Hovering off to one side, the manservant bowed respectfully. “Yes, sir.”
“Has there been any word from Drey?”
“No, sir. I’ve people waiting on the docks for him but he’s well skilled at avoiding detection when he wants to.”
Luca frowned. “Has there been any word to suggest that he might want to?”
“None as of yet. The mission was a success and word is that the Huntsman evaded all attempts to capture him, both magical and otherwise.” Piero brows drew down. “He made an interesting choice marking Johanni Gagio,” he noted.
“A curious choice,” Luca amended. “Obviously the duc of Cerchicava was the most attractive candidate, but Drey may not have had the opportunity to mark him properly. Gagio’s death creates political ramifications a little closer to home than one of the other ducs might have done, but nothing that can’t be dealt with.” He carefully slit the piece of human intestine on the table before staring pensively down at its interior. “There’s a reasoning at work here, but whether it’s the Huntsman’s, Drey Orcicci’s, or Domito Preto’s is still unclear; he always was a complex child.” He turned, his eyes burning a deep, dark red. “But regardless, I want an answer, Piero. Find him before I lose patience with the question.”
“Yes, sir.”
The manservant bowed and withdrew, his tone of voice conveying his opinion of Drey’s reasoning as plainly as if he’d spoken it aloud. He’d always believed that Drey was too complex to be trusted. Trading on their years together to deflect his master’s displeasure, he’d said as much when Luca had taken the half-starved Cerchicavan orphan into his employ and later into his family; then again when he’d set a crossbow into his hands and sent him out to act as the trade’s clandestine enforcer and executioner. He was brilliant but rash, ruthless but sentimental, too ambitious to act in secret and too young to act independently. No good would come of giving him so much power so soon.
Luca had told Piero to be patient, that the boy would season. He was a calculated risk that would pay high dividends in the future, and in the meantime, he wore one of the strongest binding spells possible. They were secure. Period.
This had mollified the manservant for a time. Piero had held one of the first binding spells on Luca himself in the early days of Luca’s apprenticeship. At Montefero de Sepori’s command, Piero had taught him everything he knew of the necromantic arts, changing him from a defrocked and condemned churchman to a highly skilled Death Mage in under seven years. When Sepori was finally taken down by the duc of Cerchicava and a young ex-cutter named Coll Svedali, Piero had escaped and fled to Riamo. Now he wore Luca’s binding spell and was perhaps the only living man the Death Mage trusted, besides his son Drey.
But there were limits to both.
Eyes flashing a brilliant crimson, Luca spoke the words of a dual questing spell, then straightened with a nod as the piece of intestine turned first black and then gray before crumbling into ash. Drey was alive and Piero had not conspired to waylay him. So why hadn’t he returned home?
The next day the city was abuzz with the news that the Huntsman had struck again, this time in Riamo itself. The body of Anthony Spoleto, a wool merchant and owner of several warehouses in the harbor district, had been found wedged under a dock just before dawn with the assassin’s signature crossbow quarrel buried between his shoulder blades. An hour later another body, that of Ciuto Farnese, owner of one of Riamo’s midsize mills, was pulled from the Ardechi River, again pierced from behind with a crossbow quarrel. By the time the Huntsman’s third victim, Ferrante Ascanio, a banker for the city’s Spice Merchants’ Guild, was discovered stuffed into a packing crate not a hundred yards from where Ciuto had lain, the quarrel so deeply embedded in his back that it could hardly be seen, the city was in hysterics.
Bowing to the pressure of his council, the duc closed the harbors and sent his own Court Mages in to try and discern the Huntsman’s identity through any trace magics on the quarrels. Despite their best efforts, they failed to discover anything about him. Rumors began to fly that he was protected by a deeper, darker magic than the Court Mages had access to and, for the first time, the word necromancy began to be heard in taverns and alehouses across the city.
His face set in a grim line, Luca sent Piero to obtain components from each corpse, and standing over the three carefully collected squares of organ meat on his table, he threw a handful of dried belladonna over them and shouted out a single word. The accompanying flash of fire told Luca all he needed to know.
“It’s Drey. And he’s blocking me.”
Piero knew better than to ask why.
They received a less than satisfactory answer that afternoon. A grubby child, wearing a simple coercion spell activated by the coin in his fist that had passed through three others before coming to him, brought a message shortly before dinner. Luca read the missive silently, then handed it to Piero, who peered down at it suspiciously.
Dear Father. Negotiations in Cerchicava have become somewhat more complicated than I had anticipated but I expect to be home in time for His Grace’s funeral. Your loving son, Domito. The manservant gave an unimpressed sniff. “He cocked up the duc’s death somehow and now he’s afraid to come home.”
“Possibly.” Retrieving the missive, Luca’s eyes flashed red for an instant and a series of fine, scarlet lines appeared scrawled across the paper before disappearing once again.
It’s nothing, I’ll fix it, he read. “You’re right, something’s happened.” Crossing to the window, he stared out at the sky, watching as the sun slowly disappeared behind the turreted roofline of the ducal palazzo. “Nothing too serious apparently and fixable before Johanni Gagio’s funeral.”
“Word is that may be as soon as three days from now. The five ducs are already on their way.”
“Three days then.” Luca’s eyes narrowed. “He wasn’t identified,” he mused, “or we’d have heard.”
“Every city along the Ardechi would have heard.”
“Yes. The Huntsman’s notorious. Every rumor, every speculation about him, is savored like a midwinter banquet. So he wasn’t identified, and he wasn’t injured-the writing would have revealed that by a darker color and a thicker line-and he wasn’t captured, or he wouldn’t have been able to set a cipher on his message or a coercion on his messenger.”
“Or mark three Riamo merchants,” Piero added.
Luca shot him a flat expression. “One puzzle at a time, if you don’t mind,” he spat.
“Your pardon, sir.”
“He’s in the city,” Luca continued. “But he either can’t or won’t come home.”
“A locate spell on the message itself should reveal where he was when he wrote it.”
“Yes, and I’ll leave that to you presently. He won’t have lingered but it will give us a place to start looking. He’ll know that and may have left another message.”
“So he’s going to lead us on some little treasure hunt?” Piero asked in an indignant tone.
“It seems so, and you can make your displeasure known to him later. For the moment, however, follow his trail of bread crumbs and find out what he cocked up.”
“Excuse me for saying so, sir, but you could just execute a full-out locate and coercion spell on the boy himself,” Piero said carefully.
“I could, and I may, but for now, you will carry out my commands.”
Piero bowed at once. “Yes, Master.”
The locate spell on the missive led to the site of Anthony Spoleto’s murder but no farther. With a dark expression, Luca opened a small iron cask and removed a wax-sealed ceramic jar containing the preserved flesh of a Cerchicavan priest long dead. The priest had been in charge of the Svedali Innocenti Foundling Home where Drey had spent the first six years of his life. Luca had obtained the flesh just after he’d taken the boy in and had used it only once, when he’d given Drey the name Orcicci and taken his oaths as master and father. Under such circumstances, the flesh would serve as the catalyst for a powerful locate and coercion spell that would see the Huntsman forced into Luca’s presence despite all obstacles in his path.