A Shadow All of Light (41 page)

“You mean to have all advantage,” I said.

“Yes I do, yes.” He turned to the duo of Jesters and gave orders.

When they left on this errand, he leaned back in his seat and regarded me anew. “You don't look like I thought you would.”

“You've been watching me. My appearance cannot surprise you.”

“I mean, when I first saw you. Different then.”

“I must say that I admire your espial,” I said. “We are a wary crew. If someone is keeping watch, we always know. Many there are who thirst after the maestro's secrets.”

“You still think me witless. It is not so hard to spy.”

“I do not call you witless. Perhaps I have too much vaunted my own wit. Perhaps my brain is none so keen as I believed.”

We fell silent for a long space, each feeling the strangeness of meeting after so long a time.

“Do you remember our mother?” I asked.

He would not answer. I listened to the tide, trying to picture where the piers stood that it washed against. I tallied smells in my head; there was one odor unusual but almost familiar. I tried to recall and then
Sandalwood,
I thought. Where had I met it before?

At last he spoke. “I blame the old man. Like she was a donkey, how he treated her. Working her like a donkey. Beating and cursing. She broke down early, but I remember her quiet and kind. She wept much.”

“Yes. I saw you weeping once along with her.”

“Well, I didn't cry when the old man died. Glad he's gone. I could have made things easier for him in the last times, but I didn't.”

“He beat you too.”

He looked at the wall behind me. “Sometimes.”

“Often.”

“Yes. But there came a time he had to stop, if he wanted to live.”

“I thought about it too, doing him in.”

“You have no nerve for it.”

“You beat me more often than he did. I took courage to strike back.”

“To sneak from behind. I whipped you because it was your fault I got so many welts. He was always harder on me.”

“We're both free of him now. Why need you come against Astolfo? I could find a place for you in Tardocco where you might learn things that would be helpful for many years to come.”

“I want what you have. By rights, the greater part is mine.”

“I have little. But Mutano and I could teach you—”

“Enough of this,” he said. “I am too old to be learning magic shadows and such trickery. Easier to take what you gave gathered. Now I am going to tie you to that chair and wait hidden outside to see who arrives. If my men are followed by Astolfo's men, I'll see 'em before they get here.”

He took down a length of chain hanging on the wall and brought it three times about my chest and locked it behind me. He had come prepared with a lock. That meant that he had visited this place and chosen the room in which to imprison me. He was not trusting to improvisement but was keeping to a plan. I could not decide if the plan was his own.

I struggled but the chain was tight upon me and the links pinched my flesh when I moved. “I need to piss,” I said.

“No you don't,” he said. He closed the door tight when he left but did not lock it, there being no lock.

*   *   *

I sat still, trying to lessen the cruelty of the chain, and thought. There was much to try to comprehend. The loss of my father was not burdensome because I had taken for granted he had died long ago. Osbro I had pictured as taking a wife or a hire-wench to do for him as he farmed the small patch of land for half its produce, the other half going to Lord Merioni—or by this time to the lord's heir. I had imagined my brother as becoming accustomed to his lot, thinking of me only in idle moments, if at all. It did not occur to me that he could have designs upon me in my station. I had dissevered that time of my life and thought it swallowed by oblivion. But here was Osbro, and in a position to do me ill. His rise in fortune was swift.

Yet he had arrived in the city in the same predicament as I—ignorant of cultured life and with no local family or friends through whom to make acquaintance and lacking most of the skills required to make a living. I had formed a scheme, based solely on a tissue of improbable rumor, to burrow myself into the trade of shadows, and I had chosen the rashest of ways to do so. Great good fortune had been my ally—and the fact that Astolfo perceived that the umbrae might become for me a vocation, a labor of love, and not a profession or, at worst, a means of conversion to petty crime. I had possessed an advantage without knowing of it.

Osbro would have none. He too would have arrived friendless, hungry for advancement and profit, but without a specific ambition. He would present himself at a hostel or a tavern like The Iron Coulter where exiles from plough and pasture sought refuge in Tardocco. At one of these sites he would have loitered, watching and listening as his silver dwindled, hoping to fasten upon some method to search me out. He said that talk about me had reached Caderia. What he had heard would be only speculative exaggeration, but plausible to his ears.

He would not have thought that many a pair of eyes would be watching him, as they watched all new-arrived rustics. We straw-chaff ploughmen were raw materials, ready to be turned to mostly dark purposes, to be made into footpads, housebreakers, arm breakers, tavern-brawl quellers, and slaves condemned at the wharves to labors even harsher than farmland had thrust upon us. A few vain promises and a spare coin or two from a glib and easy-mannered fellow clad in silk—and the bargain was made and the unwary undone. Soon the rustics accumulated debt that would keep them in low station and impecunious circumstance for years on end.

Some such thing had happened to Osbro. He had drunken too deeply with a handy and specious gabbler and ensnared himself in he knew not what sort of scheme as a pawn or cat's-paw. Coin had been promised in heaps and, once the business was completed, the considerable pleasures of the city would be open to him. These fancies were the stuff of his dreams, but the outcome would prove bitter for him.

To me he seemed nearly useless as an instrument. Only his connection to me, and thus to Astolfo, was of value, unless his ignorance and bumptiousness counted as assets. There was one way in which they might. If the grand scheme that involved him were discovered or if it failed through ineptitude, he could be discounted as a participant, as being too naive to be able to carry out any part in it.

He must have done a deal of talking, Osbro with the grape in him, for his suborner had learned of his connection to me and of mine to Astolfo. If that last alliance were already known, then those who had deceived Osbro were known to Astolfo and me and probably to Mutano also. Our opponents would be known to us from time past and we would deal with them according to our histories.

Time drew on as my bladder grew tighter and the chain links more irritating. I could not think that Osbro's emissaries could carry out their mission in a way to please him. Mutano, even though wearing only a tradesman's short sword, would disarm the two of them in brief order, and bring them to Astolfo as captives. I judged these fellows burly but bumbling. The next move was the maestro's, and he held the upper hand.

After what seemed a very long time, my brother returned, freed me from the iron, and led me to a filthy corner of the great space outside the little room to relieve myself. Then he brought me back to the disused office, laid down four thicknesses of ancient canvas, and bade me lie down. He chained my right foot to the iron chair. I remonstrated, saying that I had no desire to escape, that negotiations must be under way, and that we would all be rewarded by the results.

For answer he gave me a gloomy, halfhearted kick in the ribs. “They should have come back by now,” he muttered, and went off to find, I expected, a bed much softer than mine.

No matter. I disposed my chain as comfortably as I could and slept as soon as my eyelids closed.

*   *   *

The daylight was bright in the cracks and crevices of the walls and roof when voices in the warehouse woke me. Osbro and Mutano were talking, but I could not make out the words. The tones were easily readable: Osbro spoke loudly and with some heat; Mutano spoke softly and with a touch of humor.

I sat up when my brother kicked the door open and exhibited me to Mutano. My colleague showed no surprise and barely glanced my way.

“What is this damned toy?” Osbro demanded. He flung it down on the canvas beside me.

“This is Maestro Astolfo's belt with the leopard's-head buckle,” I said. “It is his customary wear. Everyone recognizes it. How did you come by it?”

“I brought it to this person at Astolfo's request,” Mutano said. “He sends it to identify himself to you and as a surety of his good faith in negotiation with our amicus here.”

“So then, Guido and Gracchio are inexpert swordsmen?” I said.

“I have met nimbler,” Mutano said.

“If you hold them, I care not,” Osbro said. “For all I care, you may reap their gizzards. I have this Falco, as you call him. You come unarmed, so you cannot take him from me.”

“Yet what can you do with him? He is of no value to you now.”

“I shall question him and find out all the defenses of your house, all your comings and goings, and where you store the treasure you have gathered for so many a year.”

Mutano made a smiling half bow. He was dressed in his most splendid finery, with salt-white lace collar, black silken trunks and hose, red slippers with applied gold flowerets, and large gauntlets of flocked, stiff linen. His purpose in this dress, methought, was to cause Osbro to feel lowly and uncertain. “Then our intentions are in balance, for we shall closely question the two Jesters under our sway.”

“They can tell you nothing, for they know nothing.”

“They know more than they think they know, more than you suspect. They can describe, for instance, the appearance of at least one of those who have paid you to do certain things of which you cannot comprehend the results.”

“What say you now? Speak plain.”

“You are a fool in hire. You do not know to whom you are in hire or for what reason. With a little trouble, Astolfo can find out. What he learns from you will be to your good. Let us deal openly.”

“What terms?”

“It is no use my asking you to release Falco, for you will refuse out of hand. But you must keep him safe and without abuse. We will hold your two men until our bargain is concluded, then we will let them go at the same time you release Falco. Astolfo values him as a bodyguard and is willing to pay a reasonable ransom, provided that you agree to his other condition.”

“What other condition?”

“He will meet with you in person and question you about your new friends and acquaintances, the men you met and had commerce with when you first arrived in the city. He suspects them as his rivals in trade who are out to undermine his enterprises and drive him into poverty. If you answer satisfactorily, he will supply you with gold enough to make a start in the city in some enterprise of your own.”

“Where would this meeting take place? I will not come to his big house with its entrapments.”

“We shall seek out another place. You may examine it beforehand to inspect its safety.”

“That place too may be a trap.”

Mutano pretended to brush dust from his sleeve. “We have allowed you to keep Falco. Take him with you. If you suspect trickery, you may kill him. Your two ungainly fellows shall be allowed at your side and they will be allowed arms.”

Osbro rubbed his chin, his scalp, and the back of his neck. “Where is this meeting point?”

“That is undetermined. We are trying to find a place you will accept, some place out of the city where none of our associates might hide. A lonely place that is secure.”

“I do not trust you and your master.”

“Astolfo's word is his bond, as everyone avers. His familiar belt is the sign of it. All Tardocco knows.”

Osbro picked up the belt and turned it over, inspecting it with indifference. Shrugging, he passed it to me. “I must think upon these things,” he told Mutano.

“I will return in four hours. The meeting place will have been chosen and I can lead you to it for your inspection. After four hours, the agreement no longer holds. We are pressed for time—as I believe you know.”

Osbro gave him a keen glance, then dropped his head, as if to ponder. Then: “Well,” he said.

Mutano came to me and clasped me on the shoulder. “Be of good spirit,” he said. “And take good care of the maestro's belt.” He turned and went out the door and I heard his footsteps echo through the warehouse. The outer door opened and closed. He had departed.

Osbro waited, listening intently. He went into the warehouse and peered out through a broken board. When he came back, he unchained me quickly and said, “Come along. We are going to another place. If we stay here, I shall be set upon.”

“You have Maestro Astolfo's word,” I said.

“Yes, and as useless it is to me as that childish belt that you are buckling on. It does not suit with your domino outfit. In fact, it makes you look even more ridiculous.”

“I shall wear it because it is a sign of the maestro's earnest promise.” I said. “He will keep faith with you in whatever agreement you both arrive at.”

“Wear it, then, to look the fool you are. But come along. We go to another place.” He appended to his command a resounding slap to my ear. It recalled vividly the days of my early youth.

 

IX

Gathering of Shadows

Osbro was correct in asserting that Astolfo's belt with its heavy buckle sorted ill with my domino costume. The cincture hung loose upon my hips and the leopard's head bobbed up and down, annoying my codpiece. I was overtired of the black-and-white livery; I had worn it for three days now and it was soiled and stinking. The mask had been destroyed and the cock hat with white feather had been knocked from my head and booted to lie forgotten in some foul corner. Osbro, fearing that Astolfo and Mutano would rescue me from his control, had now moved me four times within the jumble of storerooms and warehouses that brooded over the tides of the harbor. With each change of place my clothing and corpus grew dirtier.