A Summoning of Demons

by Cate Glass

  Fascinating. Twice more, I watched her tumble. The last time, she’d made it two-thirds of the way to the top, but had been unable to find a next fingerhold. She had pushed away and jumped down apurpose. Hefting a jagged rock shard, she began prying and beating at the shackle, muffling the sound with her wadded bedgown.

  I puzzled over it, until she tried scraping at the stone with the twisted chunk of metal. Lady Virtue’s whispers, she was making herself a tool. If we didn’t do something, our bride would be free before we’d spoken to her. Footsteps approached from the keep. Livia’s head popped up. I ducked and retreated, waving at Placidio to stay back.

  “We’ve got ourselves a lizard,” I whispered when I joined him. “A very determined one, who makes tools.” I told him what I’d seen.

  “How’d she get out of the shackle? It wasn’t close fitting but I’d bent it so she couldn’t slip her foot out.”

  “You bent it … with your hands?”

  “Aye, but—” He scratched his beard. “Well, all right, I suppose … with the right tool or rock, she could pry it open. No doubt she’s strong enough. I didn’t exactly have time to clean up the place yesterday. Are you ready to tell her about her friend’s murder?”

  “Not to start. First, I’m going to see if I can make her talk with me—or rather with someone who might help her get away from her kidnappers. Neri gave me an idea.…”

  A short time later, Placidio, his black hood raised, made a noisy approach and glared over the rim of Livia’s prison. I stood silently at his right hand in my own hood and cape.

  “Enjoying your stay, damizella?” he called down. “A bit of a comedown from Villa Giusti?”

  “I’ll survive.”

  She sat half in, half out of the shaded portion of her prison, where we couldn’t notice that she was free of her shackle. I’d wager there were several sharp rocks beside her hidden hand.

  “We all survive as we can,” said Placidio. “That’s how we came to our choice of business. And certain, you will survive. Though it might not be a life you’d enjoy. Might involve men—most assuredly thugs and bullies.”

  “So you’re a slaver.”

  “Nay, not us.”

  “A snatcher then, who deals with slavers?” A brave front she put on. Her voice did not quaver, but it was close.

  “Mayhap. But we think you have some value to those in Villa Giusti. We’ve put them and your father on notice that they’ll receive our price before midnight. Any assistance you can offer to sharpen our bargaining would be to your advantage. I’ll leave you to think on that.”

  “My father…” She lifted her chin sharply. “So if I die from thirst, you’ll reap nothing for all your trouble.”

  Her challenge rang like that of a pitcher half-filled instead of empty. Was it the notion of ransom or the mention of her father had spiked her hopes?

  “Dying of thirst takes a while,” said Placidio, snarling in devilish pleasure. “A traveler of the wild like you will likely know just how long. Nis, when you water the rest of our stock, be sure to skip this one.”

  “But, Capo, she—” Placidio backhanded me.

  I staggered and dropped to my knees. Uninjured. A man like Placidio, who found it needful to lose as many duels as he won, was a master at false moves and had taught Neri and me a few.

  “But stop by here on your rounds,” said Placidio. “Make sure she sees you have a flask … just in case the stubborn lady changes her mind.”

  I touched my head to the ground, and then slunk after him until we were out of Livia’s sight and earshot. I hoped she had taken note.

  “Well played,” I said. “We’ll let that simmer a bit, along with the afternoon heat. We’d best keep a close watch until you replace the shackle, though. Wouldn’t want her loose. I’d wager il Padrone’s treasury she could find her way back to the city using the stars.”

  Placidio grunted. “Likely.”

  “But she’ll be wary for a bit. We likely have time to visit her contracted husband.”

  “You are a hard taskmaster, lady scribe.”

  “Did you notice any kind of hook we could use to persuade young Donato to contravene his parents’ wishes? I didn’t.”

  “Perhaps the lady’s expressed preference for women. But if politics is driving the marriage, likely not even that.”

  “The Canon of the Creation is far more than politics.”

  Donato’s chamber was similar to Livia’s, but only about half the size and it lacked any sheltering roof. To my astonishment, the man was still asleep. Sitting upright in a corner. Eyes closed. One ankle was shackled to a bolt halfway along the wall.

  “How can he stay so still?” I whispered. “And why?”

  “Not entirely still,” Placidio said softly, after stepping back from the rim of the hole. “Before you woke this morning, he was in the adjacent corner. He likes the shade. I doubt he’s asleep.”

  Placidio picked up a pebble, stepped round the rim until he was just above and to one side of Donato, and flung the pebble hard and straight. It struck just beside Donato di Bastianni’s ear.

  The man did not jump, flinch, or twitch.

  “Spirits!” I said, joining him well away from the rim. “Clearly you were wrong.”

  “That’s not sleep,” said Placidio. “That’s discipline.”

  “But why?”

  “That’s the question, I’d say. Certain, it changes things a bit. Let’s see if he’ll talk.”

  We adjusted our masks and hoods. A fixed rope and a pail served to lower sausage, cheese, and a flask of ale into Donato’s hole. Dumond had supplied us a rope ladder like the one we’d used in the coliseum rescue, driving iron spikes into the rock to hold it and the supply rope.

  Placidio descended first, and sat cross-legged in front of our prisoner. I followed suit, placing the refreshments within Donato’s reach before taking a seat beside Placidio.

  “Segno di Bastianni,” I began. “We’ve come to introduce ourselves. The food and drink should display our good intentions.”

  He didn’t move or even look.

  “Honestly, we’ve no reason to harm you, despite my partner’s rude rock throwing and the abrupt nature of our introduction last night. We are engaged in a simple business transaction.”

  “The rock-throwing was only a test,” said Placidio. “You are a most disciplined young man. I commend you. We’ve no ill intent.”

  Donato’s eyes blinked open. His was a narrow, well-proportioned face, with a nicely sculpted indentation of his cheeks, a shelf of black brows shading deep-set eyes, and a night’s scruff of black on his chin. His hands trembled slightly.

  Glancing from one of us to the other, he pressed his hands into his lap and breathed deeply, as one does when embarking on a perilous venture. Just as I did every time I released my soul and became someone else.

  “I don’t believe you,” he said. “Not any of it.” Precise. Even. As if he had used a hot flatiron to remove every inflection—and every fearful quaver. Discipline, indeed.

  “Why is that?” I said. “Because of our garb? Masks and symbols are but distractions.”

  He dropped his gaze to his folded hands. They were still now. “Perhaps because you tried to smother me, and then hauled me into the wilderness and chained me in a hole. No honest business relationship involves such tactics.”

  His plain logic was scarce audible, even at a short distance away. Somehow that only added to its offense.

  “Spoken by a privileged son of the Philosophic Confraternity,” I spat, “whose honest business involves stripping young men naked, gelding them, and forcing them to live forever in a skin of silk at the end of a chain.”

  His gaze snapped to mine—alarmed—only to drop just as quickly. Discipline, again? His knotted fingers stilled. “Sniffers are not men. They are servants of evil who have chosen their fate—demons who have accepted their true nature. Why would the Cavalieri Teschio care? Is this a test?”

  The young coward’s blank
face begged for a slap.

  “I care about hypocrisy,” I blurted … and immediately wanted to tear out my tongue. A stupid reply. An inept exchange and entirely out of character for a hardened kidnapper. Entirely not where I wished this interview to go. It was the Confraternity speaking through his mouth. I doubted he’d even considered the words before spitting them out.

  “This is certainly a test,” said Placidio, salvaging the moment. “We test the value of those who populate our city. Our business has thrived on young persons with limited prospects whose families seem to approve our modest estimates of their value. But you, segno, a young man of unlimited prospects, mark a significant change in our merchandise. We have some disagreements in our ranks as to the price you’ll bring. What would you say is your worth to your family? Ten thousand silver solets? A hundred gold? A thousand? Where will they balk and say, ‘Too expensive for a dull, incurious lump; find another buyer’?”

  Placidio leaned forward as if to speak in confidence. “And be sure, for a well-formed young fellow like you with healthy skin and good teeth, even one with an empty head, we have other buyers at the ready.”

  Donato’s complexion took on a rosy cast. “You will never get the opportunity. Whatever you think you know, you chose the wrong family to test. My father—”

  “Truly, are you going to invoke your father?” I snapped. “Does he groom his precious boy to succeed him? To be a Confraternity director is a mighty aspiration. But I suppose a director would insist on proper placement for his eldest son.”

  “My father shall serve nobly for the full span of his life, as will his deputies, may their seasons be long and fruitful”—one would think his father was listening—“while I do as— While I proudly become a defender of truth.” His mouth worked, but nothing more came out.

  No practiced or prescribed answer for this one? After a few moments, I feared he might faint again. “In other words, you will do as you are told to defend the truth as the Philosophic Confraternity proclaims it.”

  “Yes. That. Certainly.”

  Defend. Was he to be a praetorian, then? Could there ever have been a young man less suited to a soldier’s life? And no matter family, one did not arrive at the post of director enforcer without serving as a praetorian. Perhaps the defense he spoke of was scholarship.…

  “If not to succeed him as director advocate, perhaps your noble father has some other advocacy position in mind for you. He is an authority on ancient artifacts, I’ve heard.” Indeed, Rinaldo di Bastianni had validated the antiquity of the Antigonean bronze, the statue that now sat in the grand duc of Riccia’s treasury, the statue that had brought Teo to Cantagna. “Do you study antiquities or myths?”

  “The undying truth of the ancient is a proper study for all.”

  Another standard philosophist recitation, invoking the Canon. How I wished I had Livia’s pages and the stolen book there with me to challenge him, but we’d come directly from the villa. In no way had I dared risk the precious documents on our foray into the heart of the Confraternity.

  “But he’s also chosen you a wife,” said Placidio. “Perhaps she is to be your preoccupation. Will she not persuade your family to buy you back?”

  “Perhaps she finds him a dullard and will rejoice if he vanishes,” I said. “Perhaps we should apply to her and see what she will pay for her preferred outcome.”

  “The match is a business arrangement. Agreed to by her, her family, and my own. There is no need for persuasion.” No hint of doubt shadowed this declaration.

  Snarling, I poked at Placidio’s shoulder. “You see, Capo, he’s naught but a token in his betters’ game. I think we should strip him and send him straight to Tregawny before I find need to blemish his sweet balls myself. Boys like him raise the wolf in me.”

  “Aye, that’s quite clear on this fine morning. But I’m sure this fellow was not the one dragged your lover away in chains for claiming visions of the Unseeable Gods. Was that you, boy?”

  Donato opened his mouth, but this time he snapped it shut and averted his gaze. Did he not trust the answer that came to mind? Or his ability to speak it without revealing more than he wished?

  “So is there anything you wish us to tell your family?” asked Placidio. “Mayhap we should report that you are spewing the Confraternity’s deepest secrets. Or shivering in your boots. Or pissing yourself—”

  “No!” Donato’s breath had quickened, his posture grown stiff. Was it fear? Anger? Perhaps he had some difficulty like the falling sickness; some believed that disease was infestation by demons. Or perhaps he suffered some shameful incapacity; the very intelligent daughter of one of Sandro’s friends had been word-blind, incapable of reading words on a page. Perhaps Donato had been trained or even beaten to hide his limitations. That might explain this combination of confidence, discipline, and terror. But I would wager good coin that it was more.

  From above and behind us screeches and the beat of feathered wings broke the quiet as the entire colony of hawks rose together and swooped westward.

  In the momentary interruption, Donato had closed his eyes again. His limbs had relaxed. Discipline? Perhaps so. Either that or he had fainted again. Perhaps there was a fainting sickness, less violent but just as debilitating as the falling sickness.

  Enough. We were getting nowhere. Even the birds were bored.

  “Eat your dinner and contemplate your worth,” I said, rising smoothly to my feet. “We will dispatch our offer to your family by midnight. I hope they don’t pay.”

  Placidio rose as well. “Never mind this scold, young gentleman. Certain, we’ll listen if you’ve a suggestion as to the amount to ask, but we’ve a sense about these things and will know if you aim too low. As I said, we’ve other markets.”

  Donato gave no sign of hearing us. I resisted the temptation to kick him to ensure he was breathing.

  We left the food within his reach. I clambered up the rope ladder and over the rim, ready to be shed of the hot black cloak. As I hauled up the empty food bucket, Placidio climbed the ladder.

  Just as I coiled the bucket rope, a clink of metal and a harsh gasp popped my head up.

  “Gods’ balls!” Placidio lay sprawled over the rim of the wall, arms outstretched and clawing at the rock and scrub. One foot was tangled in the ladder which now hung from only one spike. The remaining loop of rope threatened to pop off its spike at any moment.

  I flung myself to the ground and grasped Placidio’s wrists, locking my legs around the splintered trunk of a long-dead cedar. Lacking the muscle to haul him up, I could only provide him purchase.

  Forearms planted, shoulders straining, he dragged a knee over the rim. In moments he was sitting on solid ground, chest heaving.

  “Well done,” he said when he had settled. “Don’t know how—” He snatched something from the rock beside him. “Boundless Night, Dumond. I’ve words for you.”

  He tossed me an iron spike as long as my fingertip to wrist. Unbroken. Unbent.

  “Did he hammer it into dirt?” I said. “Or just not deep enough in the rock? I can’t believe Dumond would make a mistake like that. Even so late, without sleep.” And after having worked not one, but two magical portals and his twenty teaser holes. He’d fought beside us, as well. “We all pushed ourselves past our limits last night. I know I’ve not slept well since the earthquake.”

  Placidio had pulled up the ladder and was now examining the two anchor points. “The damnable rock is cracked around that hole,” he said, uncertain. “Difficult to notice when working in bad light after a very long two days. Guess I won’t kill him.”

  He left the spike and the bundled ladder on the rim of the roofless cellar.

  Before we withdrew to consider our next moves, I peeked into the cellar. Donato had slumped over his knees, his hands wrapped over his head. A head full of empty words and seething fears. Livia was annoying, but, spirits, at least she was alive.

  12

  TWO DAYS BEFORE THE WEDDING

  LATE
AFTERNOON

  Placidio, Dumond, and I pulled out bread, cheese, figs, and ale from blessed Vashti’s provisioning. As Neri slept on in the keep, we spread our meal in the shade of a broken arch. The two of them had just reported that the spikes at the rim of Donato’s den were reset and would not pull out were Atladu himself to attempt it. Livia’s ladder supports were verified as well set.

  “Still don’t understand how I could have missed that,” said Dumond, staring at his fingers. “When I set them, I used magelight—brighter than I’ve ever managed before. My eyes must have been crossed.”

  Dumond had been appalled when he heard of our near disaster. A fall from the cellar rim would have broken bones—the one injury Placidio’s self-healing magic could not address. As soon as we had unloaded the cart, they’d gone off to see to the problem.

  I sliced off a Neri-sized chunk of cheese for myself. For the first time since escaping the Villa Giusti, I was ravenous. “You checked that Livia’s not gotten out of the new shackle?”

  “Seems to be sleeping,” Placidio said. “Mayhap she’s human after all and not one of the daemoni discordia crawled out of the Great Abyss. We’d best deliver the Cavalieri ransom demands soon. Elsewise we might be paying her parents to take her back.”

  Placidio’s grumbling was understandable. The shallow cut in his hip Livia had inflicted during the snatch yet stung. And when he had ventured into Livia’s cellar to replace her broken tether, fully expecting her to attack, she had still managed to scratch his cheek with her chipping tool.

  “Aye, sooner is better,” said Dumond. “Gossip says the city steward has joined the Confraternity in demanding the Sestorale convene immediately. Everyone assumes they’ll ask for the Gardia to join the praetorians in the hunt. The philosophists have already put half a legion in the streets. Setting a time and place for the exchange might well change the focus of their hunt. They’ll assume we’re inside the city.”