Aldo Morando approached the secondhand merchant Fianelli with a smile. "I believe I've got some information that might be of interest to you."
"I deal in old clothing and cheap medicines," said Fianelli, disinterestedly. "Not information."
Morando wasn't fooled. Fianelli didn't want it known that he was the kingpin. His underlings did the legwork, bought and brought in the information, delivered it to the drop point, and collected their money from the same. But Fianelli was less professional than he thought he was. Morando had been a spy for Phillipo Maria once, in Milan. Now there was a son of a bitch who really understood underhand dealing. Fianelli was a provincial amateur by comparison.
Aldo Morando knew how the money worked, too. A lake at the top; a stream to the next tier; and drops to the actual sources. Well, that wasn't how it was going to work here. He was going straight to the lake.
"The details of who blew up the magazine out there might just be worth buying. But they'd be expensive."
"I don't know what you're talking about."
Morando raised his eyebrows. "I have a source to the captain-general's innermost secrets. For a price I can let you into them. It's as simple as that."
Fianelli shrugged. "And why would I want to know his secrets? Now do you want to buy, or just talk rubbish?"
"I'm not buying. I'm selling." Morando turned and walked out. The next move would be Fianelli's.
It wasn't long in coming.
Petros Nachelli wasn't a man whom Aldo Morando would have chosen for a go-between. A short, fat, glib little man who oozed greasiness and dishonesty in equal proportions. The Greek was a rent collector for the landed gentry of Corfu's Libri d'Oro. Cockroaches came higher on the social scale of things. Spying was a big step up for Petros.
He knocked on Aldo's door with a smile of false bonhomie on his podgy face. "Ah, my friend Morando. I received a message that you had some . . . merchandise you wished to sell. You can entrust me with it. I'll see you get the best possible price."
"I deal directly or not all, Nachelli. You can tell him that."
The smile fell away from the pudgy face. "I was informed that you were either to sell or I was to take it." He twitched his head over his shoulder, in what he apparently intended for a menacing gesture. Across the road, two of Nachelli's men were loitering. Rent collection sometimes required a beating or two.
Morando gave them no more than a glance. Fianelli's three goons were, in their own way, fairly impressive fellows. Genuine professional thugs. Nachelli's "enforcers," on the other hand, were about what you'd expect from such a lowlife. From the looks of the two scrawny fellows, they were just some relatives of the rent collector pressed into service here. Reluctant service, from the expressions on their faces. They'd be accustomed to bullying long-suffering peasants, not someone like Morando who had a somewhat scary reputation of his own. Aldo suspected that a loud Boo! would send them both packing.
"I think not," Morando sneered. "I have taken precautions, Nachelli. His name—Fianelli's—and the names of his three errand boys. Due to go to the podesta, the captain-general, the garrison commander and this newly arrived imperial prince, if I disappear. So go away and tell the boss I don't deal with intermediaries."
Morando smiled nastily, before closing the door. "And remember that your name is on the list now, also."
Aldo Morando was in fact delighted by one aspect of Fianelli's choice. The use of Nachelli fingered several of the Libri d'Oro families who'd been enriched by the feudal system the Venetians had imposed on the island—and were now conspiring against the Republic. A potential source of much income, for a blackmailer.
Fianelli came to see him after sundown. When he left, Morando went to the flagstone that served as a trapdoor to the "satanic cellar" and lifted it up. Bianca Casarini emerged from the stairs.
"I still don't understand why you didn't pass the information on to him yourself," he grumbled. "This is a bit dangerous for me, Bianca. Nachelli's just a toad, but Fianelli—crude as he may be—is something else again."
Bianca gave Morando her most seductive smile and chucked him under the chin.
"Surely you're not afraid of him? Aldo Morando? A veteran of Milanese skullduggery? Quaking at the thought of a criminal—ah, not exactly mastermind—on a dinky little island in the middle of nowhere?"
Irritably, though not forcefully, he brushed her hand aside and stumped over to the table in the kitchen. "Save the silly 'manly' stuff for someone stupid enough to fall for it, Bianca." He lowered himself into one of the chairs. "I survived Milan by not being foolhardy. So please answer the question."
Bianca came over and slid into a chair next to him. She took her time about it, to consider her answer. Morando was a charlatan, true, but it wouldn't pay to forget that he was also considerably brighter than any of the other men she was dealing with on Corfu.
She decided the truth—most of it, at least—would serve best.
"I can't afford to become too closely associated with Fianelli myself. Even more important, I can't afford to let him start getting the notion that I've become indispensable to him."
Morando arched a quizzical eyebrow. From long habit, he did so in a vaguely satanic manner. "Satanic," at least, as he—a charlatan and a faker—thought of the term. Bianca, as it happened, had once gotten a glimpse of the Great One, in her dealings with Countess Bartholdy. So she knew Morando's affectation was silly.
The real Satan had no eyebrows, nor could he. They would have been instantly burnt to a crisp, so close to those . . .
Not eyes. Whatever they were, they were not eyes.
She shuddered a little, remembering.
Morando misinterpreted the shiver. "Fianelli's not as bad as all that, Bianca." He chuckled. "I would have thought you'd want to be indispensable to him."
She shook her head. "You're misreading him. No, he's not that bad—but he is that sullen. Fianelli is the kind of man who hates anyone having a hold on him, especially a woman. If he gets sullen enough, he'll cut off his nose to spite his face. The nose, in this instance, being me."
Morando looked away, thinking for a moment. "Probably true," he mused. "He does remind me a bit of those crazy Montagnards in Milan, even if he hasn't got a speck of political loyalties. But . . . yes, he's got that somewhat maniacal feel about him."
"I don't think he's entirely sane." Confident now that she had Morando diverted down a safe track, Bianca pushed ahead. "He murdered that woman of his, you know—had her murdered, anyway—and for what? She was docile as you could ask for, and so dumb she posed no threat to him whatsoever. Didn't matter. At a certain point, she irked him a bit. Why? Who knows? Probably asked him to wipe the mud off his feet before entering the kitchen she'd just cleaned."
Morando grunted. "All right. What you intend, then, is to make sure that the information we feed him comes from both of us. You feed him stuff from the Libri d'Oro, I feed him stuff from the Venetians. And stuff which jibes with each other. That way he'll think he can play one of us off against the other. That'll please his fancy—enough, you think, that he won't start thinking of either of us as a threat to him."
"Exactly."
Again, he gave her that false-satanic eyebrow. It wasn't all fakery, though. Bianca reminded herself sharply that Morando hadn't survived Milan without being willing to shed blood himself, on occasion.
"Just make sure it isn't true, Bianca." The menace in Morando's voice was barely under the surface. "If I start thinking that you're playing me . . ."
"Don't be silly! Why would I do that?" She didn't try for offended innocence—Morando wouldn't believe that for an instant—but simple cold calculation. "This partnership is proving profitable for both of us. Besides, sooner or later—we're doing our best to make sure it happens, after all—the Hungarians are going to pour into this place. When that happens, I have every intention of being on the best possible terms with you."
She glanced at the flagstone. Morando, following her eyes, smiled. "It will make a nice hideout, won't it, until the Hungarians have sated their bloodlust?"
His eyes moved back to her, lingering for an instant on her body. "Simple lust, too, for such as you. Mind you, Bianca, I will expect to be entertained while we're waiting in the cellar."
She laughed huskily. "And have I ever given you grounds for complaint on that score?" Her hand reached out and began stroking his arm. "Now that you bring it up, in fact . . ."
Regretfully, he shook his head. "Can't, sorry. Not tonight. The Tomaselli slut is coming over later and she's supposed to bring a friend of hers with her." He rolled his eyes. "I need to save my energy. And other stuff."
Bianca laughed again. "What are you complaining about? Two women, naked, squirming all over you—most men would think they'd died and gone to Heaven."
Morando's face was sour. "Most men have never copulated with Sophia Tomaselli in a rut, with paint and ointments smeared all over her body and with her groaning what she thinks are words of passion. I'm coming to detest the woman." The face grew more sour still. "God only knows what her friend is like."
Discreetly, Bianca said nothing. She knew what the friend was like, as it happened, having been the one who steered her to Sophia in the first place. Like Sophia, Ursula Monteleone had all the vices and the unpleasant personality of a Case Vecchie woman moldering in a provincial backwater; unlike Sophia, who was at least physically rather attractive, Ursula was almost obese and had bad breath.
"Some other time, then," she murmured seductively. That was a waste of time, with Morando. But Bianca liked to stay in practice.
At midnight, Bianca communicated with Countess Bartholdy. Unbeknownst to her, not five minutes later, Fianelli used almost exactly the same magical methods to communicate with Emeric.
Both mistress and master were pleased at the reports.
Others were not.
Eneko Lopez glared out the window of the lodgings he shared with his fellow priests. There was nothing to see, in the middle of the night, except the occasional flashes of cannon fire.
Hearing footsteps enter the room, he glanced over his shoulder. It was Diego and Pierre, not to his surprise. Of the four of them, Francis was the least sensitive to evil auras.
"Yes, Diego and Pierre, I felt it also. It woke me up. Twice—and with a different flavor to each. They're using the same rituals but following slightly different procedures. We've got two Satanists, or packs of them, working in this place."
"Yes. But why two, I wonder? One of them will be Emeric's agent, for a certainty. Who is the other working for? It wouldn't be Chernobog. For his own reasons, the demon avoids satanic rituals as carefully as we do."
Lopez shrugged. "Hard to say. The Dark One penetrates everywhere, in this wicked world." He slapped the windowsill with exasperation. "This cursed island!"
"It does not really smell like an evil place to me, Eneko. And I am—you may recall—a rather accomplished witch-smeller."
Eneko sighed. "Yes, I know. But whether it's evil or not, there's something on Corfu that impedes all of our own magic." He clenched his fist, slowly, as a man might crush a lemon. "Were that not true, we could deal with these Satanists easily. I could sense that they are skilled enough—one, especially—but not powerful."
Diego cleared his throat. "Two things, then. The first is that we should let Francesca know what we know."
Eneko's lips quirked a bit. He could guess what the second thing was. "I agree to the first, not that I think she'll have any more success than we're having. I will not agree to the second. Not yet, at any rate."
He could hear Pierre's sigh. "So stubborn! Eneko, this island—whatever lurks on it, rather—is not evil. Not friendly to us either, no. But not evil. So why not try to form an alliance with . . ."
"With what?" Eneko demanded. "A formless, faceless something? About which we know nothing, really, except that it seems able to absorb all our magic like a sponge absorbs spilled water?"
Pierre cleared his throat again. For the first time since he and Diego had entered the chamber they all used as a common room, Eneko turned to face both of them squarely. The Basque priest's eyes were perhaps a little wider.
"Ah. You're right, actually. We do know something about it. It impedes earth magic, in particular."
"In particular? Perhaps—exclusively." Pierre stepped forward to join Eneko at the window. Looking out into the darkness, he frowned thoughtfully. "I admit, it's hard to prove, one way or the other. None of us can fly and—"
Cannon fire illuminated the night. "—going out on a boat is probably not a practical idea, these days."
The next evening, the prevailing northwest wind—the maestro, it was called—was blowing hard enough to make the poles of Emeric's great pavilion tent creak, despite their heavy burden. The assembled officers carefully did not look at the two corpses swinging from them. One of those corpses was that of a purported rebel. But the other was that of a former officer in Emeric's army, the man who'd been in charge of the magazine that had been sabotaged—and there were still vacancies on the other four poles.
"His name is Hakkonsen. Erik Hakkonsen," said Emeric coolly. His men had been running around like chickens with their heads cut off since the destruction of the magazine, trying to find out who had blown it up. It gave him great satisfaction to show them that he could do what they could not.
"He's an Icelander, a Knight of the Holy Trinity. He's Prince Manfred of Brittany's personal bodyguard, so you can assume he's an excellent swordsman. He stands about six foot two, he is lean and athletic, broad-shouldered. He had fine, blond, straight hair, but it is now probably dyed black. He's wearing a short, dark Mungo cotte, a gray homespun shirt, and tawny woolen breeches. One of my agents actually sold him the clothes. He is possibly in the company of a blond woman. I want either of them. The woman will do for bait. Him, I want his head."
A guard came running in. "Sire! Sire! The camp at Patara is on fire. I can see it burning."
Emeric and his officers rushed out. In the darkness, the arc of leaping wind-driven flames stood out clearly. Some of the flames were easily thirty feet high. In their ruddy light, even from here Emeric could see the tents and the tiny stick figures of soldiers, fighting the fire.
"Get down there!" shouted the king. "That's the new shipment. That is the horses' hay!"
Cavalry commanders, particularly, left at a sprint.