Previous Chapter

Andre crashed and rolled across the ground, dragging Giovanni’s corpse with him a short distance before the rough ground of the cavern dragged him to a stop. A wave of revulsion pulled Andre back to his feet, backing away from the man’s body. The memories of his brief encounter with the face of death were already fading into the back of his mind. The present was more pressing.

With a quick spin Andre took in the situation and found it was shaping up in their favor, at least to an extent. Fabian still cradled his head in one hand but he looked like he was rallying. However, his surviving soldier was no longer watching the fight between Erasmus and Ragi. Instead, the man had turned around and conjured a gangplank that covered the twenty feet between the shoreline and their boat.

Securing a line of retreat might have been a sound strategy. Andre couldn’t say for sure. What he could tell was that it left one of Fabian’s sets of eyes looking in the wrong direction while the other, Erasmus, was locked in a death grip with Ragi. With one conjuror dead and the other busy with the gangplank there was no one to send out a new chain for the thin man to escape with. Andre did see one chain still running across the ground but it was too far from Erasmus to be useful.

Just like that, Andre realized he was off stage. No one was paying attention to him, making it the perfect chance to reset for the next scene, which should probably be some kind of quick escape. In order to pull that off, he was going to have to move the players about some.

He dashed over to Fabian and grabbed the blind man by the belt, hosting the flailing man up on one shoulder. In the process he felt his side, where the goblin cat had scratched him earlier, light up in pain. Fabian generously added to it by flailing at that spot with his cane. Teeth gritted, Andre advanced a few more paces to the water’s edge and threw the other man in, though not before checking to ensure he wouldn’t land on a submerged rock. The blind man may be, as Ragi had said, a nasty one but Andre wasn’t looking to carry any more blood guilt if he could avoid it.

Fabian came up, sputtering and yelling, attracting the attention of his guard, who leapt into the water after him. With the way clear, Andre dashed out across the gangplank towards the ship. He almost made it before the other conjuror noticed and sent the board away, leaving him flailing in midair for just a second before he tumbled into the water.

Swimming was not a skill Andre had ever needed. Even though most of Nerona was within a few days of the coast, willingly entering the ocean was not safe so he’d never bothered to learn. If the boat had been more than a few feet away from him he might have been lost for good. Thankfully, between his forward momentum and a few flailing strokes as the water closed around him, Andre was able to get close enough to the ship to grab its anchor chain and use it to drag himself onto the deck.

For a moment he lay there on his back, gasping for air. Then the cavern lit up with a blinding blue light and a shrieking, crackling noise ripped through the air. Andre scrambled to his feet and peered over the rail. The center of the slope was filled with a blinding knot of surging, writhing lightning that Ragi was wrestling with. The energy lashed about, blasting stalactites and stalagmites to pieces and melting patches of the dirt, but never quite breaking free of the stout man’s grasp.

In fact, as Andre watched Ragi seemed to crush the bolt down little by little, until its entire length was trapped between his two palms. Then he took three steps down, hoisted it up over his head and flung it down into the water. There was a flash, a sharp crack, then the entire underground bay lit up with a spiderweb pattern. By instinct Andre reached up and rubbed his eyes. It might have taken a normal man minutes or even hours to get all his vision back after witnessing such a display but whatever magic the Fair Folk had put in his hat seemed to compensate for the sudden changes in light and he was still able to see what was happening.

Which wasn’t actually a great deal. Of course the lightning bolt had been Erasmus, who must have transformed in a last ditch effort to escape Ragi only to wind up thrown into the water instead. Unlike Andre, Erasmus proved able to swim, though the shock he had released into the cove had left his two allies twitching and flailing about. The thin man had grabbed hold of Fabian’s collar and looked like he was trying to drag the two of them back to land.

Sophia and Ragi were making their way down the slope at a breakneck pace. They would reach the waterline in just a few seconds which meant Andre needed some way to reach them. Conjuring a gangplank of his own was not going to work, his Gift didn’t have the stamina left for it. He cast about the deck of the ship, hoping to discover something that would help, but all he saw was rope, the anchor chain and a barrel that smelled like tar. There was also a hatch that led below decks but he didn’t have a chance to open it. He had just reached out to it when the boat rocked underfoot.

Bella pulled the invisible cloth off of her head and hopped off of Charissa’s back, bunching the fabric up and setting it to one side then setting a pair of shoes on top of it. The shoes were clearly Charissa’s because the only thing on her feet were a pair of thin socks or slippers that looked like gleaming fish scales. She grabbed one of the ropes off the deck and jumped off the boat, running back to shore on the surface of the cove, her slippers never quite touching the water. Bella grabbed the rope and helped it feed evenly.

Once he got over his surprise Andre joined her and helped her drag Ragi sputtering back through the water to the boat. Charissa hoisted her daughter on her back and carried her across in much the same way she had Bella. They hoisted Ragi up out of the water about the same time Erasmus scrambled onto shore, dragging his two companions behind him.

For a moment Andre felt like their eyes met. Erasmus drew himself up to his full height, studying the distance between the shore and the boat. Then he spat into the water and hoisted Fabian over one shoulder, beginning the long climb up the slope towards the keep. “Grab an oar,” Ragi said. “He may have retreated for now but once the garrison knows we’re here Phillipe will be down on our heads.”

Andre was no sailor or gondolier but the ship handled well enough that they were able to get it out to sea with no real issue. The channel was very short and let them out through a narrow gap between two low cliffs. Once onto the open ocean they found a current that took them away from the shore at a brisk pace. Ragi determined the tides would turn about in another hour or so, which he thought would make it easier for them to reach the docks and slip into the city quickly. So Andre hunkered down at one end of the deck and waited.

As he sat there his mind wandered and a thick blanket of exhaustion settled over him, like a physical object that pressed him down to the deck. His vision went fuzzy and he began to drift away from the world. A moment later a hand lightly touched him on the arm and he jerked upright, looking around in confusion. Sophia knelt on one side of him, Bella on the other, both looking concerned.

Andre started to get to his feet, saying, “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing, nothing,” Bella said hastily, gently pushing him back down as the two joined him on the deck. “I wasn’t sure if you were all right.”

“Just tired.” Andre settled back in, rubbing absently at his aching side.

Bella took a deep breath, studying the deck in front of her with an intensity that seemed unnecessary. “Andre, I’ve been thinking about what you said after you found us in the keep. It seems you don’t care why the Magistrate and the Borgias were looking for us or why we were trying so hard to avoid them. You don’t care who I am. You spent half of the money Ragi gave you on that fire jar you made to distract the guards and you never asked for any more payment…” She fidgeted with the hem of her skirt for a moment, clearly looking for words. “What… Why did you…”

“It’s my part.” Andre knew it was true as the words left his mouth. “The Maestro and his wife found me in a gutter and gave me everything they could and in turn I’ve never felt like I fit with them. Not quite. Not really. I didn’t have a part to play until today.”

She gave him a look he didn’t quite understand, a kind of measuring look that made it seem like she had finally figured out how he fit into the world. “If that’s the case, Andre, then may you play your part for as long as you can. We’ll do what we can to help you.”

“We?” Andre smiled a thin little smile. “Who’s we?”

Bella matched his expression. “Torrence.”

She got up and moved over to Charissa, the two women beginning a whispered conversation he couldn’t follow. He looked over at Sophia. “What was that about?”

“I think they’re just making sure you’ll look the part in the future,” she said with a sly look. “Don’t worry about it. She’s always had a strong sense of accountability when it comes to things like this.”

Andre nodded absently, his mind offering him a new question. “Sophia, where is Rhodes? I’ve seen two thirds of Nerona and heard stories about the rest but I’ve never heard of a place by that name.”

“Oh, it’s at the bottom of the Gulf of Lum. My family hasn’t held title to any meaningful bit of land since the Tide Caller drowned it centuries ago.” She gave a helpless shrug. “We took refuge with the Vinoverdes and they’ve been good to us ever since so maybe it wasn’t a total loss.”

“I’ve visited Vinoverde county once,” he mused. “It didn’t strike me as a place that had a huge need for tailors or seamstresses.”

For some reason that made Sophia smile, saying, “No, it really doesn’t. That’s why I’ll be staying in Torrence, with Bella, once she’s married. At least for a little while.”

“I see.”

“Where will you be going next, Andre?”

He shrugged. “The Maestro keeps his own council on such things. The troupe is doing well enough for now, though the seasons will turn soon and we’ll probably have to find a larger town or city to wait out the rains in another month or so. We’ll have to wait and see.”

“Andre,” Ragi called from the prow of the boat. “It’s time to start for shore.”

He nodded and grabbed his oar.

None of them understood sails so they had to row in by hand, which meant another half hour of sweaty work, followed by a quick hop onto an empty dock. They lost themselves in the streets for a time, weaving in and out of alleys seemingly at random. Eventually Ragi brought them to another set of docks in another part of the city, by which point Andre was so lost he wasn’t even sure which direction the keep was in anymore. A large, two masted ship waited there.

The crew seemed to recognize Ragi because they let him on without question and ushered the five of them down below decks. A fast, quiet conversation began between Ragi and a member of the crew who seemed important. Andre tried to follow it for a few seconds but couldn’t quite keep up so he found a place to sit atop a large pile of rope, leaned against the side of the hull and immediately fell asleep.

Previous Chapter

Something was very wrong.

The moment Andre felt the impact with the ground things changed. At first he thought the change in color resulted from his seeing stars, a side effect of his collision with the archer and subsequent fall. But the reddish brown glow did not flicker or spark the way one might expect from a hand hit. It shone out as steady as the sun, a constant presence casting the whole cavern in its dull, unnatural hue.

The light was coming from a place just over Andre’s left shoulder. Positioned as he was, tangled with the soldier, he had no view of what the new source of illumination in the grotto was and he couldn’t quite extract himself to look. He felt rigid. So did the conjuror he’d just tackled to the ground, as if his limbs had all seized and would never move again.

Andre, isn’t it? I did not expect we would meet again.

The sound that filled the cavern formed words but didn’t have the pitch or tamber of a human voice. It screamed and groaned like a dying man. It was punctuated by the clash of swords, the shriek of metal on metal, the crunch of horrible impacts and the tears of the wounded. It came from the source of the unnatural light. That much Andre knew with certainty. Other memories floated up, images and whispers long forgotten, things his own mind may never have really registered when they happened. He knew what he would see before the thing stepped in front of him.

It was a towering figure, shaped like a man but filling the grotto from top to bottom, shedding rusty illumination as if lit from within. Within the figure there were no distinct features like a face, clothes or jewelry. Instead it swirled with chaotic images that shifted faster than human eyes could follow, though they left Andre with a sinking impression of violence and death. Over the figure’s head the light seemed arranged in a great crown, except the points drifted lazily back and forth. It looked more like ribbons or hair than a true crown.

As if recognition changed something Andre found he could move again. Scrambling to his feet he squared up against the creature and said, “Have you come for me, King of Scars?”

The figure raised one hand and waved it in front of its chest, unfurling a long scroll that hung in the air in front of it. Your name is not on my list today, Andre.

It was true, from what he could see. The names on the scroll were plain to see, though there were dozens if not hundreds of them and most were written in languages he’d never seen before. “Then why are you here?”

Why do you think?

The King of Scars traditionally came to guide souls that died of violence, at least by Neronan reckoning. So the answer to the question should be obvious. “What I mean is, why can I see you? The Kings at the Corners appear to those on the edge of Eternity, to usher their subjects into the beyond. If I’m not on your list there’s no reason for us to meet.”

The figure rolled the scroll in its hands until it reached an empty spot just below a name. It’s in my nature, Andre. I made a promise the last time we met and I’m here to keep it.

“Promise?” Another wave of familiarity washed over him, a sensation that he knew something about what the King spoke of but couldn’t place why. Andre rubbed his face in his hands, trying to clear his head. Instead he found he could see through his hands.

He jerked upright and stared about, finding that no one in the grotto was moving. Fabian was mid stagger, his hands cradling his head, while his other guard was still in the process of heaving. Up slope, Erasmus and Ragi were in the middle of some kind of exchange of blows. Electricity arced from Ragi’s hand towards the thin man’s arm, reaching out with bright, blinding tendrils that should have finished their journey in the blink of an eye. Instead they hung in the air as if waiting. Within all of the people was a dimly glowing essence, almost impossible to see in the brighter light shed by the King of Scars but still there, if he looked.

Andre looked down at his hands again and understood it was the light of the soul. His own body was a few feet behind him, on the ground with the archer he had just bowled over, but it didn’t glow because Andre’s soul had risen up to meet the King.

The archer’s body didn’t glow either.

His voice a whisper, Andre asked, “What promise are you here to keep?”

The figure held the scroll out for him to read the name written just above the open spot. Giovanni Conjure. It was written in a firm, precise hand with Neronan letters. I promised that, so long as it was in my power, I would allow you to live a life free of violence and blood guilt.

Andre turned his attention to the place where the King’s face would have been, had he been a normal person, and immediately regretted it. For a brief second he thought he saw the moment Giovanni’s head struck the cave floor. His stomach clenched and Andre had to take a few deep breaths before he could speak again. “So long as it was in your power. But you can only touch the lives of men at the moment of death. The omens, the incense, the prayers of the Heralds… those are just us begging for your attention or imagining we’ve found it. This is the first time you’ve been able to keep that promise.”

The figure cocked its head to one side, as if studying something it hadn’t expected to find. Strange that you remember that detail but not so many others. Still, you are correct. I am here because you have killed a man, Andre, and that put him on my doorstep, under my jurisdiction.

“So what?” Andre yanked his gaze away from the creature before him, turned his attention back to Ragi’s duel, as if the blinding lightning could purge the figure from his vision. “Are you saying I’m guilty of that man’s death?”

Of course.

It was such a blunt, direct answer Andre nearly laughed at it. Nearly. His stomach clenched, the air came up his throat, but somehow the sound emerged in a groan instead. “Then you can’t do much to keep me from blood guilt, can you?”

On the contrary, it is a simple thing to do. You remember much of my nature, don’t you? Every soul that is ready to pass beyond must go through one of four gates and I guard the gate of Scars. When their time comes I send them through… or return them to life, if their reasons to remain are just.

“Odd that the four of you return so few, then.”

Is it? There are vanishingly few just things in this, or any world, Andre.

“I suppose you’ve already heard Giovanni’s reasons to live?”

I have.

“Then it seems he was lacking as well.”

No more so than anyone else who has died today, or most days.

“Then what is there for -”

I made a promise, Andre. It is within my power to allow a trade, one for one. It’s a rare gift, you know, and an opportunity that most people will never see in their lives. The King of Scars tapped one finger on the scroll. For a brief moment it looked like a human hand, old and weathered and wrapped in bandages, the finger trembling with age and exhaustion, before it returned to its luminous form. This is the only avenue I can offer you to escape blood guilt. Write your name here and I will return him, then you will be free of guilt and we will depart for Eternity.

Andre stared at the figure in horror. “How?”

It is within my power.

“How can it be in your power?” Andre demanded, a familiar warmth building up within him until it overwhelmed the guilt in his stomach. “How can it be just? How can you so casually offer to trade lives like they are coins, fit to be swapped back and forth for favors or promises?”

Does it make a difference?

“Of course it does! How are you any different from him?” He jabbed a finger at Fabian. “He dragged Giovanni here so he could drag Charissa off to.. I don’t know where they were going but he plans to keep her from her family! Plus whatever the Borgias are planning to do with Belladonna! You cannot treat lives so cheaply!”

You think I find them cheap?

“They don’t seem to be any more than names on a list to you! How is that any different from the way Conte Vallemarmo treated Oliviamonde?”

He did not know their names, for one thing. He did not speak to them before they passed to Eternity, as I do. In truth, he was much like you.

The wrath building in Andre’s gut was snuffed out in an instant. “What do you mean?”

Why does Grigori Borgia desire Belladonna Vinoverde and Charissa de la Rhodes?

“I…” Andre cast his gaze about the cavern, hoping to catch a glimpse of the women in question and gain a burst of insight. Yet even in his current state he couldn’t see them. “I don’t know.”

Why does the Magistrate of Fionni tolerate the Borgias working against the interests of his liege, the Prince of Torrence?

“How could I possibly guess?”

Why did Giovanni Conjure choose to fight on behalf of the Blind Man, rather than employ his talents in much safer ways?

Andre reluctantly turned to look at the man he’d just slammed to the ground. He looked shockingly normal, frozen in the moment of his death. His mouth was slightly open, perhaps still gasping with the force of Andre slamming into him, and his eyes were wide in surprise. But the back of his skull was pressed against a stalagmite that Andre hadn’t noticed behind him. There could be no doubt about how he died.

Or who had done it.

“I don’t know. How could I know?”

Then you know even less than the Conte knew when he put Oliviamonde to the torch. I know this. Vinchezo Vallemarmo has long since passed through my gate into Eternity.

Andre looked back at the King of Scars. “Then what should I do?”

I cannot tell you what you should do. I can only offer you the choice of whether you wish to ransom the life of Giovanni Conjure or live with his blood guilt. You chose the actions that brought you here. You must choose how you will go forward. That simply is. Whether men should or should not be burdened with such choices is not for me to say.

Andre considered the man he had just killed. Then he looked up at Ragi, still fighting for his duty to his family and Bella, and Sophia, struggling to remain upright against the debilitating power emanating from Fabian. He never meant to hurt anyone when he decided to help them. Certainly he had no desire to bear the guilt of killing anyone.

Yet he couldn’t leave them to finish their task alone, either.

“I cannot take his place.” Andre took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “So I will have to bear the guilt.”

Good. The King of Scars rolled up the scroll and it vanished.

Andre goggled at the figure, trying to find something to say.

I made a promise, Andre, and I have kept it. I have done all in my power to keep you from blood guilt but now that you bear it the thing cannot be undone. That does not mean I believe the I was asked to do was wise. I have brought countless people into Eternity and I believe there are worse things they can bear into the beyond than blood guilt. I hope that when your next time comes you will not be burdened with one of them.

The figure turned to go but, before it could vanish Andre said, “What kind of promise is it that made you do all this?”

Any promise would have been enough. Yet it is rare for a person to be given the chance to trade their life for another’s and even rarer for the person to accept that offer. When a promise is made as part of that trade it is all the more important to uphold it.

The unnatural reddish light dimmed, then vanished as the towering figure of the King of Scars faded from view. For a heartbeat Andre caught sight of a man within it. Then the King was gone, its voice calling one last message back to him.

I will tell your mother you are living well.

Previous Chapter

There were many kinds of Gifts that fate bestowed to the people of Nerona. Some were beautiful, some were practical and some, like the Gifts of the Thunder Hand and Thunder Heart, were incredibly dangerous. One thing true of all of them was that the Gifts themselves made very little sense to people who didn’t have them. You could explain them with words, certainly, but those words meant nothing to people who lacked actual experience with the Gift in question.

Hannibal Fulminate, the most famous Thunder Hand in Neronan history, once explained the nature of his Gift by saying, “For everything that falls there is a climb, just as for lightning there is thunder.”

It sounded very pithy but didn’t mean a lot to a poor conjuror like Andre. 

That said, it made a kind of intuitive sense that Ragi could somehow catch Erasmus, even when he was a lightning bolt, but that didn’t guarantee he could do it every time any more than Gianni could catch a club every time while juggling. That meant the older man was going to need help before he missed a catch. So Andre sucked in a deep breath and tried to follow what was going on, figure out some way to help.

His first thought, as Ragi collided with Erasmus’ lighting bolt form a second time, was to make a shield of some kind to keep Fabian’s soldiers from shooting them. He’d fixed or built plenty of prop shields over the years. Making one should have been easy enough but as soon as Andre began to build the picture of one in his mind he realized it wasn’t going to work. He’d never exhausted his Gift before but he could still tell it wasn’t up to making something that big now.

It was a strange sensation, a kind of bone deep exhaustion that turned the picture he was trying to hold in his mind into a blur. It was like getting so tired his eyes blurred, except with his mind’s eye rather than his normal ones. 

Andre also knew enough about conjuring to know he couldn’t really do anything about the soldiers’ conjured weapons. He’d met a lot of others with his Gift working in other troupes. Comparing tricks of the trade was a common way to pass the time when walking from town to town or when camped at large festivals outside the major cities. Over the years he’d never heard of a way for one conjuror to effect another’s conjurations.

Aside from the normal ways, of course.

Bella and Charissa had vanished from view, which was a small consolation, but Erasmus seemed to think he could gain something by slipping past Ragi anyway. At least he spent a few seconds trying to wriggle free of Ragi’s grasp once they collided. Now that he was ready for the thin man’s attacks Ragi had managed hold on to him after the collided. The big man got one arm wrapped around Erasmus’ back and was trying to lock him in some kind of wrestling hold. Although he was taller, Erasmus seemed unable to turn that leverage into any kind of advantage. Unsurprising given Ragi’s manifestly superior strength.

It seemed winning the contest wasn’t necessary, however, as another crankbow bolt from the conjuring soldiers came skipping along the stone ground towards them. It struck Erasmus on the calf and he vanished again. Once again he became a bolt of lightning travelling along the thin chain that returned him to the base of the slope in a thunderclap. This time he paused to rub his ribs, obviously discomforted by Ragi’s grasp.

Andre grabbed Sophia by the arm and pulled her down into a crouch halfway behind one of the many stalagmites in the chamber. He dumped his pack out and gestured to the pile of old clothes that resulted. “Could you turn this into a net? Something to catch those arrows so they don’t reach?”

“It will take a second,” she replied, already starting to unravel the tunic on top. “But there’s nothing to say he can’t run along the net just as well as those chains.”

Andre grimaced but knew she was right. Still, it was the only thing he could think of at the moment. He grabbed a cloak and wrapped it around himself, pulling the collar up over his mouth and nose, then said, “It’s worth a shot. I’m going to try something else.”

After which he got to his feet and sprung up on top of the stalagmite.

A lifetime of running the posts on to and off of stages had made him confident in his footing and what was a stalagmite but a post made of stone? What was a slope full of such stones but a set of stairs made for a stagehand?

Well, nature had not built the cavern with Andre in mind, that was certain. Even as he dashed down the slope, skipping from one stone protrusion to the next, he was forced to move side to side far more than he would like. He’d hoped his mad run would bring him down to the docks before Fabian and his men could react. No such luck was with him.

He’d barely gone a quarter of the distance before one of Fabian’s soldiers pointed him out to the others. Andre immediately jumped back towards the path, leaping off the jagged stones and keeping as low to the ground as he could for the few seconds he needed. A shield may be too big to conjure but a cloud of smoke… well, it looked big but really wasn’t. After a lifetime of conjuring it for one scene or another he was pretty sure he could envision it in his sleep, no matter how smudgy his mind’s eye was becoming.

This time proved to be no exception. After conjuring into his clenched hands for a few seconds Andre spread them to release a huge plume of light gray smoke. Then he clapped one hand over his nose to hold the cloak in place and started forward again. The cloth kept the worst of the smoke out of his lungs but he couldn’t see through it any better than Fabian’s men could. Sadly, it seemed his magical hat didn’t do anything to help in that regard.

Andre couldn’t really say he was surprised at that and he’d anticipated having to move about with his vision impaired. Moving to the left, downslope along the path, made the most sense. It made so much sense the archers probably realized it as well so Andre decided not to go that way. Instead he moved to the right, staying on the path until he emerged from the smoke and leapt up onto the stalagmites again.

He scampered over another few stone protrusions before his skin prickled and Erasmus blazed past once more. The resulting thunderclap threw off Andre’s timing and his boot slipped off the next stalagmite. He jackknifed, twisting to get his hands under him and break his fall. The stone ground was much harder than the grass he was used to landing on and a dozen small protrusions and loose rocks prodded him uncomfortably as he rolled but on the whole Andre thought it was a good landing. Then he slammed into one of the taller stalagmites and changed his mind.

Winded, he scrambled to his feet again and threw a look towards Fabian and his men, wondering if he needed another smoke screen to keep from getting shot. Their attention was still focused on Ragi and Erasmus. The clash of lighting wielders had followed Andre down the slope, albeit at a slower pace due to keeping to the path, and Ragi was now backing the thin man through the remains of Andre’s smoke cloud.

The soldiers were conjuring and releasing bolts as as quickly as they could but so far Erasmus hadn’t reached one yet. That was because Sophia trailed a few steps behind the two. Rather than completely reweaving the clothes he gave her she had simply stitched them together at the corners, creating a checkerboard of cloth that waved over the three of them in a loose dome. From the slow, lethargic moves of the cloth it was proving more than she could easily manipulate with her Gift. It was still enough to throw off the archers’ aim.

Satisfied things hadn’t turned into a disaster yet, Andre started down slope once more, looking for another pattern of stalagmites he could use. He had just worked out a path that would let him move faster than walking when Fabian raised his voice and called, “Ipecac.”

Andre’s head whipped around to watch the blind man drink whatever it was in the bottle he was holding. A moment later a violent wave of nausea washed over him. Andre abandoned all thoughts of jumping, much less jumping on top of anything, and did his best not to vomit. 

He’d met a carnival Sensate once, who tickled himself with feathers and shared the sensation with others, calling it, “Sharing the mirth.” When Fabian introduced himself Andre had wondered why a man with such a Gift would lead soldiers. The Sensate Gift supposedly went both ways, meaning Fabian would feel everything his men felt as well. But, as Andre watched the blind man stand there, one hand resting on his stomach, otherwise unperturbed by the nausea he was sharing with the room, it did make a kind of sense. If Fabian could endure that level of discomfort so easily and his enemies couldn’t…

Well, the results were obvious. Andre could barely walk, Sophia’s net had collapsed as she heaved her stomach’s contents onto the ground and Ragi was swaying lightly on his feet. The only consolation was that Fabian’s side wasn’t much better. Erasmus looked almost unaffected, though whether that was because of his own fortitude, some quirk of his Gift or just because he was familiar with this particular trick was impossible to tell. Whatever it was, it didn’t give him the confidence to try to overpower Ragi, weakened though he was. The archers fared much worse.

One had dropped to his knees and was vomiting on the floor. The other clutched his midsection, face contorted in discomfort, but hadn’t entirely lost his composure yet.

Fabian twisted his head about, one way, then the other, looking suddenly annoyed. His cane reached out, sweeping back and forth until it tapped the standing archer in one leg, then the blind man rapped the soldier’s shins with it smartly, snapping, “Open your eyes, fool. I can’t see.”

Andre had never once heard of a Sensate seeing through the eyes of another person. Then again, he’d also never heard of a blind Sensate before. Either way, he finally had an idea of what he could do to help Ragi and the others escape.

Isobela told all the new actors to crouch down and put their head between their knees, then take three deep breaths to get rid of nausea from stage fright. Andre tried it and found it worked almost as well with the phantom nausea he was feeling. Steadied, he leaped up and across the stalagmites once more, adjusting his path a few steps towards the archer Fabian was scolding. The blind man had drawn another bottle from his waist pouch but not yet removed the stopper. Whatever that bottle did, Fabian seemed unwilling to drink it before he knew the situation and his vicarious vision still didn’t have a point of view it could work with yet.

With time dwindling, Andre threw all caution to the wind. He sprinted down the slope, leaping and tumbling across every obstacle, ignoring every bump and prod as he advanced. Looking back, the run took him five seconds, maybe six. As he ran it he thought it would never end, each protrusion or divot in the floor seeming to add hours to the time it took to reach the bottom.

Then, in the blink of an eye, Andre went from vaulting off a low rock to skidding along the grotto’s shoreline. The archer had recovered just enough that he had opened his eyes and seen him coming before they collided. Then Andre wrapped his arms around the other man and carried them both to the ground with a sickening thud.

Previous Chapter

“I offer you the name Uncertain,” Andre said, stepping away from Ragi and the others, keeping Phillipe’s attention on himself. The Maestro always said when you dominated the stage, no one paid attention to the scenery. It was how a stagehand did their work unseen and, hopefully, it would be enough for Ragi to whisk his family to safety as well.

“I don’t need anything from you, creature,” the captain snarled. “What use could I have for your names?”

It was a fair question, though Andre had no idea what the answer was. “Strange are the courtesies overhill,” he said, which was hopefully cryptic enough to suit a Fair Folk. He took a step forward and made a conscious effort to speak in the Maestro’s cadences. “What shall I know of you, then? Are you unstoppable, as the Guardian of Grapes says?”

Phillipe mirrored him, taking a single step back. “What if I am? What do such things matter to man, when he is doomed to spend his short and miserable life chasing after the petty wants of his stomach and his loins? And you would name me Without Certainty! Ha!” His laugh was flat and hard. “Men who chase after such things are as foolish as those who treasure the Gifts of their birth. I am more than these things, Blacklight. I am a Borgia.”

Some kind of breakdown in communications must have occurred because he could hear the others doing something behind him. Which meant they weren’t escaping. Still, the Maestro always insisted the actors had to trust the stage crew to do their jobs while they focused on their lines. Andre was new to that side of the equation but from his time on the other he knew it was true. He’d have to keep talking.

“What is a Borgia, then?” Andre asked, pacing back and forth as he studied Phillipe. Even now, as he matched Andre’s movements, fire building behind his eyes, the captain moved with a purposeful, deliberate pace that seemed out of place.

“We are a promise, Blacklight.” He drew a basket hilted rapier from his waist with one hand and fished something out of a pocket with another. Phillipe held it up between them, making it clear that it was a half eaten piece of bread. He must have been pulled away from dinner when the alarms started. “We are a family, not by birth but by choice, wedded to one another by the breaking of bread and the grace of our Father, Grigori the First.”

The captain spread his hands wide, holding bread and blade like twin blessings offered to all. “We nourish one another when we are hungry. When we are hurt we bear one another’s wounds. And when our family is threatened, we take up arms to destroy all our enemies, without fear or mercy.”

Andre tasted bile in the back of his throat. “You kill in the name of your father?”

“For the sake of our Father!”

“How many enemies can one man have?”

Phillipe lowered his arms, looking resigned. “I forget you are not human, Blacklight. If you were, you would know that every enemy who sets himself against a family is an enemy to its father, whether he wills it or not.” He snapped his sword into a guard position, its point directly aimed at Andre’s head. “Human or not.”

“And your family… how many are they?”

The captain hesitated, clearly unsure of what to make of the question. “Hundreds, I suppose. Perhaps thousands, now. A dozen newly made men were with me when I broke bread with the Father three years ago, when we were only two hundred strong.”

“So many.” A shiver ran up Andre’s back then around and down into his hands, curling them into a single knot of muscle that would not let go. “And in the name of your father you chase two girls through the Nernonan countryside, though one of them is pledged in marriage? How is that fair?”

“Fair!” Phillipe barked a laugh and flicked the point of his sword to their left. They had moved far enough that the goblin cat’s corpse lay in that direction now and Andre could just make it out while keeping an eye on the captain if he stood just so. What he saw astonished him.

The cat’s body had mostly transformed to a lumpy, pinkish mass. Charissa knelt by it, a knife in hand, shaving its fur with an eerie, effortless grace as her daughter stood by, the fur spinning into a thread that wove itself into a single sheet of silk black fabric. In the few minutes he’d been speaking they had somehow taken the fur from all but the tail and hindquarters. The work was done too fast to be anything but a Gift.

“You have killed the beast,” Phillipe said, “and now the Talisman maker seizes its magic for herself. A few such crimes and she will hold more power than even the greatest armies in Nerona. Do you think such things are fair? Tell me, creature from underhill, is it fair that humans are born so different from one another, that one person can so easily trample others underfoot?”

“There was no one under their feet when I found them in your tower. There was no one under the feet of the girls who you chased through the roads that wind overhill and I see no one beneath them now. Yet there are many feet that stamp down to trample them and each boot bears the name of Borgia.”

Phillipe’s brought his sword back to bear on Andre. “What of it? Those underhill have never cared about our affairs before. Why does the fate of a few girls matter to you, Blacklight?”

Staring at the point of the sword should have made it difficult to answer but Andre found his reply flowed as easily as if he’d rehearsed it his entire life. “Because look! You have so much light.” He pointed overhead at the blazing beacon in its reflective bowl, shedding light out towards the sea and sky but leaving none to reach the roof below. “Yet you won’t shine it on yourself.”

“We can still see the light to guide us.”

“Perhaps. If that is the way you wish to go. But for those who grope through the darkness, seeking another way, what is there for them?” Andre slowly lowered his hand and closed his eyes. He pictured the beacon in his mind but shrunk it down and took away the dancing flames, then he let his Gift do the rest. When he opened his eyes again a small light hovered over his outstretched palm. “For them, I will be their blacklight.”

For a second Andre thought the captain was about to back down. He wavered, at least, his gaze uncertain as he stared at the small yellow pinprick Andre had conjured. Then Phillipe shook himself off and said, “Hubris. The world is too vast for such a small light to make a difference.”

Andre closed his hand and stopped conjuring. “We shall see.”

There was a breath of air by his neck then Ragi whispered, “We’re done, Blacklight, it’s time to go. Don’t worry about him. He can’t run and use his Gift at the same time.”

“This isn’t over, Corragio!” Phillipe called.

“If you were still the Phillipe I knew it might not be,” Ragi replied, stepping up beside Andre. “He would risk his life and limb to get what he wanted when he was a bravo with no master but himself. But a Borgia must put the family first! What will they do without an unyielding avalanche to crush their enemies into the dirt? They cannot risk losing such a thing.”

Ragi started to pull Andre back towards the roof’s edge, clearly expecting that to be the end of it. His judgement was good enough for Andre and had already started to turn towards the others when he saw Ragi’s expression turn to shock. He spun back to find Phillipe charging towards them in an insane burst of speed. He looked like a gymnast, about to leap into a triple summersault, except for the sword in his hand and his murderous glare.

For all his surprise, Ragi reacted quickly, planting his feet and lunging forward with his own sword point directed squarely at the captain’s stomach. For a moment, Andre thought the exchange was over with that. It looked like Ragi would run him through and be done with it. Then Phillipe somehow managed to plant both his feet under him and he came to a sudden stop. He didn’t slide or crouch. He simply stamped his feet down and snapped upright, perfectly straight, like a spear that had just been thrown into the dirt. Ragi’s thrust hit him squarely in the middle and slid off, doing nothing. It didn’t even slice through the captain’s jacket. For all the world it looked like the captain had planted his feet and transformed from a running man made of flesh to a motionless statue made of stone.

He only stayed that way long enough to avoid getting stabbed. After the point of Ragi’s blade was turned he stabbed over the shorter man’s sword arm, aiming for Ragi’s considerable neck. Ragi managed to grab Phillipe’s arm with his off hand, levering himself partly up and away from the point, but it still opened a nasty cut on his back. Worse, for all Ragi’s considerable strength, he couldn’t stop the captain.

Phillipe slowly dragged his arm back towards himself, preparing for another strike, while he locked eyes with his opponent. Andre tried to read what was going on. He remembered Sophia trying to wrap the captain in an awning when he’d discovered her and Charissa under the Maestro’s caravan. He’d had his feet planted, holding perfectly still that time, too. Then Phillipe had patiently pulled the fabric off of himself using one hand.

Just like that, Andre could see the picture in his mind. A man who was invincible when he held still, who became more impossible to stop the slower he moved – a man who was inexorable so long as he was patient in how he moved. Yet if he picked up his feet and ran he must become a normal person, or he wouldn’t have reacted like he did to Ragi’s attack. He wondered how far Phillipe’s invulnerability went.

As the captain finished setting up his next strike Andre pushed into the melee, holding one hand up in front of Phillipe’s face, and he conjured the brightest light he could. The captain cried out and jerked away from it. Amazingly enough, he kept his feet planted but from the way he began to blink frantically Andre could tell he was dazzled at least. For a follow up, Andre switched from light to smoke, filling the air around the captain with a dense cloud of oily smog while he grabbed Ragi and ran.

Blinded and coughing, Phillipe still managed to force himself after them at his purposeful, inexorable pace. But with no idea where they were, his sword swung aimlessly and the other two were able to get out of its reach easily. Sophia waited for them at the edge of the roof, a rope twisted out of old costumes in her hands. She worked the rope around to lift all three of them off the roof and down to the walls, where Bella and Charissa waited for them. From there she lowered them again, to the ground this time, before spooling the rope around her waist.

“Excellent work, all,” Ragi said. “Now we just need to find this wine cellar of Andre’s. Do you know where it is?”

Andre cast about, looking for landmarks, but realized with a sinking feeling he didn’t recognize anything. “I think it’s on the other side of the fort, sir. I don’t think we can make it there without getting spotted.”

Charissa grinned, holding her hands up as if displaying a cloth. “Well, think again.”

Previous Chapter

Things unravelled very fast once Phillipe called in the guards.

Andre had been at the rear of their group as they descended the stairs but once Ragi turned them around and they started for the roof he wound up at the front. He found it very difficult to lead them back towards the roof. Not only was his side burning from the goblin cat’s scratch, he found that the cold chicken he’d just wolfed down sat very poorly in his stomach. Worse, in the hurry to climb the stairs again it was hard to see where he was going in the dark. Out of habit, he conjured a lantern.

Nothing appeared in his hands.

Instead, the image of Leaves tucking a lantern away into its robes came to mind and Andre began to suspect what his deal with the Fair Folk truly entailed. Stumbling and cursing, he dragged his pack off his back, fished out Gravel’s hat and shoved it onto his head. The stairs became a bit clearer and he continued on his way.

“Who’s up there?” Phillipe’s voice demanded from below. “Giovanni? Is that you?”

“Here, Captain!” A new voice replied. “I’m here!”

“Then who is that above?”

“We’ll find out, sir.”

New footsteps joined theirs in the mad rush to the roof and Andre did his best to put on more speed. After a seemingly endless ascent, no more than ten seconds to be truthful, they arrived on the roof once again. Andre pushed his spear into Bella’s grip and charged for the corner, a new ladder forming from nothing in his hands. He had just started lowering it over the side of the keep when something heavy crashed into its top, smashing it to kindling.

Andre immediately jumped to one side, the goblin cat’s gnashing jaws snapping through the space his head had just occupied. It saved his life but nearly killed him at the same time. His evasive leap left Andre off balance, teetering on the edge of the roof, and for a moment all he could see was the blurry green of the courtyard spinning far below. Andre dove towards the roof, choosing to fall himself so he could control his landing.

It worked, but only in part.

His side spasmed in pain midfall and twisted him around, so he landed badly and nearly rolled off the roof. The low lip around the roof was just enough of a handhold for him to arrest his slide. For a brief moment it was all Andre could do to cling to the roof’s edge then Bella and Sophia grabbed one arm each and dragged him up on to solid footing once more.

The roof was in chaos. The goblin cat was scampering back and forth across the rooftop, swiping at Ragi and the guards, hissing and yowling, showing equal hostility to everyone around it. The guards had formed a ring with their backs facing inwards. Their swords made the creature hesitate but they weren’t enough to keep it at bay, one of them was bleeding from his arm and another’s tabard hung in ribbons, his mail shirt the only thing that had kept him from getting worse.

Ragi and Charissa had positioned themselves between the three young people and the guards. Ragi was alternating between brandishing his spear at the cat and the guards while his wife worked to reload the crankbow. For the moment, both human groups were directing their attention towards the cat. Even so, Andre doubted they would be granted the time to climb off the roof via ladder unless they did something to make it happen.

His gaze wandered up to the beacon in its metal bowl, burning brightly overhead, and inspiration struck. Andre grabbed Sophia’s arm and started towards the beacon house, saying, “I need a hand!”

“What are you doing?”

“Just watch!”

The beacon was about twenty feet over the keep’s roof and he wasn’t confident he could make a ladder that tall in his current condition. Fortunately, he didn’t need to get that high. The door was locked but making a simple skeleton key was a much easier task. It did take long enough that Bella caught up to them, yelling, “That’s the wrong way!”

Andre ignored her, shoving the door open and pushing into the small tower at the base of the warning tower. There wasn’t much inside it besides a staircase spiraling up to the top and a stockpile of wood and oil for fuel. Candles in narrow niches provided just enough light to see. Thankfully, that was all they needed.

There was no such thing as a jar made for throwing or, if there was, Andre had never seen it. So he conjured normal ones and handed them to the girls, who filled them from the barrels of oil until the shredded tunic he’d given Sophia from his pack couldn’t hold any more of them. Then she carried them to the door, manipulating the tunic with her Gift, while Andre and Bella filled another four jars, one in each hand. Meanwhile, Sophia used the tunic as a sling, throwing the full jars with shocking accuracy.

In all, she launched nine jars full of oil about the roof, the five she started with plus the four extra the other two brought her, before they ran out with lit candles and used them to set the oil ablaze. The outcome was grizzly. 

The guards, who had not fared well against the cat or the steady stream of flying jars and crankbow bolts, finally fell back down the stairway but they left two of their number behind, lying injured on the roof. They could not get to their feet before the flames reached them. Their screams as they caught fire were horrifying and Andre felt his brief burst of triumph on seeing the others withdraw vanish. 

The goblin cat had somehow avoided all the projectiles launched in its direction. It danced through the field of burning oil, hissing and yowling in rage, but didn’t catch fire itself. Even so, the fire was dense and it didn’t try to force its way through towards them.

“Good work,” Ragi said, falling back to join them. He was cradling his off hand, the sleeve of his tunic saturated with blood from a nasty claw mark that had left two parallel furrows in his arm. “Now let’s get off this roof.”

Andre nodded, panting hard as he said, “Give me a moment and I’ll get us a ladder.”

“I don’t know if we have a minute,” Charissa said, gently moving them away from the raging fire. “Did anyone see where the cat went?”

“No,” Bell said, “but it does vanish from time to time.”

The oil burned with a dense, heavy smoke that drifted down rather than up and Andre found himself coughing on it as he tried to catch his breath. He leaned down, trying to find fresh air, and froze. A small, black creature was trotting across the roof, keeping a healthy distance between itself and the various oil fires burning there. It paused to watch one of the guards, no longer screaming but still twitching as he burned.

Andre would later swear he saw it baring its teeth in a vicious grin. That was when he recognized it, in spite of its drastically reduced size, as the goblin cat. As if that spark of recognition drew its attention, its head swivelled around to meet Andre’s gaze. He opened his mouth to shout a warning but the cat leapt forwards and suddenly grew to its original size, slamming into their group with claws flashing.

Charissa lost the crankbow as the cat bowled her aside. The weapon flew out of her hands, bounced along the roof and disappeared over the edge, taking it firmly out of play. Andre and Bella were thrown to the ground. Only Ragi kept his feet, fending off the cat’s claws with his spear and stepping forward towards its jaws. The cat’s teeth gnashed at him but never quite reached.

Instead, the squat man dropped his spear, wrapped his enormous arms around its front leg and dragged the entire creature along, swinging it around twice and slamming it into the wall of the beacon tower with a titanic thud. The creature let out an almost pitiable yelp, its legs flailing as it tried to get back to its feet. Andre grabbed Ragi’s dropped spear, charged forward and slammed it into the cat’s flank.

The creature kicked him with its hind legs for his trouble, knocking him away. As Andre folded over and slid along the ground he felt his hair standing on end. A brilliant flash of light lit the world overhead along with a deafening crack then a bitter, acrid scent filled his nose. Coughing, he pushed himself to his feet.

Ragi stood a few feet away, his broad hands still outstretched and crackling with the power of the lightning bolt he’d just thrown. The power of his Gift had arced through the air, split the spear in the cat’s side and killed the vile creature dead. Its fur stood out around it in a bizarre halo and its slitted eyes were rolled back in its head. The air was mixed with the scent of burning oil, charred flesh and the strange, bitter scent that accompanied every thunderstorm.

The older man grabbed Andre by the shoulder and hauled him to his feet, saying, “Good work. I’ve never had great control over my Gift. Without that spear to guide the lightning I never would have hit that creature.”

“I’ve always found it amusing that a man with your level of discipline would lack control anywhere in your life.” Captain Phillipe Borgia stepped through the curtain of fire and smoke as casually as the Maestro stepped on stage.

Andre felt his stomach sink. Would this mess never end? Beside him, Ragi tensed as well, his expression transforming from impressed to wary in an instant.

“Corragio del Rhodes,” the captain said, the hint of a smile crossing his face. “As always, your work is impressive. I shouldn’t say this but I’m grateful for ridding us of that menace. I’m afraid the Magistrate’s daughter will not be as well disposed.”

“Phillipe Inexorable.” Andre glanced at Ragi, wondering what that name meant. He’d never heard of the inexorable Gift.

“I am a Borgia now, Signore Rhodes.”

“So I hear.”

The captain came to a stop about twenty paces away and the two men studied each other with open hostility. Then Phillipe’s gaze shifted to Andre, causing him a jolt of terror. “Once again, the Rhodes family keeps unsavory company. I understand why your masters keep their treaty with Underhill but I’ve always wondered what they see in you.”

It took a second for Andre to realize what Phillipe was on about. He’d been fooled by the hat, and didn’t recognize the stagehand he’d been introduced to two days ago but rather thought he was looking at something otherworldly. Andre seized on that at once. He squared his shoulders and met the captain’s gaze, asking, “Do you offer me a name?”

Ragi spun to stare at him in surprise. Phillipe’s amused expression slipped for just a moment as well, replaced by a shadow of uncertainty before a mask of neutrality covered it over. “No, creature. I don’t.”

With that simple rebuttal Andre’s hopes of swindling the captain into letting them go were dashed. The fire on the roof was starting to die down as the oil ran out. Soon the guards were going to be able to get back on the roof and then they were trapped for certain. He would have to buy time and hope the others had a good idea. So Andre tugged his hat tighter down on his head and said, “Then you may know me as Blacklight.”

Previous Chapter

Bella didn’t open the door first, Ragi did.

He spent a minute or two peering at the courtyard and assessing the lay of the land before gently closing it again. Andre easily peered over top of his head but he struggled to make out any details in the shadows of dusk. The only thing that was clear to him was that they were, indeed, on the opposite side of the keep’s courtyard. Ragi apparently wasn’t as challenged by the dark. “It looks like the guards are doing a loop of the courtyard. I’m not sure if they’ll look up but if they do I don’t think they’ll see us on the walls, the beacon is lit and it makes the keep’s roof throws some very deep shadows. Once we’re on the roof we’ll need to keep low so we don’t do that ourselves.”

“How can the guards avoid the cat?” Andre asked.

“According to our friend in their midst, someone in the Magistrate’s family has a Gift that lets them control it, although I’m not sure how. I’ve never heard of a Gift that influences animals.” Ragi glanced at Andre. “What about you? A travelling theater group has a lot of opportunities to encounter the strange and unknown.”

“I’ve never heard of goblin cats before today, much less a Gift that can control them.” Andre tapped his chin thoughtfully. “It could be an Invoker, though. In which case that’s not a real cat, goblin or otherwise, but rather an elemental someone’s bound with their Gift. Wind spirits sometimes show themselves as cats and we are on the ocean. It’s not impossible.”

“No. Elementals look like animals but they don’t act like them.” Bella gave him a flat look. “Have you ever met a cat?”

“You’re right,” Andre admitted. “It was definitely a real cat of some sort.”

“Then we won’t worry about how they control the thing unless we learn something new,” Ragi said. “We all saw it turn invisible, yes? Well, at least I wasn’t hallucinating that part. Unfortunately it leaves us with no way to know it’s coming ahead of time unless by some chance it smells bad. I don’t suppose you noticed anything like that, Andre?”

“Sorry, smell was the last thing on my mind.”

“Well, it wouldn’t have helped us that much anyways. The air is very still tonight.” Ragi nodded towards the door. “Bella? Would you do the honors?”

She did, rapping a quick pattern of knocks on the door before yanking it open and motioning them through. Once again she clung to the door, holding it open while Andre and Ragi hustled past her. Then she moved through herself and closed it with a firm but painfully loud thump.

Andre gritted his teeth and conjured a ladder. It felt much harder this time compared to the last, like he was starting to run out of something essential to the process. Never in his life had he conjured so much in one day. He wasn’t sure how much more he might be able to make before his Gift failed him entirely.

At least while he was bracing the bottom of the ladder so Bella and Ragi could climb up he got a moment to catch his breath before making his own ascent. Bella went first and Ragi passed her their short spears and his crankbow before joining her. Once Ragi was firmly on the roof Andre began his own climb, the other two holding the top of the ladder in place as he did. Ragi apparently thought he wasn’t moving fast enough because the older man grabbed him under the arms as soon as he was able, pulling Andre up onto the roof with little effort. He felt a twinge in his side as the other man lifted him.

Andre let the ladder vanish as they hustled across the roof, stooped nearly double, and down into the prison tower. It was a short trip down the stairs to the locked doorway on the floor below. Ragi got there first, grabbed the knob and gave it a vicious twist. There was a metallic snapping sound and the door came open, a bit of the door’s latch tumbling out as it did so. Ragi had broken it, though Andre couldn’t guess how.

Ragi rushed in, one hand on the hilt of his sword, but there was no one on the other side other than Charissa, who jumped up and ran over to him as soon as she realized who it was. It was a touching reunion but Andre didn’t pay much attention to it. The room where the Magistrate had kept her was more comfortable than Sophia’s cell by quite a bit. There was a bed on one side, a small table with an oil lamp on it and a chair with a cushion for sitting near an open window.

The chair seemed to draw Andre in with some otherworldly power and he found himself collapsing on top of it, exhaustion overwhelming him. Once there he realized he was very uncomfortable. Every few seconds he would shift position, trying to pay attention to what the others were saying but unable to focus. Instead, he found himself yoyoing between dozing off and wiggling in discomfort.

“Ah, he’s so pale!” Charissa said, her voice breaking through the fog filling his head. A cool hand pressed against his forehead. “And he’s bleeding! What happened to him?”

“A goblin cat got him by the shoulder but it didn’t look like that broke the skin,” Ragi said. “Besides, that’s on the wrong side. Maybe it swiped him with its claws.”

Andre jerked upright, fully aware once more, as something prodded his side and sent a burning bolt of pain running up and down it. “Careful!”

“Looks like a light scratch.” Charissa pulled the sheet off her bed and the knife from her husband’s belt, quickly slicing the fabric into strips. “We’ll take care of that, dear. Go find Sophia and bring her here, we should probably leave once this is handled.”

“Right.” Ragi propped his crankbow against the wall and turned to Bella, drumming a pattern on the stone not that different from the one she used on doors. “If someone comes through the door without this signal, loose that bolt into them.”

She nodded understanding. As Ragi started to leave Andre said, “She’s on the next floor down. Last cell in the hall.”

Ragi nodded. “Is the door locked?”

“Just a bar across it.”

“Then I’ll only be a minute.”

Andre wasn’t sure how long he was actually gone but it must have been more than one minute because by the time he got back with Sophia the other two women had stripped off his tunic, applied a compress dampened with a bit of wine to his scratch and bound it in place with strips of cloth. He was in the process of wriggling into a new, black tunic when Ragi got back. Sophia swept in behind him and hugged her mother fiercely.

“We’re all here,” Ragi announced. “Andre, are you ready to move?”

He didn’t feel ready to move but he knew if they stayed it was only a matter of time before Captain Phillipe came to check on Charissa again. So he struggled to his feet and said, “Of course.”

Charissa pushed him back into the chair with one hand, saying, “Of course not. You’re going to pass out on the stairs. When was the last time you ate anything?”

“Breakfast.”

She took a plate of half eaten chicken off the table and shoved it into his hands then poured some more wine into a wooden cup. Andre wolfed the meat down in a few bites. It was cold but also one of the most delicious things he had ever tasted. He emptied the cup of wine when it was offered to him then belched when it was all gone.

Once he was done Ragi gave him a critical once over. Frowning, he said, “Raise your right arm as high over your head as you can without pulling your wound.”

Andre did as instructed but barely got his hand over his head before wincing in pain.

“Why is this an issue?” Sophia asked. “Can’t we just head back to the walls and take the door there back underhill?”

Bella shook her head. “The Queen Below wasn’t happy that I brought Andre with me on my last trip and she closed the door there to me for a year and a day. Even if she hadn’t, I’m not sure she’d let Andre leave a second time.”

“Which means we need to get out of here under our own power,” Ragi said. “I don’t suppose you ladies saw anything that would help us get out when they brought you to the keep?”

“We were thrown in a covered wagon,” Charissa said. “We didn’t see much until we arrived in the main courtyard and from there they brought us straight here. I haven’t left this cell since.”

Ragi glanced at his daughter. “Sophia?”

“The same.”

“The keep has a secret canal that leads out to sea,” Andre said. “The Fair Folk let me out from underhill there.”

“A bolt hole, is it?” Ragi rubbed his hands together eagerly. “Splendid. They probably keep some kind of boat there for emergency escapes, as well. The Magistrate’s insurance policy will play in our favor today.”

“Uh…” Andre shifted uncomfortably on his chair. “There was a rowboat at the docks but there isn’t anymore.”

“What happened to it?”

“The guards used it to row some blind man out to sea. I overheard him telling the guards they planned to move Charissa elsewhere using the channel to row her out to a ship at sea so I burnt the docks. So they couldn’t have brought it back.”

“That was shortsighted.” Ragi’s words were harsh but his tone was gentle. “However, I’m not sure I would have done any different given the circumstances, especially with the Blind Man in play. By all accounts he’s a ruthless character. And given our situation it still might be the best way for us to get out of the keep.”

“What about the door?” Sophia asked, glancing at the entrance behind them. “Is there anywhere you could take it, Bella?”

“No. I think the planks it’s made of are a mix of different kinds of wood or something like that, plus the iron bands are held in place by a mix of steel and bronze nails. There’s no door remotely like it anywhere close enough to matter.”

“I’ve never heard of the Gift of Doors,” Andre said. “How can this whole keep have doors that she can’t use?”

“It’s not as rare as you might think,” Bella said. “There’s been one of us every few generations of the Vinoverdes. I know the Doomsman for the King of Dawn is one as well, he taught me how to control my Gift when I was young. There’s probably a half a dozen others scattered around the country but we don’t speak about it much. Even if you settle for something as simple as nailing a carving to a door it’s impossible to defend every door in a city against the Gift. There’s a great deal of sabotage you can do with nothing more than normal doors.”

A thought occurred to Andre. “What if you had two identical doors, made to be identical to each other and totally different from others?”

She met his gaze evenly. “Then they would be very easy to join together with the Gift.”

“Even if one of them was moving around?”

“Yes, Andre,” Ragi said. “That’s why all we need to do to get out of the city is reach the ship the Prince sent to meet us and have Bella open the door to the captain’s cabin.”

“I see.”

“We can’t do that until we get out of the keep,” Charissa pointed out.

“We can use the barrels.” Everyone in the room stared at him and Andre hastened to add, “The entrance to the bolthole is in the keep’s wine cellar. If we dump the wine from a few and lash them together we can make a raft. A bad one, but it will work.”

After two seconds of consideration Ragi nodded. “It doesn’t have to take us far, just to one of the canals or a beach nearby. So long as we can make landfall inside the city we’ll be fine. Take us to this wine cellar, Andre.”

They left Charissa’s cell and started down the stairs. Just as they reached the entrance to the hallway where Sophia had been kept the door at the base of the tower slammed open. Ragi hesitated, then waved them upwards again. “Back to the roof,” he whispered. “We’ll find another way down.”

“What about the goblin cat?” Bella whispered back.

“Guards!” Phillipe’s voice echoed through the tower like thunder. “Check on those prisoners!”

Ragi scowled. “Believe me, the cat is less dangerous. Go!”

Previous Chapter

As Andre ran terror focused the mind to a razor sharp point and at that point he foresaw his own death. The giant cat was going to catch him and eat him. Or not eat him, cats could be wasteful like that. Either way, there was no chance he could outrun that thing even if he was well rested. Tired and hungry Andre might as well sit down and wait for the inevitable.

Instead he spun around, hands held palms together as he conjured, and met the cat’s eyes. The giant feline leapt straight up in the air, killing its forward momentum entirely, then landed noiselessly, its fur standing straight out from its body and making it look the size of a fully loaded wagon. It watched Andre, its two tails lashing violently behind it.

Two tails?

Yes, definitely two, though he had no idea what it needed the second one for.

The cat lowered its head almost all the way to the ground and lifted one paw, reaching forward to prod at Andre. In response he whipped his hands apart, the huge cloud of smoke he had been conjuring between them exploding outward. The cat jumped back in shock and slipped off the top of the wall.

As it fell Andre watched it disappear from view.

One moment it was twisting as it tumbled towards the ground, the next moment it was turning transparent and then finally it faded from sight entirely. Andre turned back towards the battlement in the far corner and started running again. He made it maybe another ten feet before something slammed into his left side.

The cat’s paw looked like little more than a shimmering blur in the air but it hit him with all the force one might expect from such a large creature. It knocked Andre face first into the wall’s crenellations. Then the creature’s hooked claws snagged into his sleeve and yanked him backwards, out over the courtyard. Before he even realized he was falling the cat’s teeth clamped around his arm and shoulder and hoisted him back up over the wall.

The world around Andre jerked and spun as the cat thrashed him back and forth then he was thrown down onto the wall again with a punishing thump. Dazed, he looked up into the cat’s eyes. It had turned visible again at some point. In any other situation it would have been a beautiful sight, for the creature’s eyes had a kind of patient understanding to them that seemed both wistful and profound. Then it stretched its lips back and opened its mouth with all its daggerlike teeth and the beauty vanished.

Andre was scrambling away from the feline when it suddenly vanished before his eyes for the second time in as many minutes. There was a slight gust of air as the invisible cat leapt away. A split second later a crankbow bolt shot over Andre’s head, passing through the space the creature had just occupied without resistance. He followed the bolt back to its origin and saw Ragi, standing in the doorway to the keep.

Bella was standing behind him, holding onto the door itself like her life depended on it.

Andre was already on his feet, running towards them, before Ragi could toss the crankbow aside and motion for him to come. It felt like the longest thirty feet he’d ever run in his life. By the time he crossed the threshold the energy his burst of panic had brought was long gone and Andre dropped to the ground like a sack of grain once he was safely inside. Bella slammed the door shut behind him while Ragi watched the opening the whole time with a new, loaded crankbow cradled in his arms.

Once the door was closed he set the loaded weapon aside, picked up the discarded crankbow and started reloading it. While he did, Bella helped Andre to his feet. “Good work,” Ragi said as he finished his task. “I’m impressed you escaped from underhill, much less found us up here.”

“It was more adventure than I was expecting when I woke up this morning,” Andre admitted. He looked around the room and guessed they were in an armory. There were four loaded crankbows, including the one Ragi had just set down, on a table nearby. A rack of half a dozen spears stood against one wall and three tall, scale shaped wooden shields hung from the other. A small fire burned on the hearth. “Where are we?”

“The second floor of the keep’s gatehouse,” Bella said.

“Is that safe? What if the guards find us here?”

“The guards don’t use it at night,” Ragi said. “That creature has free reign of the courtyard and walls after the sun sets so most of the Magistrate’s men avoid being out during those hours if they can.”

“You knew about that thing and you didn’t tell me?” Andre slapped his hands to his head in a mix of disbelief and frustration. “I nearly got eaten by that thing!”

“Goblin cats don’t eat people,” Bella said. “It’s just that sometimes they play with people until the people break.”

Andre stared at her, mouth agape, mind grasping for any kind of sense to make of those words. “You know what that thing is?”

“We were told,” Ragi said, his face suggesting he wasn’t happy to be talking about it. “We have a friend or two among the Magistrate’s men.”

“Friends? How do you get friends among the Magistrate’s guards?”

Ragi sighed. “Andre, I don’t want to seem ungrateful but there’s-”

“He deserves to know.”

The older man pursed his lips and stared at Bella, weighing something in his mind, then he nodded and said, “Tell him all you like, then.”

She moved to one of the room’s chairs and sat down, moving with a prim grace that should have been out of step with her sweat stained and ill fitting apprentice’s garb. Yet somehow, now more than ever, she cut a refined, dignified image. “My name is Belladonna de la Vinoverde and my family has long tended the best vineyards in eastern Nerona.”

Andre dragged himself into one of the other chairs and stared at her. On the face of it the idea that the daughter of the Marchese Vinoverde was wandering around a port town in disguise was absurd. Yet it was hard to believe the Magistrate would send his guard captain to personally search the outskirts of the city for anyone less important. “If that’s true, why are you here? Vinoverde is a two week journey to the south and as far as I know there’s no reason for you to want to go overseas. They grow their own grapes over there.”

“I’m engaged to marry Lucas del Torrence next year, to bolster his claim to the throne of Torrence.”

“I’m sorry?”

“The Magistrate of Fionni is in the pay of Grigori Borgia,” Ragi said. “The Borgias have long looked for a noble sponsor to help spread their tendrils into Torrence’s territory. Who better than the Prince himself?”

“What?”

“Grigori most likely intends to use me as a hostage -”

“I don’t care!” A fresh wave of energy drove Andre to his feet. “I found Sophia and Charissa in the keep, by the way, they seem fine but the Magistrate plans to turn Charissa over to a blind man sometime soon, we might want to go get them before that!”

Bella got to her feet and grabbed his hand, a pleading look on her face. “Andre, you have a right to know why you’re here.”

“I already know that, Bella.” He stabbed a finger in the general direction of the keep. “Two women – your friends – came to me and asked me for help and I haven’t gotten it to them yet. Why should I care about the rest? I’ve never met a Marquese before, the closest I’ve gotten was the Conte who sacked Oliviamonde and left my mother dead in a gutter. If all you can think about is succession, thrones and hostages when two people right there need your help, maybe I shouldn’t be here.”

She let go of his hand, her face pale, and she swallowed hard. Before she could say anything Ragi pushed a short spear into Andre’s hands, saying, “You’ve got a remarkably firm picture of the part you play in all this, don’t you?”

Andre prickled at his words. “I’m not playing a part, Ragi.”

“We all are, in our ways,” the older man replied, wadding his scapula up and shoving it into Andre’s pack. “I, for one, am grateful for yours. We weren’t sure until just now that the Magistrate would keep my wife and daughter here. It was possible he would immediately quarter them elsewhere. It’s an ill omen, hearing Grigori sent the Blind Man here, by all accounts that one is particularly ruthless but now we can act before he does.”

“Yes.” The sudden change of direction in the conversation had disoriented him but now he was beginning to catch up again. “Yes, but we need to get back to the keep and I’m not sure how we’re going to do that with that cat thing out there. It’s too fast to outrun and too big to fight. I don’t know how to use this.”

Ragi chuckled and pushed it back when Andre tried to hand him the spear again. Instead he pointed one of his beefy fingers at the head of the spear. “Do you see this?”

“Yes?”

“Keep it between you and anything that looks dangerous. I’ll take care of the rest.” To emphasize his point he shoved a sword into his belt and grabbed a spear of his own. “As for the goblin cat, they’re wiley beasts but we can avoid it entirely now that you’ve changed the doors.”

“What does that mean?” Andre glanced at Bella, who had been very quiet for the last few minutes. “Sophia mentioned the doors, too. Is that how you got underhill? The Fair Folk let you use their doors?”

“Not directly,” she said. “I was born with the Gift of Doors, which is hard to explain to anyone who doesn’t have the Gift. What matters is that two doors that are very similar to each other are actually one door, so long as you have the Gift, and you can open both of them at once, passing from one to the other.”

“How similar do they have to be?”

“Ideally the same size and material, though if they are the same size and different kinds of wood, or the same kind of wood with iron bands, I may be able to open them. If they are close to each other.”

Andre fished the mouse carving out of his pocket and held it up. “What if this is on one door and the other is plain?” An incredulous look told him Bella using her Gift then was absolutely impossible. “Then we have a problem. I took this off a door into the keep but I don’t know where that door leads. I was out on the walls when I found it and I pried it off because Sophia mentioned carvings but I didn’t know why it was important. So it never occurred to me to look on the other side of the door.”

Ragi frowned. “Do you know how close to the prison cells that door is?”

“Not close. I went up the entirety of the prison tower and the only entrance to that tower from elsewhere in the keep was on the ground floor. You might be able to enter the watch room from somewhere else but I didn’t get a good look inside it so I can’t be sure.”

“How did you get out of the prison tower onto the walls, then?” Bella asked.

“The tower leads to the roof, I conjured a ladder from the keep’s roof. If you open that door,” Andre gestured to the gatehouse door, “just like you did for me earlier we could go back to that spot on the walls. From there it would be easy to climb back up onto the roof the same way.” Though he wasn’t looking forward to conjuring something that large in his current state.

“Then that’s what we’ll do,” Ragi said. “Maybe we’ll be able to get it all done before the goblin cat spots us and comes calling.”

“What if we can’t?”

He handed Bella his spear and picked up a crankbow. “We’ll deal with that when it comes to it.”

Previous Chapter

Andre scrambled to hide once again, although this time he didn’t go out the window. He wasn’t sure his arms were up to the task, for one thing, and the guards had just searched the area so he doubted their captain would bother to duplicate their work. This time he just slipped behind the door to the cell beside Sophia’s and did his best to fade into the shadows.

It was a bit nerve wracking, listening to Captain Phillipe’s footsteps approach with their deliberate pace. After what felt like a lifetime he stopped at Sophia’s door and knocked politely. If she was nervous, Sophia’s voice didn’t betray it when she said, “Hello, Captain.”

“Your mother sends her regards,” Phillipe said. “She says you were in fear, just now, though I have to confess I didn’t hear your voice myself. It seems a mother’s instincts are not to be underestimated, as a few moments after she told me she heard you cry out my men came and reported the same. Yet you don’t seem terrified now. Quite the opposite. May I ask what changed?”

“I thought I saw a pair of glowing yellow eyes at the peephole there,” Sophia said, her voice catching quite realistically in the middle of the sentence. Andre wondered if it was because she was an excellent actor or because he really had frightened her badly. “Then I screamed and they vanished. Your guards told me there was nothing here and that I may have imagined them.”

“Do you think you imagined them?”

The silence after he asked dragged out to the point where Andre wondered if Sophia was ever going to answer the question. At the same time, he saw why she hesitated. The ideal answer was whichever one would make the captain leave sooner but he couldn’t guess which one would accomplish that. Finally she said, “No.”

Phillipe tsked and said, “Perhaps. Perhaps not. Finish your supper, signorina, you wouldn’t want to attract rats.”

“Captain. Why were you with my mother, just now?”

“Because while having her here as our guest is a great privilege she will not be remaining with us for long. The Magistrate has decided to move her elsewhere, as this is not the kind of place to be keeping a lady of Rhodes.”

“Well, I look forward to seeing our new accommodations.”

Andre thought he heard the captain chuckle at that. “They’re well worth the anticipation, signorina. Good evening.”

After another wait for the captain to leave Andre slipped out of hiding again, suppressing his annoyance. “Did you ever see a cat while you were in here, Sophia?”

“Nooo…” The way she stretched the word out suggested she didn’t understand the question.

“Just wondering. I thought I heard the Captain mention one while he was on his way down.” 

He grabbed the bar on the door and started to lift it out of the brackets when Sophia said, “Wait. I shouldn’t leave yet.”

“Why not?”

“For starters, the moment they notice I’m missing the Magistrate will have guards everywhere. Once it’s time to leave for good there’s nothing helping that but you need to find Bella and my father before that. And while you’re looking for them it’s better if you’re alone. Easier to keep out of sight.”

“I don’t have the faintest idea where Ragi or Bella are,” Andre hissed. “They didn’t tell me anything about how to find them once we got here.”

“They’re on the walls of the keep, though I’m not sure where,” Sophia said. “The doors up to the keep walls are made of oak and have animal carvings mounted to them. At least one of them is missing that carving and that’s the one they’ll arrive at.”

“What?”

“That’s her Gift, Andre, opening doors. It would take too long to explain in detail but that’s the short of it.” Andre suddenly recalled Bella asking him if he could conjure a door when they first met. If her Gift relied on them somehow the question made a lot more sense. “Now go look for them. I’ll stay here so I don’t lose track of mother when they come to move us.”

“I overheard some of the guards talking about that earlier. I don’t think they’re planning on keeping the two of you together, Sophia, it sounds like they’re just planning to move her. If you need to slip out of here on your own to keep track of them can you do it?”

She shook her head, a motion barely visible in the gloom of her cell. “How am I supposed to get out of here?”

“You’re a raveller, couldn’t you weave the threads in your sleeve into a rope and use it to lift the bar or something?”

“They saw me use my Gift, Andre. That’s why they made me wear this.” Sophia moved forward until she was right next to the door and moved so her body was more fully in the meager light of the cell. Andre realized she was wearing a simple leather shift and very little else. There was nothing there to unravel. 

Blushing, he half turned away from the door and fished a cloak, tunic and a few spools of thread out of his pack. He opened the door long enough to pass them through to her, saying, “Then take these. And keep an eye out in case they move your mother.”

Sophia nodded as she pulled the cloak around her shoulders. “Do you think you can get up to the keep’s walls from here?”

“Maybe. I got a look at the courtyard while I was out the window, at least.” He closed the door and slipped the bar back into place then turned to go.

“Andre.” Sophia’s eyes were fixed on the tunic he’d given her, which she’d already started reweaving into something closer to her own size. “Thank you.”

He froze, confused. “For?”

“You didn’t have to come.”

“Oh. Yeah.” It felt like there was something else he should say but he wasn’t sure what it was so he settled for, “Don’t worry, I’ll find your father.”

Which was a very stupid thing to promise, considering Ragi seemed a lot more capable of finding him than the other way around. There wasn’t much besides looking he could do at the moment, though, so he glanced out the windows and considered.

Massimo had let him into the main body of the keep but the wall of the building they were in overlooked the courtyard. It wasn’t part of the fortified walls with their oaken doors. He was going to have to get to another corner of the building if he wanted to reach them. 

Based on what he’d seen from the outside, the keep was a large rectangle that occupied one corner of the larger and equally rectangular fortifications. Each corner of the keep proper had a rounded tower, three small and one large. He’d climbed up one of them to get to the cells, it wasn’t really big enough to contain more than the staircase he’d used. The large tower was the corner the keep shared with the walls. It was also taller than the other three and had the enormous warning beacon atop it which, if it wasn’t lit yet, would be very soon.

Still, he reasoned the safest way to the walls was via the keep’s roof. Not only had the ground floor been filling up when Massimo led him through it, Andre had no idea how many twists and turns he’d have to make through it to reach the other towers. There was a chance someone on guard would see him if he went up to the roof but if he went back down then getting seen was a certainty. So Andre donned his hat and started up the stairs again.

There was another deep archway after a few turns of the spiral but that one ended at a closed door with iron bands. Presumably that led to the chambers where Charissa was being kept. Not much point going that way at the moment so after gently testing the knob to find it locked Andre continued on his way.

After another half dozen steps the ceiling came into view. The gathering dusk filled a square opening overhead, a simple and convenient way to access the roof. At least, if you were someone who belonged on that roof.

Andre had to take his hat off so its pointed crown wouldn’t give him away, then get down on hands and knees and crawl up the last few steps so he could peek out while keeping as low as possible. At first he thought the roof was empty. Then he caught sight of a single guard who was walking a plodding circuit of the building, pausing every so often to gaze out at the ocean.

It took almost twenty minutes and two full circuits of the roof for Andre to give up on the hope that the guard was only there to do a quick check on things. There was no sign of him going back down into the keep. Andre was going to have to sneak past him somehow.

On the bright side, the guard did not appear to be particularly vigilant and his attention was mostly directed out towards the water. His attention turned that way pretty much every time he came to a stop. Andre wondered if he was on the roof to guard the keep or watch for hostile ships on the horizon.

Unfortunately, the roof itself was a flat expanse. Andre thought he might be able to run across it in the time it took the guard to walk the section that faced away from him. That left little to no time to climb off the roof and down to the walls themselves, about ten feet below them. It was also going to be very noisy.

Using smoke as a distraction was a possibility but would probably bring more people up to the roof than he was comfortable with. In many plays actors would mime throwing a rock to create a distracting clatter. Andre could make a rock but, given how little there was on the roof to clatter, he felt it might make the guard more suspicious rather than just curious.

Then he remembered what the captain said on the stairs and had a new idea.

He went down the stairs and studied the third floor door for a minute or two, getting a very good image of it fixed in his mind. Then he set about conjuring a number of things one at a time. First, two thin pieces of rope that were almost strings. He hadn’t brought anything quite like what he needed in his pack and he’d given most of that to Sophia anyway.

Next, he conjured a pair of willow sticks about two feet long and tied the rope to either end, creating a pair of crude bows. It took a little bit of twanging to get just the right sound from them but eventually he was satisfied. Finally, he created a concave sheet of tin large enough for one of the bows to rest in so that the sound would be amplified up the stairway.

Then he positioned himself in the archway, which was deep enough for a person to stand in comfortably, and he set his plan in motion. Holding one end of his contraption together with one hand and the other end with his foot, Andre rubbed the bowstrings across each other with a strong, firm sawing motion. It was a crude replica of his usual sound harp but it still created a believable cat’s yowl. Or so Andre told himself.

He played the sound three times then let the conjurations vanish. If he got lucky the guard was now coming to see what was going on, which meant Andre had to make sure he wasn’t seen. He’d told Bella he wasn’t sure he could conjure a door. Most of the time he conjured small things, like props or costume pieces, or smoke and fog for scene setting. But it turned out that, with a bit of focus, he could conjure a decent replica of a door. So long as the door he was duplicating was right behind him for reference and he didn’t have to include hinges.

Andre’s hope was that, by duplicating the door and holding it upright in the archway, he could make things look normal enough that the guard wouldn’t notice as he walked down the stairs, looking for a stray cat. It was a bit of a gamble but he knew most people didn’t look closely at sets when walking by. All he had to do was keep the door conjured until the guard went past.

Yet pass by the guard did not. Andre counted off seconds, then a minute, then two and still there was no sound of boots on the stairs. He let the door vanish with a sigh. Not all his ideas could be winners, it seemed.

Except, when Andre got up to the roof again to check in on the guard he found it empty. There was no sign of the guardsman who had been up there anywhere and, as he had already established, there wasn’t anywhere for the guard to hide. Confused but a little grateful, Andre crept out onto the roof and over to one of the keep’s outer walls. From there, getting down was simple. 

Andre had conjured ladders many times in his life and one more time wasn’t a serious exertion. Even so, he was feeling the effort. As he crouched down on the walls and dismissed the ladder he wistfully thought about Sophia’s dinner. He should have asked for a piece of her bread while he was with her.

Like Sophia had told him, the door from the keep to the top of the wall was made of oak and a carved, wooden mouse was nailed to it. She had mentioned the right door would have no carving on it. Curious, Andre pulled his knife out of his belt and spent a minute prying the mouse off the door to see what would happen. He didn’t seriously expect it to swing open and reveal Bella once he was done. 

But it would have been nice.

Disappointed, he turned and started across the walls, keeping an eye out behind him in case a patrolling guard appeared from the keep. It was about a hundred and fifty feet from the door into the keep to the far corner of the wall, where an enclosed, fortified battlement contained the next door for him to check. He had crossed about fifty of those feet when he heard the yowl.

This was not a crude imitation of a cat’s cry, wrenched out of ropes under duress. This was the genuine article, shaking the air with the force of a shout and coming from just behind and below him. Struck with sudden panic, Andre spun about, trying to pinpoint where the sound came from.

As he whirled he caught a flash of movement in the corner of his eye. A shape landed on the wall between him and the castle with a silent grace that seemed to chill the air. As Andre focused on it he struggled to understand what he saw. At first he thought a warhorse had somehow jumped up on the walls. Then the creature opened its yellow, slit pupiled eyes and he understood why the guard hadn’t come looking for the cat.

Why the walls themselves didn’t need guards on them.

Why Massimo said they should get indoors as it was getting dark.

With the benefit of that understanding, Andre broke into a run. The cat was right behind him.

Previous Chapter

The tower was not what Andre had expected. The seat of the Magistrate, from which he defended the southeastern reach of Nerona, brought to mind a spare, utilitarian fortress. However, as Massimo had implied, the current Magistrate was working on changing it to a more luxurious place. The inside was richly appointed with tapestries and paintings.

Andre didn’t know much about either artform so he couldn’t really judge how skillful or valuable the decorations were but they looked nice. He did notice that most of the paintings weren’t the usual historical or religious fare. He caught a glimpse of a painting that depicted the Tide Turning, when Hannibal Fulminate battled Old Lum in the days when Nerona had a king. However the rest of the images he saw looked incredibly mundane. A caravan on the road. A table, laden with food and surrounded by a feasting, celebrating town. A field, full of ripe grain that a single, powerful looking man was busily reaping and stacking, painted in such vibrant colors that the wheat looked like gold.

There wasn’t a lot of time to look closely at any of it, since Massimo didn’t wait for him. The gardener’s son led him through servant’s hallways at a rapid clip, passing by a dining room where supper was laid out but no one was eating yet and a receiving room empty of guests to arrive in the main kitchen. Based on what Andre saw, they had just looped around the outer wall of the tower, which was nice. He was pretty confident he could find his way back on his own if he had to.

The kitchen bustled with activity and a few of the servants scurrying around, pouring soup into tureens and arranging sliced bread on plates, paused their activity long enough to scold Massimo for getting in the way. Massimo just ignored them. As they hurried through he snatched a slice of soft, white bread off a plate and tore it in half, then passed one half to Andre. He ate it with a pang of guilt. The Maestro believed sharing food was the first sign of friendship but Andre knew that Massimo’s good will came under false pretenses.

Once they were through the kitchen Massimo led him down a short hall that led into the heart of the tower and opened a door to reveal stairs leading upwards. The spiral staircase was quite dark. There were no places to hang lanterns or set torches, though a dim flickering from overhead suggested there was a light burning up there somewhere. “The cells are on the third floor,” Massimo said. “You should stop on the second and check to make sure your Harbinger isn’t in the watch chamber with the captain.”

“You’re not coming?”

“Servants don’t go up to the prisoner’s chambers unless they’re bringing food and I’m a gardner, not a chef. Besides, it’s time for supper.”

Honestly, that was for the best. Andre didn’t want to get the other boy into any kind of trouble and there was a good chance he wouldn’t want to help Andre out of said trouble, either. He put one foot on the first stair and said, “Thank you, Massimo.”

As Andre started climbing the door swung closed behind him, sealing with an unsettling thump. It was the second time that day he was stuck in a dark stone chamber. At least this time the Fair Folk weren’t going to show up, asking for names. 

Hopefully.

The stairway was windowless and that, combined with the lack of lights, served as a kind of security all its own. If he conjured a lantern to see by, Andre would be easily seen in turn by the guardsmen. There was no telling whether his story about bringing wine for a Harbinger would work on them and, even if it did, there was a good chance they would send for Captain Borgia to confirm it. On the other hand, if he stayed in the dark there was a good chance he would trip and give himself away.

Andre paused for a moment to dig through his pack, swapping the wine bottle for Gravel’s gift. Once his new hat was on his head again it was possible to pick his way up the stairs without a light source. He was already used to creeping around backstage so stepping lightly wasn’t a challenge for him. Getting up the stairs quietly was easy. The watch chamber might have been a greater challenge if the guards themselves had been attentive. Fortunately, they were not.

From the looks of things they had already received their supper and the three men in the chambers were gathered around a large wooden table, unpacking food from a basket. A delicious fragrance reached Andre, reminding him that he hadn’t eaten since breakfast. Still, the guards were more distracted by hunger than he was and Andre slipped past the door with no issue.

Another two turns of the stairway brought him to a narrow archway turning off the stairs. Beyond it a short hall led along a series of cells on one side. Windows opened out over the keep’s courtyard below. This had to be the place.

Andre crept down the hall, peering into the first few cells one at a time, wondering what kind of crimes required their use. No doubt there were plenty of stocks in the main city. Then again, perhaps these were holdovers from the days when Fionni was more a frontier fortress than a trade hub. There wasn’t any evidence of the first two cells being used recently. All they contained were bare stone walls and a raised slab of brickwork to sleep on. Wooden doors with small, barred windows swung out into the hall with brackets to hold simple wood bars on either side. It was a simple way to secure a prisoner but it would do the job.

From that it was easy to figure out that the only cell occupied was the one with a bar across the door, which was the cell at the far end of the hall. So he skipped the next three cells and peered into the window of the last. Sophia was seated on the cell’s brick slab, quietly chewing on a piece of bread, a plate of fruit and jerky set next to her. A strange tension, one Andre hadn’t even been aware of, vanished from his chest when he saw her.

“Sophia,” he whispered.

She looked up at the window, dropped her bread and shrieked.

Andre was so startled he jerked back from the window, dumbfounded by her reaction. Until he remembered the hat and the way it created an unnatural glow that looked like eyes while casting everything else beneath it in shadow. Frustrated with himself for forgetting such a simple thing, he yanked the hat off and moved back to the window. “Sophia, it’s me, Andre!”

She had also moved away from the window, huddling by the far wall with her tin plate held in front of her like a shield. The rest of her supper sat forgotten, scattered over the sleeping slab. There was no light in the cell and, with Andre blocking the window, it was almost impossible for him to make out any details. She was clearly having the same problem because she demanded, “Prove it.”

“What do you want me to do? Replace your supper? I already told you it won’t taste like anything.” Not without a Fair Folk to receive it, anyway, but that was besides the point.

His answer seemed to satisfy her because she lowered the plate and hurried to the door. “Andre? How did you get here?”

“Bella took us underhill, somehow, and we got separated -”

There were footsteps on the stairs and Andre belatedly realized that Sophia was a valuable prisoner, of course the guards would want to know why she screamed. He bolted away from the door and took stock. If he was a guard he would check the cells for danger so hiding in one of them was out of the question. The odds he could get far enough up the stairs to be out of sight weren’t good either. 

The windows had iron rings to hook shutters onto when storms came off the ocean but they weren’t in place at the moment and the windows themselves were wide enough to slip out of. So Andre conjured a metal hook and rope, slipped the hook into a ring and dropped himself out of the window, clinging to the rope, just seconds before the guards burst through the archway.

Dangling there, some twenty or thirty feet above the ground, Andre reflected on how most of the life of a theater stage hand took place at lesser elevations. He decided he preferred it that way. There was a real chance the guards would see his hook through the window if they were attentive. From there it would be a simple matter to look out the window, discover him and drag him in to go meet the Magistrate. For all that risk, Andre’s attention remained fixed on a rocky patch of ground just below.

He tried to take deep, even breaths, which Mastroianni insisted was the secret to keeping calm in any situation, but he hadn’t been able to drop out the window gently. The momentum of his drop kept him swaying back and forth and made him sick to his stomach. Andre swallowed hard, forcing his bile back down, and adjusted his grip on the rope as his hands began to cramp. He was vaguely aware of men’s voices coming from the window. Sophia said something he couldn’t make out in response.

The discussion went back and forth for a minute or two then faded away into the distance. In spite of how difficult he found it to dangle there, Andre waited a full ten count after he stopped hearing voices to drag himself through the window on shaking arms. Once he was back on solid ground he let the hook and rope vanish and heaved a sigh.

“Are you okay?” Sophia asked through her window.

“More or less,” he said, shaking out his arms and flexing his fingers, suddenly full of nervous energy. “Where is your mother?”

“I’m not certain but I think she’s on the next floor up. She has the Rhodes family gift so the Magistrate will probably take better care of her than a simple raveller like me.” Sophia peered at him in curiosity. “Why were your eyes like that earlier?”

“It’s a long story. We need to get you out of here but I’m not sure where we should go, that was something I think your father was in charge of.”

“Maybe. You said Bella opened a door underhill?”

“Yes, but we were separated and I don’t know where they came out.”

“You need to find them. I think I have an idea how they were planning to leave and we can’t do it without them.”

Andre shook his head, suspecting he knew the plan. “I’m not sure I can go with you if you’re planning to go underhill again. The Fair Folk I met only gave me permission to pass one time.”

Sophia’s eyes widened. “You negotiated with the Fair Folk? On your own?”

“Longer story. Do you know where they might have come out from underhill? Or would your mother?”

She cocked her head to one side and at first Andre thought she was thinking. Then she put a hand to her ear and Andre stopped to listen as well.

There were footsteps on the stairs again. “She was probably startled by the cat.” Captain Borgia’s voice echoed down the stairs. “But I will look in on it myself, to be safe.”