Ilario, the Stone Golem (13 page)

seen in his eyes as he pushed me back against the bed. But mixed with

hopelessness, now.

‘Why did you want to kill me?’

He scrubbed his fingers through his curly hair, each as filthy as the

other. ‘I didn’t
want
to!’

And
that
is
the
truth.

The realisation surprised me. I caught Ramiro Carrasco’s eye, and the

half-sardonic and half-frightened look there.

A smugness, at having told me a truth he thinks I will dismiss out of

hand.

And something that isn’t fear of execution, or exile, or dying in jail.

‘Why did you try?’ I ticked it off on upraised fingers just protruding

from the fur of the cloak, wrapped warm around me in this freezing

prison cell. ‘Near to the Riva degli Schiavona. In the gondola. Across the

lagoon, on Torcello. You
tried
, certainly.’

Temper slashed in his tone. ‘I’ve been convicted! What more do you

want
?’

‘I want to know why.’

I turned away for a moment, guiding the jailer aside, speaking quietly

enough that I knew Carrasco couldn’t hear me. The man nodded and

left.

Turning back, I found Ramiro Carrasco with a face that stress and

helplessness made white and drawn.

I held his gaze.

‘Are you a man who can kill because he’s promised money? I talk to

my father about that. When he has peasant levies to train . . . it takes time

to make a man kill another man. You have to brutalise him. Convince

him that the man he’s killing isn’t human. You can make professional

soldiers out of some men. Most of them still vomit their stomachs empty,

after a battle. But . . . some men have no knowledge
here
,’ I put my palm

against my abdomen, ‘that any other man is real. So they can kill without

thinking about it. Sometimes they look like kind grandfathers.’

I didn’t look to see if the jailer had returned. And was quietly glad that

Onorata’s grandfather has never become inured enough to the sight of a

battlefield that he doesn’t, even now, spend some nights not daring to go

back to sleep.

Ramiro Carrasco stared away from me, into the darker corners of the

cell. I reached out and turned his head towards me. He appeared

surprised at the force I could exert.

I said, ‘
You
haven’t that capacity. Which, for an assassin, is perhaps unfortunate.’

He only shivered. I thought he might protest against ‘assassin’, but he

merely gave me a look as full of hot hate and rage as any I’ve seen.

Behind me, Tottola stretched himself in unsubtle warning.

59

I asked, ‘Why did you do what Videric told you?’

At the name of my father – my mother’s husband – he first flinched

and then laughed.

‘Get out of here.’ His voice had a harsh undertone in its whisper.

‘You’ll get nothing out of me.’

‘I don’t need to. I know Videric wants me dead. I know
why
. I know it

was Videric who sent you with Federico so that you could get close to

me. I know there was more than one man with you, and I know they

didn’t get further than Genoa. I know Videric will send other men, now

you’re out of it, because he really
does
need me dead. No, I don’t need you to tell me any of that.’

Ramiro Carrasco de Luis blinked in the light of the torches. He wiped

his wrist across his mouth. Sweat, smeared away, left whiter skin

displayed. A waft of unwashed body smell came to me when he lifted his

arm.

‘I don’t understand.’ He was careful not to phrase anything as

agreement with me. ‘If you don’t want to know anything, why are you

asking me? What are you asking me?’

‘Why you’d try to do it. Try to kill me. Why you feel you
have
to.’

I saw decision on his face.

He spoke again, in a dialect common in the hill close to the Pyrenees,

which was unlikely to be understood much outside of Taraconensis, and

his bright eyes watched me to see that I comprehended:

‘It was a choice between you and my family.’

The simplicity of his statement was at odds with the ferocious

contained emotion behind his eyes.

‘I’m the first of my family to go to university.’ He spread his hands,

mocking himself. ‘I have a lawyer’s degree! My mother and father, my

brothers, my cousins and
their
parents, they’ll all serfs, still. Tied to the land. Owned by the man who owns the estates.’

No
need
to
ask
his
name.

‘You will think it very little of an excuse.’ Ramiro Carrasco spoke

sardonically. ‘Nor would I, in your place – what are twenty people you

don’t know, compared to your own life? But
I
know. I know my mother

Acibella de Luis Gatonez; Berig Carrasco Pelayo, my father; my brothers

Aoric and Gaton, and my sister Muniadomna . . . my uncle Thorismund

. . . my grandmother Sancha . . . And I don’t know you. Why should I

care about some
freak
?’

He spat the last word. I looked at him.

The hatred comes from helplessness. From being arrested, charged,

imprisoned; locked away from being able to kill one Ilario Honorius. And

knowing that, because of that . . .

‘Blackmail’s very like being a slave,’ I said, into the cold silence of the

dungeon. ‘They can kill your parent or your child, or sell them away

from where you are. There are never as many slave revolts as you’d think

60

there would be. That’s one of the reasons why. Do you know how long

he’ll wait without hearing from you?’

The question caught him by surprise. Carrasco shook his head before

he realised. ‘It’s not – there’s
not
—!’

I ignored the stuttered denials of something it was too late to deny.

The same odd feeling of fellowship came back to me. It is no wonder I

could never hate this man. I nodded, absently, thinking, Perhaps this will

not be so unpleasant to you – or perhaps you will find it unbearable.

I heard the jailer returning, grunting as he carried a weight down the

passage. The torch showed him with tools in his hand, and a small block

of steel-topped wood under his arm.

I took a leather bag of coins out of my cloak’s inner pocket and passed

them over.

‘Do it here,’ I said.

The jailer looked a little uncertain. I signalled to Attila and Tottola.

Having spoken to them on the way, they knew what I wanted. Of all of

us in the cell, I saw an expression of surprise only on the face of Ramiro

Carrasco.

The two soldiers picked up Carrasco and held him down, bent over

the anvil. Hands in Carrasco’s hair held him stretched rigid. The jailer

slid a slave’s collar around Ramiro Carrasco’s neck and cold-hammered

a rivet home.

‘This isn’t legal!’

‘You’d think so, wouldn’t you?’ I watched, arms folded, the cloak

warmly wrapped about me. ‘But Venice has always been able to put

prisoners and captives of war into her galleys as slaves. It’s legal to buy a

prisoner as a slave in Venice. Provided you don’t stay on Frankish

territory. Perhaps they didn’t mention that when you studied law? It’s

true all the same.’

He couldn’t struggle in the two men’s grip, but it didn’t stop him

trying. ‘Why do you want me enslaved? What
use
am I as a slave?’

He hasn’t realised what has happened to him, even though the collar is

now around his neck.

Some don’t. I have seen men whipped until the blood runs before they

realise that their freedom has gone. That they’re property. I wondered

what it would take to make it clear to Ramiro Carrasco de Luis.

In Iberian I said, ‘You’ll know one thing about the law of slavery, I

don’t doubt. What happens when the owner of a slave is murdered?’

The chime of the hammer fixing the second rivet all but drowned his

words:

‘The household slaves are tortured—’

‘Tortured. Why? Why not questioned?’

‘Because it’s assumed all slaves lie; it’s a legal assumption—’

I saw it hit him.

If
Ilario
dies,
I
am
a
household
slave;
I
will
be
tortured
.

61

Not even because they assume a slave committed the murder, but

simply that a slave will not be trusted to be honest
because
they’re a slave.

Ramiro Carrasco looked up at me with wide dark eyes.

I watched him as I spoke. ‘If something were to happen to me, if I

were to die – even if it was merely from a sickness . . . Then, my slaves

will be turned over to the authorities, and tortured to find out what they

know. And Ramiro Carrasco the slave won’t know anything about what

killed me. But – interrogated men talk about everything they know, if

they’re subjected to enough pain. Everything.’

There was no need to say it aloud, in front of the jailor; I saw the

understanding in Ramiro Carrasco’s expression.

Everything
. Including every order Aldro Videric ever gave you, when

he told you to murder me.

62

10

Outside the Doge’s palace, Tottola went to the Riva degli Schiavoni to

summon a gondola. Attila crossed his arms, the end of the slave’s chain-

leash held in one hand.

Ramiro Carrasco blinked against the sunlight, weak as it was.

It was clear enough to show up the filth caking him. He did not, for all

he wore the same clothes, appear much to resemble the sardonic

secretary of my sister Sunilda.

Tears ran down his face, and he lifted both hands to wipe them, since

his wrists were manacled together. I wondered if it was the brightness of

the light.

He shot a dazzled look at me. ‘My family—’

I gazed back coolly. ‘As an owner, I can always
volunteer
my own slave

for interrogation.’

He took a step forward and Attila jerked the links of the chain through

his fingers. The iron collar came up hard against Carrasco’s windpipe. I

couldn’t help wincing in sympathy; I know how that feels.

‘Declared your slave . . . ’ There was a degree of wonder in his tone.

No,
he
hasn’t
realised
the
truth
of
it
yet.

‘You have to stay with me now,’ I said, gently enough. ‘What we’re

going to do with you, God knows. But you have to live with me, as my

slave, so that if anything happens to me, all Videric’s dirty little facts get

spilled out into the open. It’s a balance, a set of scales: if he kills me, everything comes out into the open.’

Videric may know me well enough to know I only want to be left

alone. But whether he believes it – whether he fears having knowledge at

large, in my head, not safely in a hole in the ground . . .

‘You’re my precaution,’ I said. ‘And since you have to be a slave for it

to work – then you
are
a slave. You don’t understand that yet, but I suppose you will.’

Attila rumbled a brief, ‘Let me belt the cheeky bastard.’

Ramiro Carrasco opened his mouth. And shut it again.

‘That’s right.’ I shrugged. ‘If I tell Attila here to beat you until your bones break – and if he was the kind of man to do it – I could order it right here, and no one could stop it happening.
You
have
to
understand
this
. You don’t have the legal protection of being a serf. You’re no more

human than a horse or a chair.’

63

It was not my words that had the effect on him, I thought, but the

sombre lack of surprise from Honorius’s soldier – a man whom Ramiro

Carrasco would probably know, from his visits to Neferet’s house.

‘You . . . ’ Ramiro Carrasco turned his head and looked at me. His

back straightened. Even under the filth, he had a certain amount of

dignity. I wondered how much experience of slavery it would take to

curve his spine, and make him – as I sometimes still do – lower my head

automatically in the presence of the free.

Ramiro Carrasco said, ‘You may have stopped him killing my mother

and father.’

‘Yes.’

Because if that news were to reach him, he would turn traitor to

Videric freely; any man would.

‘But you had no way of knowing that I – that it was because . . . You