by Baen Books
After all: That was how he’d ended up having to do what he did now. He walked on, making sure he was out of sight of the gatehouse before he stopped to mop his brow, and permit himself a brief half-smile. He did enjoy fooling people, it was true. He did know he was being followed, but that too was to be expected. Spies and intrigue were normal to the city states. It helped to keep the level of robbery and murder down, employing some of the rogues for the work. Most of them weren’t very good at it. They’d follow any new-comer for a while to see if he behaved normally, and then give up. There weren’t that many strangers in Ferrara, but around the horse races, the Palio di Ferrara, there were more than usual. The most likely spies and assassins would be posing as more wealthy travellers, and they’d get more attention. The poor were too limited in access to be feared, the fools thought.
It was true, of course, that he’d have had more flexibility masquerading as one of those wealthy ones, but he also would have had more and better watchers. So he went about the normal business of a poor musician – buying a hot ciupéta from the baker, and parting with a copper to dip it into the simmering pot of tripe outside the butchers shop, which also had a rumor of salume cooked in it. He found a place to sit and eat, and then polished his krumhorn, which gave him a chance to slip the long slim knife out of it, and into his boot, before playing for coins from passers-by, and being chased off by the well-fed butcher’s boy. “Go make your buzzing noise elsewhere, you little rat.”
The little rat went to look for a little rat-hole. He found one in a scruffy tavern, popular with coal-men. He played there, and though he was too poor to share a bed, as the others did, he did find shelter in the stable. For the next week he was the model of a moderately unsuccessful musician, as the town filled up for the Palio with its parades, flag-squads, horse and donkey racers, and even women’s races. The streets were thick with jugglers, magicians -- some possibly real, some obviously frauds — sellers of pastries, other better musicians, sellers of magic charms and saint’s relics, and a few pickpockets, and Antimo quietly fitted in. As much as it annoyed Antimo, he even let a man slit his pouch. He was tempted to slit his throat in exchange. But he wasn’t here for the copper coins. And he had some spare money, hidden.
* * *
Duke Enrico Dell’este, already known for his strategy and cunning, was feeling neither clever nor in control of the strategic factors of his life. The spymaster looked nervously at the mailed duke, who thumped his fist into his palm. The huge, grizzled Alpine mastiff lying at the door picked it head up at the sound. “Lorendana and now this. Are you sure there are no more leads?”
“Just that he came from Breno. On the orders of Marquis Michael Benzoni, Your Grace.”
“Cousins betray me, daughters desert me!” The duke sighed. “No description, no method, or what he plans?”
“He is apparently quite young, and very plain. An ordinary looking man. It was said that his other three victims died by the knife, Your Grace. He is supposed to be very good at his work. He kills where many others have failed. His skill seems magical. That is why I asked about magical protection.”
The duke paced. “What magic we have is tied to iron. Such protections as I can invoke, have been, for years. Now… I am tempted to let him succeed,” he said wearily.
“We need you, Your Grace,” said the man.
That was not said out of courtly manners, because the spymaster, Marco Albruzzo had none. The worst of it was that the duke knew it to be true. Ferrara had been in a desperate situation, surrounded by bigger, hungry states, with little land, and no security, when Duke Niccolo -- the man who could have been his father -- had died. Duke Enrico had never known his mother. She’d been executed shortly after his birth. The other man, who could possibly have been his father, Ugo, or his older step-brother, had been executed seven months earlier. Only pregnancy had saved his mother from the headsman until his birth. She had been nineteen, and married to Duke Niccolo for five childless years.
It had colored the way that Enrico treated his own late wife’s children, and surviving wayward daughter, and had shaped him, Enrico knew. His father certainly had not loved him for the scandal of doubt that surrounded his birth, and that had driven Enrico to the guidance of the man who had loved him and shaped him, just as he had worked iron’s shape to his will. The young Enrico was introduced to the master swordsmith Eldo Villacastin when he was just seven. The lords of Ferrara had ancient ties to the iron-workers, and the dukes were expected to pay some lip service to working in iron themselves. When his tutor took him to the forge, Master Eldo set him to working the bellows for a few minutes to amuse him. Enrico had stayed, because even then he’d learned both to spot the danger signs in his father, and to be as cunning as a little fox, hunted by something far bigger and nastier. He did not have to go to the swordsmith, every day. But it was a place that was safe from his father’s drunken rages, and where he had found a family of a sort, and learned… everything that was important. He’d never be a swordsmith like the master, or the master’s sons. But they and theirs, and the city… they needed him. They also needed the fox to enable them to survive the bigger predators who would sack or destroy their home city. Even the spymaster was one of the smiths. The journeymen travelled, and that had been the start of his spy network, which had helped him survive, and had helped him win against the odds.
The network had grown since then, as Enrico had fought to recapture the lands his father and grandfather lost. He’d learned to be as cunning as a fox, because he had neither the troops nor money to win by other means.
Yes. They needed him. And he needed his strong-headed, wild daughter. He missed her fiercely, although they had, neither of them, been any good at saying so. Right now there was not much he could do about Lorendana or her Montagnard… meddling, except to pray that she did not get killed. She meddled, he knew, partly to infuriate him.
“After the Palio… I want the city cleared of those that we do not have absolute certainty of. The man may have a good cover story, but if we get rid of some of the dross, we can see the color of the metal.”
The spymaster nodded. “There’s a fair amount of dross. Mind you, there are enough people we can’t touch, Your Grace.”
“The gentry will be my problem. But I can winnow down my contact with those.”
“We have a list from the gates,” said the spymaster. “The day after the Palio finishes, we’ll sweep the streets of them.”
“I expect he will try before then,” said Duke Enrico. “But we can do nothing before, but watch. The Palio is too popular to stop.”
“Wear armor, Your Grace.” Marco jerked a thumb at Molto, the snoring mastiff across the doorway. He and the dog had a very wary relationship. “Keep the dog with you. And change your pattern of living.”
“I need to beat iron, and to scratch sometimes,” said the duke, slightly plaintive.
The spymaster had summonsed a smile. “You’d be safe enough in the forge to do both, I reckon, Your Grace.”
* * *
Antimo readied himself, storing food, and drink in the tiny hidey-hole he had established for it. It was too small to hold a man, between the boards, but enough for his stock. A night journey, when he was sure he was unobserved and half the town was drunk, had brought him the rope that he would use to leave over the city wall. Other than that, he already had all he would need, food, drink, a pot to relieve himself, and patience. A book, or even several would have been a luxury, but reading was something he had learned to accept could not be a part of his role. He would pass the time, as he had before, drawing, numbering and counting things.
On the final day of the Palio, when the cobbled streets were loud with martial music, drum and sackbut, and the competitions between the contrade were at their noisy height, Antimo slipped into the rafters of the tavern stable. That building was only separated by a few bricks from the coal-yard next door, and its coal-wains, waiting to be filled. Antimo went from being a musician… to a wastrel sleeping
on a pile of coal, with a shovel and an empty jar of cheap wine, some of which he poured onto himself, before rolling in the coal dust. The krumhorn he dropped down the tavern well. It could only make the water better.
They would search hard for a musician, trying to hide. Not for a drunk lying openly in the coal-yard. No-one would come to load coal until the city got back to work, and if anyone came… he’d load coal. They’d look for a skulking rogue, hiding, behaving suspiciously. Their eyes drifted unseeing over folk doing what they thought they were supposed to be doing. Yes, they might not recognize him, but it wasn’t a job people lasted long at.
Antimo heard the guards searching and yelling, by late the next afternoon. One of the town’s soldiery even looked in the gate of the coal-yard at him. Coal was uncomfortable, but it was May and the blanket under him helped. Eventually, someone opened the gate to the coal-yard and two soldiers came and looked in the shed. He opened his eyes and looked blearily at them. “When is the Palio race? I’ve got a silver grosh bet on Bario…”
The guards laughed. “Go back to sleep. You’ve lost your money,” said the taller guard.
“Have you seen -- ” started the other.
The taller fellow interrupted him with a snort. “Look at him. He hasn’t seen anything for two days, I reckon.”
They left, and Antimo waited some more. He was good at waiting.
* * *
“He gave his name as Phillipo, and claimed to have come from Milcantone,” said Ferrara’s spymaster, Marco Albruzzo. “I questioned the guard myself. All he remembers about the fellow was the krumhorn. All else he could tell us was that he was quite young and poor and ordinary. He was followed and seen playing it, and he was cadging money and sleeping in the stable at the taverna Molcando,” said the spymaster. “The stable-boy was given a few coppers to ignore him. He’s not there now, though. No one saw him leave. No one has seen him since last night, when he was whining about his pouch being slit, showing them the cut. The krumhorn is all most people remember.”
The duke drew breath in a hiss across teeth. Nodded. “He is the one we were looking for. I can smell it in the neat piece of distraction he used. Something unusual to draw the attention, so they didn’t notice him, but it. He is a skilled operator,” said the duke.
“So where is he now, Your Grace?” asked Marco.
“Sleeping comfortably in some disaffected minor noble’s house, I would guess,” said Enrico. “We will need a little careful questioning of some servants, and to keep some under observation. I will compile a list.”
In answer his spymaster handed him one. The duke raised an eyebrow, read it, and added two names to it. “If you find signs, we’ll take steps.” They both knew what that would mean.
The spymaster nodded. “It could be a false trail, Your Grace. The poor fellow could be dead in a well, and be nothing more than a krumhorn player who got robbed.”
“If people fall sick around the tavern, I suppose we’ll have the well drained and send someone down,” said the Duke. “But I don’t think so. That krumhorn…”
“Maybe the horses will fall sick. The people around there don’t drink well-water.”
A week passed. The home of a newly wealthy merchant was raided, but all that yielded was a man skilled in adulterating silver coinage. Enrico let time dull the watchfulness. He knew that could be what the assassin intended. It could however be that -- not for the first time -- information received was not accurate. He had other, pressing matters to concentrate on.
* * *
Antimo waited two weeks. It was not much, against the life of a man. The marquis had given him five weeks, which Antimo had considered too little time. As usual, the waiting gave him too much time for thought. It was time spent -- except in the small hours when he would exit the little door just under the eaves of the tavern to swing onto the roof and stretch his legs -- quietly, not moving much, waiting and sleeping. The little attic had, of course, been searched when they’d originally looked for him, and showed no sign that anyone had used its cramped junk-space for years. It was too much trouble to get to for the owners to bother with. But that was then. Antimo had added some straw from the stable, to make himself comfortable, and whiled the time away drawing maps and even a portrait or two in charcoal on the floor. He drew by the light of a shifted tile that kept it from being too hot to live so close under the roof. By opening the eave-door a crack, he was also able to keep the duke’s tower in sight, and watch the smoke from the foundry. Smoke revealed a great deal to him, once he had realized that it was not all the same. The heat and the fuel used made it come out differently from the chimneys. The swordsmiths here had their tricks or their magic, Antimo had been informed. And one of them involved using something in their furnaces that did not produce much smoke at all – and that was when the duke was there.
The foundry bought coal. Antimo had established that fact before he even came to Ferrara. This was a place that had neither iron nor coal of its own and yet was one of the centers of steel-craft in Northern Italy, renowned for the craftsmanship of its smiths. Especially its swordsmiths, who held a ducal charter, and plied their trade just across the moat from Duke Enrico’s Lion tower. It was unusual, and had been enough to start Antimo thinking about how to kill the duke, when the marquis had told him that that would be his target.
The fact that the duke went there every day that he was in the city, was enough to finalize Antimo’s plan.
Swordsmiths needed iron, and they always needed coal delivered. And the coal-seller’s wain needed a man with a shovel. The late afternoon often saw that man very drunk, especially as his supply of cheap wine mysteriously increased. Antimo had actually been to the foundry twice before the chance arose to get close to the duke.
The forge-masters allowed the duke the space to be alone with the hot iron. To strip off to his shirt-sleeves and allow the muscles on that solid, stocky body to be used. To lose himself in the rhythms of working iron. It was respect. It was also very dangerous.
Antimo moved like a ghost. It was one of his real skills, unlike playing the krumhorn, he knew. He could pass, silent and unseen, or at least un-noticed. The lounging guards had assumed he was just there to shovel coal into the furnace, so allowed the coal-blackened man and his barrow to pass.
The duke was bent over his work at the anvil. The furnace was bright and the duke had two lanterns there, each with shutters and mirrors to help the light shine precisely where it was wanted, to help him see work clearly. Outside the dusk was already fading into night, and deep shadows hung around the feet of the silhouetted iron-worker, and the rhythmic hammer-blows ceased as he leaned forward, and Antimo moved in for the kill.
Fast, silent and deadly…
To be obstructed by the huge dog that stood up from the shadows behind his master.
The dog was almost as big as Antimo, but the assassin was not afraid of that. The dog had growled no warning, nor did it lunge towards him.
Dogs never did, to Antimo. They liked him, nuzzled him, came to him, even the savage ones. But the mastiff was in his way… and he’d seen his father’s dog pine and die. It made him pause for just that second before killing the dog’s master…
But the task had to be done.
He could have killed the dog, but instead, stepped left, delaying the deadly stroke by a second or two.
The moment had been enough, and something must have warned his target.
And now the target held a hammer in his hand.
Antimo felt it hit him, as he tried to step past the dog.
It hit him just like a hammer thrown by smith-hard muscles would, but not squarely, merely glancing off his temple.
Antimo did not know that.
* * *
The guards stood alert and watchful now, a spear-point at the throat of the felled assassin. Lorendana’s dog, however stood over the man. Enrico Dell’este looked at the animal in puzzlement. “It’s more like Moro is guarding him than guarding me. “
�
��He at least gave you warning, Your Grace,” said the sergeant-of-the-guard.
“The reflection in the blade I was working on did that, Luco,” said the Duke shaking his head. “I think it was the magic in the iron working for me. The dog just got in his way, I think. Still, it gave me a second or two to act. I would have been spitted otherwise. He was very quiet and very fast.”
“What do we do with him, Your Grace?” asked the guard, looking at the unconscious man. He was breathing… for now, bloody as a head-wound can make a man. It was hard to tell how bad the wound was, merely by the blood. “Kill him or save him for the headsman’s axe?”
“Take him to the cells. If he lives through that blow, he may tell us about who sent him, and just how he got so close,” said Enrico, grimly. “Then… I’ll see. In the meanwhile I want Marco Albruzzo sent to me. We will follow up as much as we can, just in case he does die before talking. We will start with a check on the coal-merchants.”
* * *
When Antimo next remembered anything, he was lying down, under a blanket, on a bed in a dim room. He blinked his eyes, looking at the stone walls, and the large man lounging in the chair against the wall. “Ah. The canary is awake,” said the man in a gravelly voice. “How many fingers am I holding up, signor?”
“Three,” said Antimo, before he realized he that he should perhaps have said five or two. But he felt too weak to think, let alone come up with quick lies, just then. Still, from under half-lidded eyes he took in the details of the place, instinctively. It could only be a dungeon room that he was in. The door was heavy, and had a tiny barred grille near the top. The only light came from a tiny slit window, high on the wall.
“Good,” said the man, standing up. “The physician said you’d either get it right the next time you came to, or your wits would be permanently addled.” Antimo closed his eyes. It was still too much to think properly. He heard the door close.
A little later, a creak alerted him, made him open his eyes again, as the door to the dungeon room opened, to admit none other than the man Antimo had sought to kill. “My people tell me you are awake,” said Duke Enrico Dell’este.
