At length came the sound of the bar being drawn back, and the snick of a bolt. Tich tensed, his hand clenching and unclenching on his drawn dagger. The door swung open.
Fiametta stood holding a lantern in one hand and a long kitchen knife in the Other. She was still wearing her red velvet dress, missing its outer sleeves. She stepped back a half-pace, and her eyes widened as she played the lantern light over her visitors. Thur felt doubly grateful for Tich's dirty blanket, now wrapped like a skirt about his waist.
Fiametta looked back and forth between the two brothers. "Dear God, Thur. How do you tell which of you is the corpse?"
"Uri is better looking," Thur decided, after a moment's serious thought.
"I fear you're right. Come in. Come in. Get out of the street." Fiametta waved them urgently inside.
Chapter Sixteen
"What did you do to the guards?" Thur asked, staring blearily around the darkened entry-hall. He and Tich laid Uri down upon the flagstones as Fiametta locked and barred the door again behind them.
"Guard," Fiametta corrected, turning. "There was only one. He's locked in the root cellar under the kitchen, right now. I hope he's drinking himself senseless. I wasn't able to get his sword away from him." She glanced curiously at Tich.
"Did you magic him down there?" asked Thur, impressed.
Tich's brows rose.
"Oh," said Thur. "I'm sorry. This is Tich Pico. Don't you remember him from Catti's inn? The muleteer's son. A gang of Ferrante's bravos killed his father and brother, and stole his mules. Tich, this is Fiametta Beneforte. Her father was the master mage Catti smoked. This is his house. Was his house."
"Yes, I do remember seeing you," said Fiametta.
"We have a thing in common against Ferrante, then. All of us."
"Yes, Madonna Beneforte," Tich nodded. "Do you want me to kill that Losimon in the cellar for you?"
"I don't know. But he has to be better secured; I'm afraid he'll get out. Oh, Thur, I'm so glad you're here!" She flung her arms around him and hugged him.
Thur blushed with pleasure and grunted with pain. "Are you really?" he said, feeling suddenly shy.
"Did I hurt—oh, what a horrible gash! It should be closed and bandaged at once! You look terrible." She jumped back, but he managed to retain a clasp on her warm hands. He was still chilled from the lake and the night air. But he had to let go as his blanket slipped down further, to catch and clutch it to himself for decency. Fiametta paused in sudden puzzlement. "But why are you here?"
"I wanted to find you."
"But how did you know to come here? I wasn't sure I could get here myself, till an hour ago. Do you think ... Is it still my ring?" She touched her chest. Yes, the ring hung there, under her linen and velvet, Thur was sure of it. But he had not thought about the ring.
He shook his head. "I don't know. This house was the only place I knew of in Montefoglia to hide. I mean, I knew—I felt this was how to find you. But I don't know how I knew. I'm good at finding things. Always have been. Lately, I've been getting better at it. I found Uri...."
"It is a talent. It must be. Uri did right to apprentice you to my father. Oh, if only he had lived!" She rubbed her eyes, smeared wet with anger, weariness, and grief.
Hurriedly, Thur launched into a brief tangled account of his sojourn in Montefoglia's castle, culminating in his escape with Uri's body. Tich listened open-mouthed; Fiametta's teeth clenched.
"We knew you were taken, this afternoon. Before he destroyed the last ear Vitelli used it to tell Monreale he was going to put you to death," she said. "I thought he meant to hang you. I didn't imagine anything so evil."
"But—how did you come to leave Saint Jerome?" asked Thur.
Her brows rose quizzically. "I was looking for you. I was going to save you from being hanged I hadn't figured out how, yet. I thought they would do it at dawn."
A slow grin pulled up the corners of his mouth.
"Well, nobody else was willing to try—oh, dear." Strange thumping noises echoing distantly through the house interrupted her. "I think that guard is trying to get out. Come on." She picked up the lantern and led the way through the courtyard into the kitchen. Thur limped after, Tich bringing up the rear.
The wide polished boards flooring half the kitchen jumped as something hard struck them from below. The guard's head, Thur thought dizzily. Obscene curses drifted up, not quite muffled enough, as the Losimon heard their footsteps. After a moment, a sword blade thrust up through a thin gap between two boards, questing blindly for a target. Thur glanced down to make sure he was standing on the tiles.
"How did you get him down there?" Tich asked, also stepping cautiously around the wood.
"Not magic," said Fiametta. She lit a candle stub stuck in a bottle on the kitchen table from the lantern flame. "I was going to use magic. I was going to set him on fire. It s the only spell I know that I can work entirety in my head, without any material symbols to hold it. It's a talent. But when he came to answer the door, I thought I'd better get inside, first. So I told him I lived here, and I'd come back to see if any of my clothes were left. But then the talk went ... strange. He just let me in, and said he'd help me look for my dresses, if I'd let him ... do things, to me."
Letting Tich kill the Losimon seemed suddenly a much better idea, to Thur. He set his teeth, then unset them again immediately as the loose ones twinged.
"I told him ....ell, I told him all right." Her hand touched the head of a striking silver snake belt looped around her waist. "But I told him there was a wine cask my father had hidden in the root cellar, behind the turnips, a special vintage. There really was one, you see. It might even still be there. When he went down to look, I clapped the trapdoor closed, and dragged the pewter cupboard across it." She nodded toward the large painted cupboard pulled out from the wall. "He almost pushed it up enough to get his fingers out, but then I jumped up and down on it. And then you came. I thought, if it didn't hold him, I must set his hair on fire—at least he has hair—and then try to stab him." She paused, as the sword thrust up again. "I could still set him afire. And you could stab him," she offered to Tich.
Thur, remembering his experiences with Ferrante, shuddered at the thought of little Fiametta attempting hand-to-hand combat with an infuriated Losimon veteran. "Just ... wait a minute," he said. He borrowed the lantern and hobbled back to the courtyard. He recalled glimpsing ....es, there in a pile of tools beneath the gallery rested a good-sized sledgehammer. He carted it back to the kitchen. "At least let's get his sword away from him first."
For bait, he walked out on the floorboards, taking care not to step on a crack. Sure enough, the sword blade and curses came up through the slit again just in front of him. He raised the sledgehammer, familiar in his hands, to his side and swung it down hard. It clanged off the swordblade, and Thur almost toppled. He clutched again at his slipping blanket, and, lightheaded from the effort, handed the hammer off to Tich, who caught on at once. Enthusiastically, he whacked at the bent blade as the Losimon tried futilely to withdraw it. On the third blow, the metal broke. A crash from below, and more curses, as the Losimon fell backwards.
"Why, Thur. That was clever," said Fiametta, sounding rather astonished. Thur's brow wrinkled. A little less astonishment would have been a little more complimentary.