Dave Duncan - The Alchemists pursuit

Knock! Knock! Rap-rap-rap.

I turned the half-lantern so my face would be visible.

I had to wait, but I had expected that little ploy.

"What do you want?" asked a whisper.

I could whisper too. "Information."

"This is a new departure for you, sier Alfeo."

It was Sciara. Even a whisper can be recognized. Any other time I would have given him a smart-alecky response but not tonight. Tonight I felt I had sunk too low to amuse anyone, even myself.

"Desperate times require desperate measures, lustrissimo. Are you going to let me in?"

The door opened a few inches in well-oiled silence. I pushed it wider and stepped into darkness beyond.

"Lock it!"

I turned the big key. Then I encountered a heavy curtain, and beyond that a very dimly lit corridor with another curtain, and finally a room. It was barely large enough to hold the table in the center, flanked by two chairs and bearing a lantern, but at last there was light enough for us to see each other. Another door at the far side presumably led to either Sciara's house or a back exit.

He looked even more like the Grim Reaper than usual, for I had never seen him except in his secretary's blue robe, whereas tonight he wore a black hat and cloak and his skull-like face seemed almost to float in the air. He did not sit or invite me to.

"Who taught you that knock, Alfeo?"

"No names, lustrissimo. You can help the one who sent me and no one else can."

The death's-head showed its teeth. "He is too mean to pay for what he wants you to buy."

"Not this time. Women are dying."

"He cares?"

"We both care and so should you."

Sciara was enjoying baiting me too much to stop yet. "If I knew anything that would help Their Excellencies catch the killer, clarissimo, do you think I would not have shared it with them?"

"Information can mean different things to different people. Are these word games part of the process or are you keeping me here until Vasco can return with the sbirri? You will have to explain my presence in your house, you know."

Sciara drummed thin fingers on the table. "Tell me what you want."

"To see the evidence that the Three used to find Zorzi Michiel guilty of patricide eight years ago."

His total lack of reaction was admirable. I might as well have asked if it was raining. Venetian magistrates, several hundred of them, are noblemen elected by the Grand Council and their terms of office are limited, all except the doge's. The clerks, guards, secretaries, ducal equerries, and all the rest who make the government work, are drawn from the citizen-by-birth class, and are employed for life, or in some cases until they reach sixty. Sciara has been Circospetto for as long as I can remember and knows everything. He could probably recite by rote the records I wanted to see, although I should not have believed him.

He pouted. "That file may be eight years old, but it has been attracting much attention of late. For me to remove it even briefly would be extremely dangerous."

"So now we're bargaining. Name your price." Yes, I was an impudent young puppy, but I was a clarissimo and he was only a lustrissimo. We nobles have our rights and arrogance is one of them. Humility would shell no cockles with Raffaino Sciara. His eyes shrank as if they were withdrawing into his head.

"You come here tomorrow night, a half hour later. If I do not answer, you go away and try again the next night. It may be several days before I manage to obtain the material you want to see, understand?"

I nodded, my mouth dry.

"When I do," he said, "you will look at the papers while I watch. You write nothing and take away nothing."

"Agreed."

"Five hundred ducats."

"Absurd! Two hundred."

He smiled. "Five hundred and not a soldo less. Fifty of that now."

He had me by the throat and we both knew it. He did not trust me any more than I trusted him and he must be enjoying watching me squirm.

I reached inside my doublet. "You'll have to settle for eighteen sequins now, it's all I brought." I was four lire short.

The tip of his tongue showed for a moment, snakelike. He had not expected me to have such lucre on me and had been looking forward to kicking my young butt out into the alley. He probably wished he had asked for more.

"Nonrefundable," he said.

"No."

"Then we have no agreement. Just looking for those files will be dangerous for me."

Job himself could not have bettered my sigh. "Nonrefundable, then," I agreed. I spread eighteen little disks on the table.

"Tomorrow at half an hour past midnight. Four knocks."

I nodded and turned on my heel without a word. I had made my debut in major corruption. I might make a politician yet.

There was no sign of my supernatural feline helper out in the calle. Feeling soiled and with a sour taste in my mouth, I hurried back through the dark to the watersteps where Giorgio was waiting. If I had just thrown away fifty ducats, Nostradamus would skin me.

Nostradamus can always surprise me. Next morning he hobbled into the atelier on his canes, obviously still in pain, and by the time he had settled into his chair, I was there with his willow bark potion. I should properly have slunk quietly away and given him an hour to sheath his fangs, but I was anxious to head off to Palazzo Michiel. Besides, I wanted to get the ordeal over with.

"Good morning, master."

He grunted, which was better than snarling.

"Concerning my visit to Circospetto…" I broke the news about the five hundred ducats and the forty-nine already gone. Since the wages due to me for the entire seven years of my apprenticeship will only be seventeen ducats, I expected to be torn into little pieces and fed to the fish of the canal.

He grunted again. "Good. You made the correct decision."

Rejecting the temptation to sink to the floor in a dramatic swoon, I said, "Thank you, master."

"Had he asked for only the two hundred you mentioned, I would have forbidden you to go back there. We have done Sciara down so often that he might have forgone that much just for the spite of seeing me exiled and you sent to the galleys. But I doubt if even he will pass up five hundred."

"Um…" I said, baffled by this backward thinking. "Yes, master."

Of course Nostradamus would collect from Violetta, but that would mean that his final reward for catching Honeycat would shrink by the same amount. This could be ominous. Had he given up hope of earning his fee?

"And I need counseling on a matter of cats, master."

He looked up at me with an expression that would flake paint off a Tintoretto. "Cats?"

I explained about cats: cats that force me to detour and so lead me to find Alessa in a weak moment, cats that direct me to a refuge when the mob is after me, and cats that delay me so that vizio Filiberto Vasco doesn't catch me red-handed trying to bribe Circospetto. One cat, or three? Not a cat in the normal sense at all, of course, so what? As I spoke he frowned and tugged at his goatee. Afterward he stared across at the wall of books for a while, scanning it as if he were mentally scanning through their contents, book by book. Perhaps he was.

"You been summoning without telling me?"

"No, master."

"Curious," he murmured. "I had not thought of… Well, I advise you to be very careful. I have exposed you to much strange lore in a very short time. It may not have seemed short to you, but when you compress the wisdom of centuries into just a few years, it can take on a life of its own. I may have been reckless. You may have opened channels to unexpected realms. Three times but never four?"

I scrabbled hastily in the back rooms of my memory. "In the Iliad, Patroclus tried three times to scale the walls of Troy and fell back, but when he tried again, Apollo struck him down. Diomedes, too. He attacked the god three times, and each time Apollo brushed him aside, but on his fourth attempt the god roared at him to warn him off. And Achilles-"