by Cate Glass
Donato folded his arms across his chest, easy and proud as if he’d never in the world had a shaking fit. “I will likely be looking for a replacement for Giorgio the Hand, if ever I get shed of these villains. Capo, if you are so clever as to get yourself out of a city that must surely be locked down tight … and to survive and laugh at these inept players … you must have excellent skills. If you were to get me, my bride, and my prisoners back to my home in good health, I might be able to provide a future far more profitable than those you propose.”
The woman tilted her head, doubt and suspicion sculpting her face. “That sounds very convenient—for you. What if you decide I’ve too little experience or my crew is too big or too small or too stupid or too dirty to serve your needs? How easy it would be to turn on us once you’re comfortable again.”
Dono dipped his head slightly. “I acknowledge the risk you would take and am prepared to reward it with the ransom my family is preparing to pay these imbeciles. Certain, I would be placing my clear trust in you by putting my person and that of this most valued lady in your hands. Thus”—he extended his hand—“on my honor as a loyal son of the Philosophic Confraternity, if we come to no permanent agreement, I shall provide free and safe passage to the port of your choice for you and your crew, along with the wherewithal to enjoy your travels.”
Livia stepped forward, her complexion flared as red as her hair.
I hissed and pinched her foot. No doubt she wanted some say before having her person placed in the hands of thugs, but Dono’s play might be her only way to safety.
Neither Donato nor the capo looked anywhere but at each other as the woman considered his offer.
The last remnants of sunlight flared red through a breach in the heavy clouds. With the same dramatic brilliance, Giorgio’s silencing exposed a pattern linking the other bits and pieces. Dono had wanted to send a message to this Giorgio the Hand. He had also expected to gain responsibility over Giorgio and his underlings on his wedding day—when he assumed his new post in the Confraternity. Giorgio had commanded the rest of the Cavalieri to run, thus Giorgio had been one of its topmost leaders—and the very one whom Dono believed would have dispatched this woman’s crew to search for us.
This strange young man, who had no skill with words or people, who had contorted his life to create a refuge from paralyzing fear, had evidenced a truth as astonishing as if the citizens of Cantagna had begun walking on their heads: The Confraternity and the Cavalieri Teschio were working together.
Were the goods Giorgio thought might keep him alive this very intersection—a crime of child-snatching that could indelibly taint the Confraternity? The selling of children. Innocents, Donato had said.
And then did full horror fall on me like the rivers of sewage that drained from the villa Giusti cesspool. Sniffers had always seemed to outnumber the arrests of sorcerers fit for future as a slave. What if the Cavalieri Teschio had been supplying youths—some stolen or perhaps bribed with a silver coin—to the Confraternity, and the Confraternity sorted through them, finding ones they could make into sniffers? Children with hidden magic, perhaps. Or maybe whatever gave sniffers abilities beyond ordinary magic could also make a sniffer from an innocent.
My every bone, every sinew, every droplet of my blood revolted, so that I almost missed the completion of Dono’s pact with the remnants of the Cavalieri.
“You don’t want these impostors dead?” said the capo. “Want to deal with them yourself, do you?” The capo’s sly smile, grown throughout their exchange, now broke into a grin, as if the light of the world had not darkened to pitch.
“It will be a great pleasure,” said Donato. “Have we an agreement, Capo…?”
“Mannia,” said the capo, clasping his wrist. “Sure we do. I’ll gladly join in rites of vengeance. I’ve a great hunger for it just now. We flourished under Giorgio, till these folk interfered and set praetorian blades at our throats. What a fortunate meeting, this. Beyond every expectation.”
“Capo Mannia.” Dono’s fingers closed around her wrist to seal the agreement. “You can start by binding these two and leaving them and their dangling third shackled to these walls while we share out their supplies and strategize our return to Cantagna. There’s a storm rising, I’ve had no decent sleep in three days, and I’ve no wish to drag this lady onto the road on a stormy night. I shall dream tonight of exquisite revenge.”
Mannia’s humorless laugh bounced from every rock and tree. “A fine plan. My cadre have been on the run three days now, scarce a moment for a bite or a sip. With the stores we’ve found here, we can have a proper celebration. One that’s fitting for a fine-looking, privileged young gentleman of the Confraternity and his virgin bride. My people have need for some fun.”
“Don’t trust—” The brute kicked me in the side, silencing my warning.
Dono didn’t even turn his head. Spirits, how could the young fool trust this Mannia? Her every word oozed with spite.
As the bearish tenente and his pustule-afflicted henchman fetched the coil of rope a comrade threw down, Donato took Livia’s hand and bowed. “Gentle lady, will you accompany me to this celebration and a sleep in whatever comfort these rogues have allotted themselves while we were thrown into mole dens? Tomorrow I shall welcome you and your good father back to my house that we may fulfill his wish for our future.”
“Anything to get out of here, segno,” Livia said with a sickening sweetness. “We shall negotiate our private destiny later.”
Only when Placidio and I were securely bound and shackled to the spikes in the wall did they at last drag Dumond back from the brink. Scarce able to squirm, my mouth full of dirt and filth, I twisted around to watch as they tied his hands to the bucket rope, and lowered that gentle man toward the floor. Before his feet could touch, they cut the rope. He dropped to the ground and the rope fell on his head. Not once did Dumond move on his own.
“Old man,” I called. “Old man, are you all right? Let us know you breathe.”
“Silence, impostors!” At least we knew exactly where Bagi, the gravel-voiced giant, was posted up on the rim. His blotchy companion dragged Dumond to the spike across the cellar from us and tied the bucket rope to it, then climbed back out and pulled up the rope ladder.
Dumond didn’t answer. Didn’t move.
Tears welled in my eyes with a vision of four clever, dark-eyed girls and their dear mother lost in grieving. If that vision came to pass, I would never forgive Teo. Somewhere between the marvels of his magic and the strength and quickness of his body, he surely could have found a way to save Dumond without compromising … whatever he was concerned about. Especially if he and Neri worked together. Even injured, my brother was clever and skilled, and he would never let Dumond die if only he had a bit of help.
As darkness slid over the cellar, I felt movement from behind. The quiet rattle of a chain. A great deal of soft cursing, which roused more annoyance from above.
When all fell quiet again, a finger touched mine behind my back. Then came the whisper. “Think carefully, lady scribe. He didn’t give up Neri.”
He. Donato. What in the Night Eternal was he doing? Easy to imagine that he was, himself, an agent. But I knew that was a wishing dream. There had been no compromise when he met my gaze after Neri vanished. He knew we had used magic. He believed magic was the taint of Dragonis. And no believer was ever going to set us free.
20
ONE DAY BEFORE THE WEDDING
PERDITION’S BRINK
NIGHT
An hour passed. Another. Neri would come—unless they’d caught him. It made sense for him to wait and let our captors fall into carelessness or sleep, but it was wretchedly difficult to be patient. And Teo was somewhere up there, too. Not interfering.
Under cover of the pitch-black night, Placidio picked at the ropes binding my hands, and I his, but the Cavalieri were clearly expert with ropes and knots. I dared not speak. Someone could be listening. Placidio must have felt the same.
&nb
sp; For a brief time, the sky cleared enough to allow moonlight into the pit. Dumond must have put up a hard fight while we played interrogators. He had not moved, nor was there any other sign that he yet lived. Then clouds boiled over the moon and released the promised rain.
Rest became impossible. The repeated cycling of deluge, respite, and brief bursts of moonlight until thunder signaled another onslaught brought the chill that came with being soaked to the skin on an autumn night. Meanwhile, the mystery of Donato di Bastianni plagued me. I tried twisting the bits of the mosaic into different relationships, different meanings. But no matter how I tried to reinterpret what he’d said, the result came down to the same.
An alliance that no one in the Costa Drago would accept: a respected institution had conspired with a gang of street rats to enslave innocent children.
A possibility that no one in the Costa Drago would believe: Sniffers were not always condemned sorcerers.
And a young man, one who professed a sincere belief in the strictest dictates of his family, had exposed that family’s horrific crime in front of us.
Was Donato so certain we would die with that secret? Though he had most assuredly saved our lives for the moment, his agreement with Capo Mannia might raise the Cavelieri from the grave under another name and restart their unholy business.
Left in my hand was the piece that did not fit. Donato and Neri. Donato had distracted Placidio, leaving the supposedly starving Neri a bucket of food, and, knowing that sorcery was the only true explanation for Neri’s disappearance, he’d not exposed us as sorcerers to the Cavalieri.
Certain, there remained his personal oddities that my speculations could not quite explain. His difficulty with people and words. The personal discipline that had started so young. The shaking fits that appeared to drive him to it. Was it dreams of innocents being mutilated, inked with red mouths, and sheathed in silk that plagued him? Certain, that was fodder enough for nightmares if one had a remnant of a conscience.
I believed he did. He’d told Neri that his father was wicked. And when he claimed to know nothing of the bookbinder’s murder, I had found him credible. He believed Livia naive.
Sandro had provided me books of natural philosophy and introduced me to several men and women who studied the movements of the heavens, the behavior of moving objects in relation to each other, and the marvels of systematic alchemy. All intelligent, rational people. All fervently searching for answers. It was the echoes of such fervor I had recognized both in Livia’s writing and in the woman herself. She wasn’t afraid of being wrong. Only of not looking deep enough.
Of course, if Teo was to be believed—if my dreams were what he said—then Livia was indeed wrong and Donato correct. There are truths, Donato had said, implying universal horrors ordinary people could not imagine. So what did Donato know? And how? Neri believed Donato’s strange habits were how he kept his frights from making him into a lunatic. Dreams …
“Ssst.”
I lifted my head from the wet dirt. Had the sound come from above the rim or inside our prison?
My fingers felt like sausages, my hands half numb from the tight, wet ropes. But I drew up my knees and dug my feet into the muddy paving and eased backward. The sodden bulk that was Placidio was still only a finger’s breadth behind me. That was reassuring. Even more so when he bumped my back with his elbow—apurpose. So he wasn’t asleep either.
The hiss was not Placidio’s. I squinted into the pitchy black and blinked when I glimpsed a pale blur and a spark of blue fire inside a cavern of night.
My pulse raced and I struggled to sitting, nudging Placidio. I dared not name my hopes until the pale blur whisked my way, bringing the stink of overripe male and soft, raspy breathing. In moments my arms and hands were free and a familiar shape pressed into my fingers. A moment for the blood to return and I could feel my dagger’s defining boundaries of pearl and sharpened steel. As the ghostly figure hovered over Placidio, I cut the ropes from my feet and knees, taking care not to rattle the chain. Had Neri remembered the shackles?
Even as my mind voiced the question, a hand pressed a key to my shoulder. I retrieved and used it without jangling, and passed it on to Placidio as soon as my foot slipped out. Free of aught that might make noise, I scurried toward the spot where I had seen the blue flame … and found a whiff of burnt rope and the cold, wet shape of a square-shouldered man. Sitting up.
No matter the necessity for speed and silence, I flung my arms around Dumond, pressing my head to his and fumbling around until I felt his cheek. He blew a long breath on my wrist, knowing exactly what I was asking, then gripped my hand and moved me away just far enough that I could give him leverage to stand. He held on to me for a moment, and then freed himself and patted my arm.
Soon Neri was back and guiding Dumond and me to the ladder he’d lowered for us. Even in the rain, my brother’s hand felt dry and hot. Feverish? Or perhaps only my imagining of the fiery magic coursing through his veins. He pressed my hand to the rope, but held it still for a moment, hinting I should wait. Soon Placidio joined us. With a last squeeze of my hand, Neri’s pale form vanished, his magic taking him back to wherever he’d come from.
Then it was Placidio’s turn to use hand signals. He took one of my fingers and put it on his own forehead. Then he pressed two of my fingers on Dumond’s cold cheek. Then three fingers on my own. In the ensuing pause, I assumed he did the same for Dumond. The order of our going.
Yet Placidio didn’t ascend right away. Instead, as we stood at the base of the ladder in a steady drizzle, his finger tapped a regular, rhythmic pattern on my wrist. Counting, I thought. Perhaps he and Neri had set some timing interval. After a small eternity, the rain came down harder and he released my hand.
Ah, he’d been waiting for more noise to cover him. His dark bulk vanished upward into the timely downpour.
I might have actually heard Placidio’s grab-the-spike-and-roll-over-the-rim-move or I might only have imagined it once a reasonable time had expired. But that’s when I urged Dumond onto the ladder. I stayed close behind, unsure as to his condition. I encouraged but did not push. With the both of us on the ladder, I hoped his spikes were still well seated.
Someone gave Dumond a hand over the rim. I could feel the change in speed and weight ahead of me, but just as I reached the top, finding stone instead of another rope rung, something heavy crashed into the nearby brush. A body? Sticks broke; branches—cedar branches—scraped each other. I could smell them.
A storm of silent grunts, muffled yells, and pounding blows followed. A moan. One more blow. And then silence, save for hard breathing and the patter of the rain.
I grabbed for one of the spikes and did a less artful scramble over the rim than what Placidio had tried to teach me so many times. And less successful. One foot yet dangled over blackness, and my right hand could find no sure grip on slick stone.
My stomach lurched into my throat as my foot scrabbled for purchase.
When a hand grabbed my arm and hauled me over and up, my terror did not dissipate. It took a wet, bare, reassuring arm around my shoulder to soothe me. Evidently it had rained enough to clean my brother up a bit. His fevered hand had cooled.
After clinging to him longer than was necessary or appropriate for an elder sister who aspired to be mother, friend, partner, and sibling all at once, I let him go and followed the path into the trees until I found Dumond.
“To the keep,” he whispered.
I squeezed his hand to reply, and then reached for Neri, but he was gone again.
Dumond and I crept onward as quickly as we could manage, using the lightning flickers and our extended hands to keep from running into sharp-edged rocks or impaling ourselves on dead tree limbs.
Another silent skirmish from the left paralyzed us with our backs to a scabby oak. An ugly gurgle ended the fight. We stumbled onward and were soon joined by Placidio. I felt almost whole again.
Patchy light ahead halted our steps. A flash of lightning gave us
an instant’s view. The keep, the chimney stack of the newer ruin that pointed skyward like a dead man’s finger, the broken archways that led to the courtyard behind the keep. From that courtyard the stone stair descended to the grotto of the spring and Dumond’s painted doorway. Escape.
The mottled light came from the inside the ancient keep. Torches burned inside the tower, the dancing light an invitation to good cheer. Though I couldn’t make out the words, the walls rang with bouts of raucous laughter, bawdy singing, and the kind of boasting banter one might expect after a successful venture. The riot suggested the snatch-crew had brought a great deal of spirits to add to our flask of mead and short cask of ale. Some drunkards sounded jovial, some angry or belligerent.
Outside those bright openings in the walls, beyond the raucous noise, lay inky shadows that could harbor sentinels. A moment’s stillness, listening through the patter of rain, and Placidio—who had the best hearing of us all—drew us away, back behind a standing wall. We crouched low so our voices wouldn’t carry.
“Danger awaits at the keep. Don’t know that I’ve ever felt the sense so strong or lasting,” whispered Placidio. “It’s more than just the capo. More than rowdy drunks. So we’ve decisions to make. Are you well, smith?”
“Can’t run. Left fingers don’t work right. Head will take some work to fix,” said Dumond in a hoarse whisper. “But let me get to the grotto; I can get us out.”
“Lady scribe?”
“My head is all my own,” I said. “And you, swordsman?”
“Killed two vermin between the ladder and here. No choice in it.” He was in no way apologetic.
