Martin Greenberg - If I Were an Evil Overlord

“You seem disturbed,” he said without preamble.

Alesandro nodded unhappily. “It’s Dom,” he replied with some hesitation. “He sent me to fetch you. He’s in trouble.”

The tiny orphanage of San Jorge had been abandoned long before Luca had come to Riamo. The children and the priests who’d cared for them had moved to larger quarters when the last plague had swelled the orphans’ numbers beyond what the small building could contain and it had never been reoccupied. Luca strode up the overgrown walkway with an air of bored disinterest while maintaining an almost painful scrutiny of every aspect of his surroundings. When Drey emerged from the open doorway, his lean face devoid of expression, Luca almost snarled at him.

“Just what do you think you’re playing at?” he demanded.

“I couldn’t risk returning right away, but I knew you would be getting impatient.” Resetting the wards on the orphanage door, Drey leaned against the wall of the main entrance hall with a calm expression.

He explained his absence to his father in as few words as possible. The duc of Cerchicava had been his original candidate as expected but the same Coll Svedali who had aided the duc in destroying the trade in that city had intervened again, throwing a strange combined magic at Drey that had taken him completely by surprise. It had left a pale, white scar across his cheek which was only now beginning to fade. That Drey and Coll had been contemporaries at the Svedali Innocenti Foundling Home together and that Drey had encountered him at least once before without killing him made Luca’s eyes darken dangerously.

“So, you allow yourself to be marked …” The Death Mage showed his teeth at Drey’s response to the necromantic word, “… with a locate spell of unknown magic, you leave the marker alive, you come home, and you send for your civilian brother.”

“I needed to get a message to you. It was the safest way.”

“And how did you explain your inability to return home to him?”

“I told him I had the clap.”

“And do you?” Luca echoed Drey’s responding expression. “I ask only because something’s obviously addled your brains. You deliberately put Alesandro at risk.”

Drey’s calm demeanor did not change. “Not at all. The spell is one of location only and it had already begun to fade when I sent for him.”

“How can you know that? You said the spell casting was new.”

“The spell casting is new. The components are conventional.”

“There’s nothing conventional about this threat in Cerchicava.”

“Coll’s only a threat to the few Death Mages remaining there and anything that weakens them strengthens us. When you’re ready to step in, Coll can be removed without causing any kind of stir.”

“We will set your presumptuous and naive assessment of that situation aside for the moment,” Luca snarled at him. “In the meantime you will explain to me why you chose to mark the duc of Riamo.”

Drey shrugged. “There was opportunity?”

“And then,” Luca continued, throwing him a warning look, “decided to further destabilize the situation here by marking three Riamo merchants just to pass the time? Don’t even think to deny it,” he snapped when the younger man gave him a patently false wide-eyed look. “Their deaths have the Huntsman written all over them.”

Drey shrugged. “The Huntsman’s habits are well known. Anyone could copy them.”

“Really?” Luca locked eyes with his son. “I have Farnese’s corpse on my table as we speak. Do you really want me to cast an identify spell of my own brand of conventional magic upon it? Should the perpetrator wear my binding spell the results would be dramatic.”

“I had private reasons to mark them,” Drey answered a little to quickly.

“ What reasons?”

Drey looked away. “They’re not mine to tell,” he said at last.

“Than whose are they?”

“Alesandro’s.”

“What?”

“I got into some trouble.”

The other man had been waiting in the back garden for Drey to fetch him in. When Luca signaled curtly for him to explain, he ran a hand through his sandy-colored hair with a helpless gesture. “I borrowed heavily to invest in a ship bound for the far east. It was supposed to return with a cargo of gold of unsurpassed quality. When it sank, the moneylender I borrowed the original investment from called in his debt.”

“Ferrante Ascanio,” Drey supplied.

Luca raised one finger to silence Drey before returning his attention to Alesandro.

“I had no way to pay him back,” his brother continued.

“So why didn’t you come to me?” Luca asked. “Your mother’s invested monies are there for you to make use of. You only had to ask.”

Alesandro looked away. “I knew how conservative you were in matters of money. I didn’t think you’d approve.”

“And you thought I’d approve of you subjugating yourself to a moneylender instead?”

“Well, I’d hoped you wouldn’t find out. I thought I could recoup my losses on the next venture, so when Vincent Corsini…”

“Vincent Corsini?”

“Yes. He came to see me. I told him of my difficulties and he said he knew some people who could help me. He convinced Anthony Spoleto to clear the debt with Ascanio.”

“This just keeps getting better and better.”

“But soon he began to make demands on the shop,” Alesandro continued. “He wanted to use my cellars as storage facilities for smuggled cargos and my clientele as possible borrowers for Ascanio. When I refused, he sent Ciuto Farnese to see me. He said that Spoleto would take my shop if I didn’t cooperate. That I would be ruined and the Albergo name would be disgraced. Vincent couldn’t help me, so when I heard that Dom was back in the city, I went to him.”

“How did you know where to find him?”

The two brothers exchanged a look before reaching into their doublets to pull out a pair of matching amulets.

Luca just shook his head. “So, what did you think Domito could do about them?”

Alesandro met his stepfather’s angry gaze with an even expression. “I knew the Huntsman could kill them for me,” he said bluntly.

The shocked silence in the hall was almost palatable.

“How long has he known about you?”

Luca had ordered Alesandro to go to the Palazzo della Rona and wait for them there. Once he was out of earshot, the Death Mage had taken his other son by the throat, shaking him like a dog until the rage had ebbed enough for coherent speech. When he finally released him, Drey stepped back, his usual deadpan demeanor unchanged.

“He’s always known, father,” he answered calmly. “Alesandro and I don’t keep secrets from each other.”

“Unbound?” Luca could barely get the words through his teeth they were clenched so tightly together. “You let him walk about with this kind of knowledge for anyone to discover, unbound!”

“I trust him.”

“I will kill you and leave your body for lesser mages to pick out your eyeballs like carrion crows!”

“That’s your right.”

“Right? You don’t know anything about right. Are you so witless that you can’t take a lesson from your own experiences? Coll Svedali, that fellow foundling of yours that you’re so unwilling to mark, left unbound by Lord Montefero de Sepori, destroyed the trade in Cerchicava with one stroke! Hundreds tortured and executed in the dungeons below their cathedral. And they have dungeons below San Salvadore too, you know. Or did you think you were so powerful you couldn’t be arrested, or that Alesandro couldn’t be? One night in their hands is all either of you would last. One night!”