Trecchio never slackened his pace, but marched his charge straight to an alcove containing a low, heavy wooden door, which yielded with a shriek of rusty hinges. His gesture encompassed the darkness beyond. “In,” he said.
Jianna swallowed her protests. With a lift of the chin she advanced, only to halt on the threshold as if her feet possessed their own will. A jerk of Trecchio’s arm slung her forward into shadow. She staggered, then spun to face the doorway.
“I need a light—” she began.
The door slammed shut and the blackness caught her in its jaws. A vast weight seemed to crush her, and she gasped for breath. Tried to scream and, as if in a nightmare, produced nothing beyond an impotent mew. Heard the bar drop into place even as she sprang for the door; wrestled wildly with the unyielding latch, then gave it up and sank to her knees, racked with sobs.
It was inconceivable. She was not supposed to be here. She was supposed to be at the Glass Eye Inn, making ready to dine in the interesting common room. After dinner she was supposed to giggle and gossip with Reeni. She was supposed to sleep in a soft, clean bed and in the morning travel on to Orezzia, where her noble prospective in-laws waited to welcome her to the great house of which she would one day be mistress. That was the future ordained by her father.
Her tears slowly dwindled. She rubbed her eyes and raised her head. Contrary to her initial impression, her prison was not entirely dark. A very small window—little more than a peephole, but fortified with heavy iron grillwork—admitted a current of chilly fresh air and a thin stream of moonlight by which she imperfectly descried her surroundings. She knelt beside the door on the stone floor of a chamber some six or seven feet square. Probably a storage closet, furnished with a narrow cot, a water jug, a bucket, and nothing more. No table or chair, no light, no fireplace, and the place was miserably cold; she was already starting to shiver. Rising to her feet, she stepped to the bed and found there a single woolen blanket. She wrapped herself in the musty-smelling folds, went to the tiny window, and peered out at moonlit dirt. The closet was partially subterranean, its sole window placed at ground level. She glimpsed a stretch of courtyard, presently empty; a section of some anonymous outbuilding; a patch of starry sky; nothing that told her much.
She turned from the window, rubbing her forehead. Her nose was stuffed from the recent crying, and her head ached dully. A touch of cool water on her face might help, if only that jug in the corner contained anything. It did. She dashed a little of the contents across her swollen eyes, then lifted the vessel to her lips and drank. Good. Cold and reasonably fresh. It was then that she realized for the first time that the closet contained no food. No matter. The mere thought of food sickened her. She felt as if she would never want to eat again. But she would want to eat again, common sense acknowledged; probably far sooner than she expected. And then what? Would her captors feed her, or did they mean to starve her into submission?
Her headache was gathering strength. She went to the cot, lay down, and shut her eyes, but with little hope of slumber. Fear and confusion whirled about her mind, while the intolerable images burned behind her tightly closed lids. Aunt Flonoria, and her astonished dead face. Reeni, hurt and disfigured before she was murdered. The driver, the guards … Fresh tears scalded her cheeks.
There had to be a better image, one to drive the others away. Something shining, powerful, and benevolent to sustain her now. She blinked, and there it was—her father’s face, so clear, perfect, and alive that she felt she could stretch forth her hand and touch him. Her hurried breathing eased then, for she knew beyond question that he would find her and save her. He would succeed because he always succeeded, and once he learned of her abduction, nothing would stop him.
She could almost pity the lunatics who had dared to lay hands on her.
“Father,” she whispered into the night, “please hurry. Hurry. Hurry.”
* * *
Hurry. They were taking an unconscionably long time about it all. The Magnifico Aureste stirred impatiently. His seat on the third-floor balcony of the Cityheart, formerly known as Palace Avorno, was comfortable and well situated, sheltered from the sharp chilly breeze yet affording a clear view of the straw-strewn scaffold set up in the Plaza of Proclamation below. The scaffold supported a block, beside which waited a masked headsman. The plaza was filled with spectators whose true mood was difficult to gauge. With a few conspicuous exceptions, there was little display of boisterous merriment. Similarly absent was any overt sign of the resentment or disapproval whose free expression would have sparked the wrath of the Taerleezi guards ranged about the scaffold. A good thing, too. But for the presence of those steel-edged guards, the angry tongues would be wagging, the fists and rocks would be whizzing. Certainly some of those rocks would fly high, even so high as the third-story balcony accommodating the unbeloved Governor Anzi Uffrigo, his lady wife, and a few favored friends, including a single handsomely attired Faerlonnish noble: the Magnifico Aureste Belandor.
Aureste cast a sidelong glance at the governor, whose gravely contemplative gaze anchored on the scene below. Uffrigo possessed a long, sensitive, melancholy countenance, with a fine thin nose and mournful melting eyes—the face of a poet or a mystic. Nothing there to suggest cruelty, lust, greed, or malice. Nothing at all to suggest the qualities that had won Governor Uffrigo the popular cognomen of the Viper.
“Tedious, eh?” inquired the governor in his light, melodic voice, without turning his head.
Apparently he had sensed the pressure of Aureste’s regard. His instincts were as keen as his namesake’s.
“They take their time,” Aureste conceded with a humorous air.
“I trust the spectacle will justify the inconvenience.” Uffrigo beamed his radiant, gentle smile. “They say this new headsman is an artist of matchless skill. We shall soon judge for ourselves. If he fails to please, I’ll hand him over to his own successor.”
“There is a pretty symmetry to that notion, Governor, and the possibility of limitless continuity. I envision a crimson progression from executioner to executioner, extending indefinitely into the future. Each heir to the title of Master Headsman is literally linked by blood to the progenitor of his line—inheritor of a proud tradition and member of a unique dynasty.”
“Ah, Aureste.” Uffrigo rippled a musical laugh. “If only more of your compatriots shared your drollery. So many of you Faerlonnish seem so lamentably dour.”
So many had been given such good reason. But the Magnifico Aureste did not number among them, and he replied easily, “It is our national talent to discern the darkness impinging on every patch of sunlight, but a sanguine nature impairs my own vision. This is a serious disadvantage.”
“You are such an amusing fellow, I don’t know how we should do without you.”
As always, it was difficult to know whether Uffrigo’s approval carried an intentional barb. Swallowing his own flash of irritation, Aureste inclined his head smilingly.
“Yet I gather that we must now do without that pretty daughter of yours,” the governor continued. “What is the child’s name again? Jianna, is it?”
“Jianna, yes.” Aureste’s smile remained fixed in place. His daughter’s mere name upon the governor’s lips offended his ears, but by no external sign was his anger evident.
“A charming young creature. You’ve promised her to an Orezzian, I hear.”
“You are well informed.”
“So I endeavor to be. A pity she could not remain among us to delight all eyes here in Vitrisi, and I daresay she wept to depart her home. Ah, well. No doubt the match you’ve chosen for her offers many an advantage.”
“Many,” Aureste agreed, smiling on. Inwardly he wondered, once again, if the governor deliberately sought to bait him or touched raw nerves by sheer chance. He strongly suspected the former, for Uffrigo possessed a certain feline quality of playful cruelty. Irritating, but unimportant. In any event, a Faerlonnishman among the Taerleezi conquerors could hardly afford to take offe
nse.
“The Orezzians are a warmhearted folk, devoid of prejudice, I’m told. They’ll accept her without reservation,” Uffrigo suggested.
Despite her father’s infamy, he meant.
“Her countless delightful qualities are certain to purchase the child the warmest possible welcome,” the governor continued cordially.
The massive dowry that she brings buys a measure of their tolerance.
“And she’ll soon accustom herself to the unfamiliar habits and manners of her new family.”
She’ll always be an outsider in an Orezzian household.
“For all of that, my dear fellow, I daresay you will miss her?” the governor probed.
The fresh wave of anger that swept the Magnifico Aureste’s mind was not easily mastered. This Taerleezi viper’s interest in Jianna was a profanation of something immaculate. Across his mind flashed the image of a dagger slicing the offensive tongue from the governor’s mouth. A pleasing concept. Face and voice were perfectly controlled as he replied with a light shrug, “It is not as if I had lost a son.” Before the other could reply, he added, “Governor, I believe the festivities commence.”
An open wagon flanked by mounted guards had reached the foot of the scaffold. Its passengers included a quartet of battered prisoners, their bruises black in the sunlight, their rags stirring in the hard breeze. One of the four doomed faces was known to the Magnifico Aureste. Without surprise he recognized the fugitive he had handed over to the Taerleezi authorities some weeks earlier. Faint satisfaction tingled across his mind.
The prisoners were conveyed from the wagon to the scaffold. The list of their crimes was read aloud—all four were convicted saboteurs, members of the resistance—and the executioner went to work.
Perhaps he might have been called an artist; a highly accomplished craftsman at the very least. The dexterity with which he divested each prisoner of hands, feet, and genitalia prior to the final decapitating stroke was wonderful to behold. Yet the Magnifico Aureste took little pleasure in the spectacle, which struck him as unattractive and uselessly prolonged. The offending parties were to be eliminated—an excellent objective. The bloody preliminaries were so much pointless embellishment.
The majority of spectators appeared not to share his sentiments. The acclamation greeting each precise stroke of the headsman’s ax rang through the Plaza of Proclamation. The screaming voices offended his ears, seemed somehow even to offend his nose; the very atmosphere lay rank and heavy in his lungs.
Aureste drew a deep breath, and his nostrils twitched. An acrid reek all too perceptibly rode the breeze. Smoke, and plenty of it, tinged with the scent of charred meat. He looked up from the plaza to behold dark clouds of the stuff sweeping in from the east, and knew the source at once. In the slums known as the Spidery, great bonfires had been kindled to consume the victims of the plague. So swift had been the recent spread of the pestilence, and so luxuriant the proliferation of corpses, that the public pyres now blazed no less often than thrice weekly. Ordinarily the smoke drifted out to sea, but today the fickle breeze carried it straight to the Plaza of Proclamation.
His throat tickled. His lungs drank the airborne remnants of the nameless dead. Aureste coughed discreetly and wished himself far away.
“Note the power and precision. He is an artist as promised.” Governor Uffrigo’s soulful rapt gaze never strayed from the scaffold.
Aureste breathed a sigh and settled back in his seat. The choreographed carnage continued, and he willed himself to watch. Presently he found himself mentally superimposing the face of the Magnifico Vinz Corvestri upon the faces of the headsman’s victims, and the spectacle acquired charm. The pleasant scene filling his mind’s eye was less fantasy than foresight. For weeks his agents had woven their secret nets about Corvestri Mansion, and the culmination of their efforts was imminent. It would come any day.
FOUR
The workroom was discreetly situated in a cellar beneath the kitchen behind Corvestri Mansion. The kitchen’s separation from the house reduced the risk of fire. The windowless workroom below, similarly distanced for corresponding reason, was accessible only by means of a subterranean corridor whose entrance was guarded when the chamber was occupied. It was occupied now by three human beings, two of them living and one of them undead.
The Magnifico Vinz Corvestri, illicit arcanist and head of his House, was deeply immersed in his work—with good reason. The plague-stricken object of his attention displayed the rebellious tendencies so characteristic of his puzzling malady, and effective control demanded effort. Control was essential, however. Should the undead visitor escape the net of sorcerous restraints presently hemming him in, then the plague must surely take hold in Corvestri Mansion, starting with the master and his only son.
Vinz’s eyes shifted for a moment to the boy standing beside him, heir to his title and his talent. Even in the midst of the most strenuous mental endeavor, he experienced the usual thrill of pride. Young Vinzille Corvestri, only thirteen years of age, already demonstrated a precocious arcane ability that more than qualified him to serve as his father’s apprentice and assistant. And an admirable assistant he was—careful, accurate, diligent, yet at the same time imaginative, boldly original, blessed with flashes of insight that sometimes seemed inspired. A genius, perhaps, gifted with powers destined to outshine his father’s.
Much of the gift resided in the lad’s intense concentration, his exclusion of all distraction. He was doing it now, Vinz observed with approval, shutting out the world and everything in it beyond the plague-ridden prisoner before him. His face was still and almost eerily empty—a youthful, incompletely formed, but very excellent face, Vinz noted at some cost to his own focus. Vinzille Corvestri bore little external resemblance to his soft-bellied, round-visaged, nondescript father. Happily, he favored his handsome mother, from whom he had inherited his fine features, his slender height, and his chestnut-haired autumnal coloring. Yes, altogether an ideal son.
The moment’s self-indulgence had taken its toll. The sorcerous net enclosing the undead visitor gave way, and a bony arm clad in dark rags thrust through the rent. That groping arm would spread pestilence unless promptly contained. Vinz Corvestri came within a breath of exerting his power and then held back, allowing his son to take command.
Vinzille rose to the challenge. Without hesitation he reshaped his mental construction, shifting the complex lenses of his mind to bend the energy of the Source in a new direction. The questing arm of the undead froze for an instant, then drew back through the rent in the sorcerous net, which promptly mended itself. The plague victim—a tattered former denizen of the Spidery gutters—pushed vaguely at the surrounding intangible walls, turning in aimless little circles within the confines of his prison. A flex of Vinzille’s intellect seized and immobilized the undead, whose facial contortions expressed unidentifiable emotion.
“Name yourself aloud,” the boy commanded in tones of adult authority.
Vinz Corvestri caught his breath. Direct verbal solicitation of the force inhabiting the ruined body of the plague victim had formed no part of his plan; had not, in fact, occurred to him. This novel approach offered further evidence, if any was needed, of his son’s uncommon talent. A fresh wave of pride threatened to rock his concentration.
The undead’s milky eyes rolled. His jaw shuddered and dropped. A yellowish tongue protruded. It quivered and a low, unintelligible mutter emerged, something between a rumble and a moan. Scarcely a human utterance.
“Name yourself,” Vinzille insisted.
Successive spasms convulsed the undead’s body. A froth of reddish foam appeared upon his lips. “We,” he replied in a voice scarcely tolerable to human ears.
“Again,” Vinzille directed quietly.
The undead’s jaw clamped. His head thrashed in a recognizable gesture of refusal.
Linked to his son by the shared current of arcane energy, Vinz felt the sudden surge of the boy’s will, the intensity of which would probably have a
chieved success had not a sharp knock on the workroom door blasted all concentration. He briefly sensed the heat of Vinzille’s frustration, and then the connection lapsed.
Vinz contained his own annoyance. His servants, those few that he could still afford to keep, were well trained. None would presume to disturb the magnifico in his workroom without good cause. Stepping to the triply bolted door, he applied his eye to the peephole and spied the familiar outline of a Vitrisi resistance activist known to him and his household members only by the alias Lousewort. The Corvestri servants were under orders to admit Lousewort at any hour of the night or day. Vinz unbolted the door at once.
“Wait,” he instructed his son.
“No.” Vinzille shook his head. “We had it, I can get it back. Don’t stop me now.”
“Only for a moment.”
“Please, Father. I can do it.”
He probably could; he was already that accomplished. But no adolescent, however gifted, should be left to pursue so dangerous an endeavor unsupervised.
“Not alone. I’ll return shortly. Wait.” Vinz stepped out into the corridor, shutting the workroom door behind him.
Lousewort stood there, bland visage all but lost in the shadow of a broad hat. It crossed Vinz’s mind fleetingly that he had dealt with this man for years and still possessed no very clear mental image of the face beneath the hat; probably that natural or cultivated anonymity offered a valuable asset to the local resistance movement.
Vinz wasted no time in preliminaries. “I heard that Pesq and Fovi were taken in Mouse Alley. You’re in trouble?” he asked.
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