"Spirit-magic?"
"Black necromancy." She described the silver putti ring Lord Ferrante had worn, the casket with the salt-shrivelled baby, and the connection Master Beneforte had feared, found, and severed between the two.
"That's a level of sorcery over my head, I'm afraid," said Thur humbly.
"Yes, I can see that," Fiametta sighed. But to be fair was compelled to add, "Over my head too." But not over Monreale's. Nor Master Beneforte's—there could be no concealments now, though Fiametta was near-certain her father had never confessed his experiment in Florence to the Abbot-and-Bishop. If Fiametta's vague understanding was correct, her father's spirit dangled now over damnation on Lord Ferrante's string. His soul risked being cut off from God even at this late hour. "I hope Abbot Monreale is not too busy with the siege to attend to one poor lost spirit."
Thur frowned thoughtfully down the winding road. "If Lord Ferrante succeeds in compelling your father's ghost to serve his will, and if this spirit-magic is as strong as you think, it would put all those people Monreale is trying to protect into greater danger. Your father's fate is near the center of his troubles. He'll attend." Determination stiffened his face. "All I have to do is get you there. Right."
Fiametta hung on tightly as Thur and the horse picked their way across a rocky brook at the bottom of the hill. The hazard cleared, she asked, "What is your magic, Thur? Your brother must suspect you of some talent, or he wouldn't have sought to apprentice you to a mage."
Thur's mouth screwed up in uncertainty. "I'm not sure. I've never been tested by a real master. I can find water with the dowsing-stick. And I have a knack for finding things, Mother says. I once found a little girl, the mill-wright's daughter Helga, who was lost in a snowstorm. But we were all out searching, so maybe I was just lucky. And I've long thought ...," he cleared his throat, as if embarrassed, "thought I could sense the metal ore, in the rocks. But I was always afraid to speak, for if I was wrong, the men would have been very angry with me. A false stringer is the devil to work." He hesitated, then added shyly, "I saw a kobold once, not long ago." He seemed about to add more, twisting the lion ring around his finger, but then shook his head. "And you, Madonna Beneforte? You must be skilled."
Her brow puckered. She should be skilled, yes. But.
"I'm very good with fires," she offered at last. "Even Papa has me light his. And my Latin pronunciation is good, Papa says—said." She brightened in memory. "The best thing I got to work on so far was, Papa let me help cast a spell for fertility for Madonna Tura, the silk-merchant's wife. She'd had no children, though she'd been married for four years. The spell required a balance of male and female elements, you see. We made it in the form of a belt of little silver rabbits. He let me design and shape the rabbits, all different. I got to keep two real rabbits for models. White French. Lorenzo and Cecelia. They had baby bunnies, which I adored—they were so soft!—it was part of the spell. But then they had more baby bunnies, and they kept digging out of the run in the back garden, and they ate all of Ruberta's herbs, and left rabbit droppings all over the house, which Papa made me clean up. So when the spell was finished, Papa said we had to eat all the rabbits. I suppose thirty-six of them really were too many, but I didn't forgive Ruberta, our cook, for weeks. Rabbit stew, rabbit ravioli, rabbit sausage ... I went hungry," she said virtuously, but then rather spoiled the impassioned account of her pets' martyrdom by adding, "Except I helped eat Lorenzo, because he always bit me."
She frowned at Thur's grin, which immediately muffled itself. "I sneaked Cecelia out and let her go at the edge of town."
"And did it work?" Thur inquired, as she fell silent.
"What? Oh, the spell. Yes. Madonna Tura was delivered of a boy just last month. I hope they're all right." A silk-merchant's shop would be a likely target for looters. But perhaps Madonna Tura had escaped to other relatives.
He held up the lion ring to the sunlight, and wriggled his fingers to make it sparkle. "And is this a magic ring, Madonna?"
His words gave her a chill, nearly identical as they were to those of his—dead?—brother. "It....as supposed to be. But it didn't work, so I just wore it as jewelry."
She glanced down at him warily, but he merely remarked, "It's very beautiful."
She had been surviving hour to hour, not looking ahead. As a result here she was, alone in the wilderness, or at least passing through somebody's woodlot, with almost-a-strange man. A week ago, she would have thought it terribly compromising. Those careful social safeguards seemed flimsy and false as a stage-setting, now. Yet what fate was she riding toward?
Her marriage portion was supposed to have come from the great bronze Perseus, which Master Beneforte had not lived to cast, nor Duke Sandrino to reward him for. She would inherit the house, presumably, though it was surely stripped by now. Unless Papa's creditors sued for it, and wrested it from her and divided the money among themselves, leaving her destitute.... Worse had happened to unprotected widows and orphans in the courts of law. That free future she faced was a frightening thing, without money. A rich young woman had a control over her life equal only to her control over her funds. A poor young woman ... the same. Only different.
But if Lord Ferrante's conquest of Montefoglia succeeded, all hope was futile. Only if Ferrante fell did she have a chance of regaining any of her inheritance.
She watched Thur, marching along. His hair gleamed brighter than the lion ring as they emerged from the insect-humming woods into the sun again. She felt a flash of guilt, for worrying about money when his brother Uri's fate was still uncertain. Was it really so uncertain as she had made out, in her anxiety to soften the news? The thrust had looked mortal enough. At least the uncertainty had them both heading in the same direction. If he'd known his brother was dead, what reason would he have had to accompany her? She scarcely believed her ring's testimony. How can you be my true love? You don't even know me. You must be dazzled by some magic illusion of me, and when you find out what I'm really like, you'll hate me. Her eyes blurred with tears. Idiot child. Stop your blubbering, she thought sternly to herself.
Late in the morning they came to the meadow and coppice where Master Beneforte had been murdered, or died. The horse ate grass while Thur rested his legs and Fiametta walked about. But she gained no sense of Papa's presence here now. The meadow seemed only innocent and beautiful in the daylight. They went on.
Thur told her a little about his own life, as he walked through the warming noon. There didn't seem to be that much to tell, though clearly Thur was not naturally voluble. He'd had some schooling with the village priest—Fiametta was relieved to learn he could at least read and write. A younger sister had died of plague, possibly, judging from the dates, in the same bad year's outbreak that had carried off Fiametta's mother. His father's death in the mines had cut short his schooling and sent Thur to hard work in the valley, and his brother Uri off to the more glamorous life of a mercenary. The mines sounded tremendously tedious. She'd never guessed so many men's hands, so many steps, so many trees burnt, were required to bring the little shining bars of metal to their final destiny in her father's workshop. Thur had never seen a city—never been out of the valley of Bruinwald before. He seemed astonished and awed to learn that she'd lived in both Rome and Venice. He stared around at the rolling hills and ordinary little farms as if they were wonders. For practical purposes, the man was a babe, Fiametta realized with dismay.