The next day Petracchio returned to Terminalia to make his second report to Pomilio. This time he had to wait in the sweltering heat of a rare sunny morning, as the SPQV Inspector had several clients whose business was sufficiently important that he could not shrug them off as easily as those of the previous day. The fine weather seemed to have drawn out twice as many petitioners, none of whom had brought any meaningful protection from the sun either, and who would likely end up beet-red by noon if they didn’t secure some shady real estate along the building’s portico.
As the rookie sat on the broad marble steps he wondered how Aemilia was faring. Although Stefano had been able to recover from the girl’s poison in a few hours, his partner had still been comatose when Captain Venatore finally sent everyone home for the night save for himself. The veteran Greenhead would hold vigil over his officer at the shrine they’d brought her to after she’d collapsed—a quiet sanctuary to Aemilia’s namesake saint in her old neighborhood. The Lowtown canalside along which the shrine stood used to be an Old Varonian community, but was now mostly inhabited by Lakers and their distant Skraeling cousins. Neither race had any time for the Church of the One True God and its myriad saints, so when the Greenheads brought Aemilia a dozen nuns had nothing better to do than drop everything and cluck over the headstrong girl now in their care. When at last the mother superior and chief physician announced to Venatore that Aemilia would recover from her head wound, the Captain told Petracchio and Stefano to get some rest.
“What what do I tell the Inspector?” The rookie was still sore that Venatore had not shared the specifics of Sabatini’s interrogation, and wished that he had been close enough to the conversation that it had not been drowned out by the roar of the crowd. That unfamiliar name lingered in his memory, as did mention of Queen Cariebasa. How were they related?
Whatever the connection was, his Captain was still being less than forthcoming about it. “You tell Pomilio that if his beancounters apprehend a girl punting a ’21 Magliozzi that she is wanted for the assault of two Greenheads and that she is to be remanded to our custody. No funny business. Capisce?”
Petracchio baked on the brilliant white marble, feeling his bruised lips crack in the sun. The sutures on his face itched terribly, but he did not scratch them for fear of undoing Stefano’s magical handiwork. Instead he sat and fantasized about splashing his face with a cool draught of water from one of the City’s deep freshwater springs. Briefly he contemplated abandoning his place in the queue to go find some kind of liquid freshmen, cool or otherwise, but given the crush of people waiting and predatory looks with which his fellow clients regarded his spot he’d be lucky if could even get within sight of the SPQV headquarters again this morning, and he knew there’d be Eieron himself to pay if he failed to deliver his report and Venatore’s message.
What was it about that girl, he wondered as a lizard sunned itself warily within a stone’s throw. Don’t let your guard down, friend, Petracchio thought. Bask a little too deeply and you’ll be someone’s breakfast. The rookie shook his head as a knot of Shan-li kids did exactly what he was thinking and tried to spear it with a sharpened cane of bamboo- the lizard exploded into motion, seemingly in half a dozen directions at once, then was gone to continue its sunbathing in a more hospitable location. As the Middle Kindgom children yelled at each other for squandering their opportunity for some free street meat the Greenhead laughed. At least he’d remembered to eat breakfast this time, if nothing else.
Petracchio tried to remember if this Evangelina had been around in the old days, when he and Sabatini had run with Arlix’s gang. He was fairly certain that he would have remembered a girl who looked like she had, as even from the fleeting glimpse that he’d caught of her last night at the Arena he knew that she was a looker. Dangerous, too. Something wasn’t adding up, though. If she were in fact Sabatini’s girlfriend, as his Captain had claimed, then what was she doing wandering around the canals of Lowtown all by herself? Petracchio knew Sabatini well enough to know that any woman of his wouldn’t be allowed to leave a room without a small army of goons in attendance, let alone in the company of some Oguntak lowlife. And what was Queen Cariebasa’s angle in all of this?
The rookie’s ruminations were interrupted by the sound of an SPQ V page shouting out his name- Petracchio scrambled to his feet, shaking off the pins and needles in his legs as she followed the young clerk out of the sunlight and into the cool, dark bowels of the building’s interior. It took a few minutes for Petracchio’s eyes to adjust to the gloom, during which he passed a blur of fine architecture and many faceless men and women dressed in grey. The SQPV headquarters felt less like an outpost of law enforcement than it did a Varonian Counting House, and sure enough at regular intervals the Greenhead caught a glimpse of rooms full of savants whispering their way through never-ending columns of numbers, no doubt checking a certain Great House’s ledgers against their own records for signs of fraud or other financial malfeasance. Petracchio shuddered at the thought of being cooped up in such a chamber for his waking hours, being expected to do nothing but add, subtract, multiple, or divide- having the shit beaten out of him every night on the Lowtown beat seemed to be a dream job in comparison.
“By the Seven, kid—you look like Hell.”
Inspector Pomilio did not mince words as the junior Greenhead entered his office, which lay somewhere deep within the complex. There were no windows to the square room, just bookshelves which extended from floor to ceiling and were filled with leatherbound codices whose contents could not be readily identified from the gold-leaf glyphs stamped into each spine. Pomilio’s desk was a slab of marble piled high with scrolls, tomes, and loose sheets of papyrus, several inkwells of various colored dyes, and a curious machine comprised of numerical dials and polished brass gears.
The SPQV agent noticed that Petracchio was staring at this contraption, which gleamed coldly under the blue-white light of the room’s fungus globes.
“You like that, eh? It’s an ancient Salumar artifact, recovered from one of the Nine Sacred Cities. Don’t even ask me how much money I spent to have it restored—if I had a wife, she would have killed me several times over.”
“What does it do, sir?” Even though Pomilio had spoken to him in his normal speaking voice, the rookie whispered, for fear of violating some obscure SPQV regulation about noise.
The Inspector’s eyes brightened. “It’s a computer. By setting the dials and turning the gears, this machine can do an entire day’s work of a counting house in mere seconds. Let me show you.”
Pomilio fiddled with the contraption as he inputted an array of numbers, then clicked on several gears to pop them in and out place. The rookie blinked in disbelief at the turning mechanism and the totals which flashed in mother of pearl as the Inspector operated the device.
“I don’t understand, sir. If such machines exist, why don’t the Great Houses use them?”
“That is an excellent question, indeed! But think about it—if devices like this do all of the work, then who wields the power?”
Petracchio balked at the question initially, but then it came to him like a bolt from the blue. “The men who make the machines!”
“I knew I liked you for a reason, son. Yes. Every counting house is firmly under the control of its mathemagicians, but a device knows no loyalties. Tell me—what do you know of the Information Wars?”
The rookie blinked, trying to remember his woefully inadequate parochial education. “Umm. I know that House Dandolo won. Right?”
Inspector Pomilio laughed. “That’s more than most of my agents recall. You are correct that House Dandolo was one of the victors, but few people know who the real losers were: the makers of these machines.
“Five hundred years ago the greatest threat ever to the Senate and People of Varo emerged. Enough of these machines had been recovered from the ruins of Old Salumaria that artisans were able to divine their inner workings and replicate their functionality. The Clockmakers’ Guild was born, and its members suddenly found themselves in possession of more computational power than all of the Great Houses combined.”
“Why are you telling me all of this?” Petracchio asked, fearing that he already knew the answer.
The Inspector stopped turning the crank that powered the machine. “Because this City is in danger again, son, and I need your help to save her.”
“Me?” The rookie laughed out loud at this. “I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but I’m not likely to survive my first week on the Lowtown beat, let alone save a million Canalsiders.”
Pomilio fixed the young Greenhead with a serious expression. “It is not ours to decide what destiny has in store for us, merely to discern it for what it is. Whether we embrace that fate or not—that is our decision.”
“Then explain,” Petracchio said, still unconvinced. “What does any of this have to do with my destiny?”
The Inspector gestured towards the notes piled on his desk. “For several months now the SPQV has been aware of some… irregularities… in the City’s financial affairs. At first it was a minor accounting error in the official ledger of a Great House, perhaps a misreported series of transaction at one of the fori—things like that. Harmless in isolation, easily enough rectified, problem solved. Right?
“Only these inconsistencies, they turned out to be related to one another. How we finally figured this out is a long story that I don’t want to bore you with, but let’s just say that the key to discovering what was going on was to be found in the bond market. A brilliant young mathemagician connected the dots for us and we moved to arrest the parties involved. Case closed… or so we thought.
“Problem was, even though the person we sent to Egg Rock admitted his guilt and even demonstrated how he was able to do what he did, the irregularities continued to appear. Which meant—“
“—which meant that you had a conspiracy on your hands!” Petracchio exclaimed.
“Exactly. Our man had been a willing patsy, surrendering himself to draw attention away from the actions of his compatriots. And it even worked for a little while… until the other night.”
“Esanga,” the rookie whispered. “You’re talking about the Oguntak, aren’t you?”
Pomilio smiled. “You are definitely sharper than the average Greenhead, I’ll grant you that. Esanga the Traitor is quite an interesting individual- not your typical Canalside rags to riches story, that’s for sure. One day he’s sifting through shit on a garbage barge, then all of a sudden he’s displaced Yan Liao as the most feared crime lord in the Three Parishes.
“If the story ended here it would not interest us, aside from the obvious El Mirad angle. But the El Mirad is just a means to an end, you see- the obscene amounts of money that Esanga is now making from his illegal drug empire are being diverted along some very curious channels that are most unusual for a two-cyp criminal. Or any criminal, for that matter. Money is going up to Hightown. The Senatorial families’ financial affairs are normally immune to our investigations, but the Council of Eleven granted us access owing to the special circumstances. We found our money trail, and it lead us straight to one of Varo’s most respected Senators.”
“Let me guess,” Petracchio said. “Gaius Brindisi.”
The Inspector’s mouth fell open. Before Pomilio could recover enough to ask him how he knew, the rookie explained:
“Easy. The Senator spends a lot of time in these parts doing charitable works, or so I’ve been told. It’s the perfect cover for any number of illegal activities. That would also explain why his brat of a son thinks he owns the place.”
Pomilio could only nod at this. “The Brindisi family is definitely mixed up in something big. Chances are they don’t even know what they’ve gotten themselves into.”
“What do you mean by that?”
The Inspector stopped fiddling with the Salumar computer and faced the Greenhead head-on, his dark eyes gleaming like obsidian. “Does the name ‘Rosario’ mean anything to you?”
Petracchio cocked an eyebrow. “Should it?”
The SPQV agent didn’t answer him immediately—the rookie felt Pomilio sizing him up again, as he did when they first met the other night along the dirty waters of the Secundo. He suspected that if the Inspector could have dialed his soul into the brass machine on the table between them and turn the crank to divine his truth worth through the mysterious workings of its countless tiny cogs and gears, then he would have in a heartbeat. The junior Greenhead swallowed hard and said nothing until Pomilio replied at last.
“If you are withholding something, Ser Petracchio, then I am obliged to remind you that obstructing the investigation of an SPQV inspector is a serious offense.”
“Thank you for the warning, sir. I’ll keep that firmly in mind.”
There was a flash of impatience in Pomilio’s expression—impatience and anger. “You realize that he’s in the middle of all this, right?”
“Who?” The rookie asked, knowing full well whom the Inspector meant.
Pomilio’s smile was no longer kind. It was the toothy mirthless smile of a predator circling its prey. “Your Captain. All of those denars washing through his precinct, you think he doesn’t get his taste?”
“Venatore’s a bastard, but he’s not dirty.” Petracchio tried to say this in a way that suggested that he himself believed it, but his voice quavered as he did so. He recalled what the Captain had said at the Arena about seeing the light. “He can’t be.”
“Tell you about the girl, did he? Poor little Terzia. Old Giro loves to trot that one out early on to establish his bona fides with the new recruits. I bet he left out the best part, though. Did he happen to mention what he did when he found out that the girl was carrying his child?”
Petracchio’s stomach became leaden. From the Captain’s telling of the story it hadn’t been clear whether Terzia had lived or died; the rookie had assumed the latter. He dreaded what was coming next as the Inspector filled in the rest of the tale:
“So our hero, desperate to restore his credibility with his fellow gang-bangers, tries to force the girl to go to an apothecary to get rid of the baby. She refuses. What Giro does to Terzia makes the beating she took from her brother look like a relaxing trip to a Shan-li bathhouse. Throws the poor girl down a flight of stairs and breaks her neck. The chief magistrate wants to try him for murder, but Venatore’s old man has some pull with the local cittadini and spirits him away into the Marines on a penal regiment assignment instead.
“So when he comes back from Ryzien, Giro is a changed man. Or so he says. He may say he’s playing for our team, but don’t be fooled. A dog is only as good as his options, rookie. And this Lowtown mutt has so many options.”
Petracchio shook his head, attempting to disbelieve everything that he’d just heard. Inspector Pomilio also shook his head, a patronizing look on his face.
“You don’t have to take my word for it. Ask Titus Esposito, if you dare. Ask Queen Cariebasa. You think it’s a coincidence that Lowtown is a haven for monsters? Instead of sending them to Egg Rock, he offers these lowlifes safe harbor. Who knows what kind of banh binh he gets for his trouble, while the rest of us get to pay the interest. But not for much longer.”
Pomilio drew closer to the rookie, so close that he could see the cracks and wrinkles that belied the SPQV agent’s youthful mien. Petracchio recoiled as the Inspector’s sudden tirade reached a furious new intensity, tinged with righteous anger.
“This dead Oguntak, he’s just the beginning of a reckoning that’s long overdue. Make no mistake, boy-- this is the endgame for Giro Venatore. I’m sorry that you’ve come at such an awful juncture, but when I’m through with this investigation the last place you’ll want to be standing is between your Captain and me.
“Got it?”
---
Petracchio couldn’t quite recollect how his meeting with the Inspector had concluded, only that he was relieved beyond measure to be out of Pomilio’s lair, so much so that he didn’t notice that he was being followed until he’d returned to his adopted Lowtown neighborhood. Nocciola was bustling, the midmorning sun almost threatening the customarily staid reserve of this ancient parish within a parish—colorful vendors staked out every available square inch of canalside with their wares as a jabbering tide of black-clad Old Varonian matrons haggled over every last bit of produce, meat, cheese, and bread for sale. Young children ran laughing through the chaos, criss-crossing the footbridges and racing between the merchants’ stalls, while the older boys noodled around on the water in their family’s lacquer or rickety skiffs of their own, trying to impress the young ladies who sat in groups of three or four on the granite quays, giggling amid their adolescent gossip.
The rookie stopped to admire the selection of one of the flower vendors as he picked up the tail. It was the shrine-bearer from the previous morning- the one who had beaten him to a pulp at Damin Esposito’s bidding. How he hadn’t spotted the thug before was a testament to the ogre-like man’s preternatural stealthiness, but now that he had been made the shrine-bearer made no attempt not to be seen. Suddenly he was standing so close to Petracchio that he actually cast a shadow over the junior Greenhead, who blinked up at the man, his hand on the hilt of his broadsword.
“Easy,” the shrine-bearer said in a low voice. “I’m not about to wring your neck on a market day. If I’d wanted to do that, I’d have done it before you left Terminalia- am I right?”
Petracchio was only somewhat reassured by this. “All right. So what do you want with me then?”
“The boss would like to have a word with you.”
The rookie couldn’t help but laugh. “So now he does give a damn about me. Is this a good or a bad thing?”
“Don’t get cocky. It means we’re all in much deeper shit than we thought.”
“Fine,” Petracchio said. “Lead the way.”
The shrine-bearer nodded, then motioned away from the canalside markets towards a cul-de-sac where a cluster of thugs sat on the portico of a confraternity lodge. A veritable Old Varonian institution, the confraternity was filled to bursting with the parish’s elder menfolk, who took advantage of the market day to escape their own households and socialize while their wives and daughters bargained with the vendors. Petracchio recognized a couple of the men outside as fellow shrine-bearers—their animated conversation ceased as soon as they saw him, but they opened their ranks to allow him to pass in their comrades’ care.
The lodge house was dingy, its whitewashed walls long since curdled into a sickly yellow from untold generations of Voordian pipeweed and opium smoke. The two men walked along a hallway featuring a row of busts that stared at them with blank eyes, ancient sons of Nocciola whose names could barely even be read on the tarnished bronze plaques affixed beneath each august visage. They passed several open doorways, where old men sat and played dominos in between long draughts on Salumar water-pipes or drinks from open amphorae of wine—in the distance one could hear a boy singing and the tinkling laughter of courtesans.
Petracchio wondered if he’d made a huge mistake in coming here. If he had made a break for it in the market at least there would have been witnesses if he’d failed to escape the beefy shrine-bearer. But hadn’t those same Canalsiders watched him get thrashed the other morning without so much as raising a finger to assist? No, he was a dead man either way. At least by choosing to go quietly he might actually get some answers before the inevitable end.
The long hallway eventually opened up into a large square internal courtyard whose colonnaded impluvium was a carefully-manicured series of fish ponds. The shrine-bearer lead the Petracchio over a wooden footbridge to a small grassy island, where a lone old man sat sunning himself in a Shan-li wicker chair. At first it seemed as though he was taking a late morning nap, but as the two drew near the old man snapped to attention and spoke:
“Piacere. I am Titus Esposito. Come and sit for a while, eh?”
No sooner had the rookie set foot on the island than attendants sprang from the shadows of the colonnade and set two identical wicker chairs opposite the old man, so Petracchio did as he was told and sat. The shrine-bearer did so as well, the rattan creaking uneasily under the henchman’s massive frame. “Careful there, Mauro.” The old don teased. “I just had that chair recaned!”
The two Canalsiders had a good laugh over this, while Petracchio did his best to look amused as well and not as terrified as he in fact was at that moment. Damin Esposito was a man of slight build—although he had no doubt been wizened by the passage of time, the rookie got the sense that the Gentle Don came out of his mother’s womb this way, all bones and sinew but taut as the string of a crossbow. Esposito had a shock of white hair that ringed his bald and spotted forehead and gathered itself below into a beard that jutted out like the tuft of an old mountain goat; his green eyes were flecked with gold and constantly flicked around the courtyard, taking in everything that they could. When the damin spoke, his Old Varonian accent was unmistakable, yet unlike others of his neighborhood his words were always intelligible, if not painfully clear.
“Would you care for some wine?” Esposito did not wait for an answer, nor did his servants wait for a command—as soon as the damin said the word, an amphora appeared, along with three goblets made of white gold. One servant filled the cups as the other handed them first to Petracchio, then Mauro, and at last to the old man, who gave the bouquet a tentative sniff before taking a sip. The enormous bodyguard on the other hand downed the contents of his goblet in one undignified quaff, proffering the cup to the attendants for a refill.
“I’m afraid we got off to a bad start, you and I.” The Gentle Don made it clear that he did not intend this as an apology, so Petracchio made no attempt to acknowledge it as such. “Retirement is a nasty business, this much I can tell you.”
The rookie sat and stared at Esposito with a frozen smile, deathly afraid to move or speak, clutching his still-full goblet as if it were the only thing keeping him from plunging into a bottomless abyss. The old man frowned.
“That was a joke, boy.”
“Forgive me, Damin, but I don’t quite understand why I’m here right now.”
Esposito’s green eyes stopped wandering long enough to fix the young Greenhead with a gaze that was as searching as it was mocking. “Ah, but I don’t think that’s true.”
“It’s Inspector Pomilio’s investigation, isn’t it?” Of course, Petracchio thought. The old man is scared. Whatever understanding Titus Esposito may have had with Captain Venatore didn’t count for a damned thing if the SPQVs had a Greenhead from the Lowtown beat who was actually willing to talk to them. Had the old don known that Pomilio was already on the Oguntak case there’s no way he would have let his bodyguard Mauro rough him up the way he did. That’s why Venatore had come here the day before—not out of any concern for his new recruit’s well-being but to stop Esposito’s mobsters from compounding their stupidity and driving the rookie straight to SPQV headquarters.
The Gentle Don’s lack of an answer was all the confirmation that Petracchio needed. Look, the young Greenhead wanted to say. I have no intention of telling the Inspector anything about whatever you and the Captain are into, so don’t worry. But he also knew that this was the only leverage he had. For the first and possibly the last time during this case, the moment was his. So the rookie mustered his most enigmatic smile and waited for the ancient damin to swallow his pride and break the silence first. Titus Esposito mumbled a curse in Old Varonian, then spoke the four words that the rookie was hoping to hear:
“What do you want?”
“Information.”
The old man slumped in his chair. “Very well. Ask.”
“Tell me about Esanga.”
Esposito sighed and motioned for one of the servants to refill his goblet. “What a damned shame. That boy was one in a million. These Oguntak, they don’t care about tradition at all. They come here with their masks and their blood feuds and may the One True God help you if you think you can make them care about anything else.”
Petracchio nodded. For all intents and purposes he could be sitting in the precinct house, right now listening to his Captain. No wonder these two were thick as thieves. The Gentle Don continued unbidden:
His people called him ‘Esanga the Traitor’- do you know why?”
The rookie shook his head.
“Because when the Southlands went to hell, Esanga stood with the Crusaders. Even after I-town itself gave up on the Crusade and let their own sons and daughters fend for themselves in the godforsaken jungle, even when his own countrymen saw the writing on the wall and disavowed their alliances with the Northerners, he stood with them until the very end.
“Now here was a boy with a sense of honor. I didn’t care where he wore a mask or smeared himself with his own shit, because he believed in something bigger than himself.”
“Is that why the Queen killed him?”
The old damin narrowed his eyes. “What did you say?”
Petracchio fumbled for a response. “I- I- I thought the Captain told you.”
“No,” the Gentle Don said with a tone of voice that was quiet, yet anything but gentle. “In fact, when he came to me yesterday he told me that she had absolutely nothing to do with it.”
The rookie didn’t know what to say to this, fearing that he’d already said far too much. Why hadn’t Giro told him?
Esposito spat. “That reptilian bitch. Ever since she came to Lowtown it hasn’t been the same. There was a time when you could be a proper villain in this City, boy, before the Great Locks vomited up every last bit of savagery from the Southlands. Now the old ways, they don’t count for nothing. Niunte. You follow me?”
The rookie stood mute before the Gentle Don’s fury, which clearly had been building for who knows how long. Esposito did not wait for Petracchio to respond:
“For years Cariebasa has been muscling into my turf, and that fool Captain of yours has done nothing to stop her. ‘Keep the peace, Titus.’ That’s all he tells me. ‘Keep the peace’! What has she ever done to keep the peace? At every juncture I have been the one to stand down, surrendering another block, another parish, giving up another line of business. And for what? I used to run this City, boy, and now look at me. I’ve become a joke. The damin of some shit alley that even Lowtown has forgotten.
“But no more.” Titus Esposito stood up from his cane chair on a whim, waving away the attendants as they sprang to assist him. “If the Queen wants a war, then so be it. I am no longer interested in keeping the peace. Tell your Captain that if he wants peace so badly, then he should tell Cariebasa to go back to the Palmlands where she came from!
“You can also tell Venatore that the next time he comes to my neighborhood he’d better bring a platoon of Marines for a bodyguard. I don’t know what kind of chess game he thinks he’s playing, but I am no one’s pawn. Capisce?”
---
As Mauro lead Petracchio back the way they had come down the long hall of the confraternity hall, he muttered over his shoulder. “You got balls, kid. I’ll give you that. Most people shit themselves when they find they’re face to face with Old Man Esposito, but you stood your ground.”
The rookie said nothing, still reeling from the havoc he had unintentionally loosed during his audience with the damin. Mauro, sensing Petracchio’s angst, stopped halfway amid the neighborhood’s ancestral busts and put a huge meaty paw on the copper’s shoulder.
“You think you fucked things up, but you’re wrong. The damin would never have let this insult go unanswered, no matter how much Venatore tried to smooth things over. The Queen, she crossed the line.”
“’This dead Oguntak, he’s just the beginning of a reckoning that’s long overdue,’” the rookie mumbled to himself, recalling Inspector Pomilio’s parting words.
“What?” Mauro asked.
“Nothing.” Petracchio shook his head. Suddenly he had a thought. “Tell me, Mauro. Did you know Esanga well?”
The bodyguard looked at the young Greenhead for a moment before answering. “I suppose. Most Southlanders keep to themselves, but Esanga was different. He was a good soldier, that one.”
“He ever mention a girl to you?”
“Evangelina.”
Petracchio raised an eyebrow. “You knew her?”
“You don’t forget a girl like that, you know what I’m sayin’?”
The rookie nodded.
“Yeah, Esanga was real sweet on her. Really riled up the Old Man, though.”
“Because she was Sabatini’s girl?”
Mauro snorted at this. “Sabatini! As if he’d know what to do with a tight bit of chiton like that. No, I’m talking about the Queen.”
“What?” Time seemed to stop for a moment as Petracchio tried to make sense of what he was hearing. Fortunately the bodyguard didn’t seem to understand the importance of what he was saying, so not only did he repeat himself, but offered some clarification for good measure.
“The girl, she’s with Cariebasa. You know…” Mauro seemed unable to find the proper words for their liaison, but Petracchio understood nonetheless, although the repercussions of such understanding left him unable to say much in response. The giant Canalsider lead him back out on the portico and into the afternoon shadows; before he left, he offered one final bit of advice.
“Keep your head down, kid. Because things are about to get ugly. Capisce? If I were you, I’d think of a whole different line of work altogether.”
---
Venatore flew into a white-hot rage when Petracchio reported the details of his conversation with Old Man Esposito. As the Captain stormed about his office destroying whatever he could of his spartan furnishings the rookie briefly considered whether he should have brought Stefano in with him as backup, but the veteran Greenhead did not lay a finger on Petracchio, nor did he ever threaten to do so, although at the end of his outburst he leveled a thick calloused finger at the young man. “Any blood that is spilled—this is on you, son.”
The rookie tried not to flinch at Venatore’s stern malediction and swallowed hard. “No, it isn’t.”
A murderous glare across the oak table, the only thing that the Captain had not overturned or smashed at this point. “What did you say?”
“I said it isn’t on me, sir. And you know damned well that it isn’t. It’s you. It’s always been you.”
Venatore said nothing to this, which Petracchio took as tacit confirmation. “What I don’t understand, though, is why.”
“Leave it, rookie.” The Captain’s growl would have been enough to make the junior Greenhead soil his trousers just a couple of days ago, but Petracchio could see through the bluster now.
Before he had a chance to press his question a second time, however, they were interrupted by Aemilia, who entered Venatore’s office without knocking. Her head was still bandaged and she moved with a tentative step, but already the fire had returned to her eyes, as had her slight but unmistakably bemused smile.
“Well, now!” the Captain exclaimed. “Look who’s back from the dead.”
Aemilia surveyed the wreckage of the veteran Greenhead’s office. “What happened here?”
Venatore looked at Petracchio, then back at Aemilia. “Nothing. Just felt like a little Spring cleaning, and our rookie was kind enough to help me. Isn’t that right, Petrarch?”
The Captain had never used Petracchio’s familiar name before, which caught him entirely off-guard. He sighed and nodded his head. “Yup. Cockroaches the size of spiny Aeedian lobsters.”
“Fine. Don’t tell me. Idiot boys and their idiot arguments. Just fill me in on what I’ve missed.”
“Are you sure you’re ready to come back?” There was something in the way that Venatore asked the question that suggested an uncharacteristic amount of tenderness for the Captain—Petracchio noticed that Aemilia placed her hand on her abdomen, if only for the briefest instant before withdrawing it self-consciously.
“I’m fine, Captain.”
Venatore resumed his gruff mien. “Fine. Then find your partner and let’s go and try to stop ourselves a gang war, shall we?”
---
The bloodshed had already begun. No sooner had the Captain and his rookie officially begun their Lowtown beat than they were summoned to the scene of a shooting near the Laker tenements—two Canalsiders lay dead on the cold granite, their blood being washed away by a hard rain even as Venatore and Petracchio approached.
“These are a couple of Esposito’s boys,” the Captain grunted. “I guess the Queen got his message.”
While the auxiliaries secured the crime scene, Petracchio adjusted his rain gear and looked at Venatore. “I didn’t know that Aemilia was carrying.”
The Captain appeared surprised at first at the rookie’s statement, then gave a grim smile. “Yes. I’ve tried putting her on clerical duty ever since I found out, but the girl just won’t listen. She says she’d rather die than proofread my reports.”
Despite all that had transpired that day, Petracchio couldn’t help but laugh. “Are you…?”
“Are you kidding! Aemilia has better taste in men than me, even if they do tend towards the obsessive.”
“Stefano.”
“Give the rookie a prize for his deductive prowess!” Venatore shouted at one of the auxiliaries as he clumsily handled one of the bodies, then turned back to Petracchio. “Officially the Greenheads frown on this sort of thing, but who am I to stand in the way of true love?”
The way that the Captain’s voice caught when he said this gave the junior Greenhead pause, so the two watched the auxiliaries work as the rain fell even harder now on the quay and the obsidian waters of the canal. Finally, Petracchio cleared his throat.
“Pomilio told me some things when I met with him this morning. Things about you.”
“Yeah.” The Captain’s response wasn’t a question, but the acknowledgment of the inevitable.”
“About Terzia.”
Venatore looked away. “There are many things I’ve done in this life that I’m not proud of, rookie. But there’s only one that I would do anything I could to take back.”
“Sir?” Petracchio was waiting for the Captain to elaborate, but when he glanced at the veteran Greenhead he saw his hand on the hilt of his broadword.
“We’ve got company- get down!”
How he had spotted the shooter in the driving rain was anyone’s guess, but no sooner had he shouted than the Captain shoved his junior officer aside. Petracchio felt the first missile whistle just past his ear, while the second hit Venatore square in the chest. As the Captain roared with pain and fell onto the slippery granite the rookie unslung his crossbow and ducked behind one of the dockside pilings just as the third shot twanged, the iron bolt exploding into the stone with a white puff and microscopic shards of rock.
Petracchio peeked around his cover to see the telltale black velvet hood on a gondola whose dark lacquer seemed to merge into the surrounding canal like something out of a dream. His training as a Marine suddenly returned to him as he listened to the clanking of the repeating crossbow’s gears. There was always a split second in between volleys as a fresh set of bolts fell from the hopper and fed into the machine—the rookie waited for the right moment, then popped up from behind the piling and took his best shot. Someone cursed from underneath the hood, and the repeater failed to engage for a second round of firing, at least for the moment. Petracchio dashed back to where his Captain had fallen, and found him attempting to prop himself as he slipped on the oily granite and his own blood.
“Easy, sir.” The rookie saw the iron bolt protruding from his Captain’s torso, having sundered the layers of cured leather and chainmail as if they’d been a costume made of tissue paper. Petracchio had seen worse wounds in the cranberry bogs of Deltaine, to be sure, but never a man who had ever tried to get up after being hit like that.
“Don’t let… the bastards… get away,” Venatore croaked, his words punctuated by shallow agonizing breaths. Petracchio’s eyes darted back to the canal but the lacquer was already long gone, having melted back into the rainy blackness. The auxiliaries were already scrambling towards the two of them to assist their fallen Captain, having abandoned the bodies of Titus Esposito’s footsoldiers on the other side of the pier.
Petracchio gripped his partner’s hand tightly. “We’ll get ‘em, Cap. Don’t you worry about that.”
“Petrarch.” Venatore’s fingers felt cold as stone, and his voice was little more than a hoarse whisper now. “The Queen. Tell the Queen.”
“Tell the Queen what?”
The rookie repeated his question but the Captain only gurgled a few barely audible syllables, then fell silent. One of the auxiliaries, a burly Ashlan Cherin with a mustache so waxy that it defied the rain in a manner that was comically incongruous, sized up the injury as soon as he reached their side. “The precinct apothecary isn’t going to be able to help him with this. Nor are the good sisters at St. Aemilia’s, for that matter.”
Petracchio already knew this from his time in the field. He also knew that of the handful of surgeons in the City who could successfully treat a wound as grevious as this, one of them just so happened to work for an old friend.
---
“You want me to do what?”
Francesco Sabatini stood glowering at the rookie from the steps of his private marina. As soon as he realized what he’d have to do in order to save his Captain’s life, Petracchio flagged down the swiftest-looking piece of lacquer that happened to be cruising by and commandeered the vessel with a raised crossbow. The hapless punk kid did not offer so much as a peep of protest, and it was only about halfway through the race to Orsilia along Varo’s quiet side canals did the Greenhead learn the reason why: the gondola had been stolen on a midnight joyride, a crime to which the boy tearfully confessed on his own volition once he recognized the unmistakable visage of Girolamo Venatore looking up at him from the velvet passenger seat. Petracchio told the kid that if he could deliver the Captain to Sabatini’s alive he’d let him go, but if he failed to do so he’d personally deliver him to Egg Rock—the rookie could swear that he had never seen someone row a boat so hard.
Petracchio stood with one foot in the gondola, the other on the granite quay. Venatore lay sprawled in the boat, one of his arms trailing in the dark water. His body was a lifeless slab, his normally ruddy skin as grey as if he were Cebalese. The mustachioed auxiliary stood and held the lacquer against the tide, the young gondola thief having been heaved overboard as soon as the phosphorescent lamps of Sabatini’s nightclub emerged from the gloom. “You heard me. Get your surgeon- now!”
The damin was apoplectic. “After what he did to me at the Arena? Venatore humiliated me in front of my own men. I say let the bastard die.”
Petracchio stepped fully on the quay. “Please, Cecco. Do this as a favor to me. For Arlix’s sake.”
A couple of neckless musclebound thugs materialized to intercept the Greenhead as he moved towards the foot of the marina steps, but Sabatini called them off with a hiss. “You’ve got a lot of nerve cashing in on his name to help out a lousy copper.”
The rookie held his ground and did not answer. There seemed to Petracchio to follow an eternity of silence that was only broken by a low groan from deep within the gondola. How Venatore was even still alive at this point was a miracle; that he could yet stir sent a shiver down the junior Greenhead’s spine. When his gaze darted back from the Captain, he could see his own fear and wonder reflected in the damin’s eyes. What sort of beast was this man, that Francesco Sabatini was afraid to let him die?
“Bring him in,” he barked to his henchmen, who obeyed without so much as a word. As Petracchio followed them up the stairs, however, Sabatini put a firm hand on his shoulder. “After this we’re through, you and I. Capisce?”
The junior Greenhead nodded as if to agree, whereas in fact both men knew damned well that the two had long since passed that point a long time ago.
Her name was Ingrid. Arlix’s second-in-command, the Skraeling woman had captivated the hearts of many a poor hapless Canalsider before Sabatini and Petracchio fell under the blonde warrior goddess’ spell, but none had fought as fiercely for her affections as these two rookie cutpurses. Although normally aloof and reserved, Ingrid allowed herself to be amused by this rivalry, and despite her boss’ warnings not to, she took every opportunity to encourage their amorous zeal until it was inevitable that one or the other should do something that would be as foolish as it was irrevocable.
As the damin’s personal surgeon-- a butcher from Orsilia who was reputedly as adept at carving Sabatini’s victims into untraceable chunks of meat as he was putting the living back together-- Petracchio waited in one of the nightclub’s rooftop chambers, a penthouse office whose décor was nothing more than a garish and expensive attempt to look tasteful. Heavy velvet curtains enrobed a room filled with lacquered furniture made from Southlander hardwoods, interspersed with pieces of art that had been chosen more for their price than their aesthetic appeal: here was a horrid little square painting on a decorative easel, there was a painted vase big enough for a grown man to hide inside.
“See what sort of things you can buy when you’re not living hand to mouth on a Greenhead’s salary?”
“It’s the hidden costs that always get you, Cecco.”
The damin sneered at this, then changed the subject. “Your beloved Captain will live, or so my surgeon tells me. Apparently he has the constitution of an ogre king.”
“Don’t sound too disappointed.”
“Are you kidding? Do you have any idea of how this will raise my stock among the Varonian underworld. ‘Francesco Sabatini is so fearless, he’ll send his own physician to heal your wounds before finishing you off.’”
Petracchio couldn’t help but laugh at this. “You always manage to find an angle, don’t you?”
“That’s why I’m the guy in a position to grant someone like you a favor.”
The rookie narrowed his eyes. “You ever see Arlix?”
Sabatini shook his head. “The old Skrae doesn’t want anything to do with me-- too successful for his tastes, I suppose.”
Petracchio wanted to say something unkind in response to this, but mindful of his situation he thought better of it. “How about Ingrid- she still come around the club like she used to?”
“Not since Evangelina. You know how Ingrid feels about competition.”
“Speaking of competition, did you know about Evangelina’s liaison with Esanga? Or the Queen, for that matter?”
Sabatini’s face hardened. “Is this part of your investigation, Petrarch? I didn’t realize that you Lowtown coppers had jurisdiction here.”
“You’re probably right,” Petracchio shrugged. “But I bet the SPQVs do.”
“What?”
“In case no one told you, this is a joint investigation. So you can either answer my questions, or talk to one of their Inspectors.”
The damin looked indignant. “You don’t think I killed the savage, did you?”
“You tell me,” the rookie said. “As far as I can tell, you have a pretty compelling motive, not to mention a history with this sort of thing.”
Sabatini’s demeanor was now cold and reptilian. “So that’s what this is about. Payback for what I did all those years ago?”
“No—it’s about a murdered man and the gang war that has followed in its wake.”
“Let the Lowtown scum die!” Sabatini’s dark eyes flashed. “You think you’re doing anyone a favor by trying to keep those animals from killing each other? Even your Captain isn’t that naïve.”
Petracchio wanted desperately to come back with a rejoinder as stinging as his old comrade’s words, but what had Sabatini said that wasn’t manifestly true? Less than a week on the beat and already the rookie feared that Lowtown was not a place where anyone made a difference—a sailor could sooner change the tides.
“Trust me, ‘mici,” the damin said. “Queen Cariebasa did everyone in this City a huge favor by setting that worthless Southlander adrift on the Prospero.”
Petracchio’s heart stopped, but he caught himself before he allowed his jaw to fall agape or ask the damin to repeat himself. It was all he could do to finish the conversation without betraying any more than a junior officer’s interest in his Captain or the curdled mixture of nostalgia and bile that befitted an old comrade turned rival. His mind was already floating backwards up the Secundo on an Eieronian tide, sharply turning to the right as it joined the waters of the Prospero.
---
“Sabatini didn’t know the body had been found on the Secundo,” the rookie explained to Aemilia and Stefano as he breathlessly briefed his fellow Greenheads on the situation once he’d returned to the precinct-house, which despite the late hour was buzzing with activity. The gang violence had already intensified in the short while that Petracchio was gone, with the result that Lowtown had rousted the day police rotations from their slumber and pressed as many auxiliaries into action as they could muster on such short notice. With the pikes and shields of the auxiliaries and the heavy riot armor of the regulars, one could almost think the entire City were under siege.
“That explains why he didn’t know the SPQVs were involved. He must have almost stained his velvet robes when I told him.”
“That doesn’t prove anything,” Aemilia said as Stefano strung and restrung his crossbow for the eleventh time. As the Captain convalesced in the same nunnery that she had, Petracchio noticed how quickly and easily Aemilia fell into the role of commanding officer, as if it were a part that she had been born to play. She considered the rookie’s case as he presented it, then proceeded to demolish it as systematically as Venatore would have, albeit with less profanity. “No cittadini would even think about moving on someone as protected as Sabatini on evidence that weak, even if he did have a plausible motive. Besides, you saw the bite marks.”
Petracchio’s mind was racing. “What if someone put them there to throw the Captain off the scent? I know that he’s been covering for the Queen. So as soon as he saw what to his eyes was incontrovertible proof of her involvement, he’d dispose of the evidence immediately. Which is exactly what he did.”
The erstwhile Captain thought about this. “Go on.”
“Consider also the fact that Esanga’s body was found naked. Tell me, Aemilia- how long have you been on the Lowtown beat?”
“Fourteen years,” she answered almost immediately, without even pausing to think about the question.
“And when’s the last time you found a naked man in the drink?”
Silence.
“Now a woman, yes, I’ll buy it. A prostitute makes a bad decision or a nice girl makes the wrong turn down an alley at night and the predictable happens. But even then to find a body without a stitch of clothing on it is rare. Caecilia might be another world as far as this beat is concerned, but I saw enough shit while I was there to know what seems all kinds of wrong.
“Whoever murdered Esanga stripped the body so that the people who found him wouldn’t miss the bite marks. This much is for certain.”
“But why couldn’t that have been Cariebasa herself?” Aemilia protested. “I know enough about the Queen after fourteen years of keeping her out of trouble. I didn’t always approve, mind you, but it was the Cap’s call. He long since earned his right to lead us off a cliff, and for all I know he was right all along. Less than three days after this boy turns up dead and see how quickly it all goes to shit!
“Queen Cariebasa is proud. If the word Canalside is right that she and this girl Evangelina were lovers, then Esanga’s sudden appearance may have been enough to provoke her to something this stupid. Or have you never crossed the line out of love?”
Petracchio’s ears burned at this, but he said nothing. Aemilia continued:
“All I know is that if we don’t put a stop to the fighting, it’s just a matter of time before the Senate sends the Black Legion down here.”
The rookie’s hair stood on end. The Black Legion! It had never occurred to him that Lowtown was teetering so close to the precipice that this was even an option, but what did the Senate care about a bunch of lowlifes and immigrants fresh off the boat? It was probably only because of Venatore’s tireless efforts that the pitiless and drug-fueled Black Legionnaires hadn’t scoured Lowtown several times over at this point.
Stefano surprised the both of them by looking up from his heavy crossbow and saying, “Why don’t we just ask the Queen what happened?”
The rookie and Aemilia looked at Stefano, then each other. “What would the Captain say?” Petracchio asked.
“No doubt he’d call us a bunch of idiots for even entertaining the thought,” Aemilia replied with a wry smile on her face.
Stefano chuckled, then snapped the well-polished gears of his crossbow back into place with a resounding click. “So when do we go?”
TO BE CONCLUDED!
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