The Blessed (27 page)

Two of the knights of the city dismounted, their faces awash in consternation at the girl's alarming tone.

Hasani, Gaspare, and Ugo swung up and into their saddles.

“Halt!” said the captain of the patrol. “You shall remain here a moment longer.”

“We are on an urgent errand of Count Armand Rieu des Baux,” said Lucien, carrying the count's banner. “Do not detain us if you care to keep your position.”

“Let me see your papers,” said the captain. He stood his ground, but the knight's words unnerved him.

“We have reason to believe that a friend of the count's is in grave danger,” Lucien said. “She is an older woman, a beggar to your eyes. But she is much more than that. We must get to her, and get to her now. It is vital.”

The knight of Les Baux handed the captain his papers, knowing there was an even chance he could read. But that bore the sixteen-point star of Les Baux, anyone could make that out. “The man speaks the truth,” Vito shouted. “Let us be about our task.”

“Be at peace,” said the captain, handing the papers back to the knight. “Tell me the woman's name and we shall aid you in finding her.”

“She is about sixty years of age, with a basket about this wide, full of cloth. A weaver? A seamstress? She resides in this district.”

“And her name?”

“
Vito
,” Tessa whispered. She was as white as a sheet, trembling now. Panting, her eyes wide. Twin tracks of tears ran down her face, dirty still from the dust of the road. “They're moving
away
. . .” Hasani reached down and hauled her up in front of him. He looked to Vito, ready to ride without permission if necessary.

“What ails the girl?” asked the captain, his eyes narrowing. “Is she ill? If she is ill, we must place her immediately in quarantine! And does your African have papers? I must see those as well.”

 
CIRO and Amidei tracked the woman as she walked down one street and then the next, moving toward the Université district on the east side of the city. She moved slowly but methodically, as if counting her steps. Surely that was how she maneuvered through the twisting avenues, he thought. Counting.

“Give me a little room to toy with her,” Amidei whispered to Ciro.

“As you wish, m'lord.”

Abramo moved forward, chanting a spell of confusion as he stared hard at the woman in front of him. “Eighteen, twenty-five, ninenty-one, thirty-six,” he said silently, willing the words into her mind. The woman stopped, put a hand to her head, and then slowly turned in a circle, sniffing the air. He inhaled with her and barely stifled a cough at the stench. Here, the streets narrowed. There was barely a path down the center, where rotten meat or refuse or excrement did not lie.

Somehow the woman managed to avoid it all with each footfall. Was she truly blind? Having found some olfactory landmark, she turned and headed down another street. As darkness crawled through the city, its citizens disappeared within their own doors. Abramo, Ciro, and the woman were three of only eight within sight.

Again he neared her, this time passing by her. “Forty-five, twenty-one, eighty-four, eighty-eight, eighteen, eight.”

The woman stopped, dead in her tracks, behind him. “Who are you? Who is there?” She turned in a slow circle. “By the words within me, you are of the dark. Lost . . .” She grasped her chest, as if able to hold her beating heart. “So lost . . .”

He continued on, not looking back. She was strong, this one. It was good they were removing her now, before she joined the others. With one glance at his towering figure, two men left their perch where they had been sharing a pipe, slamming the door behind them.

Abramo turned and with a nod, gestured to Ciro to send the others from the street. He immediately turned, grabbed a man and a woman, and shoved them around the nearest corner. The street was suddenly silent but for the old woman, with Abramo and Ciro blocking any escape.

“HASANI,” Tessa whispered through her tears, her gasping. “There is no more time. We must go to her,
now
. She has not long. They close in as we speak. I sense her . . . and our enemy. Amidei is not alone.”

Hasani did not hesitate. He turned his gelding in a tight circle and they were off, with Ugo and Gaspare right behind them. Vito jammed a fist into the jaw of the patrol captain, sending him sprawling, and spooked the next knight's mare so that he reared, sending him off the back. Both were knocked out cold.

The third knight on horseback drew his sword, but Matthieu was already upon him, jumping from his horse to the next. Both went to the cobblestones, turning over and over, each landing punches. The Les Baux knight rose, victorious, but bled from his lip.

Vito tackled the fourth knight on foot, regretting that a third punch was necessary to put him down. He did not want to kill any of them. They simply had to be away. He looked up and saw that Hasani, Tessa, Ugo, and Gaspare were already out of sight. Men and women around the well stared at them as if they were monsters. Slowly they backed away, fear lining their faces.

Vito sighed and ran toward his horse. “Daria is going to flay me alive,” he muttered, jumping into the stirrup and immediately urging the horse into a gallop in one fluid motion. The Les Baux knights were directly behind him. They rode hard, leaning down behind their horses' necks, praying they would not slip on the slick cobblestones.

 
“TELL me, old woman,” Abramo said, nearing her. The night was falling fast, deliciously fast, and it was cold with the wind off the water. “Do you feel the chill?”

“I know you,” she said, turning a half step behind him as he circled her like a cat playing with a mouse. “The man with the cardinal. We have no quarrel.”

“I beg to differ,” he said with a smile, smelling her fear-filled lie. “Our quarrel is vast. But alas, I cannot even tarry to begin our conversation. I must silence your tongue now, this night.”

“Why? Why me?”

“You know why it is I hunt you,” he said, stopping at last. “You are one of them. My enemy.” He glanced up. There was a hint of rain upon the wind, and fast-building clouds. A storm?

“Now I know why it is that I have these words for you . . . ‘The Lord rebuke you, Satan!' ”

She stepped forward as he fell back from her words. “ ‘I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. I have given you authority to trample on snakes and scorpions and to overcome all the power of the enemy.' ” She paused and looked upward. “Nothing shall harm me.”

He turned away, running into the wall as if thrown, and then slowly faced her, hate racing through his body, his fingertips itching to grab her throat, to rip it apart before she uttered but one more word . . . he would show her harm! She would
know
harm!

“God's remnant shall be pulled from exile to carry out his mission. If I am a part of that mission, so be it. If I am not, if you succeed in killing me this night, I shall die praying for those who will. You, newcomer,
shall not be victorious
.”

He rose, eager to watch her die. He took a step forward, but the sound of a sword striking another drew his attention down the narrow street.

Hasani passed Ciro, who now battled the one named Ugo, and was heading straight for Abramo, his curved blade high in the air.

The Gifted had arrived. Why had his master not warned him?

Abramo turned, saw the old woman stumbling away, already eight paces ahead, moving faster than he expected her age or blindness would allow. He must reach her, kill her, then disappear. He leaned down and, using the toehold of a cobblestone, set off after the woman, his left hand on the powder that would help him disappear, his right on the blade of his dagger.

He pulled the dagger from beneath the fold of his overcoat, lifted it over his right shoulder, taking aim, when a lightning bolt came down from the sky, blowing him backward down a tiny alleyway. He paused a moment on the ground, momentarily stunned, dimly hearing the scream of Hasani's horse, the sound of a girl's cry.

Abramo shook his head and rose, trying to see after the blinding flash of light. Ciro was still out there, fighting Ugo. There were only two men, the knight and the slave, and the girl was here! They had to take them, lay hold of the child and kill the woman.

He rose. It was time.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

HASANI leaped back to his feet, turning only briefly to make sure that Tessa moved. She was crying, but she was moving, rising from the cobblestones. The lightning had startled his horse, sending them both to the ground. He reached for his great, curved sword from the stones and advanced upon the alleyway, now deep with shadow, where he was sure Abramo Amidei had disappeared.

The old woman had paused down the street, hunched over as if defending herself, ten paces away. He grunted to Tessa, pointing toward the woman with his chin. The girl set off down the street, still crying in fear. “He is in there, Hasani,” she whispered through her tears, edging past, keeping Hasani between her and the alley. “He is in there! He yet lives!”

Hasani knew it already. He could feel the chill of the alley, in a way that went beyond a normal city's stone cold feel. The dark was here. He let his eyes slide to the right, where Ciro battled with Ugo and where Gaspare still was on his knees, his arms stretched out to heaven in prayer. It was he who had asked for the lightning bolt, and their God had answered.

It was here he might find retribution, might find the moment to end his enemy's life. Hasani would make Abramo Amidei think about each stripe his whip had laid into Hasani's back, every punishing blow that Daria and Ambrogio and Nico had taken, before he killed him and turned toward Ciro . . .

Abramo was upon him, stronger than he expected, pushing him back, nearly taking him down. Hasani grimaced, chastising himself. He had been distracted by thoughts of revenge rather than the task at hand. He narrowly blocked a blow of Abramo's sword, stopping it just short of his neck, and then pushed away, just before the Sorcerer's dagger thrust would have pierced his belly.

Abramo advanced, his eyes piercing Hasani. “I should have killed you on the isle.” He circled him. “I should have watched as Ciro flayed every last bit of your skin from your back.” He smiled. “Yes, Hasani. Hate me. Hate me. It shall feed you. Feed you.”

Was there a deeper shadow behind Abramo? It was suddenly so cold . . . as if snow were on the wind!

Hasani raised his sword and sliced downward and then circled and brought it down again in the other direction. Both times, Abramo narrowly avoided the blade.

“Was it you who foresaw this night? Do you fancy yourself an avenging angel, come to save an old woman?”

Hasani thrust forward, bending low on his forward knee. His sword hit something beneath Abramo's clothes, something that made the Sorcerer wince but kept it from driving inward. He whirled and wrapped his cape around Hasani's sword, sending it with a flick down the road toward the woman and child. He advanced on Hasani, his sword poised to strike, speaking as he stepped toward him. “Did you really think that you, a slave, could amount to anything? Did you think you could save the woman? I shall kill you, kill the woman, and take my time with the child. I like her fear. And then, then I shall move on to the others.”

Hasani thought about his drawings. Why he and Vito and Ugo and Gaspare were not in that scene with Ciro and Abramo and Daria and Gianni.

Is this where it ended? Here? When they had just arrived in Avignon?

He gripped a dagger at his belt, behind him, slowly easing it from its perch and into his fist. He only needed to wait for the right moment . . .

The sound of horse hooves upon the cobblestones grew louder in their ears. From the shadows came three men on horseback, one bearing the flag of Les Baux. The flag fell to the ground as the knights all drew their swords, roaring their disapproval in a move designed to invoke terror in their enemies. One paused beside Ciro and Ugo to help take the hulking knight down, but the other two tore down the street toward Hasani and Abramo, with Vito in the lead.

“So you live to die another day,” Amidei whispered to Hasani.

And with that, he stood straight, lowered his sword, and disappeared within a small exploding cloud of white.

Hasani threw his dagger, but it bounced off the far building's wall and fell to the ground. He looked to his left and saw that the woman and Tessa were well, Tessa lifting his heavy sword from the ground with everything she had in her, then dropping it as she saw Vito coming hard. She grabbed the woman's arm and pulled her to the side, narrowly keeping her from being stomped beneath Vito's horse's hooves. Lucien of Les Baux was right behind him.

Vito pulled the horse to a stop and circled around. “Where is he?”

“He disappeared! And yet he is still near!” Tessa cried. “I can feel him, here. Oh, he is on the move! He is running away!”

“Ciro is gone as well!” cried Ugo from up the street, throwing up his hand and sword in dismay and frustration.

Hasani took his sword from Tessa, then lifted her up toward Vito. He immediately turned, as if guarding them from the night. But the street was utterly still. No doubt city dwellers hovered behind their shutters, not daring to open them, but still watching their every move through the cracks.

Vito deposited Tessa safely behind him. “I beg you, lady,” he said to the old woman, “take the knight's hand that is reaching toward you. We are here to bring you aid, not harm.”

Tentatively, the old woman reached upward. In a quick move, Lucien had her settled behind him. “Who is this nobleman? Why does he menace us?” the woman asked.

“An enemy of old,” Vito said. “He knew you as one of ours, and therefore wished to kill you before we reached you.”