5 Odore di Ratto (Smells Like a Rat)
Freedomday, Hare Moon 7
Daniela found Francesco fuming in the still dewy grass, her letter clutched in his hand. He looked taller and broader than normal to Daniela, who inched toward him in bedclothes and bare feet. “You ungrateful little wretch,” he screamed, closing the distance faster than she would have liked. Quick thinking didn’t present a solution before he grabbed the front of her robe and threw her to the ground. “What have you to say for yourself?”
Shocking fear inhibited speech as much as it did breath. “Francesco, it isn’t…”
“Isn’t what? A disgrace, the likes of which might send Father to an early grave?” He struck her with his open hand and knelt above, pinning her to the wet ground. “How could you be so stupid? You aren’t anything to a man like Lorenzo!”
Daniela wailed as he shook her. “Stop, Francesco, please!”
“Signor,” Luca begged, “you’re hurting her.” He stood helpless, watching.
“She’s lucky I haven’t killed her!” He shouted, fury flashing in his dark eyes.
“Francesco!” Andrea cried, running to join the conflict underway in as public a place as could be found at Casa Fiordelise. “What are you doing?”
The white-haired steward, Tomaso, held Marietta’s elbow, gawking from the door of the manor. Marietta wrung a dishtowel in her hands, pain and fear mixed on her wrinkled face.
Francesco stood and backed away a step. He shoved the letter into Andrea’s hand and said, “See for yourself. Our little sister has been busy.”
Luca helped Daniela rise. “Are you alright?” he asked in a whisper.
Daniela wiped blood from her lip. “Andrea,” Daniela tried to explain, but he held up his hand to keep her from speaking. She shut her mouth and waited for him to read her shameful words.
When he was finished, he crumpled the paper and put it in his pocket. Glaring, he said, “Talk to Stella and do something about this now. Father can never know, no matter what.”
Francesco grabbed Daniela’s arm and dragged her. “Wait,” she cried. “It isn’t true.”
He stopped, whipping her around to face him. “Explain,” he growled through clenched teeth.
“It’s a lie I invented to give Lorenzo a reason to marry me.”
“You mean carrying his child is a lie,” Andrea said. “You’re still sleeping with him.”
Daniela studied the mud on her hem. Logic, damn. “I love him,” she said, her voice weak.
Francesco’s tongue struck vicious as his sword. “He wouldn’t marry you even if you were pregnant. He’d just do the same as he does with Bette Zavatera, pay a monthly allowance for the raising of the child and go on without another thought.”
Warm cheeks blazed hotter as his words sank in. “Santina Zavatera is Lorenzo’s daughter?”
Francesco shrugged. “He thinks so, anyway.”
“The Navaro men have enough money to do as they please,” Andrea said, his voice less angry, almost sympathetic. “You’re not the first young lady beguiled by that lot. Lorenzo’s brother pays for three by-blows and their father wasn’t any better.”
“Lorenzo’s brother is a priest!” Daniela shrieked.
Andrea’s uncomfortable grimace did little to ease the stark truth. “Priest or not, rules are different for the wealthy,” he said. “Money makes any problem go away.”
“I thought he meant to marry me,” she whispered. With every passing moment, her world felt smaller and less stable. A once proud, sprawling tree that seemed to stretch to the heavens, her dreams were coming dangerously close to being felled by small axe nicks. “He confessed his love and I believed him.” Luca’s bony arm around her shoulder may have been the final stroke. Face in her hands, she muttered, “What have I done?” Clouds rolling in from the south couldn’t have dampened Daniela’s spirit further. Even a cold spring rain wouldn’t wash away her shame.
*
A blustery wind tore through the streets of Kanassa, kicking up dust from the surrounding square. Vincenzo stared out from the scaffold at his adoring fans. Perhaps it was vain to think they were there just to see him. A city guardsman in a steel breastplate and red cape led a balding man up to the gallows and Vincenzo took a step forward, his chain clanking.
The Lucinda of the Order of Divines, high priestess and embodiment of peace, solemnly waited for the city officials to announce the prisoner’s name. Her eyes never rose from the ground. Vincenzo imagined presiding over executions must be difficult for a woman whose very presence could stop a fight in the street. He’d seen it happen once, with the previous Lucinda. Both sets of duelers sheathed their weapons before the rotund old woman in the white frock, and walked away upon her command. The new one was pretty. Maybe worth dropping a sword for.
“Johannes de Piro,” the city official said, “you have been found guilty of horse-thieving and sentenced to death. May the gods have mercy on your soul.”
The fair-haired young woman stepped forward and took the old man’s hand. Speaking gently, she swung her censer over Johannes, the words intended only for the soon to be departed. After her brief prayer in the language of the clergy, the hangman fitted his noose over Johannes’ neck and the priestess stepped away. Vincenzo squinted, scanning empty rooftops. The doge’s bowmen were missing. No sign of his friends, either. He couldn’t blame them, really.
“Please,” the prisoner begged. “I’m no thief.”
Words falling on deaf ears. Two missing fingers on Johannes’ right hand marked him as a refugee from the war and implied his low status. Perhaps poverty drove him to crime.
Maybe he was innocent. It didn’t matter. Tears leaked from Johannes’ hazy, age-wrinkled eyes. In a world where the innocent were put to death without proper trials and the powerful bent laws to their wills, there was little incentive to walk a righteous path.
The hangman kicked the stool and as Johannes strangled, the crowd cheered. None even had the decency to pull his dangling feet.
Vincenzo took another step forward with the help of a guard’s booted foot. “You’re next.”
He wiped fresh spittle from his face, shackles rubbing on raw wrists. A city guard holding a poleaxe grabbed his elbow and shoved him forward, toward another stool.
His feet refused to move. The poleaxe arced around until its sharp point poked into his back. Blood loss or strangulation—not much of a choice. Even a well-placed blade could take a long time to kill. Hanging appeared the quicker way. He stepped upon the stool.
“Vincenzo Gritti,” the official cried so all could hear, “you have been found guilty of attempted murder and sentenced to death. May the gods have mercy on your soul.”
“I prefer they have mercy on my neck,” Vincenzo muttered, and was rewarded with another gob of spit landing on his ragged leather doublet, a garment that had suffered many patches.
The Lucinda stepped forward and spoke softly in words he couldn’t understand, but then she slipped something small and cold into his hand and stepped back, reciting more Irdun words of blessing or forgiveness. He had a hard time listening, between Johannes’ strangled gurgles and feeling the hunk of metal in his fingers. Identifying it as a key, he suppressed a smile. Perhaps his friends were there after all.
The hangman fitted the noose and Vincenzo took a shaky breath. For all his years and the narrow scrapes he’d come away from, he flinched when the rope tightened. The sort of feeling that burns its way into a man’s mind. He fought to keep his hands steady, in case he might need them. There would be no time for fumbling fingers.
The hangman kicked the stool.
Vincenzo dropped, rope biting into his skin as his weight tightened the noose. Pressure crushed against his neck muscles and he fought the urge to open his mouth to gasp for air. He kept tense, though it hurt. Seconds could mean the difference between life and death.
The hangman beside him crumpled to the floor, wailing, a black arrow jutting from his back. He fell against Vincenzo’s leg and the rope began to swing. Though the motion wasn’t much, Vincenzo’s nostrils flared and his ears throbbed with trapped blood. Sounds blended and time slowed. The cloud-covered sky that earlier seemed dim, took on a blinding brightness.
A tear leaked down his cheek.
Darkness fringed his vision.
He closed his eyes.
A dull metallic clank sounded, echoing through his mind. Had he been hit by something? Vibrations traveled through the rope, grating against raw flesh. He chanced a peek upward, rolling his eyes. The Lucinda, a knife in her hand, sawed at the rope. Seconds felt like minutes as she worked, each pass with the dagger blade stretching Vincenzo’s withered hope to its limit. A voice shouted from nearby, “Hurry, Cassandra. We can’t kill them all!”
The rope creaked, Vincenzo at its mercy as it gave way. His knees hit the scaffold and he dropped forward, chin landing with jarring force. Lungs burned, drawing in air and dust without discrimination. He rolled onto his side, catching flashes of color and light but unable to interpret the quick movements. People were running.
Left hand still clasping the priestess’ gift, he struggled with the small key, trying to feel for the right end. With weak fingers, he jammed the prongs into his right shackle.
When the brightness faded and the world came back into focus, Claudia was there, standing over him while he shed his shackles and gained his breath.
In silk skirts, she swung a well-worn rapier, his sword. Blood flecked her stockings and left sleeve. “Get up!” She grabbed his arm while she wrenched her blade from a fallen guard. “We have to go. Now!”
Vincenzo needed no prodding, only a moment to get his bearing. The Lucinda swung her censer in a wide circle, a makeshift flail but apparently effective as it struck a nearby guard, identifying the hollow metallic impact he’d heard earlier.
The doge’s men, in steel breastplates, encroached. Three against eight? Vincenzo liked the odds. Not the worst he’d seen. At least they weren’t well-trained Edrian Guards.
Claudia ripped off her ties, swinging her weighty skirt like a swordsman’s cape. Catching a blade in the swirling fabric, she disarmed one opponent while she slashed at another.
Vincenzo dodged an incoming thrust. Though still recovering from his near-death, instincts for survival kicked in—at least enough to remember how to kill. He picked up the soldier’s dropped sword. With a few well-timed mediatajo, cuts from the elbow rather than the shoulder, Vincenzo drew blood from an opponent’s left arm. Shouts from the far end of the crowd told him more guardsmen were arriving as alarmed spectators fled the bloody scene. Claudia threw her skirt in a too-close guard’s face and said, “Time to run.”
His accomplices ran through an alley, Claudia leading. A handful of guards charged after them, the rest cut off by the panicking crowd. “We’ll make our way out through the slums,” she instructed. “I have horses waiting near the old wall.”
Vincenzo thanked his luck the weather was so awful. Unburdened by armor, they darted through narrow alleys and scaled a rock wall with the aid of an old rain barrel. Their pursuers fell further behind at every obstacle.
A mile from the gallows, Claudia bolted between two tall shops butting up to a familiar section of city wall. “We need to cross here,” she said, panting.
Vincenzo doubled over and leaned against the brick wall, unable to catch his breath. Having made the climb dozens of times, he indicated the Lucinda’s flowing robe. “Cut it.”
Claudia drew a dagger and stripped away the hazardous fabric. The priestess kept her eyes fixed on Vincenzo, perhaps expecting something more than what she saw. He tended to have that effect on people, his reputation exceeding reality. “There are handholds every few feet,” he said in a gravelly voice. “Follow Claudia and I’ll be right behind you.”
Claudia tossed away the fabric and climbed up the wall like a spider, calling down to Cassandra. “Up and then left a few feet. There’s a broken brick you can use to pull yourself up.” With Claudia coaching, they were soon over the wall and making their way west.
In a secluded stable, three horses waited, tethered and ready for them to make good their escape. With fresh mounts and homespun wool cloaks serving as disguises, the three fled through the slums and out the crumbling walls of old Kanassa, bypassing the city gates.
Vincenzo reached into his shirt and drew out a divine pendant. He lifted the baby on the bloody cord over his neck and kissed it, replacing it in his doublet pocket. Whether the divines took personal interest in individuals of not, Vincenzo was glad for his freedom.
It was nearly nightfall, when they approached an old cottage outside the border town of Tivisio. A young boy with a limp met them outside a dilapidated stable and took the reins as the trio dismounted. Vincenzo gave him a pat on the shoulder and grabbed the boy’s silk sleeve with his fingertips. “What’s this?” he asked, drawing out his words. “I’m away a couple months and she’s got you wearing my clothes?”
The boy’s eyes went wide.
Vincenzo winked and ruffled the boy’s hair. He pointed at the shirt and then at the puny chest within. “It looks good on you.”
The boy smiled and fake punched Vincenzo in the arm.
“Let him get back to work,” Claudia said, evidently not appreciating the light mood. She turned and strode toward the cottage.
The Lucinda scanned the yard and cottage, perhaps reconsidering her decision to get out of bed that morning. Vincenzo caught the priestess’ hesitant glance in his direction and said, “I guess we’d better head in and see her.” He held his hand out to be polite. “After you?”
When Vincenzo entered the cottage, Merciless Doll awaited, looking every bit an upper-class woman in her tailored dress and matronly veil. “Sorry we’re late,” he said. “We had a little trouble making our polite excuses. The party was almost too much fun to leave.”
She didn’t move. Her weighty gaze and sustained silence was a warmer welcome than he anticipated, or deserved. Vincenzo scratched the back of his head and decided against attempting further humor. She wasn’t in the mood and frankly, neither was he. “I suppose I can save you from having to say, ‘I told you so.’” He stared at her feet, unable to apologize to her stony face. “I was wrong and you were right.”
Rather than reply, she swept graying locks back over her shoulder and closed her eyes. Vincenzo had known Merciless Doll two decades. He’d witnessed her take punches on the chin with stoic dignity and shed tears over the bodies of the slain. She couldn’t deceive him even with silent calm. She was livid. Rather than unleash the tirade he alone had earned, she turned on Claudia. “What took you so long to get here?”
Claudia raised her chin before she responded. “I couldn’t get into the prison. They had him locked up tighter than a virgin’s knickers and it turned out I wasn’t the hangman’s type.”
Merciless Doll’s eyes became impatient slits. “Well, you’re a plain bird, aren’t you? You couldn’t seduce your way into a monastery. That’s why I sent Cassandra.”
Vincenzo pitied Claudia, who he thought rather pretty, even in comparison to the beautiful priestess. Short, dark hair and an awkward smile disguised a woman as deadly as she was coy.
“It turns out she wasn’t his type either,” Claudia said, failing to hide the bitterness in her voice. “Perhaps Thorne would have been a better choice.”
“At least you accomplished your task, albeit sloppily.” Merciless Doll drew a cloak around her shoulders. “Cassandra, take the boy and fetch Thorne and Laich from the river. I want them standing guard here tonight. Vincenzo, get yourself cleaned up, you reek like a dungeon.”
She pointed a finger at Claudia. “And you. Get ready to move. We leave at first light.”
When she left the cottage, taking her pent up tension with her, everyone seemed to breathe a little easier. Vincenzo made his way to his room, where hideous flowered wallpaper greeted him, reminding him it wasn’t a prison. Water awaited on the table. He stripped off his doublet and shirt and ran a wet towel over his face. Working to scrub away every trace of his ordeal, he avoided tender rope burns. He put down the discolored towel and leaned against the open window, watching the darkening sky. Never in his life had he felt more content to see a sunset.
Vincenzo closed his eyes and hung his head. The scent of wet earth drifted in through the window overlooking a swollen river. As far as safe houses went, the cottage was his favorite, surrounded by thick forest and separated from Tivisio by a vacant estate seized during the war. The only things within two miles of the cottage were fallow fields and a small village, containing a chapel with a single priest. A shuffle sounded behind him and Vincenzo’s eyes opened. Claudia leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed, watching him. “Are you alright?”
“I’ve been better.”
She approached, eyes on his rope burns. “I thought I’d return this to you.” She held out his sword. “I kept it warm while you were gone.”
Vincenzo accepted his rapier and placed it grip down, against the wall.
“I tried to get you out of prison. Cassandra too. We just couldn’t.”
He nodded. A frown marred her pretty face more than dried soldiers’ blood still evident around its edges. No need to tell him how much she suffered on his behalf, her face said it all.
A sigh escaped his lips. “I took a risk that didn’t pay off and got myself arrested. You could have left me to rot.”
She stepped into him. “Of course I couldn’t,” she whispered.
When her lips met his, Vincenzo pushed her away, anticipating a knife about to slide between his ribs. Hurt shone on her face and she turned to leave.
He grabbed her arm. “It’s been a hell of a day, Claudia.”
She closed her eyes and frowned. “The thought of leaving you to die never crossed my mind,” she said. “Yvette’s either.”
He pulled her back into his arms. Though she reeked of blood and horses, he held her, glad to be away from Kanassa. He turned her chin up and brought his mouth back to hers. There were worse things than spending the night in the arms of a courtesan with an affinity for blades.
“I should go,” she said, breaking off their kiss.
“You could stay.” He slid his hand around to the small of her back to hold her in place.
“You heard the old lady. She wants me to make sure everything’s ready for our early departure. I know better than to cross Yvette when she’s upset.”
“She’s upset with me, not you. Besides, what’s an hour’s delay?” Vincenzo took her hand.
“An hour? In that case, why bother?”
Vincenzo paused. “Begging your pardon but I just got cut down off the gallows. I’m not in top form right now…”
A devilish grin crossed her face.
He smiled wide, showing too many teeth. “Oh you’ll pay for that!”
“I look forward to it,” she purred as he pushed her backwards onto the straw mattress.
Vincenzo rose to his elbows. “Earlier, I pondered how this might be my worst birthday ever.”
The fingers of her left hand already had his trousers unbuttoned. “And now?”
“It could be redeemed.”
*
Yvette hurried to a dilapidated rural church just up the hill from the village of Tivisio. A light burning within told her the resident priest was still awake, so she rapped. Savio Ventura opened the door. “Signora Capodevin?” His brows furrowed. “I expected you three nights ago.”
“There was a delay.”
He shifted to look past her, age-weakened eyes searching the darkness. “Come in,” he said, his sleeve sweeping aside to usher her in. “Has something happened to our Lucinda?”
Yvette scanned the room, a force of habit not easily suppressed. A lamp sat upon the desk near a single dirty plate and empty teacup. The embers in the fire burned low. “No, she’s safe.”
“I’m relieved to hear it. I grew worried when she didn’t arrive as expected.”
Yvette pulled her cloak down away from her throat, its weight suffocating in the warm room. “Her boat sailed this morning. I need time to make other arrangements.”
His bushy brows pressed together and gaunt features pulled taut with his frown. “She’s not coming? Then, why are you here?” He rubbed his hands, one over the other, fidgeting.
“I need to send word to our contacts in Kanassa.”
Savio Ventura scuttled around his desk and plopped into his chair. He took up a pen and pulled a sheet of paper from the drawer. “What shall I write?” Yvette stared silently at the blank page. The list of things she couldn’t say grew by the day. “And whom shall I address?”
Yvette’s mouth opened but no words emerged. Concern of betrayal haunting her, she wrung her hands and considered how much to reveal, even to a priest Cassandra trusted with her life. A lie formed in her mind. “Tell Savio Carlo the Lucinda is staying in Tillio until she can leave.”
“But there’s no Divine chapel in Tillio,” the old man spluttered. “After the Radan chapel burned two years ago, the townsfolk drove the savio and lucindae off!”
“Then no one will be looking for her there,” Yvette snapped back. She didn’t need reminding what happened to the rural chapel and its inhabitants. Twenty-four graves lay around the burned out foundation of Tillio’s old Radan chapel, and one, far removed, sat under a sprawling tree next to a deer run. A tragedy still mourned by the residents of the small town, and steeped in rumors and superstition. “I’m sorry to have wasted your time.”
“That wasn’t the message you wanted to send, was it?” the savio asked when Yvette’s fingers touched the doorknob. She turned back to face him. He stepped toward her, saying, “If you believe it unsafe to send a letter, let me personally take your message.”
Paranoia reared its head, a mad dog ready to bite any outstretched hand. “I’m out of money.”
The old man’s shoulders slumped and his white brows arced with his smile. “Our holy Lucinda asked me to help you. Keeping my word and seeing her to safety is reward enough.”
In a city where every service rendered demanded a vail, however small, anyone who offered to take a risk for free made Yvette’s hackles rise. Vows of poverty be damned, even the righteous took bribes without hesitation. Light eyes surrounded by lines twinkled in the lamplight. “Tell me who you need to contact in the city, and I will gladly relay your message.”
Perhaps he was just too sincere in his plea. Yvette’s mind prickled with suspicion. “I’m sorry, Savio Ventura. Not this time.” Yvette left the chapel.
Freedomday, Hare Moon 7
Daniela found Francesco fuming in the still dewy grass, her letter clutched in his hand. He looked taller and broader than normal to Daniela, who inched toward him in bedclothes and bare feet. “You ungrateful little wretch,” he screamed, closing the distance faster than she would have liked. Quick thinking didn’t present a solution before he grabbed the front of her robe and threw her to the ground. “What have you to say for yourself?”
Shocking fear inhibited speech as much as it did breath. “Francesco, it isn’t…”
“Isn’t what? A disgrace, the likes of which might send Father to an early grave?” He struck her with his open hand and knelt above, pinning her to the wet ground. “How could you be so stupid? You aren’t anything to a man like Lorenzo!”
Daniela wailed as he shook her. “Stop, Francesco, please!”
“Signor,” Luca begged, “you’re hurting her.” He stood helpless, watching.
“She’s lucky I haven’t killed her!” He shouted, fury flashing in his dark eyes.
“Francesco!” Andrea cried, running to join the conflict underway in as public a place as could be found at Casa Fiordelise. “What are you doing?”
The white-haired steward, Tomaso, held Marietta’s elbow, gawking from the door of the manor. Marietta wrung a dishtowel in her hands, pain and fear mixed on her wrinkled face.
Francesco stood and backed away a step. He shoved the letter into Andrea’s hand and said, “See for yourself. Our little sister has been busy.”
Luca helped Daniela rise. “Are you alright?” he asked in a whisper.
Daniela wiped blood from her lip. “Andrea,” Daniela tried to explain, but he held up his hand to keep her from speaking. She shut her mouth and waited for him to read her shameful words.
When he was finished, he crumpled the paper and put it in his pocket. Glaring, he said, “Talk to Stella and do something about this now. Father can never know, no matter what.”
Francesco grabbed Daniela’s arm and dragged her. “Wait,” she cried. “It isn’t true.”
He stopped, whipping her around to face him. “Explain,” he growled through clenched teeth.
“It’s a lie I invented to give Lorenzo a reason to marry me.”
“You mean carrying his child is a lie,” Andrea said. “You’re still sleeping with him.”
Daniela studied the mud on her hem. Logic, damn. “I love him,” she said, her voice weak.
Francesco’s tongue struck vicious as his sword. “He wouldn’t marry you even if you were pregnant. He’d just do the same as he does with Bette Zavatera, pay a monthly allowance for the raising of the child and go on without another thought.”
Warm cheeks blazed hotter as his words sank in. “Santina Zavatera is Lorenzo’s daughter?”
Francesco shrugged. “He thinks so, anyway.”
“The Navaro men have enough money to do as they please,” Andrea said, his voice less angry, almost sympathetic. “You’re not the first young lady beguiled by that lot. Lorenzo’s brother pays for three by-blows and their father wasn’t any better.”
“Lorenzo’s brother is a priest!” Daniela shrieked.
Andrea’s uncomfortable grimace did little to ease the stark truth. “Priest or not, rules are different for the wealthy,” he said. “Money makes any problem go away.”
“I thought he meant to marry me,” she whispered. With every passing moment, her world felt smaller and less stable. A once proud, sprawling tree that seemed to stretch to the heavens, her dreams were coming dangerously close to being felled by small axe nicks. “He confessed his love and I believed him.” Luca’s bony arm around her shoulder may have been the final stroke. Face in her hands, she muttered, “What have I done?” Clouds rolling in from the south couldn’t have dampened Daniela’s spirit further. Even a cold spring rain wouldn’t wash away her shame.
*
A blustery wind tore through the streets of Kanassa, kicking up dust from the surrounding square. Vincenzo stared out from the scaffold at his adoring fans. Perhaps it was vain to think they were there just to see him. A city guardsman in a steel breastplate and red cape led a balding man up to the gallows and Vincenzo took a step forward, his chain clanking.
The Lucinda of the Order of Divines, high priestess and embodiment of peace, solemnly waited for the city officials to announce the prisoner’s name. Her eyes never rose from the ground. Vincenzo imagined presiding over executions must be difficult for a woman whose very presence could stop a fight in the street. He’d seen it happen once, with the previous Lucinda. Both sets of duelers sheathed their weapons before the rotund old woman in the white frock, and walked away upon her command. The new one was pretty. Maybe worth dropping a sword for.
“Johannes de Piro,” the city official said, “you have been found guilty of horse-thieving and sentenced to death. May the gods have mercy on your soul.”
The fair-haired young woman stepped forward and took the old man’s hand. Speaking gently, she swung her censer over Johannes, the words intended only for the soon to be departed. After her brief prayer in the language of the clergy, the hangman fitted his noose over Johannes’ neck and the priestess stepped away. Vincenzo squinted, scanning empty rooftops. The doge’s bowmen were missing. No sign of his friends, either. He couldn’t blame them, really.
“Please,” the prisoner begged. “I’m no thief.”
Words falling on deaf ears. Two missing fingers on Johannes’ right hand marked him as a refugee from the war and implied his low status. Perhaps poverty drove him to crime.
Maybe he was innocent. It didn’t matter. Tears leaked from Johannes’ hazy, age-wrinkled eyes. In a world where the innocent were put to death without proper trials and the powerful bent laws to their wills, there was little incentive to walk a righteous path.
The hangman kicked the stool and as Johannes strangled, the crowd cheered. None even had the decency to pull his dangling feet.
Vincenzo took another step forward with the help of a guard’s booted foot. “You’re next.”
He wiped fresh spittle from his face, shackles rubbing on raw wrists. A city guard holding a poleaxe grabbed his elbow and shoved him forward, toward another stool.
His feet refused to move. The poleaxe arced around until its sharp point poked into his back. Blood loss or strangulation—not much of a choice. Even a well-placed blade could take a long time to kill. Hanging appeared the quicker way. He stepped upon the stool.
“Vincenzo Gritti,” the official cried so all could hear, “you have been found guilty of attempted murder and sentenced to death. May the gods have mercy on your soul.”
“I prefer they have mercy on my neck,” Vincenzo muttered, and was rewarded with another gob of spit landing on his ragged leather doublet, a garment that had suffered many patches.
The Lucinda stepped forward and spoke softly in words he couldn’t understand, but then she slipped something small and cold into his hand and stepped back, reciting more Irdun words of blessing or forgiveness. He had a hard time listening, between Johannes’ strangled gurgles and feeling the hunk of metal in his fingers. Identifying it as a key, he suppressed a smile. Perhaps his friends were there after all.
The hangman fitted the noose and Vincenzo took a shaky breath. For all his years and the narrow scrapes he’d come away from, he flinched when the rope tightened. The sort of feeling that burns its way into a man’s mind. He fought to keep his hands steady, in case he might need them. There would be no time for fumbling fingers.
The hangman kicked the stool.
Vincenzo dropped, rope biting into his skin as his weight tightened the noose. Pressure crushed against his neck muscles and he fought the urge to open his mouth to gasp for air. He kept tense, though it hurt. Seconds could mean the difference between life and death.
The hangman beside him crumpled to the floor, wailing, a black arrow jutting from his back. He fell against Vincenzo’s leg and the rope began to swing. Though the motion wasn’t much, Vincenzo’s nostrils flared and his ears throbbed with trapped blood. Sounds blended and time slowed. The cloud-covered sky that earlier seemed dim, took on a blinding brightness.
A tear leaked down his cheek.
Darkness fringed his vision.
He closed his eyes.
A dull metallic clank sounded, echoing through his mind. Had he been hit by something? Vibrations traveled through the rope, grating against raw flesh. He chanced a peek upward, rolling his eyes. The Lucinda, a knife in her hand, sawed at the rope. Seconds felt like minutes as she worked, each pass with the dagger blade stretching Vincenzo’s withered hope to its limit. A voice shouted from nearby, “Hurry, Cassandra. We can’t kill them all!”
The rope creaked, Vincenzo at its mercy as it gave way. His knees hit the scaffold and he dropped forward, chin landing with jarring force. Lungs burned, drawing in air and dust without discrimination. He rolled onto his side, catching flashes of color and light but unable to interpret the quick movements. People were running.
Left hand still clasping the priestess’ gift, he struggled with the small key, trying to feel for the right end. With weak fingers, he jammed the prongs into his right shackle.
When the brightness faded and the world came back into focus, Claudia was there, standing over him while he shed his shackles and gained his breath.
In silk skirts, she swung a well-worn rapier, his sword. Blood flecked her stockings and left sleeve. “Get up!” She grabbed his arm while she wrenched her blade from a fallen guard. “We have to go. Now!”
Vincenzo needed no prodding, only a moment to get his bearing. The Lucinda swung her censer in a wide circle, a makeshift flail but apparently effective as it struck a nearby guard, identifying the hollow metallic impact he’d heard earlier.
The doge’s men, in steel breastplates, encroached. Three against eight? Vincenzo liked the odds. Not the worst he’d seen. At least they weren’t well-trained Edrian Guards.
Claudia ripped off her ties, swinging her weighty skirt like a swordsman’s cape. Catching a blade in the swirling fabric, she disarmed one opponent while she slashed at another.
Vincenzo dodged an incoming thrust. Though still recovering from his near-death, instincts for survival kicked in—at least enough to remember how to kill. He picked up the soldier’s dropped sword. With a few well-timed mediatajo, cuts from the elbow rather than the shoulder, Vincenzo drew blood from an opponent’s left arm. Shouts from the far end of the crowd told him more guardsmen were arriving as alarmed spectators fled the bloody scene. Claudia threw her skirt in a too-close guard’s face and said, “Time to run.”
His accomplices ran through an alley, Claudia leading. A handful of guards charged after them, the rest cut off by the panicking crowd. “We’ll make our way out through the slums,” she instructed. “I have horses waiting near the old wall.”
Vincenzo thanked his luck the weather was so awful. Unburdened by armor, they darted through narrow alleys and scaled a rock wall with the aid of an old rain barrel. Their pursuers fell further behind at every obstacle.
A mile from the gallows, Claudia bolted between two tall shops butting up to a familiar section of city wall. “We need to cross here,” she said, panting.
Vincenzo doubled over and leaned against the brick wall, unable to catch his breath. Having made the climb dozens of times, he indicated the Lucinda’s flowing robe. “Cut it.”
Claudia drew a dagger and stripped away the hazardous fabric. The priestess kept her eyes fixed on Vincenzo, perhaps expecting something more than what she saw. He tended to have that effect on people, his reputation exceeding reality. “There are handholds every few feet,” he said in a gravelly voice. “Follow Claudia and I’ll be right behind you.”
Claudia tossed away the fabric and climbed up the wall like a spider, calling down to Cassandra. “Up and then left a few feet. There’s a broken brick you can use to pull yourself up.” With Claudia coaching, they were soon over the wall and making their way west.
In a secluded stable, three horses waited, tethered and ready for them to make good their escape. With fresh mounts and homespun wool cloaks serving as disguises, the three fled through the slums and out the crumbling walls of old Kanassa, bypassing the city gates.
Vincenzo reached into his shirt and drew out a divine pendant. He lifted the baby on the bloody cord over his neck and kissed it, replacing it in his doublet pocket. Whether the divines took personal interest in individuals of not, Vincenzo was glad for his freedom.
It was nearly nightfall, when they approached an old cottage outside the border town of Tivisio. A young boy with a limp met them outside a dilapidated stable and took the reins as the trio dismounted. Vincenzo gave him a pat on the shoulder and grabbed the boy’s silk sleeve with his fingertips. “What’s this?” he asked, drawing out his words. “I’m away a couple months and she’s got you wearing my clothes?”
The boy’s eyes went wide.
Vincenzo winked and ruffled the boy’s hair. He pointed at the shirt and then at the puny chest within. “It looks good on you.”
The boy smiled and fake punched Vincenzo in the arm.
“Let him get back to work,” Claudia said, evidently not appreciating the light mood. She turned and strode toward the cottage.
The Lucinda scanned the yard and cottage, perhaps reconsidering her decision to get out of bed that morning. Vincenzo caught the priestess’ hesitant glance in his direction and said, “I guess we’d better head in and see her.” He held his hand out to be polite. “After you?”
When Vincenzo entered the cottage, Merciless Doll awaited, looking every bit an upper-class woman in her tailored dress and matronly veil. “Sorry we’re late,” he said. “We had a little trouble making our polite excuses. The party was almost too much fun to leave.”
She didn’t move. Her weighty gaze and sustained silence was a warmer welcome than he anticipated, or deserved. Vincenzo scratched the back of his head and decided against attempting further humor. She wasn’t in the mood and frankly, neither was he. “I suppose I can save you from having to say, ‘I told you so.’” He stared at her feet, unable to apologize to her stony face. “I was wrong and you were right.”
Rather than reply, she swept graying locks back over her shoulder and closed her eyes. Vincenzo had known Merciless Doll two decades. He’d witnessed her take punches on the chin with stoic dignity and shed tears over the bodies of the slain. She couldn’t deceive him even with silent calm. She was livid. Rather than unleash the tirade he alone had earned, she turned on Claudia. “What took you so long to get here?”
Claudia raised her chin before she responded. “I couldn’t get into the prison. They had him locked up tighter than a virgin’s knickers and it turned out I wasn’t the hangman’s type.”
Merciless Doll’s eyes became impatient slits. “Well, you’re a plain bird, aren’t you? You couldn’t seduce your way into a monastery. That’s why I sent Cassandra.”
Vincenzo pitied Claudia, who he thought rather pretty, even in comparison to the beautiful priestess. Short, dark hair and an awkward smile disguised a woman as deadly as she was coy.
“It turns out she wasn’t his type either,” Claudia said, failing to hide the bitterness in her voice. “Perhaps Thorne would have been a better choice.”
“At least you accomplished your task, albeit sloppily.” Merciless Doll drew a cloak around her shoulders. “Cassandra, take the boy and fetch Thorne and Laich from the river. I want them standing guard here tonight. Vincenzo, get yourself cleaned up, you reek like a dungeon.”
She pointed a finger at Claudia. “And you. Get ready to move. We leave at first light.”
When she left the cottage, taking her pent up tension with her, everyone seemed to breathe a little easier. Vincenzo made his way to his room, where hideous flowered wallpaper greeted him, reminding him it wasn’t a prison. Water awaited on the table. He stripped off his doublet and shirt and ran a wet towel over his face. Working to scrub away every trace of his ordeal, he avoided tender rope burns. He put down the discolored towel and leaned against the open window, watching the darkening sky. Never in his life had he felt more content to see a sunset.
Vincenzo closed his eyes and hung his head. The scent of wet earth drifted in through the window overlooking a swollen river. As far as safe houses went, the cottage was his favorite, surrounded by thick forest and separated from Tivisio by a vacant estate seized during the war. The only things within two miles of the cottage were fallow fields and a small village, containing a chapel with a single priest. A shuffle sounded behind him and Vincenzo’s eyes opened. Claudia leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed, watching him. “Are you alright?”
“I’ve been better.”
She approached, eyes on his rope burns. “I thought I’d return this to you.” She held out his sword. “I kept it warm while you were gone.”
Vincenzo accepted his rapier and placed it grip down, against the wall.
“I tried to get you out of prison. Cassandra too. We just couldn’t.”
He nodded. A frown marred her pretty face more than dried soldiers’ blood still evident around its edges. No need to tell him how much she suffered on his behalf, her face said it all.
A sigh escaped his lips. “I took a risk that didn’t pay off and got myself arrested. You could have left me to rot.”
She stepped into him. “Of course I couldn’t,” she whispered.
When her lips met his, Vincenzo pushed her away, anticipating a knife about to slide between his ribs. Hurt shone on her face and she turned to leave.
He grabbed her arm. “It’s been a hell of a day, Claudia.”
She closed her eyes and frowned. “The thought of leaving you to die never crossed my mind,” she said. “Yvette’s either.”
He pulled her back into his arms. Though she reeked of blood and horses, he held her, glad to be away from Kanassa. He turned her chin up and brought his mouth back to hers. There were worse things than spending the night in the arms of a courtesan with an affinity for blades.
“I should go,” she said, breaking off their kiss.
“You could stay.” He slid his hand around to the small of her back to hold her in place.
“You heard the old lady. She wants me to make sure everything’s ready for our early departure. I know better than to cross Yvette when she’s upset.”
“She’s upset with me, not you. Besides, what’s an hour’s delay?” Vincenzo took her hand.
“An hour? In that case, why bother?”
Vincenzo paused. “Begging your pardon but I just got cut down off the gallows. I’m not in top form right now…”
A devilish grin crossed her face.
He smiled wide, showing too many teeth. “Oh you’ll pay for that!”
“I look forward to it,” she purred as he pushed her backwards onto the straw mattress.
Vincenzo rose to his elbows. “Earlier, I pondered how this might be my worst birthday ever.”
The fingers of her left hand already had his trousers unbuttoned. “And now?”
“It could be redeemed.”
*
Yvette hurried to a dilapidated rural church just up the hill from the village of Tivisio. A light burning within told her the resident priest was still awake, so she rapped. Savio Ventura opened the door. “Signora Capodevin?” His brows furrowed. “I expected you three nights ago.”
“There was a delay.”
He shifted to look past her, age-weakened eyes searching the darkness. “Come in,” he said, his sleeve sweeping aside to usher her in. “Has something happened to our Lucinda?”
Yvette scanned the room, a force of habit not easily suppressed. A lamp sat upon the desk near a single dirty plate and empty teacup. The embers in the fire burned low. “No, she’s safe.”
“I’m relieved to hear it. I grew worried when she didn’t arrive as expected.”
Yvette pulled her cloak down away from her throat, its weight suffocating in the warm room. “Her boat sailed this morning. I need time to make other arrangements.”
His bushy brows pressed together and gaunt features pulled taut with his frown. “She’s not coming? Then, why are you here?” He rubbed his hands, one over the other, fidgeting.
“I need to send word to our contacts in Kanassa.”
Savio Ventura scuttled around his desk and plopped into his chair. He took up a pen and pulled a sheet of paper from the drawer. “What shall I write?” Yvette stared silently at the blank page. The list of things she couldn’t say grew by the day. “And whom shall I address?”
Yvette’s mouth opened but no words emerged. Concern of betrayal haunting her, she wrung her hands and considered how much to reveal, even to a priest Cassandra trusted with her life. A lie formed in her mind. “Tell Savio Carlo the Lucinda is staying in Tillio until she can leave.”
“But there’s no Divine chapel in Tillio,” the old man spluttered. “After the Radan chapel burned two years ago, the townsfolk drove the savio and lucindae off!”
“Then no one will be looking for her there,” Yvette snapped back. She didn’t need reminding what happened to the rural chapel and its inhabitants. Twenty-four graves lay around the burned out foundation of Tillio’s old Radan chapel, and one, far removed, sat under a sprawling tree next to a deer run. A tragedy still mourned by the residents of the small town, and steeped in rumors and superstition. “I’m sorry to have wasted your time.”
“That wasn’t the message you wanted to send, was it?” the savio asked when Yvette’s fingers touched the doorknob. She turned back to face him. He stepped toward her, saying, “If you believe it unsafe to send a letter, let me personally take your message.”
Paranoia reared its head, a mad dog ready to bite any outstretched hand. “I’m out of money.”
The old man’s shoulders slumped and his white brows arced with his smile. “Our holy Lucinda asked me to help you. Keeping my word and seeing her to safety is reward enough.”
In a city where every service rendered demanded a vail, however small, anyone who offered to take a risk for free made Yvette’s hackles rise. Vows of poverty be damned, even the righteous took bribes without hesitation. Light eyes surrounded by lines twinkled in the lamplight. “Tell me who you need to contact in the city, and I will gladly relay your message.”
Perhaps he was just too sincere in his plea. Yvette’s mind prickled with suspicion. “I’m sorry, Savio Ventura. Not this time.” Yvette left the chapel.
