by Cate Glass
“I know it’s a risk.” I pulled my Cavalieri garb from the canvas bag. “But we’ve always worn these masks in front of him, so he shouldn’t be able to identify us. While I go and let Nis speak with Livia, you two figure out how we can spook Donato into telling us what’s got him so nervous; then perhaps we’ll know how to scare him out of his wedding.”
“Aye, an interesting approach,” said Placidio. “And one of us will be there when you finish with Livia—and Nis.”
Yes, the flaw in my impersonation magic. “Even if Teo can’t get involved with our business,” I said, “I’m guessing he can at least fetch one of you when I’m ready to be myself again.”
“You intend to use your magic? Romy, you must not.” Teo’s quiet horror chilled me more than any shouting could.
Dumond and Placidio looked bewildered. I finished lacing my black tunic and fastened the black cloak at my shoulders.
“You confessed that you don’t know whether I’m weak or damaged or what the Enemy might do if I am. But our mission here, Teo … we see the dangers and possibilities of the situation clearly. The future of sorcerers and many others living in Cantagna. A young woman’s life. The contributions she might make to human knowledge. We don’t have days or even hours for me to sit aside and learn to protect myself. If a monster comes crawling out of my head, do what’s needed to protect us. Tell these two what you told me, while I go and try to speed things up a little.”
I stuffed a small bag with a flask of ale, a cup, and a roll of thin bread spread with olive paste and headed for Livia.
Neither lady nor gentlemen were at all like I’d imagined. Yet I felt more determined than ever to prevent them being forced into the Confraternity’s scheme—Director Bastianni’s scheme. He, not his cowering son, was the manipulator.
Insects rasped and darted as I strode through the scrub and ruin. One of the others could show Teo the way, once they’d heard him out.
By the time I had quieted my irritations and prepared myself for what Nis needed to do, Teo had joined me. He remained a few steps away in the sparse shade of a slender cypress. He sat on his haunches, silent and watchful, like gargoyles carved over lintels or under the eaves to discourage demons.
Demons … Faulty scraps left over from the creation, so Teo had said. Lurking in the deeps, searching for warmth.
I shivered. Without speaking, I acknowledged Teo’s presence—grateful for it, no matter what he could or could not do. Then turned my back and turned inward. Magic filled me like a fiery flood tide. My name is Nis.…
* * *
Like a spider on a web, I crept down the rope ladder. The girl Livia lay under the stone roof, curled atop the blanket Capo had allowed me to bring her. The nights were chill on this cursed rock. Innocent she looked. But I knew better.
“I’ve brought food,” I said as I scurried under the slab roof. “Capo’s off to the caravans to tell them all about you and his other new merchandise.”
“But the ransom!” She popped up like mushrooms after a rain. “Did you tell Papa? He didn’t refuse. He wouldn’t. How—how much was asked?”
I set the bread roll and a cup of ale where she could reach it. Still better for me if she wasn’t a skeleton and could bring a good price.
Soon as I sat back in my usual place, she scrambled up there and wolfed the goods. I glared at her and believed that’s what she was. A wolf. Just like all the other rich folk, playing us unders to their own uses.
“Last night I delivered the ransom message. Your price is six thousand silvers by tomorrow midnight. Got no answer by this morning afore we come back here. And every hour is more danger. The city’s awash with praetorians and wardens and constables.”
She jumped to her feet. “Six thousand! So much … and in two days!” She weren’t brassy no more. “How can anyone possibly do that?”
“Someone better do. You’re the one said it should be your da. But from what I heard in the city, I’m wondering if he’ll think he’s better off without you, just like your man’s folks. I just don’t know what to believe from a gods-cursed liar.”
“I do not lie,” she snapped, moving close as she could like she might catch me in her jaws. Her shackle rattled with every step. “Everything I told you was the truth.”
“Except that when you ran away from the philosophists, you didn’t leave your ‘important pages’ with your ‘secret friend’—your friend in the Street of the Bookbinders. You killed her.”
“What?” She stopped dead, spluttering.
“It was talked of everywhere in the city. A woman was found dead two nights ago in the Street of the Bookbinders. They’re hunting everywhere for the one that done it—someone that tried to force the woman to make a wrongful pamplit. I wonder if they know it’s the same sad rich girl they’re hunting as was snatched from that big house—you.”
“No, no, no! Oh, blighted universe!” She clapped her hand over her mouth and sagged back to the wall. “That’s not possible. I made sure no one followed me. And only two people in the world know that Marsilia publishes my pamphlets. Every other book or pamphlet she works on is for the Academie or the Sestorale Library—all perfectly acceptable.”
“Maybe you’re not so clever as you think. Or maybe you’re the one killed her because she didn’t want to publish wickedness no more.”
“Nis, I swear to you, everything I told you was the truth. Because you were brave enough to believe me and help save my life. Brave enough to come down here and feed me in the first place.”
I didn’t want to think she’d done it. I’d got to like the notion of being her maidservant, thinking maybe I’d be wearing a fine gray dress like those in the house where we snatched her. I didn’t like hearing I was as stupid as people thought.
“Then who killed her?”
She crouched down and spoke low, as if the birds might carry word of her talking to her enemies. “I told you yesterday. What I write is natural philosophy—science and reason, everything that the Philosophic Confraternity hates. They won’t allow anything to be published that suggests their teachings are wrong, much less purposefully wrong.”
“The philosophists. The very people you plan to go live with. You’re saying they killed the bookbinder?”
“For four years, Marsilia published my writing because she believed in my ideas. She never told anyone that it was she who did the binding. Nor did I. And the only ones who knew she worked with me were my uncle, who’s three years dead, and one other who would never in the world betray—” She near swallowed her tongue.
“Ahhh … your lover?”
She didn’t answer, only crouched there staring into nothing. Like she was dead. “Tirza,” she whispered, as if the person she talked to was dead, too. “You knew what Marsilia meant to me…”
She looked back at me as if I might make some sense out of what she was saying. But it wasn’t me she was talking to.
“… but they found the lever, didn’t they? The Mardi lawsuit that could mean your father’s ruin.”
“You’re saying they knew about the bookbinder because your lover told them how to find her.”
“It’s my fault. They asked if I’d ever been intimate with anyone. I don’t lie. So I told them I had and that she was a woman. They didn’t care as long as … as I’d not had a man inside me, though I’m not sure even that would have stopped anything. I refused to tell them her name. But Mama knew of Tirza, and Mama will do anything a man tells her. And Tirza loves her father, who is on the verge of ruin, and she knew about Marsilia. So when they found me missing, they must have questioned her … and found Marsilia … stars and stones…”
I thought she might collapse and cry and show me she was not so brave after all. But she didn’t.
“You should go, Nis, and you should run away from these horrible men who make your life such a misery. Don’t trust anyone. Ever. Not kin. Not friend. Not lover. Not anyone.”
“Capo still don’t know I delivered the message to the differen
t house. If I run, I’ll be dead sure. Wouldn’t even know where to go. But hearing you tell about all your traveling … you’re the one should run away instead of marrying someone so wicked. His people killed your friend, the bookbinder, and who knows what awful things they said—or did—to your lover made her give up the bookbinder’s name. Did he know of the murder, do you think? Your man. He’s one of them, right? Works for them?”
She stared at me like I were a mouldering corpse raised up from a grave. “Dono? I don’t— He’s a nothing. Of course he’s to wear the red, but only because he’s a director’s son. I’m not even sure he knows about my writings. He never asked about my travels or what I studied or why I wrote such lies, as he would deem them. Certain, his father knows—no guessing there—why else would he insist on this wedding? But Dono himself? In those two days before this happened, we met several times. He does speak, but it’s all pretty manners and Academie prattle. He doesn’t attend any lectures or musicales. He’s no interest in why some stars stay in fixed patterns and why some change position every night. He claimed never to have heard of the opticum which reveals the tiny creatures our eyes cannot see, but is concerned that such a thing could easily be demonic. He said he read history at the Academie and sometimes reviewed historical papers—boring things about improvements in weaving and the construction of aqueducts. He mentioned that he would assume an official post on the same day as we were to be wed—a Confraternity feast day. Something about working with people new to the Confraternity. So he’s to be a tutor or mentor, I assume, but he never said what subjects. I can’t imagine him in a position of authority. He has an attendant with him at all times, like he needs someone to tell him where to sit and which knife to use. He said not one single thing of interest or import, enough that I knew he was just as dull and thickheaded as when he was a boy.”
How could one person have so many words in her as this?
“He didn’t touch me even once—when any other man would have kissed my hand.” She rolled her eyes and yanked at her hair. “Not that I want his touch. Worse, he wouldn’t even look at me like I might be a human person. The idiot talked about what apartments we might be given in the villa. About whether I would wish to have a lapdog. Stars … a lapdog … as if I had no mind to put to sensible use. And that was on that same evening after I’d gone and come back—the night they put a guard on my door—and he didn’t even mention that, as if it were the most ordinary thing in the world to have a soldier at his bride’s door. That was the night they killed her. Could he have been showing me his dull good manners while his people murdered an old woman because of me?”
She near spewed sparks as she talked. If that Dono were with us, she’d’ve strangled him right there.
What would she do if her people paid to get her home? She didn’t need me to tell her that marrying a man who conspired with his da and approved her friend’s murder was not so simple as marrying a cowardly dullwit. What a strange girl she was to be so smart and so ignorant all at once.
“I’ve been thinking on that story you told me about him,” I said, “that boy he ratted out as a sorcerer. What happened to him? Was he really a demon?”
“There are no sorcerers, Nis. No demons. Reason … scientific thought … can explain everything, even if we don’t understand it all as yet. The philosophists know this, but they want people to be superstitious and afraid. As for Guillam, Papa said they brought in their horrid sniffers and claimed they found evidence of magic on the collapsed shelf. Praetorians came for Guillam that night at supper, anyway, and dragged him away screaming. His family was arrested, too, but Papa said they were eventually released and told that Guillam was dead. They moved away from Cantagna. Papa supposed that it came out that no magic was involved, that the shelf fell because of the fight, and Guillam was blamed because he was the eldest there. A boy had died, after all, and another was injured. Someone had to pay for it.”
“Maybe they made a sniffer out of him.” Sometimes I had wicked dreams about sniffers.
Livia hunched her shoulders, not caring. “I suppose they might have. They say they only make sniffers out of sorcerers, but certain, they might have told themselves that doing it was as just a punishment as hanging for a boy of fourteen. At least he would get to stay alive.”
I shivered. To be one of those green monsters on a chain—going around naked, but for the silk, whether it was raining or cold or blistering hot. Blinded. Ears plugged. Their talk nothing but howls and moans. Maybe their tongues were cut. Made me want to puke.
She rubbed her forehead, smudging it with her fingers sticky from the olive paste. “You should go, Nis. Before your capo gets back.”
I couldn’t let the story go. My trip to the city had scared me. “Sniffers were everywhere in the city last night. Where do they all come from? We don’t hear about that many sorcerers being arrested, and lots of those are old folks or broken ones who think they’re Lady Fortune’s favored. But people in the street were saying the Cavalieri who snatched the girl from that big house were magic users, which we’re not. What if they catch me?”
This time Livia looked straight at me. “They wouldn’t make you a sniffer, Nis. They claim sorcery gets passed through the blood, so they don’t want women, because they might bear children. So it’s only men—cut men—they make into sniffers. They’d just hang you or drown you. I swear if I get out of this mess alive, I’ll try to do right by you. But likely it would be better if you would run away from me as far and as fast as you can.”
She dragged herself over to her blanket and curled up on it, her hands over her face. Maybe she was crying then—losing her friend and discovering awful things about her lover and her gonna-be husband—but I didn’t wait to see. I scrambled up the rope ladder in a hurry, as I needed to get … something … done before Capo came back. Something to do with the other prisoner. Feared as I was of hanging or drowning, I didn’t want Capo to throw me out, though if I stayed with him, I was like to be dead before I was one-and-twenty anyways. Certain, my imagining of being maidservant to Livia didn’t look at all promising with her married to a murderer. It was hard to keep my own weeps from leaking out.
Once close to the top of the ladder, I held still for a goodly while listening, remembering that lurkers could be nearby. After a bit, I shimmied quiet over the rim but I wasn’t so sure which way to go next. The scrubby trees and rock spires all looked the same in every direction. The sky was milk and silver, and I was tired as if I’d not slept in a year. I wanted to curl up like Livia and sleep for a month.
A rustling from a shrub off to one side struck a spark inside me that burst into full flame. Someone was hiding in there who was not Capo nor Lizard. I swallowed a scream and ran—crazy, lunatic, leaping over rocks, dragging through thorn bushes, scraping my arms on broken walls, slapped in the face by dry limbs, then down a gully, darting through shadows till my feet skidded and stumbled to keep up lest I lose my balance and tumble down the endless steeps. A man with a familiar face perched on a rock nearby. He reached out for me. So elegant he was, so handsome. Eyes the colors of fire and sunset, shimmering blood and molten rock. Skin the rich red-brown of copper. Long, graceful fingers.
“Do not fear, my lovely. I’ll not let you fall. So precious you are to me.” His voice was low and sweet, caressing my ears and soaking into my skin until it burned my heart. “Our time approaches. Let us whisper of pleasures to be found in the domes of sky and sea, of our future where you shall reclaim your proper place among your kind. My consort … my completion … perfect. I’ve waited so long.” He stretched out his hand … and I reached for it … almost touching …
“Romy, no!”
I blinked and looked out over nothing. Five fingers of ice-glazed iron around my wrist were all that prevented me plummeting down a cliff of red rock and gullied grit to the wasteland far below. Nis was fled, and by Lady Fortune’s whim, a granite-faced Teo gathered me into his imprisoning embrace and dragged me away from the brink of Perdition’s Br
ink.
17
ONE DAY BEFORE THE WEDDING
PERDITION’S BRINK
LATE AFTERNOON
“She needs to come with me to Domenika.”
“Our lady scribe needs to do as she chooses. She is a woman of her own mind.”
“As long as her mind is her own. Today … I’m not sure that was the case. You saw her fight me.”
“The swordsman’s right. She chose to return here this morning, knowing full well the risks. That is, I presume you presented the risks to her as starkly as you’ve presented them to us.”
“It’s why I came. Domenika does not travel, and though she has assistants who could explain more than I can, I believed Romy would listen to me. Yes, the timing is awkward; clearly the same event has set all of these conflicts in motion at once. But I fear for my friend, and for the unknowns of power beyond all of our experience—yours, mine, and that of my elders.”
No matter that my arms covered my eyes and ears, I could not escape the argument. Teo. Placidio. Dumond. Good friends who cared about me. Not lovers. Not … seducers, like the one in my dreams. That one was so angry, yet so passionate and so very, very beautiful. Her touch was the kiss of lightning; his gaze was magic itself. My body quivered at the memory of it. Spirits, what would their kiss be like?
Why should I be afraid? The Moon House had taught me how to manage demanding, passionate, angry masters. Even beautiful ones.
Keep aware of your true surroundings, Romy. Don’t drift. Teo had been clear about that. Keep all of your senses well-grounded in the place where you are. And let your own voice be the one to command your actions, your choices, your feelings.
So … the stone was smooth and cool under my cheek. Pleasantly so. And wet. They had brought me to this shady grotto and doused me with scoops of water from the spring because the heat of flesh and fury had driven me to madness. Bruises on my arms pulsed with my heartbeat.
Faint light and fresh air that smelled of warmed cedar filtered in from a distant hole in the cliff. Supposedly, you could walk from this grotto of the spring and its upward stair to that hole and look out on the wide world. Yet the opening was impossible to access from the flats below, and reachable only with ropes, spikes, hammers, and skilled climbing from above.