The Merchant of Dreams (Night's Masque, #2)(2)

"No more than I trust any man in our line of work."

Mal grinned. "Very wise. But he has not failed us so far. I think he has earned such trust as we can spare."

His hand closed around the beads in his pocket. They were already starting to take on some warmth from his flesh, and there was something comfortingly familiar about the way they clung together as he rolled them over one another. Perhaps it was only an echo of a memory, of playing with his mother's rosary as a child. Though her beads were of amber, not cold steel.

"There," he said a few moments later. "The citadel of Calvi."

The broad promontory stretched northeastwards away from them, covered in more of the bare-branched chestnut trees. At its farthest point it rose to a hill encased in walls of pale stone, rising sheer and impregnable from the cliffs. Within, tall red-roofed buildings clustered about a domed church. It made the Tower of London look like a child's toy.

"If they are in there," Coby said, "how in the name of all that's holy do we get them out?"

? ? ? ?
Above the open gates of the citadel was carved a motto: Civitas Calvis Semper Fidelis. Faithful to whom? Mal wondered. Their Genoese overlords, or their own self-interest?

A lone guard, slouching in the meagre warmth of the noonday sun, detached himself from the wall as they approached and looked them up and down. He was a good six inches shorter than Mal, with greasy black hair and a gap between his front teeth.

"Who are you?" he asked. "And what is your business in Calvi?"

Mal hesitated. His Italian was a little rusty, and the man's accent was not easy to understand.

"Our ship is damaged," he said, pointing back northwards. "We need to buy nails and rope for repairs." Just enough truth to give his story verisimilitude, that was the trick of it.

"You are English," the guard said, his eyes narrowing.

"I was born in England," Mal replied, "but I have family in Provence. We were sailing to Marseille–"

"Not a good time of year to be sailing anywhere."

"My father is dying," Mal said with a shrug. In truth his father was some years dead.

"There is a chandlery down by the quay." The guard gestured over his shoulder.

"Thank you. But first I would light a candle for my father's soul, and give thanks for our own safe landing. There is a church in the citadel?"

"The Cathedral of Saint John the Baptist," the guard said, drawing himself up to his full height. "Go to the top of the hill; you cannot miss it."

Mal thanked him again, and they went through the gate. A steep cobbled street wound upwards, turning into a broad flight of steps that led past the ochre-and-white stucco fa?ade of the little cathedral.

"Now what?" Coby asked in a whisper.

Passers-by were eyeing them suspiciously. Mal might be taken easily enough for a local, apart from his height, but Coby's blond hair and pale skin made her stand out in any crowd south of Antwerp.

"We do as we said, and go inside," Mal replied.

Coby halted and stared around as they stepped through the cathedral doors. Perhaps the plain exterior of the cathedral had led her to expect a similarly austere interior. Instead, the light of hundreds of votive candles gleamed on the pale curves of alabaster carvings and reflected off the gilding of a hundred statues and icons of saints. The elegantly vaulted ceiling overhead was punctuated by oval panels painted with scenes from scripture, as fine as any work Mal had seen in Italy. An enormous crucifix, taller than himself, stood on the altar.

Mal genuflected, dropped a handful of sou into the collection box for the ransoming of Christian slaves, and lit a candle, placing it before a statue of Michael, his own patron saint. Coby remained near the door, looking uncomfortable in the opulent and, no doubt in her eyes, all-too-Papist surroundings. Mal turned back to the alabaster saint and murmured a prayer. For her soul, his own, and most of all that of the brother lost to him.

A chill of unease ran over him as he thought of Sandy. Touching his finger to his forehead in a hurried gesture, he returned to the cathedral door.

"Let's get out of here," he told Coby.

"What's wrong, sir?"

"I don't know. Something…" He shook his head to dispel the uncomfortable feeling. "Let's go down to the harbour. We might be able to pick up some gossip at the chandler's."

A long flight of stone steps led down from the citadel to the quayside, where housewives haggled with fishermen over baskets of the morning's catch. Flocks of gulls screamed overhead; their more cunning fellows sidled around the stalls, yellow eyes fixed on the fishermen's baskets. Mal looked around for the chandlery, but his eye was caught instead by a squat stone watchtower at the end of the quay, connected to the citadel above by a length of wall that ran up at a sharp angle. No entrance was visible from this side, nor any windows, and yet the islanders were giving the building a wide berth.

Mal looked out to sea, shading his eyes as if looking for a ship, and drummed his fingers thrice on his dagger hilt. Coby halted at the signal and waited expectantly.

"There," he said, glancing sidelong towards the tower.

She nodded, following his gaze discreetly.

"The skraylings?" she whispered.

"I'm sure of it." He could not say how, but he was as certain as if someone had just told him. "Where better to lock up a score or two of unexpected prisoners?"