A Conjuring of Assassins, page 14
I wanted to speak to him of the mark on his chest and more about his dreams and my implausible suspicion that I had shared those dreams and that they bore some connection to the sadness that beset him. But I needed to be clearheaded when morning came.
He shook his head, disbelieving. “So generous … first my life and now coin and a bed.”
“This is a loan, as I said, until you can find your way again. I’ve been lost before—separated by unimaginable distance from a life I treasured as much as you seem to value your home. But I had my brother beside me to keep my feet pointed forward, and we remained in a city I knew. You have neither.”
Teo rose and crossed his arms over his breast. “Before I left the Isles, I sought every kind of information about the Costa Drago. I was told of magnificent cities and flourishing fields, of mighty rivers and forests thick with life, of artworks that would lift my soul, wealth that would astonish me, sorrows that must grieve the divine Mother herself. But no one ever spoke of such welcoming to a stranger as you have shown me.” He bowed from the waist with an easy grace. As he straightened, he flashed a sidewise grin. “Especially such an odd stranger!”
Sober truth damped my laughter too soon. “I wish I could say there’s no reason to fear. But you must take care. Spies and magic sniffers are everywhere. If you’re caught using magic, you’re dead. Showing your markings, even speaking too much of the goddess mother or divine father can create suspicions. Do you understand?”
“Deíxe éleos,” he said softly, eyes closed. Have mercy. “Sorrowfully I understand and will behave as you say. Careful. Sleep easy, Kyria Romy, and may your tomorrow business prosper. I shall repay this loan in the moment I am able, as well as provide whatever you might need of me—whatever is in my power to give—from this moment until the end of days.”
I extended my hand. As I clasped his wrist firmly, he did the same to mine. Was he merely following my lead, or had someone told him how contracts were sealed in the Costa Drago? Perhaps he was merely a traveler, sent to meet a family friend. But my bones told me that he was something else as well. Priest? Perhaps. Sorcerer? Almost surely. But a danger? I didn’t think so. Whatever he was, I didn’t believe he understood it right now any more than I did.
Teo was asleep before I could blink. Before doing the same, I hurried out and around the corner to the shop.
Two items sat waiting in message box number six. One was a simple curl of wood. The shaving from a pen and a very sharp penknife was Sandro’s agreed upon signal that the prisoner had arrived in Cantagna. Again I wondered why the delay and whether Sandro knew the prisoner was our old acquaintance.
The second missive—a folded half page at most—was sealed with silver-gray wax and bore the imprint of crossed scrolls, the symbol of the law profession. Unable to wait, I broke the seal right there and read:
Segna,
Our mutual friend recommended your recent inquiry to me. Fortunately I am in possession of references for the gentleman you mentioned. You may view these references in my chambers on any day between the Hour of Business and my midday walk. I am most often in the courts all afternoon.
I commend your brother for his aspirations after his troubles with the law and you for supporting him. May Lady Fortune and Lady Virtue assist him.
Cosimo di Mantegna,
Lawyer registered to the Cantagnan Magistracy
“Ha!” Experienced in the Shadow Lord’s intrigues, the wily lawyer Mantegna had told me that not only did he have information about the Mercediaran ambassador, he would present it to me himself. His midday walk always took him to a particular tea shop in a quiet corner of the Merchants Ring where il Padroné would encounter him by seeming chance if he needed to discuss some matter. Mantegna knew I was familiar with the arrangement.
A fierce heat rose in me—the heat of the chase that had propelled us through our first adventure. Our new game was full on.
11
THREE DAYS UNTIL THE PRISONER TRANSFER
LATE MORNING
I circled the Piazza Livello fountain for the fifth time in the damp, heavy sunlight, threading the crowds that surged and waned in the thriving heart of Cantagna. Every citizen had business there sooner or later. To pay fines or taxes. To procure licenses to sell wares in Cantagna’s markets or unload barges at her docks. To stand witness or accused in a magistrate’s court. To attend a lecture at the Philosophic Academie or seek a loan in the Gallanos Bank, an ornate temple to a god of prosperity, did there exist such a divinity. They came most often to the Palazzo Segnori. Its ordered rows of windows promised security and clarity in all works. Today I would enter by the front door.
I dipped a hand in the fountain and wiped the grit from my neck as I observed three wardens of the Gardia Sestorale standing post in the shade of the Palazzo Segnori loggia. Their gray-blue tabards left them almost invisible. Somewhere patrolling nearby would be the ever-present danger …
There. The milling crowd in front of the Philosophic Academie parted like soil to a plowshare. A burly red-haired man with an axe at his belt strutted through the Academie’s grand doors and down the wide steps as if he were a senior philosophist instead of a hired axe-man. He was a nullifier, charged with ferreting out magic users and dispatching them to the Executioner of the Demon Tainted—whole or maimed, the Executioner didn’t care which. Behind him, attached to his belt by a chain leash, slunk his sniffer, sheathed head to toe in a skin of green silk. Even eyes and ears were covered by the green silk skin, only two holes left for breathing, giving him the appearance of some worm-like creature of ancient times crawled out from the seams in the earth. Sniffers were male sorcerers who had traded certain death for existence as a slave. Gelded, chained, ordinary senses dulled by the skin-tight silk, they were allowed only a single purpose—detecting the use of magic.
I could not withhold a shudder.
As did most people I had ever regarded sniffers as inhuman. Until the night Neri and I had come face-to-face with one at a gate crossing. Under the stretched silk covering his eyes, his eyelids opened, and I’d felt his gaze on us—a free woman and her companion, going about our business on a cold, rainy night. It had occurred to me what a painful sight that must be for one who had no hope of warmth or companionship, no purpose but the death hunt.
If the sniffer recognized the taint of magic inside us, he had made no sign of it. Perhaps Dumond’s luck charms had protected us; perhaps he truly couldn’t see what we were unless we were using the fire inside us. I liked to imagine it had been … a gesture … something human. No matter which, I’d never again looked at sniffers the same way.
Fortunately my morning’s business required no magic. Still, I fingered the bronze luck charm in my pocket until the unholy pair vanished into a side street.
The City Architect kept records of all building plans, not just those for houses and public halls, but maps of sewers, water pipes, graveyards, wells, anything and everything. While I distracted the clerk on duty, Neri could sneak around behind the clerk and steal the detailed drawings and maps of the Quartiere di Fiori—the very private neighborhood where the ambassador of Mercediare lived and conducted his city’s business.
I made another loop of the piazza. An hour past the time we’d set to meet, Neri had not yet come. He would think my plan boring, as this impersonation needed no magic. I could work the scheme alone, yet it would be riskier without a partner. So I delayed a quarter hour and then another and another. Each interval screwed my gut tighter.
Whenever I didn’t know where Neri was, I worried. For an exuberant youth gifted with magic, life was a constant risk. I hoped it wasn’t resentment kept him away.
Perhaps Placidio had taken a turn for the worse. Guilt nagged, insisting I should have stayed with them instead of trying to untangle the mystery that was Teo. Distraction was a certain danger in schemes like ours.
Another circuit of the massive fountain. The only quiet islands in the rushing current of citizens were artists sitting on the paving stones sketching portraits or doing charcoal renderings of the Palazzo Segnori facade or the gold-tipped bell tower. I paused behind a young woman doing a watercolor study of the fountain itself. Under the hand of towering Atladu, a bronze Leviathan broached chiseled waves, his jaw open, his mighty tail readied to sweep the monster Dragonis from the sky. The mid-morn sunlight transformed the water flowing over Leviathan’s back to molten silver yielding the beast a rippling life. The woman’s rendering comprised only a few splashes of color, yet she had translated all the energy of the sculptor’s art and the water’s life to her page.
When asking for our help with this matter, Sandro had told me how easily Vizio’s campaign of vengeance could blossom into war. I had envisioned a few besieged households engaged in bloody retribution, perhaps some shortages of food or wine or wool, not a real war that would affect us all. But if Vizio unleashed vendetta, it would not fall only on the signers of the Assassins List, but on their families, their servants, their tenants, on the villages who prospered from their trade or tending. In such a world, what would happen to a young person who could now sit peacefully among these passersby, slaking her thirst for art and beauty by creating wonders such as this drawing?
Cantagna still had too many hungry people and too much corruption, but these islands of hope were rising everywhere. Fragile hopes in a world where peace was so unaccustomed.
The mid-hour bell in the Palazzo Segnori tower chimed twice past half-morn. Only an hour remained until midday when I hoped to meet Lawyer Mantegna in his favorite teashop and discover interesting things about the Mercediaran ambassador. No time remained for dallying.
As I hurried into the deep shadows under the palazzo loggia, I pulled a voluminous gray mantle from a large bag and fastened it around my shoulders. Pausing beside one of the great pillars, I twisted and pinned my hair into a sedate knot at the back of my head. A fat, plushy toque of peacock blue covered it all and drooped an ugly veil across my eyes. I finished by pulling folds of a plum-colored underskirt through slashes in my workaday skirt.
Genevieve di Lac would be an ambitious young matron, wealthy, but not supremely wealthy, of respectable family, but not an old family, one of many such women scrabbling to find a place among Cantagna’s elite. Women like Genevieve were cruel to their maids and rude to clerks and seamstresses and courtesans, but often got tangled in their own plumage when in the presence of those they aspired to join.
Even without magic, I had to believe I was Genevieve. Segna di Lac would neither hesitate nor duck her head. At my imperious wave a footman opened the leftmost palazzo doors, and I hurried through the babble of the city’s business toward a downward stair. My back prickled. The call could come at any moment. Mistress Cataline? I thought you were dead! Or, Scribe Romy, have you forgotten your position? How gaudy you are! Or it could be simply the howl of a sniffer.
A cool quiet enveloped me as I descended into the labyrinthine lower halls and the City Architect’s domain. With a calming breath, I swept through a marked doorway into a workroom that smelled of old parchment, old wood, old dust, and fresh ink, and announced, “I am Segna di Lac of Strada del Mele and I wish to set the route for my sister’s wedding processional.”
The startled clerk seated at the drawing desk opened his mouth. “Segna—”
“Leila is dithering about gowns and jewels, leaving the most important plans withering from neglect. The processional must traverse the finest circle route available through the Quartiere di Zefferile of the Merchants Ring, avoiding certain unlucky houses along the way, and ensuring that we arrive at the Ucelli Gardens at the Hour of Gathering, which is the most auspicious time.”
“Segna, the Ucelli Gardens are located in the Quar—”
“Do not patronize me, young man. I know exactly where the Ucelli Gardens are located and there is no more fortuitous prospect in Cantagna. I wish to see every map of the districts involved, with notations of clean benches available for those who cannot walk too far, and of fountains and arcades lest the day be too warm. And we must pass the Domata Ponds, where we might encounter the great spotted cuckoo to ensure a prosperous first year, and the Pillar of Hymonides, which with the proper invocations to Lady Fortune will naturally ensure Domenico’s—”
I pressed a finger to my mouth as if the mention of a groom’s potency might sear my tongue.
“Truly, segna, with greatest respect, the Domata Ponds, the Ucelli Gardens, and the Hymonides Pillar are not even in the same—”
“Hop to it, clerk!” I rapped a knuckle on his desk. “The route was recommended to me by several most influential persons. My dear friend, Segna Beatrice di Mesca herself, whose daughter has made a most fortunate marriage, told me that her personal soothsayer insisted a wedding processional must visit three particular sites, and I’m sure those are the correct names. Bring me the maps I’ve requested, and you’ll see.”
The clerk hopped to it. The wealthy patroness of the arts Beatrice di Mesca’s name was none to be trifled with. Her daughter’s marriage to Tibernia’s conte had involved such an outrageously elaborate wedding processional that no one in the city could be ignorant of it.
“Please have a seat, Segna di Lac. I shall return expeditiously.”
With a bow, the clerk retired through the archway into the vast warren of the archives to gather maps of at least four different quartieres in order to explain to me how the route I suggested was impossible and nowhere near the Quartiere di Zefferile.
Cantagna was divided into five concentric rings—five districts, each with multiple quartieres or neighborhoods. Over the past quarter century our city had been quite forward-thinking in gathering all documents, maps, plans, and histories into a collection for each district. The materials the clerk sought for Genevieve would be catalogued nowhere near the ones the Chimera needed.
Now the more dangerous step. I’d never planned on doing this alone. What if he forgot my instructions and came back? What if my notion of the chamber’s layout was wrong? Spirits …
Counting to three, I circled behind the clerk’s tall desk and peeked through the doorway.
No sight of him. Muffled footsteps yielded to the rattle of hinges and creaking wood far to my right. Satisfied, I hurried leftward, pausing only to read the labels on the long rows of document racks and cabinets. Five, six … the seventh row should be about right for Quartiere di Fiori of the Heights.
The Heights comprised this most elite innermost district of Cantagna, where the heart of Cantagna’s governance was surrounded by sun-blessed, palatial homes of the city’s oldest families. The Quartiere di Fiori, named for its lush flower gardens, was the Heights’ most remote neighborhood. Vine-draped gates and private guardposts protected the quarter’s reclusive residents—mostly hostile diplomats, landless nobility, and a few wealthy eccentrics.
Neither Beggars Ring folk, common artisans, nor duelists below the top ranks were allowed to wander the Quartiere di Fiori’s avenues. Even il Padroné, only a junior member of the governing Sestorale despite his unquestioned power and influence, was rarely invited there, and never had he taken his mistress. Without maps, the Chimera was blind.
My fingers brushed the carefully inked labels above crowded scroll cases, shelves laden with bound books, and wood boxes of flat maps and drawings.
Wrong aisle. These were Asylum Ring materials, not those for the Heights. I sped farther down the row to a crossing aisle and moved leftward again. Partway down the crossing aisle shelves had been cleared away for a broad table laden with tools, wrapped clay, and the model of the new coliseum rising in the Asylum Ring.
Il Padroné loved taking guests on tours of the City Architect’s workshops, especially the sculpted models. He hoped to create an outward magnificence that would inspire Cantagna’s inward illumination.
He had taken his mistress there at night lest she be a distraction to those diligently developing his visions. His lamp had lent a fantastical quality to the miniature cityscapes. We had pretended to see ourselves and others we knew hurrying through the arcades of his coliseum, strolling beside fountains and ponds, and enjoying performances in a theater that would be carved into the side of a hill where an ancient king’s armory had once stood.
I scurried past and entered an aisle labeled Heights, eastern districts. My finger traced the labels for the Quartieres of Songs, of Apricots, of Vines …
Had the collections grown so much in a year? Had the Archivist rearranged things? This was supposed to be quick, yet every passing moment seemed interminable … until my finger touched Quartiere di Fiori and I found everything I wanted. A map of streets dated last year. The always important plots of water resources and sewers. The building plots of fine residences. A moment’s hunt located Palazzo Ignazio and three random houses just in case someone noticed the missing maps.
My bag could not hold everything. Yet every moment choosing brought me nearer detection. A little farther up the shelves stood a defensive study of the district and a pamphlet called The Plague in the Heights. I added them to the bulky bag.
Time seemed stretched, as if I’d been in the archives for hours. So I tucked the bag under my mantle, raced back to the end of the row, and peeked into the outer aisle.
Night Eternal! The clerk, his skinny arms thrown about a deep basket filled with standing map rolls, was closer to the exit door than I was. Surely he couldn’t see over his load or hear my heart thumping.
