An Illusion of Thieves Read online

  “What do they look for?” whispered Neri, as we threaded our way through the Merchant Ring toward Piazza Cambio, the grand apron fronting the gateway between the Merchant Ring and the Heights. “Sorcerers don’t wear badges to say what they are. And none’s going to confess to a Gardia warden that they’ve plans to kill the Shadow Lord if only he would just let them through a gate.”

  “I’m not sure,” I said, my steps slowing.

  The city bells rang noontide. At least a dozen praetorians—soldiers of the Philosophic Confraternity—had joined the Gardia wardens at the Piazza Cambio gate. Their yellow badges and tabards, trimmed in scarlet, were unmistakable.

  “This is not just extra guards added because it’s Quarter Day,” I said. “I’m thinking they’ve found the murderers.”

  Neri exhaled long and slow. “A day of righteous judgment.”

  Before we could reach the gate, the praetorians and wardens surged forward, shouting for all to clear the center of the piazza and the boulevard that led down to the Market Ring.

  “Quarter Day business will resume shortly!” shouted a Gardia warden to an elderly couple trying frantically to get through the gate. “Just got to make way for now.”

  To the shouted questions as to what was happening, their answers were “a judgment” or “don’t know more’n that.” Any who balked were forcibly moved.

  The normal commotion of a city crowd grew to an ear-splitting uproar, everyone babbling questions and speculation as they shifted toward the periphery of the piazza. Fear wriggled in my head, demanding I see what transpired. I could not say fear of what. Thus as Neri and I shifted backward, we locked arms and yielded ground slowly, letting others flow past on either side of us. Though quickly subsumed by a press of wet shoulders, wet cloaks, wet leathers, and dripping hats, we ended up near enough the front of the crush to view whatever was to come.

  Wardens and praetorians took up positions in front of the crowd, creating a warlike colonnade around the great oval. Clearly the judgment was to be carried out right here. Well calculated, I thought, as no other than Quarter Day would find such a large representation of citizens in one place. This judgment was to be rendered without prior announcement, and before this larger population instead of simply the mean-spirited who flocked to a prison yard to witness bloody spectacle as they’d done for Da. This was no common judgment—or perhaps the one to be judged was uncommon.

  It was the sudden infusion of red into the scene that confirmed and increased my uneasiness. Soldiers in red tabards and bright helms flowed from the gate and every lane and alley that branched off Piazza Cambio, seeping into the spaces behind and between groups of onlookers like blood into murky water. They were Captain di Lucci’s condottieri—the Shadow Lord’s favored mercenaries.

  “They’re expecting trouble,” I murmured, where only Neri could hear.

  I glanced around the thickening crowd, searching for answers. There would likely be clumps of other liveries, retainers of the wealthy houses, here to protect their segnoré’s or segnora’s interests. My heart near seized when I caught the bilious green of nullifiers here and there behind the onlookers; only to be expected after the magical explosion that had killed so many. But no house liveries were to be seen, certainly not the dark green and mustard yellow of House Gallanos. What was one to make of that?

  The condottieri did not challenge the Gardia or praetorians. Perhaps the city itself had paid di Lucci to be here …

  The bells from the tower of the Palazzo Segnori began to toll. The somber cadence drew every soldier to attention and quieted the expectant crowd. The yellow-liveried praetorians, evenly spaced about the great piazza, raised their swords in a deadly salute, as eight of their fellows marched through the Cambio Gate. In the center of their rectangular formation a mule pulled a small farm cart hung with fronds of prickly juniper and dried lavender to ward against evil. Inside the cart stood a bent figure robed and hooded in the same putrid green as the sniffers and bound with same type of wire-threaded rope I’d used on Neri. A condemned sorcerer—a man, I guessed from his size, but it was impossible to be sure.

  A young man and woman, clad in the white-and-red robes of Philosophic Confraternity initiates, marched behind the prisoner’s party. They carried a huge banner painted with two words. Mago. Magrillaio. Sorcerer. Butcher.

  From every side of me rose a hiss so huge, so spiteful, and so contemptuous, imagination named it the spew of Dragonis itself as the monster had gazed upon paltry humankind. No matter what I told myself, that Neri and I were good people who wished no evil upon anyone, and that at least a few sorcerers were not to be feared or despised simply for existing, hate seeped into my bones like a poison designed to dissolve them. I held tight to Neri’s arm. He quivered, too.

  The contemptuous hiss, accompanied by a few sobs and scattered whispers, persisted until the party of the condemned passed out of view, making its way down to the other ring gates to end at the docks … and a death ship.

  The praetorians lowered their swords, but the dreadful processional was not over. A group of men and women clad in fur-lined gray robes marched slowly from the gate in two ranks of ten. I counted them three times to be sure.

  This was the Sestorale itself. Only on the most solemn occasions did the titular governors of Cantagna appear in public together. Today, perhaps, to evidence the Sestorale’s unity in this righteous judgment—rather an all-but-one unity, as there should be twenty-one of them.

  The two ranks diverged, each forming a half circle on the left and right of the empty space in the center of the piazza. My eyes peered through the dismal mist for a well-known form. He would be near the end of the ranks, as he was a junior member; only two years ago had he allowed his name to be put forward for election. Several of the sestorali had similar moderate height and slender build, but it was impossible to be sure. Most of them had raised their hoods—either against the damp or against prying eyes. Sandro would be one of the latter, preferring to avoid attention … unless he was the missing one.

  To the continued tolling of the bells a mule-drawn wagon rolled into the center of the Sestorale half circles. Grooms unhitched the mules and led them away, while others set the brakes and chocked the wagon wheels with wedges of wood and iron. A man clad in black leathers and hood had joined those at the wagon.

  My stomach lurched at the sight of his axe. The city headsman.

  Spirits! Who was to die here?

  Gardia pikemen with weapons at the ready escorted a second tip cart holding a single, standing passenger. The man’s hands were bound at his back, making it difficult for him to maintain his balance as the cart jounced over the cobbles. This prisoner was a big man with thick white hair straggling over his shoulders, his elegant satin and brocade garments in filthy tatters. I would know him anywhere. A few years ago, after spending a particularly lively and entertaining evening with Sandro and me at one of il Padroné’s salons, he had offered in great good humor to buy me. Sandro politely declined and offered to sell him a vineyard instead. The three of us had laughed about it.

  Naldo di Savilli. His identity explained everything—the secrecy, the precisely delivered rumor, this pageantry of armed might and political unity by the Sestorale. The man about to lose his head was a segnoré of Cantagna’s old aristocracy, whose family owned thousands of hectares of vineyards, forests, and pastures, and he was the highest-ranking member of the Sestorale. And no wonder the condottieri had been brought in to supplement the Gardia and the praetorians. House Savilli had a highly trained family cohort of at least two hundred men.

  Two soldiers followed the cart, carrying a banner that read, Magrillaio. Tesure. Trattiere. Butcher. Paymaster. Traitor.

  Naldo di Savilli had paid the sorcerer who caused the explosion. It confirmed my suspicion that it had been intended to assassinate il Padroné as he marched in a processional to honor his beloved grandfather. Certain, Naldo had a deep and abiding dispute with House Gallanos—the upstart bankers, he called them. He
believed he should be the grand duc of Cantagna, a title his sires had borne for two centuries.

  For decades he had held his ambitions in abeyance, a strong ally of Sandro’s father and grandfather as House Gallanos had transformed Cantagna from a pleasant town into a great and prosperous city. Like the other grand segnorés, Naldo had tolerated Lodovico, too. But unlike many of them, Naldo had maintained a sincere friendship with Sandro when he became the Gallanos segnoré. Sandro had hoped that Naldo would ultimately judge Cantagna’s welfare more important than a moldy title.

  Alas for hope and friendship. That Naldo was a charming, generous, and witty man could have no bearing in a case of fifty-seven murders.

  The evidence against him must have been so glaring, so obvious that even those on the Sestorale—Naldo’s longtime friends, business partners, a cousin—had accepted his guilt. Had he been so confident of support from those who sympathized with his claim that he had moved on House Gallanos so baldly? If he had used his family cohort to waylay Sandro and assassinate him, as had been tried at least three times in ten years, the others might have looked the other way, secretly applauding the deed. But Naldo had dared to suborn sorcery in service of his ambition. That was likely what brought the Sestorale together to condemn him. Naldo’s daring move boded very ill for Sandro’s chances to avert open rebellion from his onetime allies, who saw his vision for Cantagna as theft of their long-held privileges. Danger loomed on the horizon. Civil war.

  As the old man was dragged from the cart and shoved up wooden steps to the wagon that had become an executioner’s platform, I murmured in Neri’s ear. “Let’s go. We don’t need to see this.”

  “They’re not letting no one leave,” Neri whispered back. Indeed, the condottieri had blocked all the streets, preventing Savilli’s men-at-arms from rushing in to save him—assuming any of them were still living and free.

  The bell’s steady toll gave way to a deafening clangor that drowned out Savilli’s last words. As they shoved him to his knees, I buried my face in Neri’s shoulder. I needed no more bloody visions. But I could not escape the dull thud of the blow rebounding from the buildings around the piazza. And Neri’s bone-deep shudder confirmed the axe had accomplished its task.

  An hour after cart and wagons had removed evidence of the righteous judgment, Neri and I stood in the sodden queues of those who still had Quarter Day business in the Heights. Some people were subdued. Most gossiped.

  Rumors were already spreading about the identity of the hooded sorcerer—Savilli’s bodyguard? his son? his barber?—about the evidence against him, about others among the Sestorale who might have joined him in rebellion against the Shadow Lord were they not cowards. Some voices sympathized with returning to the old order of things—before the Gallanos ascendency. Others shouted them down, saying Savilli and his kind wanted all to be slaves, not citizens. The execution had shocked words out of people that they would not dare say in other times. The only thing all agreed was that suborning sorcery pointed to Savilli’s ultimate downfall. Evil would out.

  “Step forward, damizella. They’re almost ready for you.” The stringy, black-bearded warden waved me toward one of his fellows, a stumpy soldier standing just inside the gateway arch alongside a solemn, square-faced praetorian. We were required to give our names and business before we were allowed through. No one ahead of us had been turned away.

  We halted just outside the arch, where the rain funneling off the gate tower dripped and spattered over our already soaked shoes. Torches cast a wavering light from inside the gate tunnel, setting the runnels of water sparkling.

  As the praetorian dismissed an earnest young couple come to register their marriage at the palazzo and waved them through the gate, a round-bellied man in a bilious green tabard and plumed hat strolled out of the archway. Grotesque, inhuman, his sniffer emerged from the arch behind him, gliding almost weightless at the end of his chain leash, stopping when his master stopped.

  “Shite!” None could have heard Neri’s panicked curse, but his grip on my arm near yanked it out of its socket. Dumond’s luck charm sat in Neri’s pocket. Now, I supposed, we’d know if the cursed thing worked. Mine still resided in Sandro’s house. Meanwhile I had to come up with a story quickly. In no circumstance would I speak our true names within hearing of a sniffer.

  “Now, Iren,” I said, smiling up at Neri, as if we were but on a day’s pleasure stroll. “After our business, should we find that noodle seller in the Market Ring again? I have a craving for her mussel broth we tasted yestereve.”

  Neri gaped at me as if I were mad. I just hoped he noted my use of his backward spelled name—the same childhood code he’d used on the day I was banished.

  “Speak your names, district of residence, and business in the Heights,” said the Gardia warden, a thick-necked soldier with a wide, flat nose.

  “I am Damizella Ennitia di Varni of the Market Ring, come to bring my cousin Iren, born in Invidia, to register as a citizen of Cantagna. He’s just come of age and will be the heir to my small property, as Lady Fortune has conspired with her divine Mother to leave me barren. So anxious am I to settle matters that I wished not to wait another quarter despite this miserable weather. I told Iren that Cantagna’s winters are mild compared to those he’s used to up the northlands of Invidia, but I’m not sure he’s believing that today.”

  I laughed aloud and hugged my sodden cloak around me as my mind grasped at threads to weave this web of lies. I had to forge ahead before they could decide what to make of us.

  “And certain, I do believe you’ve frighted the tongue out of this boy with a beheading. So dreadful and, of course, just and righteous, but awful to witness, and then that devil sorcerer who exploded things right here in our midst, and other dreadful creatures about”—I leaned toward the bewildered praetorian as if imparting a confidence—“some not so far away from us here. And while we wholly appreciate their divine mission, it is not so nice to actually see one. Quite shocking. But I’ve ever been so curious since childhood, so tell me, with its eyes covered so tight, how in the names of the Unseeable does the creature know when to halt without toppling over?”

  The increasingly agitated warden glanced over my head as the queue piled up behind us.

  “Does she speak true, boy?” snapped the praetorian, glaring round me at Neri.

  “Aye … your honor … she d-do,” Neri stammered. “I come from Invidia to learn to make cheese from cows, as it’s my favorite and all we can make at my home is goats’ cheese, which has a stink what won’t leave you. But Ennitia says—”

  “Move on.” The praetorian and the warder spat the order at the same time.

  I breathed. Good work, little brother.

  Not daring to smile, frown, speak, or look at each other, we clasped hands and strolled into the gate arch as if we had no worries beyond cheese-making and inheritance.

  A heavy hand fell on my shoulder. I wrenched away and spun around, pressing my back to Neri, my heart near exploding from my chest.

  Bulbous eyes glittered under the nullifier’s plumed hat. “It don’t see, chattery lady. Don’t need ta. It sniffs its master moving, and it sniffs when I stop.”

  Chortling, the nullifier rattled the chain leash in my face and turned back toward Piazza Cambio. For the instant the leash remained slack, the sniffer stood facing us in the wavering torchlight.

  Spirits, he was shivering. The green silk that sheathed every part of him like a second skin was soaked, so that I imagined I saw through it to the bare flesh beneath. Certain he was freezing.

  If he was shivering with the cold, was his stomach growling with hunger, too? Were his silk-clad bare feet bruised and aching from the old cobbles, as mine were, now the soles of my shoes were worn thin? Was he human, after all?

  And if so … was he mad? If not, what did he think of as he was led about the city on a chain? His past life? A family? Vengeance? What had driven him to such a dreadful choice? I had always assumed that it was either cowardice or
the natural corruption of a sorcerer’s soul made a man choose to be a sniffer. Had he truly been given a choice? Stories … rumors. Whatever the answers, I would not see any sniffer the same as I had before this night. They were human. In the same moment that truth stung me, I came to doubt the nullifier’s assertion. Beneath the wet silk, the sniffer’s eyelids lifted. I believed he saw our faces.

  I neither moved nor breathed until the rattling chain grew taut. His silken feet splashed an ice-skimmed puddle as he trailed after his master.

  10

  YEAR 988: SPRING QUARTER

  Rumors, dour faces, marketplace bickering devolved to fisticuffs, family cohorts strutting their colors in the Market and Merchant Rings, as if asking for trouble … Cantagna grew more restive as the Month of Winds brought green hillsides, budding trees, and early blooms of madder and bell-like bindweed. Placidio wouldn’t let me pay him the new month’s retainer as he had missed so many days for his other profession.

  “Stupid spats over nothing,” he said. “I’d sooner kick their backsides than uphold their honor in dogfights. Everyone in Cantagna has a spike up their ass.” That was as much as he had ever volunteered about his matches.

  Perhaps everyone was having dreams like mine. Since the events of Winter Quarter Day, I spent my nights running from magical explosions, bloody axes, or hollow eyes that stared at me through screens of green silk. In the day I told myself that the sniffer had detected nothing about my magic. He had let us pass. In the nights he memorized my face.

  To add to the general anxiety, my business stalled. Most of my work from lawyers and notaries comprised settlements, like contracts, wills, and eviction notices. Perhaps in such anxious times, people weren’t in the mood to settle things. On the other hand my reputation had risen in the Beggars Ring. Some ordinary people brought me private business, sometimes just to hold a message for a friend or write a letter to a relative. But Beggars Ring folk could not afford decent fees, and I had to count on word of mouth for them to find me at all.