The Spirit Ring (31 page)

      
Never, you bastard.
"If I work steadily through the day, my lord, I might have the furnace built by sundown. Then it must be lined with clay, and the clay dried and fired."

      
"Could you do that tonight?"

      
"I could, but to fire it while still damp risks cracking."

      
"Mm. Risk it," Ferrante ordered, with a quick glance at the sun. Time bit at his heels too, it seemed.

      
"There's still the bombast mold to make, my lord. The furnace may as well dry slowly while that's being done."

      
"Ah. Yes." Ferrante frowned at the brickwork, his face abstracted. Was he seeing, in his mind's eye, his bombast battering down the walls of Saint Jerome? And then what? The breach in the wall fought for, taken; monks and Sandrino's soldiers slain. Women—Fiametta, God!—tormented, refugees chased from corners, put to the sword while crying futilely for sanctuary in the chapel? Would Fiametta be among them? Surely she would fight like a cat, and be killed for it, not prettily. Thur did not think Fiametta had the knack of surrendering. A frightened Ascanio dragged out from under the prior's bed to have his throat slit...
like Pico's boy.
Though neither guards nor stone walls had defended Zilio. Not that it seemed to alter the end result.

      
Killing them would do it.

      
Thur was alone beside Ferrante. His knife in its sheath on his belt pressed against the small of his back like a compelling hand.
What more chance do you want than this?
Ferrante wore mail, true, but his neck was bare as... as a boy's. But could Thur escape, afterwards? Over the stable gate, say, out through the entry court, before the alarm went up? An image of the black-mouthed cavalryman's lance driving between his shoulder blades as he fled down the road made Thur's muscles stiffen. He did not want to die on this bright morning. Maybe Ferrante did not want to die either.
This isn't my calling. I came to Montefoglia to make beautiful things out of metal, not corpses out of living men. Oh, God.
Thur stood up.

      
But Ferrante had already turned away, striding back to the Duchess. Another chance lost. Right or wrong? Did angels weep, or devils gnash their teeth? Thur bent and worked around his brick pile to keep Ferrante in sight, straining his ears to catch the next words.

      
"We can yet arrange things, my lady, in good public form," Ferrante continued to the Duchess, his voice and temper controlled again. "Sandrino's death was an accident. He fell on the knife in a scuffling fall. We had both drunk too much unwatered wine at the banquet. My lieutenant misunderstood the situation."

      
"We all know those are lies," said Letitia flatly.

      
"But we are the only ones who know," Ferrante argued smoothly, after a glance at Lady Pia's stone face apparently convinced him denial would be fruitless. "If we all say otherwise, why then, so it will be, as far as any outsiders know. You can save your family's honor and position, in this awkward event. If I wed Julia, and become Ascanio's guardian, why, it will be clear to all that Sandrino's unfortunate death was an accident. You lose nothing, not even your home, and gain a protector in me."

      
"So you can go on to cheat my son out of his patrimony? So you can murder him at your leisure?"

      
"I could murder him at my pleasure right now!" Ferrante snapped. "Give me credit! I am trying to save you all!"

      
"You are merely trying to save yourself. From the just retribution that must fall on your head, if God has not abandoned the world altogether!"

      
Ferrante's nostrils flared, but he reaffixed the smile that had slid from his face. "I'm not inhuman. I desire your goodwill. See, I have even brought you your rosary that you asked for. My men and I are not the thieves you accuse us of being." He pulled a string of polished black beads from his purse, holding them out just beyond her reach.

      
Letitia turned pale, controlled her hand in mid-snatch, and accepted the gift with a small curtsey. "Thank you, my lord," she stammered. "You can't know what these mean to me."

      
"I think I do," smiled Ferrante. She drew the beads through her soft white hands, came to the end—a black bead stopped with a gold flange—hastily reversed the string, and came to the other end, also a plain black bead. Her face came up, wide-eyed with anger, as Ferrante held up a small carved ivory ball between his thumb and finger. "Do you seek this?" he inquired sweetly.

      
"Give me —" Letitia surged forward in a hiss of silk, then stood still, hands clenched to her sides.

      
"A very interesting object, this. I've had Vitelli examine it thoroughly."

      
Lady Pia crossed her crocus-sleeved arms tightly under her breasts, but remained standing sturdily behind the Duchess.

      
"A fascinating spell," Ferrante went on, hugely ironic. "A way for a woman to kill a man many times stronger than herself. A poison that is neither food nor drink, against which my saltcellar would be quite useless. The woman holds the poison locked in this little ivory ball, under her tongue. Then she induces the man who is her enemy to kiss her. Was that task to be yours, or Julia's? Or Lady Pia's, here? A pretty scene, to be seducing me while her husband lies imprisoned below her very feet. She whispers the word that unlocks the ball, and breathes into her unsuspecting lover's mouth. The poison flows into him in the form of a snake made of smoke. He dies strangled, unable to breathe. I suppose she must take care not to inhale while this operation is in progress, eh?" His fist closed around the ivory sphere.

      
"If ever a man deserved such a death, it is you," hissed Lady Pia.

      
"Oh, were you to have been my executioner?" purred Ferrante. "I'll remember that. But no. When you add this to the evidence of a very curious painted cabinet, kept locked in your boudoir, my lady Letitia, it seems to me a very convincing charge of black witchcraft and poisoning might be got up against you. Think on that."

      
"By you? You hypocrite! God cleave your lying tongue!"

      
"One would think God is your personal bravo, the way you call on him," snarled Ferrante sarcastically. "You keep your secrets well. I had no hint before this that you had a talent for the black arts. But this," he rolled the little ball between his fingers, "is quite a pretty piece of work."

      
"I didn't make it," denied Letitia.

      
"Then however did you come by it?"

      
"I had it from a girl who burned for it. She had it from a Moorish magician in Venice. She had used it to kill her unfaithful lover. I visited her in her cell the night before her execution, for mercy and our Lord Jesus’ sake. The Inquisitor himself, for all his hot irons, never found out how she did it, but she confessed it to me. She gave it to me. I kept it for... a curiosity. To make such a thing is quite beyond my power." Letitia pressed her lips tightly together.

      
"You must of course say so. But look at it from my point of view. A man who has his mother-in-law privately strangled must expect harsh social disapproval from her numerous cousins, however much envious men may secretly applaud the deed. But a pious fellow who has her publicly burned for black witchcraft against his life can only gain solemn sympathy."

      
"Judicial murder," said Letitia frozenly, "is murder still." Lady Pia was pale, breathless.

      
"But my hands will not be stained with it, eh? And hasn't there been enough murder in Montefoglia? Come, my lady. Let us cry peace. Today, I ask humbly, and grant you the dignity of free compliance." Ferrante's effort at goodwill was brightly strained.

      
Letitia turned her face away. "I have the headache. You have kept me too long in the sun."

      
Ferrante's voice hardened. "Tomorrow I shall have the means to compel cooperation. And you'll wish you'd struck your best bargain while you could."

      
"I wish to go in." Letitia's face had less animation than one of the marble statues tucked among the garden walks.

      
"So that you can continue to poison your daughter's mind against me?" Ferrante tucked the ivory ball away in his pouch and gave her a courtier's bow. Letitia and Lady Pia glanced down the garden to where Julia now sat on the bench, fearfully clutching her lap dog. Ferrante followed their gaze, his eyes lidding. "I think the time has come to separate her from you and your so-loyal handmaid. Before you force me into the same rough courting our noble Roman ancestors used to gain their Sabine wives."

      
It took a moment for the import of this threat to sink in. Letitia's eyes went luminous with anger. "You dare —!"

      
"And would you then dare deny me permission to wed her, afterwards?" Ferrante's brows drew down, considering this inspiration. "Perhaps not. Is this the solution to your stubbornness, Letitia? Drastic, but if you force me to be cruel to be kind —"

      
"Monster!" cried Lady Pia, and swung a clawed hand at his face. He caught her arm easily and wrenched it downward, his lips compressed with annoyance. A white circle fell from her crocus sleeve, bouncing on the dry ground. She gasped and stamped her foot upon it, too late; a liquid orange light flared around her slipper, and was gone.

      
"What's this?" Ferrante asked, holding Lady Pia one-handed at arm's length despite her struggles. He stooped to retrieve the crushed tambourine, shoving her away.

      
His part as spy must be revealed in moments. Thur stood up and felt for his knife hilt. He'd last used it to cut roast mutton at breakfast. It needed sharpening. Why hadn't he thought to sharpen it? He could not breathe.

      
He drew and lunged just as Ferrante straightened up. Too far a strike: the guard by the wall, starting forward, cried a warning. Ferrante half-turned and flung up a mail-clad arm, deflecting Thur's thrust. The blade skittered across the links and grazed the side of Ferrante's throat. In a desperate bid to recover the chance Thur turned the blade and recoiled. It bit the back of Ferrante's neck. But Ferrante's grip, astonishingly strong for the awkward angle, was already wrapped around Thur's wrist, and the knife did not bite deep. They wrestled for the hilt. Then Thur's groin exploded with blinding pain, like lightning chewing up his nerves, as Ferrante's combat-experienced knee hit its target with force and precision. A boot met Thur's chin as he sank, snapping his head back. It was worse than meeting a rock fall. A second kick found his belly; his stitches burst, and the hot cut bled anew.

      
The tip of a long, shining sword pressed into the hollow of Thur's throat as he lay blinking up at the bright blue sky and Ferrante's dark face swimming overhead. Ferrante pressed a hand to the side of his neck, glanced at the sticky blood staining his palm, and cursed. He swung his sword up and stepped back a pace as a couple more guards came running up and, redundantly, began kicking Thur.

      
The noblewomen were screaming and clutching one another. Fiametta at least would have picked up a brick and tried to help bash Ferrante's head in. Thur deeply regretted his shyness. If only he had been more forward, he might have won a kiss from her, or more, before this death....

      
Ferrante leaned on his sword, breathing heavily, the whites of his eyes showing. After a minute, when it was quite plain Thur would not rise to try again, he waved the guards back. "Take them to the tower." He dispatched two men to remove the crying women. Gathering up the terrified Julia and her dog, the officer-guard hustled them from the bright garden.

      
Thur blinked madly watering eyes and tried to memorize the sky. He wanted to fall up into it, go to God. He'd rather his last sight be the face of Fiametta, but he certainly did not wish her here, so blue sky must do. The faces of enemies wavered over him. There was Ferrante's, blurred and doubled, brick red with rage and fear.

      
"Why, German?" Ferrante grated. The bright sword pressed Thur's throat again. It looked like the chute to heaven, foreshortened in the sun. You could slide up it into the blue sky....

      
"Swiss," Thur corrected thickly. His mouth was numb and gritty with dirt.

      
"Why did you just try to kill me?"

      
Why. Why. Well, it had seemed like the proper thing to do. Everyone had wanted him to. He hadn't really wanted to. He wanted Uri back far more than he wanted Ferrante dead. "You killed my brother," Thur spat out in a gobbet of blood.

      
"Ah? Not Sandrino's Swiss guard captain!" Ferrante's teeth gleamed in a weird satisfied grimace. Apparently vengeance for dead brothers was reason enough to make more dead brothers, in his world. Did Ferrante have a brother? Would this chain go on forever?

      
Vitelli the secretary, his red robe flapping, came running up. "My lord!" he cried, in a voice edged with panic.

      
"It's not as bad as it looks, Niccolo." Ferrante's voice was controlled again, a bored drawl.

      
"You're bleeding —"

      
"It's not deep. You there. Go fetch my surgeon."

      
"Let me staunch it...." Vitelli passed a hand across Ferrante's neck and the bleeding slowed to a dark ooze.

      
Ferrante scratched carefully around the cut with gory fingernails, his face screwed up in irritation. "That was too damned close. Search him for hidden weapons." He nodded to a soldier, who knelt cautiously by Thur and began prodding around his bruises. He discovered Thur's thin purse tucked in his tunic, which he handed up to the secretary. He laid a white parchment circle absently on the ground. Thur moaned.