The Mongoliad: Book Two (The Foreworld Saga) (39 page)

“Lian—” he started.

She shook her head, refusing to listen to him, and leaped up. Clutching the bag, she rushed out of the ring of torches. Gansukh got to his feet, meaning to follow her.
To what end?
The thought made him indecisive, and he staggered slightly as he tried to sit back down and go after Lian at the same time.

“The horse rider has had too much to drink already.”

Munokhoi and a pair of
Torguud
guards had come up behind him. He hadn’t seen them coming, and he held his tongue, unsure how much of the conversation with Lian they had seen. Munokhoi came too close to Gansukh, a leer stretching his face. “Your pretty bird has flown,” he chuckled. His breath stank of
arkhi
, and his eyes were black holes that seemed to suck the torchlight into them. “If she flies too far away, the giant bear won’t be the only thing we
hunt.” He glanced at his companions and laughed with them. “What soft skin she has...”

Gansukh stood firm on the sandy ground. Before he had come to court, his reaction to Munokhoi’s words would have been physical. He would have drawn his knife and demanded the other man do the same. But after all the lessons with Lian, he knew that was the reaction of a wild animal—one wolf responding to another. Munokhoi had come looking for a fight; why give him that satisfaction? Did he not have better weapons at his disposal now?

I am a better man because of her
, he realized, and the dead thing in his heart started fluttering again.

“There are no walls out here,
city boy
,” he said with a hint of a smile. “How are you going to catch something that can fly out of the range of your Chinese toys?”

Munokhoi jabbed Gansukh in the chest with a stiff finger. “You know nothing about—” he growled.

“Captain Munokhoi.” One of his companions interrupted Munokhoi, and when he whirled on the man, the guard redirected his anger with a gesture.

A guard was running toward them. “Captain Munokhoi,” he shouted, scattering a trio of concubines and a minor ambassador as he dashed across their carpet. “The patrols are late, and horses—without riders—”

Munokhoi didn’t wait for the man to finish. He shoved Gansukh aside and sprinted toward the main table. “The
Khagan
,” he screamed. “We are under attack. Protect the
Khagan
!” His
Torguud
guards drew their swords and followed, shoving their way through the suddenly panicked crowd.

Gansukh hesitated, torn between his duty and what was caught in his heart.
Lian...

“E
VEN BY YOUR
standards, that is rather childish, don’t you think?” There was an impish gleam in Colonna’s eyes that belied his tone.

After the messengers had left their impromptu conclave, the cardinals had dispersed as well, not wishing their meeting to be stumbled upon by the others. He and Capocci had intended to lead the girl and the young man back to Fieschi’s secret entrance, and once they had passed the Old Scar—the name Capocci had given to the savage break in the foundation of the ancient temple in which they were housed—the roughly hewn cardinal had taken his leave.
I have souls to rescue
, he had said as he vanished into the dark tunnels.
These two, I leave in your care.

Once the messengers had departed the confines of the Septizodium tunnels, shutting the secret panel and sealing Colonna in darkness once more, he had returned to the haunts of the captive cardinals. Capocci had not been that hard to find; Colonna suspected he knew what the other man was up to.

Capocci was seated in a dusty antechamber, a narrow room with tall arched doorways. Of the four thresholds, three were filled with rubble, hiding whatever grand hall this chamber abutted, and the fourth led back to the rest of the areas more commonly used by the
cardinals. A pair of small lanterns kept the seated cardinal company, along with a few other objects.

The heavily bearded cardinal glanced up when he heard Colonna’s voice. “Most children know better than to play with poisonous insects.” His beard seemed to flap like a bird’s wing as he smiled. Something small squirmed in his leather-clad grip, and he dropped it into a clay jar sitting on the floor in front of him. “You may be right, however. This new hobby may qualify as infantile behavior, but for something so infantile, I must say I’m pretty good at it.” His smile broadened, his bearded wings lifting. “Want to try it?” He gestured to a wooden box beside him; out of the tiny airholes in the top came the furtive scratching of half a dozen furious scorpions, clawing and crawling over one another. “There is another glove.” A heavy leather gauntlet, left-handed, lay on the floor beside the box.

Colonna shook his head as he lowered himself to the floor. He leaned back against the wall of the dusty chamber. “I rest content merely abetting your follies, without actually participating.”

“Follies!” Capocci cried out in mock outrage. “I do not consider this a folly! In a den of vipers, it is a marvelous thing to have all possible tricks up one’s sleeve.” He slid open the lid of the box—just enough—and thrust his hand inside. After a moment of concentrated groping, he grinned with satisfaction and drew his hand out. Quickly, in a motion that ran counter to his air of relaxed insouciance, his bare left hand slid the lid home again.

Pinched between his right thumb and forefinger, an angry scorpion wriggled. “Hello, my little angel of death,” Capocci cooed. “I am the great and powerful Cardinal Capocci, and I offer you a chance at redemption. Will you mend your ways and become a harmless plaything? Will you cast off your poison and be born again in the name of Christ? What’s that?” He lowered his head and nodded as if he understood the clicks and snaps of the scorpion’s pincers—the secret language of arachnids. “Yes, you say? Oh, blessed by the Lord
on high! Well then, let me assist you in your
resurrection
.” Adjusting his grip on the squirming scorpion, Capocci reached for the stinger with his bare left hand. “This won’t hurt a bit, my innocent child.”

Colonna, despite himself, leaned closer to watch. This was not the first time he had seen Capocci perform this trick, and as much as he pretended otherwise, he could not help but be fascinated by what came next.

With a magnificent finesse of movement that one would have not thought possible in a man with such thick and rough fingers, Capocci expertly gripped the stinger—at the base of the last of the six segments that made up the tail—and gave it a quick, firm jerk. Though he knew it was a fanciful notion, Colonna imagined he could hear a yowl of outrage from the scorpion as it was parted from its deadly weapon.

Capocci held up the tiny dagger, squinting at it for a moment in the dim light of the lanterns, and then he smiled at Colonna. “Sing Hosanna,” he told the scorpion and dropped this one too into the clay pot.

“Are they well away?” he asked Colonna, referring not to the scorpions but to the others most recently in their care.

Colonna nodded. “They are.”

Capocci sighed. “What do you think of Robert’s plan, then?”

“As good as any. Naught will come of it, I fear. Or at the worst, we will emerge from this purgatory to find a city filled with corpses—Orsini and Frederick having killed themselves and everyone else in their frenzy to keep us
safe
. What sort of world will we thrust the next Bishop of Rome into?”

“God only knows, my dear Giovanni,” Capocci sighed. “God only knows.”

“Speaking of God, He will forgive me—I hope—when I say this, but I like your idea of dropping them on Fieschi in his sleep.” Colonna leaned forward to peer into the clay jar. “Though, I am not
sure the fellow ever actually does sleep. He’s out most nights—all night—at Orsini’s, and he has never, to my watchful eye, dozed off once during the daylight hours.”

“De Segni, then,” Capocci said offhandedly. “Or Bonaventura!”

Colonna grinned. “A marvelous choice. The good man will shit himself, probably in front of us. Ho, he will surely lose some votes that way.” He laughed until a thought struck him. “Or when they appear to sting him, and then he doesn’t die, Fieschi will use that to imply Bonaventura is some sort of holy man.”

“Ah, excellent point. That sort of foolishness would clinch the election. Some of the others are rather prone to such superstitious nonsense.” Capocci deftly retrieved another scorpion. “In that case, perhaps we suggest to Somercotes that he use them on Castiglione, to the same end.”

Colonna shook his head ruefully. “Fieschi is well practiced in law and rhetoric, remember? He will use this as the basis for an argument that Castiglione is an agent of the Devil, as is clearly demonstrated by his unnatural affinity to the demonic sort of creatures that scorpions are.”

“That’s true,” Capocci sighed. He plucked the stinger from the scorpion, then dropped the angered arachnid into the clay jar and flicked the now useless stinger into the room’s far shadows. “Let’s just throw them on Fieschi anyway. For the fun of it. God will forgive us this infantile transgression, don’t you think?”

Colonna leaned his head back against the cool stone wall. “I would think so, my friend. He has had little enough to say these past years about an endless parade of monstrous cruelties.”

* * *

The chaos in the marketplace at the Porta Tiburtina confirmed Ocyrhoe’s fears. Wagons were lined up for the gate, but none of them
would be moving anytime soon. A dense mob swirled and surged around the wagons like surf raging upon broken rocks. Ocyrhoe spotted a lanky thief boldly lifting a crate of fruit off the back of a sagging wagon, then darting away with his prize—no one the wiser. Most of the merchants had already packed up their stalls, even the farmers who wouldn’t be able to get out of the city until the guards decided to start letting people through. It was better to have their wares and goods safely stowed than stolen or ruined in the crush.

A line of guards, pole-axes lowered and wavering in the general direction of the mob, like the rippling ridge of hairs on the back of a nervous caterpillar, stood fast before the gate. More than a few looked distinctly unhappy—nervous, fearful. They didn’t know how long they were supposed to stand there or under what circumstances they could begin allowing people to pass through the gate.

Once Ocyrhoe realized she and Ferenc couldn’t simply walk out of the city, she examined the mob and the guards more carefully, listening and looking for some opening, a gap, a weakness through which they might pass.
Not out. Not through...ah, yes...

“We can use this,” she signed to Ferenc, dragging him away from the edge of the mob. They slipped into the back alleys, winding ever closer to the wall of Rome itself. Gradually, the district became more and more residential, more quiet and deserted, but the guards who might otherwise have been patrolling were absent—no doubt called to the gate as reinforcements against the riot that would eventually erupt. Whatever had stricken the marketplace near the Coliseum would sweep through the crowd at the gate, sooner rather than later. Judging by the number of guards and their somewhat fearful presentation, they were well aware of the oncoming storm.

Eventually, she found what she was looking for—the wall itself. Maybe three stories high, the wall around Rome had been built to keep people out, not in. In some places, it was possible to clamber to the top by way of dirt that had been piled against the inner side.
They weren’t so lucky here, and they didn’t have the time to find such an easy method of escape. The wall was made of rough volcanic rock, knotted and twisted with all manner of hand and toeholds. It shouldn’t be too hard to climb—as long as they weren’t seen.

Ferenc said something to her in his tongue, but she shook her head and pantomimed climbing the wall. When he still hesitated, she shoved him at the wall, and he finally relented. He grabbed at several knobs, lifting himself up easily, and proceeded to climb the wall, as if he had spent many hours in his youth climbing such barriers.
He probably had
, Ocyrhoe thought,
or trees, even
. She hesitated, hand on the nearest knob of rock.
Trees.
She was about to leave Rome, the only home she had ever known. Outside the city was...
outside
. There were no walls, no houses, and no streets. Just forest and swamp and plain and...what else? She held her breath. Was she doing the right thing? Was she ready for this?

“Halt!”

Behind them, a man ran toward them, fumbling to pull his sword out of its scabbard. Ocyrhoe recognized the colors of his garb.
One of the Bear’s men.

She glanced up at Ferenc. He was halfway up, far enough that the guard couldn’t reach him, but not far enough to quickly reach the top. There would be no time to finish the ascent before the guard reached them, and if they were on the wall, they’d both be easy pickings.

Ferenc looked down, and there was an agonized moment when they stared at each other. If she ran, would the guard chase her? Or would he go after Ferenc? What would they do if they split up?

She shook her head. She didn’t know. She hadn’t thought through their plan that far.

“Get down from there!”

The guard was nearly upon them.

* * *

Fieschi pushed the door closed and waited for his eyes to adjust to the darkness. With a hand lightly brushing the wall, he walked carefully into the tunnels. He knew where he had to go and what he had to do; it would not take him long to reach the common areas where the cardinals resided. As his feet retraced the steps he had taken earlier, back toward the room where he had eavesdropped on Somercotes and the others, he banked the remainder of his long-burning frustration with Orsini.
He had reacted too slowly. It would be hours—possibly days, even—before they could be sure the city had been sealed in time.

He had to force the vote. He couldn’t wait to find out if Orsini had been successful or not. Besides, even if they were caught, there would be no way to know to whom in the city they might have spoken. He had to assume the secrets of the Septizodium would not remain secret much longer.