Suicide Kings (5 page)

Walking through the door of the Romancier she nearly lost her resolve. It was dark and smelled of alcohol, anger, and urine. She started for a moment, her lungs trying to find breathable air, her eyes blinking out the sting. After a moment she pressed on, stairs visible through the dim light. To her right she perceived a long wooden table with a stack of liquor behind it. A balding man eyed her quietly from behind the stand. There were other men in the room; quiet, unsavory, emitting that stench of failure, resentment, and lust which made the Romancier seem like the first port of stop on an oceanic tour of Hell.

She ignored them, forged ahead. Their ungodly desires would be stoked by her physical features, which were fairer than any of this lot might hope to touch. Yet men such as these feared a woman of power, and she needed to be that woman. She must have succeeded for she reached the stairs and ascended them without molestation, without so much as a comment.

At the top of the stairs she exhaled, realizing only then she had held her breath. She found the door Siobhan had directed her to. With shaking hands she pulled a metal barrette from her hair and used it to disengage the unsophisticated lock that held the door.

The room beyond was small and poorly adorned. It was a corner room with two windows, a small bed with straw mattress, a small desk and a plain wooden armoire. Closing the door, Diana went to the window and found Siobhan waiting below. Using the rope to let her up proved to be easier said than done. Siobhan might not have been a big girl, but she had fifteen pounds on Diana, and there was no piece of furniture to which to tie the rope. Ultimately the door latch had to do, and a moment later a huffing Siobhan tumbled into the small room.

“Doesn’t exactly travel in the highest of fashion, does he?” Diana remarked, looking around.

“Oh I don’t know. I’ve had worse. Not everyone needs satyrs and nymphs cavorting on the ceiling above them to sleep at night.”

“All right, look around for…I don’t know, evidence.” A thorough search of the room wouldn’t take terribly long. Diana opened the armoire and was greeted by the aroma of clothes long past agreeableness. She pinched her nose. “Is bathing truly so expensive that the poor can so ill afford it?”

Siobhan giggled. “It is said that bathing too regularly may bring upon malevolent humors. If I may say so, it may be of some value to you, lady, to see some of the world beyond Firenze. Try Roma; the whole city stinks. People follow around the pope in hopes that a few puffs of his perfumed grace might alight on themselves.”

“Let’s not mix our burglary with blasphemy. One sin at a time.” A quick look through the wardrobe revealed nothing. She didn’t have the heart of desperation yet to go through the clothes that hung there.

“Here, under the bed!” Siobhan called with excitement. She withdrew a small wooden box. “It’s locked. I could try to jig the lock.”

“Wait!” Diana ordered, a horrid thought crossing her mind. She hefted the box. It was not terribly heavy and as she shifted it, she could feel small objects within sliding back and forth. Coins, she guessed, not terribly many in number. She peered at the lock. Small, intricate, more complex than the box itself. “The lock might contain a trap of some sort.”

“Do you think so?” Siobhan sounded dubious. “In that little box? If this man is poor as you say there would be no way he could afford such a lock.”

Diana squinted, trying to see inside the dark keyhole from underneath. “Perhaps I’ve misjudged the man in my initial impression.”

“We could always smash the box.”

Diana chewed softly on the inside of her cheek. “There will be no hope then of our mission going undiscovered.”

“How long do you think that’s going to last anyway?”

Diana put the box down, thinking. “Is there anything else of value in this room?”

Siobhan shook her head. “Dirty clothes, half eaten food, unmade bed. Maybe he’s got some hidey spot full of clues, but it could take us hours, or never, to find it.”

Just the box then. It was all they had. Diana tapped a front tooth with one polished fingernail. With a sigh, she slid the box back under the bed.

Siobhan was aghast. “Are you daft? That’s the only thing of value we’ve found!”

Diana looked up at her. “I won’t have you risk a possibly trapped lock. If we take it and we’re caught, we’ll be thieves. I’ll get a lecture; you’ll be hanged. I won’t take that chance.”

Siobhan blinked, apparently experiencing a rare speechless moment.

In the silence, footsteps were audible outside in the hall. Diana met Siobhan’s wide eyes. Without a word between them, they simultaneously darted into the small armoire and hid within. Diana took only enough time to slip the ornate pistol from her bag. Together, they were cramped, pushed up together like two rabbits in a warren. The smell of Mancini’s clothing seemed to rob the air of whatever sustained life. From the crack between the two doors of the clothespress they could peer out at a sliver of the room beyond, but they had to take turns doing so.

A key turned in the lock and the door opened. A man walked in. Through the crack in the wardrobe, Diana could see he was short in stature, but with considerable musculature and a round belly. Perhaps forty-five years of age were past him, balding with the remains of his hairline shaved close. His clothes were rough-hewn, nondescript. He wouldn’t have warranted a second glance under normal circumstances. Now she noticed a certain grace and certainty in his movements. He looked like nothing better than a farmhand, but underneath lingered something more.

He removed a tan overcoat with a tired sigh and burped. He plunked down on the bed and began removing his boots.

“Oh damn,” Diana whispered.

“What’s going on?” Siobhan hissed. “I can’t see.”

Diana shook her head wordlessly. She couldn’t see as well now that the man, who surely must be Mancini, remained at the edge of the room. A moment later she heard the unmistakable sound of a body stretching out on a mattress. Mancini let out a guttural sound as he relaxed. Mere seconds later, the snoring began.

Diana pursed her lips, resting her head against the arm holding her pistol. A part of her wanted to laugh.

“He’s sleeping, isn’t he?” Siobhan whispered.

Diana nodded. “What kind of sinister assassin needs a late morning nap?”

“I hope he’s a heavy sleeper.”

Diana looked at her. “All right, we need to change plans.”

Siobhan visibly swallowed. “You’re going to shoot him, aren’t you?”

Diana only gave her a hard look. As quietly as she could, she pushed open the armoire door and stepped out into the room. She leveled the pistol at the sleeping man’s chest, stepping aside enough that Siobhan could exit.

The man lay still on his bed, snoring softly. His round stomach was like a summit rising over the plateau of the bed. Diana figured this particular assassin was no stranger to the pleasures of the dinner table.

“Giuseppe Mancini,” she called, her voice firm and commanding. The man on the bed snorted and waved one arm absently, as if flicking away a fly. He did not wake. Diana gave Siobhan an incredulous look. “Giuseppe Mancini, wake up!” She kicked the bed.

The round man on the bed started, and pushed up onto his elbows, looking back and forth at the two women like they were unfathomable creatures. “Who by God are you?” he huffed at last.

Diana held the pistol higher, to emphasize the danger. She had one hand underneath the barrel, for it was too heavy to hold with a single hand. “My name is Diana Savrano. You murdered my mother. I want to know why.”

The man squinted at her, breathed heavily in and out for a moment, then shifted his gaze to Siobhan. “Who are you then?”

“I’m just the help,” Siobhan answered after a moment’s reflection.

He looked back to Diana. “You don’t know what you’re talking about, girl.”

“You were seen and recognized. A woman, cloistered, in her forties. She told me who you were and what would have brought you to Firenze.”

“Is that right?” he replied, as his brows knitted. “Where is this woman? Why doesn’t she accuse me directly?”

“Because after she told me about you, you threw her from the dome of St. Zenobius.”

A look passed across the man’s face, his left eye twitching slightly. “If what you say is true, you’ve found yourself more trouble than you can handle. I didn’t throw any woman off the dome, and I didn’t murder your mother. Now, put that toy away before one of us comes to harm.” He sat straighter, began to push his mass to the edge of the bed.

Diana leaned in toward him with the pistol. “One more movement and I’ll blow a hole in your gut wide enough to put a fist through.” Her lips quivered as she said it. A part of her hoped he would give her reason to do just that. He stared at her, almost certainly taking her measure. With him watching she told him, “I am a lady of Firenze. What status do you have? Barely more than a slave. If I kill you now, who would care?”

“You might be surprised,” he growled. He made no more moves to get up from the bed, however. “What would you have of me?”

“The truth,” Diana barked. “Who paid you to kill my mother?”

“I told you the truth. I did not kill your mother.” He held one hand over his head, leaning away as she threatened him with the pistol once more. “Listen, listen…it is true that I was hired to kill your mother.”

Diana felt a flood of emotion at those words, rage, sadness, disgust. More than anything she felt as if she’d been struck. She could not fathom that anyone would want her mother murdered. “Why? Why would someone wish this on my mother?”

“I don’t know,” he answered.

“That’s not good enough!” she hissed, gripping the pistol with knuckles white as bone.

“I don’t know!” he insisted. “I don’t ask for such details. I work through an anonymous agent in Milano. I receive a name and an initial sum of money. Once my victim is done, I receive a second sum of money. All communications occur through a secret drop spot. I never know who hired me, nor who works as the go-between. Only the victim.”

Diana looked over at Siobhan, who stood unmoving and tight lipped. “What’s in the box under your bed?”

His eyes narrowed. “Just a few personal possessions I keep safe from thieves.”

“Where’s the key?”

“Are you going to rob me now too?” he cried, sounding indignant.

“Give me the key, or robbery will be the least of your concerns.”

He motioned with one hand toward the table. “It’s in my shirt pocket, over there.”

Siobhan found the key and a moment later had the little box open. “A handful of copper pennies, several silver coins and at least seven florins.” She whistled. “That’s probably more than I’d make in half a year, unless we were to renegotiate the terms of my employment given some unexpected duties.”

“Anything else?” Diana asked, her eyes never taken off Mancini.

“There’s a small stiletto dagger. Well, this is interesting. He’s got a locket on a chain with what looks like a bit of human hair in it.”

Mancini’s face remained etched in stone through Siobhan’s recitation.

Diana thought of the parchment in her mother’s writing. She hated to think of her mother lying with this wretched pig, but there was no denying that the note might have referenced an affair. “Is the hair in the locket black?”

“No, looks blonde to me.”

Diana was oddly disappointed. The box had given them nothing of value. Certainly he carried more money than most travelers would, confirming he must be up to no good. Aside from substantiating the basics of the nun’s story, as much as she was concerned, they had learned nothing. Diana remained quiet for a moment, balancing indecision and frustration. At last she raised the pistol to eye level, taking careful aim at Mancini’s crotch. “I’ll give you one more chance to tell me why you killed my mother.”

Sweat poured down off his nearly bald head. “I told you that it was true I was hired to kill your mother. But I did not complete the assignment. I swear by the Virgin Mary herself that I never did anything to harm your mother.”

Diana held her breath. The man seemed sincere…a sincerity brought on by terror. Still she didn’t trust him; what he said made no sense. “I don’t understand. You said you were hired to kill my mother, and now she is dead.”

“Lady Savrano, I came to Firenze to kill your mother. But I swear to you, when I arrived, I had no chance to complete my mission. She was already dead.”

Chapter Four

The Anchoress

Diana felt like Mancini had smacked her in the face. Had her mother died of marsh fever after all, or did he insinuate that someone else had killed her? She detected no hint of deception in his voice; indeed her instinct told her to believe him. Nonetheless to him she hissed, “I don’t believe you.”

He must have detected the note of danger in her voice, for his eyes grew wide and he looked to Siobhan beseechingly. He sat forward, arms outstretched in a desperate gesture. “I swear, good ladies, that I am telling the truth!” Then his expression turned, his look of fear hardening to determination. They’d gotten distracted by his pleas. He’d been allowed to move forward on the bed until he could push himself up. He did this now, standing and launching himself at Diana.

Diana wasn’t having it. She steadied the pistol in front of her just as Mancini engulfed her with his corpulent form. At the last moment she couldn’t help but blink. Instinctive fear and uncertainty about what the gun might do—about whether she had even loaded it right—gripped her. She turned her face away from the barrel, squeezing her eyes. Only then did she pull the trigger.

The entire room seemed to be pulled apart by the ensuing blast. The explosion was as loud as an angry god. The pistol bucked in her hands, but she managed to keep her hold on it. She didn’t realize she had lost her balance until she fell against the far wall and put one hand against it to keep from going down on her rump. Finally she opened her eyes, but this did little good for the room was thick with foul smelling smoke. She could see nothing, but at least Mancini had not landed on her. Her ears rang furiously and hurt, although the worst of the pain quickly subsided.