An Illusion of Thieves Read online

  The procurer had told me Mam laughed and kissed the silver, so he passed along her word that I was a troublemaker who would need strict discipline. She hadn’t mentioned my true evil.

  Three years later, when I dared risk a beating to visit my family, I told my parents what they made me do at the Moon House. Da had averted his eyes and staggered out to the alley to be sick. Mam had spat on me.

  I’d never understood what she’d thought would happen—that men would simply pat me on my pretty head or gaze at my naked body without touching? Or that I would kill myself rather than yield my virtue, while allowing her to keep enough silver to feed the rest of her brood for a year?

  “Mam, talk to me. What’s happened? Where’s Da? Where’s Neri?”

  But my mother said nothing beyond that initial expectoration of my birth name, abandoned when I became Cataline of the Moon House. Exasperated, I sat back on my heels.

  “Fortune’s dam! You came!” A tall, bony girl had shoved the hanging rug aside. Rough, rouged cheeks confused her age, which should be something like fourteen.

  “Dolce?”

  Three grimy faces, all girls with black curls and great dark eyes, peered around my sister’s skirts. Outside this room, naught could have told me they were my kin.

  “Neri’s hid, soiling his netherstocks,” said Dolce. “Da’s in the Pillars, awaiting the axe. Can your devil lord fix that?”

  “Never call him that,” I said, reflexively. The wrong partisan, hearing the insult to il Padroné, would cut her throat. “What’s Da accused of?”

  She folded her arms across her greasy tunic. “He were writing for a lawyer called Dontello up the Market Ring. Dontello shares chambers with a ’luminator, and Da made the mistake of admiring the book the woman was inking—one that had three rubies set in its cover. By next morning the rubies were dug out of the leather and vanished, no matter the chamber was locked up tight as a pimp’s purse. Either Da took them or a thief walked through the wall. Constable was going to bring in a sniffer till Da confessed to the snatch.”

  Liquid fury scorched my veins. Dolce’s spare account made the awful situation very clear.

  “Da told Neri about the book,” I snapped. Neri, whose magic could take him anywhere his imagination had an object to latch onto. Neri, fool enough to believe he could steal rubies from a locked room without someone bringing in a sniffer to determine if magic had been used in the crime. And what was Neri’s idea of saving my father, who had evidently chosen to sacrifice his hand … his livelihood, his life … to protect him? Fetch his despised and disowned sister Romy, il Padroné’s harlot, and lay the impossible, intractable dilemma in her lap.

  Ready to tear my hair from its roots, I yelled at Dolce and Mam, at Da and stupid, stupid Neri, wherever he was. “Idiots! All of you! You should be out of the city by now.”

  “Wherever would we go?” said Dolce. “On the road we’ve got nothing, lest I or Sofi here go hoorin like you, which Da forbids. Cino and Neri’s been up to the Asylum Ring digging for the new coliseum now and again. But, of course, if Da gets chopped, we’ll lose their coin, too, as the devil—excuse me, Il Padroné the Generous—made it clear he mislikes his citizens thieving, so no city project will hire a thief or those kin to one. Yet Da don’t dare plead he’s innocent, now does he?”

  Dolce smirked, as if she thought a situation that could leave us all wrapped in chains at the bottom of the sea was naught but a players’ comedy.

  “Did Neri admit using”—I didn’t know if the younger ones understood Neri’s forbidden talents as yet—“his particular skills? There’s no doubt?”

  “Told you he was shitting his nethers, din’t I? Think he would have come begging to you elsewise? The ’luminator had only fetched the book that very day. Not another soul but Da even knew she had it.”

  Magic was demonfire, so it was said, remnants of the gloriously beautiful monster Dragonis who had fractured our land at the dawn of the world. The monster had ravished both men and women, implanting its evil in them and their children. Supposedly the Unseeable Gods had battled Dragonis for a thousand years, until at last they imprisoned the monster under the earth. But the fight had depleted them so terribly that they vanished into the Night Eternal, leaving only the twin sisters Virtue and Fortune to see to the world of their creation. Sorcerers—anyone born with a talent for magic—were the monster’s descendants. No tribe, kingdom, clan, or city in the Costa Drago had ever permitted sorcerers to live, lest they raise their monstrous ancestor to terrorize a world with no gods left to defend it.

  I wasn’t sure what I believed about the gods. And I didn’t know if it was an imprisoned monster who made the earth shake, leveling cities, or caused our mountains to spew fire and ash, swallowing whole provinces or changing the course of rivers. Certain there was some truth buried in the stories. No land but ours birthed sorcerers. No one could say how many of us were left in the world, but I’d learned early that anyone proved to be a sorcerer or a sorcerer’s kin must die.

  “Where are the rubies?” A glance about the hovel’s pitiful furnishing of chests, stools, and heaped rags gave no hint.

  Dolce snorted. “Good and he didn’t hide ’em here! Constables rousted the house when they came for Da. But the goods was already dumped in the river, so Neri says. Weighed with a rock.”

  Spirits, was she stretched out on mysenthe to snigger at such peril?

  No one had ever explained to me why magic infected some of a sorcerer’s kin, but not all. Certainly Dolce demonstrated none, nor did Cino. Nor did either of my parents. But nullifiers—those who owned and ran the sniffers—took no chances. Let Da lose his hand and his family would likely starve. Let a sniffer identify Neri as a sorcerer, and his family was certainly dead.

  I was not exempt. The Moon House kept no records of their courtesans’ family origins. But someone around here would remember me. A neighbor. A cousin. Some friend of Neri’s, Dolce’s, or Cino’s, or a comrade of my three brothers who had died in a riot years ago. Someone would have heard a whisper that the law scribe’s eldest girl—what was her name?—had been bought by the Moon House, had been washed, educated, and trained to please men or women of wealth in both seemly and unseemly ways. Eventually they would connect Romy of the Beggars Ring to Cataline, courtesan of the Moon House, the Shadow Lord’s mistress. So I would die, too, and forever taint Sandro with my corruption …

  “I’ll speak to il Padroné,” I said, smothering the ache in my breast. Only he could stop this.

  2

  I was back in il Padroné’s residence by the Hour of Contemplation. Sandro had shown me his secret ways in and out, tunnels and passages that allowed him to walk amongst the people in disguise to hear what they would not say when he walked amongst them as himself. He took a measure of pride that he heard little to contradict the image he had chosen for himself: an intelligent, generous, fair-minded, and very dangerous man, who would hear a poor widow’s petition as equably as a wealthy merchant’s, even as he shaped every aspect of Cantagnan life. For our city’s greatness, he said, and for his family’s honor.

  I crept into my chambers to ensure that none but Micola waited there. The girl sat on the velvet stool at the foot of my bed, wearing a clean dress and apron, the match for the filthy ones I wore. “Sssst!”

  She spun around, and I winced to see her poor bruised face brighten. “Mistress! Where—?”

  “I need a sponge bath as quick as can be,” I whispered. “And my brush. The dark green gown, I think. It’s a favorite.” And modest. I would not have Sandro think I offered some tawdry bargain for the favor I must beg. Everything of me was already his.

  My well-trained Micola did not question. She always had hot water at the ready, so it took but a short time to clean the stink and grime of the Beggars Ring away. As she finished perfuming my hair, I took her hand and drew her around in front of me. She sank to her knees, to keep her head below mine, though I had no rank to demand such. Her gaze fixed to my slippers.

/>   “Well done, as always.” I brushed her soft curls away from her swollen cheek.

  She flinched when I touched the purpling flesh.

  “Forgive my fit of temper, sweet one. You did right to fetch me. My father is very ill and I needs must speak to il Padroné about the matter. But I want to make sure you are all right. And to ask your pardon.”

  Micola’s head popped up, her expression—her whole posture—opening like shutters in spring. “I—I was in a muddle about it, shamed I had passed you the news about your father’s sickness so late, but I couldn’t recall why I would delay a whole day. It was so strange.” Her bruised brow wrinkled. “Whyever would I choose to fetch you from the secret closet? You always warned me not to. When Gigo came to fetch you, I was so confused.”

  Fear clogged my throat. “I’m so sorry.”

  Most tales of magic spoke of horrors, like houses ablaze, limbs rotting away, or infestations of rats or spiders or demons. At best, my magic created confusion. But at worst, it could surely break my victim’s mind.

  “I was sent for while I was gone?”

  “Aye, mistress.”

  I breathed away panic. Sandro had not dispatched searchers, else I would have been intercepted in his secret tunnels. He trusted me, and indeed I had never lied to him. But there were certain questions he had never asked. And now … Whatever happened, nothing could ever be the same.

  “What did you tell Gigo?”

  Her fair complexion bloomed rose, and she giggled. “I blubbered. A fit you might call it. Told him I had displeased you and didn’t know where you’d gone—which was true. You told me to speak only truth.”

  “Yes, good. And what did he say?” Sandro’s bodyguard was no fool.

  “Naught. He examined … this.” Her shoulder lifted toward her swollen cheek. “Never came back.”

  “All right then. Well done.” Detestable as were the blow and my theft of her mind’s truth, the lie had likely saved her life as well as mine.

  As Micola straightened up the clutter from my toilet, I wandered over to the garden doors. This hour was a part of il Padroné’s day that did not belong to me. He would be drinking a tisane or milked coffee with his wife as he did every evening before retiring.

  Marriage, for Cantagnans of position and wealth, was a negotiation of business, family, and politics. Sandro’s negotiations had allied him with a silver merchant’s daughter—a fourteen-year-old budding rose with the mind of a walnut. He had not bedded her, nor did he intend to do so until she was of decent age. But he treated her with all courtesy and respect, and held hopes that their life together would be satisfactory for both. My path and hers did not cross.

  How best to proceed? Likely he already knew I’d returned. And he would be curious; I never struck the servants.

  All my habits of fear and secrecy, so ingrained these nine years that I never had to think about them, were jarred into terrible life. If I did nothing, he might decide I wished to be alone and not send for me until morning. Worse, he might believe I didn’t want him to know what caused my unusual behavior. He might come to think I had secrets, a danger I meticulously avoided. Yet I needed to see him. My father had only hours until he was mutilated—or dead from the shock of the axe.

  The problem was that I could not approach the Shadow Lord on my own. To the world I did not exist as a person. I was a rare and beautiful object in his house, like the illuminated codex of Endogian poetry chained to a stand in his library, or the ancient marble statue of the lost god Atladu that graced his foyer, so gloriously lifelike it was believed to be a relic of the vanished sea kingdom of Sysaline. I could no more choose to spend an hour with il Padroné than his silver spoons could choose to feed him supper. Thus, I ever awaited his attention as did they. Though Sandro viewed me very differently, he knew that accepting the world’s expectations helped keep me safe from his myriad enemies.

  Once, on a cool moonlit evening after feasting with the twelve oldest families in Cantagna, we had strolled the gravel paths of my private garden, talking of one guest and then another, of which might prove an ally when the unrest among them showed its true face, and which a betrayer. I remarked that it must be difficult to anticipate betrayal from lifetime friends.

  “It is as it has always been,” he said. “From boyhood, I’ve had to assume that every person at my table, friend or stranger, carries a knife ready to let my blood or wears a pocket ring primed to drop poison into my wine. It is a not-so-nice consequence of Lady Fortune’s abundant blessings. Certain, the habit has saved my life more than once.”

  He had stopped abruptly and spun me around to face him. “Then you came into my world and opened your heart to one you had every reason to despise. In these few years you have gifted me in ways no other ever has. Tonight’s gathering reminded me that I’ve wanted to bring you some small token in kind.”

  From his cloak he pulled a small bundle, two gifts wrapped in silk and tied together with a gold ribbon. One was a slim gold ring set with emeralds that hid a tiny poison pocket. The other was the very same pearl-handled dagger my tutors had presented me on my departure from the Moon House—and Sandro’s bodyguards had taken from me upon my arrival at House Gallanos.

  “To keep you in the height of fashion,” he said, teasing, as he strapped the soft leather sheath to my thigh. A thrill chased up my spine. “But truly, so my ferocious chimera can protect me.”

  The gifts left me speechless, overwhelmed by the enormity of their meaning. For those weapons had nothing at all to do with fighting off assassins, but everything to do with trust.

  Now, on this terrible day, I had to challenge that trust.

  “Micola,” I said, drawing her from her tasks. “Go to Gigo. Tell him I inquired how his new mare is working out. Mention that I’ve just returned to the house and bathed.” That should be enough to let il Padroné know I wished to see him.

  Micola dipped her knee and hurried for the door.

  * * *

  Not an hour later, the dressing room door swung open.

  I did not raise my eyes or rise from First Pose, a posture of graceful, dignified submission, the first a future courtesan was taught. You sat on one heel, the other leg forward, slightly bent, toes pointed, gown or draperies arranged to best advantage. Spread the arms, they’d told us, cup the hands, lower the eyes. Always present yourself as beautiful, open, available, ready. From First Pose, I could rise in one flowing movement, slip smoothly into complete obeisance, or remain still for hours. Nine years had gone since I’d last used it.

  He smelled of coffee and wine, of clean skin and pine bark. The air embraced his approach—or so I always imagined. I had spent so many hours observing every muscle and sinew beneath that bronze skin that I knew how every part of him interacted with his surroundings, like an eternal dance with sun or starlight, moon or fire, whether in the company of strangers or between the two of us alone.

  The knot of apprehension beneath my breastbone grew into a mortal ache as his long finger lifted my chin with the tenderness that had replaced the ugly linkage of master and bound servant with ties of the heart.

  “Ah, my glorious chimera, what troubles you?”

  I dared not look at him, lest I crumble. From the night I was led into his presence expecting horror, and he had, instead, offered me protection, education, and the power of consent, I had promised myself never to ask him for anything.

  Eyes closed, I began as did every petitioner who came to this house. “Padroné, with honor and humility I lay my needs before you, trusting your wisdom to show me a path forward, pledging you my gratitude and loyalty in whatever service I might provide for you in turn.”

  Silent, he moved away, and I feared I might already be undone. He had spies everywhere.

  But he had simply fetched a chair, and now sat it square in front of me and himself in it. I looked on his fine boots and longed to remove them as prelude to an evening of conversation, laughter, wine, and pleasure. Instead, I shifted my cupped hands to my
lap, still open to receive whatever he might grant. A courtesan’s discipline matched that of any soldier.

  “Tell me your need, Mistress Cataline.” Sober, unruffled, as ever with his petitioners. Nothing left of the caring lover, only the concerned Padroné.

  “My father is a law scribe, a man of reverence for Lady Virtue and respect for his useful work. A man Lady Fortune has blessed with an overabundance of hungry children.”

  Sandro had never asked about the people who had sold me to the Moon House or anything of my life before I was taken there. Neither did I speak to him about his dead uncle, the old Padroné, who was known to blind and flay anyone who crossed him, but only after he had raped their sons and daughters, making that horror the last thing they looked on before their torment. Not even those who most resented Sandro’s outsized influence over Cantagnan life would deny that many, many things had changed for the better since he had become the House Gallanos segnoré.

  I told Sandro of the ruby-studded book and the locked room and of the constable’s conclusion that none but my father could have stolen the gems. “On my life, he could not have done the crime, Padroné, not even to feed his children. It was my mother, not he, who sold me.”

  Child-selling had not been a crime, of course. Not then. Sandro had made it so because of what was done to me.

  “My father’s work, helping to implement the law to keep this city prosperous, strong, and noble, is his life’s honor. To lose his hand would kill his soul, and his family would starve…”

  When my telling was done, I begged Lady Fortune keep Sandro silent. He knew me. Trusted me. Loved me, so he said and I believed. He would know this pleading was as hard a thing as I had done since the night I was brought to him from the Moon House—a gift from his degenerate uncle—and I asked him please not to peel off my skin once he had taken his pleasure with me. He had not forced me that night or ever. So let him gift me this without questioning. Did I attempt a lie, he would surely know. Omissions—like the matter of my father’s confession to this crime—were not lies. And the truth …