A Conjuring of Assassins, page 29
We sped through the burial chambers as if the dead were pushing us from behind, and reached the tunnel entry and the perilous path upward to the land of the living in an astonishingly quick time. Neri hung back as Placidio and I brushed ourselves off.
“I’m off to meet Dumond,” he said, his black curls dusty, his skin ablaze with adventure. “We’re to test the last doorway. Soon as we’ve got the whole route clear, swordmaster, I’ll get your main gauche back to the stair. What should I do with your sword?”
Leaving his sword behind damped Placidio’s spirits far worse than the pain of a nicked rib.
“No assurance we’ll leave by this tunnel route, else I’d stow it in the dead lady’s bedchamber,” he said at last. “But with boot and sleeve knives, the dagger at my belt, which may or may not be left me, and the main gauche hid in a place I know, I’ve already more weapons than hands. If I need better”—he bent his head toward Neri and flashed a grin—“I’ll just have to borrow one from its owner. Forcibly.”
“I’ll keep this one with me, then.”
“So these storage caverns and Oriana’s tomb must connect to the palazzo,” I said.
“They do. There’s a tangle of passages beyond the tomb chamber. Spooked us, but we found the way all the way to the stair from the closet.”
“Glad to know you can be spooked by something,” said Placidio.
Neri, reflecting his swordmaster’s flash of humor, picked something off my shoulder and tossed away an unsettlingly large spider. “Don’t let the creeper collect you, sister witch.”
I caught Neri’s arm before he could dart away and pulled him close. “I’ve good reason to believe one of Egerik’s servants is a savage murderer, little brother. And with what we’ve just seen, don’t underestimate anyone in that house. Tell me you hear what I’m saying.”
The retort burning Neri’s tongue died as my grip hardened and he met my gaze with sobriety. “I hear. You remember it, too.”
“I will. And Monette will.” Trying to smile, I shoved him away. He disappeared into the tunnel.
* * *
As I climbed out of the rift, the city bells chimed the first hour past midday. One hour we had to decide our next move. I was glad of the time. So much to consider.
Placidio was already halfway up the path, and quickly vanished over the rim of the rift. I followed. Once off the steeps, I breathed deep of the clean air, grateful for sunlight, solid ground, and a quickening breeze.
For a moment I thought Placidio had gone off without me. But he stood in the shadow of the Cat’s Eyes—out of easy view of lurking Pizottis. But for this moment I didn’t think his mind was on drunken swordsmen and vendettas, spies or treasonous ambassadors. Hands propped on the walking stick, he gazed out easterly. The day was so clear, you could almost glimpse the sparkle of the Mare di Ossa—the Sea of Bones—or the range of high peaks that curved protectively about Riccia-by-the-sea.
Shadows drifted across his demeanor like wisps of cloud across the sun. Grief, I believed, perhaps prompted by my farewell with Neri. I’d seen it in our brief encounter with the grand duc of Riccia-by-the-sea. There was history between Placidio and the grand duc. Maybe magic. Maybe family. Maybe Riccia itself or something else entirely. All remained fixedly beyond his boundaries.
But today, we needed to move forward, and I wasn’t sure exactly of our destination.
“Do you suppose Egerik fancies himself Vizio’s replacement?” I said, propping my backside on the massive boulder.
“I’d not think his strict cleanliness rules would hold up well in Mercediare or any independency—except perhaps tidy little Cuarona. More likely he’s got some tyrant-in-waiting who will owe him immense favors.”
“Truly, Monette could use a few more weapons to sling between these two,” I said. “Malignant spirits frightened Egerik more than anything. It would have been convenient if he had murdered his wife.”
“You’re a cruel woman, lady scribe.”
“Then tell me why were Brotherhood of the Exquisite symbols on the plinth at Oriana’s tomb.” I said. “The rose, knife, and blood are meant to be a sort of clever cipher that only the initiated understand. But if her death wasn’t a Brotherhood event, why put them there? Who are they reminding?”
“Maybe it serves a different purpose there,” said Placidio. “Many families believe in burying their family members with all the appurtenances of that person’s life. Those were surely Oriana’s face paints, her couch, her pillows.”
“The art reflected her Mercediaran birth,” I said, “and I’ll wager her favorite color was that orange-red of the hangings and her favorite flower asphodel as in the gold pillars. But why the symbol of the Brotherhood? For Egerik?”
Placidio harrumphed. “Did you ever consider that maybe the woman herself was a member? No matter name or history, there’s not a fraternity or brotherly order in Cantagna doesn’t have women admitted nowadays. She’d lived with Egerik for a long time, so likely knew about it. Maybe she shared his obsession with these exquisite pleasures.”
“Truly?” Never invited to—or interested in—these fraternities and brotherhoods, I’d not imagined women members. But if so …
Placidio slapped his forehead. “Mother Gione’s ever-nurturing tits, you heard report of a member’s—”
“—exquisite suicide.” The conclusion struck us at the same moment. “Certain, that was it! Reports said she was ill. Her children long dead. No others conceived in the years between. Some women take that very hard.”
“Men, too. Especially those concerned with great families … heritage … titles.”
Born to a family whose multitude of children was the root of starvation, and having lived with Sandro whose aspirations to children rested in someone else, I found it difficult to sort out how childlessness, no matter how tragic, could have driven a well loved woman to take her own life. “Do you think Egerik drove her to it?”
Placidio raised his opened palms as if to distance himself from the knotty question. “Self murder is comprehensible. The mystery is what might drive anyone to embrace this confraternity of perfected triviality.”
I could not disagree. A hot breeze snatched at my mantle and tugged my hair from its braid.
“Cei naked,” Placidio blurted.
“What?”
“Mayhap seeing Cei standing naked on that plinth was the lady’s idea of exquisite perfection. Recruited her to the Brotherhood.”
“I certainly won’t argue with that particular perfection,” I said, “though suspecting the beautiful man capable of savage murder tarnishes the imagining a bit.”
Private as he was, I sometimes felt as if Placidio knew me better than anyone in the world. Better than my brother who had never tasted the wider world. Better even than Sandro, from whom I’d hidden a childhood that had forever shaped me and the taint on my soul that would necessarily drive us apart. For certain, Placidio was the only one of the three I could not shock.
I left my rocky support and tugged Placidio’s hat around to the rakish angle that shadowed his dueling scar. “So, swordmaster, we know the terrain and our opponents. Our weapons are in place. All we have left to do is fight.”
Placidio gave a pleased chuckle, startling a goodly number of pigeons. “A sufficient recitation, student. We need to move. Don’t like to stand in one place too long.”
He scanned the few passersby carefully before we stepped out from the shelter of the split boulder.
“I’m guessing you saw the natalés and the sea lavender around that tomb,” he said.
“I did. Perhaps Oriana is the one who put the natalés about the house, believing her unborn child’s soul was still inside her. Some believe that when a child is stillborn.”
“So her tomb became the child’s too. Yet it still needed warding for whenever the soul took flight? Even though the younger had been three years dead by the time she died? And presumably the child’s soul would have flitted away with hers, yet Egerik still maintains warding inside his house? Does any of that make sense?”
I had to agree it seemed strange, but who was I to say?
“The sea lavender could be to ward off the spirit of the man Cei murdered,” I said. “Though if that was so, you’d think Egerik would rid himself of Cei, hoping to appease the dead man.”
To twist such morbid oddities and theories into some logical pattern, while walking in the peaceful sunlight with warblers and buntings waking from afternoon doldrums in the oak branches overhead, struck me as ridiculous. A laugh bubbled up in me. When I finally let it escape it met a matching chuckle from Placidio.
“Two old skeptics, we are,” he said, as we turned onto the boulevard, “trying to make sense of goblin stories and human strangeness. ’Tis not polite to laugh at others’ serious business, lady scribe, especially when they’re dead.”
“Certain, their story is sad. The strange part is trying to explain the spiritual motives of a political functionary. Truly, I would like to know what malignant spirit Egerik fears.”
We walked on in quiet companionship. I appreciated what Placidio was doing—inducing a sense of calm before a difficult task. Unfortunately the effort was spoiled from time to time when he would shove me behind a tree or a boxwood hedge without warning. After a moment, he’d say “all’s well,” and we’d be on our way again. The Pizottis. I’d never seen him so skittish.
The gates of Palazzo Ignazio came into view. As on the previous morning, the dolphin-and-hammer ensign flapped slowly in the heavy breeze. Only …
My feet halted, my every assumption, every certainty, every conclusion suddenly in flux. “Placidio, you told me that you could recall everything I read you from Mantegna’s report exactly. Yes?”
“Aye. I was very well focused. Elsewise my slashed gut was going to have me clawing my naked skin off.”
“Tell me what it said about the salacious scandal in Argento.”
“There were certain whispers at the time of a salacious scandal involving several wealthy Mercediaran exiles, all of whom died within months of Egerik’s departure.”
Exiles. One word that could change everything yet again.
“Now look at the pennon atop the gatehouse.” The pennon that, like that one flying the previous day, displayed Mercediare’s blazon on a field of fiery red orange. Only today the dolphin and hammer were topped by a crown.
“Demonfire!” Placidio’s astonished exhalation could have extinguished Chloni’s lantern in the moment the sexless god created the stars.
“Most people who leave Mercediare alive are happy to do so and grateful to be accepted elsewhere,” I said. “I can think of only one group of Mercediarans who would ever style themselves as exiles.”
“House Rossignoli.…”
No earthquake precipitated by Dragonis’s mighty tail could equal the concussion that name set off in my head. Rossi might be the most common surname in the Costa Drago, but Rossignoli was exquisitely rare. Dedino di Rossignoli, the last king of Mercediare, had been dead for over a hundred years.
“Fernand di Rossi lived for some years in Argento,” I said, biting my lip, frantic to rebuild our understanding before the next bell rang. “When I first met him eight years ago—my second year in House Gallanos—he had just arrived from Argento. He and Egerik were in Argento at the same time.”
Fernand di Rossi, who wore a gold bracelet, a gold ring, and a diamond-and-ruby baldric inherited from his nameless family. What a fine way to eliminate family members one might view as rivals—to have a newfound ally implicate them in sordid activities that could draw the Brotherhood of the Exquisite to eliminate them.
“In every local dialect of the Costa Drago, cinque means five,” said Placidio. “The last Rossignoli king with the name of Fernand was the fourth of that name, also known as Fernand Empire Builder.”
Was it possible that Fernand di Rossi was Pretender to the long vacant throne of Mercediare? Even if he’d claimed Rossignoli blood as one of his origin stories, who would have believed it? Rumors of Rossignoli heirs had popped up now and again like ghost hauntings, but were as easily dismissed. Mercediarans were thorough in their purges. And even believing, who would fear Rossi? A silly man, charming, as significant as a household spider.
Yet this particular spider’s web reached into every wealthy house throughout the Costa Drago, and his superior intelligence—even the Shadow Lord sorely underestimated it—made than web far stronger than any could imagine. He was armed with a list of rich, influential people sworn to rid the world of Protector Vizio and what other information he—as Cinque—might have gathered through the years. History named the Rossignoli kings both ruthless and wily. Had he installed a cache of arms and stores underneath all nine independencies? Such violence would inflame the Costa Drago to ruination for generations.
And on this particular day, Egerik was flying the royal ensign of Mercediare—enjoying a moment of superiority, imagining all of us common intellects would never notice his audacity.
“We’re not speaking of rampant vendettas anymore,” said Placidio. “Or supporting a rebellious faction with arms and food. We’re speaking of a full-blown revolution.”
I glanced up at the heavy banner, filling and whipping in the heavy breeze. “Somehow,” I said, “in some way, it is going to begin in Cantagna. Tonight.”
As the tower bells struck the second hour of afternoon, the heart of Cantagna’s working day, Placidio and I stared at each other, even as the matter of spies, ambassadors, a groomed assassin, a cellar full of armaments, and a compromising list of notable citizens reshaped itself around us yet again. And only moments did we have to judge what we were left with.
24
THE DAY OF THE PRISONER TRANSFER
TWO HOURS PAST MIDDAY
No possible story could serve as an excuse for us arriving late to Palazzo Ignazio. If we wished to continue this venture, we had to stroll across Egerik’s flagstone forecourt and outsized sleugh before the bells’ intonation faded, slipping back into our roles as devout servant of divine Espe and jackleg cloth merchant—two fools who had no idea what use their conspiratorial host thought to make of them.
Our earlier conclusions of partnership between Egerik and Rossi were guesses, and now the stakes were much, much higher. Switching Protectors was an internal matter for Mercediare, its consequences rippling through trade and shipping, skirmishes and vendettas. Bad enough. But a revolution to install a hereditary lord—a king—would fracture every independency.
Like Cantagna, every city had those families who longed for a return to the age of kings, and those like House Gallanos who envisioned something new. Two independencies were already ruled by hereditary nobles. Would the upright grand duc of Riccia ride to the aid of a legitimate Rossignoli heir? His legions were the largest in the Costa Drago. What of the conte of Tibernia? If those two powerful lords joined Rossi’s cause, his lack of an army of his own could be moot.
I tried to hold on to reason. “Egerik has spent years positioning himself as a trustworthy pillar of the Protectorate. It’s hard to imagine him sacrificing his own ambition to a royal Pretender who’s spent his life in drawing rooms and lacks his own army to wield those hidden weapons. What does Egerik get out of a revolution? Even a spy’s cache of secrets cannot pay for an army, and an impoverished sovereign’s gratitude buys no cloth-of-gold. So I need whatever help you can give to confirm or refute our hypotheses. The longer I can go without invoking my magic, the more I can learn to influence Monette when it’s time, but Rossi…” Rossi could ruin our play with one glance.
We strolled across the courtyard. “I must know if Rossi is already in the house,” I murmured, “and I must know if they are together in this, and whether this new suspicion is grounded.”
Placidio leaned heavily on the walking stick, lest anyone wonder at our pace. “Aye to all that,” he said and tugged his wide-brimmed hat lower to shade his face.
Though I doubted Rossi or Egerik either one would be observing our arrival, I raised the hood on my mantle as well. “Once I’m Monette, if ever we’ve time alone, you’ve got to pull me out, so we can share what we’ve learned.”
“I’ll do that.” He gripped my arm with a most unfatherly tightness. “Before all, you needs must think hard on the answer to our endgame question … about Egerik and Rossi surviving this mission—this night. I’ve a notion we’ll not have luxury to regroup and ponder. Look at the number of footmen, guards, carriages, horses about this court. Looks as if your audience will be sizeable.”
He was right. Staggered by the possibilities of royal revolution, I’d not even noticed. The peripheries of the circular courtyard were bustling—servants in varied liveries wiping down carriages, groomsmen tethering horses, linkboys laughing, dicing, or drinking until their services were needed for departing guests. I expected a few conspirators, not guests …
A meticulously liveried guard wearing the dolphin-and-hammer crest of Mercediare approached us from the entry.
I glanced up at Placidio, somber, his cheeks flushed, eyes fierce as flaring embers under his thick brows. He was right about the endgame. Assassinating Egerik and Rossi could implicate Cantagna in treaty violations, shaking the Shadow Lord’s power, if not erasing it. Yet that could not overbalance preventing a generation of war. Either consequence would leave il Padroné’s vision of enlightenment in ruins.
Yet something more was brewing here. Why the guests? Why the divination? Egerik’s desire gave us a unique opportunity to discover his game and thwart it. Maybe without resorting to murder.
“The Chimera is not comprised of assassins,” I said. “We work for Cantagna’s safety. Not Mercediare’s, not Cuarona’s, not any other city’s. Our task is to neutralize the danger of the Assassins List and that we will do.”
We could slow our steps no longer. The Mercediaran guardsman arrived to escort us to the sleugh crossing. On the far side of the iron footbridge, Mistress Mella waited in pale perfection, as if she had been carefully put away in a trunk when we left the previous day and just brought out again. Not a hair had slipped from her modest cap. Not a wrinkle or smudge marred her crisp white linen gown. “Merchant Fabroni, Damizella Monette, welcome return to Palazzo Ignazio.”
