He was also someone with diverse ways of killing people, and Guibaldo Ferri was on his mind as he offered two coins to a servant in the inn’s kitchen to heat water for his master’s bath. He wished he had a chance to confirm what Villani was doing, but it wasn’t really necessary. He knew. Villani was doing what Tomo wanted to do himself: achieve a measure of safety as they neared Asharias.
He’d be getting rid of the poison. And he’d be planning to be rid of Tomo tonight, leaving him to enter the city with twenty hidden sun disks and a vain, foolish man who would—very probably—begin talking about Skandir the moment customs officers seized hold of him.
Which would likely kill them all. Including Villani and the Dubravae.
He wondered if those two had thought about that. Probably not. They weren’t trained in these matters. Seressa prepared its spies extremely well. The woman on their ship, Leonora Valeri, had been different, an impulse of the duke’s, opportunity seized. Women, attractive ones, could be useful, even without knowing how to unlock doors or coffers, or kill.
He had to think swiftly. There were two different problems. He needed to go ahead tonight with Villani and Djivo. And those hidden sun disks were a danger, and so was Ferri. Tomo agreed with Marin Djivo about this. The disks were not going to get into the city undiscovered.
Tomo felt agitated and was trying not to show it. He was leaving the kitchen to sort out the bedroom when Guibaldo Ferri’s servant, the talkative one, came bustling in with two coins of his own and a loud request for a bath for his man. And so it was that a light dawned for Tomo Agosta, like Jad’s sun rising over the lagoon on a midsummer morning.
“Let him go first,” he said to the sweating kitchen servants by the fire. “His master is more important.”
—
THEY WOULDN’T HAVE to meet by the stable, Pero realized.
He and Djivo were sharing a room, with the three Seressini merchants in another. That was a small, useful thing. The other things that happened before the dinner hour were less obviously good.
Tomo, his servant, whom he knew to be a spy (they had told him in Seressa), came in to take his boots for cleaning. Djivo was also in the room, dealing with his own, his servants dismissed for the evening. Pero knew where they’d be, and what they’d be doing in preparation for tonight. Blue moonrise.
Tomo closed the door, which was normal, then he knelt in the middle of the room, which was not. Pero had been sitting on one side of the big bed they’d be sharing. Djivo, on the other side, stood up, looking at the servant. Pero stood up, too.
Tomo said, “Forgive me. I was trained to be able to follow conversations at a distance by watching the movement of lips. I know you intend to leave tonight. Please—let me also come.”
Sometimes you really couldn’t think of what to say. Pero stared, he waited. Marin Djivo, he noted, was doing the same.
Tomo met Pero’s gaze. He was a spy, trained—you needed to remember. Then, abruptly, remembering that became easy.
“I have arranged for Guibaldo Ferri’s death,” his servant said quietly. “Gospodar Djivo was correct. He would have been discovered smuggling and he would have talked. About the battle. Who fought there.”
Pero opened his mouth and closed it.
Marin Djivo said, also quietly, “You killed Ferri? It will be investigated. We will never—”
“I arranged for his death, gospodar. He will die tomorrow, in the morning most likely. It will appear to be a seizure of the heart. You will be—we will be, I dare hope—gone before that.”
“More poison?” Pero found his voice.
Tomo nodded. “In his bath. It penetrates through the skin. It was devised in Esperaña where they know much about such things.”
“And what about whatever he is smuggling?” Djivo asked. Pero wondered how the man could be so calm. If he’d ever be like that himself, hearing things like this. If he wanted to be.
“Sun disks. At the bottom of a chest. If Grilli takes over his goods, to deal with them for the Ferri family—and I expect he will—he’ll have them closely examined. He knows Ferri. He won’t want to risk his own life. I think he’ll look.”
“And if he doesn’t?” Pero asked.
Tomo shrugged. “This is the best I could devise. Ferri would have been caught, he would have talked about the fight on the road. We would have been arrested.”
“You keep saying ‘we,’” said Marin Djivo.
“Because it is true, gospodar. Servants are tortured first.” Tomo offered a wry smile. “I respect Signore Villani greatly, but I would not protect him if they squeezed my balls in a vise.”
Pero Villani stood in a room in an inn far to the east, on the imperial road to what he’d have to call Asharias, and he felt his life to be suspended very strangely. He realized, belatedly, that violence was possible now, right here.
Marin Djivo said, “And we trust you why? You have admitted murdering one of our party.”
“To save all our lives, gospodar. You know this is true.”
“And if you are caught in the city yourself? Identified as a spy?”
Tomo smiled a little. “Gospodar, they know I am a spy. Every one of us is when we come east. I do not expect to be allowed into the palace when Signore Villani goes there.”
Pero managed words. “But if you do enter with me, would you be looking to kill . . . someone more important than a merchant?”
Tomo’s expression turned grave. “Seressa might expect me to try. I have no intention of doing so. Just as you have chosen not to. I believe Gospodar Djivo to be correct: nothing we bring in will remain hidden. My own . . . devices will be discarded tonight, as I take it yours was just now. I would also like to return home, signore, gospodar.”
“This is,” said Marin Djivo, “much to take on trust.” He had spread his feet, Pero saw.
Tomo nodded. “I understand. I . . . gospodar, I believe you are skilled with your sword, and might try to reach for it and kill me now, as a solution. I have no sword, of course, but I have knives on my person and I am trained. I would not accept being murdered, gospodar. I will shout, scream. And I might kill you. It would be better to take me with you. We are, I believe, destined for that now.”
“Destined?” Pero said.
“Jad has his designs for all of us, signore.”
Pero stared at him. “And right now that means Guibaldo Ferri dies and you come with us?”
“I believe it does,” said Tomo calmly. “I pray that it does.”
Marin Djivo laughed aloud. “This is not,” he said, “how I thought the story would play out. I don’t believe this is destiny, but I don’t see why you shouldn’t come with us. We can’t really stop you. If we accuse you of a murder you’ll tell them about Skandir.”
He really did seem amused, Pero thought.
Tomo nodded seriously. “I would do that. For an easier death and having no reason to be loyal.”
And with that, both of them turned to look at Pero. Something occurred to him. He shook his head, because amusement, unexpectedly, now overtook him as well—even with a travelling companion about to die, murdered, in the morning. Because that was about to happen.
“Yes, come with us. But we aren’t going anywhere tonight.”
“Why?” Tomo asked. Pero saw Djivo’s brow furrow.
“You don’t see it?” Pero felt an unexpected pleasure. Too long being the least-adept person here? He said it. “And I am supposed to be the inexperienced artist, guided along the road?” He shook his head again. “First reason: we don’t need to go on ahead, with Ferri no longer with us. Signore Grilli will take the sun disks from hiding and declare them to the officials and pay the duty. Tomo will help him find them if he has to. He will say Ferri’s servant told him where they are.”
“He did tell me,” Tomo said.
Pero smiled. “How convenient. You ar
e able to tell the truth.”
Djivo laughed. “And is there another reason?”
Pero looked at him. “Think about it. A merchant dies suddenly, unexpectedly, and two of his companions and their servants have slipped away in the middle of the night?”
“Oh,” said Djivo.
“Oh,” said Tomo.
—
SIGNORE GUIBALDO FERRI OF SERESSA was found dead when the sun rose the next morning. He was discovered so by Marco Bosini, with whom he had been sharing a bed in their room. Young Bosini’s cry of alarm woke Nelo Grilli in the other, smaller cot, and the next shout brought others rushing into the room.
Attempts to revive the merchant were unsuccessful. It was judged that his heart had given way in the night, perhaps in the always dangerous hour before dawn when—it was known—death drifted close to men. Prayers to Jad under the world in the night were made in fearful awareness of this.
It seemed that death had found Guibaldo Ferri here, only days from Asharias and the end of a long journey.
Grilli, the most senior of the merchants, undertook to arrange for the burial and rites, and to supervise the sale of the merchandise Ferri was carrying, when they reached the city markets. There was no questioning Grilli’s integrity, and he asked the other merchant, Bosini, to review all his actions and affirm their rectitude. There were precedents. This did happen when men travelled a long way to trade.
After the burial—in a grave by the stream west of the inn—Nelo Grilli, advised by Ferri’s badly shaken servant, and assisted by the artist’s man, Tomo, opened a particular chest. He removed from a hidden drawer a number of small sun disks, of considerable value here, even after the tariff on religious artifacts was paid.
On the advice of Tomo Agosta, offered diffidently, Signore Grilli placed some of the gold coins Ferri had been carrying in his purse into the hidden compartment, to make it appear he had been secreting some of his money. That was hardly illegal. It could be called prudent. The money would be found, of course. The customs officials of Asharias would have seen boxes of this sort before.
They would undoubtedly steal some coins, but not—one might hope—all of them. The khalif did want trade, there was an administration supervising foreigners’ rights.
The party remained another night at the inn and Grilli led evening prayers by the stream on a mild evening, with the sun of Jad going down. He was assisted by the Dubravae merchant, Djivo, who had a pleasant singing voice.
They left together in the morning. They were met towards evening by an escort. The next afternoon they saw the triple walls and the water and the enormous dome of what had once been the Sanctuary of Jad’s Holy Wisdom and was now consecrated to Ashar and the stars. As so many had been through centuries, they felt humbled as they passed through the gates.
The City of Cities had been built to do that to visitors, and it still did.
Men and women cannot know—it is in the nature of our lives—what would have happened had another road been taken, other decisions been made, a life continued instead of being cut short. Nonetheless . . .
Guibaldo Ferri, had he lived, would have had his secreted sun disks found by customs officers. It was true—they were familiar with such contrivances, howsoever intricate. It was also true that officials paid with their own lives if they missed goods that were later found by the second careful inspection.
Pero Villani’s paint pots were examined, twice. His arsenic would have been discovered. The entire party would have been taken to an unpleasant location and interrogated, and more than one of them (not just Ferri), seeking the mercy of death, would have volunteered the information that Rasca Tripon, named Skandir, had ambushed a company of red-saddle cavalry and djannis. And that he had been assisted by the Dubravae, Djivo, and also by the artist, Villani.
They would all have been tortured for further information in a spirit of very great anger. There would have been no swift deaths. There would have been no portrait of Grand Khalif Gurçu, the Destroyer.
These events did not occur because Guibaldo Ferri died and Pero Villani discarded his poison—as did his servant, Tomo Agosta.
Several of the hidden coins in Ferri’s chest were taken by customs officers, both the first and the second searchers, but all was judged in order, and appropriate stamps and seals were provided after the assessed duties were paid.
The two remaining Seressini merchants, Bosini and Grilli, were escorted across the strait to the residences and warehouses allowed to Jaddites there.
Marin Djivo made his way, having been here before, to Dubrava’s permitted residence, not far from the ruins of the Hippodrome where, centuries ago, men had raced in chariots behind horses for the delight of enormous crowds and in the presence of emperors.
The artist Villani was escorted to the palace complex. It was alarmingly irregular and the officials there were duly alarmed, but he had been awaited and their instructions were exact. His servant did not accompany him. Servants, the artist was told when he inquired, would be provided him.
Events proceeded in the city and the world.
Eventually, Tomo Agosta did, in fact, find his way home to Seressa and its canals with a tale to tell. He would live a long life, unusual for a man of his profession. He never went to Asharias again. He remembered it, however. Few who journeyed there did not.
CHAPTER XX
As spring churned muddily towards summer, with a calculation of distance and food and health and time to be made, the supreme serdar of the army of the Grand Khalif Gurçu began to endure troubled nights on the road to Woberg Fortress.
It was raining. Almost every day, every night.
Men and horses were wet, weary, mud-stained, dispirited. He looked at the cavalry mounts and he thought even they looked disheartened. He had been a cavalryman. His love, all his life, had been for horses. It pained him, seeing them this way, and there were broken legs happening in the slack, treacherous footing, which meant shooting them, or slitting throats to save a bullet.
The stars were not shining upon him, the serdar thought. And now the heavy wagons that had been trundling two of their largest cannons had both broken.
A bitterness occupied the serdar’s spirit. They had done the latest river crossing so well this morning with the temporary bridge the engineers assembled, even in rain—only to have the wagons both crack (loudly!) as their guns were reloaded on the slippery northern bank. He could almost hear that sound again tonight, over the drumming of the rain.
They were not far now from the line of Jaddite fortresses, but they were so very far. And deathly distant from home and safety, where they needed to be before autumn arrived and became winter and men and horses began to die without a blow being struck, by them or against them.
He didn’t mind losing soldiers in battle. It was expected. He also, from experience, anticipated that disease would take a certain number. But if he turned back too late and winter came early and only a starving remnant of almost fifty thousand made it home . . . well, he would do best to end his own life on the road, because it would be ended for him, badly, in Asharias.
The serdar had seen that happen.
And so, given all this, how should a man fall asleep in the night? He thought of calling for a woman or a boy to ease him, but these anxieties were not the sort that could be physically assuaged.
Instead, the serdar ordered a lantern lit and roused himself to look, again, at the dates that had been presented to him this evening. He knew what they said, what they imposed, he really did know what he needed to do. But he didn’t want to do it. He wanted to be the man who took Woberg for the khalif. To return to Asharias in glory, as the one who’d done what no one had ever been able to do: crack open the gateway to the Jaddite emperor’s rich lands.
Conquered fortresses were also gateways for those who took them, opening wide upon power, wealth, fame. Perhaps even an avenue to the thr
one when Ashar took Gurçu the Destroyer to the stars. If the son—whichever one emerged—proved weak, unworthy, less glorious than the brilliant serdar who’d taken Woberg, was this not possible?
He fell asleep on his camp stool over the desk they had set up for him, his head dropping onto dates and numbers. Either his slave or his adjutant must have blown out the lantern, because it was dark in the tent when the serdar woke. He was stiff and unhappy, and none of the numbers had changed while he slept.
Slowly a wan light filtered into the tent. Dawn coming. With rain. He could hear it. He pushed himself to his feet and pissed in his chamber pot. The slave came forward from his corner and carried it out. He lifted the flap to do so and the serdar glimpsed greyness and mud, was hit by a gust of the wet wind blowing.
It was the thought of the horses, slopping forward in that slippery footing, that ended it for him. A cavalryman from the beginning, promoted to red-saddle when not much more than a boy. You cared for your horses, you loved your horses. He looked at the numbers in front of him, but he decided because of the horses.
He sent his adjutant to summon the serdars serving beneath him. It might be the last time he did this. You weren’t normally given more than one opportunity to command the assembled army of Asharias. Unless you conquered. And he wasn’t doing that.
He gave the order when the eight men had gathered in his tent. No one challenged him. No one would do that here. It would be different back in Asharias. He was hardly the only ambitious man in the army. They would lie, some of them. They would say the rains hadn’t been so bad, that the supreme serdar of the khalif’s great army had been overly cautious. Even, perhaps, cowardly.
The serdar of the cavalry cleared his throat and made a proposal, based on word that had come in the night from scouts he’d sent ahead.
It was a good suggestion. It involved killing Jaddites without delaying the withdrawal of the main army or trying to get the massive guns north through this accursed mud and the rivers ahead.