Of Sword and Shadow, page 26
But the next morning, I wasn’t as confident as I’d been the night before when I’d first explained my idea. Too many things could go wrong, and I’d pay a high cost if we failed. I prepared anyway because the alterative was a long siege that would end in death for many of the Greeks who shared my city. I didn’t know all of them, and those I knew best were just as opportunistic as I was. But I’d met generous Greeks, like Zoe, who genuinely cared about me, who had always wanted to help me escape my life with Thomas. Nor could I forget Gil, who had briefly convinced me that my value wasn’t dependent on how well I could accomplish a task or how much I could be sold for.
In the slave markets, I’d made a bargain with God. I’d told Him I would make the same promise as Gil, and part of that promise was protecting the innocent. All the people like Zoe, going about their daily lives, helping their neighbors and the occasional street girl who wandered their way, they were innocent when it came to this war. They were worth saving, even if it cost me my life.
I gathered what I needed and ate the morning meal with Sebastie, Micer, and Don Oliverio. I was nervous, but I hoped I hid it as well as the men hid their concerns.
The archbishop came into the room as we finished. “I wanted to wait until I had daylight to work with.” He handed a rolled piece of paper to Micer. Then he sat beside me and wrapped my hands. He was skilled at bandaging—the linen helped with the pain but didn’t limit my dexterity.
Micer turned to me with a smile when the archbishop finished. “Well, my adopted niece, it’s time. Are you ready?”
Was I ready? To pull this off, I would need all the skills I had learned as a little mouse. I would need the wisdom of an Anna, the courage of a Theodora, the determination of an Irene, and the boldness of an Isabella. And I would need the confidence that had come, for a brief time, when I had been loved as a Eudocia.
I nodded. “Yes. I’m ready.”
“God be with us all,” the archbishop said.
I wasn’t sure if God wanted the Navarrese to rule Thebes instead of the Catalans, but Atumano’s motivations were pure. Of the five of us, he was the only one who was working purely for the good of his fellowmen. I hoped his instincts were right and that a change in rulers would be a good thing not just for me, not just for Micer and Don Oliverio and their families, but for all of Thebes.
Micer and I were cautious as we left the church. A pair of Catalan soldiers marched past, and we waited until they were out of sight before we continued to the mostly abandoned market. A little boy waited, sitting on the counter of an empty stand. It was the same boy I’d used when I’d wanted a distraction at the Hypsistai Gates while Gil and I sneaked into the city from the south.
Micer handed the boy a coin. “Well?”
“De Ardoino is in his home. Pertusa, too, and a few guards.”
“How many?” Micer asked.
“Ten, most of the night. But six left this morning for the wall. Then a runner came and left, then another.”
“De Ardoino and Pertusa are still there?”
The boy nodded. “I think they’re using it as a command center.”
“Well done.” Micer gave the boy another coin.
The boy hopped from the stand, but I took his shoulder before he could run off. “Do you remember when you told me you were a swift runner?”
He nodded.
“If the city changes hands, you may need to be faster than soldiers from both sides of this. Do you understand?”
He nodded again, his expression grave.
“Go to a church,” Micer said. “You’ll find refuge there.”
We watched him leave, then met another informant, the wife of a Greek baker, who told us the same thing the boy had.
As we walked away, Micer lowered his voice. “You can still turn back if you want, Eudocia. You don’t have to do this.”
I shook my head. “No. The information is good. It’s time to end the siege.”
We went to the same home I’d once taken a basket of silk hanks to in an attempt to sneak in and steal de Ardoino’s seal. I’d failed then, for Thomas, but I couldn’t fail now, because Thebes would suffer if I did.
Two guards stood near the entrance, as we’d expected. Micer left me, and I walked to the guards by myself. “I’m here to negotiate with the verguer.”
“The verguer is coordinating the defense of Thebes. He doesn’t have time to consult with every Greek girl who comes off the street.” One of the guards looked me over. He’d been in the tower, and recognition finally lit his eyes. “You’re the thief, aren’t you?”
“Right now, I’m a messenger.”
He didn’t answer immediately. He seemed to evaluate me again, as if weighing my words for truth. Finally, he nodded. “Are you armed?”
“No,” I lied.
He didn’t believe me. He pushed me into the wall and felt along my body, searching for weapons everywhere, including in places where I most certainly couldn’t hide anything so large as a dagger. I hoped he remembered enough of what was said in the tower that he would keep his actions to nothing worse than groping. He found the little knife I’d tucked into my sash and took it.
“No weapons, hmm?”
“That little thing? It’s more a tool than a weapon.” Perhaps the knife and I had something in common.
“I’ll see what de Ardoino says. Wait here.” He turned to the other man. “Keep an eye on her. He might not wish to see her, but that doesn’t mean he wants her free to roam the streets.”
The first guard strode across the inner courtyard, and the second guard focused on me. He grunted. “I’ve heard of you. Surprised to see you here voluntarily.”
I didn’t answer. If the guard had heard the whole story, he would have known I’d been sent to the slave markets, and if I was a slave, that would make any action I chose an involuntary one.
“Fire!” The shout came from down the street and was accompanied by a plume of dark smoke.
I waited for the guard to react, but he hesitated. I took a step onto the street for a better look. I couldn’t see the flame or the man who’d called out, but I knew it was Micer. “Do you suppose it’s the Navarrese?”
That got the guard moving through the entrance and onto the street. I slipped inside and rushed through the nearest doorway.
Chapter Thirty-Six
I didn’t want to be spotted in the courtyard. I followed the stairs up and past the window I’d once jumped from, then took the hallway to de Ardoino’s bedchamber. I cracked the door and said a prayer of gratitude that it was empty.
At least it looked empty. I checked behind the curtains and beneath the bed. I had to hurry—the guard would have informed de Ardoino that I was here by now, and they’d start looking for me any moment. I checked the table, then rifled through the wooden chest. The object I needed was near the top. I took a dagger, too, as replacement for the knife the guard had confiscated. I removed the extra sash I’d put on that morning and made a bundle with my find, then pulled the chest over to the window. From my perch atop the chest, I examined the angle from the window to the outer wall of the property and tossed the bundle out.
Footsteps sounded in the hallway outside. I nudged the chest back into place and hid behind the curtain where Pertusa had once concealed himself.
The door opened. “She’s not in here. Keep looking.” It was de Ardoino’s voice.
Footsteps moved again in the corridor but not as many as before. I waited, listening, until I heard the shuffle of papers near the table. I wasn’t alone. I slid to the edge of the curtain and peeked out. Nicholas de Ardoino had his back to me. He’d been injured in battle and wore a bandage on his left foot.
I could wait it out. They would continue the search, but if they’d already searched here and determined that the bedchamber was empty, then they might not check again. I’d accomplished what I needed to. The rest of the plan depended on others. As long as they didn’t suspect our scheme, I could wait and escape when an opportunity arose.
But a chance like this was unlikely to come again. De Ardoino had information about my past that no one else had. And I wanted it.
I rushed from the curtain and held the dagger against the verguer’s neck.
He slowly raised his hands. “You’re a quiet one. No wonder Thomas called you a little mouse.” He hadn’t looked at me, but I was the only person on the estate who would threaten him with a blade.
“You may turn around,” I said. “Slide the stool away from the table.” I didn’t want him grabbing anything, even something that looked harmless, and using it against me.
I stayed close enough to be a threat and hoped his injury meant he wouldn’t be able to overpower me. I took his longsword from its sheath and used that instead of the dagger so I could keep a bit more distance between us.
Despite his injury and the weapon I wielded, he didn’t seem unduly worried. Perhaps compared to the Navarrese, I wasn’t enough of a threat.
“I suppose Thomas taught you to use that. You were his protégée, yes?”
In the back of my mind, I knew I should leave. De Ardoino wasn’t safe—not even when wounded and unarmed—but I had questions burning for answers. “How did you know Thomas?”
De Ardoino’s expression spoke of distaste. “Thomas was my grandfather’s bastard. When Thomas’s Greek mother died, my grandfather acknowledged him and his sister, Thamar, and they came to live in our villa. Thomas and I were about the same age. Trained on horses and with swords together. I suppose, looking back, I can see how useful it was to have someone constantly pushing me. My father was adamant that I be better than his unwanted half brother. When my grandfather died, Thamar was married off and Thomas was dismissed. My father had never wanted them around.”
“Thomas was your uncle?” Surprise surged through me, but it also made sense. I’d always thought Thomas Greek. He’d moved in Greek society, always identified himself that way, but he’d known so much of Catalan culture. He’d spoken the language flawlessly. And in a society where Greeks weren’t allowed to own weapons, he’d somehow become a formidable warrior.
De Ardoino frowned. “He ceased being part of our family when my grandfather died.”
“You cut him off?”
“Thomas was my friend back then. But he brought our family no honor. Someone like you wouldn’t understand the importance of reputations and the dangers of family secrets. We weren’t heartless, despite his penchant for mischief, even then. My father saw that he was apprenticed to a notary.”
That explained how Thomas had learned to read and write. “And then he helped you become verguer. But afterward, you refused to see him,” I said.
“Again, family honor. By then, Thomas had become the man you knew—a thief. Someone who made his living by manipulation and dishonesty. I didn’t want that for Thebes. The notary I chose was better suited to the position.”
“And better suited to line your pockets on occasion.” I repeated the accusation I’d heard from Thomas more than once.
De Ardoino sneered. “That’s how it works.” Then his sneer turned into a chuckle. “You are Sophia’s daughter. Just like her.”
“What do you mean?”
“Sophia wasn’t very tolerant of dishonesty. That’s why she wouldn’t marry Thomas. He wasn’t always a criminal, but even when he was an apprentice, he had ways of manipulating things so they worked in his favor. He loved her. Was obsessed with that woman. But she wouldn’t disregard her precious principles for him.”
“What happened to her?”
“She married a Bosnian refugee.” He took a moment to think. “Stephen—that was his name. They went to Negroponte, were there for years. But they came back. He was working with a merchant, and Sophia had contacts in Thebes. He had strange ideas about God, Stephen did. And he convinced Sophia. They were too vocal, so they were burned as heretics.”
Executed for heresy? I lowered my sword in surprise, then lifted it again. “You’re certain?”
“Yes.”
All this time, I’d thought they’d sold me and then forgotten me. But there was a clear reason my parents had never tried to redeem me from slavery—they’d been dead. “I wasn’t burned with them. Why?”
“Your age. And you were Thomas’s property. That offered you protection.”
My mother had sold me in an attempt to save my life. But had she sold me to a man she’d once known because she’d been desperate or because I was his? “When did they leave Thebes for Negroponte?” I could have asked a more direct question, but I didn’t want to give de Ardoino another bit of leverage.
He thought again, trying to remember. “Twenty-five years ago.”
I didn’t think I was that old, so Stephen was my father, not Thomas. I inhaled deeply, not realizing how much I had feared that possibility until I knew it wasn’t true. “What was Stephen’s family name?”
De Ardoino shook his head. “I don’t remember. Thomas would have known. I heard it all from him, years ago, when the friendship of our childhood still carried some meaning. Ironic, isn’t it? Thomas lost Sophia because she couldn’t abide his dishonesty. So he bought her daughter and turned you into something she would have despised. A thief. Someone who manipulates and lies and threatens people with violence. She might have been impressed by the education Thomas gave you, but she would have been repulsed by how you’ve twisted it.”
There were few things de Ardoino could have said to cut me more deeply. I’d grown up knowing my mother had sold me into slavery, but I’d always hoped she’d had a compelling reason, that it wasn’t my fault. Would my own mother despise me if she knew what I’d become? But I hadn’t been given the luxury of choosing my own way—I’d been a slave most of my life.
Yet, what choices had I made in the brief periods when I’d had freedom? I’d continued earning my living the only way I knew how. I’d agreed to job after job without thinking through whether that choice was right or not.
De Ardoino kicked my blade aside with his uninjured foot. I kept both hands on the hilt, but I was off-balance, unable to threaten him for a few moments. He’d distracted me, taken advantage of me. I knew better. I shouldn’t have let my guard down.
That was all the time that was needed. De Ardoino grabbed his stool to use as a shield, and Pertusa burst through the door with his sword drawn. I got the impression he’d been listening to the entire conversation. A grin broke out on his face. “Last time we met, I had to settle for less than the revenge I sought. I look forward to extracting a little more now.”
Chapter Thirty-Seven
I kept my sword in position but stepped back, away from both men, closer to the window.
Pertusa shifted his sword into one hand and held out the hand on his injured arm. “First, I need the seal you stole.”
“How did you—?”
De Ardoino cut me off. “We haven’t forgotten why you came here for Thomas. And the chest is out of position.”
When had de Ardoino noticed that I moved the chest? Had he known I was in the room the whole time, even while I’d hidden behind the curtains? I’d underestimated them. That was one of the first rules Thomas had taught me—never underestimate your enemies. Now I would pay for my error.
I took a ring from where I’d hidden it in my tunica sleeve and cupped it inside my hand. When Pertusa came to retrieve it, I tossed it through the window.
Before I could put my second hand back on my hilt, Pertusa grabbed my blade and yanked it from my grasp. Then he backhanded me across the face. He wore mail mitts. The strike knocked me backward, into the wall, and a stinging sensation suggested he’d drawn blood. He grabbed my arm and twisted it painfully behind me, where he could snap it in two with only a bit more pressure.
“That was unwise. But mice aren’t always the smartest creatures, are they?”
I’d just come to the same conclusion. My desperate plan had been foolish, and it was going to get me killed.
Pertusa pushed and shoved me toward the door. The pain didn’t ease at all and seemed to flare with each step we took down the stairs and out into the courtyard. He threw me to the ground beside the seal. “Pick it up.”
I crawled to the ring and pressed the seal part into the dirt, obscuring it before I picked it and myself up again.
“Bring it to me,” the deeper voice of de Ardoino said.
I obeyed but not very quickly. I was in no hurry—once they had the ring, there was a good chance they would kill or torture me. Or send me to the slave market again, which might be the worst of the possibilities.
De Ardoino grabbed it from me. He shook his head as he tried to examine the seal through the dirt. “I’ve rarely been inconvenienced so much by someone so insignificant. Clean it. I’ve seven gates to defend, and I can’t be in all places at once. I need my seal. If I can’t see every bit of the carving, I’ll slash your neck and use your heretic blood to clean the dirt and test the print.”
I used my outer tunica to wipe away the grime. “May I spit on it, great verguer? To clean it?”
He huffed. “Great verguer, am I? Your respect is too late to gain you any mercy. But you may use whatever means necessary to clean it.”
“Hurry it up.” Pertusa stood behind me, watching over my shoulder. I didn’t want to hurry, but the threat was real and something I didn’t dare ignore.
When I finished, I handed the cleaned seal to Pertusa, rather than de Ardoino. I doubted he was as familiar with it as de Ardoino was.
I bought myself only moments, because Pertusa handed it to de Ardoino immediately.
“What were you going to do with it?” Pertusa asked, leering at me.
“Sell it.” That sounded more plausible than forging orders for the men defending the gates. After all, I didn’t write Catalan.
