A Conjuring of Assassins, page 3
Neri’s coloring deepened three shades. “I just didn’t—”
Placidio didn’t budge. “When I say stay in one particular place, don’t show yourself, remain there till all’s done and clear, I trust you to assume I have reason for it. I trust you to do as I’ve said unless an earthquake opens the dirt beneath your feet.”
Neri’s cheeks burned. “But you didn’t say there’d be scoundrels, and I wasn’t expecting Romy to come, and I thought I should get the best view I could—”
“But even when your whim took you to a different spot, you didn’t stay there till it all was ended.”
Placidio didn’t have to raise his voice to make his point. If Neri had been where he was supposed to be, he would have been with me when Cinnetti came down the prison path. If he’d stayed in his chosen view point until the duel was over, he would have seen me running—because I’d made sure Druda would head straight for him.
“We four—and those we bring into our lives—exist with ever-present danger.” Placidio gave no quarter. “As the Chimera, we’ve willingly accepted even more. But the price is trust…”
“… and constant mindfulness,” I added. “I put us all in a bad spot because I wanted to prove a point about responsibility, but lack of attention got me in too deep.” I stood and shoved my stool aside. “Thanks to you all, it’s over. Madness averted. And now I’m hungry. Do we have anything in the house to eat?”
Vashti insisted on making tea—her solution for all upheavals—and though our neglected larder provided nothing more than the remains of our morning’s bread, some cheese, and a bowl of plums and apricots, we made do. Placidio and Dumond sat on the floor, Neri on his pallet.
“Any notice of our prisoner’s arrival?” asked Dumond, offering a welcome change of subject. “By my tally it’s six more days until Cantagna has to turn him over.”
The prisoner in question, a citizen of Mercediare, had been arrested thirteen days previous in our city’s northernmost territory, accused of selling stolen papers. By treaty, Cantagna had twenty days to turn foreign criminals over to their independency’s nearest representative—in this case, the local Mercediaran ambassador—for transport back to their own city. It was usually a straightforward transaction, even dealing with Mercediare, our city’s greatest rival. For either party to violate the treaty could reap heavy fines or restrictions on commerce, shipping, or banking.
“No word,” I said. “I’ve heard heavy rains and mud slides have blocked the Argento Road, causing terrible travel problems. Neri’s been scouting prison yards—the Pillars, the Asylum Ring gaol, even the Prisoners Walk behind the Palazzo Segnori—listening for rumors.”
I looked to my brother for confirmation. He shrugged agreement, showing no sign of his usual excitement at a mention of our Chimera ventures. He hated when Placidio found fault with him.
“Would’ve been nice if the Shadow Lord could have told them where to stash the fellow, so we wouldn’t have to watch every cell in the city.” Placidio downed another apricot smashed atop a wedge of cheese.
“He can display no interest whatsoever in the prisoner,” I said. “He dares not do anything that might make the Mercediarans suspect the prisoner’s true identity, elsewise they’ll hound the Sestorale into turning the fellow over immediately.”
Sandro had seen evidence that identified the prisoner as an elusive thief, spy, and broker of secrets known as Cinque. He very much wanted the man questioned before anyone else got wind of the connection, because among Cinque’s known assets was a document he called the Assassins List—a sworn pact between certain powerful people, some of them Cantagnese, to assassinate Mercediare’s Protector when the time was right. Rather than tip off the Mercediarans, he had asked the Chimera to discover the location of the Assassins List and ensure it never reached Protector Vizio’s hands.
No one who valued human decency would defend the thuggish tyrant who called herself the Protector of Mercediare, but such an open-ended threat of assassination sitting in that woman’s hand would certainly precipitate a campaign of murder, kidnap, and rapine against the signers. Her vendetta would cost our city valuable citizens and valuable allies, spilling over into every aspect of the city’s life.
“Why would anyone sign such a paper?” asked Vashti. “Promising to kill someone in the future? If you think a person wicked enough to be dead, you should be bold and do it!”
Placidio grinned and raised his mug of tea to Vashti. “Now we know why Dumond is such a dull, solid citizen. Remind me, all of you, to hide all my wickedness when we’re together like this. Wouldn’t want this woman to get any notions.”
Laughter burst out all around. Even from Vashti, who ducked her head, and Dumond, who nodded broadly. Even I, who yet felt lunacy much too close, joined in.
Vashti’s ferocity was truly no surprise. Anyone who saw her with her four daughters could not but envision the Lioness of Paolin—her homeland’s goddess of the Hearth, always depicted as rampant, guarding her cubs.
When we had sobered again, I gave her the only answer I could think of. “From what il Padroné told me, the signers weren’t agreeing to assassinate Vizio, only to contribute money to hire someone else to do so when her primacy in Mercediare became untenable. Just in case she started choking off trade routes or raising tariffs on shipping or some such.”
“Such subtlety won’t make a difference to her,” said Placidio. “If she gets hold of that list, the consequences will be the same as if each signer had a dagger at her neck.”
The city bells rang the Hour of Contemplation—three hours before midnight. Dumond and Vashti left to fetch their daughters from a friend. Neri returned to the Duck’s Bone to work off some of the hours he had missed.
Placidio didn’t move, except to fill his cup from our little ale cask at his back. “Are you going to be all right, lady scribe?”
It would have been easy to make a glib answer and send him on his way. But, in truth, I didn’t want to be alone.
“Don’t know. I’ve a flask of Porchellini brandy I could open. Client gave it to me for pointing out he’d entered the wrong name in a contract.”
Placidio waved me off. “I’d say … don’t drown what happened today before you know how it’s maintaining. Drink can ease a great deal. But some things … it’ll leave you defenseless. Makes the aftermath far worse.”
“Worse? I don’t think it could be.”
“I’ll vouch.” He raised his hand as if swearing. “And I’ll stay. You don’t have to talk unless you want. I could nap. Or I’ll play cards. For beans … dry, of course. Pebbles? Lint?”
A year ago I’d tried using wine to deaden grief. It had near ruined me. Now I thought of it, I didn’t want anything dulled or erased just now. It was sleep frightened me. How could I let go? What if waking life never came back and I was left the shivering, weepy wreck I’d been a few hours before?
Perhaps the discipline that brought me back last year could work again. “Tomorrow. Maybe a lesson from my swordmaster? I’ve been lax of late. Next time, I want to fight off the demons with a blade.”
“Woolhouse at midday.”
“I’ll be there. So you can feel free to—”
“I’m still staying.” From a pocket in the scuffed canvas armaments bag on the floor beside him, he pulled out a palm-sized wooden box and tossed it up onto the little table in front of me. It was made of olive wood, beautifully carved with sea creatures.
“What’s this?”
He hefted himself off the floor and onto one of my stools. His big hands slid the lid smoothly off the box. “Cards. We’re playing high stakes primera. You provide the beans.”
* * *
I slept until the sun was high enough to penetrate Lizard’s Alley and our tightly closed shutters. Save for the first dreadful, horrifying gasp when the world was yet a blur and I was back huddled in a corner of the ruin Beggars Ring folk called Fortunata’s Doom, all was well. My hands quivered a little as I scraped together the scattered piles of dried beans and shoved them back into their jar. I owed more than beans to Placidio’s account.
He had stayed with me, playing primera, coché, triplets—every card game known in the Costa Drago—keeping me lost in tricks and trumps and wagers until I could no longer hold my head up or make out the painted faces on the paper rectangles. Even when I stumbled to my pallet, shaking for terror of sleep, he promised he would neither leave nor close his eyes until Neri came home.
That had happened at some time, as Neri’s bed was jumbled in a different disorder than the previous night. But Neri himself was not there. Maybe Fesci had more work for him.
The city bells rang the hour before midday. That hurried my morning ablutions and gave me little time to dwell on whether I would need to work or play myself into oblivion every day from now on. I hoped a dose of my swordmaster’s discipline would reduce my need of his cards or his shoulder.
I checked the message box to see if we had word of the prisoner from the Shadow Lord. We didn’t. And I stopped for a moment to speak with the ironmonger whose house and yard sat across the Ring Road from Lizard’s Alley. But by the time the bells pealed the midday anthem, I was outside the city walls, hiking briskly along the bank of the River Venia—Cantagna’s lifeblood.
Past the old city docks and the untidy remnants of the fire that had destroyed them and an entire warehouse district two decades since stood one blockish stone building. The wool guild warehouse, abandoned since the plague years by everyone but birds and transient beggars, had held little but rotting timbers, vermin bones, and a reputation for hauntings when we chose it for Neri’s lessons with Placidio. Now thick leather bolsters for punching and stabbing hung from the rafters, hay bundles served for archery practice, and the floor of pounded earth was clear of rubble, ready for combat practice of all kinds.
No one would mistake the taskmaster that awaited me for the companion who had shown me such generosity the previous night. He started me off running—all the way to the scarp called the Boar’s Teeth—and climbed the steep rocks right behind me, a silent dare to slack or dally. Pausing at the top only long enough to swallow a sip of his restorative tea—a vile concoction of ginger, salt, and lemon—we picked our way down again and raced back to the woolhouse. Only then, when I was drenched with the sweat of midday summer, did he toss me a leather jaque, a pair of leather gloves, and a short sword, pull out his own wickedly sharp main gauche, and set to.
It was well done. For two hours—very near eternity, it seemed—I’d no choice but to bring every muscle, nerve, thought, and imagining to the problem of keeping my feet moving and my skin intact. He never spoke a word beyond attend, you’re dead, or again.
It was exactly what I needed.
Afterward, we sat drinking for a while, Placidio his ginger tea, I from a cask of clean water I had installed in self-defense. When I could muster spit enough to speak, I said, “Tomorrow? Same time?”
He reclined against one of our hay bundles, dragged his hat across his face, and grunted in a vaguely affirmative tone.
“I’d say earlier when it’s cooler, but I might sleep late like today. This will help get me to tomorrow.”
“Good,” he said. “Harder tomorrow.”
A hot, heavy gust off the river set the bolsters swaying. “Did you work with Neri this morning? He was out early. Did he say anything when he came home?”
“No and no. Best if he sweats a bit. Don’t make it easy on him. I won’t.”
Placidio was right, of course. The hard experiences Neri and I had gone through had been necessary. I’d just hoped we were done with the contentious part. Maybe family was like training; you were never finished.
Placidio’s breathing settled deep and regular.
I roused my creaky limbs and moved off to the hanging bolster farthest from him and went through the punching and kicking exercises he’d taught us. My conscience—voiced in Placidio’s flat baritone—forced me through the entirety of them three times. And then through the slow, stretching, thoughtful sword moves, using repetition and concentration to embed them in my muscles in the same way as walking, running, sitting, and standing. One additional run-through—fast—and I was done for. My body felt like a glob of hot wax.
I cleaned the salt and sweat from the blade, wrapped it carefully, and returned it to Placidio’s armaments bag. My jaque and gloves went into the small chest I’d bought to hold some of the costume pieces Vashti had made for my last impersonation. I’d found the chest in a cloth merchant’s stall in the Market Ring. The bombastic merchant and his eye-fluttering daughter with a singular devotion to Lady Fortune had given me the idea for the practice impersonation I’d been working on with Placidio and Neri.
Spirits, was that only yesterday? I closed up the little chest, shoved it behind the hay bundles, and tapped Placidio’s shoulder. I had no illusion that he was sleeping as soundly as it appeared.
“Move your sorry bones and come with me, swordmaster. Germond the ironmonger wants me to meet him at the Duck’s Bone this evening to draft a new will; I think Basilio’s wooing has made a soppy idiot of him. But it’s not time yet, and I’m dreadfully thirsty for something with a decent taste to it. So I’ll stand you a mug from Fesci’s secret tap.”
“Got something on this evening.”
“Mayhap we’ll get word of our prisoner’s arrival tonight. Time’s getting short.”
Five days more until Cantagna would turn over the prisoner to the Mercediaran ambassador. The Sestorale always waited the full span of time the treaty allowed for relinquishing custody of the prisoner, like children proving to street bullies that they weren’t going to be pushed around. Once we found out where the prisoner was being held, it should be simple to get him to tell us what we wanted to know. Such a man would know how Mercediaran interrogators would relish getting their hands on an infamous spy working against the Protector. Only one aspect of the transaction bothered me …
Placidio had begun snoring at such a volume he drowned out the sound of evening birds along the river. I jabbed the toe of my boot in his ribs. “Have you ever been in prison?”
“A time or three. Never long enough for the rot to set in. And I’m still alive. Not looking to do it again.”
He did not elaborate. Any reference to his history fell behind his well-protected boundaries.
“I’ve been thinking … this Cinque … we can’t set him free, no matter what we promise.”
Sandro had left the matter of the prisoner’s fate up to us. Destroying the Assassins List without evidence of Cantagna’s interference would neutralize the danger that concerned him so fiercely.
Placidio shoved his hat aside just enough to peer at me. “Aye, that seems clear enough. Beyond the fact that the fellow’s a mercenary spy—thus not so trusty—if he were to vanish from a prison cell in Cantagna, it would raise all sorts of uncomfortable questions.”
“Such as who had arranged it,” I said.
“And the logical answer would be the Shadow Lord. There are certain difficulties with being as notorious as Alessandro di Gallanos is. And as ruthless…”
“… as he certainly is.” My partners did not yet comprehend that I truly understood the darker aspects of the man who had been my entire world for nine years. “But to abandon anyone to such a fate…”
An ugly fate it would be. Mercediaran prisons were the stuff of nightmares. If the Mercediaran ambassador had any notion the prisoner was more than a common thief, it would be worse. Mercediarans were sophisticated in the nasty arts of retrieving information from prisoners.
“Seems that leaves only one clear alternative.”
“We cannot just kill him,” I snapped. “No matter if you’re comfortable meting out death.”
“I am never comfortable with that.” No teasing this time.
“The Chimera is not a cadre of assassins.”
“And I’m saying you’d best be thinking about that.” He pulled his hat back over his face, folded his arms over his chest, and drew a deep settling breath.
My insult had been unfair. Placidio took his profession seriously, just as he did his role of swordmaster. He forever prodded me to consider the possibilities and consequences of every action, pushing me to be more observant, to think deeper, and to constantly improve my skills to cope with a dangerous world. I welcomed the teaching, but it could be most disquieting.
“Why are you lolloping here?” I said. “I thought you had something on for this evening.”
“Never said that something wasn’t a nap.”
“At some time, I want—I need to work on the relinquishing. I can’t ever risk what happened yesterday happening again. Will you play Merchant Baldassar for me?”
“I will. Not tonight, though. I’ve a rough match coming on. N’more than that till we’re dead or done with this prisoner venture.”
“Good. Don’t take too bad a beating.” I headed for the door, calling back over my shoulder, “Remember, fluttery young Monette needs her papa sober.”
“Yeah, yeah. Pesky females, the both of you.”
I laughed as his mumbled jibe followed me into the riverside wasteland that separated the abandoned woolhouse from the city. But as I picked a path through ruins and river wrack, the exchange with Placidio nagged at me. Yes, he had a point, but we were sorcerers. We should have better ways than murder to solve inconvenient problems.
3
FIVE DAYS UNTIL THE PRISONER TRANSFER
LATE AFTERNOON
The fishermen’s path climbed the slope from the riverbank to a narrow slot gate in Cantagna’s southwest wall. The warden waved me through without a glance. No one cared who passed into the Beggars Ring, the poorest, most crowded, and most dangerous of Cantagna’s five concentric districts, on a steamy afternoon. Those who’d not spent their childhood years exploring its crumbling tenements and the ramshackle dwellings that sprang up overnight like mushrooms from the muck could wander for days before finding a way out of it. At night the guards were a bit more nosy.
