A Conjuring of Assassins, page 26
I laughed in spite of myself. “What are we to do with you?”
Again I glanced at Placidio for help. He met my gaze briefly, but just shook his head and strolled over to the open doorway.
“My friend and I have important things to be about today,” I said. “And my brother … once he’s heard this, he’ll be convinced I’m a lunatic. He’ll want to bash you on the head and throw you back into the river—and I’m not at all sure he’d not be right. What I would really like to do is sit here all afternoon and see what else you can do that you don’t understand.”
“My talents seem sparse.” He wrapped his arms round his bony knees, lost in Neri’s slops. “Surely you’ve thought of that, friend Romy. I recall so little of my purpose. I don’t seem to be very good at anything. My father sent me away, thinking this acquaintance in Cuarona could make use of me. But instead of trusting me to explain his purpose, he wrote her a letter many seasons ago telling her that someday I would come. Before I left, he gave me a bit of coral to wear that she might recognize me. Perhaps my head is not so much broken, as never very solid in the first place.”
It was a wistful assessment. I wanted to pat him on the head and make him feel better. But he was not a child of three. Besides it was entirely ridiculous.
“Sparse talents? You helped rescue a good man from certain death when his own strength and that of his friends were failing. You can heal yourself overnight from injuries that would keep an ordinary man on his back for a month. For certain, you swim very well, except when you’ve been beaten to a solid bruise.” I pointed through the door toward the river. “Or was that a lie, too?”
“The beating was true. My soul was but a cooling ember at the end…”
“I didn’t question the beating. To overcome three captors when you lay at brink of death shows a modicum of skills, whether you are meant to have such skills or not. But did you truly swim from one of the city bridges up here to the River Gate not an hour ago?”
“Aye. I am a strong swimmer. The river is friendly, though I miss the salt and the waves, the pulse of living water, not just a mindless running downhill. Perhaps mindless is better for me just now. The sea is…”
His voice trailed off as before when we spoke of the sea. His luminous eyes clouded.
“And I’ll swear you don’t sleep,” I snapped, battling sentiment. “You heard everything I said while you were turned inward to heal yourself. Your dreams spilled into mine. You spoke to me when you were sleeping, without moving your lips. Can you do that, too? Speak in my head?”
“Pshh. Who could do such things?”
“Someone whose search for some inexplicable something can be detected by a sniffer. Which means the searching is magic. But he doesn’t know what he is or can do … and here he is with me, who understands exactly what that is like, because for years I thought I was broken, and now—”
“You’re not? That is most encouraging.” A bright grin blossomed and faded. “My head bones bulge and crack with all this thinking.”
“You told me your name that night and that you weren’t dead. You spoke in Annisi. Do you know very much of it?”
“Annisi?” He frowned.
“The language of Typhon. No one’s spoken Annisi for centuries, but the first word I heard from you was skatá. Crude words don’t surprise me, but the language did. Then you called on the goddess mother and divine father, Theía Mitéra and Theíko Patéra, whom we name Gione and Atladu. I happen to know a bit of Annisi, because—What’s wrong?”
Teo roamed the floor again, head bent and brow creased with effort. “I must have heard the words somewhere. My family speaks as you do here—the merchant tongue of the Costa Drago—though with differences in pronouncing. But … the Mother of Earth and the Father of Ocean … yes, we honor them … heed them … always.”
“Stop,” I said. “Look at me and tell me your name. Tell me the truth with no hiding.”
I grabbed his wrist as I’d done earlier.
Troubled, he fixed his gaze to mine and offered his other wrist to Placidio. Placidio, so unusually quiet, accepted it.
“My name is Teo. I have come from the Isles of Lesh and I wish no one harm. There are many things I don’t remember, and I must believe, as you’ve said, that my head is damaged.”
No magic surged through him to cover lies or place another story in my head, as I had done with Rossi and my chambermaid and my father. He believed what he said. Had someone done to him what I had done to those three and others in my life? Or was he lost in a broken impersonation that he could not relinquish on his own?
“So, this one last test,” I said. “Close your eyes, turn inward, and tell us something interesting—without speaking it aloud.”
“Without speaking?” His iridescent eyes cooled to gray. “That’s impossible.”
“Try it.” I tightened my grip on his wrist.
Mouth drawn into a knot, finger-deep wrinkles on his brow, Teo shot me one hard, skeptical look, then closed his eyes.
You are a woman of extraordinary generosity and courage, Romy of Cantagna, and wise and clever and most extravagantly lovely.
I dropped his wrist.
But truly your head must be as broken as mine.
Teo’s words struck my mind as solidly as arrows slamming a target even after I stopped touching his flesh. His lips had not moved. Not a ripple of magic surged through him. Not magic as I knew it. Not even his magic as I had felt it.
I sank to the straw—my joints refusing to hold me up any longer. “Not broken,” I said, scarce able to muster a whisper. “Certainly not wise or clever.”
“You heard what I said!”
I nodded. How was it possible he could do such a thing? How was it possible he didn’t know?
The other two were silent, and I glanced up to see Teo staring at Placidio’s back.
“I didn’t hear anything,” said Placidio. “But you did, Romy?”
“Clear as sunrise.” I wrapped my arms about myself, as if to assure myself of their continuing attachment to my commands. When one’s mind is no longer one’s own, but trespassed by another, no matter how … friendly? innocent? good humored? sincere?… as Teo seemed to be, one could take nothing for granted.
Placidio spun around, brisk and sure. “Can you speak back to him?”
“How could I?” I said. “No magic flowed through him when he spoke.”
Teo’s gaze shifted to Placidio.
“Perhaps it was just too subtle to detect,” said Placidio. “Try it. Close your eyes, reach for your magic and concentrate—as we tried when practicing the hand light, as I do when drawing power for healing—and then say something to him without speaking. Does she have your permission to try, Teo?” He bowed ever so slightly in Teo’s direction.
My jaw dropped at the gesture of respect.
“Certainly,” said Teo, not seeming to notice Placidio’s offering. “I would tell you how to do it, if I knew. By the Mother’s heart, I don’t understand. It is a marvel, truly.”
I did as Placidio suggested. Several times. Each time, Teo shook his head, grimacing in apology.
“Perhaps it is only a skill of those born in Lesh who’ve had their skull cracked.”
“Perhaps so,” said Placidio. “For now, I need to be off. For what it’s worth, I believe your story, Teo, and wish you well in your endeavors. I’m glad Romy was able to help you and wise enough to do so. Romy, I’ll see you at the olive grove tomorrow at the time we set.”
In a whirl of cloak and dust, the swordsman left. His pronouncement left me flummoxed. What had convinced him?
I closed my eyes and laid my forehead on my knees hoping to break the fascination of this impossible mystery.
Bare feet scuffing the straw-layered dirt brought Teo’s cool bulk to my side. He stank of river wrack and the sweat of fear.
“Your friend is a good man. His acceptance means a great deal to me … and to you, I gather.”
“Yes. Winning his trust is not easy. Truly I wasn’t expecting it in your case, especially with this new strangeness. I accused you of putting things in my head, but I didn’t truly believe it.”
“It makes me wonder what else—good, ill, strange, ordinary—lies waiting outside the bright lens of my seeing. But maybe I don’t want to know.”
“Mmm.” Overwhelmed, amazed, terrified at the possibilities of his talents, I could not muster words enough to make sense of a man who had no concept of his gift, because in his mind, sorcery meant something evil, whereas what he did was … ordinary. Invading a mind, it seemed, required less effort than healing broken bones overnight.
“I found employment,” he said quietly, yanking me back to the mundane. “Down at the docks. In the morning before all this happened. There’s a fish-packer named Frenetti, who buys hogsheads of … serdellas? Little fish. Silver.”
“Pilchards.” Silly word, when my head was stuffed with so much of magic and not-magic.
“Aye! Pilchards brought overland from the sea in casks of brine. He dries them, packs them in jars of oil, salt, and spice. I told him of the spices my aya used for serdellas, and he liked that, and also that I knew how to work with them, which he says not many in Cantagna do. He says that when a new lot comes in, he could use me to help. And in between, he needs a good hand for mending nets, scraping keels, just about anything needed for his fishing boats or the boats that carry his packed fish to markets up and down the river. I know fish and boats. He says I can sleep in his fish house, and he doesn’t mind I lack boots. So, this…”
I lifted my eyelids enough to see his outstretched hand. Long, clean fingers holding one silver solet and five coppers. He laid them on the hard-packed dirt at my feet.
“I used the other seven coppers to eat and to buy this shirt. And I shall repay them and return your brother’s breeks as soon as possible.”
I squeezed my eyes shut. How could he think of coins and breeks and fish, when we had just proved he could speak in my mind? And what of his dreams? Behind my eyelids I saw the broken walls that seeped fire and cracked foundations that seeped water to fade the ancient mosaics. And I heard the voice of warning. We cannot hold … your time has come early. Was that some kind of truth, as well?
His movement stirred the air stirred beside me. Standing. “My pledge remains, my generous friend. Whatever I can do for you until the end of days.”
My clotted mind took a few moments to comprehend his meaning. I jumped up. “No wait, Teo, don’t leave—”
He was already gone.
I hurried to the open doorway. Teo moved rapidly toward the distant city, hopping from rock to snag, broken wall to weedy clump as if he weighed nothing. Were the dangers and possibilities of our appointment with Egerik not weighing on me more than ever, I would have chased after him to ask why he dreamed about cracked walls and leaking fire.
21
ONE DAY UNTIL THE PRISONER TRANSFER
LATE AFTERNOON
I was halfway back to the River Gate when the city bells intoned the Hour of Respite. The day that had started so dreadfully early still had hours to run. As I weighed the conflicting benefits of practicing my needle casting against making an early bedtime, when I remembered the messages I’d picked up before Teo’s appearance. My hand flew to my waist pocket where I’d stuffed the elaborate parchment of the Cuaronan Wool Guild and the unmarked fold of plainer stock.
I chose the mysterious one first. It had no signature. But clearly it had come from Nuccio.
A reliable source from the Brotherhood confides that there have been no exquisite murders presented in the local chapter in the past three years. One presentation centered on a disobedient servant’s punishment. One on a member’s suicide. One on a game of draughts that culminated in a member’s death.
So Egerik had not murdered his wife for the Brotherhood’s edification. What was wrong with me that I could feel crestfallen at such news? I did wonder if the disobedient servant could have been one of Egerik’s. Or if the ambassador might have persuaded some brother of the fraternity to his suicide or into a mortal game of draughts. But I doubted Nuccio could or would enlighten me further.
Hoping for better news from my Cuaronan friend, I snapped the seal on the Wool Guild message. The page bore a few lines of elegant handwriting.
Dama Ginzetti,
It is with great sadness that I heard of Mistress Cataline’s passing. When I attended Segnoré di Gallanos’s first salon of last summer, I noted her absence, as I was looking for her particularly after such enjoyment at the winter quarter salon. An acquaintance quickly hushed my queries and told me the dread news. I was devastated, even when my friend whispered of rumors that the death was perhaps not exactly a passage from this earthly plane.
I cannot imagine what token of friendship she has left me, but I would be pleased to receive you in my chamber—#5—at the Wool Guildhall on any afternoon during the Hour of Respite. You are kind to see to Cataline’s wishes.
Best Regards,
Lenore di Tessio, Commissioner,
Wool Guild of the Independency of Cuarona
The Hour of Respite. Right now.
* * *
Like doting aunties, the sober, blockish halls of the Syndicati Maggiore—Cantagna’s seven oldest guilds—overlooked the teeming heart of the Merchants Ring marketplace. They provided solid assurance that the merchandise displayed under the colorful canopies or on carts, tables, or spread rugs was the finest to be had in all the Costa Drago.
My cheeks pulsed with the heat of my hurry as I ducked into an arcaded walkway between the Hall of Physicians and Pharmacists and the Guildhall of the Wool Trade. Foreign wool guilds rented chambers in the guildhall for their local representatives, so they could have easy access to their Cantagnan counterparts during their incessant negotiations. Lenore, as the sister of a wealthy Cuaronese merchant, made her home in a much finer house, but spent her days in the small sitting room she was allotted for her business.
I paused to run my fingers through my hair and to blot the sweat of my walk with a kerchief.
No one had followed me from the Beggars Ring. I had stopped by the shop on the way just long enough to grab a clean mantle and a new pen I had splurged on a few days previous.
Beyond a side door in the guildhall lay a stone-floored entry chamber devoid of people, furnishing, or any decoration beyond the unartful paintings that covered its walls. The mural’s subjects ran to fat, thick-coated sheep, multitudinous bags of sheared wool, and elaborate looms the size of houses, all marked with the crest of the Cantagnan wool guild. The diminutive figures of scrawny sheep and dour shepherds relegated to the background lacked the favored markings. No one would mistake the message that to dally with foreigners on wool business was a losing gamble.
A quick exploration of three branching passages took me to room number five. The cypress and crescent moon ensign of Cuarona hung above the open doorway.
Inside, a woman with great shining loops of hair piled atop her head sat busy at a writing desk. There was no mistaking her. Though of middling years, her cheeks were smooth as an infant’s and bore the same charming blush. Unfortunately, those cheeks and her glorious, rich folds of copper hair were the only physical attributes to offset flat gray eyes, equine teeth and jaw, and bones better suited to an ox than a woman.
Lenore di Tessio bore her awkward physiognomy with dignity and a sharp wit that she confessed gave her far better advantage in the wool trade than would more refined features. I had thoroughly enjoyed our few meetings.
Her head turned at my tap on her door. “Commissioner di Tessio, may I have a word?”
“Enter.” She wiped her pen, laid it aside, and turned her chair where her weak eyes could see me better.
She snapped to her feet. “Oh my! Mistress Cat—”
“Shhh!” I pressed my finger to my lips. “Please excuse my subterfuge. I am not dead and not hiding, but I’ve been given no leave to enlighten the world as to my state of breathing.”
“Oh, my dear, I—I—” She could not seem to come up with any more words. Her body tried to increase the distance between us without actually retreating. An observer might assume I carried the plague, which, indeed, had much in common with banishment from the Shadow Lord’s favor.
“Gracious Dama di Tessio—Lenore—I swear to you there is no danger in speaking with me, nor the least compromise of your position. I’d never wish to cause you embarrassment.”
I held my ground in the doorway so as not to threaten, and only when she had lowered herself cautiously to her chair did I step inside.
“As you can see, I am much diminished in situation. But I’ve managed to make a new life for myself. Quiet and out of the way. And seemly, which I always told you would be my only aim did the worst come to pass. As it did. Obviously.”
“Good. I’m glad of that. That is … glad you’ve made a seemly life. And that you’re alive.”
She was more flustered than standoffish, which gave me encouragement. I’d no intent to approach the truth as closely as I had with Nuccio. I didn’t know her well, and she had many other interests to compete for her loyalty. But she had relished sharing gossip with an intelligent woman outside her professional circles.
“I brought a small remembrance in return for your kindness,” I said. “Though we met only a few times, you spoke to me as a person whose company you enjoyed, and not as the Shadow Lord’s bound mistress. That meant more than you will ever know. Dare I say that most women who accepted me in their society did so entirely in hopes of my master’s favor?”
I set a plain wooden pen case on a table beside the door.
“No need for thanks.” Her posture eased, though she certainly did not rush across the room to embrace me. We’d not been that kind of friends. “To talk of something other than wool contracts was a pleasure.”
Indeed her gossip had proved to be a delightful source of sharp observations on Cantagnese society. Not wishing to give her a wrong estimate of the length of my visit, I perched on the arm of the petitioners’ bench just inside her door.
