The Spirit Ring (21 page)

      
"Our men will bring in something, one way or another, if the countryside doesn't." The taller Losimon glowered at the old man. "Tell your neighbors that."

      
The old man shrugged, not daring any more open defiance, and trundled on through. The city guard turned his attention to Thur. "What's your business, stranger?"

      
Thur turned his red cap humbly in his hands. "I seek work, sir. I was told some men in the castle wanted to hire foundrymen."

      
The city guard grunted and wrote Thur's name, which Thur gave as Thur Wyl, and business down in his record book. "And where are you from?"

      
"Meissen. Altenburg," Thur threw out at random. He'd once met a crippled miner from the Altenburg, hands eaten away and half-blinded from the corrosive cadmia. It seemed a good place to be from, far from.

      
"German metalworker, eh?" said the shorter Losimon. "They'll be glad to have you."

      
Thur turned eagerly to him. "Do you know where I should go and who I should see, sir?"

      
"Go to the castle—right and straight up the main street—and ask for Lord Ferrante's secretary, Messer Niccolo Vitelli. He's doing the hiring."

      
"Thank you, sir." Thur ducked away.

      
The streets were narrow, like ravines between the tall stone houses and shops all crammed together. The sky was squeezed overhead into a blue ribbon. Thur recognized nothing of the town at this new angle but the colors. There were not many people in the streets this morning. On a sudden, urgent impulse, it occurred to Thur that it might be easier to check on Fiametta's house first, before he became caught up in God-knew-what labors in the castle. He stopped a man bent under a load of firewood and asked directions to Via Novara.

      
Thur turned the opposite direction from the castle. A dry gutter ran down the center of the cobbled main street. Near the eastern city wall he found Via Novara, and turned upslope to its end.

      
That
big square house? It seemed almost a
palazzo
to Thur's eyes, all of cut stone. Fancy cast-iron bars decorated with leaves and vines guarded the downstairs windows; larger windows protected by wooden shutters ran in a course high above. How right a setting it seemed for Fiametta. This house would protect her like a human jewel at its heart, like a little Lombardy princess. No wonder she was worried about it.

      
A thick oak door was set in an archway framed in white marble blocks, contrasting brightly with the yellowish native stone of the walls. The door stood open, guarded by a green-tabarded Losimon, armed. A fresh-faced young Losimon groom stood in the street nearby, holding the reins of two horses. One animal wore a plain leather headstall. The other, a big glossy chestnut with a snowy, showy blaze and white legs, had a long-shanked, gilded bit and gold-studded, green leather reins, with a silk-tassled breast band and crupper to match. Thur paused uncertainly.

      
"What do you want?" the guard, seeing him loiter, asked suspiciously.

      
"I was told Lord Ferrante's secretary, Messer Vitelli, wished to hire foundrymen," Thur began, letting his northern accent thicken. He was about to add,
But I got turned around and lost in the city,
when the guard relaxed and waved an understanding hand.

      
"Go right in."

      
Startled, Thur sidled past him. He paused in the stone-flagged hallway to let his eyes adjust to the dimness. To his right a door led into a deserted workroom, with workbenches and a clutter of tools strewn about—thrown about, Thur realized from the empty brackets on the walls. The benches were shoved out of place, one upturned. Looters had evidently given the room a once-over, but not yet stripped it of all tools and function. Thur walked forward into the brightness of a large inner courtyard.

      
The courtyard had its own well. A little pool was now dry. The court might have been originally designed as a garden room, but was very far from garden-like now. It more resembled an infernal workshop, housing some satanic project interrupted and abandoned. Thur’s eye picked out meaning from the apparent chaos of cranes, brickwork, digging, and scaffolding.

      
Master Beneforte had built a raised smelting furnace, right in his courtyard. Below it, in a deep dug-out depression, stood a huge clay lump, stuck about with thin tubes and fenced with iron bands and girders. The lump was vaguely manlike, an elemental swamp-monster straggling toward form. It could only be the great Perseus that Fiametta had spoken of. Char in the pit revealed where the wax had been melted out of the mold, drying and readying it for its molten bronze. Around the figure was built up a bank of earth, pierced here and there with clay pipes. The whole was tented over with canvas, to keep the nonexistent rain off the baked clay.

      
From the wooden gallery circling the courtyard above came a man's deep voice calling, "No luck here." Footsteps echoed, and Thur twisted around to see the man lean on the rail and stare down at him in turn.

      
He was a powerful-looking fellow in his thirties wearing military garb, chain mail over a padded coat, tough leather leggings below for riding. An officer, by his sword and confident bearing. Dark hair was cut plain to fit in a smooth cap under a helmet. He was clean-shaved, though a natural heaviness of beard darkened his jaw. His face was redeemed from heaviness overall by alert dark eyes that measured Thur without fear. His right hand, resting on the railing, was wrapped about with a white gauze bandage.

      
More footsteps, and another man appeared on the gallery opposite. Thur schooled his face to reveal no twitch of recognition. It was the red-robed little man he had seen atop the tower in Monreale's mirror, directing the crossbowmen's fire. "Nothing here, either," he said, then looked down and noticed Thur. He frowned. "What's this?"

      
Thur doffed his cap again. "Excuse me, sir. I'm a metalworker. The guard at the town gate told me to see Messer Vitelli."

      
"Oh." The little man grew less stiff. "They sent you on, eh? Well, you've found me."

      
It seemed to Thur that his damnable talent for finding things lacked discrimination. He was not at all sure he was ready to deal with Messer Vitelli. Yet the fellow was slight, clerkish, not too well endowed with chin, bright-eyed and jerky as a blackbird. Why should he make Thur uneasy?

      
"Are you a foundry master, by chance?" asked Vitelli.

      
"No, Messer."

      
"Pity. Well, you look strong enough. You're hired. How are you at solving puzzles?"

      
"Eh?"

      
"Strong, but not too bright. Come up here." Obediently, Thur mounted the stairs to the gallery and presented himself to the man in red. The soldierly fellow strolled around to join them. "We're looking for something," Vitelli told Thur. "A book, or possibly a bundle of papers. It will be well hidden.”

      
A pile of books and papers overflowed from a chest that sat waiting on the gallery. Thur pointed to it. "Not one of those, Messer?"

      
"No. But similar. Those are valuable, but they're not what we seek."

      
The soldierly man rumbled, "How can you be so sure it even exists, Niccolo? I think you have us on a wild goose chase. Or Beneforte may have burned it years ago."

      
"It must exist, my lord. If he'd had it, he wouldn't have destroyed it. No mage could. Not if he'd already gone so far."

      
My lord?
So this was Lord Ferrante himself? Thur wondered if he should pull out his little dagger and attempt to assassinate the man on the spot. His dagger was more used to cutting bread at dinner. The soldierly man scarcely looked the devil incarnate that Thur had been expecting. An ordinary man, even attractive. And Ferrante's mail protected him, nor did he turn his back. That seemed a quite casual habit, as he slid past them toward the next room. But he didn't let anyone, not even Vitelli, get behind him. Then another green-clad guard came out of the room, and the moment of opportunity was gone.

      
"Help him." Vitelli directed Thur to the guard. "Tap every brick, try every board. Don't skip a one."

      
"Yes, Messer." The bored-looking guard motioned Thur to follow him.

      
And so Thur found himself ticking on stone and knocking on plaster, and crouching on the floor sliding his dagger between the boards, inch by inch. They did one room, then another.

      
Vitelli stuck his head through the door. "Finish this floor. We're going to try the cellars."

      
I'd go up, not down,
thought Thur automatically, and choked the words on his lips. Now was not the time to let his talent, or luck or whatever it was, shine forth. Of that, he was certain. He bent his head to the floorboards and ignored the ceiling.

      
The next room, he realized with a little shock as they entered it, was Fiametta's own. The wooden bed had been broken apart, the mattress knifed open in the first excited search for the goldsmith's treasures. A couple of chests had been upended and emptied out, but nothing remained of their contents now except a few old linens strewn on the floor. Surely Fiametta had owned more clothes than that. The good cloth must have been taken. Disturbed by an obscure sense of violation, Thur righted the chests, gathered the undergarments back up, and clumsily folded them away. Had the soldiers laughed, clowned around with her women's clothes? Thur didn't want anyone to laugh at Fiametta, with her sturdy dignity so hard-held. He frowned deeply.

      
"Come on, here." The impatient guard, sensing shirking, demanded help. Thur dutifully started tapping the walls. There was nothing behind the walls, of that he was sure. One wall, two, three...

      
"Ah, ha!" cried the guard, from the floor in the corner. "Got it!" He jimmied a short floorboard out of its slot with the tip of his dagger. A bundle of paper tied about with silk ribbon rested within the space. He snatched it out and brandished it triumphantly, grinning, and hurried out to find his master. Thur followed.

      
They found Lord Ferrante and Messer Vitelli in the kitchen, just climbing out of the root cellar, looking dirty and disgusted.

      
"Here, my lord!" The excited guard thrust the bundle of papers forward.

      
"Ha!" Vitelli snatched it, ripped off the ribbon, and spread the papers across the kitchen table. The cracks of the wood were yellow with the flour of many batches of bread and noodles. Vitelli read eagerly, turning papers over, then his face fell. "Damn! Rubbish."

      
"That's not it?" the guard, who'd been fingering the flat purse at his belt, said in a discouraged tone. "I found it hidden under a floorboard..."

      
"It's not Beneforte's writing. It must be the girl's diary. Peh! Notes on magic, yes, but it's all apprentice's rubbish. Gossip and love spells and like muck." Contemptuously, Vitelli flicked the papers away.

      
As Ferrante and Vitelli turned away, Thur surreptitiously gathered the sheets back up, wound the ribbon around them, and tucked them back out of sight in a cupboard housing dinged and battered old pewter. Ferrante paused to let Thur and Vitelli and the bitterly disappointed guard exit the kitchen first.

      
"That's all the time I can waste this morning," said Lord Ferrante as they walked into the courtyard. "You can take some men and try again this afternoon, Niccolo, if you insist, but then we'll just have to go on without it."

      
"It must be here somewhere. It must," said the secretary doggedly.

      
"So you say. Maybe he kept all his notes in his head, eh?"

      
Vitelli groaned at the thought.

      
Ferrante stared absently around. "Perhaps when I'm Duke here I'll give you this house."

      
"That would content me, my lord," said Vitelli, growing a shade more serene.

      
"Good."

      
Vitelli wandered into the sunlight, and glanced under a pile of canvas. "Should I have these pigs of tin moved to the castle along with the books, my lord?"

      
The gleaming metal bars in the stack weighed about a hundred pounds each, Thur estimated, doubtless the only reason they hadn't been carried off in the first wave of looting, before some officer had arrived to assert Ferrante's rights.

      
"Leave them for now." Ferrante shrugged. "They're not going to march away. Until we can find a foundry master who can cast a cannon that will be more dangerous to our enemies than to ourselves, they might as well sit here as anywhere." Ferrante turned away. "Come along, German."

      
Thur picked up his pack. Ferrante paused at the oak door to speak to his guard posted there.

      
"I know you've been poking about in here, looking for jewels."

      
"No, lord," said the door guard in a shocked voice.

      
"Eh. Don't lie to me or I'll have you stretched. You and your friends pocket a garnet or a coin or two, I don't care. But if I find that anyone has carried out a single scrap of paper, even if it's an inventory of the chamber pots, I'll have his head on a stick before sundown. Understand?"

      
"Yes, my lord." The guard stood frozen to attention till Ferrante and Vitelli swung aboard their horses. Two breast-plated and helmeted soldiers who had been searching the garden and tool shed appeared when the groom ran to fetch them, and fell in behind the two horsemen. Thur's guard and the boy groom marched ahead.