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.”

Previous Chapter

The entrance to the grotto was hidden behind a cask in a wine cellar. Once Andre opened the door at the top of the path he had to figure out how to unlatch the hooks holding the cask in place before he could roll it to one side and get into the building proper. Before he crossed the threshold he stopped to fold up his new hat and shove it into his bundle of costumes. He considered changing clothes but decided against it.

It was doubtful there were permanent acolytes of the Heralds on station in the citadel, assuming that was where he was, but the Heralds of Scars did visit most military camps semiregularly, at least in tales. Hopefully the citadel worked the same. So Andre stayed in costume and closed the entrance to the grotto behind him, latching the cask back into place and taking in his surroundings.

The wine cellar was an unremarkable chamber of worked stone, likely molded out of the rock by someone with the stonetender’s gift. The finishing was too smooth for anything else. He did wonder why the path had been so rough in the cellar by comparison, though perhaps the builders hadn’t wanted to pay the stonetender for the extra work. The room was cool and dry. One side of it was lined with casks of wine, the opposite side with racks of bottles. That gave Andre an idea.

The Maestro was always telling him to think ahead, write a script or at least consider his words before he said them. Andre had never taken that seriously because he always struggled with lines. Props, on the other hand, were something he knew a lot about. There were four Kings at the Corners of Eternity and each had an order of Heralds desperate to gain the attention of their chosen monarch via devotion and ritual. Andre knew very little about how they went about it but he did know one thing.

The Heralds of the King of Scars liked to use wine in their rituals.

He wasn’t sure if there was a difference in what kind of wine was used so he grabbed a smaller bottle off a nearby rack and tucked it under one arm. Then he looked around for the exit. There was a small set of stairs leading up the far wall and that seemed like as good a place as any to start. Andre put one foot on the bottom step and froze, startled to hear a sudden scrambling sound coming from under the wooden slats. 

There was a surprised squeak, more sounds of scrabbling paws, then a ghastly snapping sound. After that things were quiet. Andre tried to peer through a gap in the stairs but all he really caught was a glimpse of a yellow eye staring back at him. 

“Enjoy your rat,” he muttered to the citadel’s cat, then continued on his way.

Andre hesitated at the door at the top of the stairs, breathing deeply and doing what he always saw the Maestro do before he went on stage. He ran his hands over his costume, checked his props and muttered his line under his breath. He could do this.

He pulled the door open and stepped out into a small courtyard. He’d emerged from under one of the citadel’s outer walls and his ears told him the ocean was not far beyond it. A large stone tower rose up in front of him, the fortress’s main keep. There was a door into the tower a dozen feet away but Andre also had the option of following the inner wall through an archway into a place with bushes. 

The day was growing late and Andre suspected there would be fewer people in an open garden or courtyard now that the sun was behind the fortress walls. Besides, he was well and truly sick of being indoors for the moment. It was as good a place to start looking for Bella and Ragi as anything.

The place proved to be a hedge maze. At first Andre thought he was just on a path lined with bushes, it wasn’t until he reached a third junction in rapid succession that he realized it was a labyrinth. His sense of direction wasn’t good but Antonio had once mentioned always following the right hand wall would get him through any maze. He instantly started following that advice. Four or five minutes later he rounded a corner and found himself in a clearing about ten feet across.

There was a bench there with a boy about his age seated on it, whittling the end of a staff with a small knife. They stared blankly at each other for a second, then the boy said, “Good omens, Herald. What brings you to Citadel Fionni?”

Still off kilter, Andre held up his bottle and blurted out, “Wine. The Harbinger needed wine. The Captain…” He hesitated, brain working frantically to recall the right name. “Captain Phillipe sent me to fetch some and told me to meet them back at the prison cells?”

The boy gave him a skeptical look. “Why would the captain want a Harbinger to go to the prison cells? We’re not planning to execute anyone.”

That was a question that was tough to answer, since Andre didn’t know much about the captain and Phillipe hadn’t sent for a Herald regardless. So Andre just shrugged and said, “How should I know? Harbingers don’t usually feel a need to explain things to me.”

“And the Captain didn’t say anything to you, either? I’m shocked.” His wry grin suggested he was much the opposite. “The cells are in the tower, though, not under the Citadel walls. You should have gone back in there.”

“Sorry,” Ande said, looking over his shoulder at the tower looming overhead. “I’ve never been here before. To the city, much less the citadel.” 

“Don’t worry about it.” He blew a few flakes of wood off of his staff and got to his feet, tucking his knife into a sheath on his belt. “I’m Massimo Echoes, by the way. And you?”

“Ragi.” Andre blurted the name out before he could think better of it. He hadn’t bothered to come up with a fake name for himself and in a panic he didn’t give his own, though he instantly regretted it. “Ragi Conjuror.”

“I’ll take you out and get you to the tower, Ragi.” Massimo started towards one of the clearing’s other exits. “It’s faster this way.”

Andre hurried after him, relaxing enough to gawk a little more. “Why is this place here? All the mazes in stories are for trapping things but this place looks more decorative than anything else.”

“They tell me that’s what it’s for.” Massimo pointed up towards the top of the tower. “Back when the Prince of Torrence built this place it was a plain old fort but once they started digging canals so the ships could get in and out of the Gulf in safety things changed. The city’s important now. There’s no formal lord of Fionni, yet, but the current Magistrate has ambitions and they say he’s trying to turn Citadel Fionni into a proper castle.”

“Well this is not exactly what I’d picture in a proper castle.” Andre paused to stare at another clearing down a path to his right. A large statue of a man with a golden half circle around the top of his head stood there, one hand raised to point to the east. “Is that…?”

Massimo followed his line of sight. “The King of Dawn, yeah. The other three are around here, too, if you’re interested in seeing yours.”

“No, I think I’d rather not.”

“The Magistrate had Heralds come in and consecrate them, if it makes you feel any better.”

“They’re death, you know,” Andre murmured. “I understand that you have to give your journey into Eternity some thought before it comes. But inviting it in and dwelling on it constantly doesn’t seem healthy.”

“Surprising words from someone in your line of work.” Massimo looked him over then glanced away, uncomfortable. “Then again, maybe not. Were you Returned?”

He’d been caught scratching again. Frustrated, Andre yanked his hand away from the old scar on his neck and shoved it under his arm, wrapping the wine bottle there in a death grip to keep his hand from wandering. “I don’t remember. It happened when I was very young.”

“What -”

“Burned.” He bit the word out with more force than he’d intended. “I got burned, that’s all.”

“Oh.” Massimo cleared his throat and pointed down the path to the left. “We can detour that way. Otherwise we’ll go through the clearing with the Dreams statue.”

“Lead on.” Andre followed the other boy in silence for a few minutes, trying to keep track of the many twists and turns in the maze. It was harder than he anticipated. In the growing dusk the place was beginning to feel alien, all narrow paths and strange rustling noises as unseen animals moved through the brush. The hedges were mostly broad leafed bushes of an unremarkable type. Every so often a rose, hawthorne or similar flowering bush showed up at a corner and Andre eventually realized Massimo was using them to navigate somehow. There must have been a trick to it. Unfortunately, Andre was so turned around by that point he had no hope of figuring it out for himself.

So he turned his scrutiny to his companion. Massimo was pretty nondescript, roughly the same height as Andre was, with a medium build and an average face. The only remarkable things about him were his nose, which was a bit lumpy, and his hair, which fell to just above his shoulders and hung straight as a pin. He wore a gray tunic with yellow slashes held in with a belt of woven thongs. He didn’t have any tools on him beyond his knife and staff nor was he wearing heraldry or an insignia.

So, after following him for another few minutes, Andre asked, “How is it you were out here so late in the day, Massimo?”

“My father tends the gardens for the Magistrate,” Massimo replied. “I’ve been his apprentice the past two years, though I don’t know if the Magistrate plans to add enough greenery for two full time groundskeepers. I may have to leave here once it’s time to begin a journeyman’s work.”

“Do you -” A strange shadow passed over the two of them and Andre spun, eyes going up to the top of the hedge. The top edge of the fortress’ outer walls was barely visible over the bushes. Other than a pennant with the emblem of Fionni and Torrence on it there wasn’t anything to see on the walls.

“Ragi.”

Andre took a step to the left, standing on tiptoes to try and see over the top of the maze.

“Ragi.” Massimo grabbed him by the arm and gently tugged him down the path. “It’s getting late. We should get inside.”

On the one hand, he wanted to figure out what had just passed by on the walls. There was a good chance it was the real Ragi and Bella. On the other hand, if it was those two they probably weren’t going to make themselves known while Massimo was around. “Of course. Lead the way.”

In another minute or so they were out of the labyrinth and heading for the tower. Andre stole a few furtive glances back, hoping to catch sight of either of his companions in the gathering shadows filling the maze. Sadly, by the time Massimo was ushering him into the citadel proper, neither one had appeared.

Previous Chapter

Getting up the ladder was the hardest part of anything Andre did while he was underhill. The dark made it impossible to pick out where rungs were and he wound up waving his hands around and stubbing his fingers on the wall more than once. Things got easier when he broke down and put the hat Gravel had given him on his head rather than carrying it. This freed up one hand, which helped immensely.

He had hoped the strange gleam it emanated would also provide enough light he could see by, at least a little, but it worked out better than that. Once the hat was firmly on his head Andre found he could see dimly, though details were fuzzy. Still, it was more than enough to get him up the ladder and out of the Fair Folk’s lands.

What it didn’t tell him was where he wound up, which turned out to be wet, dark and very cold. At some point, when climbing the rungs, Andre suddenly found himself underwater, still clinging to a ladder but one that was now made of old wood worn smooth by the tides instead of hard stone. That inspired him to go up the ladder faster and a second later he broke the surface, gasping. A few rungs later Andre rolled onto a wooden pier built on stone pilings. A rough hewn grotto surrounded him, echoing with the soft slap of waves on stone, with two piers protruding into the dark chamber. An old rowboat was tied up to his pier, there was nothing on the other.

Andre paused for a moment to catch his breath and wring some of the water out of his clothes and the bundle of costumes he’d had on his back. While he worked he looked around, trying to figure out where he was. Ragi and Bella had been on their way to the Magistrate’s cells. He wasn’t sure how close Bella’s door out from underhill would get her to that goal but, by the same token, he had no idea how close he was to that goal, either.

A quick lick of his lips told him the grotto was full of salt water rather than fresh. When he was deep in his cups Mastroianni occasionally mentioned how common it was for a citadel to have a secret way in and out so a handful of people could escape sieges. Although it was a wealthy, sprawling port now, Fionni was initially built as a small fortress. Perhaps this was such a bolthole, dug deep in the foundations of the city.

The air was cold and clammy but not totally still, there was a slight draft coming in over the water and that suggested there was some outlet overhead. Andre dragged himself to his feet, collected his bundle and squelched off the pier towards land. The limited amount he could see thanks to Gravel’s hat didn’t reveal much about the space he was in. His best guess was that it was a natural chamber that had later been expanded by human hands. There was no real shoreline to speak of, the edge of the cavern came straight down to the water, but there was a narrow path cut into the wall leading upwards at a steep angle. It zigzagged up into the dark past the point where the vision Gravel’s hat granted him dissolved into a meaningless haze.

It was tempting to ignore the path and just steal the rowboat. Ever since he’d found himself underhill Andre had felt more and more out of his depth. Negotiating with Fair Folk was about as far from the life of a stagehand as he could think of. If he went even further afield to the point of infiltrating Citadel Fionni on his own he felt certain that a grim fate would befall him, if not at the hands of the city’s magistrate then certainly at the hands of Captain Borgia.

Yet he still found himself hiking up the path. Sure, the secret exit to the Citadel wasn’t likely to be guarded, that would make the secret part of things difficult to keep up. The problem was the boat. Andre had never been in a boat in his life and stealing one from the Magistrate was probably not the best way to inaugurate his sailing career. So it was probably safest to get out of there the normal way.

He made it to the second switchback when a door overhead swung open and three people bundled through.

Two of them were carrying lanterns. That gave him just enough light to tell that the third person was shorter than the other two and was moving unnaturally. That was all he had time to take in before he realized he had to get off the path. It was not an easy task.

The cavern was naturally rough and steeply sloped so as soon as he stepped off the precut path he had to move with greater care. Worse, the whole of the grotto was damp and slick, complicating footing even more. There were a few small stalagmites and natural rock piles here and there but getting to one before he was spotted without making enough noise to give himself away was a fall order.

So Andre did the next best thing. Once he got about ten feet off the path he conjured a duplicate of a plaster set piece that was painted like a rock and crouched down behind it. Then he realized his hat was probably still gleaming and he pulled it off and stuck it under the fake rock. Then he peeked out and watched the trio approach.

The two figures carrying lanterns were dressed in the livery of guardsmen and they wore sideswords at their hip. The third, somewhat unnatural looking figure was an enigma. His eyes were wrapped in bandages and he moved with an odd cadence, a cane carefully sweeping the ground in front of him and his steps came in an uneven pattern. A short step, another short step, then a long step.

Andre was more than a little accustomed to acrobatics and he’d even drilled for stage fighting with the Maestro but he’d never seen that kind of cadence before. He wasn’t sure what it was for unless it somehow helped him compensate for a seeming lack of sight. The blind man wasn’t dressed in guard colors, which was no real surprise. Guards generally needed to see. Instead he wore a deep green tunic over beige hose and heavy boots that came to his mid calf. He was wrapped in a cloak that probably matched his tunic at some point in its life but now was stained by rain and mud wherever it wasn’t faded by the sun.

With his position secured Andre had attention to spare and he realized one of the guardsmen was speaking in a low voice. “There is no chance of my petition being reconsidered, signore?”

“In time, signore, in time,” the blind man answered. “Papa Borgia does not break bread with everyone, you understand. The privilege is earned.”

“I do understand,” the guard replied. “But it seems a very hard thing to have to send a girl away from her mother so that my own can walk again.”

“I know. To speak truthfully, I support your desire. You’re a much more honorable man than many who seek the advantages of the Borgia’s gratitude.” The blind man stopped and turned to put a hand on the guard’s shoulder. He moved with eerie precision for someone who theoretically couldn’t see what he was doing. “But Grigori is a man of business. The exchange of coin and favors is what he desires and both are of little value when the entire Gulf of Lum lies between him and the city where they are kept. Right now, you have little to offer him. But I wouldn’t despair, my friend, for your captain proved his worth. I’m sure that, if you stay loyal, you will prove your own in time.”

“That’s an odd thing to say,” the second guard said.

“Why is that?” The blind man gestured as he spoke and the group started moving again.

“Well, you say the Borgias seek coin but a woman over thirty is not likely to gain you much compared to the value of a girl in the bloom of youth. Yet you want to take the older woman to him rather than the younger.”

The blind man harrumphed, clearly unimpressed with the guard. “If coin were the currency then I’d say you’re right but I assure you there is more to the exchange than that. Signore, leave the question of value to us. There are many things that are only of worth because of how secret they are, after all, and it’s not my place to question how Papa Borgia chooses to assess that. We are just here to see that the transaction takes place.”

“If it’s so important to you why don’t you take her with you now?” The second guard asked.

“The pieces are not in place yet and she is safer staying here until the ship from Renicie arrives in port.” The blind man stopped when his cane hit the first board of the docks. He held out a hand towards the guardsman in front and said, “I don’t trust my footing on this old wood. Lead me.”

“Of course, signore.”

The three men proceeded to clamber into the rowboat with a fair amount of splashing and swearing before rowing off into the grotto. Andre watched them go, frowning. He wasn’t sure what to make of what he’d overheard. Certainly the woman they were talking about spiriting off to Renicie was Sophia’s mother, Charissa, but he wasn’t sure why it was necessary. Nor did he really understand why the blind man had come and gone in such secrecy. If he was a guest of the Magistrate he should have been able to walk right into the Citadel’s main gate.

Unless he wasn’t a guest of the Magistrate.

All three men had mentioned the Borgias, a somewhat dubious house of merchants from Renicie. Andre didn’t know much about them other than that they were extremely loyal to each other. The Captain had said he was a Borgia. Perhaps he was operating on behalf of their patriarch without the knowledge or permission of the magistrate. 

Or perhaps the magistrate was trying to keep the city’s councilors from knowing he had helped the Borgias. Whatever it was, it seemed to demand great secrecy of the captain and his men. Perhaps Andre could work that to his advantage.

It took longer than he liked to conjure enough oil to burn both piers, made worse by the fact that he was already tired from everything he’d done that day. But once they were burning on their own he trusted the flames would go till they reached the water line. Getting a boat up to the path without tearing it open on the rocks below would be impossible. Hopefully that would prevent the captain from moving Charissa out in secrecy, buy them a few days if Ragi couldn’t rescue her immediately.

Of course, if he didn’t want to need rescuing himself Andre figured he’d better find the others as soon as possible. So he headed back up the path once again. It was time to figure out what part of the citadel he was in.