The Traitor's Daughter (38 page)

“Nothing. I’ve recalled at last that I am the Magnifico Corvestri.”

“I don’t understand you. And you don’t understand me if you expect me to accept insult and humiliation. I’ve been a dutiful wife to you for all these years, but there are limits. I’ll not tolerate abuse.”

“You’ll tolerate the rightful authority of your husband, madam. It is a lesson you should have learned years ago, but I trust it is not too late to teach you.” Vinz snapped his fingers, engaging the regard of the Sishmindri, whose house-name he did not recall and whose real name he had never known. “Remove her.”

The Sishmindri hesitated, visibly reluctant to lay web-fingered hands upon his mistress.

“It’s all right, Teebo,” Sonnetia resolved the amphibian’s dilemma. “I’ll go.” Her voice was controlled as always, but the glance she cast at her husband communicated the deepest outrage. Head high, she marched out of the study, closely followed by her guard, and the door closed behind them.

Vinz expelled his breath in a sigh. It was over. He had engaged in a contest of wills with his wife and emerged the victor. He had asserted his rightful authority, displayed appropriate firmness and resolve, defended the secrecy of the night’s venture. Save for her single disturbing flash of insight, things had gone quite well, and he had every right to enjoy a few moments of well-deserved self-satisfaction. But he was not enjoying anything. That look she’d given him! In all their years together, he had never seen such anger in her eyes, and that wasn’t the worst of it. There had been something more, something akin to—what? Reproach? Bewilderment? Something that stirred his guilt and remorse.

Nonsense. He was tormenting himself over nothing. The anger in her eyes—now,
that
had been real, the reaction of a self-willed, overindulged woman unaccustomed to restraint. He had granted her too much freedom, which she may or may not have misused, but those days were over.

He did not care to speculate as to the manner in which she may or may not have misused her freedom. Contemplation of the impending mayhem at Belandor House was actually preferable. Another few hours, and it would be over and done with, one way or another.

Vinz stared out the window and willed the hours to pass.

* * *

Time trudged at its own pace and the afternoon yielded to twilight that persisted for decades before giving way to night. Vinz ordered a light meal brought to his study on a tray. When the food arrived fifteen minutes later, he found that he could scarcely touch it. His hands were cold despite the good fire crackling on the grate, and his jaw muscles insisted on clenching.

Unacceptable. He needed that jaw in good working order to achieve proper enunciation of the syllables designed to focus mental force. And his hands: Much suppleness was required to perform the gestures that somehow—not even the most deeply learned arcanist really knew quite how or why—enhanced the ability of the human mind to draw upon the power of the Source.

Vinz rubbed his hands together, driving warmth into the fingertips. He forced himself to swallow a few mouthfuls of soup and felt himself warming from the inside. He cracked his knuckles and bent his digits backward as far as they would go. All seemed adequately flexible. He tried once again to lose himself in the
Journey of the Zoviriae
, but the face of his wife kept superimposing itself upon the page. Rising from his chair, he paced restlessly about the study, but the face did not go away. Then the thought of Belandor House sprang once more to the front, and again that was all there was.

The distant tolling of a bell touched his mind. His hands jerked, and his eyes jumped to the window. It was dark outside, but not yet late enough. The hours of waiting stretched out before him and they were infinite, they would never end.

But they did end at last. Eternity expired and distant chimes sounded the stroke of midnight. Ordinarily he would have been fast asleep at such an hour, but now he was extraordinarily wakeful, almost as if he would never sleep again.

It was time. Vinz stood up. A warm woolen cloak in an unobtrusive shade of charcoal lay draped across the chair in the corner. Now he put it on, but not before checking his pockets to verify for the hundredth time the presence of the tiny stoppered vials, the miniature leather pouch, the arcanist’s necessities. For the hundredth time, he found all to be in order. Briefly he considered—for the hundredth time—the advisability of taking up a small lantern to light his path, and for the hundredth time rejected the idea. A light would only draw unwelcome attention, and he could find his way without it; he had only a very little way to travel, after all.

With the hapless sense of abandoning a safe refuge, he departed his study. Through the dim corridors of sleeping Corvestri Mansion he made his quiet way; down a secondary stairway ordinarily used by servants, along a humble back hallway to a side exit. Only once in the course of that journey did he encounter wakeful life: A Sishmindri sentry stationed at the head of the stairs dropped into a respectful crouch as the master passed, and once again Vinz thought to glimpse astonishment in the golden eyes.

Slipping the bolt, he pulled the door open and made himself step through into the night. The raw cold struck him at once, despite the protection of his cloak. Autumn had undeniably yielded to winter, and all his instincts urged him to shrink back into the shelter of his home.

Later
.

Lifting his hood, he pulled the edge well forward to shade his face. He stood at the side of the house, with but a few feet of flagstone walkway separating him from one of the several small doors in the wall encircling his home. The doorway opened upon a small service alley that ran between Corvestri Mansion and its nearest stately neighbor. Never in an entire lifetime of residence had he passed through that particular portal. Even as a boy he had decorously come and gone by way of the grand front gateway. It had never entered his mind to explore a lesser path.

He strode to the door, unbarred it, and went through into the darkness beyond, where he paused, blinking. Seconds later his eyes adjusted and he discerned a faint glow at the mouth of the alley, toward which he groped his way. The glow brightened and presently he stumbled forth into Summit Street, where the big brass-and-glass streetlamps cast their strong light. Instinctively he ducked his head. The illumination here in this best of all neighborhoods was excessive; he might easily be seen and recognized.

Ridiculous. He was thinking like some sort of a criminal. But he
was
a criminal, Vinz realized; or very shortly to become one. He cast a quick guilty glance around him. The street appeared deserted. No beggars huddled under archways, no drunks sprawled in the gutters; the Watch did not tolerate such unpleasing presence here in the heart of the Clouds.
The Watch!
His stomach tightened. Those vigilant guardians of public order patrolled this neighborhood continually. He might meet up with them within seconds, and then what? They would wonder what a respectable resident of the Clouds—a titled magnifico, no less—was doing roaming the street at midnight. They would offer to escort him safely back to his own door, and if he demurred, what then might they think? He quickened his pace, and the sound of his footsteps seemed appallingly loud, likely to rouse his neighbors from their slumbers. Along Summit Street he hurried, past the proudest old palaces of Vitrisi, now largely inhabited by Taerleezi officials, and the insignificant distance that he actually traveled seemed immense.

At length he reached the end of the street and beheld Belandor House, its arched windows dark, its superb filigree rooflights aglow. The wrought-iron front gates were closed and padlocked, but the armed sentries usually stationed before them were unaccountably absent tonight. Curious, but good. He had dreaded braving the regard of those sentries. To his right gaped the dark entrance of an alley, similar to that serving Corvestri Mansion and all great Summit Street dwellings, allowing tradesmen, mechanicals, and other nameless folk with their wagons and donkey-carts access to the rear of the building. He had passed by such alleys thousands of times, barely noting their grubby utilitarian existence. But now the black gap in the world seemed to offer shelter, which he accepted with gratitude.

Into the alleyway slunk the Magnifico Corvestri, following its stygian course along the walled perimeter of the Belandor property to the rear of the house, where a small lantern hanging above a low postern cast its light upon a silent gathering. Six of them, he counted quickly, all heavily armed. Strange to see so few. Somehow he had expected an army. They were not voluminously cloaked as he was, but attired in doublets, loose breeches, low boots—practical garments affording freedom of movement. All were masked, their black dominoes lending them an eerie uniformity. His own face should be covered, Vinz recalled, and he had not come unprepared. Now digging into one of his pockets to bring forth a grey fabric scrap, he pushed his hood back and tied the mask in place. They were all watching him as he advanced, and he felt a complete fool, fumbling with the strings beneath that collective faceless regard. Once the mask was in place, however, the resulting sense of anonymity offered distinct comfort.

As he drew near the quiet group, he caught a whiff of pungency on the damp air, something unknown and unsettling. He walked on and soon descried the source—a still figure stretched prone in a puddle beside the gate. It was a dead Sishmindri sentry lying in its own sharp-scented blood, the first victim of the evening’s enterprise. And although he had expected to encounter something of the sort, a powerful revulsion swept through him. He faltered an instant and only with an effort of will compelled himself to continue his advance.

Then he was in their midst, the eyes in the invisible faces all fixed intently upon him, and he was a sedentary rotund amateur among these tigers of the resistance, yet it was up to him to lead them in.

“I will prepare myself,” he informed his listeners, and his voice came out astonishingly calm and confident, even authoritative, as if he addressed a band of apprentice arcanists. And nobody ventured to ask him why he hadn’t prepared himself well in advance, so there was no need to explain the very short-lived effects of his self-fortifications. Perhaps they already knew, or perhaps his air of assurance impressed them. In any event, nobody uttered a word and the silence stretched as Vinz swallowed the essential draughts, inhaled the requisite powders, and timed his mental exercises to the rhythm of his quietly spoken, practiced syllables.

The inner light dawned almost at once, accompanied by the familiar but ever-wondrous mental expansion. He touched the Source, and its power filled every emptiness within him.

I am truly a master
, he thought, and the flowering of self-satisfaction might have choked his concentration, had it been given the chance. But a true master knew how to exclude even the most seductive of distractions. He focused his arcane vision as if through a spyglass of the mind, and the hidden reality of his surroundings surrendered itself without further resistance.

“No arcane safeguards have been placed upon this gate,” he reported, hearing his own voice reverberate across great distance. “Only an ordinary lock and key. I can overcome the lock by specialized means, but the exercise will drain a measure of force.”

“No need,” one of his companions returned.

The voice was low, the face was masked, and a cap covered the hair, but Vinz’s heightened perceptions easily identified the individual known to him as Lousewort. How could he ever have thought Lousewort nondescript, nearly invisible? The man’s dedication, high courage, and determination all but blazed.

Lousewort gestured and one of his companions stepped to the locked door, pick in hand. The lock yielded with astonishing ease. The gate swung open.

Vinz stood motionless and sent his perceptions questing through into the Belandor property. No exceptional obstacles or pitfalls in the immediate vicinity of the gate, he noted, but some few yards farther on pulsed an atmospheric sensitivity, designed to detect strangers and no doubt alert the Belandor household to the unauthorized presence. The sensitivity was invisible, devoid of physical reality, but in his mind’s eye he saw it as a sort of disembodied mouth, throbbing with red energy, alert to unfamiliar flavors and ready to loose huge, silent yowls.

A flex of the mind, supported by corresponding hand gestures, fused the lips together, effectively stifling utterance. This done, Vinz advanced with caution, passing through the open postern into his enemy’s domain. Without turning to look he knew that his masked companions were close behind him, and their sheer silence was remarkable. Not a twig or dry leaf crunched underfoot; they glided on like specters.
Ghosts of the Resistance
. In a back garden was a fishpond with a fanciful arbor, probably designed to please that pampered daughter of Aureste’s.

Belandor House arose before him, pure and proud and seemingly inviolable. He had never before set foot upon the property, much less penetrated the house itself.
Unlike Sonnetia’s maidservant. And Sonnetia herself?

For a split second his concentration wavered, and in that moment he felt the lips of the muted atmospheric sensitivity begin to work themselves free. At once he pushed the potentially disastrous distractions out of his mind. No room for them now.

Once again master of his mind, Vinz sent his perceptions pushing toward the nearest doorway in the great house and found the way clear of impediment up to the immediate vicinity of the entrance, which was protected by a heavy atmospheric/receptive shield: a beautifully conceived piece of work capable of feeding and strengthening itself upon the energy employed to attack it. But the Magnifico Corvestri knew how to deal with such a device. The key lay not in direct assault but rather in a systematic undermining.

Vinz took a moment to gather his faculties, then performed the mental and vocal contortions that slightly altered the course of the energy flowing through him, directing the Source’s power to another layer of his intellect and allowing him to bleed arcane strength from the shield. The process was not to be completed in an instant. At least four or five minutes passed, and Vinz was peripherally aware of his companions, their regard pressing hard. To these men of action, the minutes of waiting must have seemed endless, but not one of them complained, demanded an explanation, or urged him to hurry. It would seem that they trusted in his abilities. He would prove that their trust was not misplaced.