by Cate Glass
Placidio held the door as Donato and I passed through into a chokingly narrow tunnel.
Dumond hobbled after us, using the walking stick Adjutant Gaspar had found at Villa Solitor.
“That’s what happened with the other boy and the shelf,” I said. “You were angry.”
“The demon in me wanted to hurt a person I hated. Instead I killed an innocent.”
“It was never a demon, but only your inborn talent. The monster—the Enemy—is something else. The monster comes through your dreams.”
“The monster devoured the demon in me and took its place, feeding on my evil. I should have been sent to the Executioner long before that. Drowned while it was still possible.”
“You were very young.”
“I was half grown! I committed murder, violated the First Law of Creation, lied. I cowardly accused Guillam, and so my father—Night’s daughters!” Donato flattened his back to the wall, eyes closed, breathing rapidly. In the shifting light, I felt as cold as if what warmth existed so deep in the earth had fled.
Pressing a finger to his mouth, Placidio waved Dumond and me backward—away from Donato. Then he raised the lantern high, spreading the light.
“Where exactly do we come out of this passage?” he said. “Beggars Ring for certain. Then we’ve got to climb to the Heights, and our friend here with the twisted ankle is going to be slow. We need to have a plan.”
“We come out—?” Dono’s eyelids twitched. His breathing slowed. “Near. Piggery. Owner has a mule.”
“Ottone’s pigs. I know where that is,” said Dumond, understanding Placidio’s strategy—get Dono’s mind to fix on the mundane. On present action. On the ground under his feet. “A mule will help. You said you knew a sheltered spot for me to work our entry. It will take me half an hour to prepare. But we’ve only five hours or thereabouts until we need to have you and the lady to the Avanci Bridge. Is that enough?”
“To get there, yes. To devise some way to stop all this? I hope.”
“Good,” I said. “Onward then.”
Moments later, we left the mausoleum tunnel for a pitch-dark alley. Placidio dimmed the lantern and asked if he should leave it before we closed the door.
“Take it. None will miss it tonight,” Donato said and walked down the alley into the Beggars Ring.
We nudged a boy awake at the piggery barn and gave him three coppers for a half-day’s use of the ass. The child was asleep again before Dumond was mounted. Our route took us around the Ring Road to the Serpentine—the backside road that threaded the secondary gates through Cantagna’s rings.
I’d thought to use the climb through the city to find out exactly how Donato had become entangled with the Enemy, but after our experience in the tunnel, I hesitated to press. It was no longer a mystery why he traveled so little and kept his rooms plain. He had chosen to live without feeling or stimulation, because any emotion could lead to magic and to the monster who would not let him die. Think about that too much, and I would be the one with my back to the wall, shaking.
The Serpentine took another twist and led us into the Asylum Ring. Here and there, light flickered from an alley or a window. Faint music piped from a tavern. A cart of wine casks lumbered through the streets. The city was stretching, not quite asleep as yet.
Onward. Upward. Watch for sniffers in every corner, every alley.
Stay safe, little brother. Wake healed, my guardian.
Though heart and ears were open, as before, I felt nothing.
* * *
The city bells rang eight strikes as Dumond dabbed the last color on his painted door. I held the lantern for him, trying to stay balanced on the steep, rutted ground.
Placidio, sword drawn, stood guard in the gap between two buttresses, built to reinforce this section of Villa Giusti’s north wall. The land beneath the massive wall had slumped over the years—earthquakes … landslides … drainage—and the wall had developed cracks. The massive piers built to reinforce it were joined at the top by a broad cornice which prevented the rain from doing more damage and any patrolling guards atop the wall from noticing us or our light.
Donato stood to the side, watching Dumond intently.
“That should do it,” said Dumond, wiping his brush as he surveyed the finished work. “You say there’s shelter on the other side at this spot where I can paint an exit door?”
“The stables,” said Donato. “The minders sleep there, but they’re all praetorian initiates, thus will be at the ceremonies. The loft would be the safest place for you to wait, lest a messenger ride in. Can you do this … work … from there?”
“I can. And safest is always my preference.”
“We’d best go,” said Placidio. “Night’s passing.”
Dumond packed his paints and called up his magic.
“Night Eternal…” whispered Donato as the small, narrow door became its truth and Dumond’s blue fire winked out.
Placidio pulled it open. The odors of horse and hay mingled with those of mud and stone as he ducked and squeezed cautiously through. A sharp snort and rustling movement greeted him. “Hey there, beastie,” he whispered. “Sh-sh-sh. Just passin’. All’s good.”
The rest of us followed at his word as he continued his soothing murmurs to the occupant of the stall.
Dumond quickly vanished the door. “I’ll find the loft and ready our exit. Have a care, my friends.”
Donato, Placidio, and I ghosted through a small yard, keeping to the shadows through a torchlit warren of outbuildings. A sniff told their tales. A reek of coal and iron bespoke a smithy; the sweet scent of leather and the dry grass smell of rope a saddlery. A blockish, windowless stone structure, sealed by massive locks, was surely an armory.
Donato did not speak or pause until the hard-packed dirt of the service yards yielded to an open expanse of cobblestones. Halting at the corner of the last work shed, he glanced in all directions, across the remnants of walls and abandoned fonts. Alone beyond the cobbled waste stood the stone-and-rubble structure Neri had described—a dome built atop four square walls the height of a tall man. Torches set to either side of a low doorway darted in the night breeze.
Neri hadn’t known the words that would tell me exactly what this structure was. But I’d seen several very like when traveling through the northern wildlands of Invidia with il Padroné. Sandro had said they were shrines so ancient none knew what gods they honored. Invidian folktales named them gateways to the Great Abyss. Certain, that was where I’d heard the word pérasma. Pérasma meant passage or gateway.
Unease riffled my spirit. The Great Abyss was where the daemoni discordia waited to torment the unvirtuous. Demons existed in the bowels of the earth, so Teo had told me, but after an earthquake or volcanic eruption could drift into occupied lands and linger wherever they felt warmth. The maw of volcanoes. Hot springs. Demons …
A trumpet fanfare sounded in the distance, its brilliance muffled by the bulk of the great house that rose to the south beyond a jumble of kitchens and laundries.
Donato released a great exhale. “Come,” he said. “No one will be inside.”
“Sniffers don’t … sleep … there?” I said. Neri had seen them being led inside.
“No one sleeps there.”
We sprinted across the cobbles. Dono lifted a narrow plank leaned against one of the broken walls. “If you would assist, swordsman; I usually have attendants when I come.”
Placidio helped Donato carry the heavy plank to the edge of the sleugh. As Neri had reported, the iron trench surrounded the entire building, and was very deep and very wide. A year’s supply of oil for ten villages must be required to make up the traditional proportion for its filling. Water dribbled into the trough from the mouth of a bronze fish just inside the trough—no doubt a connection to the city’s pipes from the natural springs deep inside Cantagna’s hill.
Though no sound came from inside, Neri had been right about the foul stench. The natural hot pools of the Costa Drago often smel
led of sulfur.
The men laid the plank in a bracket alongside the iron trench and shoved it across the oily surface of the water through fittings atop four iron supports until it reached another bracket on the far side. Donato led us across.
A plain door—much newer than the stone and rubble wall—was not locked. I followed the men inside. Donato turned up a lamp. One might think the pérasma a crofter’s home. The domed ceiling was lost in darkness, but the square walls were the same stone and rubble as the outside. Hooks and rings had been hammered into the walls to hold coiled ropes, lengths of cloth, and tools. Plain wood furnishings were set in useful groupings: a long table with a high stool beside it, a wooden chair with wide flat arms alongside a small table. Shelves holding a variety of cups, bowls, jars, flasks, and vials sat atop a standing workbench. “How ordinary.”
Placidio stared at the workbench. “Not so much ordinary.”
A closer look set my skin shriveling. The lengths of chain hanging from the hooks had neck collars attached. A bolt of green silk lay atop the scrubbed table, surrounded by a litter of thread spools and scraps, a needle case, and a fine pair of scissors. The wide-armed chair was festooned with straps, and the small table beside it held a tray of razors, knives, and large needles and a ceramic bowl stained with blood … or red ink. And what vile alchemy was done in the bowls and flasks on the workbench? This was where human men were transformed into howling beasts.
“Do either of you have open wounds?” asked Donato, giving us each a glance. “Bleeding?”
“Tied off,” said Placidio. “Your man provided a roll of bandage along with the clothes.”
“No,” I said. “Why?”
“Blood attracts attention you’ll not want. Bring that, if you would.” Donato motioned toward the lamp. He picked a few things from the workbench shelves, slipped them into a small bag he’d hung from his shoulder, and started down a narrow stair off to my right. I’d not even noticed the stair.
My skin slithered across my bones. I reminded myself of the knowledge I believed was waiting here … and of this man’s despair when he begged us to drown him. Reason claimed we were fools to follow him into the dark. Instinct told me to go.
At the foot of the stair was a stout iron door. At Donato’s nod, Placidio pushed it open. Close, steamy air, redolent with the stench of rotted eggs, bathed us as we entered a natural cave of black rock. To either side of us was a bed-sized shelf of rock. A wall of iron bars, with a locking gate, masked the rest of the chamber.
Donato folded his arms across his chest. “My father brought me down here for the first time two days after they dragged Guillam away. He told me to close the outer door. At fourteen I could scarce move it. We’ll need to do that.”
The door would shut off the stairs—and the outside world—for I saw no window slot or ventilation hole. A nervous quip about monsters and dungeons came to mind.
“What of our weapons?”
Placidio’s question startled Dono, as much as it did me. “Weapons?”
“Should we bring them or leave them on the stair? On one hand, I’ve little faith in any Confraternity man—especially one who invites us to trust him as he leads us into a cellar, especially a man who was possessed by a murderous monster not a full turn of the sun ago. On the other hand, when he was possessed by that monster, weapons were more dangerous than helpful in the case of his perceived enemies.”
“I won’t— Down here, I have more control over myself. More experience than out in the world. I’ve no reason to believe matters should go so wrong, but then … Bring them or leave them as you feel is best. I swear to tell you everything and protect you as best I can.”
Donato’s mien was so open … so horrifyingly sober … I could not doubt his sincerity. I needed to know why the Enemy would not let him die. Placidio answered by shoving the door closed. We kept our weapons.
“Two others were here that night.” Donato picked up his story without looking at us. “Zattiglia was an elderly man I’d seen in my father’s company numerous times. I knew him only as an aide to the director enforcer. He lived in the east wing of the villa. But on that night he wore the yellow badge of the Defenders of Truth on his red gown. My father introduced him as the Protector of the Seal…”
“… and First Defender of Truth,” I said. The titles Dono was to assume.
“Yes. Father told Zattiglia that he might have found him an apprentice from his own house. He wished me ‘tested’ in the night’s events.”
“Was Guillam bound to one of these slabs?”
“No. He already lay beyond this next gate. I could hear him mewling like a wounded animal.”
Dono’s pale hand snapped a latch and drew open a narrow door in the barred wall. Before us the murky, green-black water of the font burbled, steamed, and whispered in a nest of jagged rock, crusted with black, green, and yellow. To the left of the pool was a low table—or bed—of polished basalt. Facing it from the opposite side of the pool was a high-backed, thronelike chair of the same black stone, carved and smoothed. Both bed and chair were fixed with enough leather straps to immobilize a man. Or a boy. Spirits …
Donato moved quickly to the far side of the pool, where a stone table held a wide iron bowl. He set out the pottery flasks and small jars he’d brought, then busied himself making a fire in the bowl.
“Guillam, was, of course, bound to that table,” he said as he worked. “He had already been prepared. A part of the preparation is to ensure the candidate is weak. In extremis, so it was described to me, and left with open wounds.”
The fire in the bowl blazed high, scented with incense and other rarities, Donato glanced up, his eyes bleak as winter in the flickering light. “I confessed then, as my father knew I would. I dropped to my knees and babbled that I was demon tainted, and that it was I who had brought down the shelf and killed the boy, and would they please just drown me in this pool and let Guillam go.”
“But he already knew,” I said and brushed my hand before my face as a cobweb or stray hair teased my eyelashes.
“Indeed so.” Donato drank from a red-painted flask and replaced its stopper. “Father assumed that fear, strictly focused education, and encouragement in the personal discipline I already displayed would allow me to become his most effective ally in reforming the city. My public fit had sorely disrupted his plans. Thus he must turn my breach of discipline into a lesson, assuring me that I would understand the consequences of such insupportable weakness. He wished me to watch Zattiglia make Guillam into a sniffer. The conversion would not really be effective, of course, as sniffers must possess the taint of magic in order to be useful. But who would ever know?”
“Arrogant bastard!” spat Placidio.
I shared his revulsion. “Such stonehearted cruelty to use a boy so. Two boys.”
“I am not searching for sympathy you’ve no reason to offer,” snapped Donato. “The nature of—”
A tremulous chill swept over and through me despite the blaze and the steaming pool. At the same moment, Placidio hunched his cloak about his shoulders.
Donato shuddered. “Our bargain stands? You agree that I should demonstrate my problem, yes?”
“Yes.” Placidio and I replied together.
Moving quickly, Donato thrust a blue-painted flask into my hands. Then he sat in the black stone chair and slipped his feet through the leather straps, pulling the buckles tight around his ankles, hips, and chest. “One of you should lock both the outer door and the inner. The other, if you would, please fasten these last two.…” He slipped his clenched fists through the straps across the chair’s arms.
Placidio saw to the locks. I yanked the wrist straps tight.
Stepping back, I brushed my face again, realizing even as I did so that there were no cobwebs in this place and that no stray hairs had escaped my braid. Another tease at my neck, like wisps of storm cloud. But the blood on Donato shook me more.
“Dono, what have you done?” I said. “Your hands…”
>
He had unclenched his fists. His palms were bleeding … and trembling more violently with each passing moment.
“I’ll be all right. As will you, I promise. You feel them, don’t you? They’re already roused. The smell of blood is a promise.”
The mounting heat of the chamber neither soothed my shivers nor dismissed the cobweb sensations on my face and hands, and now through my clothing as well. “A promise of what?”
“Warmth. And purpose,” he said. “Please cover the lamp and keep silent.”
Darkness enveloped us, the only light the fire in the bowl across the pool. Reflections of the orange and green flames glinted in the bubbling water and illumined Dono’s face. His eyes were closed and sweat beaded his temples.
“They bound me in this chair that night,” he said, “and Father watched as Zattiglia ignited the summoning fire. Though I fought them, they forced me to drink from the red-painted flask, saying it was the same they’d given to Guillam to prevent his will resisting what was to come. Not to sleep, though. Never let the subjects sleep. They didn’t cut me; Guillam was bleeding enough for the summoning. But something happened they didn’t expect.”
He laughed … despairing.
“Never thought I would do this voluntarily. Listen. Observe. As soon as you’ve seen enough to understand, force me to drink from the blue flask. Be sure I will fight you.”
Dread infused every part of me. “Dono, what are you—?”
He began to sing in a clear, strong baritone. Eerie. The words were no language I recognized. The slow, complex melody, composed in a scale that grated on the ear and on the soul, could have been a rising storm wind or the rising dead. Three times he repeated it. By the end his tongue had grown thick and his head drooped. The only sounds remaining were the burbling water and the whisper of worms creeping across the ancient stone.
My hand found its way into Placidio’s. I clung to his icy fingers as terror’s own fist squeezed my heart ever tighter.
Of a sudden Donato’s head lifted, slamming against the high back of his stone chair, and his eyelids opened. The firelight that bathed his face did not reach his eyes. His pupils had grown huge—wells of blackness.
