The Mirror Thief(189)

Perina and I bandaged your injuries, Trist?o says. She has, I believe, a genuine gift for the treatment of wounds. If you have been able to review our work, I hope you have found it to be adequate.

I have, Crivano says. And I have. For that I thank you. I suppose I should thank you, too, for engineering my rescue last night. Before I do so, I should like to determine if it was you who put me in danger in the first place.

Trist?o stops at a high wooden counter, sets the chamberpot down. He stands with his back turned, his eyes on the distant mountains. A difficult question, he says at last. I do not believe that I placed you in danger. Partly Narkis bin Silen did this. Partly you did it yourself. Also, as always, we must blame Fortune. It is true that I might have helped you more, and sooner. I might have informed better, or explained more. But in so doing I greatly would have endangered myself and my own project. Therefore, I did not. It burdens my heart to confess this, but it is indeed so.

Against the windows, his slender black form is edged by fire. He does not move except to speak. A pair of flies has come upon the chamberpot; they float above it in tight spirals, fighting the changeable breeze.

Trist?o, Crivano says, what in God’s name has transpired?

Trist?o turns. His face appears and disappears in the scarlet sunset. The events of the past week, he says, are perhaps best likened to an obscure codex with a broken spine, the contents of which have been scattered everywhere. All interested parties possess a few pages, but only the book’s author knows the whole. Indeed, even the author himself may have forgotten.

Who is the author?

I do not know.

Crivano frowns, crosses his arms. Pain shoots down the length of his right ulna, and he uncrosses them again. Very well, he says. Tell me this. What is your interest? How did you come by your pages?

At first Trist?o doesn’t answer. He lifts a touchwood from the counter behind him, ignites it in the brazier, and puts it to the wicks of several candles around the room. The high ceiling begins to catch their light. In both Ghettos, he says, I am acquainted with many learned men. Among the so-called German Jews of the New Ghetto, and also in the Old Ghetto, where my own people live. Through these men I have come to correspond with scholars in many cities, Constantinople perhaps foremost among them. Generally our correspondence consists of discussion about our mutual pursuit of secret knowledge, but sometimes we share news, or ask of each other simple favors. This is how I came by my pages.

Someone in Constantinople told you about me. Someone told you that I’m a spy for the haseki sultan.

I have learned that you believed yourself to be so, yes.

And you knew of the plot with the mirrormakers.

I knew what you knew of it, Trist?o says. I also knew that Narkis bin Silen had made other arrangements for their removal. Please understand that this, to me, was only trivia. It remained so until I became aware that your enterprise was ruined. At that time I perceived a means of helping you, and of helping myself also. Only then did I interfere.

You arranged my meeting with Narkis at Ciotti’s shop. You knew it to be watched by sbirri. You wanted us to be seen by them. To be seen together.

What you have spoken, Trist?o says, is indeed so.

Why?

Trist?o lights the last of the candles, throws the slender brand into the brazier. Then he gathers handfuls of firewood chips from a bin and drops them in, as well. They flare and blacken on the white-hot coals, and for a moment the round brazier seems to recapitulate the setting sun.

The sbirri were following you already, Trist?o says. I suspect they had already gleaned the crude outlines of your plot. I reasoned that if I could induce you to associate openly with the Minerva bookshop, with the Uranici, with reputed magi like myself, then the dimensions of your conspiracy might seem larger than they were, and the Council of Ten might postpone your arrest until more could be learned. Had not Lord Mocenigus’s unexpected denunciation of the Nolan spurred the Ten to swifter action, you and the mirrormakers might have escaped the city with minimal bloodshed. Narkis bin Silen, of course, had doomed himself from the outset. I had been informed of his intention to remove the mirrormakers to the territories of the Mughals, and I knew this to be hopeless and ridiculous, but I saw no reason why his careful preparations could not be redirected toward practical ends. I lured him to the bookshop to make him known to the sbirri, in the hope that they would eliminate him before his foolishness ruined your entire project.

Crivano purses his lips. He supposes he should be angry, but he is not. When you speak of practical ends, he says, I assume you’re referring—

I mean only that the mirrormakers and their party are now to be taken not to faraway Lahore, nor even to Constantinople, but to Amsterdam, exactly as they have been promised all along.

The expression on Trist?o’s face is so sincere, so devoid of irony, that Crivano can’t help but laugh and shake his head. Let me ask once more, Crivano says, for I still lack understanding: what is your interest in this matter? On this you have yet to speak.

Trist?o looks at him appraisingly. His eyes seem dimmed by regret, or sadness. In his hesitation Crivano perceives no fear. Almost everyone whom Crivano has met since he came here, even Senator Contarini himself, has seemed wary of him—everyone but Trist?o, whose ambitions are even grander than his own, who has even less to lose.

After a moment, Trist?o lifts a long metal spoon from the countertop and dips it into the chamberpot. He scoops up a quantity of feces—the stench intensifies in the fire-warmed air—and transfers it to a thick-walled beaker, scraping the spoon clean with a polished wooden rod. Then he adds water from a pitcher, stirs, and turns to the rows of jars and phials in the cabinet behind him. I have, he says, two principal interests. I have pursued both in this city with zeal and considerable satisfaction, but in both I have now reached an impasse. While your recent misfortunes sadden me, they have also provided me with a solution that is, I believe, comprehensive.