The Spirit Ring (38 page)

      
Letting Tich kill the Losimon seemed suddenly a much better idea to Thur. He set his teeth, then unset them again immediately as the loose ones twinged.

      
"I told him... well, I told him all right." Her hand touched the head of a striking silver snake belt looped around her waist. "But I told him there was a wine cask my father had hidden in the root cellar, behind the turnips, a special vintage. There really was one, you see. It might even still be there. When he went down to look, I clapped the trapdoor closed, and dragged the pewter cupboard across it." She nodded toward the large painted cupboard pulled out from the wall. "He almost pushed it up enough to get his fingers out, but then I jumped up and down on it. And then you came. I thought, if it didn't hold him, I must set his hair on fire—at least he
has
hair—and then try to stab him." She paused as the sword thrust up again between the boards. "I could still set him afire. And
you
could stab him," she offered to Tich.

      
Thur, remembering his experiences with Ferrante, shuddered at the thought of little Fiametta attempting hand-to-hand combat with an infuriated Losimon veteran. "Just wait a minute," he said. He borrowed the lantern and hobbled back to the courtyard. He recalled glimpsing... yes, there in a pile of tools beneath the gallery rested a good-sized sledgehammer. He carted it back to the kitchen. "At least let's get his sword away from him first."

      
For bait, he walked out on the floorboards, taking care not to step on a crack. Sure enough, the sword blade and curses came up through the slit again just in front of him. He raised the sledgehammer, familiar in his hands, to his side and swung it down hard. It clanged off the sword blade, and Thur almost toppled. He clutched again at his slipping blanket, and, light-headed from the effort, handed the hammer off to Tich, who caught on at once. Enthusiastically, he whacked at the bent blade as the Losimon tried futilely to withdraw it. On the third blow, the metal broke. A crash from below, and more curses, as the Losimon fell backward.

      
"Why, Thur. That was
clever
," said Fiametta, sounding rather astonished. Thur's brow wrinkled. A little less astonishment would have been a little more complimentary.

      
"Now we're even." Tich grinned breathlessly, waving his dagger. "Let's get him."

      
"Wait," said Thur. "What do you have around here to bind him?"

      
Fiametta bit her lip in thought. "If they haven't taken it—it was only iron, not silver or gold, maybe they left—just a moment." She scurried out with the lantern. The Losimon stopped thumping. Fiametta returned in a few minutes, draped about with a long iron chain.

      
"It's a manacle my father was working on for the Duke. It doesn't have a key. It opens with a spell."

      
"Do you know the spell?" asked Thur.

      
"Well... no. I know where it is in Papa's notebooks, but Ferrante and Vitelli have taken all Papa's notebooks away."

      
"But do you need the spell to lock them?"

      
"No, they just lock. That's built-in."

      
Thur regarded the handcuffs, then stepped to the door to glance into the courtyard with its pillared stone arches supporting the wooden inner gallery. "All right." He returned to the kitchen to shout down through the floorboards, "Hey! You! Losimon!"

      
A surly silence resulted.

      
"There are two armed men"—his hand closed on the haft of the sledgehammer—"and a very angry sorceress up here. She wants to set you on fire. If you come up and surrender without giving us any more trouble, I won't let them kill you."

      
A man's gruff voice responded, "How do I know you won't just tie me up and kill me?"

      
"My word," suggested Thur.

      
"What worth is that?"

      
"More than yours.
I
am not a Losimon," Thur snarled.

      
A long silence, as the Losimon crouching in the dark contemplated his options. "Lord Ferrante will have my head for failing him."

      
"Maybe you can desert, later."

      
The Losimon made an obscene suggestion, which Thur ignored.

      
Thur whispered to Fiametta, "Do you think you could, like, just warm him up a bit? Not really set him on fire. But demonstrate."

      
"I’ll try." She closed her eyes; her soft lips moved.

      
A cry, and slapping noises, echoed from the cellar. "All right! All right! I surrender!"

      
Thur let Tich and Fiametta drag the pewter cupboard off the trapdoor and stood with his sledgehammer raised. Slowly, the trapdoor creaked upward, and the Losimon cautiously poked his head out. He was a grizzled man, strong but no youth. Little red sparks still glinted in his curling hair, which gave off a singed stench. He did not bother to carry his broken sword hilt, but crawled out and stood empty-handed.

      
Thur had Tich clap one end of the manacle around the man's wrist and lead him to the courtyard, where he wrapped the chain around a stone pillar and attached the other cuff. Thur did not put down the sledgehammer until Tich yanked the chain to be sure the cuffs would hold, mashing the Losimon against the pillar. Tich put one foot to the pillar and held the man while Fiametta gagged him. He rolled his eyes at the sledgehammer, and did not attempt violence against the girl.

      
Fiametta led them back to the kitchen. "Here, sit on this chair," she said to Thur. "Ruberta had a healing salve for bruises. Oh, your sides look like a piebald horse. Are any ribs broken?"

      
"I don't think so, or I wouldn't have been able to get this far." Thur settled himself very cautiously.

      
Fiametta rummaged in the cupboards. Her voice wafted out, "That ugly gash won't heal unless the edges are held together. At least it looks clean. I'm no healer, but I know my needlework. If... if I can stand to sew it up, can you stand to let me?"

      
Thur choked down an anticipatory whimper. "Yes."

      
"Ah. Here's the ointment." She emerged from the recesses of a carved sideboard clutching a Venetian glass jar. A pale cream inside emitted a faint, pleasant scent, like wildflowers and fresh butter. Delicately, she daubed some upon Thur's ribs. A warm, relaxing numbness penetrated from the spots where she spread it. "I'll go get my sewing kit, if the Losimons haven't taken it." She set the jar down and hurried from the kitchen.

      
Surreptitiously, Thur scooped up a large glob of ointment and stuck his hand under his blanket to rub it on and around his aching, swollen crotch. It helped a lot, and Thur sighed relief.

      
"You should have gotten
her
to rub it on there." Tich snickered, settling cross-legged on the floor.

      
"That might have done... more harm than good," Thur grunted, charmed by the idea but offended by Tich having suggested it. Hell, he hadn't even kissed Fiametta yet, hadn't even tried to. He remembered his deep regrets about that, when he'd been facing death in the castle. "God, I hurt all over."

      
Fiametta returned in a few minutes carrying a small covered basket. "We're in luck. I found the curved needle Ruberta uses to sew up the stuffed goose when she roasts one."

      
"Sounds perfect," said Tich, his brows going up in black amusement.

      
Thur decided his lips hurt too much to smile.

      
"I think you'd better lie flat on the kitchen table," Fiametta directed.

      
"Just like the goose," Tich commented. Fiametta grimaced at him, half-amused, half-annoyed, and he subsided.

      
Thur climbed up and arranged himself while Fiametta threaded her needle. She studied the two stitches at one edge of the gash surviving from Ferrante's surgeon's work. "Yes. I can do that." Her lower lip stuck out in determination. She took a deep breath and made her first jab.

      
Thur sucked in his breath, gripped the table edges, and stared at the ceiling.

      
"Do you think anyone is going to come around and check on that guard?" Tich asked, standing up to watch. Fiametta shoved a candle into his hand to light her work.

      
"Not before morning," said Fiametta, tying a knot. She was neat, but much slower than Ferrante's surgeon.

      
"Maybe not at all," Thur managed in a strained voice. "They're undermanned, and this house has been stripped of valuables. Except Vitelli might come around to search it again. He's convinced—ah! —"

      
"Sorry."

      
"Keep going. He's convinced your father has hidden some secret notes or books on spirit-magic somewhere in the house. That's how I met them here day before yesterday."

      
"Secret books?" Fiametta frowned deeply. "Papa? Well, maybe."

      
"Do you know of any such?"

      
"No... if so, he's kept them secret from me."

      
Thur stared at the kitchen ceiling through eyes watering with pain. "I think they do exist. I think they're...
up
, somewhere. I felt it, when Vitelli had me trying to pry up boards. I didn't tell—ah! —Vitelli, of course.

      
Fiametta's eyebrows lowered in concentration. "Up. Huh." She tied off another stitch and glanced at the ceiling. Half done. Slow but sure. Slow, anyway.

      
"Vitelli wants them very badly. I'm certain he'll be back," gasped Thur. "But maybe not as early as tomorrow. He looked pretty sick, when I broke up his spell."

      
"That close to completion… so complex..." Fiametta nodded thoughtfully. "I'll bet he's sick right now."

      
Silence fell as she worked her way meticulously across Thur's belly cut. The last one, at last.
Pale
was not in Fiametta's repertoire, but there was a distinctly greenish tinge beneath her toasted skin. She pursed her lips and rubbed a goodly handful of ointment across the cut, before sitting Thur up and tying a protective strip of cloth that looked suspiciously like a bit of former petticoat around his waist.

      
"That's... that's good," Thur wheezed gallantly. "Better than the surgeon."

      
A pleased smile curved her full lips. "Really?"

      
"Yes." He swung his legs off the table and stood up. Pink and black clouds boiled at the edges of his vision, and the room tilted. He found himself bent over, clutching the table.

      
"Tich, help!" Fiametta rushed to Thur's side; he waved her away, afraid he would crush her if he fell, but she ignored the wave and put her shoulder sturdily up under his arm. "You are going straight to bed," she decreed. "I'll put you in Ruberta's room; it's right off the kitchen here. It's the only bed the Losimons didn't break up looking for hidden treasure. Tich, the lantern."

      
By the time Thur's head had cleared they had maneuvered him into the housekeeper's bedchamber, "No!" he protested. "Your father's secret books, Fiametta. We've got to find them, to keep them from Vitelli. I'm sure it's important. I have to help you look."

      
"You have to lie down here." Fiametta pulled back blankets on the first real bed Thur had seen in weeks. It had linen sheets.

      
"Oh," murmured Thur, overcome. The bed seemed to suck him down. It was a little short, but wonderfully soft. Fiametta pulled the coverings over him and whisked Tich's blanket out from under them in one smooth movement. She gave the blanket back to its owner.

      
"But the notebooks," Thur said weakly.

      
"I'll look for them," Fiametta said.

      
"They were up. Above the second floor."

      
"This house only has two floors, doesn't it?" Tich craned his neck as though he might see through the ceiling.

      
"I have an idea or two," said Fiametta. "Go to sleep, Thur, or you'll be useless."

      
Persuaded, Thur sank back. Fiametta and Tich tiptoed out. Thur was weary beyond anything he'd ever known, but disorderly images from the past few days whirled in his thoughts. He'd rescued Uri, but Master Beneforte still lay in danger. The Duchess. Lady Pia. Lord Pia, with his strange passion for bats, stuck to the oak door with his blood running down. Vitelli's dark aura, growing in menace and power...

      
But in a few minutes Fiametta returned, carrying a large clay mug. She set the lantern down as Thur, with difficulty, sat up.

      
"Have you eaten? I didn't think so. There's no food in the house right now but some flour and dried beans, and tired turnips, but I found that wine. Here." She sat on the edge of the bed and helped him get his hands around the mug.

      
She'd brought it unwatered. It was thick, red, dense, a little sweet. Thur gulped it down gratefully.

      
"That helps. Thank you. I was starving."

      
"You were shaking." She watched him with concern.

      
Over the rim of the mug, he watched her in return. Their lives had been tangled together by this treachery in Montefoglia, and by the peculiar prophecy of her lion ring. Was the Master of Cluny's spell meant to be a prophecy of the self-fulfilling kind? Thur had been at first struck by Fiametta's prettiness, amiably inclined to love anybody who even suggested that she loved him. Yet now he was not so sure that she did love him, despite the ring. What
did
she think? He was uneasily aware that he had not more than half-won her mind. It was all so complicated. She was a complicated girl. Would life with Fiametta always be this confusing? He was beginning to suspect so.