The Buccaneer's Apprentice (4 page)

“Really.” The Drake was fully focused on Nic now. Though his right fist had remained frozen in the air above his shoulder, the fingers of his left hand searched for the coin bag that hung at his side. From within he fetched a ten-luni piece, shining and new, which he held up as bait. “Tell me more.”

The woman’s eyes never left the coin. “Cursed he is and cursed he will remain until he encounters one even more cursed than he,” she’d crooned as her fingers twitched. “The curse is in his very blood. Beware, kind signor. Beware of him!”

Nonsensical as the woman’s words should have been, Nic almost believed it. A curse would explain the unfortunate path his life had taken, not to mention the unusually early demises to which his previous masters had succumbed. He had been keeping his head hung low, but he couldn’t resist looking up to see what the Drake thought of the woman’s proclamation. When he saw displeasure making the man’s eyes even darker, he immediately wished he hadn’t.

“Interesting.” Tired of listening to the
zingara
, the Drake flung the ten-luni piece into the mud. Immediately the woman dove into the grime to find it, while her dog barked and limped to assist. The Drake’s head cocked. “What’s your name again, boy?” Nic had to wet his lips and clear his throat before he could tell him. “And your surname?”

“None, sir.” It was true. No one had ever known the identity of the woman who had given birth to him.

“And would you hurt me, your master, Niccolo?”

“Never, sir.”

“I’m glad to hear it.” The Drake had paused. The slightest of smiles crossed his lips. Nic could have predicted that any one of the Drake’s smiles was twenty times more dangerous than a frown. “Let me ensure that you don’t.”

That was the day Nic had learned that the Drake disliked wasting a readied fist.

“I’m cursed,” Nic had said that night to his fellow servants, the Dattores, while warming himself by their small fireplace. Tiny squares of paper saved from his day’s errands lay at his feet. “It’s not fair. Aren’t you supposed to
do
something to be cursed, like displease the gods or … I don’t know. Steal something?” Nic picked up the topmost square of paper, which had been used to wrap some fish. It still smelled, but not badly. With nimble fingers, he began folding it into triangles.

“The gods forbid.” Renaldo Dattore had removed his metal skullcap from which hung framed optic lenses. He had been peering through them at one of the paintings recovered from the Portello ruins earlier that week. It was not the portrait of Crespina Portello after which Signor di Angeli had been inquiring. That lay against the wall on the other side of the tiny hut the Dattores shared, along with an identical copy that was still drying. “If all it took to be cursed was to steal something, we should all of us in this household be under a black cloud.”

“Renaldo,” chided Michaelo, his partner, as he had crossed the room with a wooden bowl full of soup, hot from the fire. “You and I do not steal.”

“We assist the man who does.” Renaldo shook his head. “Which is worse?”

Michaelo was a small man with a trim red beard, who typically wore a broad smile. From appearances, one might have supposed him a tumbler or some sort of street entertainer. No one save his masters would have guessed he was one of the most accomplished forgers in all of Cassaforte, capable of mimicking a painting so finely and with such patient detail that it was indistinguishable from the original. It was even rumored among the Drake’s other servants that Michaelo’s original surname had been Buonochio, before he had changed it for Renaldo’s. “We do not choose our indentures,” he’d replied, winking at Nic as he brought him some of the same stew. The Dattores did not have to share their meager rations with him at all, so Nic did not complain in the least that his bowl had contained a smaller portion. “Our masters select us. We have no choice. Niccolo, let me look at that cut.”

While Michaelo had used a wet cloth to clean the jagged welt across Nic’s cheekbone, Renaldo slid his chair back a respectful distance from the painting he had been examining. He blew onto a spoonful of his dinner. Like Michaelo, he also sported a short beard, but his hair was dark and his features thick and coarse where Michaelo’s were fair. “Do we really have no choice?” he’d wondered aloud. “Does having no choice make us less culpable, when a master turns to thievery? Perhaps we are the ones who are cursed.”

“Nonsense. Both of you.” Michaelo had finished with the cloth, and pulled a little stool up to the fire, where he huddled over it with his own bowl. They had shared the warmth of their hut and their company most evenings with Nic since the third week after his work-debt had been transferred to the Drake. They had felt sorry for him, Nic supposed, having to burrow into the stable straw with the other work beasts at night. While it was true that, once the temple bell tolled for the last time each day, Nic would have to return to the stables lest he get the couple into trouble, at least there were a handful of hours every day in which he felt almost human. “No one is cursed. Especially you,” he added for Nic’s benefit. “Your masters’ unfortunate demises have to do with probability.”

Nic shook his head. He had finished folding the paper. It had taken the recognizable shape of a boat which, when set upon the water, would actually float for a while until completely soaked through. Somewhere in his distant childhood he’d picked up the hobby of folding paper into various shapes. It kept his hands busy and his mind occupied in the evenings. He liked making boats the most. “What do you mean?” he asked as he set down the little boat to eat his stew.

“Probability. The odds. As in, when the Master plays taroccho and places a high wager on a good hand, he thinks the probability of anyone having an even better hand extremely low. Of course, because a probability is low doesn’t mean it can’t occur.”

“What my dear Michaelo is trying to say, I believe, is that when any man indulges in a life of crime, he can expect his life to be nasty, brutish, and short. When one has a string of villains for one’s master, and yes, Michaelo, I do include our own esteemed master in that category,” he’d said in response to Michaelo’s disapproving cluck. Neither of the Dattores had ever referred to the man in question as anything but “The Master,” just as none of them ever called him “The Drake” to his face. “When one’s indentures fall into the hands of villain after villain, it’s a small wonder that they end up meeting the ends they richly deserve.” Renaldo had put down his bowl on the table with a clatter, then stared at the painting he’d been busily repairing. Other artifacts from the wreckage of Portello lay in boxes around the hut as well, vases, paintings, trinkets, and valuable knick-knacks alike. All of them waited for Renaldo’s craftsman hands to fix, or for Michaelo to copy so they could be sold to multiple purchasers, while the Drake kept the originals. “If only your curse would work now,” he muttered.

“Tush!” Michaelo had crossed his index and middle fingers, kissed the tips, and held them up to the heavens to ward off bad luck. Nic didn’t miss the look of longing in his eyes, however. The Dattores had been with the Drake for years, and it was rumored that they had done such good work for him that he had stipulated in his will that upon his passing, their work debts were to be erased.

“Every time I lose a master, though,” said Nic, thinking about the second constant in his life, “the costs a new master pays to buy out my papers are added to my indentures. If I kept one master for years, instead of months, I might be able to work off the debt. Eventually. But if my masters keep dying, I’ll never be able to work off the total.”

“It does seem a pity,” clucked Michaelo.

“That’s the way the world works, son.” Renaldo had sighed. “At least for those of us with nothing.”

“How old were you when you went into your indentures?” Nic had asked them. The cut on his cheek hurt when he changed expression, so he had attempted to hide the wretchedness he felt.

“Seventeen, after my father died and I had no money to pay his debts.” Renaldo spoke as if it were a very long time ago.

Michaelo had leaned forward. “Niccolo, son, surely it’s not all bad, being in service to the Master? You’re fed, you’re clothed. You’re not out on the street, or spending nights beneath the Temple Bridge.”

Nic knew the man’s words were kindly meant, yet he couldn’t help but feel bitter. “My food and clothing are added onto my work debt. I sleep in the stable. I’m fortunate if I don’t wake up covered with mule manure.” He’d stared at Michaelo. “You didn’t tell me how old you were when you went into service.”

Michaelo sighed and had looked to Renaldo for aid. Renaldo simply shook his head and motioned for him to speak. “It was twenty-two years ago, out of necessity,” he’d said at last, in a voice so quiet that it was barely audible over the crackling branches in the hearth. “I was not as sensible in my youth as I am now. But Niccolo, your luck will change. You’ll be a free man one day.”

“When I’m old and past caring,” Nic had growled, staring at the floor. “I’m sorry, I know you both mean well, but if I had any luck, it ran out long ago.” He stood up. “I’d best go.”

“No, stay until the bell,” urged Michaelo. “We’ll go over your letters together.”

“I’ll have no use for reading, when I’ll be a dogsbody for the rest of my life.” Nic would rather have stayed in the warmth of that fire, with the only two friends he’d ever had in his entire life, but on this particular evening he’d wanted to be by himself for a while. Huddling in the stable with a mule blanket around his shoulders might have been a poor second to his present company, but looking at the Dattores only reminded him of the long years of service he had ahead.

“Lad.” Renaldo held open his arms as Nic crossed the hut to go. From his chair, he gave Nic a gruff, fatherly hug, then held both sides of his head and said, with meaning, “Your luck will change. You’ll be your own master soon.”

Outside the sun was setting. In the distance, the hornsman for the palace let loose a peal. The replies from the seven cazas surrounding Cassaforte’s coast would soon follow. The temple bell would toll within the hour. “Thank you,” said Nic. He stood, slipping the unfolded squares of paper into his pocket. He had no use for the finished paper boat. “It’s nice to dream about.” Without a word more, he slipped out of the hut.

From outside, he couldn’t help but take one last and envious look through the open window at the couple within. From the shadows he watched as Michaelo sighed and picked up one of his folded paper sculptures. The man examined it a moment before letting it drop from his fingers into the fire. “He’ll never get out from under, will he?”

Renaldo shook his head. He picked up his metal skullcap and donned it, then swung down two of the optic lenses so he could resume his close examination of the painting he had been studying. “I pray that the gods will have mercy on him,” he announced. “For none of his masters ever have.”

Cazarro, I regret to hear of the disappearance of your daughter. Surely the youngest girl is always a father’s jewel, and I pray the gods speed her restoration. If she has vanished into the underbelly of the city, however, there is no guarantee she will ever return. It is a sordid place of disease, filth, and despair, where the weak are preyed upon by creatures whose villainy you can scarce imagine.

—District Officer Perla Venucci,
in a letter to Cazarro Ianno Piratimare

P
erhaps the gods heard Renaldo’s prayers that night, or perhaps he had been right about the odds finally catching up with Nic, because it was a mere two months later that the young man’s luck changed for the better. It happened on a rare moonless night, a time when men seemed more restless and the public houses and gambling dens of Cassaforte could be relied upon to fill to capacity. Long after the temple bell had pealed its last for the day, Nic had found himself rousted from slumber and pressed into accompanying the Drake to the Viper’s Sting, an inn in Cassaforte’s port district. Nic had punted the gondola from one end of the city to the other, trying hard not to let the Drake witness his yawns along the way. It wasn’t easy. No matter how late his duties had kept him up that night, he’d still have to wake by sunrise to begin his morning chores.

The canals on two sides of the Viper’s Sting were both cluttered with gondola when Nic finally punted close, but one of the inn’s servants, seeing their illustrious guest, had motioned for Nic to take an empty and choice spot near the landing. “A pleasure to have you, signor.” The servant scraped and bowed to Nic’s master while Nic assisted him from the craft. Indoors, their reception was no less fulsome. Scarcely had the Drake stepped inside and glanced around at the crowded quarters with an impassive and supercilious air, than the inn’s owner himself had appeared. Bobbing and offering the inn’s fullest hospitality, he escorted them to a room in the back. On either side of their path, various people had bowed or curtsied or removed their caps and placed them over their hearts. Of Nic they noticed nothing. All attention was on his master.

Though there were fewer people in the back, it was no less smoky or quiet. Several tables had been set up for taroccho, and at the head of the largest and most illustrious was a chair, taller-backed and more elaborately carved than the others. It was here that the innkeeper had paused, hastily motioning for the Drake kindly to wait a moment. The man occupying the chair had cupped his cards to his chest when the innkeeper leaned down to whisper in his ear. From his dress and bearing, Nic could tell that he was of the Thirty, and the look he gave the Drake had been almost hostile. Still, when the innkeeper was done whispering, the man rose. His back stiff, he had bowed with formality, but without respect, and took another place at the table. The Drake had immediately stepped forward to take the ceded position.

At a snap of his master’s fingers, Nic had scurried to remove the precious occupant’s markers, snuff box, and flagon. When he had delivered them to their owner, now several seats down, he had heard the man muttering to his neighbor. “Damned officious, if you ask me.”

A few of the table’s occupants had appeared to recognize the Drake, and greeted him with tips of their caps. A few others were more reserved in their manner, seeming to side with the slighted member of the Thirty. One man in particular, however, seemed neither intimidated nor offended by the Drake’s presence. He was a round-faced man drinking wine nearly as red as his cheeks, who had leaned over his neighbor and held out a hand in the Drake’s direction. “A pleasure to have a new player to fleece, a pleasure indeed,” he said, chuckling. “Armand Arturo. Perhaps you’ve heard of me? Armand Arturo’s Theatre of Marvels?”

The Drake had regarded the man’s hand in much the same way as if someone had proffered him an obviously bad oyster. “No, signor,” he replied coldly. “I have not.”

“Ah well. Ah, well.” After an awkward moment, the red-faced man withdrew his hand. While the member of the Thirty shook his head and hissed insults into the ears of his neighbors, the Drake took up the deck of cards, and began to deal. “And you, lad? What’s your name?”

Nic looked up in surprise. The man was addressing him. His eyes studied the boy, seeming to take in the details of his face, the cap pushed low over his forehead, the dark, bedraggled clothing he wore that was dirty from the stables and still damp from punting. They were kind eyes, Nic decided. Still, no one had ever spoken to him when he was with the Drake. His lips worked uncertainly, but no sound came out. “Boy.” The Drake snapped his fingers. “These cards are sticky. Get another deck from the innkeeper.” His fingers dug into Nic’s collarbone as he drew him close to murmur into his ear. “Make sure they’re not marked, as I’ve taught you.”

It was difficult for Nic not to wince at the bruise the Drake was no doubt leaving, but he was used to how his masters did things. He was no more than property. The Drake no more expected Nic to respond to the polite inquiries of strangers than he would expect one of his walking sticks to start announcing the time of day. In truth, Nic felt uncomfortable with the scrutiny that particular night, for the day before the Drake had been in a temper, and left a visible bruise to show it. Nic had pulled his cap lower over his face and went to do as he’d been bid. He had made certain to inspect the card backs in private, however, so as not to offend the innkeeper.

The Drake played taroccho, Nic knew, not only because it allowed him the leisure to drink heavily between deals, but because he had a talent for reading the intentions of the other betters around him. It was obvious from the way the youngest man at the table fondled his chips and stared nervously at the table’s center, for example, that he had wished the two upturned cards there would turn into something better for his concealed hand. From the smug way the man of the Thirty smiled as he had regarded his own hand and tossed more money into the porcelain teapot that had held the round’s winnings, it was easy to deduce that he was confident of holding three identical kings or queens. The Drake, meanwhile, remained impassive and impossible to read. His face could have been cold as the marble statues in the city’s temple, and his tactic worked. Over the course of the next hour, while Nic stood behind his chair and suppressed yawns, the Drake repeatedly pulled the teapot over in order to empty out its contents before him, at the conclusion of each round.

Only one other man had won nearly as much as the Drake, and that was the red-faced man. Signor Arturo continued to exchange pleasantries and jokes with his neighbors as he played. The man barely looked at his cards before tossing in wagers. When he won, it was with apologies and thank yous alike to all as he raked in the markers. When he lost, he laughed heartily at his mistakes. It was as far distant from the Drake’s own clench-lipped, stony silence as a soul could get. It was obvious that the other players—even the man of the Thirty—minded losing to Armand Arturo far less than they did to Nic’s master.

The commotion of the Viper’s Sting had done nothing to help Nic keep awake. On the contrary, the constant buzz of noise made him wearier and less able to keep his eyes open. To prevent himself from falling asleep, he invented small tasks to perform, to keep active. He had adjusted the screens by the fire to keep the Drake’s temperature warm, but not too hot. He had fetched spiced wine when the innkeeper or one of his wenches was elsewhere, and plates of dried fruits from the kitchen to keep the Drake full.

It was during a trip to the kitchens for a packet of
tabbaco di foglia
before the Drake’s pipe got low that Nic had turned away from the kitchen mistress and found the red-faced man hovering in the door, staring at him. Oh, he had a handful of forest nuts that he was busily cracking open so he could feast on the meat within, but Nic was obviously the object of his scrutiny. “You’re an interesting one,” he had announced.

Nic was so unused to anyone addressing him with anything other than an order that he found himself tongue-tied. Instinct made him bow, however. “Now, now,” said Signor Arturo, cracking open another shell. “Nut?” Nic’s stomach had growled at the offer. It was torture to be surrounded by so many people eating when his last meal had been hours before and meager in scope, but he shook his head. “Oh, come boy. I’ve plenty. How old are you? Fifteen?”

Before he could stop the man, Nic found his hands being stuffed with forest nuts, their shells roasted and split to reveal the red husk and green meat within. Hastily he thrust them into his pockets before anyone else saw. “Thank you, signor. I am sixteen. Seventeen in a few months.”

“You’re older than I thought. What’s your name, then?”

“Nic, signor. No surname.” Nic’s voice had remained quiet. His eyes darted in the direction of the main room, looking for some avenue of escape.

“You’d best not let the Drake find you talking to his boy like that, signor,” called out a passing serving wench as she waltzed by, two flagons in her hands.

“And why not?” said the man, still sounding cheerful. “Are we not all free men—and women—of Cassaforte, able to speak with whom we please?”

“You and I, maybe,” said the wench. She gestured with a flagon at Nic before disappearing into the public room. “The boy? No.”

“Saucy girl,” said Signor Arturo, watching her flounce off. Then, in a more confidential voice he added to Nic, “And pretty, eh? But don’t tell the wife I said so,” he added with a wink, once he caught Nic’s involuntary grin. He had pointed to his finger, around which lay a gold marriage band. “So, lad, what is it you want to do with the rest of your life?”

It was impossible to resist the man’s infectious good spirits. “I—I don’t know, signor.” He shook his head. “I do what my master bids.”

The expression with which the signor regarded him was kindly, yet his eyes narrowed. “You’re indentured, no? But that won’t last forever. Don’t you have a dream, lad?” he had asked, crossing his arms and regarding him curiously. “Something you’d like to do once you’ve worked out your debt? Nothing to make your soul sing as you get through the dark days? Hmm?” No one had ever asked Nic about his wants before. They weren’t discussed in the servant’s quarters of any of the houses where he’d worked. Wishing was something other people did. For a moment he gawped at the man, trying to think. “What has that master of yours done to you?” asked Signor Arturo. His hand reached out. Before Nic could stop him, he had removed Nic’s cap, exposing a purple knot the Drake had left with a well-aimed blow. The man also took in Nic’s blackened left eye, which he’d been attempting to conceal. “It should be a crime, beating the dreams out of a boy before he’s dared to dream them.”

Gruffly, Nic snatched his cap back and shoved it back onto his head. “Sorry,” he said, knowing the man hadn’t meant any harm.

“It’s me who should be apologizing, boy. It’s just that when I saw that bruise—”

“Oy.” The serving wench entered through the kitchen door and gave a whistle to Nic. “He’s on the move, looking for you.”

Every nerve that had relaxed around Signor Arturo jangled with alarm. Nic adjusted his cap, made sure he had the packet of
tabbaco di foglia
in his hands, and turned to apologize. Signor Arturo, however, had vanished without a word. His disappearance turned out to be well-timed, for mere seconds later, the Drake met Nic at the closer of the two kitchen doors. His eyes had darted around the premises, searching for something. “Where the devil have you been?” When Nic had held up the packet of dried pipe weed, the Drake had snatched it away and peered into the busy kitchen. “Tell me, boy, and be truthful, or I’ll snatch your tongue by its roots.” Nic swallowed hard and held his breath when the Drake’s face loomed close, smelling of sweet wine and decay. “Was anyone in here asking you to help him cheat at cards?”