The King's Agent (31 page)

“Battista, I ... I ... needed to ask after my guardian,” she sputtered a confession of sorts, one given uneasily but with true remorse. “He had been unwell for some days before I left and ... and I have a care for him. I owe him much.”

Battista pivoted round, jaw flinching; he gave her a cold eye and pursed mouth.

“Do you love him?”

Her brows flew up her forehead; of all the responses she had imagined, she never expected this.

“No ... I mean, yes. But it is the love of a brother, of a caregiver.”

Battista’s shoulders drooped, but he did not let it rest. “Why did you not tell me?”

She raised her face skyward, wagging it at her own foolishness. “I did not think you would approve. I feared you would think it too dangerous. I—”

He grabbed her by the shoulders and shook. “I trusted you with my life. I took you into my home, and you betrayed me with your secrets.”

Aurelia pushed a hand against his chest, his condemnation only too real to be debated, though he did not know the depth of it. “I would do nothing to hurt you, Battista, ever.” She gave him that truth willingly.

“I want to believe you.” He lowered his puckered brow, his face stripped of anger, wreathed with vulnerability. But as she reached out, he drew away. “I long to believe you.”

He resumed the climb, Aurelia quick on his heels.

“We are united by the desire to help our fellow man. You can be—”

But the words died on her tongue, dried up by a blast of scorching air that battered them as they reached another plateau.

Pushing against it, they turned right, following the path as it narrowed and flattened, as it opened into yet another cavernous room. But this one held them as none before had.

The room burned as if alive with flame; waves and waves of it burst up from the floor and out from the walls, a maze of fire. But at its end, perched somehow safely, a painting, though one too distant for them to tell for certain if it was a part of the triptych, yet how could it be anything else?

Their anger put aside, they stared at the blasts of flame, perspiration bursting on their skin, soaking their clothing. The explosions burst with jarring arrhythmia, only the most meager hint of a path carving its way through the fire.

Battista looked down at her with naught but concern. He held out his hand and she took it gladly.

With the same jerky motion that had brought them along the ledge, they leaped and bounded, held and reversed their way through the flames. Reaching the center of the room, they found a space devoid of all fire, so small an area, they could but stand with their backs pressed against each other, a hair’s breadth from the snatching flames.

In the distant left, they had left the entrance behind; toward the right, the painting waited beyond the remainder of the maze. From this perspective, there was no denying it as part of the triptych. A quick glance revealed it as almost identical to the first, a mirror image of the two women, though the landscape behind them appeared different.

“It must be the left piece!” Battista shouted over the whoosh of the fires.

The truth of it washed over her with a wave of gratitude, and upon the emotion came a painful pinch of guilt.

“I’m sorry, Battista.” She swung round.

“I think I see a pattern,” he said at the same time, turning as well, their bodies pressed against each other once more, their faces no more than inches apart.

But instead of gracious forgiveness, Aurelia found his face contorted with alarm.

He plummeted to his knees, hands beating against her legs, at the flames feeding voraciously upon her skirts. Sparks flew in the air as his hands pummeled the disintegrating material. But the flames ate away the fabric like a ravenous beast, the heat reaching through to her skin, and she groaned in discomfort.

Battista reached back, drew out a dagger—the same dagger she had insisted he pull from the pot—and with savage but precise slashes cut the layers of her skirts away, thrusting the tattered, burning silk from them and into the path of flame. It caught completely, disappearing in seconds in a burst of spark and ash.

As he crouched at her feet, his stroking gaze climbed her lower body, all her curves revealed through the tight-fitting stockings and hose. He straightened slowly, intrusive stare rising with him.

Aurelia could not move, afraid of the penetrating glare and yet enthralled by it.

He met her gaze and broke away from it, not with anger but respect.

Aurelia wiped the sheen of sweat from her face, only to have the hand wrenched away.

“We must away from here. I can stand it no more.”

Battista pulled her along, along the path and through the pattern amidst the flames he had somehow reconnoitered.

They reached the end of the maze, no more than a few feet from the painting, and just beyond it, a closed but obvious portal. The painting seemed to hover in the air, but in truth hung from the thinnest thread hooked to the stone ceiling hundreds of feet above their heads. On the floor between them and the door, another stone slab, one with the same pattern as before. But here there were no pots, nothing to put on the slab to keep it down and the door open.

Battista stepped forward, onto the slab. As expected, the door scraped open. He stepped backward, off the sunken stone. But instead of slamming shut, the door closed slowly, the edges inching together bit by bit. At the moment it closed, a belch of flame darted up from the ground at its threshold. With an almost-comical roll of his eyes tossed to Aurelia, Battista stepped on the stone and off it again, this time counting silently.

“We can make it,” Aurelia said, knowing—with irrefutable certainty—they could.

He smiled at her, nodding. “Indeed, we can. But we will not do it without the painting.” He stepped beside her and pointed. “You run to the right, while I will move to the left. I’ll grab it on the run.”

Aurelia swallowed, throat raw and dry. If he did not snatch it perfectly from its perch, if he moved no more than a hair in the wrong direction, the full force of the bursting flames could scorch both him and the painting.

Battista pushed the strands of sweat-saturated black hair from his face, neck muscles bulging as he breathed two deep cleansing draughts, and stepped onto the square. Aurelia stepped up beside him, just to the right, at an equal launching point.

They shared a look, one potent and full, and turned back, eyes forward on their goal and their exit.

“Go!” Battista shouted.

He stepped off the stone and they took off at a sprint.

Aurelia pumped her arms, her legs.

He outdistanced her, but he needed the time.

The door slithered downward.

With a warrior’s cry, Battista leaped up at the painting, long arm, large hand, reaching out for the unframed but mounted painting. His hand grabbed it, his arm yanked, and the ropelike string snapped like a whip. Battista bounded back, impelled by the opposing force.

“Watch out!” Aurelia screamed, certain he would lose his footing, land on his body now off-kilter with his legs.

Battista growled, pitching his head forward, righting his balance with sheer force of will, landing on his feet, free arm windmilling for stability.

Ten feet away and the door crept lower still, a high window now half-closed.

Aurelia curled her body in anticipation; they would not make it through without ducking.

Battista crouched as he ran, back almost horizontal, head down, face pitched up to see.

Three feet away, the door tumbled to waist level. One more gait, one taken blindly, Aurelia’s head bowed, and she hurtled through, somehow unscathed.

Battista puffed with exertion no more than a step behind.

Aurelia wheeled round, now on the other side. He was too big; even compacted, he would never make it.

“No!” With an anguished cry, she threw out her arms, as if she could pull him through.

With an answering reach, Battista stretched out not only his arms but also his body, as if diving into water, thrusting the painting ahead of him as he hurled himself through the remaining narrow gap.

His body, a projectile, propelled into the space beyond the door, hitting Aurelia as if she were the target.

With startled cries and pain-filled moans, they tumbled together through a small cubby, along a rocky path, and out into the open air.

Twenty

Thence we came forth
to see again the stars.

—Inferno

“
A
re you—?” His voice rumbled into her, through his body lying prostrate at a cross angle atop hers.

“Yes, yes. You?”

“
Sì,
” he panted. His body ached in more places than he could count, his lungs burned, and he could barely breathe for the stitch in his side. “Somehow, yes, all right.”

“The painting?” Aurelia grunted at him, straining to talk beneath the weight of his body.

He rolled off, coming to rest on his back beside her, face turned to the star-brilliant sky and the moon above them. In silence, he raised his right arm sluggishly, fatigue protesting against every movement, and held the wood stretched canvas in the air.

Her body heaved with the sigh of relief.

The laughter bubbled in his belly, rising upward, refusing to be denied. It squelched in his throat till he could stand it no longer.

With the braying of a donkey, he burst into laughter, loud and raucous, of relief and the ridiculous.

Aurelia lifted herself up on her elbow and stared at him. Battista laughed all the harder at her astounded gape, a guffaw now out of control.

She answered then, only a giggle at first, but as she flopped once more onto her back it grew to a chortle and then to a riotous cackle, the high-pitched harmony to his baritone buffoonery.

They laughed until they grew weak—weaker—from it, until it exorcised all the pent-up stress and fear from their bodies, releasing it into the fathomless night and the twinkling stars.

“This is complete madness,” he said; a cat’s purr of laughter still textured his voice.

Aurelia gave a snort, but no argument.

“Life there could not be any stranger than this.” He pointed at the crescent of moon in a caliginous purple sky, no less bright for its partial form.

She giggled again. “I had thought my existence before was bizarre, but this ...”

Battista sat up, though not without a creak of bones and groan of protest, and pulled the painting from its casing. He spread it upon his lap and bent over to squint at it.

Aurelia sat up, leaning into him to get a better look herself.

“It is the other side. There can be no doubt.”

“Agreed.” Aurelia rubbed her forehead. “But there is not enough light to see what it may tell us.”

Battista rolled the thick canvas and tucked it upright into his satchel.

“Help me, Lord,” he grunted as he rose to his feet, holding out a hand to her.

She took it with a smile, pulling as he did, till she stood beside him.

Without thought, he wrapped his arms about her, lowering his tall body to embrace her better.

Aurelia stiffened, but only for the briefest moment, relaxing into his hold, reaching up to put her arms around his neck, resting her cheek against his chest. It was a posture of succor given and received, of forgiveness and shared survival. His honor had brought her with him, a promise given and respected, but he knew he would not have survived this challenge—yet again—without her.

He had no desire to pull away, feeling as if they could fall asleep in their cozy nuzzle.

Until her stomach rumbled noisily.

Battista pulled away, holding her at arm’s length, the bombastic braying threatening to topple out once more.

“I’m hungry,” she said, grinning with no shame.

He laughed at her candor, at her alacritous appetite. “Then let us away, my lady. If I know Frado, he has found whatever game may live in the basin and has it roasting deliciously at this very moment.”

Aurelia stepped away, her arms releasing him slowly, and turned for the narrow path hugging the side of the mountain, all gray in the dim light of the moon.

Rocky crags rose up sporadically along the rim of the trail, creating railings that came and went. Battista eyed the steep path downward with a modicum of relief; the journey to the bottom would pass much quicker than had the one to the top.

“I have a confession.”

Aurelia’s voice came on the wind, and he smiled, not only at the sway of her hips as she led him down the mountain, clearly visible in her tight-fitting clothing, but also at the absence, in his heart, of the anger and mistrust of the past days. It had been a bitter morsel stuck in his craw and he was well pleased to be rid of it.

“I am not sure I am strong enough for another,” he told her with no true concern.

She laughed merrily, doing her best to roll her thick hair into some semblance of a bun and pin it up, revealing her long sweaty, sooty neck. “I know the last few hours have been trying, b—”

“Trying?” Battista roared. “Is that what you call it? I would call it insane, outrageous, monumentally difficu—”

“
Sì, sì,
fine. Perhaps I misspoke. Ouch.” Aurelia tripped on a fist-sized stone in the path, unable to see well as they passed around the dark side of the mountain. “What we survived was extraordinarily difficult, but ...”

“But ...” His voice lilted up with skepticism.

Aurelia swiveled her head round to look at him over her shoulder, smile bouncing as she continued the climb downward. “But I am having the most wonderful time of my life.”

Battista threw back his head and laughed; even in the dark, he could see the green glow of her eyes.

“No, it’s true,” she argued, her smile broad and bright as she shrugged her shoulder up to her chin like a cunning child. “Did you see how fast I ran? I have never r—”

“
Dio mio!
” Battista screamed, lunging forward, but too late.