A Conjuring of Assassins, page 24
When I reached the Merchants Ring market, I headed downhill, threading the colorful displays of heaped spices, silk scarves, and glass and bronze natalés. Why did Egerik populate his house with grave talismans for children? Now there was fodder for a divination, if only I could guess the answer.
A sudden crush of shoppers flooded the narrow lane from farther down, bumping a comb seller’s flimsy table and spilling a fruit vendor’s baskets of raspberries. No smoke billowed behind the crowd. No one seemed particularly panicked, only somberly determined to be somewhere farther uphill.
Reluctant to backtrack and take a longer way around, I strolled onward into the Piazza Vasaio. The small courtyard, fragrant with pots of flowers and lemon trees, was surrounded by shops filled with fine pottery, glass, and silverwork. This had been one of my favorite markets in the heady years of my residence in il Padroné’s home.
The piazza was almost deserted, a number of shops shuttered. Ordinarily, wealthy shoppers and prosperous traders crowded Vasaio at midday. Curious, I strolled over to an open stall, shaded by an awning. The potter was surveying the piazza as she pumped the heavy treadle and smoothed her spinning clay.
“Where is everyone?” I said, as I examined the pots and cups on the shelves lining her back wall. “The day’s fine.”
“See for yourself.” Her finger, gray with watered clay, pointed around the piazza. “There’s one over there by Philomene’s. Another straight acrost. More in the Quartiere dell Alba, so I’ve heard.”
I peered through the dappled light. Foxes were ever-present city creatures, known to frighten children, and a mad dog could empty a street. Once a wild boar had charged into the Beggars Ring through an open gate, killed two children, and knocked over a barrel fire that burnt half a quartiere.
The pair that emerged from the shop she indicated explained everything. A muscular woman wearing a bilious-green tabard and carrying an axe led a tall, thin sniffer into the piazza by a chain linked to her belt.
My body quivered with the compulsion to turn tail and run. But I dared not. The potter wasn’t at all frightened. One shout, one questioning finger pointed at me …
“Two sniffers abroad in this one piazza?” I said, proud my voice did not shake. “More in the neighborhood? Has there been another incident?”
The previous autumn a sorcerer had caused an explosion that had killed fifty-three citizens. He had been captured and sent to the Executioner to be drowned, while the Cantagnese aristocrat who’d hired him had been beheaded in a public execution. The only felon more despised than a sorcerer was the one who suborned a sorcerer to his plots.
The potter splashed water on her spinning clay. “Don’t know if they heard of something happened or only found the track. Peccio the glassblower told me they traced a magical stink to il Padroné’s own house.”
My knees jellied. Sandro’s house! No, no, it couldn’t be … Not even a month had passed since I, disguised by magic, had walked into that house to deliver the strange bronze statue to the grand duc of Riccia.
“By the Mother,” I said, “is il Padroné harmed?”
Last autumn’s explosion had been meant to kill him. And even the Shadow Lord was subject to the First Law. Had someone got wind of the Chimera—his own hireling sorcerers?
“Unharmed, bless ’im,” she said, smoothly transforming the lumpish clay on her wheel into a graceful urn, a skill that must once have seemed magical. “I heard he were shuffled off to safety when the nullifiers barged in.”
Dumond believed magical residue did not linger past a day, but who really knew? Neri and I had tried to detect traces of magic on each other before, during, and after using magic, with and without Dumond’s luck charms nearby. Only with a touch of flesh during the work itself could we sense another’s magic. As Dumond surmised, there must be something—some sensation, sound, or odor—that enabled sniffers to do so.
I needed to be away from here. Not three hours had passed since I’d used my magic in Palazzo Ignazio. And even now, Neri and Dumond were using their extraordinary skills in the center of the city, not all that far away.
“The Twins protect us all, if even il Padroné is at risk,” I said.
The woman’s fingers shaped a pouting lip on her urn. “I’ve naught to fear. Animals they are, these sniffers, like hounds what stay on the scent till they catch the demons. Certain, no spawn of Dragonis can pass my wards.”
Ropes of prickly juniper hung around her awning and twined around its posts. But, of course, I was standing under that awning with no ill effects.
“Bad luck when sorcerers are about,” I said, drifting toward the front of her stall. “I don’t know whether to expect the hellish monster to burst through the ground or the city to be flattened by another explosion.”
My eyes raked the quiet piazza for the quickest route to get me away as the potter droned on.
“… bad omens of late. Three men washed up dead to the docks four nights ago. Two swans found headless at the Ucelli yestermorn. And today morn these monsters slither about chasing demons. Summat terrible’s in the wind, no doubt.”
“Fortune’s continued benefice, Mistress Potter,” I said, poised for flight, “and for Cantagna, as well.”
She bobbed her head. “Virtue’s grace.”
Sweat beaded my back as I strolled out of the potter’s stall, past the shuttered glassmaker’s shop and a cobbler’s stall. One of the brick arches that marked the boundaries of Piazza Vasaio lay just ahead. A neat signboard read SCALA CIONDOLANTE. The Dangling Stair, a set of worn and very steep steps, led straight down from Piazza Vasaio to the Market Ring Gate.
The day had gone quiet. Conversations had retreated behind walls. Tradesmen lunched indoors. Children and elders had vanished from stoops and benches as if winter frost had dropped down on us out of season.
As if straight from my own horror, a wordless screech split the quiet from a jumble of houses and shops just beyond the piazza boundaries.
I clutched the luck charm in my waist pocket as I walked briskly through the boundary arch, watching my step on the crumbling stair like the other stragglers. A water carrier. Two prosperous-looking clerks in starched ruffs and tall hats. A woman carrying a bolt of gray wool. Perhaps ten others in sight farther down.
A second howl arrowed from the piazza directly behind me.
“Must have a demon on the run,” shouted one of the clerks, a gleeful, ruddy-cheeked young man, holding his hat as he took the steps two at a time on his way up to the piazza.
“Maybe we should wait,” said the other clerk, huffing to keep up. “Don’t want to get too close.” His pleated trousses flapped as he jogged after his friend.
I stayed my course downward, away from the confrontation.
“Come on, ma.” A boy with tight-crimped hair tugged at a reluctant young matron halted in the middle of the way. “There could be fireworks! Or monsters. Or the sorcerer could get a foot chopped!”
“’Tis evil,” she said. “Demon’s work.”
“Papa would take me. He says it’s good to see the law do its duty.”
The mother ascended another step lest the boy tear her sleeve off.
“Don’t do it,” I said as I trudged around them. “Stay away. It’s naught for a child to see.”
The woman glanced at me, the beads on her woven cap quivering.
“Out the way! Out the way!” The clerk in the pleated trousses had reversed course and near bowled the mother, the boy, and me over as he stumbled down the steps, retracing his path.
I spun around. A howling sniffer raced down from the piazza, the nullifier on his heels, the chain leash between them rattling on the broken stone. The eager clerk had flattened himself to a house front, leaving no one else between me and the green, silk-sheathed finger pointing my way.
“Esse ancora, lo spirito maligno!” yelled a graveled voice—the nullifier, commanding the demon sorcerer to be still.
Paralyzing terror exploded through limbs and veins. My feet would not move.
The screech of a second sniffer came from the crowded streets to my right. Closer than before. Closing in. My lungs refused to pump.
The descending sniffer slowed, its howl reduced to a growling moan, its hands raised with fingers spread as if sensing magic on the sultry air. The creature pointed at a doorway. Axe raised, the nullifier beat on the door, ready to smash it if the householder failed to open it.
I released a breath, as my trapped intellect urged me to action. It wasn’t you. You were just between it and its quarry. Move, now.
I reversed course to face downhill again. Go left at the red house. Barbers Row will get you out of sight.
Barbers Row began as a wide and busy boulevard, but after four or five shopfronts it disintegrated into a maze of vacant tenements, stables, and storehouses. Il Padroné had donated the area to the city for a new theater. Until the theater design was approved by the Sestorale, it was an eerie place, good for losing oneself—or slipping through a broken bit of the wall into the Market Ring.
My first step could have required no more effort were I breast deep in the flooding Venia. The second was little better.
A growing cluster of onlookers—braver or more foolish than most citizens—gathered along the stair to gawk and to heckle whomever the nullifier might roust. The two clerks were among them. My leaden feet took me behind them. The red house and Barbers Row were only a short distance away.
Another step down.
A whoop and screech from my left near shattered my skull. The second sniffer closing in.
A slight figure pelted out of a squeeze halfway between me and the red house. Pausing for one moment, he looked around frantically, then streaked for the yawning mouth of Barbers Row.
The moment was enough to recognize him. Pale hair … bare feet … my brother’s slops. Teo!
Placidio constantly harangued Neri and me to develop solid principles for joining any fight, and to hone our instincts to serve those principles. The practice made us able to react quickly without overthinking, and thus more likely to succeed. It soothed guilt and self-condemnation if we failed. And it forced reexamination of motives if the result was not what we intended.
That was why I threw myself to the ground in front of the dark little squeeze between houses that had spat out Teo. I scrubbed dirt into my face, tore my underskirt, and started cursing and screaming that the fugitive had knocked me over.
“Summon the law!” I yelled as I sat up, legs akimbo, skirts in a snarl. “Who’s to defend a poor girl fetching buns for her mam?”
My cries distracted some in the crowd from the sniffer prowling the houses across the lane. I spread my arms in a plea for help. Two dusty hod carriers and a stout woman in an apron came to fuss over me, the four of us very effectively blocking exit from the squeeze.
Just in time.
Pounding boots, clanking chain, and the waver of wordless bawling halted in a shower of dust and gravel. The chasers had come to a stop right behind me.
My spine crawled with worms. My helpers gaped in horror.
“Get out the way, citizens,” snapped a throaty female voice over my head. “Move your feet or I’ll chop them.”
One of the carriers and the woman melted into the onlookers. The other carrier dropped his empty hod, grabbed my shoulders, and dragged me aside.
The flat of a cold steel axe blade pressed my cheek. The snarling, leather-skinned nullifier bent down and said, “Don’t never get in the way of hunters, girlie.”
“Nay, yer honor,” I croaked. “Never would I. Knocked me over, he did. But nay, I would never interfere with the righteous law.”
I dropped my gaze as she yanked the chain leash. The sniffer stumbled past me. Its feet—his feet—were huge, their silk coverings frayed. Fresh blood glistened amid the street filth. Human feet.
“Find him again, demon,” growled the nullifier, as the crowd made way for them.
“Ayeee!” The sniffer’s howl of lust and anger and … pain … shivered me far worse than the cold steel of the axe. Maybe not so human. Maybe mad.
Such a short time I’d given Teo. Enough to hide, perhaps. To stop whatever magic he was doing. Magic …
“Are you well, damizella?” asked the crouching hod carrier, his hot breath on my cheek. What skin showed between his thick beard, moustache, and brows was covered with soot, and his hands had likely not seen soap in ten years. But his terror-bright eyes and quivering hands reminded me that no risky choice endangered oneself alone.
I pressed a clenched fist to my breast. “Thank you, goodman. Your courage shames me. Be on your way with Fortune’s benefice.”
He nodded and hurried away through the scattering onlookers. I stood, remaining inside the shadowed mouth of the alley, waiting for the street to clear and my heart to slow.
The two sniffers waved hands in the air and pointed in differing directions, growling and moaning while their nullifiers consulted. In moments, the woman and the tall sniffer with bloodied feet rounded the corner into Barbers Row, while the other pair raced down the Dangling Stair.
I leaned my back against the alley’s brick, taking stock of what had just happened. Teo … chased by sniffers. Teo, a sorcerer. Of course he was. If the sniffers didn’t snare him, I would. And then I’d beat the damnable liar until he spat out the truth.
A huge black shape dropped from a low rooftop to land at my feet like an avalanche of night. My stomach lurched in upheaval, as the shapeless blackness unfolded into a black-cloaked man. “Atladu’s balls, woman, are you an entire fool?”
“Swordmaster?” I could not have been more shocked had a naked Atladu leaped from the sky. “What are you doing here? You’re supposed to be sleeping. Healing.”
“Followed you from the Moon House. Wanted to warn you there were sniffers about. Decided that rooftops were safer than the streets, and that mayhap it was better we not walk together, lest one or the other of us be taken. May we now get away from here before you attract any more devilish attention?”
Wrapping his arm and voluminous cloak about the both of us, Placidio urged me down the cobbled steep.
* * *
“You’re sure that was your fish man they were after?”
“Yes.”
Placidio had bought cheese and bread in the Asylum Ring market, and we sat on a stone step to eat it. Unlike the Scala Ciondolante, these steps were shallow, wide, and open enough no one could overhear us without being very obvious about it.
Though urgency drove me onward, Placidio needed time to breathe. His drop from the roof had done his cracked rib no good.
“But you said he wasn’t—”
“I said I wasn’t sure he was a sorcerer. He denied it. Was horrified at the notion of it. He had reasonable explanations for almost everything I asked. Best liar I ever encountered.”
“Yet you played the fool to delay the chase. At least you had a reason. I thought you were going to lure me into a fight with a sniffer for a stranger. So what do you think to do about him now?”
We had circled wide on our path toward the Beggars Ring, avoiding Barbers Row. But it was clear the hunt had moved swiftly down the Rings as well. Casual inquiries around the Market and Asylum Rings had placed the howling sniffers down in the Beggars Ring at the docks.
“Perhaps he’s jumped a barge going downriver.” Or killed someone else. The potter’s omen of three dead men had taken on an ominous integrity.
I passed the rest of my bread to Placidio, unable to choke down another bite.
“Lady Fortune would never ease our path so conveniently,” he said, as my share of the loaf followed his into oblivion. “Do you think he saw it was you held up the sniffer on his tail?”
“I doubt it. He was in a panic, looking for escape. If he survives … Well, he’ll either let me know what’s happened or not.”
“And if he’s stupid enough to think he’s bamboozled you, he’s stupid enough to lead the sniffers right back to you. You can’t go home.”
“Clearly he bamboozled me. I suspected he was a sorcerer and still coddled him like a milk nurse.” I kicked at a loose cobble with my heel. “But I’m not going to stay away. I’m not going to give up my life in Cantagna. The house. The shop. L’Scrittóre’s clients and Neri’s work. Besides, I need to practice with the needles before tomorrow, and then fetch my new costume from Vashti. And I’m hoping for an answer from my acquaintance in the Cuaronan Wool Guild.”
“Thinking of raising sheep in your little domicile?”
“She may know why Egerik left his appointment in Cuarona so quickly. I’d dearly love to know if it had anything to do with the Brotherhood of the Exquisite.”
I told him what I’d learned from Nuccio.
“What I’d give for a flagon of mead to wash all that away!” He swiped at his moustache and grizzled chin. “All right. You head for Lizard’s Alley. I’ll follow discreetly to make sure no one’s sniffing around behind you.”
“You ought to be resting that rib.”
“The rib will mend.”
I was glad of him. I could still feel the cold steel pressure of the nullifier’s axe blade on my cheek.
* * *
The overwhelming relief that flooded me as I walked into the Beggars Ring was entirely unjustified. Had my little fiefdom of a stone hovel in a rat-infested alley and a shop far smaller than Sandro’s dressing closet become the kind of home poets spoke of? The kind of home that brought tears to Teo’s eyes?
More likely the relief had to do with the occasional glimpse of Placidio peering out from behind a chimney or creeping across a cracked slate roof. Now that I knew to watch for him, his aerial travels were not entirely invisible. Especially when his boot slipped and he came near tumbling headlong into the stableyard behind the Duck’s Bone—the very mire where I’d first laid eyes on him.
The swordsman splayed himself on the roof in a most undignified manner to check his slide. I paused to watch two children herding a flock of geese to their doom at Ogi the poulterer’s stall, lest I need to roust a goose rebellion to divert attention from cascading swordsmen. But Placidio deftly righted himself, popped to his feet, and vanished behind the crumbling facade of the building that housed my shop.
