A Conjuring of Assassins, page 36
Clutching the scroll case under the remnants of my mantle, I darted into the reception room. Ensnared by their own greed, trapped by treason, murder, and magic, they had little choice but to find a way out. Evidently Viviana the Diviner would do well enough. The five venal fools scuttled after me like scorpions.
I unlatched the door to the stair closet. When the scorpions arrived, I sent them down the stair. “Hide in the cellars, and I’ll fetch your bodyguards.”
Five of the most powerful leaders of Cantagna did not argue—a true measure of their befuddlement. Not one of them so much as asked about the Assassins List, much less noticed the case. Certain, I did not want to be alone with them if or when they came to their senses and realized what I carried. Dumond, Placidio, and Neri would be on the alert in the tunnels, waiting for me. They’d sort the ladies and gentlemen out.
Just as I slammed the stair closet door behind the five, one of Egerik’s guards appeared from the feasting hall. He pointed at me and yelled over his shoulder, “She’s in here, Master.”
Urgency bade me vanish and let the consequences rain down on those who had planned to overthrow my city. But I had to make sure.
From outside the bronze doors that separated the reception room from the chamber of momentary magnificence came a sniffer’s spirit-freezing howl, closer every moment. I waited. Waited. Waited. Until Egerik arrived from the feasting hall.
“Viviana! On your knees. Here.” He pointed to the floor at his feet.
I flung open the bronze door to brawny nullifier and his green-clad slave. Not twenty paces from me.
I slumped to a crouch and pointed my shaking, bloody finger at Egerik. “Your honor,” I cried. “Please sir, my master’s witched me with sorcery, as he does all his servants, as he did his beauteous wife. He’s buried her in his cellar in rites of perversion and says he’ll do the same with me!”
The nullifier, perhaps sensing bigger prey than a bloody courtier, dragged his screeching sniffer past me. I looked over my shoulder, straight into Egerik’s horrified countenance, and smiled. Then lurched to my feet and ran.
I threaded the household passages where I’d met the parade of kitchen servants. Followed the lingering aroma of roast pig to a downward stair. Into the torchlit kitchen yard. Thirty paces left of the kitchen house was a well house, and behind it—
Boots thumped down the stair behind me. Chains clinked on the flagstone terrace that overlooked the gardens. Heavy boots. A hiss from a sniffer.
Mouselike, I scuttered around the shadowed periphery, scarce breathing.
The door of the kitchen house flew open, flooding the yard with gold light from the great ovens. Three servants trudged across the yard toward the suddenly noisy kennels, carrying pails of scraps. I dashed across the pool of light behind them and into the darkness behind the well house.
“Ayee!” The bone-chilling screech originated not a hundred paces away.
I fell to my knees behind the well house, half blind in the dark, frantically patting the matted grass and tangled vines as chains clinked on stone behind me. “Be there. Be there. And be ready.”
My fingers found a squarish slab of wood. When they touched a metal ring and not just a flat, painted surface, I blessed the universe. A tug at the ring drew the trapdoor open, and I grinned at the dusty grizzled face looking up at me from the dimly lit hole. I scrambled through and jumped, trusting that my friend Dumond would catch me.
“Quickly now,” he said, once he unwrapped my arms that were near choking him. “Got to get out of the tunnels before your fish man’s trail of magic leads the sniffers down here.”
“Teo’s led them here?” I said, trying to sort out who I was, where I’d been, and everything we had yet to accomplish.
Dumond drew a stack of splintered crates under the trap door. The stack must have been sturdier than it looked, as the individual crates did not shift a finger’s breadth as he climbed.
“Here and gone. He’s been on the run near two hours now, laying down a trail of magic as this city has never seen. Atladu defend us all if he pauses to take a breath.”
As faint howls grew louder above us, he tugged at the trapdoor and threw the latch.
“He’s already wound the trace through here to the palazzo cellars to ensure they find the arms cache and the lady’s burial chamber. Now he’s off to the river. He says the water erases his connection to the demons?” He looked down at me from his perch with brows upraised. “Sniffers?”
“Yes … yes, that seemed to have worked before.”
Dumond laid his hands on the trap door and whispered, “Sigillaré.”
The close-fitted, hinged, and latched trapdoor fitted between the wood supports of the ceiling dulled and shifted—and became naught but a square of wood holding up the ceiling. In the garden above, an unpainted square of wood would lie amid the matted vines. Magic. Glorious!
“So we’re the last and need to go. Down that way.” His head bobbed toward a trail of cheery torches marking a way through the dark, and then he doused the rusty lamp that hung from the wall a few paces away. The wall with the narrow slot that led to the arms cache … and Oriana’s burial chamber … and the cells where Placidio had been held … and the palazzo cellars.
“No, wait!” I said, slapping my hands to my head. “Where does the stair from the reception room closet come out?”
“Between the lady’s tomb and the palazzo cellars. Are you worried about the five very angry lordlings who crept down that stair, cursing Egerik’s diviner and every other person in this benighted house? Because we locked them up in a cell and said that if they made a sound we’d not send anyone to find them. Figured the sniffers would put a righteous scare into ’em.”
“Better we get them away. There’ll be no peace in Cantagna if they’re caught. Do you have more of those masks?”
The smith wearily rubbed his balding head and pulled a mask and a thin gray cloak out of the pack on his shoulder. “Was hoping I wouldn’t need these.”
He had a mask for me as well.
In a quarter of an hour, Dumond had given each of the angry men and women a torn strip of gray to tie over their eyes, as “the sights down here are too terrible for the virtuous to lay eyes on.”
One by one, I gave each of the five a hand to get them past the tight slot in the tunnel wall. I infused that touch with magic, replacing the name Placidio di Vasil with an impression of a mysterious, heroic masked swordsman who had rescued them from the machinations of Egerik di Sinterolla. I kept it simple, hoping to leave few broken threads to confuse them.
Though I’d met them all, they gave no hint they associated the ragged, blood-streaked Viviana with il Padroné’s onetime mistress. Rather, for every step of the way through the sad remainders of the plague, they cursed the day we were born, the day Egerik was born, and the day the monster Dragonis shattered the tip of the Costa Drago into what would become Mercediare.
At the end, Dumond and I remained in the tunnel, watching as they angrily stripped off their masks and climbed the short steep path through the Cat’s Eye rift. Happy to be shed of them, we hurried back toward the rubble heap and the side passage that would take us to Dumond’s portal to the Merchants Ring. We’d not gotten halfway when the screeching of sniffers filled the tunnels from ahead and behind.
We ran. By the time we reached the turning, torches blazed not fifty paces ahead of us and less than that behind.
Sobbing for breath, I scrambled up the rubble heap. Once into the side tunnel, Dumond used a broken plank to knock each lamp and torch from the wall to mask our trail.
Nerves stretched beyond bearing, I almost screamed when I reached a plank wall and the last light went out behind me, leaving me in the tarry, airless dark. Druda’s empty soul could be no blacker. But a callused hand squeezed mine and set me still against a wall. Surely the sniffers heard my thumping heart as I waited for Dumond to say the word.
Blue flames sparked in the darkness illuminating Dumond’s calm face. “Cederé.”
The sniffers’ howling swelled, threatening to split my skull. But the air shifted, releasing the scent of old earth and ancient mould.
“Now run.” Dumond’s steady hand took mine, as my eyes picked out a narrow rectangular glimmer of light far ahead of us. The lantern hung in the familiar brick passage that led from the Via Mortua in the Merchants Ring to the Piazza Livello. Halfway across the Heights.
We crossed the distance in moments. There standing watch, swords drawn, were Neri and Placidio, bloody and bandaged but upright.
Neri shoved the simple plank door shut, and Dumond slammed his hands on it.
“Sigillarré!”
The door vanished. Dumond pressed his back to the spot where it had been and sagged to the dirt. Though we needed to be away from the tunnel and whatever residue of Dumond’s magic yet lingered, exhaustion settled over us like a blanket of lead. None of us spoke a word.
Placidio tossed me his flask with the green frog stopper. I relished a swallow of the nasty salt, lemon, and ginger tea and passed it to Dumond. He wrinkled his nose, swallowed no more than a teaspoon’s worth, and passed it to Neri, who drained it.
Momentarily invigorated, I tossed the leather scroll case into the space between us. “The Assassins List. In and out. Simple.”
With a burst of laughter, we gathered our remaining will and got back to our feet. We split up, each taking our own path to home and cautious sleep.
31
THE DAYS AFTER
Cantagna woke that morning with rumors flying about like an invasion of overexcited sparrows. They spoke of a sorcerous assault on Cantagna’s great Houses, of sniffers scouring the streets of the Heights, of grand segnori abducted by the daemoni discordia and dragged through the Great Abyss before their virtue triumphed and they found their way home again. The Philosophic Confraternity was investigating the event which seemed to be concentrated in the Quartiere di Fiori. Notably absent was any mention of il Padroné’s entrails being spread across the Piazza Livello. To my relief.
Events had left my mind in fragments. I needed an anchor. And I needed answers. Too many loose ends still dangled: Egerik, Rossi, the cache of arms, Cei.
After sleeping for most of a day, I spent a morning dispatching messages to my current clients apologizing for a bout of the grippe that had prevented me completing their documents. I set a new schedule and went to work. A few mundane hours of pen, ink, parchment, and meticulous copying soothed some of the ragged edges in my head. The Assassins List remained hidden beneath the floor of my house.
Neri slept for most of two days, waking only long enough to eat whatever he could find on our shelves. On the third day he was up with the dawn, gone to the woolhouse to run and practice, hoping Placidio might be there for a lesson. Placidio did not come, but when Neri went to work an evening shift at the Duck’s Bone, they said Placidio had been in twice that day to eat soup. He’d said he was recovering from a bout of goat stomach—usually associated with excess mead. No one deemed it unusual.
Neri and I agreed to go about our normal business, waiting until we four were all together again to fill in the details of our experiences. He did tell me that he and Placidio had taken il Padroné through the tunnels, allowing him to see Egerik’s caches but not themselves before delivering him to the Cat’s Eyes rift. “He didn’t ask who we were. Didn’t try to look at us. Just said he’d never forget what we did to save the most arrogant stronzo in Cantagna. He also said, ‘Do not destroy it.’”
“I’ll have to think about that,” I said. What good could ever come from the Assassins List?
When we lay in the dark that night ready to sleep, I said, “One thing more. Whose idea was it to ask Teo to draw the sniffers?”
“Dumond’s,” he said, “but only after Placidio insisted we should bring in Teo to help. Placidio said Teo could likely bring you out of your magic without touching your skin. How was that possible?”
As I’d suspected since they met at the woolhouse, Placidio knew more of Teo’s talents than he let on. Like it or not, he was going to tell me.
Visiting my lawyer clients to deliver or pick up documents for copying gave me opportunities for gossip the Beggars Ring markets could not provide. Segnoré di Navilli had taken to his bed with an attack of spleen. Segnora di Gavonti had moved her whole household to Ricci-by-the-sea for the summer.
Fernand di Rossi had been attacked in the streets after leaving a dinner party. Il Padroné had kindly sent him to Villa Collina, his house in the countryside, with his own physician. It was not known if Rossi would recover.
Did the Shadow Lord suspect Rossi’s heritage or his role in Egerik’s plot? He’d not care about a pretender reinstating Mercediare’s throne. But he would look very dimly on the notion of overthrowing Cantagna or any other independency to create a base for revolution. I trusted he would find out what else he needed to know. Rossi’s recovery might be a very difficult one.
Digo di Pizotti had been summoned before the city’s High Magistrate for pursuing a vendetta, a practice outlawed by the Sestorale only two years since, and for violating the residence of a foreign ambassador. Found guilty on the first charge, Pizotti was fined heavily and warned that any further pursuit of vendetta would result in forfeiture of his house and land.
The second charge had been dismissed as Ambassador di Sinterolla had failed to appear in court for three days running and could not be found.
Curiosity near drove me mad, especially when I heard that the grand processional to celebrate the birthday of il Padroné’s wife would include the distribution of a bounty of food in the Beggars Ring. No mention was made of any distribution of armaments. Had Vizio got wind of Egerik’s plotting or had the Shadow Lord taken Egerik’s fate into his own hands?
But later that same day, I received a note in box number one. It read:
My brothers and sisters believe the use of magic at the site of an exquisite death is most unsubtle.
Nuccio
The note bore a sketch of a rose and a knife with a curved tip, and a single dot of red ink.
This could not be coincidence. Nuccio had said it was lack of subtlety had gotten Lodovico di Gallanos expelled from the Brotherhood of the Exquisite, just before he died of poisoning—a murder yet unsolved. I suspected that the Brotherhood had dealt likewise with Egerik.
I did not rejoice at that, but neither did I feel any guilt. The few hours I’d spent as Egerik’s exquisite possession were the only part of that fraught night at Palazzo Ignazio that haunted my dreams. The triumphant glitter in his eyes as he directed me to the stool at his feet—dressed as he commanded, my eyes to be focused on him alone, sworn to accept his will as my law. Dreaming of that moment caused me to bolt awake with a case of the shudders.
Egerik’s plan would have cost thousands of lives, and we had stopped it. Yet I doubted that one of his worst crimes could ever be undone. What had become of Cei, a child who had killed Egerik’s eldest son in a fit of jealous rage? Cei, the boy whom Egerik had taken into the dark and groomed into a perfect assassin?
A tantalizing—horrifying—notion came to mind. Rossi had told me the ambassador would likely know what had become of Vizio’s son. Had Balbina bargained a beautiful boy child for Egerik’s support in her ascent? Had Egerik groomed Cei to assassinate Vizio? Egerik would call that an exquisite bargain.
That same afternoon another note arrived in box number six. Terse. To the point.
To the Chimera: If the object of our contract is in your possession, leave it at our exchange location this evening at sunset. If it is not, leave a message with your best assessment of the object’s location. Your contracted payment will be there.
The note was unsigned, but I would recognize the hand anywhere. I was of a mind to destroy the Assassins List and tell him it was lost. But he trusted me—and through me, the Chimera, and I would not lie to him.
Late that afternoon, as the afterglow painted the sky and river red-gold, I strolled along the riverside to the Avanci Bridge. Two men sat fishing under the bridge. A youth dug for mussels in a sandy sleugh. I sat on the steep embankment upriver and waited.
As the bells rang the evening anthem, the fishermen pulled in their lines and hurried away, and the youth moved his digging downstream. Cross with myself for the disappointment that washed over me like a cold splash of river water, I stomped over to the mold-blackened abutment and unlatched the tricky lock to a hidden stair.
Sandro was waiting, sitting on a step and twiddling the ties of a leather bag that sat between his feet. He shot a quick glance up. Just long enough to see that it was me.
“Would you walk with me, Romy of Lizard’s Alley? On the bridge?” He motioned to the tight-spiraled stair behind him. “I’ve arranged— No one will bother us. No one will see.”
No matter the concerns and questions circling in my head like vultures, words would not come.
“No. Certain, it’s a terrible idea,” he said, waving his hands dismissively while I stood voiceless. He kept his eyes averted. “I had no intention of coming. It’s foolish and entirely violates our agreement. But I needed to apologize to your friends. The Chimera. I knew the Assassins List was dangerous, but by every bright spirit in this universe, I had no idea of Rossi and this Egerik and their lunatic scheme. When I received Egerik’s invitation to join him on the day of the prison transfer, I was so curious. Honestly, I didn’t trust your friends enough, being so new at this kind of work. Decided I’d best see what was what myself. You know how I am; no one else could possibly do it right.”
Certain, I did. But I’d never heard him apologize for it.
“My arrogance nearly laid Cantagna in his lap and endangered all of you and so many others. So I thought you should know … so you could tell them … I’ll be much more careful in the future.”
