An Illusion of Thieves Read online

  Da protected Neri from Mam’s wrath, just as he had saved me from drowning, but then he made me responsible for teaching Neri the dangers of what he was. I resented the responsibility. I was ten years old, and my father couldn’t bear to look at me, my mother wanted me dead, and my other siblings were afraid of me. Now I had to spend all my days with a demon child.

  But I didn’t want Neri dead either, so I tried to do what Da had done with me. I took Neri out in the maze of Beggars Ring alleys and got him to show me his talent, so I could teach him not to use it.

  Neri thought it was all good fun, giggling and playing chase-and-hide, and I couldn’t convince him to stop. And he was so innocent, so loving, and so happy for my attention, I couldn’t be angry with him either. I even came to think that being able to walk through walls like Neri did might make being a demon worthwhile. Then, of course, Mam heard us laughing in the alley and was sure we were plotting some demonic evil. In the matter of a day, she started beating Neri regularly to convince him of his wickedness, and she sold me to the Moon House. All concern about our tainted souls was buried as deep as any sin could be.

  Now I was encouraging my young brother to use what he’d never wanted to stop. He strode through one chamber after another, through a desiccated garden and myriad turns of a winding labyrinth to a grand statuary hall. There at the heart of the temple, Chloni, the serene, sexless Creator of Stars, towered over us in marble majesty, slender arms spread wide in everlasting benevolence.

  We ascended a tightly spiraled stair to a columned gallery overlooking the statuary hall. The gallery took us through a series of archways, opening into views of chamber after harmonious chamber.

  No matter how marvelous the view, Neri didn’t look around. His eyes were open, but fixed straight ahead. I still felt nothing in his wrist but his pulse. His luck charm lay in the marble palm of Veitan the Gateward, the knee-high guardian statue at the dry well at the lowest level of the temple. Nowhere near our path.

  Beyond the fifth arch, the gallery walk dead-ended at a balcony. Below us was a dry fountain, its centerpiece a depiction of Virtue’s children—Reason, Justice, Temperance, and Courage—though most of Courage lay in rubble. Above us rose one of the temple’s many spires.

  Neri pressed his fingertips to his eyes and shook his head. “Can’t seem to call up the magic. Never had this trouble before.”

  I dropped his wrist, exasperated. “You started out the wrong direction.”

  “Makes no difference,” he said. “When the magic’s working, it tells me when I’ve strayed. It’s like someone’s pinching me all over till I get it right.”

  “You said you had to want the thing so bad it made your head spin. Maybe you fail because you’re trying to find your own luck charm.”

  “Maybe it’s because this is a dead place that—”

  I hushed Neri with a touch on his arm. A faint chinking noise, regular as a heartbeat, echoed through the stone halls, seemingly from everywhere at once. Determined footsteps joined the metallic echo. More than one person.

  “We should hide,” whispered Neri, as the chinking footsteps, louder now, were joined by muffled voices. Urgent voices.

  “There’s nowhere up here to hide but the archways between the rooms,” I said. But those were quite narrow, little better than the columns. “A look from the proper angle and someone below could spot us. Besides, it’s not illegal to come here.”

  Yet indeed our intent to work magic left me guilt-ridden and inclined to hide, too. It was never wise to attract undue attention.

  We should get back to ground level, the labyrinths. Even so, we’d hardly a chance of getting away undetected. We’d come too far in.

  I drew Neri close and whispered, “If we meet anyone, just let me talk.”

  The click of Neri’s boots grated my nerves as we headed back the way we’d come. My small relief at reaching the head of the stair without raising shouts reverted quickly to dismay. Quick, quiet steps were coming up. No chinking. No murmurs. This was someone else.

  A round bald head was our first glimpse of a breathless, dusty man as short, thick, and solid as a bridge piling. His cheeks pulsed scarlet. Thick-fingered, dirty hands clutched at a leather satchel hung from his shoulder. He seemed as alarmed to see us as we were to see him. Brows like black scrub brushes sat above wide-set, obsidian eyes. “Who in the great wanderings of the universe are you?”

  “We’ve come to visit the temple on our way to market. ’Tis odd, we’ve heard. Is it forbid to ordinary folk?” I added just a touch of grievance. While holding my head high, I slipped my fingers into my pocket—the one with the slit that allowed me to retrieve my knife.

  His clean brown tunic and hose could mark him anything from a merchant’s clerk to a guild craftsman. His small black eyes darted from Neri to me and back to Neri.

  My heart skidded when he stepped closer to my brother, squinting.

  Neri’s eyes widened.

  “You’re Dumond the metalsmith!” Neri’s astonishment raised the name to uncomfortable volume. “It’s so odd, your being here, as we were just using—”

  My heel on his toe stopped him cold.

  “I don’t know you.” The man cast a sharp glance back down the stair. The chinking steps were closer, faster, but not in sight as yet. “Get out of my way.”

  Neri shook off my hand as I tried to draw him aside. “Romy, this fellow made our luck charms. I think he knows about people like us.”

  Stupid Neri! My hands yearned to tumble him down the stairs.

  Instead I said primly, “’Tis no fault of ours to be born to a thieving lout.”

  My feeble attempt at misdirection came too late. The man’s face opened in recognition. “You’re the Beggars Ring boy! And you had”—pale as sea foam, the man whipped his head around to me—“a sister with skills. Lady Virtue’s bastard, we must get you out of here. It’s a sniffer on my heels! They think sorcerers caused some explosion up to the Heights this afternoon. They’re scouring the city for the likes of us.”

  A suffocating blanket shut out the world. My stomach hollowed. A sniffer. The chinking and footsteps … Sniffers were kept on chain leashes.

  “There’s no place to hide up here,” I said, forcing calm. “It’s a dead end.”

  “Can’t go down.” Dumond the metalsmith pointed back the way we’d just come from. “Follow me.”

  “I told you there’s no way out that way.”

  “There’s always a way,” he said through his teeth. “Just have to make it. Trust me or take your chances with the sniffer.”

  Dumond jogged off down the gallery, swift and silent. Neri and I exchanged a terrified glance.

  “Romy?” He was trembling.

  “Your magic can get you home, yes?” I said. “Try it. Go.”

  He shook his head. “Sniffer would know magic was done. I can’t leave you to that. It wasn’t working in here anyways.”

  Trust had never come easy. Only Sandro had ever earned it; now even that faith was shaken. But I didn’t know enough to get us past a sniffer, and the metalsmith, if that’s what he was, seemed to believe he did.

  “Come on.” Neri and I joined hands and raced after the bald man.

  When we reached the shadowed archway that opened onto the balcony, Dumond knelt on a square of canvas, pulling a flat crock from his leather case. His pudgy fingers unbuckled a strap and yanked a lid from the pot, filling the air with an acrid odor. Next he produced a wide brush from the bag and dipped it in the … paint pot? I’d thought he might have a rope in his case!

  Speechless with dismay, I watched him slap long streaks of brown paint on the old stone of the alcove wall.

  “Open one of the small pots, boy. Black or yellow. I need contrast. And hurry, if you please.”

  Neri knelt beside him.

  Panic loosened my tongue. “What are you—?”

  “Wait and see. You can’t conjure fire by any chance?” Squinting, he painted a third strip that, with the floor as
one side, formed a tall rectangle. He slathered paint in its interior.

  “No.”

  “Always seems to work better when there’s a flame to warm it.”

  So much for trust. A madman wasn’t going to save us. But jumping from the gallery would kill us for certain. And a sniffer …

  Neri’s trembling hand set another flat pot—black paint—on the spread canvas.

  “Now find the yellow, the ocher, the white, and narrower brushes.”

  Voices called to one another down below. “Not in here!”

  “He were running, segnoré!”

  “Search deeper in. One of them’s here.” This was the leader, booming his well-shaped words with authority. Segnoré, an honored gentleman. “Nothing from your creature?”

  “Naught as yet, segnoré.”

  Unflustered by the cries so close, Dumond used a smaller brush to overlay his brown swathes with thin black strokes. With a natural artistry, Dumond coaxed the dabs and strokes of color from his pots and brushes into the image of a door. Metalsmith. Painter. Surely he didn’t imagine … And yet Neri could transport himself through walls.

  “You’re working magic,” I murmured.

  “Not yet. Not till it’s good enough,” huffed Dumond as his hand sped through layer after layer of detail. “Soon as I reach for magic, they’ll be on us. No sooner, I hope.”

  He threw down the black-stained brush and took the next one Neri offered. It swirled yellow and brown paint into brass hinges and a simple latch.

  I had seen Placidio heal a wound that should have killed him. Neri had stolen rubies from a locked room. Was it so far-fetched to imagine a sorcerer could create his own doorway? Articulating such a thought stole my breath. Where would a magic-wrought doorway lead?

  “Pack it all up, boy,” Dumond whispered, his hand never stopping. “Try not to spill or smudge the paint. Damizella, if you would see where our pursuers are? The better I can make this, the more likely ’tis to work.”

  The image of a common oaken door centered one wall of the archway. While Neri fumbled with pots, lids, and buckles, I peered over the balcony rail. No one. But I could hear them.

  “Get your creature in here, Ugo,” the gentleman’s voice commanded. “There’s new footprints in the dust.”

  “That stair goes nowhere, Segnoré Bastianni.”

  “All the better.”

  Their words told me where they were. I didn’t need to risk looking. But dread fascination drew me to the other side of the archway to peer down, and a blight fell upon my soul when a burly dun-haired man, armed with axe and bow, and wearing the bilious green tabard of a nullifier, strode into the statuary hall below. He joined a taller man wearing an elegant crimson toque and a matching cloak with a sheen of gold thread—a scholar of the Philosophic Confraternity, who was examining the spiral stair. Those who guided the studies of philosophy, mathematics, and astronomy in service to the twin divinities, Virtue and Fortune, were especially ardent in their pursuit of sorcerers.

  But it was the one trailing behind the nullifier who caused my knees to weaken. An iron collar about his neck linked him to his master’s belt by a chain that chinked as he walked. The sniffer.

  From the crown of his head to the soles of his feet, his body was sheathed so tightly in dark green silk that he was all but naked. Though head, limbs, and torso testified otherwise, the eerie color and lack of fleshly characteristics left him more like to a giant worm than human. No openings for eyes, ears, or mouth were present, as a sniffer’s ordinary senses were dulled to refine his ability to detect magic. How he was fed, I didn’t know. Only two small breathing holes in the hood served to remind one that this obscenity was a living creature.

  Sniffers were once sorcerers, humans born with extraordinary skills they never asked for. But when these sorcerers were captured, they accepted a terrible bargain—to trade cruel death for existence at the end of a chain. They were always male; females might birth more of our kind. And they were always gelded to ensure they could not force their tainted seed upon innocent women. To expiate the crime of their birth, they were allowed only a single purpose, exposing those of us who might yet walk free. How could they be anything more than animals who devoured their own kind?

  The academician flicked his hand toward the gallery. “Take your creature up there, Ugo. I believe one of our assassins might be cornered.”

  Cold, trembling, I retreated to the flimsy shelter of the arch. Neri crammed paint pots into the bag, while Dumond’s strokes gave depth to the timber frame of his door.

  “They’re on the stair,” I whispered.

  Dumond nodded, bit his lip, and detailed a highlight on the latch plate. The back of his hand swiped at his watering eyes. “I need more time.”

  Terror and hope shredded my nerves. Neri shook so hard he could scarce buckle Dumond’s straps. Threatened with a cruel death, would he allow himself to be mutilated … sheathed in silk … turned into one of these hounds of death? He was just a boy.

  I spun round and watched the gallery. When moving shapes beyond the farthest arch told me our pursuers had arrived, I shifted position to block any view of Dumond and Neri.

  “Stop right there, philosophist!” I cried. “How dare you bring this foulness to a holy temple?”

  From behind me Dumond whispered approval. “A few moments only.”

  “I’ll warn you, woman, do not interfere with my purposes.” The taller figure emerged from the first arch, his robes billowing in hues of fire and blood.

  I swept my pale blue mantle over my head and strode down the gallery toward him with all the hauteur of the Shadow Lord’s favored courtesan passing his whispering subjects. One archway, two, and then I halted just outside the third. One wall and its short tunnel and sixty paces of empty gallery separated me from the pursuers.

  “Intrude no farther, corrupter,” I called to him. “I am Magdalena di Fortunato, priestess of the Unseeable Gods.”

  “A priestess? I believed your kind faded in another age.” The tall, lean man paused in the dark arch, younger than most Confraternity academicians I had met. His toque dipped down and then up again as he examined me. “Oh, worthy lady, how I would delight in speaking with you—discerning what you believe and why. But, alas, I am in pursuit of abomination and cannot be detained. Step aside, please.”

  The spare planes of his face imparted an ascetic dignity to the philosophist. His voice was mellow, his earnest sincerity indisputable, yet his words grated like metal on glass.

  “My order is sorely diminished,” I said, attempting to show the same pride as a tribal holy woman from the Kewaine Straits who once visited Sandro’s salon to demand tribute for his ships’ passage. Dignity and righteous determination had left her tattered robes and blistered feet all but invisible.

  “We have no resource to restore the glory of the Divine Ones’ halls,” I said, “but we travel the length and breadth of the Costa Drago to keep them free of profanation. You have brought your own abomination here.”

  His gaze followed my accusing finger to its target. “I can understand your distaste for sniffers, revered dama, and yet we’ve brought the creature here to pursue your own gods’ mandate. This afternoon a terrible crime was committed in our city—a magical explosion aimed to assassinate prominent members of the Sestorale as they led a citizens’ processional, honoring the hundredth birth anniversary of Giovanni di Gallanos, one of Cantagna’s great men.”

  “Assassination! The Sestorale…” I faltered. Gallanos.

  I slapped my numb fingers to my breast. Forced my numb lips and tongue to speak as a priestess must. “Magical explosion! Heinous murder.”

  Sandro preferred to work outside the glare of public attention, thus rarely attended public celebrations. But Giovanni di Gallanos was his beloved grandfather. He would have been at the head of the processional. An easy target.

  “Yes. Another despicable crime from the hands of the demon tainted.”

  “Were there victims? How ma
ny?”

  “Two of the dignitaries and perhaps a dozen common folk died in the horror. Many more were injured and will likely die as well. We summoned sniffers immediately and discovered traces of magic. Il Padroné himself granted us an open warrant to root out the murderous demons. This creature caught a scent in this neighborhood and followed it here. Evil lurking in the rubble of the divine.”

  Il Padroné’s warrant … Graceful spirits. Relief engulfed me. He lived. But this Dumond, was he one of the attackers?

  A shrill whistle from behind near burst my settling heart. Neri’s poor imitation of a shrike.

  “No sorcerers come here,” I said, as my foot glided backward a long step. “Only faithful worshippers of Atladu and Gione.”

  Questions for Dumond would come later. Never would I turn any sorcerer over to a sniffer. I whipped around and bolted.

  “After her!” The command pursued me along the gallery through the rooms and arches.

  Chains clanked on marble. The thud of heavy boots shuddered the floor.

  Dumond tossed the brush into his satchel, slung the bag over his shoulder, and spread his arms wide. Near invisible flames burst into light from his cupped palms.

  “Zhaaaa.” A nerve-stripping, wordless cry like the howl of a wolf shattered the air behind me. I glanced over my shoulder. The three hunters had emerged from the last arch before ours—not sixty steps away. The sniffer’s green silk finger pointed straight at us.

  “Esse ancora, lo spirito maligno!” The dun-haired nullifier nocked an arrow and raised his bow.

  Hearing the damning curse directed at me might have frozen me with fear, but it was awe that halted my feet when I reached Dumond. A warm draft smelling of paint wafted through a rectangular opening in the archway wall. Neri stood beyond it holding open a heavy door—the one Dumond had painted.