreciate the humor. “Tell your mistress that even the celebrated are not immune to the ravages of rogues. Or the demands of good order.”
A jerk of his head had the others stepping aside to let me pass. A metallic chink from the gate tunnel had my ears straining. It could have been many things—harness, weapons. Or it could be a chain leash. I urged Quicksilver through the dark passage at a steady pace, and did not examine the inky niches or recesses to learn if a sniffer lurked there.
A sleepy boy at a hostelry just inside the gate took charge of Quicksilver, and I did my best to vanish into the narrowest, dankest alleys of the Beggars Ring, pausing, backtracking, climbing stairs to cross rooftops. No reason they should follow. Vivienne di Agnesi was well-known as an eccentric recluse. But my nerves didn’t settle until I was well around the Beggars Ring Road without being accosted.
Not just praetorians, but a philosophist advocate at a city gate. I’d never seen that. Their sniffers must have confirmed the residue of our magic inside the villa as well as Dumond’s fleeting traces on the walls.
I stopped first at my shop. Did I glimpse my pallet and pillow, I’d never get this done. The Confraternity must believe that Livia and Donato’s disappearance was merely a snatch, lest they look for deeper motives. We needed time to find our way with the two of them, thus we had to behave as a snatch-crew would.
So, a ransom message.
I doubted the Cavalieri Teschio extended their extortion demands by way of wax-sealed folds of inked parchment. But then, they had been selecting victims from a population where maybe one in seven could read. Rumor said the Cavalieri intruded on the parents of the abducted child, told them the amount and method of payment along with the dire consequences of non-payment, and left. Certain, I was not going to deliver my demands to the director advocate of the Confraternity in person.
My years living in the Shadow Lord’s house had taught me many things and allowed me to meet many interesting people. One of those people, Agoston saz Rumos, provided exactly the service I needed. Agoston, a most charming Invidian gentleman with moustaches so elaborate and so abundant he kept a barber on call solely dedicated to their maintenance, provided a secure, discreet, and neutral messenger service to the elite of Cantagna. No disagreement, no feud, not even a vendetta interfered with the prompt delivery of messages between members of his prized circle of customers. That circle most assuredly included members of the Sestorale, il Padroné, the steward of the city, the directors of the Philosophic Confraternity, and most of the city’s elite. It also included a few wealthy but less savory persons whose enterprises were so embedded in the city’s finances that even the Shadow Lord’s best efforts had not rid the city of them. Those names were rarely spoken in company. Not only did I know Agoston, I knew a few of those unsavory names.
I pulled out some scraps of parchment, a pen long past good use, and an inkpot with only the dregs remaining. Even the Cavalieri would know that any ordinary messenger dispatched with a ransom demand would be arrested for collaboration with the snatch-crew. But if they worked for one of Agoston’s less savory customers, they would have access to his services.
We didn’t have much leeway for the ransom exchange. We needed time to persuade our captives to our will, but if we set the exchange too far in the future, the Confraternity might assume we were giving ourselves time to run with our captives. The second day from this was the Feast of the Lone Praetorian, Livia and Donato’s wedding day. On the following day, Livia would come of age. Set the exchange for the last hour of the feast day, and they might wait to hunt us down. Set it any later and certain they would be after us. So the message was simple:
To get back the missing items set 6000 silver solets divvyed in 6 small sized millers’ bags half crost the Avanci brige before Midnite on Ninth Day. Two nites hence.
If wardin or prayturyan or sniffer is seen in the Bottoms or along the River path or on the Brige tower or in any botes strayd on the river in that Midnite hour, the missing items will stay missing. For ever.
The Cavalieri Teschio
And, of course, I sketched the death’s-head emblem. Around this crude missive, I wrapped a piece of fine parchment and set a blank seal to the wax. It was addressed to Director Advocate Rinaldo di Bastianni at Villa Giusti.
I donned a respectable mantle I kept in the shop for meeting clients and set out for the Merchants Ring and House Rumos.
Never had I seen so many soldiers patrolling the streets. Both Gardia and praetorians. Like ants around dropped crumbs, they gathered around anyone abroad in the night.
To my relief they cared little for a woman alone. Those who stopped me to ask my business were easily satisfied with my identity as a wet nurse summoned to care for a colicky new infant at House Gianelli. The segnoré of the Gianelli Leather Importers and his wife presided over an exceptionally fecund household. Some of their uncountable offspring were producing their own by now. Scarce a month went by without an announcement of a new arrival.
Several of the solicitous city guard warned me to be alert. “There’s a vicious snatch-crew taking young persons from their beds, both male and female, and even such as you could be a target for them. They’ve suborned sorcerers to their work, so’s it’s doubly evil.”
Dumond would be pleased to hear that his death’s-head symbols on the walls of Villa Giusti had worked in multiple ways. The Cavalieri would never again be ignored, even if their targets were children none but their families cared about.
The protocol at House Rumos had been set in stone for at least a decade, so Sandro had told me on a night when I accompanied him on one of his anonymous walks about the city. “Follow the flower arbor to its end and you’ll find a simple door of dark blue. Ring the bell beside it. Be prepared to offer a gift of at least two silvers to the woman who answers the door in addition to the twenty-silver fee for each message. She will give you a wooden chip with a number on it.…”
The blue door, the bell, and the ever-burning lamp were exactly where they were supposed to be. When the sleepy woman answered the bell, I almost burst out laughing. She was exactly as Sandro had described her, right down to the extremely pointed toes of her shoes and the waxed curl in the middle of her forehead. I whispered an unsavory sponsor’s name in her ear, and she accepted my message and the substantial fee in exchange for the wooden chip that I could exchange for replies to my missive. She could now afford several new pairs of pointed-toe shoes.
As I returned home by a different route, I considered that woman and wondered if she—and not the public gentleman with the moustaches—was the actual Agoston di Rumos. When I tried to recall her face, all I could see was the waxed curl, the odd shoes, and the extended palm. What better disguise than a few oddities?
Night in the city was breathless. The heat of the day lingered in the damp air. Banners hung limp over shops. Laundry hung out to dry would feel wetter come morning. Both my muscles and my head weighed like mud and functioned no better. Perhaps, back in my own bed, I could sleep without dreaming.
My feet moved faster at the thought of it.
Though the moon was still high enough to light the way, I could have found my way home no matter how dark. I knew every rut, every stone, every stink of Lizards Alley. Were I stone blind, my hand could locate the door latch in one try.
Yet on this night a surprise did await me, and if not for the moon I would have missed it. Under the aged bench just outside our door stood a small stone crock sealed with wax. Curious, I carried it inside and left it on the table as I grabbed the tinderbox and made a fire in our brazier. Once a lamp was lit and a pot filled and set on to boil, I took another look. No markings on the crock or scribed in the wax seal. No message attached. Lamp in hand, I examined the bench in the alley and the space below it.
In the end, I pried up the wax, assuming that the contents had to be the message. And so they were. A distinctive aroma rose from the jar where small silvery fish were packed tightly in oil and herbs.
No matter every other happening of the previous days, the sight and smell had me laughing. Only one friend did I have who had ever worked down at Cantagna’s docks helping to pack pilchards.
Teo.
It was a measure of my exhaustion that I fell on my bed, rather than racing to the docks to roust Teo and present all the questions I had ready for him. A few hours’ sleep might ensure that I could comprehend his answers.
14
ONE DAY BEFORE THE WEDDING
CANTAGNA
MORNING
Fish. Lemon. A clean-smelling bulk close by. Breathing.
My eyes blinked open to sunlight and Teo, sitting cross-legged on the floor beside my pallet.
“Friend Romy,” he said, his head tilted slightly as always when he smiled. A smile that could light a winter solstice midnight. “Gladsome it is to see thee again, kyria.”
I scrambled to sitting, happy I’d not bothered to strip off my garments when collapsing on my pallet.
“And you, fair traveler from the Isles of Lesh,” I said. “Your greeting—packed I assume with your grandmother’s favored herbs—gladdened my heart as well. Had it not been very late, and me dead on my feet, I would have met you at the docks as soon as I found it.”
“Wise, as ever. When I saw the jar was moved this morning, I assumed your invitation to return here yet held … and I very much n
eed to speak with you.”
“Always,” I said. “But I’ll be much more sensible if I make tea before we talk.”
“I’d never presume to hinder your waking.”
I laughed and shoved a mug into his hand. “You may help yourself to Neri’s cask, if you want.”
Teo cared little for tea or wine, preferring Placidio’s salt, ginger, and lemon brew. Fortunately Neri kept a small cask of the horrid stuff in the house.
“Not this morning.”
Barefoot, his lean frame clad in loose tunic, slops, and leggings that covered the inked symbols marking his skin from throat to ankles and wrists, Teo was assuredly the same man I’d seen dive naked into the river three months ago. And yet the daylight was revelatory.
In moonlight, I would have noticed that his pale hair had been cropped short, and how a patch covered one of his iridescent eyes, and that his once-torn earlobes now bore dangling slips of engraved brass. But I might have missed the more subtle changes.
In the days after I dragged Teo from the River Venia at the brink of death, he had been charming and generous, filled with a childlike whimsy. His emotions had shown through his skin, making it impossible to disbelieve him. He had expressed humble gratitude for my help and astonishment that I called the marvels of his talents magic. Laying open his heart, he confessed how he was struggling to reclaim the part of his life that lay beyond what he called the glaring lens of the world. He had a duty, he’d said, to find something he could sense but could not name, and feared that his brokenness risked failure that could endanger his people.