The Spirit Ring

Chapter Five

From winter to summer was but a two-day walk, Thur noted to himself with contentment. He patted the shoulder of the big brown mule he led for Packmaster Pico. Yesterday morning the pack train had crested the snowy heights of Montefoglia Pass, all barren rocks and treacherous ice and biting, clawing wind. This evening they strolled along a poplar-lined avenue, grateful for the green shade against the glare of the westering sun arcing down into the soft rolling hills. He wriggled his toes in his dusty boots. His feet were warm.

The mule's long furry ears, aflop to each side, rose to attention, and its tired plod quickened. Up ahead, Pico had paused to let down the bars to a pasture gate. He led his pack train within. Judging by their puling, the eight mules were familiar with this stop, though it was all new to Thur.

"Keep them moving to the grove," Pico, pointing to the stand of trees shading one end of the pasture, shouted over his shoulder to his two sons and Thur. "That's where we'll camp. We'll take their packs off first and then turn them loose."

The mule tried to nudge Thur toward the green grass and the little stream, but Thur dutifully dragged it to the grove and tied it to a tree. "You'll be happier to have your pack off first," he told it. "Then you can roll." It waggled its absurd ears at him in disagreement, and snorted through its cream-colored nose, and Thur grinned.

He pulled off its heavy pack, loaded with copper ingots and hides, and the pack of its work mate who followed on a rope, and turned both beasts loose. They thudded away toward the stream, squealing happily. The pasture's only other occupant, a sway-backed, old white horse, regarded the invasion with both interest and suspicion. The look on its long gray face made Thur think of the old scholar, Brother Glarus, presented with a troop of rowdy new students. Thur turned to help Pico's younger boy, Zilio, with his mules' heavy packs, which threatened to crush the lad. Zilio smiled gratefully and sprang about rather like the released mules.

Pico, his sons, and Thur lined up the packs and set the bright striped saddle pads atop upside down to dry and air. The boys began to unload their meager camp gear, and Pico started to build a fire in a charred circle from a handy stack of wood. Thur stared around with interest. On the other side of the road rambled a big two-story stucco house, whitewashed a pastel pink, with outbuildings in a yard behind. The whole was surrounded by a high pink stucco wall with broken glass and rusty nails set in its top frosting of cement, but a wide double wooden gate stood invitingly open to the road.

"You could take a room at the inn if you liked,"

Pico, seeing Thur's gaze, nodded across the road. "If you're tired of sleeping on the ground. Innkeeper Catti's beds are good. But I warn you, he's a great greedy-guts, and charges plenty for his linen. He really prefers prelates to muleteers for customers, when he can get them."

"Will you sleep there?"

"No, I always stay with my beasts and my load, unless it's pouring rain or snowing. He charges me enough for the pasture and the firewood, Tis a good stop, though, and good fodder, and the beasts like it. And with an early start, I can usually push all the way home to Montefoglia by dark, in the summer. Catti's wife sets a good table, on the nights when the rain makes my fire too miserable. She smokes the most excellent hams. Which reminds me, I promised to bring one home to my neighbor who watches my place when I'm away. Don't let me forget, when I go over there to settle my charges."

Thur nodded, dug out his bit of tallow soap, and went to wash his hands and face upstream. The brook was icy, but refreshing, and the evening air so warm he was lured into washing his hair and upper torso, and then, much more quickly, his lower half. Pico's older boy Tich, a gawky fifteen-year-old, came over to watch. Intrigued, he shuffled off his boot and stuck an experimental foot into the brook, then yelled with the cold.

"It's not that bad," Thur said mildly.

Tich hopped in a circle, shaking the drops off. "Mad mountain man!" He stuffed his foot back into his boot.

"The water in the mines is much colder."

"God save me from the mines, then," said Tich fervently. "I'm for the open road. Isn't this the life?" He waved a possessive arm at the encroaching spring evening, as if he owned it all to the horizons. "You should join us, Thur, not shut yourself up in some nasty little dark shop."

Thur shook his head, smiling. "It's the metal, Tich. Hundreds of men labor to get metal like the copper we're carrying into the hands of some fancy smith, and who gets the credit? The artisan, that's who. Besides ...," Thur paused, hesitating to confide his heart's hope to a possibly unsympathetic ear. "I want to learn to make splendid and beautiful things. " Besides, it can't be any darker or more nasty than the mines.

"It's all in what you're used to, I guess," Tich allowed, too amiable to argue.

Pico strolled over to redirect Tich's energy. "Come on, boy, you've got mules to curry."

Thur shrugged his dusty wool tunic and leggings back on. Those must last till he reached Montefoglia, and found a washerwoman. Perhaps he could strike a deal, split firewood or something in exchange. Working his way with Packmaster Pico, Thur had not yet had to tap his little store of coins, and he hoped to make them last as long as possible, so as not to be wholly dependent on the charity of his brother Uri.

He shared his soap with Pico, while Tich attempted to dragoon the ten-year-old Zilio into helping with his assigned chore, and Zilio protested. Their squabbling faded in the distance as Thur and Pico walked across the road to the inn. The men's shadows lay long in front of them, as the sun reached for the rim of the hills to their backs. Thur's stride lengthened. The pink inn seemed poignant with some undefined promise drawing him on. Thur decided it must be his thirst.

He shouldered through the front door after Pico, who called cheerily for Catti. The whitewashed front room was set up with tables on trestles and benches. A few coals glowed in the banked fireplace, ready to ignite a neat stack of wood waiting to be piled on later as the evening cooled. Several promising kegs with taps sat on more trestles against one wall.

Master Catti emerged from the back of the building, wiping his hands on a grimy linen towel. He was a graying man, his waist thickened more with age than living, and he stumped along quickly on short

"Ah, Pico," he greeted the packmaster eagerly. "I saw you come in. Have you heard the news from Montefoglia?" His smile was welcoming, but his eyes looked strained.

Pico, arrested by the hushed tones, dragged his gaze from the kegs to his host. "No, what?"

"Duke Sandrino was assassinated, four days ago!"

"What! How did it come about?" Pico's mouth gaped. Thur's happy warmth washed from his belly in an instant, to be replaced with a cold knot of ice.

Catti rocked on his heels, grimly satisfied with the effect of his gossip. "They say he had some sort of quarrel with the Lord of Losimo at the betrothal banquet for his daughter Julia. Daggers were drawn, and ... the usual followed. A terrible mess, by the accounts I've heard so far from people coming up the road. Lord Ferrante's troops have captured Montefoglia, at least for the moment."

"My God. Have they sacked the town?" asked Pico.

"Not much. They still have their hands full with—"

"My brother is in the Duke's guard," Thur interrupted urgently.

"Ah?" Catti raised his eyebrows. "He's just botched himself out of a job, I'd say." And, a little less tartly, "I hear some of the guards fled with little Lord Ascanio and their wounded behind the walls of Saint Jerome, with the Abbot Monreale."

And some of the guards, presumably, had not. Yet Thur could picture Uri, defending the boy-lord, getting him safe behind the monastery's stones. Being last through the gate, no doubt.

"Ferrante's troops march about and glare at the walls," Catti went on, "but they don't quite dare attack the Brethren. Yet. Ferrante has the Duchess and Lady Julia as hostage, and has sent to Losimo for more troops at the quick-march."

Pico the packman whistled through his teeth. "Bad...! Well, my place lies outside the town, and there's little enough to steal there. Thank the Virgin I brought Zilio with me this trip. I often leave him with my neighbor. I think I'd better lay over a day or two with you, Catti, if I can have your pasture, till we get some hint of how things fall out."

"I should think you'd get a good price down there right now for your metals, from one side or t'other," said Catti. "They'll be wanting armor, weapons, bronze for cannon. ..."

"I'm more likely to have it stolen from me, by one side or the other," said Pico gloomily. "No. 'Twould be better to cut over the hills and go west to Milan. My mules will eat most of my profits in the travel, though." He glanced at Thur. "You're free to go on to Montefoglia if you wish, Thur. To seek news of your brother. Though I'd be sorry to lose your strong back."

"I don't know...." Thur stood stiff with doubt and worry.

"Stay the night," suggested Catti. "Decide in the morning."

"Yes, that would be best," Pico agreed. "There may be better news by then, who knows?" He clapped Thur consolingly on the shoulder, in awkward sympathy.

Thur nodded thanks and reluctant agreement. "Do you still want your ham?" he remembered.

"Not now.... I tell you, though, Catti, if your wife has any of those big smoked sausages, I'll take one. We can toast slices over the fire, tonight and on our way to Milan."

"I think she has a few left from the last pig, hanging in the smokehouse. But—"

"Good. Thur, go pick out one for us, will you? I had better go tell my boys the bad news." Frowning, Pico went back out the door and recrossed the road.

Catti shrugged and led Thur through the inn and across the back yard. Thur readily identified the small shack that was the smokehouse by the aromatic gray haze that seeped out under its eaves and hung promisingly in the still evening air. Thur ducked into the smoky dimness after Catti. Catti bent down and inserted a couple more water-soaked sticks of apple wood into the coals of the fire pit in the center of the dirt floor. The aromatic cloud thus released tickled Thur's nostrils, and he sneezed.

"There's four left," Catti reached up and tapped one of a row of brown, gauze-wrapped cylinders hanging from the blackened rafters, and made it swing. "Take your choice."

Thur glanced up, then his gaze was riveted by what lay in the shadows above the rafters. A board crossed them at right angles. Balanced on the board was the nude body of a gray-bearded man, close-wrapped in the same sort of gauze as the sausages, like a thin swaddling shroud. His skin was shrivelled and tanning in the smoke.

"Pico was right," Thur observed after a moment's stunned silence. "Your wife does smoke the most unusual hams."

Catti glanced up after him. "Oh, that," he said in disgust. "I was just going to tell Pico the story. He's a refugee from Montefoglia who didn't quite make it. Penniless, it turned out—after the bill was run up,"

"Do you do this often, to guests who don't pay?" asked Thur in a fascinated voice. "I'll tell Pico to settle our bill promptly."

"No, no, he was dead when he got here," Catti exclaimed impatiently. "Three days ago. But the priest was gone and there's none to shrive him, and none of my neighbors will allow an unshriven dead sorcerer to be buried on their property, and frankly, neither will I. And the hellcat girl won't pay. We had to do something with him, so I thought of the smokehouse. So there he lies, and there he can stay, till his bill is settled. And so I told my wife. She can flounce off to her sister's in a fury if she wants, but I won't be cheated by a dead Florentine's servant." Catti crossed his arms, to emphasize his resolve.

"I think he eats and drinks but little, Master Innkeeper. How much are you charging him for the smoke?" Thur inquired, still craning his neck upward.

"Yes, but you should see how the horse he rode in on gorges," groaned Catti. "As a last resort, I'll confiscate the horse. But I'd rather have the ring, for surety. The ring won't drop dead suddenly, as the nag looks to do." He waved an impatient hand against the rising smoke, pulled a sausage down off its hook, and motioned Thur out of the smokehouse ahead of him.

"You see," Catti went on, after drawing a lungful of clear air, "three mornings ago this half-Ethiope girl dressed in filthy velvet came dragging him up the road, slung across that white nag now in my pasture. She said they'd fled the massacre in Montefoglia, and been robbed, and him murdered, by Lord Ferrante's men, who pursued them past Cecchino. Except he hadn't been murdered—there isn't a wound on him—and she hadn't been robbed, for she wears a big gold ring on her thumb a blind bandit couldn't have overlooked.

"I had my suspicions, but she seemed in distress, and my wife has a soft head, and she let her in and got her cleaned up and calmed down. The more I thought it over, the more suspicious I became. You have to get up early in the morning to make a fool of old Catti. She claimed the old man was a Florentine mage, and her father. The Florentine part I'll grant. I think she was his slave. He died of apoplexy on the road, or maybe black magic. She robbed his body and hid his things, and rolled in the dirt and made her hair wild, and came in telling this tale, meaning to be rid of him at my expense and circle back later for his treasure. The proof of it is, that gold ring is a man's ring. She probably stole it off her master's finger. Well! I saw through her ploy, and charged her with it."

"And then what happened?" said Thur.

"She had a screaming fit, and refused to give up her stolen ring. She said if her father were alive, he'd turn me into one of my own bedbugs. I don't think she could turn beer into piss. She's barricaded herself in my best room, and screams curses at me through the door, and threatens to set fire to my inn, and won't come out. Now I ask you! Isn't it suspicious? Is she not a madwoman?"

"You would almost think she fears being robbed again," Thur murmured.

"Quite demented." Catti frowned, then his gloomy gaze traveled up Thur. A dim light animated his eye. "Say. You're a big, strong lad. There's a pot of ale in it for you if you can pull her from my best bedroom without breaking any of my furniture. How about it?"

Thur's blond brows rose. "Why don't you evict her yourself?"

Catti mumbled something about "aging bones" and "hellcat." Thur wondered if Catti were seeing himself as a bedbug. Could a mage even turn a man into an insect, and if so, would it be a man-sized insect, or tiny? Well, he'd been thinking about dipping into his coins and buying some ale to go with that toasted sausage tonight. The tap room had breathed a delicious aroma, from the vicinity of those kegs.

"I could try, I suppose," Thur offered cautiously.

"Good!" The innkeeper reached up and clapped him on the shoulder. "Come this way, I'll show you where." He led Thur back inside.

On the second floor of the inn, Catti pointed to a closed door, and whispered, "In there!"

"How is it barricaded?"

"There's a bar, though not a very stout one. And she's wedged it with something. I think she dragged the bed against it."

Thur studied the wooden door. From downstairs came a man's voice calling, "Catti! Hey Catti! Are you asleep up there? Get your fat self down here and pour me a mug, or I'll help myself."

Catti wrung his hands in frustration. "Do your best," he urged Thur, and hurried downstairs.

Thur watched the door a moment longer. The strange, inarticulate longing that he had identified as thirst, outside, was much stronger now, knotting and coiling in his stomach. His mouth was dry. He shrugged, and went up and put his shoulder to the oak. He wedged his foot to the floor and tensed. The door resisted; he pushed a little harder. An unfortunate splintering sound came from the other side. Thur paused, worried. Had he just lost his pot of ale? He pushed again against a skreeling of wood across wood that reminded him of the windlass in the mine. The gap widened a bit more. He stuck his head through, and bunked.

Some black iron bolts holding the bracket for the door bar had torn out of the doorframe, and the bar swung loose. A bed with four posts holding up a canopy had been shoved a little way back by the inward-moving door. Standing not three feet from him was a brown-skinned girl in a red dress with long linen undersleeves, holding a heavy flower-painted ceramic chamber pot high in both hands. Its contents sloshed ominously under its ceramic lid.

Thur's breath stopped. He had never seen anyone so extraordinary. Midnight-black hair tumbled like a stormcloud. Skin like toast, breathing the heat of a Mediterranean noon. A petite, alert, yet well-padded body that reminded him of the walnut-wood carvings of angels around the altar of the parish church in Bruinwald. Brilliant eyes, the warm brown color of his mother's precious cinnamon sticks. She looked ... she looked warm all over, in fact. She shrank back, glaring at him.

That wouldn't do. He squeezed the rest of himself through the door, shifting the bed across the floor with another shattering skreek, and clasped his hands together in what he hoped was a nonthreatening manner. His hands felt as big as cheese paddles, and as clumsy. He swallowed, and remembered to exhale. "Hello." He ducked his head politely at her, and cleared his throat.

She backed another step. Her arms bearing up the chamber pot sank a little.

"You really can't stay in here. Not forever, anyway," Thur said. Her arms were shaking. "Does that greedy innkeeper bring you any food?"

"Not ... not since yesterday, when his wife left," she stammered out, not taking her wary gaze from him. "I had a bottle of wine that I was making last, but it's gone now."

She was staring at him as if he was some sort of monster. Really, he wasn't that big. He bent his knees a little, and slumped his shoulders, and tried futilely to shrink. It was the little room that set him off to such disadvantage. He needed a bigger room, or the outdoors.

The gold ring on her pot-clutching thumb riveted his eye. A lion mask with a red gem in its mouth seemed to glow with a Saharan heat, drawing him like a fire. He nodded to it. "Is that the ring Catti wants to steal?"

She smiled bitterly. "He wants to, but he can't. He's tried twice, but he can't keep hold of it. Only one man can wear this ring. I'll prove it." She tossed her mane of wildly curling hair, and set the chamber pot down on the floor. "I was planning to break this over Catti's head, but on you I can't reach that high." She grimaced, and shoved it away with her foot. She pulled the ring from her thumb, and, sourly smug, held it out to him. "Just try to put it on. You'll find you can't."

It glowed, in his palm. When he closed his hand over it, it felt alive, like a beating heart. Automatically, he slipped it over the ring finger of his left hand, and held it up to the last sunbeam, a golden slice of light that penetrated the room's shutters and made a bright line on the wall. The tiny lion's mane shimmered in singing waves, and the little gem burned. He turned his hand, making the red reflection dance like a fairy over the opposite wall. He looked up to find the brown girl staring at him with a look of utter horror on her beautiful soft features.

"Oh—I'm sorry," he apologized, he knew not what for. "You said to put it on. Here." He tugged at it, against his wrinkling knuckle.

"A muleteer?" she whispered, still with that aghast look. "My ring has brought me a stinking muleteer? A big stupid German lout—"

"Swiss," Thur corrected, still tugging. A big stupid Swiss lout, yah. She must have been watching him from the window when Pico's packtrain arrived. He grew scarlet, like the gem. His knuckle was red and white, and swelling. "Excuse me. It's stuck." He twisted the ring around in embarrassment, but it still jammed. "Maybe some soap. I have a bit of soap in my pack. You can come with me. I'm not trying to steal your ring, Madonna. I was going to Montefoglia. My brother has apprenticed me to a goldsmith there, or He was going to, but now I don't know what's happening. My brother Uri is a captain in the Duke's guard, you see, and I don't know ... I'm afraid ... I don't know if he's alive or dead right now." He twisted and pulled more frantically as her face, stunned, began to crumple with tears, but it was no good. The ring was stuck fast. "Sorry. Can . .. can I help? Can I help you, Madonna?" He opened his hands to her, offering—well, he didn't have much. Offering his hands, anyway.

To his alarm and distress, she sank to the floor, hands to her face, weeping. Awkwardly, he levered himself down beside her. "I'll get the ring off somehow, if I have to ... to chop off my finger," he promised recklessly.

She shook her head helplessly, and gulped out, "It's not that. It's the whole thing."

Thur paused, and spoke more gently. "That really is your father in the smokehouse, isn't it? I'm sorry. That innkeeper is a bit of a monster, I'm afraid. I'll break his head for you, if you like."

"Oh ..." She put her hands out flat on the floor, and leaned on them wearily for support. She stared down at them, then looked up at Thur, searching his face. "You don't look much like Uri. I didn't expect his younger brother to be so much bigger. And you're so blond and pale, compared to him.

"I worked in the mines most of this winter. I scarcely saw the sun." He must look as repulsive to her as a white worm winkled from under a rock ... his thought stuttered, jerked about. "You know my brother Uri? And, more urgently, "Do you have any idea of his fate?"

She sat up straighter, and held out a hand to him in sad irony. "Hello, Thur Ochs. I'm Fiametta Beneforte. Prospero Beneforte is my father. You have arrived just in time to become apprenticed to a smoked corpse." Her lips compressed on an angry sob.

"Uri's letter didn't mention a daughter," Thur blurted in surprise. He grasped her hand quickly, lest she take it away again. "His letters are always too short, Mother says."

Her voice lowered. "I last saw Captain Ochs take a sword thrust through his chest, while trying to defend little Lord Ascanio from Ferrante's murdering men. I don't know if he's alive or dead, or if he got away with the other wounded to the healers at Saint Jerome. But it was no small wound." She released his grip and plucked jerkily at the wrinkled velvet of her skirts, bunched in her lap. "I'm sorry I have no better news, nor more recent. My father and I fled away for our lives. Or we tried to."

"What happened?" His belly was cold, cold. ...

In short, blunt sentences she stammered out a nightmare account of her last four days. Thur remembered the grief and loss of his own father's death in the mines. He'd been at school with Brother Glarus that winter day; the news of the cave-in had come at breathless second-hand. After days of frantic, fruitless rescue efforts, the priest had consecrated the shaft and the lost men been left buried, and Thur had never looked on his father's face again. Fiametta had had to wrestle with her dead alone in the night. Thur felt both horror for her, and a strange envy. Dead her father was, as his, but at least not cut off from the last services survivors could bestow, though smoking and curing was not exactly on the usual list of comforting ritual pieties properly due a paterfamilias.

"... and the second time he tried to twist it from my thumb, I kicked him in the knee and barricaded myself in here. That was ... that was yesterday," she came to the end of her tale, and rested her head on her knees, face turned to his, rocking a little. "How did you come here?"

Briefly, he described his brother's letter, and how he had found a guide and company in exchange for his labor with Pico.

"But how here? To this inn, just in time to meet me?"

Thur blinked. He had an extraordinary knack for finding things, yes, but surely it would be some land of arrogance, in front of a real mage's daughter, to claim supernatural meaning for a mere knot in his belly and catch in his bream. "Pico always stops here. It's the only place between Bergoa, on the border, and Cecchino."

"Have I wrought true after all?" she breathed in bewilderment. Her hand closed. "You put my ring right on.. .."

Thur twisted it. "I'll get it off. I promise."

"No." She sat up, and spread her fingers, pink palms down. "Keep it. For now. Anyway, fat Catti won't try to wrest it from your hand."

"I can't take this, it's much too valuable!" Not that he seemed to have much choice, till his knuckle shrank again. "I tell you what, Madonna Beneforte. I have a few coins. I think I have enough to ransom your father's body from that greed-head innkeeper. Get him out of the smokehouse, at least, and help you get him properly buried."

She wrinkled her brow. "Yes, but where? The ignorant peasants here all fear to have him planted on their property, because he was a mage. And I won't have him buried in the middle of the road."

"I passed through the village of Bergoa yesterday. There's a little parish church there, and a priest. He'll have to take your father in. I'll help you take him there tomorrow."

She bowed her head, and whispered, "Thank you." Freed of the stiffening from her isolation and fear, Thur could see her weariness was near to overwhelming her.

"I ... I'll have to go south, after that," Thur said. "I have to find out the fate of my brother."

Her head came up. "It will grow dangerous, the closer you try to go to Montefoglia. Lora Ferrante's mercenaries will be out marauding, pillaging for their needs, killing any who resist or ... or compelling them to their service. Or do you think to volunteer your service to the Duke's guards, if they still hold Saint Jerome against Ferrante?"

Thur shook his head. "I have no calling to be a soldier. Unless I were defending Bruinwald, the way the men of Schwyz fought off the Armagnacs at the battle of St. Jakob and der Birs. But I can't go home to our mother without sure news of Uri. If he's hurt, I must try to bring him away."

"And if he's dead?"

"If he's dead ... I must know," shrugged Thur. "But it's certainly too dangerous for you down that way, Madonna Beneforte. Maybe the priest at Bergoa will know of a safe place for you to stay till I—we—return."

"Return?"

He smiled in an attempt at reassurance. "Your ring will be your surety. If I can't get it off, I'll have to bring it back, won't I?"

Her generous mouth pursed in plaintive puzzlement. "Isn't that the wrong way around, for a surety?"

"A debt is a bond. It must be paid."

"You are an unusual man. Muleteer. Miner," Her brow lifted. "Mage?"

"Oh, I'm no mage. I meant to apprentice to your father, yes, but I figured to haul wood and lift ingots, mainly. Just a workman, really."

"I am my father's only heir." She bit her lower lip with strong white teeth. "Your apprentice's contract—had it been drawn up—would now be a part of my inheritance. I wonder how much of the rest has been looted by the Losimons, by now?"

"There you go, then," said Thur cheerfully. "Well met, Madonna, though the times are ill."

"Well met, Muleteer," she whispered. Her twisted smile was not unkind, her brows quizzical, as if she were growing used to him, or to the idea of him. "Though the times are very ill."

He lumbered to his feet, and gave her a hand up. "Come. Let's get something to eat. I don't think Catti will refuse my coins."

"No, but with his wife gone, the food could be chancy," Fiametta warned. "I gather she did all the cooking, and a great deal more besides."

"You can have my toasted sausage by Pico's fire, if you will. You can share our camp. Pico won't mind."

She grimaced. "I'd rather sleep under a tree than spend another night under Catti's roof, that's certain."

They started for the stairs, that gave onto the front taproom. Men's talk echoed up. At the head of the stairs, Fiametta suddenly froze, and held up her hand to stop Thur. "Shh," she whispered, and listened intently, head cocked to one side. "Oh, God, I know that voice. That spitty sound it has...."

"A friend?" said Thur hopefully.

"No. It sounds like the man who led Ferrante's bravos, the night they killed my father."

"Would you recognize him, if you peeked through the staircase?" The wood below the rail had decorative trefoil holes cut in it.

She shook her head. "I never saw his face."

"They don't know me," murmured Thur after a moment. "Crouch here, and I'll go see what's happening."

"Turn the ring inward. They might recognize it," she whispered, and he nodded and turned the lion mask to his palm, letting his hand curl.

She sank to the floor, slipped a little way down the staircase, and put her eye to one trefoil cutout. She drew in her breath, and her hands clenched to fists; apparently she knew the man after all. Thur walked openly into the taproom.

Three or four local folk had drifted in, and sat on the benches nursing mugs. By their work-stained tunics and leggings, they were farmers or laborers. In addition, two strangers stood, quaffing pots of ale and talking to Catti. They were clearly horsemen, travelers, wearing mud-splattered boots, short cloaks, doublets, and heavy hose. In addition to the usual dagger that every man carried, each bore a steel sword. They wore no badge or colors identifying them as Lord Ferrante's men or any other lord's. When the senior, bearded one put down his mug after a last up-tipping draught, Thur could see he was missing several front teeth. Thur hung in the background, blending in with the local peasantry.

"Take us to him, then, Innkeeper, and we'll see if he's the thief we seek," said the bearded horseman, wiping his lips with his sleeve.

"For the price of his ransom, you can have him," grumbled Catti. "I knew something stank of old fish. This way."

Catti lit a lamp and led the two strangers through tile inn to his back yard. Thur, and after a moment two other of the curious yokels, tagged along. The sky was still luminous with late twilight, though the evening star shone above the western hills.

Catti, with the lamp, and the bearded man ducked into the smokehouse. They emerged again very shortly. The bearded Losimon spoke to his stubble-shaved companion. "Found him. Get the horses."

The younger man glanced around uneasily at the gathering dusk. "Sure you don't want to spend the night here, and go in the morning?"

The bearded man's voice fell to a growl. "If we're late, or botch this again, you'll wish for hobgoblins. Without delay, he said. Get the horses."

The younger man shrugged, and trudged off around the corner of the inn.

Catti rubbed his hands together happily. Thur drifted over to him. Catti looked up. "Did you get the she-cat out of my best room?" he asked.

"Yes."

"And where is she?"

"She ran off up the road."

"In the dark? Damn! I wanted that ring. Well, I have the horse. Good riddance. It looks like I'll be quit of both my problems in a moment."

The younger stranger returned, leading three horses. Two were caparisoned with light cavalry saddles. The third bore an empty pack saddle. The younger man laid out a large piece of old canvas on the ground, and tossed some rope down beside it.

"Who are those men?" Thur whispered to Catti.

"Guardsmen from Montefoglia. That dead graybeard my smokehouse turns out to be a thief. Stole a invaluable gold saltcellar from the castle, they say. They're taking him off my hands."

"I'd think they'd want the saltcellar, not the body. Isn't it a little late for a hanging?" said Thur. The two men entered the smokehouse. After some thumping sounds, they came out with the old man's body on its board. They pulled the board away and began rolling the corpse up in the canvas. "What do they want it for? And whose guardsmen are they, the Duke's or Lord Ferrante's?"

"Who cares, if their coins are good?" Catti murmured impatiently.

The two men bound the canvas round with rope, and lifted the long package. They grunted, forcing it to bend over the pack saddle. While the bearded man tied the canvas-covered shape firmly to its carrier, the younger man ducked back inside the smokehouse and came out with two hams, which he slung over his saddle bow.

"This is wrong, Master Catti," Thur whispered urgently. "You mustn't let them take him. Here—I have some coins in my pack. I'll get them right now. I'll ransom him from you, instead."

"I'll take their coins in my hand, thank you," snapped Catti. "They offer a better bargain."

"Whatever they offered, I'll give you more."

"Not likely, muleteer." Catti waved him away, and approached the strangers, smiling. "I see you fancy my hams. You won't regret them, I guarantee. Now, let's see. The ransom, plus two pots of ale, plus two hams, comes to . .." He counted on his fingers.

Thur saw it coming. He dropped back by the smokehouse and snatched up a long billet of wood from the stack alongside.

The younger man swung aboard his horse as the older man grasped the counting Catti by the shoulder and pulled him toward himself. "Here's your payment, Innkeeper." The steel of his dagger flashed in the folds of his cloak, as he stabbed Catti in the stomach.

Catti cried out in pain and astonishment, and stumbled backwards, hands clutching his belly, as the bravo flung him away. The two watching locals started toward him, their reactions slow. The bearded man grinned, dark-mouthed with his missing teeth, and vaulted aboard his horse. His subordinate was already spurring toward the road, yanking the packhorse along. Futilely, Thur flung his billet at the younger Losimon's back with all his strength. It rotated through the air and bounced off the cloak- and doublet-padded man with little effect. Clods of dirt spun up from the horses' hooves as the bravos fled into the gathering shadows.

Thur pelted around the building in their wake, but by the time he reached the front gate, the hoofbeats were only a fading echo in the twilight. Fiametta was standing in the middle of the road amidst the dust hanging in the air, peering south after the vanished horsemen. Her face was drawn, eyes big and dark.

"They stole your father's body," Thur panted. "I couldn't stop them."

"I know. I saw."

"Why? It's madness! They took two hams as well. Surely they don't plan to eat him!"

"On ...," she breathed. Intensity of thought struggled with dismay in her face. "I have a guess. A monstrous guess. He cannot—I have to stop—" She stepped down the road a few paces, fists clenched, as if in a trance.

Thur caught her by the sleeve. "You can't go running down the road by yourself in the middle of the night."

She rotated in his grip, looking across to the pasture and the dim glimmer of her white horse among Pico's mules. "Then I'll ride."

"No!"

She stared at him, brows lowering. Her eyes flamed. "What?"

"I'll go. Tomorrow." And, as her breath drew in angrily, he added hastily, "We'll both go."

She hesitated. Her hands uncurled. She stared around into the vast uncertain darkness. Her shoulders slumped. "I don't know what to ... how to ... yes. You're right. Very well." Looking stunned, she turned to follow him back into the inn.