The Dagger and the Cross (48 page)

He was made of sterner stuff. Not that he lacked for fear.
Dear Mother Mary, not at all. His hands were damp with it; his heart lurched
and stumbled. Now and again his feet dragged to a halt, his body begged to
turn, his mind screamed at him to give it up. But he pressed on. For Marco, he
was doing it. For silly, saintly, ingrate Marco, he endangered his immortal
soul and his precious skin.

The caravanserai loomed before him. Its doors multiplied to
infinity.

He stopped. “Spells,” he said. His voice was a rasp, but it
cleared his head. The walls shrank to human dimensions. The doors dwindled to a
mere half-dozen along the colonnade. He had ascertained long since which was
the proper one. The farthest, heading toward the harbor, no different from any
of the others, except that its porter was a turbaned Saracen.

The creature showed no sign of speaking Frankish, but he
understood it well enough. Ugly little beast, with his yellow face and his
narrow slanting eyes. “Tell Prince Aidan,” Seco said, “that Guillermo Seco di
Genoa begs the favor of an audience.”

The infidel looked Seco up and down with purest insolence.
He took his time about it. Seco endured it. He had met this beast before, or
another like him.

At length the Saracen deigned to respond. He opened his
mouth and bawled what surely was a name. In time another appeared, who might
have been his fetch: ugly little yellow-faced devil, this one wearing a broad,
gap-toothed grin. The porter gabbled at him in what was not Arabic. The
newcomer gabbled back. Seco discerned his name amid the nonsense.

The second imp swallowed a last, guttural word and sauntered
inward. The first faced Seco. “You wait,” he said in dreadful
langue d’oeil.

Seco waited. The porter leaned against the doorframe, arms
folded across his chest. He did not invite the guest within, or even deign to
notice him, now that duty was done.

Seco schooled himself to patience. It was cool in the shade
of the colonnade, and he was out of the jostle of the street. He would have
welcomed a cup of something cold, to soothe his thirst.

It was an hour, perhaps, before Seco was again acknowledged.
People passed at intervals: another Saracen, this one with a Norman face,
haughty as his own master; a pair of giggling women; a boy as tall as Seco,
whom Seco recognized as the heir to Mortmain. None of them spared Seco more
than a glance.

It was almost exactly an hour, Seco reckoned. Just past the
stroke of terce, with even the shade beginning to take on the sun’s heat. The
one who came was not the imp who had gone; it was a more proper servant, a
Frank in a brown smock who said only, “His highness will see you now.”

o0o

His highness waited in what, in a castle, would have been
the solar: a room more large than small, with tall windows and a good carpet or
two, and chairs, and a table. There was no light but what came through the
windows; after the dimness of stairs and passages, enough. Seco saw the figure
in the tall chair like a throne, settled at its ease, lazy as a great cat, and
as subtly dangerous.

There was fear, great waves of it, but Seco rose above it.
He bowed to the rank if not to the man, and straightened, searching the white
hawk-face. “Prince Aidan,” he said. It was not a question unless the prince
chose to make it so.

He did not. He gestured slightly toward a chair. A servant
offered wine.

Seco took both. If there was poison in the wine, then so be
it. He doubted that there was. Prince Aidan was never one to poison a cup, when
his tongue was enough.

It was excellent wine. He said so.

The prince smiled. It did not touch his eyes.

He was not going to make it easy. But then, he never did.
Seco remembered. Memory roused hate, sudden and blinding. Seco quelled it with
all the strength he had. This creature had made a mockery of him, and more than
once. Now Seco had the means to master him.

The priest’s nonsense babbled through Seco’s mind. He hardly
needed to think of it; it woke of itself and raised its wall. Foolish, perhaps,
but perhaps not. This was not a man. He knew that, drinking wine from the fine
silver cup, watching the prince out of the corner of his eye. Not a line on
that face, not a thread of grey in that hair, and beauty to touch even a
merchant’s hardened heart. The long fan-hands flexed on the arms of the chair,
warning enough as he rose and began to prowl: proving beyond a doubt that he
was Aidan and not the shadow-quiet king.

Seco willed himself to sit still, not to follow the prince
with anxious eyes. Even when he passed behind, soundless on the carpeted floor,
a bare breath of air and presence. He circled the room once, twice, thrice,
sunwise.

A spell. Seco felt the panic rising. Soon, all too soon, he
would have no power to quell it.

He spoke more quickly than he might have chosen, with none
of the indirection which he had intended. “I have a bargain to offer you.”

Seco’s voice was steady, if harsh. It stilled the
panther-strides; it brought the prince round to face him.

“A bargain,” Seco repeated, “which may work to both our
advantage.”

Aidan stood still. His head was up, haughty, mettlesome as a
stallion’s. He looked as if he would have liked to sneer, but would not so
condescend. “People are always offering me bargains,” he said.

“Not such a bargain as this.” Seco drank from the cup,
struggling not to gulp it down. “I hear that your lady is with you here. That
she ransomed you from the Saracen sultan; that you have sworn oaths which you
might perhaps have preferred to forgo. Would you take her to wife still, if
you
could?”

“She is my wife in all but the name,” Aidan said.

“The name,” said Seco, “is all that you strove for. What
price would you pay to gain it?”

The prince tensed subtly, like a panther braced to spring.
Seco, weaponless, with only the monk’s wall of nonsense to protect him, sat
straight and firmed his wavering spirit.

“I never bargain with thieves,” said Aidan.

Seco made himself smile. “Of course, your highness. But
suppose that I offered you the wherewithal to gain what you seek. Would you
refuse it for that you despise me?”

“What do you want?”

Seco sat back. He had him. Witch, prince, deadly beast this
might be, but Seco had what the creature wanted; and now he knew it. “What do I
want? Very little, your highness. Assurance of protection for myself and my
son. Passage to the Italies, and the wherewithal to keep ourselves in comfort
both on the voyage and thereafter. Your sworn word that we will be safe from
reprisal, whether yours or any other’s.”

“And in return?”

“Knowledge that you need.”

“The pope’s letter?”

“The means to find it.”

Aidan was absolutely still. That, in one so restless, was
startling; disturbing. “Why should I pay your price? My brother sails within
the fortnight. It is a matter of little moment to disembark in the Italies,
journey to Rome, obtain a new dispensation.”

“But, your highness, you swore to wed your lady in Outremer
before the Patriarch of Jerusalem. Will you break that famous oath?”

“The Holy Father can dissolve it for me.”

“Perhaps. Perhaps he may refuse. What then? Will you
surrender this chance, which is certain, for one which may turn against you?”

The prince laughed, light and mocking. “What, you’re no
turncoat, either? Fool that I am, to think I knew one when I saw one.” He drew
closer, standing over Seco. His presence was almost more than Seco could bear:
a heat like fire, a flare of white terror. “You never loved me, Messer Seco. I
saw through you long ago; I ordered you out of my sight. You had gall to come
back. I admire gall. I chose to receive you, to see what could have brought you
here, knowing what I am and what I swore to do when next you inflicted yourself
upon me. Are you truly so eager to be stripped and shorn and whipped out of my
gates?”

“Are you so eager to be stripped of your lady and your
wedding?”

Aidan drew back a very little. “Gall,” he said as if to
himself, “indeed.” He smiled his sweet, terrible smile. “Your price is low, Messer
Seco. You’ll pardon me if I mistrust it.”

“I would hardly reckon your protection a small thing, my
lord prince.”

“That, it is not. But you know how greatly I desire what you
offer. Why are you asking so little of what is mine?”

“I know how little it matters to you.”

The truth, sometimes, could be a potent weapon. Prince Aidan
saluted it. “My protection—that matters to you. I scent the fear on you. Of
what, Messer Seco? Surely not of me?”

“You are what you are,” Seco said.

“And my lady is my lady.” Aidan paced to the far wall and
returned, and stood where he had stood before, looking down at Seco. Seco,
caught like the coney beneath the hawk, looked up.

“He’s not afraid of you,” said a child’s voice, “or even,
much, of Morgiana. He’s more afraid of the people he’s plotted with, once they
find out he’s played them false.”

The Jew’s whelp, indeed, and in the prince’s presence Seco’s
eyes were sharper, or else the boy had changed, for there was no doubt at all
that he was one of them. But it was not he who had spoken. The child who came
forward was a Mortmain, and arrogant with it, setting herself beside the prince
and eyeing Seco as if he were a coney indeed, gutted and roasted and laid on
her trencher. “I can’t get any sense out of him,” she said. “Can you?”

The prince did not give her the back of his hand. He
regarded her with the air of one besotted, although he had the sense to frown a
very little and inquire, “Ysabel, is this polite?”

“He isn’t,” she said. “He’s trying to sell you what belongs
to you. You shouldn’t let him. His son knows, too. Shall I tell Morgiana to go
and get him?”

Seco’s stomach was a cold knot. The prince was tall and
strange and terrible. This human-seeming child, with her untidy brown braids
and her wide blue eyes, was appalling.

The prince raised a brow at her. “What do you know of this?”

“We hunted,” she said. “While you were in the war. We found
a track; it’s here in Tyre. We were coming to tell you.” She fixed Seco with a
glare. “We can tell you as much as he can, and not ask payment for it, either.”

Prince Aidan laid a hand on her head, half to quell her,
half to caress her. Seco shuddered. Even the serpent, no doubt, knew affection
for its young. This new-hatched viper leaned against her kinsman, horribly like
a human child, and nibbled on a braid-end. “Should I fetch Morgiana?”

“No,” said the prince. “Not quite yet.” He raised his eyes
from her to Seco. “Well, sir. Are you prepared to tell us what you know?”

“If you already know it, your highness, then what is there
to tell?”

“You have your life to buy,” the young one said. “He’s being
very generous to let you, instead of just asking me. Are your friends as
generous as he is?”

“My life?” Seco asked with the bravery of despair. “Is that
all I gain?”

“Your son’s, too,” she said. “And maybe passage west, if the
king has room for you. He’s very charitable, is my lord Gwydion.”

Seco grimaced. It should have been a smile. “Is it always so
with you, your highness, that you suffer women and children to do your
bargaining for you?”

“They’re better at it than I am,” Aidan said. His smile was
wide and white and faintly feral. “There’s your bargain, Messer Seco. Your life
and your son’s, and passage west if my brother consents; and in return, the
names of your conspirators.”

“We can always ask Marco,” the little witch said. “He’s
terrified of us. He has nightmares about Akiva, can you believe it, uncle? He’d
do better to have nightmares about me.”

Seco had no doubt of it. He would not berate himself for a
fool. That gained him nothing. He had gambled that the prince would be alone
and therefore vulnerable, between his pride and his innocence in the ways of
merchants. Seco had reckoned without this new nest of witches.

A merchant knew when to cut his losses. Seco spread his
hands, accepting the bargain as the witch had proposed it. “For my life and my
son’s, and for passage west, and for such compensation as hereafter we shall
settle—”

“Compensation?” Aidan asked, deceptively mild.

“Surely what I have to tell is worth a dinar or two.”

“Or three, or a hundred. Or are you asking all that I have?”

“Not even the tithe of it, your highness,” Seco said.

“The price of passage for two, and my protection,” said
Aidan, “should amply suffice. If I add to it a purse of gold bezants, will that
content you?”

“That depends on the size of the purse.”

The young ones were outraged. Their elder was amused: a
white, cold amusement. “The price when last I looked,” he said, “was thirty
pieces of silver.”

Seco sucked in his breath.

“I shall give you,” the witch-prince said, “thirty bezants.
And of my charity, one blood ruby set in silver. You won’t mind, surely, the
curse that lies on it. He who wears it on his finger is doomed forever after to
tell the truth, and nothing but the truth.”

That was, in more ways than one, a threat. Seco swallowed.
His throat was dust-dry. “We have a bargain,” he said. He did not offer to seal
it with a handclasp. He breathed deep, once, twice. “The man who forged your
dispensation,” he said, “and who hid the proper document, is known as Thomas.
He has been a scribe in the papal chancery; he serves the pope’s legate. The
one who suborned him is another monk, Richard of Ascalon. Both are in Tyre in
the legate’s train.”

“Yes,” said the little witch, looking past Seco to the Jew’s
whelp. “Thomas and Richard, that is who they are.
We
want to know—”

“We want to know,” said the Jew, “how they conceal their
minds from us.”