A Summoning of Demons

by Cate Glass

  The praetorian officer was fit and trim, only his thin lips out of order. They seemed too wide for his bony face, and thus were never still—pursing, drooping, curling, advancing, and retreating within a ring of close-barbered beard.

  Livia was not intimidated. “I’ll not have you hanged, you insolent pig. A public flogging would be more humiliating. I wear my undergarments because I was stolen from my bed by fiends of the Cavalieri Teschio—whom you, for all these months, have been unable to control. In the cart you will find Segno Donato di Bastianni, my affianced husband, who has been direly ill this day past, and a third victim of the Cavalieri. Now, bring horses, cloaks, bandages and drink for us, lest my father and Director Bastianni have the hide off you.”

  “Silence this squawking crow, Zagno,” snapped the officer. “I want everyone here bound, gagged, and dragged into a heap. As far as I can see, these are all murderers, proven to consort with sorcerers.”

  Horror throttled my breath. Certain, the officer knew Livia had been abducted from her bed. But he didn’t care. He’d just provided himself an excuse for killing her—for killing all of us. Livia had been right all along.

  But the astonishments were not over. Donato, free of his bindings, stood beside the cart in a prideful dignity at odds with his lank hair, stained shirt, and bare legs. “Attention, Captain. You will apologize to the lady immediately. No one addresses a guest of my house with such contemptible disrespect. And no honorable praetorian could be so ignorant of the circumstances of her captivity. Between now and the moment we return to Villa Giusti, you will prove to me that you are worthy of your command or you will lose it.”

  By the Night Eternal, who was this Donato?

  “Who might you be, boy? Mayhap a catamite for rogues who prefer their pleasures out the other side of the bed.”

  “You know very well who I am, Captain Legamo. You’ve been my father’s liaison to Giorgio the Hand for two and a half years. Do you imagine that the director advocate’s eldest son has no eyes or ears? And the rest of you—Praetorians Lippo, Mazzato, Diedi, Racce, Monte, Zagno, and our young Lantérne Nozzo—I know you are not Captain Legamo’s usual cohort. But I know your parents’ and wives’ and children’s names. I know the oaths you’ve sworn and the day you offered them.”

  I was confounded. An hour previous, Donato di Bastianni had begged us to kill him. An hour before that, he had been possessed by a monstrous creature left from the Creation Wars. And evidently for his entire life, he had spent every moment trying to control a most well-founded terror. Was this a masterful performance or had he been playing us all along?

  Donato surveyed the positioning of Legamo and his men and glanced briefly at the sky. “The moon’s position tells me it is well past midnight. No matter what orders you’ve been given heretofore, Captain, you know well that all of that changes as of this day, our brotherhood’s most solemn feast. Though my formal induction is yet to take place, I am now Protector of the Seal of the Philosophic Confraternity and First Defender of Truth. Your future is bound to my word.”

  No, he was neither pandering nor playacting. This was discipline. Now, apparently, fortified by authority.

  The praetorians stiffened and presented their swords in salute. The captain did not. Arms folded about his chest, his wide lips working at double speed, Legamo was the very portrait of a man who had just received legitimate orders that exactly countered the last ones he’d been given.

  Was Donato now considered too dangerous to the Confraternity? That was easy enough to imagine if Dono’s father had the least suspicion that his son bore the taint of magic or that he was engaged in an intimate struggle with the very Enemy the Confraternity was dedicated to contain. Or was this the director’s way of eliminating any hint of corrupt connection between the Confraternity and the Cavalieri Teschio? Certain, this captain—Director Bastianni’s liaison to the Cavalieri leader—had been planning to murder us all.

  Placidio must have deduced something like. He had wormed his way forward so that his weapons were but an easy lunge from his hand. I echoed his move.

  After a few most uncomfortable moments, the captain threw his hands up in surrender.

  “Segno Donato! It is you, indeed so. All grace to the universe to find you living. In this poor light, this strange place … and as we have never actually conversed … Everyone in the city assumed the vile Cavalieri had done for you and your bride. They made terrible threats in the ransom demands, and as so many hours had elapsed…” His shoulders lifted to the vicinity of his ears as if the weight of the universe had been wrapped up in his decision.

  My heart resumed its tenuous beating.

  The captain swiveled sharply toward Livia and jerked his head at the soldier holding her. “Release the lady, Zagno, and give her your cloak with my sincerest apologies. As to these others, Excellency, what is your wish as to their disposition? Your father insisted we grant your captors no quarter and no opportunity to spread lies or confusion.”

  Dono glanced coolly from Dumond to Placidio and me. “These three are a rogue gang who found us where the Cavelieri snatch-crew hid us. They overwhelmed the thugs, and then led the lady and myself out here, supposedly to return us to Cantagna. Whether they are innocents to be trusted or but another cadre of the Cavalieri Teschio I have yet to determine. But I, and I alone, will do so. Bind them and bring them along. The youth in the cart was another victim brutalized by the snatch-crew. He has a wound growing septic. If your cadre has a leech, tend him. No binding is needed, but keep a close watch. I expect him to arrive at our destination no worse off than he is now.”

  The captain whipped his hand into a salute. “You heard His Excellency. Snap to. Nozzo, fetch our horses. Racce, restrain the driver. Lippo, Mazzati, Diedi, bind these two on the ground. Monte, collect their weapons and make sure we’ve all of them.”

  Not sure whether to be relieved or dismayed, I glanced over at Placidio. As the skinny Nozzo planted the lantern pole, dropped a coil of rope, and trotted off, my swordmaster’s lips formed one word. “Bide.”

  I didn’t like being patient. The praetorians were brutally efficient, and now they were under a philosophist’s eye, they remained disciplined. I didn’t like Dono’s story, either. If he meant well, he could have contrived something that would allow us to go free or, at the least, remain unbound. Perhaps he thought leniency would push Captain Legamo too far to the wrong side of his decision. Or was he not wholly convinced of the trustworthiness of anyone who knew his deadly secrets?

  Lantérne Nozzo darted back into the light almost immediately. “Cap’n, there’s a dead man over there!” Damnation, he’d spotted Teo.

  “You’re sure he’s dead?” said Legamo.

  “Dead as these boulders. Should we plant him?”

  “Bring the horses as you were told. Master Bastianni can dispose of the corpus as he will.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Donato had indeed wandered off to where Teo lay and crouched beside him. I couldn’t see what he did there—checked for signs of life, I assumed. Looked under his eye patch or at his skin under his damp clothing. I’d babbled foolishly when in the grotto. He could have heard my apology to Teo. Please the universe that even if he understood that Teo was the one who had brought the storm—the one who was the focus of the Enemy’s lingering anger—he would leave him unburied.

  When Donato returned, he paused beside me, where one of his minions was binding my hands behind my back. “Fetch a cloak and cover the dead man, Diedi. Weight it with stones. Do it now; then finish this.”

  The praetorian scurried away.

  Donato looked down at me, expressionless. “I regret your friend’s passing. He was clearly extraordinary. I’ll send someone to fetch his body. At that time, you could tell me what death rites he would prefer.”

  He moved on without waiting for any response. Had he detected Teo’s laggard heartbeat? Perhaps he knew something more of Teo’s kind from his studies. He’d mentioned a drawing in a book—was it a d
rawing of Dragonis or Leviathan? Or was his offer some pretense of honor from one who also happened to believe my brother and Dumond should die for their talents?

  Donato returned to the horses. “Captain Legamo, I would not have these prisoners hearing passwords or spying out our defenses as we return to the villa. See to it.”

  I pressed my head to the dirt, filled with dread. No matter the hints that Donato di Bastianni was wholly different than I could ever expected, he was taking my friends and me into the heart of the Confraternity. His choice to leave Neri unbound was no relief. If Neri vanished in plain view, Donato would have inarguable evidence that my brother was a sorcerer.

  One small mercy—they hadn’t chosen to bury Teo. I would not believe him dead. Maybe whatever power was infused into this cursed ground would sustain him while his magic worked a healing.

  Stay alive, Teo. Heal. The Enemy is waiting.

  24

  THE FEAST OF THE LONE PRAETORIAN

  PLACE UNKNOWN

  AFTERNOON

  “Where is Nis? Stars and stones, wake up and answer me.”

  The noisy visitor’s bony fingers threatened to rattle my bones so hard they crumbled. I ignored her summons. Waking meant moving. Moving was just going to remind me of everything in my body that ached … my head, in particular. Hours of jouncing while thrown over the back of a praetorian’s horse like a bundle of old sacking, blindfolded and my ears stoppered, had left me a headache for the ages. And then they had deposited me here—wherever here was. At least it had prevented any sort of dreaming. I could do with a year of dreamless sleep.

  “Is she dead?” The fingers poked again.

  As is the way of the world, once such thoughts were racing around in my head, waking would have its due.

  “Nis is not dead. Just … hiding,” I said. But Neri, Dumond, and Placidio … where were they?

  I did not open my sticky eyelids, having determined upon arrival that there was nothing in this cramped little room with an iron door that I wanted to see. Four stone walls. A wooden bench. No window but a slot near the stone ceiling that allowed no illumination to speak of and only a wisp of outside air to battle centuries of damp, oceans of piss, and worse. The solid iron door was centered with a small grate of thumb-thick bars and a hinged plate to cover it, through which various obnoxious people had peered, blinded me with a sun-fired lamp, and yelled at me to go back to the sleep from which they had just wakened me. I concluded that the whole purpose of the exercise was just so they could slam and latch the hinged plate again and make my head burst.

  “But where is she?”

  I swatted the bony fingers away. They were, indeed, human fingers. Throwing off the threadbare blanket, I swung my legs off the bench and allowed the blood to return to all the bruised spots whence it had fled. My temples pounded like Dumond’s foundry hammer, and my stomach threatened to unleash a river of bile.

  Livia sat beside me on the wooden bench, lit by a glaring lantern. She was much cleaner than I was. Much better dressed in a modest, embroidered gown of pale green that went well with her clean red curls, but did nothing at all for her sun-browned complexion. Yet she appeared no better rested.

  “It is gratifying that you’re alive, damizella,” I said, more equably than I felt. “Are you my cellmate?”

  “No. I’m not a prisoner … well, I’m stuck in this place and told I cannot leave until the master says. But my accommodations are more comfortable than this. I sneaked down here. Now where—?”

  “Have you seen my partners?”

  “They were perfectly fine when we arrived. There are other cells down here. They’re likely in those. The maidservant, a village girl who scarce knows her own name, knew only where you were, as she brought you the blanket.”

  “What do you want of Nis?”

  “I wanted to hear what she had to say of you and your companions. I’d thought of her as brave to succor me. And honest. But then none of you were who I thought, so what was she? A shill?” She peered closely at me. “She looked nothing at all like you, and yet … Aaagh.”

  She scrubbed at her damp curls in exasperation, releasing the scent of lavender soap. She’d had a bath to celebrate her return. Spirits, what I would give for a bath—

  Celebrate.

  My mind woke with a jolt. “Mothers’ heart, Livia, you’ve not married him!”

  Surely this was still the feast day. The wedding day. The day before Livia’s birthday, so she could not yet call a challenge to the marriage contract and persuade Donato to forgo it.

  “Certainly not. We’re not even back to the city as yet. We’ve stopped at a private villa I’m told lies somewhere near the village of Nieves. I’m just not sure what to think—and I don’t like that.” Exasperated, she threw her hands in the air. “Dono was his usual odd, mannerly self before we left that horrid place—not a murdering lunatic. He even promised I’d get to see my father today, but that hasn’t happened either, of course. I just don’t know what to do … and I’ve never had that problem before. I don’t like it.”

  A villa outside the city? Trying to make sense of what was going on, I caught one of her flailing hands before it smacked my head. “So you’ve not spoken with Dono since we arrived?”

  She yanked her hand away. “No. He raced ahead of us, after threatening to rack Legamo if he didn’t get us here before dawn. Certain, I intend to speak with him. But first, I want to know who in this cursed world are you and these others, and what more you can tell me about Dono’s condition.”

  Fully awake now, I pressed my hands on her bony shoulders so she could not bolt. “Before we are interrupted, let me tell you this one thing. You do not have to marry this man. After midnight tonight—the hour when the law says you come of age—you can challenge the marriage contract and refuse it. If Dono does the same, the contract is void. It’s the only way you can stop the marriage without burdening your father with the penalties—or the risks to his honor—that a broken contract will bring down on him. And after what we saw…”

  She grimaced. “Well, of course that was awful, but…”

  “Livia what we witnessed in that keep is near unfathomable, even to someone like me, who knows something of such matters. Think. Using that secret, you can surely convince him to agree.”

  “So that’s truly what this abduction was about? Stopping the marriage? You said so, but we were still in that cellar and no one had yet gone berserk.” She was astonishingly calm, considering what had happened over these past three days.

  “It was. We hoped to protect your ability to study, investigate, and write about natural philosophy as you see fit. Even more important, we hoped to protect your good father’s independence and that of the city he serves. The Confraternity holds far too much influence already.”

  She narrowed her pale eyes. “That’s why you took Dono as well. To convince him he didn’t want me. But what you found instead…” She pressed her fingers to her mouth as if she saw the horror yet again.

  “Never did we imagine what we witnessed yestereve, Livia. Never. Somehow”—I did not want to introduce the word magic to this discussion, at least not until she did so—“Dono’s got caught up in something beyond our knowledge, and what dreadful deeds he’s done in service to that experience, I don’t know. A few things he’s said and done these few days—like getting us all this far alive—lead me to believe he wants to be his own man, not solely his father’s parrot and not solely the monster we saw. He begged us to drown him. We must persuade him to let us help him instead. But you mustn’t bind yourself to him.”

  “He’s no monster,” she said as if stating that the sun rose in the east. “He’s mad. Somehow he can use his madness to force others into madness, too. But you’re telling me I should blackmail him into setting me free of the contract? What if he gets angry and infests me with his disease? If we don’t understand the disease, we cannot understand how it passes from one person to another.”

  “Sssst, damizella.” The hissing cam
e through the door grate. A girl’s voice. “They’re looking for you.”

  “One moment,” she said, then turned back to me. “Dono’s family must have some way of controlling his illness. They could never risk letting him walk around the Academie if he were going to set people to gutting each other. I’m thinking they must give him draughts to make him so dull and empty, but then you people stole him away for this ridiculous purpose … and he was without his medicaments. You terrorized him, starved him, made him think you were going to murder us if our families didn’t pay…”

  Appalled, I blurted, “Livia, you can’t be thinking to do this.”

  She wasn’t listening to me. “I’m sorry about your friend. What he did—raising the storm and then drawing it inside the keep—what a wonder that was. I saw it, felt it. He must have had tools or mechanisms in the armor he wore. Lodestones or some variant of quicksilver to create the virtu elektric. Was it the mechanism killed him or the wounding?”

  Near speechless, I stared at her, trying to understand a mind so determined to shape the world to her image. “Who could say?”

  She tilted her head and wrinkled her sharp features into a ponderous knot. “You see, I have to believe there are natural principles at work here. Principles the Confraternity would call magic, just as they would name Dono’s fits demon possession. Just as they name earthquakes and volcanoes a demon’s raging. Back there, for a moment before I put my mind to it, I myself called Dono a sorcerer, and your partner who opened the tunnel as well. But sorcery is just a made-up word for all the things in the world we don’t understand yet. If I marry Dono, I’ll have full access to the Atheneaum; he assured me of that. There I can learn the wisdom of ancient peoples, natural philosophy that does not support Confraternity teaching, mysteries of nature that have been lost or hidden. I might even learn something about illnesses of the mind like his. Someday the world will know both the truth of nature and the harm the philosophists have done by keeping us in ignorance.”