The Mongoliad: Book Two (The Foreworld Saga) (18 page)

O
CYRHOE KNEW THE
general layout of the Orsini palazzo. When the man she’d been following passed the pair of guards at the gate, she knew where on the back wall she could slip unseen into the grounds. There was enough moonlight to spot the shadows made by handholds on the rough stone wall. She climbed the wall, hung off the other side, and dropped into the shadows. An ancient apple tree leaned drunkenly toward the main house, and she clambered up its sprawling branches until she could leap lightly to the roof of the main building. The master of the house—Orsini, the Bear of Rome—usually met his visitors in a large room that looked out over the terraced ponds in the back. The moon was high in the sky, round and gravid, and its pale light revealed the long expanse of the city that lay below Orsini’s estate.

The roof here was well maintained, the tiles firmly interconnected, making it easy to move quickly and quietly. Ocyrhoe scampered like a squirrel across the angled peak of the roof, past the rim of stones that lay around the hearth’s smoke hole, and then launched herself at the stone railing of the balcony above.

A pair of lions, one on each front corner of the balcony, rose out of the worn stone balusters, mouths wide in frozen roars. Their
backs and rears vanished into the railing, but the sculptors had carved every detail of their heads, chests, and forelegs, down to their clawed feet. Ocyrhoe grabbed one of the lions’ open mouths, her hands wrapping around its stony lower jaw, and her feet swung, scrabbled for a moment, and then found the top of the lion’s claws. She pressed herself against the granite beast, trying to catch her breath. She hadn’t stopped moving since this afternoon. Not since she had leaped onto the back of that horse.

The rest of the day had been a whirlwind. The strange sensation of flying as she clung to the hairy foreigner and his horse. The earthy smell of the young man. The soldier’s blade and the foreigner’s knife. The stone in her hand and how much it hurt her palm when she smashed the soldier’s head with it. The stranger’s alien language, a lilting song that was frustratingly familiar yet completely incomprehensible. His name—Ferenc—which he repeated over and over and over again until she figured out what he was trying to tell her. How immediately he fell asleep once she found a safe place for them to hide.

She had tried to lie down too, but her body was too wound up. Too much energy coursing through her. Too much she didn’t know. As much as she hated to leave the young man by himself, she couldn’t sit there and watch him all night. She had to find out what had happened to the priest.

That mystery hadn’t taken long to solve. An inn near the Porta Tiburtina market was still reliving the incident from that afternoon when she slipped in. The stories being bandied about the smoke-filled room were outrageous, and more than one storyteller was arguing that his version was the true one because he had been there.
I saw it with my own eyes! This is the way it happened!
The only thing all the tales had in common was the whispered destination of the priest:
Septizodium
.

A clink of metal—like a knife against a plate, or a decanter against a cup—returned her attention to her moonlit surroundings. Ocyrhoe shifted her weight and found a place for her foot on the curve of the lion’s shoulder. She pushed herself up so that she could see over the edge of the balcony’s railing. The balcony was long, running nearly the length of this side of the palazzo, and there was a set of double doors off to her left. Directly in front of her was a window. Its shutters were open, letting out light and sound; her line of sight wasn’t very good, but she could hear voices. Two men, she guessed, though she couldn’t make out their words.

She pushed up more and got an elbow on the top of the railing. The muscles in her arms protested as she pulled her body up. She was getting perilously close to complete exhaustion; she wouldn’t be able to do much more running and climbing before her body gave out. As quietly as possible, she slipped over the railing and hid in the shadows along the side of the house.

Inside, a line of oil lamps hanging along the inner wall created dancing patterns of illumination—gloom and half-light. A wooden table sat in the center of the room, and there were two stools placed nearby. There were indeed two men: one standing, one sitting. The man she had followed was sitting, eating; the other man was the Bear.

The Bear—Matteo Rosso Orsini—watched his visitor eat. Orsini was a big man, prone to wearing big robes—even in this heat—and his smooth face was ruddy in the firelight. Ocyrhoe had seen him laugh once, and the sight had terrified her. He’d thrown his head back and opened his mouth wide, and she couldn’t help but think of a snake unhinging its jaws to swallow its prey. But what had really terrified her was all the teeth. His mouth seemed to be filled with more teeth than the human head should possibly hold. And his laugh. It came from deep in his belly—a roiling sound of thunder.

“All this way for a plate of meat.” Orsini shook his head, bemused by the way the other man attacked his plate. “Perhaps I should offer to provide more food for your friends.”

The man from the Septizodium paused, his tongue touching a blot of grease on his lower lip. “No,” he said. “I don’t want them to become comfortable.”

“What of you? Are you going to sneak out every night to feast at my table? That isn’t wise. Someone will see you eventually, someone we don’t control. They will talk to the wrong people, and—”

“The city isn’t yours?”

The Bear didn’t take the bait. “It’s not the city that concerns me. It’s the people in it.”

The man gestured at his companion with his knife for a second before returning to cutting his meat. “They’re simple. Like cattle. You spook a few of them, and the rest will follow. And the ones that wander away from the herd are lost, and they know it. They only want to return to the comfort of the herd.”

“Yes, dear Sinibaldo”—the Bear leaned on the table—“but what happens when someone else spooks the herd?”

The man called Sinibaldo shrugged and kept eating.

He looked familiar to Ocyrhoe, and she moved closer to the light, trying to get a better glimpse. This was the first chance she’d had to see his face. When she had first spotted him near the base of the Palatine Hill—near the old facade known as the Septizodium, the place where the rumors said the priest had been taken—he had been a hooded figure, ducking through the shadows.

She had been prowling cautiously, conscious of more than a usual number of guards guarding...nothing. This mysterious man had suddenly appeared in front of her, stepping out of a deep shadow in the wall that must have hidden some manner of secret doorway.
His hood had been pulled close about his face, reducing his peripheral vision; otherwise, he would have spotted her. But she had held perfectly still, and he hadn’t noticed her.

In fact, the whole way here, he hadn’t seemed terribly concerned about someone following him. Ocyrhoe had found such inattention odd, but it made the job of shadowing him easier.

He was wearing a plain brown robe. Such a common vestment among the clergy told her nothing about his identity. She knew him, but she couldn’t place where. She bit her lip in frustration. She should be able to place him even without the trappings of his office. She’d been practicing recently, sitting at the edge of the Porta Appia market in the morning and picking out faces from the crowd. When she reached twenty, she would leave her spot and try to find them in the throng. She could find ten of them easily, and the other day she had made it to sixteen, but the rest of the faces faded too quickly, and she hadn’t been able to find all twenty yet. Varinia could do thirty, and the older girl impressed upon Ocyrhoe that a true kin-sister never forgot a face.

“So,” the Bear said, “if you aren’t here for the food, then why have you come?”

“We have a new visitor,” Sinibaldo said around a mouthful of food. That must be her priest; Ocyrhoe was pleased with herself for making a correct assessment of the mystery man’s involvement.

“Yes,” Orsini said. “So I have heard. There was quite a commotion near the Porta Tiburtina earlier today. One of my men was assaulted.”

Sinibaldo put aside his knife and poured himself more wine. “Tell me everything.”

The Bear poured wine into his own glass. “The priest and his companion came from the east, along the Via Tiburtina. On horses. Looking like they’ve been on the road for weeks. The priest was spouting nonsense—gibberish, most likely, though a few of them
swore that it was biblical verse. The other one was speaking some tongue no one knew. They appeared to be lost—or rather, uncertain of how to get to their destination.”

“And that was?”

“The Papal Palace.”

Ocyrhoe sucked in a noisy breath as she finally recognized who “Sinibaldo” was; she ducked back into the shadows, hands flying up to cover her mouth. He was one of the Pope’s men, the ones who wore crimson.
A cardinal.

She crouched in the dark, straining for any sign that the men were aware of her presence. Somewhere, out among the apple trees, an owl hooted, and a few moments later, there was a rustling in the branches as the bird took flight. Ocyrhoe turned her head and nearly leaped out of her skin.

The Bear was standing right there, just inside the room. Not more than two paces from her. He was looking out across the terraces, his wine goblet held loosely in his hand.

Ocyrhoe tried to quiet her heart, which was racing in her chest like a wild animal. It sounded so loud to her that she couldn’t believe he didn’t hear it. He was toying with her, pretending not to notice she was there, and in another instant, he was going to whirl on her, reaching out with his big hand. His left hand dropped to the hilt of the dagger stuck in his belt, and she nearly screamed. For a moment, she thought she had, but then the sound cut off abruptly, and she realized it was the death cry of a small animal caught by the owl.

The Bear grunted, belched, and then took a long pull from his goblet. His hand fell away from his dagger, and he turned away from the open door. “The companion tried to communicate with some of the city militia who were there. He offered them a ring. Like the kind—”

“The kind that a cardinal of the Church would wear?” Sinibaldo interrupted.

The Bear didn’t say anything, and Ocyrhoe, her courage returning, leaned forward slightly, peering up at the Bear’s large bulk. He was staring at the man at the table, a frown on his face. “I suppose it could have been,” he said.

“Why don’t you know?” Sinibaldo asked, his voice tightening.

The Bear shrugged and took a long pull from his cup. “I haven’t seen it,” he said.

Sinibaldo slammed his hand against the table, and the sound sent Ocyrhoe huddling against the wall. She wanted to turn into a mouse and scurry away into a crack in the walls.

“I don’t have time to play games,” Sinibaldo said, and when the Bear didn’t say anything, he continued. “Where is it?” he demanded.

“I don’t know,” the Bear said. “It was taken from my man as he tried to bring it to the captain of the watch. The priest’s companion went wild and chased the soldier down. He had help, too. When the confusion all started, someone leaped out of the crowd and came to the foreigner’s aid. One of our own citizens. A young boy.”

He turned back toward the window. “Or a girl,” the Bear mused.

Ocyrhoe pressed herself closer to the wall, remembering the events Orsini was retelling. The boy had driven his horse into the man, knocking him down. She had slipped down, grabbed the man’s helm from where it had fallen in the dirt, and hit him hard on the head. He had been dazed, his hands slack and open. She had scooped up the ring, ran to the boy and his horse, and they had made their escape.

The room was quiet, a silence that stretched on for a long time. Ocyrhoe’s legs were starting to itch from the sweat running down them, and her heart wouldn’t stop fluttering in her chest. Finally, Cardinal Sinibaldo Fieschi—the most powerful man alive in the Catholic Church—cleared his throat. Ocyrhoe heard the distinct sound of wine pouring into a cup. “A
girl
?” Fieschi asked. “One of those—I thought we agreed that you would clear the city of
them
?”

“I have,” the Bear countered, his jaw tight and locked.

Ocyrhoe screwed up her courage and raised herself closer to the open window. She had to hear this. She had to know what had happened to her kin-sisters.

“My men have scoured the city,” the Bear said, his tone becoming more like the growl of his namesake with each syllable. “They’ve been driven out of their hiding places. A couple were killed, I have others in chains, and the rest ran like rabbits, abandoning the city. They are gone. Their network is broken.”

Fieschi’s tone was quiet and dangerous. “Who is the girl, then?”

The cup creaked in the Bear’s hand, whining with distress from the man’s heavy grip. “Who is the priest?” he countered.

There was a whisper of cloth, and the thump of items striking the table. The Bear vanished from the window, and Ocyrhoe risked a quick peek to see what had drawn him away. Fieschi had produced a satchel from beneath his robe—after a moment, she recognized it as the one the priest had been carrying—and had strewn its contents across the table. “I don’t know who he is,” Fieschi said. “But I know
what
he is. He is another vote.”

Ocyrhoe shifted to her left to get a better look at Fieschi. He was slouched in his chair, his attention on the contents of the priest’s satchel. His fingers idly drummed on the table.

“In which case you can quit that hellhole so much sooner,” Orsini said, interrupting the cardinal’s reverie.

“Can we?” Fieschi snapped. “He evaded the Emperor’s blockade into the city, which means that the Emperor
wanted
him to get into the city. Why? Because he is one of the Emperor’s men—the very sort of man we do not want voting in this election.”

“We do not know that he is Frederick’s man,” Orsini insisted defensively. “He might be just the opposite, in fact.” He rifled roughly through the contents of the satchel as if somehow seeking proof of this. His jaw tightened and lines creased his forehead.
Ocyrhoe leaned forward, nearly putting herself in plain sight. Her eyesight was sharp, but she couldn’t see much. On the table, in addition to the Holy Bible, there was a large piece of parchment with writing on it, a short knife in a plain sheath, several tiny purses (one that made the musical sound of coins as the Bear dropped it on the table), and a few other items the Bear dismissed.