by Eric Flint
"I can be contacted at the embassy of the United States of Europe," she said. "I shall be back there this afternoon, after I complete the business which this interrupted."
The sergeant nodded. "My thanks," he said. "For what it is worth, Dottoressa, if I had known before the order was given-" he spread his hands.
He had known, Sharon realized, but too late. Somehow she couldn't bring herself to feel sympathy for him. "I hope for your sake," she said, after a long pause, "that the death of your officer is enough to absorb all the blame."
He nodded, gloomily, and thanked her again before turning away to organize his troop's return to barracks.
"It will not suffice," said Ruy. "Like every militia, they are officered by gentry, and such as they do not allow their own to be blamed."
Sharon snorted her agreement. "Not my problem." Then, after a moment's thought. "What is my problem is what the hell started this lot off, Ruy."
Ruy smiled. "Your perceptiveness is yet another of your fine qualities. It is clear even to a simple Catalan soldier such as myself, the very byword of rusticity."
"Knock it off, Ruy," she said. "A rented crowd is one thing we need to look into. Everything in this town is political in some way or other. The fact that it turned into a massacre only adds to the mayhem. We've been here less than a month, and things are-might be, at any rate-turning ugly. I want to know what it means for the USE."
"If it means anything at all," Ruy chided. "You are not a Castilian, to be seeing plots in every shadow, Sharon."
"No, I'm not. But we've got powerful friends in this town, the USE has at any rate, and if things are changing around here it could affect us." She chuckled. "I'm stating the obvious, aren't I?"
"Most insightfully, my love."
"We'll see what the spooks have turned up when we get back. If anything. It all seems to be Cardinal Whatshisface says this, and Monsignor Whoozit is maneuvering for the other."
Ruy cocked his head on one side. "In truth, these things are the very life of politics in Rome," he said.
"I think I may have heard a trace of sarcasm there, Ruy," Sharon said, looking down ruefully at her ruined dress. "And I'm wearing the reason I think they're missing something."
Ruy nodded. "Although I could wish that you had not rushed on to this scene so quickly, it speaks in a voice like thunder of the finest qualities my intended possesses," he said. "But, indeed, this is an unusual political maneuver for Rome. Did we not have a report that Borja is just outside the city, receiving a stream of distinguished guests?"
"We did. You think there's a connection?" It was Sharon's turn to raise her eyebrows.
Ruy shrugged, an expression into which he could put more meaning than most people Sharon knew could manage in an hour-long PowerPoint presentation. This time he was giving off I am hypothesizing wildly with overtones of But I wouldn't be surprised with a side order of I really think we should gather more information.
"In an infinite universe, Sharon, all things are possible. Even the possibility that I am mistaken. I would wager my three most expensive swords that that display was called for the precincts of some notable who has not curried sufficient favor with Cardinal Borja."
Sharon saw the sense in that. Borja was plainly, even blatantly, Up To Something. The USE's intelligence apparatus was expertly wielded, but still very much under construction. The best that they'd been able to turn up was the possibility that he was seeking to undermine the pope. Turn him, for at least some time, into a "lame duck" pontiff. A low trick, and a traitorous one, but all too common in politics down the ages.
Still, if the USE's newest and most surprising not-quite-ally was under attack in his own capital city, it would be purely negligent not to try to find out what was going on. And the fact that Sharon had had no advance warning that this sort of thing was to happen-assuming that this was only the first incident, or just the first to have such unhappy consequences-meant that there wasn't anyone covering this end of the problem.
That was, she felt, typical of the way they thought in this day and age. Maneuver, infight, factionalize, go to war. No one stopped to think about what the hell happened to the ordinary folks. Armies were sent to "live off the land" as a matter of course, a polite way of saying go rob the peasants blind, we don't care about them. She looked around her. There were, even this shortly after the killing and with the soldiers only just about to depart, people about on the street.
Mostly people who wouldn't ever count for much in an account of the Great and the Good, except by implication. When "the mob" was mentioned. Or "popular discontent." Or "civilian casualties." When those even got mentioned in these times.
They were, of course, looking at Sharon in a way she'd gotten kind of used to. First of all, she could afford good clothing, so they assumed she was some kind of nobility, even without the exotic appearance she had for this time and place.
But then they saw her getting down in the street and helping people. They called people like that saints, in this time, instead of-as Sharon thought of herself-simple working stiffs with the training to help.
The fact that she provided medical assistance was just the icing on the cake. Most of them probably had never even seen knowledgeable medical personnel, let alone professionals. That was something she genuinely liked about the Committees. They were trying to make that kind of attitude a thing of the past. People mattered. And that reminded her of why they were out in the first place.
"Right," she said. "Let's go see how Frank's getting on. I think it might do some good to go just as I am, as well. That boy's landed himself right in the thick of this, and I can't think of a better way to warn him to be careful."
"Indeed."
"And on the way," Sharon said on impulse, "we can discuss your new job. Spymaster."
Ruy halted. "Spymaster?"
"Spymaster. Well, intelligence analyst, if you prefer. I want some holes filled in the information I'm getting. I want to know who's hiring rented mobs, Ruy."
"This may be a little more difficult than you imagine, Sharon," Ruy said, his tone unusually serious.
"Surely not," Sharon said, teasing him. "I thought cloak-and-dagger stuff was most of your career?"
"Oh, the skills I have in abundance, let no man say he is the better of Ruy Sanchez de Casador y Ortiz in that regard. But there is the small matter of my being a subject of his most Catholic Majesty, as is Cardinal Borja. I foresee difficulty with Don Francisco, supple-minded as that man is by reputation, and no end of difficulty if the authorities of my own country hear about it."
"Well, collecting a little local color for your intended can't hurt, surely? Speaking to people in bars and so on. I just want to know what the common folk are hearing and thinking. Gossip. Rumor. Surely no one who'd care about what you get up to would care about what people like that think?"
Ruy laughed, gently. "And to think I joked about your tepidity, woman. There are some subjects on which you wax positively Catalan. I assure you, the more intelligent of the servants of the princes and kings of Europe do concern themselves very much with popular sentiment. Alfonso in particular, since he was very much on the receiving end of it once."
Sharon nodded. Ruy had been Cardinal Alfonso Bedmar's right-hand man, back when he was plain old Marquis of Bedmar and intriguing in Venice. The pair of them had gotten out of Venice just ahead of a mob of arsenalotti who'd have had tar and feathers handy if they'd heard of the practice. And been willing to get that much closer to civilized behavior than what they'd actually intended to do to the members of that conspiracy.
"Still," she said. "You could maybe write the cardinal and ask to be formally released from service, and get on with laying the groundwork in the meantime."
"Your very whims are as the commands of God Most High, Dona Sharon. I, Ruy Sanchez de Casador y Ortiz, shall spare no effort in this matter."
He paused a moment as they strolled off toward the Borgo. "Did I mention, earlier, something about habits of obedience?"
Chapter 10
Rome
Frank groaned to himself. The two idiots who were insisting on a fight were heading for the door. He heard Giovanna's voice at his shoulder. "Can you stop them?"
"Don't think I can," Frank said, without taking his eyes off them for a second. "They seem to be dead set on a fight."
"This is the third time since we opened," Giovanna hissed. "Someone is bound to notice, and there will be trouble."
Frank nodded. "I just don't think I can stop these guys short of picking a fight myself." The pair were edging toward the door, neither willing to turn his back on the other. Frank had a vague notion that duels were supposed to be more formal than this, with seconds and meeting places to go to at dawn. Just taking it outside seemed to be a bit informal to Frank. Although taking it outside proved to be a bit difficult with neither guy willing to turn away from the other for even a split second. And that door was none too wide-Frank wondered how they'd negotiate that one. Maybe they'd have the fight right in his doorway.
Just then the door opened. There were two figures silhouetted against the early afternoon sunlight. One man, one woman, which calmed Frank's fears of a watch raid. The man stepped inside first, followed by the woman, and Frank's guts solidified and sank. Ruy and Sharon. Somehow, his instincts for when he was well and truly busted started screaming. He was not supposed to be running a wild-west saloon. Pull yourself together, he said to himself, this is your place, not theirs .
Ruy looked from one side to the other, taking in the two lefferti and their crowd of onlookers, and then settling on Frank. "Trouble, Senor Stone?" he asked, his gravelly voice even and calm.
"Couple of guys got a problem. They were taking it outside," Frank said, trying to sound nonchalant.
One of the would-be combatants seemed to take offense at the interruption, and let out a few choice Italian oaths. "Mind your own business, old man," he snarled.
Oops, Frank thought, with a slight buzz of guilty pleasure. He'd never seen Ruy in action, but he'd heard the story.
Ruy's face broke into a grin. "But I am minding my own business, signor," he said, in fluent Italian. "There seems to be a problem in the place of business of a man my intended is pleased to call a friend. This makes him my friend also, and a friend of Ruy Sanchez de Casador y Ortiz shall have no problem without my utmost efforts to solve it."
The other lefferto, apparently forgetting his quarrel for a minute, turned to point his knife at Ruy. "Butt out, old man, or your business will be imitating a gutted fish."
Ruy sighed deeply, converting the movement into a smooth draw of a sword and dagger. Both of them very, very sharp and, for all the golden curlicues about the hilts, very efficient looking. "It may be," he said, "that you are skilled enough to gut me like a fish."
There was a flash of a blade through the air between Ruy and the lefferto who had spoken, and Frank could have sworn Ruy-a man in his fifties at least-had blurred as he moved. Ruy was back on his spot, the tips of his blades rock-steady, before the lefferto yelped and dropped his knife to grab his hand and clutch it in pain. Frank could see blood already starting to seep between the fingers of the gripping hand.
"But I doubt it," Ruy continued. "And even if you did, my intended is here. I have been present when she totally disemboweled a man. And you can see that she has already been busy today."
Frank looked. Sharon's dress wasn't just in some dark pattern. There were definite bloodstains all down her front. Frank hoped, fervently, that she'd been rendering emergency medical assistance. He'd heard what she'd done in Venice, too.
The lefferti clearly got the message. The one Ruy hadn't stabbed in the hand very slowly and carefully sheathed his knife. "Signor," he said, "if I have caused offense to you, I most humbly apologize. I shall go elsewhere and await the man with whom I truly do have a quarrel." With which he went to the door, giving Ruy and Sharon-especially Sharon-an ostentatiously wide berth. The other guy snatched up his knife and scuttled after him.
The rest of the room let out the breath they had all been holding. It came out as a collective sigh. Ruy sheathed his dagger, flourished a handkerchief to wipe his sword point and sheathed that weapon as well. Frank couldn't help seeing a big, mad, feral tomcat, preening after a victory over some lesser moggy.
"So," said Ruy Sanchez, grinning and swaggering in a way that Frank thought was indecent in a man older than his father, "who do I have to kill to get lunch?"
"Man, that's gruesome," Frank said, once Sharon had told the full story of her events of the morning and gotten on the outside of a pizza. Not that the bloodstains down her dress hadn't told a tale all by themselves. Benito had been sent over to the embassy to get her a change of clothes. While she could get away with walking around the Borgo filthy with someone else's dried blood, she had to go through a whole other class of neighborhood to get back to her embassy and the stains would cause comment at the very least.
"It might so easily have been worse," Ruy said over his wineglass. "Fortunately, their commanding officer was killed quickly, before he could compound his errors."
"Frank," Sharon said, "were you involved?"
Frank shook his head.
Sharon gave him a hard stare for a couple of seconds. "Frank Stone," she said at length, "if I find out that there's even the slightest hint of you even stretching the truth on this one-"
Frank held up his hands. "No, scout's honor, I swear. For crying out loud, Ms. Nichols, we're less than a quarter-mile from the Vatican here. It ain't much further to Inquisition headquarters. My record isn't exactly spotless, but jeez, give me some credit for not being totally retarded, hey?"
Sharon seemed to accept that. "I don't want to see you get in trouble, Frank. Not again. And I don't want to see you mess things up for anyone else around here, least of all me. I'm supposed to be an ambassador, and I really don't want to have to explain away another serious incident."
"Not on my account, you won't," Frank said. "Look, we serve meals, we serve drinks. We have a singers' night every Tuesday, and Dino and Fabrizzio are organizing a soccer league. We're getting a free school organized. We've got pamphlets on hygiene, basic medical care and technology as well as political affairs-and I make sure to keep those a little on the vague side. Stress on Italian unification, run pretty lightly when it comes to the role of Vatican."
He decided to leave unsaid the fact that Massimo's pamphlets ran a lot more toward the inflammatory side. Frank didn't write those himself, after all. Nor did he see any point in dwelling on the minor absurdity involved in stressing Italian unification while not directly attacking the Vatican, seeing as how Frank knew and the pope knew and three out of four urchins in the streets in any town in Italy knew perfectly well that uniting Italy would require dismantling the Papal States. Life was full of quirks.
He didn't think Sharon was really fooled by the act. But then, Frank didn't think the pope was, either-yet; so far at least, Urban VIII had chosen to look the other way. Frank was pretty sure that as long as he kept the appearance of the Committee of Correspondence in Rome reasonably mild mannered, Urban would figure that the benefit of having them active in the city outweighed the disadvantages. That was a tactic Mike Stearns had recommended to him, in one of the letters he'd sent Frank.
… as long as you don't rile them too much, in ways they can't ignore, it's often handy for an establishment caught in the middle to have a devil to counterbalance the deep blue sea-"deep blue sea," as in "Spanish Armada." Just don't be stupidly provocative, and remember that time is on our side.
Frank had been much impressed by the letters. Partly, because it had never really occurred to him that somebody like President Stearns actually thought about these things. Mostly, though, simply because Mike had taken the time to write them in the first place. That was as good a reminder as any that "Mr. President," under the fancy suit and the slick manners, was undoubtedly the most radical politician in Europe. Mike Stearns just wasn't dumb about it, the way Giovanna'
s father and uncle were.
So, he plowed on stoutly, doing his level best to exude the aura of responsible reformer rather than wild-eyed radical. "When we get a bit of a stake together we're going to start a credit union, maybe a groceries co-op. I know the Inquisition's looking for any excuse to land on us, and I'm not going to give 'em one. I've had quite enough time in Inquisition jail cells for one lifetime, thanks."
"Most wise, Senor Stone," Ruy said, "but you are still at risk. It will be said that you were responsible for the bravos we saw today."
"I can't much help that," Frank said. "Thing is, I've spent as much time as I can hereabouts making as many friends as I can. We get a good crowd in here most of the time. Those two idiots you saw weren't typical by any means. I reckon we've got a couple of dozen character witnesses any day of the week, if we need 'em."
"Not of so much use in a political trial," Ruy said. "But you say you know the Inquisition is looking for an excuse? How do you know, if I might inquire?"
Frank grinned. "Told you, we've got a lot of friends here. One of those friends has a relation who's on the staff with the Inquisition, a clerk or something, and we get passed a warning. They don't want to do anything this soon after the pope made it clear he wanted us left alone. I figure as long as we keep our noses reasonably clean, they'll keep their hands off."
Ruy turned to Sharon. "You remarked earlier that we might have been looking at only one end of the problem? It is my opinion, my dearest, that young Senor Stone is looking at the other end, and possibly also missing something."
"Well," said Frank, mildly annoyed that Ruy was talking about him like he wasn't there, "I figure since lunch is on the house anyway, you might as well fill me in on what I'm missing, hey? And maybe there's something I've heard down here on the wrong side of the tracks that you'll find useful."
Ruy nodded. "An offer most nobly made, Senor Stone. Perhaps there may be some useful exchange to be made. With your leave, Sharon?"
