An Illusion of Thieves Read online

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  For Irl Bradford Glass Neilon (1918–2017), who gave me the gifts of books and words.

  For Laura Besze Ramirez (1966–2018), a bright spirit who reminds me every day of joy.

  CHIMERA:

  1. a mythical creature, a fire-breathing female with face, body, and limbs of three different beasts

  2. something that exists only in the imagination and is not possible in reality

  I have never believed in fate or destiny or any other concept that invests the courses of our lives with portentous meaning. Most people in our godless world believe we are born into random circumstance, and it is solely our own deeds and choices that determine whether we find ourselves in a palace or prison when we die. I’d not disagree.

  Yet we of the Costa Drago still swear by Lady Virtue and Lady Fortune—the two abandoned children of our lost divinities—as if their hands are equal, and we behave ourselves and beg them for gifts that never seem to arrive in the guise we wish. Indeed, the peculiar events that gave me both the preparation and the opportunity to alter the streams of human history, while glimpsing truths of a world beyond my imagining, could not have been better chosen had they been mapped out at the beginning of the world—before the fear of magic condemned a portion of the world’s population to extermination.

  The particular random circumstances of my birth and upbringing arrived at this life-altering confluence on a day that began in settled happiness and common intrigue …

  1

  YEAR 987 OF THE NEW MILLENNIUM: SPRING QUARTER

  The Shadow Lord’s face gleamed bronze in the lamplight, serene in his strength. Such demeanor befit a man whose quiet word could fulfill a petitioner’s deepest wishes or leave his gutted carcass hanging on Cantagna’s gates.

  We have no kings in the lands of the Costa Drago. Our nine great independencies are ruled by men or women whose power stems from family wealth, strength of arms, or brutish arousal of the rabble. Not one of those men or women could match the ruthless wisdom of Alessandro di Gallanos, known as il Padroné—the Master—Cantagna’s Shadow Lord.

  Peering through slits in the painted screen, I observed the Shadow Lord’s first petitioner of the day. Boscetti, the antiquities merchant, leaned earnestly across the table between them.

  “Padroné,” he said, “my son has taken over my trading partnership with Argento, as you in your wisdom suggested. But bandits have looted his caravans three times in a month because Captain di Lucci’s condottieri refuse to honor their contract with me. If you could just speak to di Lucci…”

  As the merchant wisely ignored the cup of good wine on the table and answered a few incisive questions from the man seated across from him, I watched and listened carefully, as always. I relished my privilege to sit hidden behind the painted screen, laughing at the fools folk could make of themselves when confronting true power, while at the same time adding the minutiae of names, family connections, desires, loyalties, and vanities to my treasury of such matters. The man others addressed as il Padroné and I called Sandro took pleasure in discussing the complexities of his world with a companion who could comprehend them. Even better, so he’d told me, that I could offer observations and ideas of my own.

  My education had been extensive—history, music, languages. Dancing and logic. Enough blade-work to defend my owner or myself. Even now, I pursued art and philosophy, the divine study. Sandro called me his chimera—the impossible made flesh—a fantastical creature who mirrored every part of his own soul.

  The two voices beyond the screen changed tenor. The conversation had become negotiation. The merchant desired il Padroné to force the mercenary captain, di Lucci, to honor their old contract, since the new owner of his trade route was a member of the merchant’s own family.

  Boscetti was a fool. Sandro was too wise to squeeze condottieri for a merchant’s favor. Besides the ever-present threat from old enemies like the southern independency of Mercediare, a stirring discontent among Cantagna’s older families had him worried. These families had been staunch allies of Sandro’s father and grandfather. But their resentment of House Gallanos’s stranglehold on power, most especially Sandro’s determination to spend the city’s wealth on public works instead of channeling it into their own purses, lurked amid the present peace like deadly nightshade in a garden.

  One incident, one misstep, and the poison could foment an armed rebellion. Civil war. Sandro would need Captain di Lucci and every other soldier he could hire. It was no false concern that induced Sandro to keep ten armed men about him wherever he walked—even through the modest neighborhood where his family had lived and granted favor and assistance to all comers for almost a century.

  “What of the commission you undertook for me, Boscetti?” Sandro deftly changed the subject of the conversation without agreeing to anything. “Have you had any success with that?”

  “Ah, Padroné, my agents believe they might have found the artwork you seek—the Antigonean bronze—buried deep in a vault in Mercediare. Extremely difficult to retrieve. Dangerous. Expensive. The rumors of its Sysaline origins and the bad luck that brings. I doubt I have sufficient resources to retrieve it. Such an unusual portrayal of Dragonis and Atladu, unique in all the known world. Perhaps something more accessible would suit your pleasure just as well?”

  “My requirement has not changed.”

  Only one who could read the subtle silence between il Padroné’s clipped words would recognize his mounting fury. Boscetti, a purveyor of antiquities, was trying to manipulate a man who hated to be played.

  I sat up straighter. This was a matter of much more interest. For five years il Padroné had searched for a particular ancient representation of the monster Dragonis and Atladu, lost God of Sea and Sky. Supposedly Antigoneas, divine Atladu’s own smith, had cast the small bronze statue at his forge in Sysaline—the city drowned in the Creation Wars—imbuing it with sanctity unknown in our godless world.

  Sandro believed that if he could gift the statue to his most powerful ally, a most pious grand duc, it would create a true friendship, fixing their alliance against any challenge from his friends turned rivals. But this particular merchant … Boscetti …

  I didn’t know Sandro had commissioned Boscetti to find the statue. Had he heard the gossip that Boscetti’s wife hailed from Triesa, one of Mercediare’s two hundred tribute islands?

  The brutish Protector Vizio, tyrant ruler of the sprawling independency of Mercediare, coveted Cantagna’s wealth. Every spring she demanded a share of it, and threatened to seize it by force if Cantagna failed to pay. Someday her legions would march north to challenge us. Thus, Boscetti’s petition, together with his suspect w
ife, could signify a great deal more than a contract dispute with Lucci’s mercenaries. The Costa Drago bred conspiracies in the same abundance as it did mosquitoes.

  “Expense is of no consequence,” said il Padroné. “I shall instruct my bursar to record an increase in your finder’s fee. I’m sure double would be acceptable. Once I have the artifact in hand, you will reap additional rewards.”

  The easy capitulation surprised me. Had Sandro some new intelligence to make his purpose more urgent or was he testing Boscetti? I couldn’t wait for evening when he would tell me all and I could warn him about the merchant’s possible entanglement with Cantagna’s old enemy.

  A wafting scent of soap drew my attention from the parlay beyond the screen.

  Stupid girl! My gangly maidservant Micola had crept into my hiding place. Round cheeks of burnished copper, dark eyes glazed with terror, she did not so much as breathe as she tugged on my sleeve, drawing me to the open door behind me.

  Well should she be terrified! If il Padroné detected the least noise behind the screen, he might forbid me sit there when he received petitioners. Micola knew I’d never forgive her for such a deprivation. Far worse would result if the merchant detected us. Micola would be whipped to death as a spy, and I would be exiled at best, for il Padroné and the Shadow Lord were one and the same, and discretion was a pillar of the Shadow Lord’s power.

  We slipped out on bare feet, my silken gown but a whisper, Micola’s hand clutching her skirt to keep it silent. As soon as we passed through the closet passage and my dressing room into my own rooms, I closed the door carefully behind me and then whirled on her. “Are you entirely mad?”

  She fell to her knees, breathless and shaking. “Please, mistress, the villain said you’d die did I fail to deliver his message to you right away. Certain, I’d only dare set foot beyond that door for mortal need.”

  “What villain?”

  “A young ruffian startled me whilst I tended your sheets, and how he got past the guards ’tis the world’s own mystery. The youth swore he knew you from childhood, and I’d never have believed that, ragged as he were. But he showed me a luck charm exactly like one in your jewel case—that’n graved in bronze with the squiggles and coiled whip—and said tell you ’twas Iren brought you the message.”

  The world’s own mystery … Surely my own eyes glazed with fear. “What message?”

  “He said—please, mistress, I’d never speak such crude words to you, but for the luck charm so like yours, and you’re ever so kind to me.”

  It required every scrap of control I could muster not to choke the words out of her. Iren could be none but my brother Neri. We had once believed backward spelling our impregnable secret cipher.

  “He said, ‘The rutting tyrant is for the chop,’ which means a terrible, wicked cruelty, and I told him that no fine lady as you … none so educated, so elegant and beautiful … would even know about lowborn punishments. But he claimed you’d know exactly what he meant. I was dread fearful he were an assassin, as some folk use tyrant to name—”

  She paled, knowing how close she was to treason.

  But her panic could not touch mine. As if the brilliant colors of the muraled wall had sloughed away, leaving only gray plaster, so did the false and foolish illusion of my life vanish. Left in its place was appalled confusion.

  Only Neri ever called our father a rutting tyrant. Only Neri could walk through impossible barriers by use of true magic, forbidden since the dawn of the world. Yet his message wasn’t about unmentionable skills that could get both of us executed, but the horrifically mundane. For the chop. My father was to lose a hand for thieving? That was impossible.

  I halted the girl’s terrified babbling. “Did he say when?”

  She gaped at me, disbelieving.

  “Tell me, Micola.”

  “Dawn tomorrow.”

  My father was dull and stiff-necked beyond reason. He was a law scribe, and every word he copied in service of Cantagna’s law was his life’s accumulated treasure. Never in the world would he risk losing a hand. Indeed, the self-righteous fool would let his family starve before breaking his precious moral code. Multiple times he’d refused to accept so much as a copper solet from his eldest daughter, the Shadow Lord’s whore. Such an impossible risk—and my fool of a brother’s message—hinted at dangers I dared not ignore.

  “Give me your gown and cloak,” I said. “Now. I have to go out.” Fortunately the rangy Micola and I were of a size.

  She squirmed out of her garments. “But, mistress, il Padroné—”

  “He will be at least another hour with petitioners. More likely two. Do as I tell you.”

  In moments she was left in her chemise, while I wore her old-fashioned blue overdress and narrow black sleeves.

  I laid hands on her quivering shoulders. “If il Padroné sends for me or comes to my chambers in search of me, you must speak only truth. That way, his annoyance will be for me alone.”

  “But mistress…”

  Even fools and children knew that the wrath of powerful men fell on those who spoke truth as well as those who told lies. But there were certain things she must not speak at all.

  “Sweet child, just tell him this…”

  With strength swollen by fury—at Neri, at my father, at necessity and circumstance and the vile Lady Fortune—I backhanded the girl. She stumbled backward and slumped to the thick Lhampuri rugs il Padroné had imported for me. As she moaned, groggy and confused, I brushed a thumb across her forehead. Naught but dread necessity could force me to what I had to do.

  With a skill rusty from disuse, my will touched the blighted piece of my soul I had walled away since childhood. Only a moment’s touch. Cold, viscous otherness squirmed like maggots in my bones and slithered through my veins, chilling, nauseating, as it had been since the first hour I understood the evil I could do. Magic—this single form of magic my body knew—allowed me to do one impossible thing.

  I considered the words the girl must not say and whispered her a story to replace them: Mistress Cataline received a message that her father is gravely ill; for honor’s sake, she had to go to him. I, Micola, delayed a whole day relaying the message.

  The girl would forget the truth and remember only what I’d told her. How despicable to alter a person’s mind without consent. I hated living with the ever-present fear of discovery, but even more I hated the taint itself, lurking inside my soul like rot at the heart of a tree, waiting to corrupt me as it did all of my kind. But the consequences of Neri’s actions could endanger more lives than my father’s.

  Shivering and sick, I fled through the palace, grieving for the bruises I’d left on sweet Micola’s face, as well as the chaotic knot inside her where a few simple words had replaced a name, a face, and a message. I’d no time and no skill to tie off every thread of memory.

  * * *

  Cantagna sprawls across the golden hills of the Costa Drago’s heart in a pleasing pattern of concentric rings. Radial boulevards lead from the airy, sunlit Heights, where the oldest families of the city live alongside the Palazzo Segnori and the Philosophic Academie, through a wall to the Merchant Ring, home to merchants, bankers, guildhalls, elegant bathhouses, and the rambling family home of il Padroné and his uncles, cousins, and friends.

  Narrower streets feed through gates in the second wall down to the bustling Market Ring, where cobblers, tailors, glovers, spice merchants, and the like sell their wares, before plunging downward again to the Asylum Ring that comprises artisan workshops, cheap lodgings, and respectable brothels, intermingled with hospices, houses of confinement, and the seedy shops of alchemists, fortune-tellers, and charm-sellers. Squeezed between the fourth wall, the River Venia, and the outer defenses is the crowded, noisome Beggars Ring and Lizard’s Alley, my childhood home.

  Shoving a path through the smoke-filled streets in the sweltering afternoon felt like plunging into the Great Abyss, where the demoni Discordia awaited the unvirtuous. The Beggars Ring housed thieves,
laborers, pigs, thugs, beggars, pimps, whores, and damaged people of all kinds. Included was one stiff-necked man who refused any work that failed to meet his exacting standards, produced more healthy children than his labors could support, and protected a secret it was death to expose—that two of his living children bore the taint of magic. My father.

  I had never decided whether Da truly cared for Neri and me, or whether he was just too weak-livered to do as every other parent in the Beggars Ring would have done upon discovering their child was cursed—drown us in the nearest body of water. The weak-livered theory had been ascendant for many years.

  At the only wide spot in Lizard’s Alley someone in decades past had built a dirt-floored stone hovel, probably to shelter their pigs or a mule. I’d spent most of my ten years of childhood there. I flipped aside the tattered rug hung across the doorway, stepped across the iron sleugh—a trough of oily water that supposedly warded the household against demons—and yelled, “Neri! Dolce!”

  The dim interior was no less filthy than the alley or the streets beyond it, but the thick walls shut out the noise and most of the light. Neither Neri nor my sister Dolce were in evidence. Rather, the scene was exactly the same I’d witnessed on my last visit, some three years past. A crone sat on a stack of folded blankets in the corner, her sagging breast suckling a ruddy babe. The infant would be my mother’s tenth child yet living, as far as I knew, out of thirteen live born. She was not yet forty. At four-and-twenty, I was her eldest.

  I crouched in front of her. “Hey, Mam. Neri sent a message about Da.”

  Dark eyes, sharp and hateful, rose to meet mine. Nostrils flared, mouth twisted into ugliness, she averted her gaze as her thumb traced a demon ward on the babe’s forehead.

  “Romy the harlot.”

  My mother’s disgust no longer devastated me. She had loathed me since discovering I was born tainted with magic. When I was ten years old and my brothers and sisters were crying for bread, Mam had rented me for a night to a man in the street. The following morning my suitor returned with a bag of coins and told her I was never coming home. He was a procurer for the Moon House, where anonymous, unblemished girls and boys were transformed into courtesans to serve the old Padroné—Sandro’s uncle—and his wealthy friends.