An Illusion of Thieves Read online

  Memories burgeoned like smoke from wet wood. I denied them and crushed the yearnings they bred, leashing my desire to shake the story out of her faster. Clearly, she wanted to preen as well as beg. “Go on.”

  “Last evening, as we drank coffee, a messenger arrived from a merchant named Boscetti. Alessandro had the fellow brought immediately, not even bothering to send me away, so I knew it was something terribly important.”

  The name provoked wariness. Boscetti was the devious antiquities merchant who’d visited Sandro on the day Neri’s idiocy broke our lives.

  “The messenger reported that ‘the Antigonean bronze had arrived in the city,’ and that Segno Boscetti awaited il Padroné’s word as to the delivery and settlement. Until such time, the item would be kept safe in the house of Rodrigo di Fermi, as Palazzo Fermi was better defended than Boscetti’s own house.”

  Fermi? Sandro would be livid.

  Like the murderous Naldo di Savilli, House Fermi had harbored the festering discontent of old privilege since the days of the dissolute Lodovico. Like the other old families they worried that Lodovico’s young nephew and heir, Alessandro, would either be too weak, so that Cantagna would fall to her enemies, or too strong, and think to expand on the frivolous notions of his father and grandfather. Certain, Sandro’s first play as Gallanos segnoré—free passage throughout the city for all—had proved that second worry justified.

  Gilliette rattled on. “Alessandro thanked the messenger, saying he would send a reply to Merchant Boscetti.”

  “But he was not happy about the news,” I said. “The terms of payment and delivery would have been addressed in their original agreement.”

  Sandro was meticulous about such things. So the mention of awaiting settlement implied some change. Boscetti had already raised the price once, on that day a year ago. He and Fermi must think to use the statue to gain something from Sandro—tax or trade concessions, perhaps a new estate.

  “Not happy at all,” said Gilliette, “though he was very polite. When we were alone again, I asked what was this Antigonean bronze they spoke of. He told me it was a depiction of Dragonis and the god Atladu, a small thing, scarce bigger than a wine flask, and not exceptionally beautiful. But it was very old, he said, and his good friend, the grand duc of Riccia, had long desired it. He had hoped to give it to the duc for his birthday.”

  “You understand that the grand duc of Riccia is the most powerful lord in all the Costa Drago,” I said. Careful. Respectful. Something in this tangle of alliances, friendships, favors, and betrayals had brought her to me. “His alliance with il Padroné brings a security that no other treaty can.”

  Riccia-by-the-sea was neither the largest nor the wealthiest of the Costa Drago’s nine independencies. But Lady Fortune had graced its mountains with precious ores and gemstones; its coastline with exceptional harbors and easy access to the riches of the east; and its people with a temperate clime and fertile fields that produced more food than they could eat. All this grace needed defending, which led to the salient point. The grand duc of Riccia, undisputed heir of the oldest noble bloodline in the Costa Drago, commanded the largest standing army in the Costa Drago or its neighboring countries. For independencies like Cantagna that relied on a small city guard supplemented by mercenaries, Riccia was an indispensible ally.

  “My father said something like before I was married,” said Gilliette, “but now it makes sense. What I didn’t understand was why Alessandro was so angry when told Fermi had the statue. Indeed he could have bitten off iron nails!”

  “Old grievances from Lodovico’s time,” I said. Because behind layers of manners, sworn allegiance, and fraternal entertainments, House Fermi had quietly tried to undermine every Gallanos endeavor since Sandro’s ascension, using their favored methods of rumor, nuisance lawsuits, abduction, and poison.

  Gilliette chattered onward, never getting quite to the point. “I said that surely Rodrigo and this merchant, Boscetti, would give him the statue, as the Fermi are his close friends and petitioners. Alessandro always does favors for them. Then I asked when he would get the statue, as I would very much like to see a thing he viewed as so important.”

  “And he told you it was merely a matter of time and business.” Sandro had been similarly dismissive with my first tentative questioning. I came to understand that he was trying not to concern me with the crueler dangers of his position. At fifteen, I believed everyone must admire and love so fine and generous a gentleman.

  “Yes! That is always his answer. I find it intolerable to be put off that way. The grand duc’s birthday is only three days hence and his lordship arrives in Cantagna for a visitation on that same afternoon. Alessandro wants so very much to give the duc this special gift.”

  I waited without comment as she admired and adjusted her jeweled bracelets.

  With a dismissive huff, she continued. “So as it happened, I was invited for coffee with Lucrezia di Fermi this morning. She is a most disagreeable woman, and I’d been of a mind to beg off, saying I had a headache. She forever teases me that Alessandro has not bedded me, and that he likely never will, as his Moon House harl—mistress”—Gilliette could not hide a spiteful glare—“drove him out of his mind. But I determined to go, thinking I might be able to help speed the negotiations for the statue.”

  Oh, you stupid girl; interfering in the Shadow Lord’s business? You had no idea of the wickedness involved; Fermi, ally of a man who was beheaded for murdering fifty-seven souls while attempting to assassinate your husband … Merchant Boscetti, who tried to drive a wedge between the Shadow Lord and his favored condottieri … Boscetti, whose wife was born in Mercediare, Cantagna’s eternal enemy … Lost in my own problems on the day of my downfall, I’d never had time to ask Sandro if he knew about Boscetti’s wife.

  This time it was Gilliette’s parti-colored satin skirts that required her attention. It was all I could do to hold rein on my impatience. She wanted me to beg her for the story. “And so what happened?”

  “Lucrezia showed me the statue before I could ask about it!” she said. “I pretended not to know what it was. Lucrezia bragged that it was a gift for a noble lord, who would shower his favor on her brother Rodrigo. And Paola di Boscetti laughed with her and said her husband had already written to the grand duc to tell him where he’d found it. They plan to present it to him at the great feast Alessandro is hosting for the grand duc’s birthday.”

  The implications came clear. “So Fermi and Boscetti are not just using the statue to squeeze concessions from il Padroné,” I said. “They intend to seduce Riccia’s loyalty.”

  Sandro had hoped the gift of the bronze would transform his pleasant acquaintance with the shy, reclusive grand duc into a true friendship that might give him breathing room to work his reforms. If Fermi were to bind the Riccian alliance to himself instead, the move would surely anoint House Fermi as the leader of those in opposition to House Gallanos. Such a significant alliance would embolden the aristocratic malcontents to challenge il Padroné, stirring the embers of rebellion.

  “And you, segna, what did you say to these women?”

  She smirked like the child she was. “I admired the statue, pretending to be in awe of their men’s cleverness, saying that Alessandro would be so pleased that such friends would be in the grand duc’s favor … and lamenting that I could not tell him, as he refused to speak to me of serious matters. I even asked their advice as to how to make him trust me with his business, as he had trusted you.”

  “What did they say to this?”

  “I gave them no time! The silly bags could only watch as my sorrow threw me into a fit of fear and grief that Alessandro would never love me. I screamed and vomited and fainted, and when they scattered to call for servants, I snatched the bronze and stuffed it between two cushions. They brought in my escorts—Gigo, Alessandro’s odd-looking bodyguard, and the maidservant Micola, whom you trained very well, though she detests me and talks of nothing but you when she thinks I can’t hear her�
��and they called in Lucrezia’s own physician and all sorts of other servants. I fooled them all! Indeed I frightened everyone so terribly that they bundled me home straightaway with that fusty statue hidden under my skirts.”

  “You stole it!” My shock elicited a radiant smile that shrank quickly to petulance.

  “I just took what was rightfully my husband’s! Unfortunately, I had no chance to tell Alessandro of my triumph. When he brought his own physician to see to me this afternoon, other visitors were in my bedchamber. Certainly, I could say nothing to him in front of anyone, as I had feigned such illness and distress; I am very good at that. Then, before I could get rid of them all, constables arrived to arrest Gigo and Micola, who’d never even seen the statue the Fermi reported stolen. Alessandro was so angry, and the only way he could prevent them being taken—”

  “—was to give his most sacred oath that the statue was not in his house.” Not imagining his silly little wife was the thief.

  Gilliette had given Fermi exactly what he needed to undercut Riccia’s support for il Padroné. The statue would give Fermi a hearing. And alongside examples from the vile Lodovico’s time in power, and Fermi’s own long-nurtured tales of grievance, new evidence of Sandro’s dishonor might well persuade the honorable grand duc to House Fermi’s view of the world. Even a rumor of Riccia’s legions at Fermi’s back could fan the embers of rebellion into a holocaust.

  “Ah, segna, what in the name of every Unseeable God do you think I can do about this?”

  Her air of clever triumph twisted quickly to venomous malice.

  “Very simple.” She fumbled under her cloak, and then thrust a heavy bundle into my hands. “People in your family are thieves so accomplished they can steal rubies from a locked room. Have them put this cursed relic back where I got it before the grand duc’s birthday feast, three days hence. Better his lordship receive the gift from Fermi, than Alessandro’s sworn word be proved false, don’t you think?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “If you refuse—or if this statue mysteriously vanishes before it is back where it came from—Alessandro will hear that his jilted harlot was lurking about the Fermi palazzo in the same hour his prize went missing.”

  Horror left me voiceless, as my mind painted a scenario as detailed as Dumond’s magical door in the Temple.

  A dismissed whore with intimate knowledge of city politics plotting a hated master’s downfall.

  A family of thieves to teach her their tricks.

  The whore’s treacherous maidservant present at Palazzo Fermi at the right time to open a side door to let her inside.

  I would be arrested. Neri, too, because he was on parole and the son of a thief, and everyone would assume he’d helped me. We’d both lose a hand. And if the story of stolen rubies and a locked room was revived … Gracious spirits!

  No one would doubt lovely, innocent, wronged Gilliette di Manvile’s claim that she’d seen the tainted Cataline sneaking about the Fermi residence on the day the statue was stolen. All these months il Padroné had acted as if the Moon House mistress was dead. But people knew how those things worked; his wife would certainly know the truth.

  No matter what he knew or believed of Gilliette’s story, Sandro would be able to do nothing to stem the damage. He would be couched either as a weakling fool, played by a harlot and a thief, or as a liar who set his whore to steal for him. And as wolves relishing the kill, those like Savilli the butcher and Fermi the weasel would use the Riccian alliance to wage their war. Generations of noble accomplishments, and all those Sandro might yet bring to our future, would be dragged down with him. Enemies would come ravaging from every side of the Costa Drago to pick at Cantagna’s bones.

  What could I possibly do to prevent such consequences?

  Take the statue to Sandro and tell him the whole story? If he would agree to see me—not at all a certainty—I believed he would accept my word over Gilliette’s. I wanted to think so. But whether I gave him the statue along with the truth or sent him the statue anonymously, possessing it would only make his dishonor more brazen; he had sworn before witnesses that the artifact was not in his house. None would believe Gilliette had stolen it on her own. He could neither return it to Fermi and Boscetti nor present it to the grand duc without proclaiming his sworn word meant nothing.

  No choice at all. The statue had to go back to Palazzo Fermi.

  I choked out my answer. “I’ll see it done.”

  Gilliette smirked, raised her hood, and strolled away.

  If I failed at the task, I would be the instrument of Sandro’s downfall and the chaos that followed. Not least among the tragedies of that chaos, I feared, would be Sandro himself. He would never abandon Cantagna to the wolves. Bereft of choices, he would cling to his position of power with brute strength alone, destroying il Padroné and becoming solely the Shadow Lord.

  * * *

  I remained at the center of the bridge until the dark figures at either end had vanished. Even then my feet would not move, as if I could avoid choosing a course of action as long as I remained there. Beneath me, the dark water flowed inevitably seaward. Fortune, events, and necessity were drawing me forward with the same inexorable power.

  I should have shoved the little vixen off the bridge when I had the chance.

  My fingers knotted about the bridge parapet as if it were her scrawny neck. The very thought of acquiescing to her scheme gnawed at my soul.

  Yet the Shadow Lord himself had taught me of balancing justice and judgment, crime and responsibility. You could not avoid the difficult things, the awful things. You had to think harder, search deeper, find the twisting path around them to make the world better than when you started.

  A single clang of sonorous bronze marked the first hour of the new day. As the shivering tone faded, leaving only the surge of the river below to weave the silence, my rage hardened to a certain determination. Neither Boscetti nor Fermi nor even wicked, foolish Gilliette must be allowed to reap triumph from their devious doings.

  Rodrigo di Fermi could not be allowed to undercut Sandro’s relationship with the lord of Riccia. Boscetti could not be allowed to grow rich from the road to Cantagna’s misery. Gilliette could not be allowed to think she could dally with il Padroné’s honor—and all the lives dependent on it—without consequence. And like the cream atop a pile of succulent strawberries to finish this conspiratorial banquet, the grand duc of Riccia must receive the Antigonean bronze for his birthday, courtesy of il Padroné.

  Events move ever forward, yet a single rock could change a river’s course. If I could accomplish such an unimaginably lunatic thing as returning a stolen item to such a well-guarded fortress as Palazzo Fermi, then perhaps I could find a rock to toss into the stream that would change how Fermi’s scheme played out. I had nine years’ schooling in intrigue from the Shadow Lord himself. I had a little magic. And I had a brother who could walk through walls. Surely I could come up with a plan.

  12

  DAY 1—HOUR OF SPIRITS

  “I’m glad to find you awake,” I said, as I arrived home from my midnight encounter with Gilliette. Neri sat on a rickety bench outside our door, honing the old sword Placidio had found for him.

  “Came awfully near chasing after you.”

  “I told you to stay away, and I was right.” I dragged him into the house after me and closed the door solidly. “She had at least two bodyguards with her. And she’s playing a wicked game…”

  Once I’d poured us each a cup of wine, we pulled our stools close where we could talk without risk of being overheard from the alley. I told him everything Gilliette had said, and led him through the impossible alternatives.

  “… so I’m left with only the one choice. I’ve got to give the statue back. Fermi and Boscetti must have no suspicion it was ever stolen.”

  Neri popped up from his seat as if I’d slapped him. “Are you balmy? Give it to il Padroné! Leave it on his doorstep. It’s his wife. His mess. He can figure out how to make it
right.”

  “No.” Grabbing his hand, I pulled him back to the stool. “I can’t give it to him. There’s no explanation he could give that proves him anything but a liar who’s gifting the grand duc a stolen artifact. The lord might not even believe it’s the one the merchant dug up. Boscetti certainly won’t tell the truth. It has to be put back where it was.”

  “No. No. No.” Neri shook his head violently. “You’ll die for this, Romy. And I will too. If they catch you, we’re done for. What says this little wife won’t set you up to get caught right when you’re taking it back?”

  “That’s a certain risk.” More likely from devious Gilliette than he even knew. “But she can’t know when I’ll do it. I just can’t allow Fermi’s scheme to succeed. I’ve told you why. Thousands of people could die if Fermi feels confident he can rid the world of House Gallanos.”

  “But you don’t want this Fermi using it. How can you stop that if you just sneak it back to him.”

  “Once it’s back, somehow I’ll…”

  And here did the late hour take its toll. I’d come up with all sorts of grand schemes as I raced home from the Avanci Bridge. Not a one survived the translation into words.

  “I suppose I’ll need to get hold of it again and make sure il Padroné gets it—but with the big difference that neither he nor Gilliette nor I will be implicated in his having it.”

  Certain, I’d not a glimmer of an idea how to make such a thing happen. Steal it back and then what? Post a bounty for anyone who stole it back for me? Get one of my lawyer clients to file a writ against Boscetti for breaking a contract?

  I drained my cup of wine. “Maybe I’ll just solicit bids for the cursed thing like a barker at a pig auction.”

  “Pfft.” Neri’s skepticism gave me the reaction I deserved. “Find another statue. Give ’em each one, so’s they can both give the duc a toy for his birthing day.”