Before I could fully comprehend his whispered message, Mantegna shouted, “Get this impertinent female out of my sight,” and shoved me into the tea shop.
Much too gentlemanly a shove. I tugged my hair over my face and stumbled forward.
“You are neither witness nor claimant, but only a charlatan,” he called after me. “Back to the stews where you belong!”
This awkward performance would not enhance his reputation as a ferocious, incisive legal adversary, but I scurried away, head bent as if properly chastised. His last message provided fire under my feet.
Giuntura … tomorrow half-morn. Throughout the Costa Drago, the hour of the giuntura was considered the official interweaving of the two families, no matter when or if a public wedding celebration occurred. Most commonly the two were done together. We didn’t have three days to stop the marriage. We had twenty hours.
5
SIXTEEN HOURS UNTIL THE GIUNTURA
As the afternoon shadows lengthened, my brother and I strode across the Piazza Livello, the heart of Cantagna. Before us stood the harmonious architecture of the Palazzo Segnori, where Cantagna’s citizen-elected Sestorale met to shape the rule of law, and the High Magistrate held court to uphold it. To our right sat the imposing Gallanos Bank, the engine that had made Cantagna the wealthiest of the nine independencies of the Costa Drago. And to the left were the wide steps and twisting columns of the venerable temple of learning known as the Philosophic Academie.
Just behind the Academie, out of sight from our position, sat the Villa Giusti, the fortified residence of the Confraternity Directorate—the three directors responsible for all Confraternity activities in Cantagna. Our destination.
The squeeze of time had left our immediate objective clear. Stop the giuntura ceremony. Our choice of strategy was similarly limited. A subtle infiltration of the household to discover a flaw in the ironbound contract or some other malleability in the situation would take days at the least—with no promise of success. Incinerating Villa Giusti to force everyone out, as Neri preferred, was physically impossible. To thwart the implementation of the contract, we had to remove one of the principals.
Clearly Donato was our proper target. Abducting Livia alone, or even both of them together, risked exposing our purpose as disrupting the betrothal. We could demand ransom for Donato as if we were an ordinary snatch-crew like the Skull Knights, albeit one that could successfully break into a fortified dwelling. Once we had Donato safely hidden away, we would have to persuade him to disavow the marriage contract in the face of his family’s express wishes. Threats, gentle persuasion, logic? We’d no idea what might work.
Strategizing the snatch was simple. We must steal him from his own bed in the middle of the night. We knew too little of the young man to lure him into our clutches.
It was the doing seemed an unscalable cliff. The Villa Giusti not only housed three important, well-guarded families, but served as the headquarters of the most dedicated and efficient military cohort in Cantagna. It also appeared very near impregnable.
Before coming to the piazza, Neri and I had assessed the Villa Giusti’s main—and only—public gate. The massive walls were protected at four corners by stout hexagonal towers; a fifth tower topped the gate itself. A queue of delivery carts and visitors proceeded slowly through the gates. A second queue waited to pass back outward. Both ingoing and outgoing carts were searched, and all visitors presented documents on both entry and exit. The grand duc of Riccia himself could have no more secure a residence.
The assessment was discouraging. Portraying ourselves as visitors, attaching ourselves to deliveries, or even smuggling a captive out of the compound once we got inside would be impossible. Placidio, whose talent for anticipating danger made him near invincible in a fight, could no doubt handle the six praetorians standing post outside the portcullis, but who knew how many more occupied the towers or stood at ready in the courtyard beyond. We needed stealth.
No doubt Dumond could provide us a passage through the masonry at some other position. But a cursory scout revealed no easily accessible stretch of the wall where he could paint unobserved.
One possible entry had presented itself during our inspection. High above the valley of stone that separated the villa’s encircling walls and the Philosophic Academie stretched a covered footbridge. The directors and Confraternity philosophists who had business at the villa or the Academie would not like negotiating the delays and confusions of common business at the main gate while moving between the two buildings. Perhaps entry from the footbridge would be less daunting.
So here we were, scouting. While Placidio searched for a place to stash our hostage, Dumond was hiring transport to carry us there. Vashti stitched capes and hoods bearing the death’s-head emblem of the Cavalieri Teschio for the snatch, while assembling supplies needed to sustain our hostage and the Chimera long enough to convince the young man to do as we wished.
Neri’s steps slowed. He didn’t remove his eyes from the formidable Academie entrance. “So we’re just going to march in there like we belong?”
“We are wearing the costumes of acceptance,” I said, brushing the sleeveless gray academic gown Vashti had hastily concocted for me. Its lappets and hem were trimmed with the white border designating senior Academie students—anzioni; Neri’s was trimmed with the green of new students—allievi. “I’ll talk our way through the halls, and you observe. No one’s going to ask you to write an essay on Floriatto’s theory of drama.”
“So you say.”
In his seventeen years, danger had never deterred Neri. He’d grown up wild, angry, and illiterate in the squalor of a family with too many children and no use for the tainted one who could get them all murdered. Over the year since my return to the Beggars Ring, my brother had grown immensely in discipline, skills, and judgment, thanks mostly to Placidio, but he’d made very little progress in academics. More fearsome to Neri than the magic sniffers who might lurk in the marble halls were students and tutors who spoke the language of the intellect.
The hot breeze tugged at the papers I carried—a few documents from my legal clients and a rolled map I’d stolen from the City Architect’s office for our last adventure. A flurry of pigeons swooped past as we quickened our pace, Neri one step behind me. My experience with Academie tutors told me that academic rank and protocol were of inordinate importance.
Spirits, a little more time to plan would be useful!
As we ascended the last few steps, one of the tall carved doors flew open. A red-gowned philosophist and a student, engaged in lively conversation, swept across the portico and past Neri and me.
Neri darted up and caught the door before it fell shut in front of me. Nerves, I guessed, certainly not some sudden blossoming of manners.
“Be confident,” I whispered as I passed him. “We belong here as much as they.”
Yet my own assurance flagged once we entered the Academie rotunda. The ceiling rose at least three stories to a dome circled with a base of windows. Light poured in from above, illuminating chaos below.
On the upper gallery that overlooked the rotunda, a tutor rang a handbell as if the universe were afire and she the fire warden. An arched doorway to our left disgorged a chattering mass of allievi in their green-trimmed gray, while other allievi and anzioni crowded past them to enter the hall they’d just abandoned. More students, with here and there a red-gowned philosophist intermingled, scurried into other halls. Pairs and trios of students and tutors ascended or descended the curved branches of a split staircase that led up to the gallery and more arched doorways. Hundreds of people on the move—and every one of them talking. Those not traveling up, down, in, or out stood in clumps of three or five or more—talking, listening, arguing. I’d assumed the Academie would be somber and strict, not a hive of bees, all of whom had something to say.