The Shadow Master (10 page)

“Such a treaty would need to be a century long if that is your intent,” Cosimo called back.

“I would accept your suggestion,” the Duke countered. The men around him jostled a little in merriment. They were glad to see their lord gaining the upper hand. But he could almost feel Cosimo's glare across the distance between them. He lifted the trumpet and shouted back. “It is unacceptable.”

“Two months then,” the Duke replied. He saw Cosimo look to his advisor. The two men talked a moment. Not about the possibility of a two month peace treaty, of course, but of how to next respond in a manner that allowed them to appear in control. But the Duke had played his hand carefully. A short peace treaty was a reasonable request that would be hard to refuse without appearing intent on war and unwilling to at least consider the possibility that others were the guilty parties. Cosimo called back the answer he had expected. “No. One month.”

The Duke smiled. But then Cosimo called back, “And you will remove all your troops from the streets during that period.”

The Duke had not expected that. “As will you?” he called back.

“And leave my family unprotected from an attack?” he replied. The Duke gritted his teeth. This Medici was quick and cunning.

“I will half the number of my troops,” the Duke replied. He could see Cosimo smiling broadly. The man felt he had a victory in his hands. “But be warned,” the Duke called to him, “We do not rely solely on troops for our own safety.”

“What else?” Cosimo taunted. “Whales? I will tell my men to beware of them on the streets.” His men gave a hearty laugh that carried easily across the distance to him. But the Duke paid no more attention to it than he would a slight breeze. The time for talking was over. He held a hand aloft and momentarily a large shadow eclipsed the sun. The men on both towers looked up in amazement as a gigantic eagle rose up behind them and circled around in the sky above them. The murmur of fear carried as easily as the mocking laughter and the Duke waved his hand at the Medici tower. The huge bird swooped rapidly, descending on the tower and breaking in the air with a mighty whump of its wings, pausing long enough to grab one of the soldiers in a clawed foot and ascend back into the sky. The soldiers on the tower top were left cowering around Cosimo, who had also dropped to the floor, losing his fine velvet hat. The eagle rose up and up into the sky and then spiralled down to the Lorraine tower, depositing the Medici soldier there.

That bit was done a little awkwardly, though, and the bird almost dropped the man to the streets below, which would have been catastrophic. He landed on the edge of the battlements, and the Lorraine men grabbed him and saved him from falling, dragging him back to safety. The bird circled the tower once more and dived away, disappearing somewhere in the city streets.

The Duke watched the men on the Medici tower slowly climb to their feet and hopelessly try and restore some sort of order. They were far too shaken, though. The Duke lifted his ship's trumpet to his lips and called out over the mutterings of men below and from the tower opposite, “A one month peace treaty then. And we shall return your man unharmed.” Well, relatively unharmed, he thought. The poor man looked like he'd take some time to recover.

Then he turned, held out his hand for his dear wife. She was looking very pleased with the way things had gone. They descended the stairs, together, as if dancing arm in arm, as they had once delighted in.

 

 

 

XVII

Cosimo Medici had enough of dealing with the bumbling fools who purported to be deathseekers. He needed to find the one man that even the deathseekers feared. If they had only been half as good as they had claimed to be when they came into his employ, the Lorraine household would be mourning their dead. But instead all he had for the gold coins he had wasted on them was two missing deathseekers and a pie delivered to his household with a turd baked inside it.

It was another Lorraine taunt, of course, and one that he would not tolerate. It was bad enough that he had been humbled in front of both his and the Lorraine fighting men by that monstrous Lorraine eagle, and that his insolent servant Galileo would not meet his wishes, but this was too much.

He wondered if the turd came from the Duke himself. There were stories that the ancients could weave a spell to control a man if they had a part of the man's body to use. It usually referred to nail clippings or his hair, but he wondered if that didn't include a man's turds as well.

He pushed the thought from his mind, as it was only making him angry. That was its purpose of course, to fill him with rage and cloud his judgement. But he wouldn't give the Lorraines that control over him. They were undoubtedly right now planning to dispatch a deathseeker to attack him. They would surely have spies in his household as much as he had them in theirs.
Had
had them, he corrected himself.

He knew enough about deathseekers' methods to be able to avoid much of the possible danger they posed to him. He knew when they attacked, and their main methods. He knew about the poisons they could employ, that could be placed in a man's food, or even upon his clothes. He knew they could conceal blades about their body that seemed small enough to be harmless, but could kill a man by being plunged into his eye, or into the base of his brain. And, he suspected, the reason the Lorraines employed such crude assassins to attack him and Giuliano in the cathedral was to throw suspicion away from them.

He did not want to spend every hour of every day having to fear every servant and soldier who came near to him, staring into their eyes to see if they might be seeking his death. Having his meals tasted before they reached his lips. Having to sleep alone with a ring of men around him, each watching the other suspiciously. He had to gain the upper hand over the Medicis and quickly. And that meant finding the one man whose name the deathseekers muttered in awe. The assassin known as the Nameless One.

He sat in the alcove in the family chapel patiently. The Nameless One was not a man you could summon at will to your chambers. He protected his identity fiercely and it was rumoured he would even slay those who contracted him if he thought they even suspected who he might be. It was said that he was so skilled that he could slay a man and even the apothecaries would not be able to determine how he had died. Unless there were a need for everyone to see how he had been slain. There were stories that he was a noble man of one of the minor houses in the city. And there were also stories that he was a soldier who had been greatly disfigured by the plague. There were also stories that he was more spirit than man.

But it was a man's voice that whispered suddenly from the other side of the partition. “You wish my services, my lord?” Cosimo tried not to act surprised. The man had arrived as silently as smoke enters a chimney.

“You know well I do,” he said. “As I suspect you know exactly what I want of you.”

“The removal of the thorn from your side?”

The man would only speak in metaphor, he knew, never agreeing to actually kill a man that had been named. “Yes,” said Cosimo. “The great thorn must be removed. As soon as possible, before it festers and causes infection.”

The Nameless One was silent for a moment and then said, “Would not my lord prefer to have the thorn remove itself voluntarily?”

“What do you mean?” Cosimo asked.

“To have the thorn removed would simply invite another lesser thorn to take its place. And one more after that. And another and another and another. If you were able to have the thorn submit to your will, though, and remove itself, there would be no danger of lesser thorns each trying to dig deeply into your side, spring after spring, when thorns grow.”

Cosimo pondered this. He was right; killing the Duke would be very satisfying, but it would lead to a blood feud that would not stop until the bloodletting had worked its way through the entirety of the Lorraine and Medici Houses. The war would be long and the spice trade would suffer worse than it did now, and then they would have no way of holding the plague back from the city. He would rather cut the Duke's throat and have him hung from one of the towers, but to have the Duke bow down to him publicly, that would be as sweet. He had been too obsessed on taking revenge for his brother to consider this. Vengeance would have been good for the family's honour, but bad for business. He needed to not just dominate the city through force, but have those who challenged him bow down to him. “How would such be done?” asked Cosimo.

“If you hold what is valuable to the thorn you will have control of the thorn.”

“And what is most valuable to the thorn?” asked Cosimo.

“The most precious thing to the oak tree is the acorn,” said the Nameless One. “The most precious thing to the rose bush is the flower.”

Cosimo considered this for some moments. Yes, he could have the Duke humiliate himself time and time again. He could gain control of those mysterious birds and whales of the Lorraines. The spice trade would flow unimpeded, and he could be the only one with ships on the seas. As long as he held the Duke's daughter captive.

“Yes,” he said. “It shall be done as you say.” He smiled to himself at the audacity of it, and then asked, “What assistance can I provide you in this?” But the Nameless One was gone. As silently as he had come. Cosimo the Great rose to his feet and stepped out of the small alcove. The chapel was empty except for the sound of his guards mumbling to each other outside the door. Cosimo stood there a moment and then raised a fist into the air as if he had just won a game of chance. It was pleasing to receive good counsel for once.

 

 

XVIII

The plague people had started gathering at the city's gate before the first hesitant light of dawn, so it looked to the guards on the walls as if they had been standing there all night long. They were waiting for the city guard to lead the six-ox cart down the winding streets to the gate in the early morning light. The guards up on the gate assembled in tight formation to let the crowd outside know they were being watched. If the plague people grew too restive or rebellious the gates would not be opened.

There was a large crowd there today, several hundred people. They had been slowly increasing in size over the past week, but the City Council were too preoccupied with the conflict within the walls of the city to concentrate overly on the conflict without. Each day the Captain of the Guard would report that the number of plague victims was increasing, and that they were become more and more difficult to control, but the City Council would dismiss him with a curt admonition that if he were unable to maintain discipline over sickly beggars then they would find somebody else who could.

What was the man to do? He increased the number of men on the wall and the number of armed men that escorted the ox cart outside the gates each morning, and hoped that the lottery would be enough to keep them all in check. A chance of entering the Walled City, no matter how remote, held enormous sway over desperate men and women.

The Sergeant of the Guard, an honest man of many years' experience named Cristoforo, stood atop the gates, and called down to the assembled throng to make way for the morning's draw. The plague people down below stepped back into something resembling orderly lines. When he was satisfied, the Sergeant of the Guard made them wait just a little longer and then ordered the guardsmen to form up outside. Levers were spun and cogs turned and a door within one of the main gates turned open, then a troop of a dozen armed guardsmen stepped out and formed a semicircle around the gates, holding shields and spears in front of them to warn the plague people back. These guardsmen were doing this duty as punishment for something, whoring or being drunk on duty, and they came into the closest contact with the sick. It was that or be thrown out of the city, and so they reluctantly accepted the task.

When Sergeant Cristoforo was satisfied, he ordered the gates open and one huge gate creaked slowly inwards until there was space for the ox cart to emerge. The huge beasts waddled out slowly and the sergeant wondered, as he did each day, what they would do when they had to eat the beasts. But as more plague victims arrived bringing tribute, of course the less need there was to do so.

Sergeant Cristoforo then called down to the sick and dying to bring forth their tribute. The crowd pushed forward then, calling out and holding up their offerings. Some had a chicken or two. Some had a pig and several had sacks of grain. The Sergeant had long observed that a family might arrive at the gates with several livestock and bags of grain, but they would be robbed of them before the next morning and others would stand there holding them up to the guardsmen. It didn't matter to him. His job was simply to take the largest offerings and give the person supplying them a pass into the city.

He noticed today a fat rogue with half his face eaten away with pustules, holding two pigs, three chickens and four sacks of grain. Yesterday the man had stood there with one pig only, and the day before that he had simply had a chicken. He wondered if he had slain the owners of the livestock and food or had traded them for their lives.

There was a decree that the gates would not be opened if the bodies of the dead were left around the walls of the city, so the sick and dying had to drag the corpses of their family, friends, or just strangers, to a ditch beyond a small rise and bury them there. Or at least make some pretence of burying them. The Sergeant pointed down to the fat rogue and the man beamed joyously, stepping forward while the guardsmen loaded his produce onto one of the carts.

He looked down for newcomers to the gates, bearing produce. They were easily discernible by the way they stared incredulously at the smooth unblemished skin of the guardsmen. It confirmed everything they had heard. There was a city that had withstood the plague where they had potions to cure it. Where, if you were rich enough or lucky enough, you could be admitted.