While We Bleed, Opening Scene: “No Witnesses”
The blurb and opening scene of my work in progress, While We Bleed.
ARDANA SUL was a true bastard’s bastard. He’d get you anything, anyone, anywhere and not ask questions as long as you paid. So when BARONESS FONCESCA of Tramontio hired him to obtain the last known vial of plague dust to use against neighboring Oltrini, it was business as usual. He should’ve known she wouldn’t leave witnesses. Flintlocks flashed, windows shattered, and his head met sharp rock. He escaped with his life, but not his memory.
Dredged from the river by a fisherman and his son, Sul recovers without recollection of his past or name. He doesn’t understand why simple kindnesses feel alien to him, and experiences something his ill-gotten earnings could never buy: a measure of peace. When the Baroness’ henchmen come to finish the job, his hands remember how to use a sword even if he doesn’t. His violent past comes flooding back, but not in time to save the man who saved him.
Determined to right at least one of his sins, Sul vows to stop the Baroness before she unleashes the weapon he brought her on a city he’s come to love. His allies include a grieving son bent on vengeance and a trio of cutthroat mercenaries he needs but doesn’t trust. Sul’s talents of guile and infiltration are put to the test in his fight back to Foncesca, but his greatest enemy may be how much of his old self he must resurrect in order to do it.
Chapter One: No Witnesses
Ardana Sul leaned against the tower chamber wall,wondering not for the first time how his clients always seemed to have more money than taste. Afternoon sunlight poured through the tall, stained-glass windows overlooking Tramontio and the river far below. The manor tower’s exterior bore the scars of a hundred sieges, but inside the room was garishly paneled and furnished, not quite to Sul’s liking. If only she’d show up, he thought with a grunt. Keeping him waiting just to show she could. The package he’d carried across mountains, oceans and deserts now burned in his hand, and he yearned finally to rid himself of it in exchange for cold platinum.
When Sul’s patience finally began to wear thin enough that he considered making inquiries of the statue-silent attendants, the door creaked open. The servants, who would fetch tea or run a stiletto through his gut with equal dispassion, snapped to attention when Sul’s employer stepped through preceded by a colorfully uniformed bodyguard.
“Baroness Foncesca,” Sul said with a sardonic half-bow, “I was starting to think I’d gotten the day wrong.”
“No you weren’t,” the middle-aged woman said with acid sharpness. “Nor taught not to speak to your betters until spoken to, I see.”
“I was. But my professional success has generally relied on discarding most of what I was taught.”
“Clever.” The woman who effectively ruled Tramontio in her husband’s dotage waved a jeweled hand toward Sul. “Check him.”
The bravo took two long steps toward Sul and began running hands over his travel-worn clothes. He fought the instinct to pull away and lunge for the man’s sword, dagger, flintlock pistol or any of the dozen hidden weapons he certainly carried. They’d already searched him once at the manor’s unobtrusive little postern gate he’d been told to use, and he knew this was just to put him in his place one more time. “Humph,” he said, “usually I have to pay extra for this kind of treatment.”
“I only allow weapons I control in my house,” the Baroness replied, “I’m sure you understand.”
The bravo nodded at the Baroness. “He’s clean, M’Lady.”
Sul smirked. “I’ve been called many things in my time, but never that.”
“Very well. You are dismissed.” She turned to the attendants behind her. “Clear the room.”
They all snapped a smart salute and retired into an adjacent room in the tower. The heavy oaken door rumbled shut. Sul waited until the echo of their heavy boots died away completely before daring to exhale fully. “Charming help you keep,” Sul said.
“I don’t pay them for their charm. Or you. You’ve been gone a whole season, I was beginning to lose hope. I almost forgot what you looked like! Signor Nondescript. So unlike what the stories imply.”
“In my line of work, Baroness, nondescript is an advantage.”
“But your skill with a blade is anything but. And you’re accounted a master of disguises. Not to mention blackmail, kidnapping, extortion, and…getting in and out of tight spots. So many talents.” Foncesca stepped toward him with anticipation in her eyes. The promise of danger their business carried, it seemed, excited her. “Do you have it?” Her mouth hung open just a bit.
Sul held up the package. Paper folded around leather stitched over lead over who knew what else, like a set of nesting dolls, down and down until… “Right here. The last phial of plague dust known to exist. A goodbye kiss from the blasted Oldens, may they rot in the nineteen hells.”
The Baroness reached out, hesitant, halfway toward the package, then drew back. “You…you’re sure it’s genuine?”
“The alchemist I took it from was, enough to throw his life away over it.”
Foncesca sneered. “Did he beg?”
“No, but his daughter did. You really want to know the bloody details of the job?”
“No.” She turned to a chest set on a table. Sul had briefly considered trying to pick its locks while he was waiting, before deciding it wasn’t worth the risk with the servants watching his every move. A few clicks and the iron lid opened. The Baroness took out a small box, its weight evident as she carried it to him. “As promised. One hundred platinum crowns. I had to borrow from my own shipping company to withdraw so much at once. Enough to buy a title of your own, lands of your own.”
“Both of which I’d lose, along with my head, the next time one of you nobles decided to declare a blood feud.”
“Only if you picked the wrong side,” Foncesca rejoined.
“I’ll keep the platinum, if it’s all the same to you.” He held out the package. The Baroness hesitated once again before taking it and handing over the box at the same time. Their hands touched for the briefest instant, and it was done. Sul opened the lid, smiled at the neat little rows of white metal painted a hundred colors by stained-glass sunlight.
As Sul cradled his prize the Baroness put her own in the chest, shut and locked it once again. She paused. “Aren’t you at all curious what I plan to do with it?”
“It’s nothing to me,” he said with practiced disinterest. “You know my reputation. I can get you anything, anyone, anywhere for the right price. Once the job’s done, I get paid and move on. Of course, this is more than enough to retire on. Might just be my last job!” He tucked the box more firmly under his arm. “And with that…” He turned toward the door to the tower stairwell.
“One moment,” Foncesca insisted. “I’ll not have it said I lack hospitality.” She motioned to a side table upon which was set a decanter of rosé wine and two crystal goblets. She poured a small measure into each and proffered one. “You’ve traveled long and far for this task. Let’s at least drink a salute to a successful expedition.”
Now it was Sul’s turn to hesitate. He glanced toward the other door behind which the guards had disappeared. Finding no excuse to refuse he reached out to accept, but slowly.
Foncesca must have read the suspicion on his face. She laughed. “Oh, really Mister Sul, you are too suspicious!”
“No such thing in my experience, Baroness.”
She laughed again, then offered Sul the other glass instead. “There, satisfied?”
Sul took it, thinking perhaps he was just being paranoid after all. They clinked glasses together and Sul sipped just the smallest bit. He didn’t taste any obvious poison, but that was no proof. “A fine vintage,” he said with a nod.
“Indeed? Would you be the type to know?”
“No, not really.”
“No. If you were you wouldn’t be the man for this job. Well, let me indulge my predilection for intrigue and tell you something anyway. The plague dust is a little gift for my dear cousin, Camero.”
“The Duke of Oltrini,” Sul said reflexively, glancing out the window and downriver.
“Very good.”
“It doesn’t usually pay to know fine wines, but nobles and their vendettas are another matter.”
“Indeed. He’s a wily one, but Oltrini is rightfully mine, and I need a port for my shipping concern. The seeress I’ve engaged predicts I could very well have the city if I act before the year’s out.”
Sul snorted. “Seeresses. Charlatans, I say.”
“You may be right. In any event, if I attack while the Duke’s away on his latest interminable pilgrimage to Artamera, the Ardicchie League will be honor-bound to rally against me. But an outbreak of plague, well, that’d force him home quickly enough.”
Sul nodded. “And by the time he arrived the city’d be in such shambles you could take it in a fair fight. Or at least the appearance of one. I admire your ingenuity. Just so long as your own troops don’t bring the plague back here themselves.”
Foncesca shrugged. “Acceptable losses. They’re pledged to fight for me, and die if needs be. I’ll plan a quarantine ahead of time.”
“Of course a city full of corpses isn’t much of a prize.”
“That’s the wonderful thing about peasants, isn’t it? There are always plenty more.”
Sul laughed out loud. “I suppose you’re right about that, Baroness. As I said, it’s no concern of mine. Though I’d appreciate if you waited until I’m far from here before releasing that awful stuff.”
“See, there’s the problem,” Foncesca said with just a touch of regret. “My seeress also warned me about you, the Bastard of Falisci himself. Understand, this is a terrible atrocity I’m committing. I could never be forgiven for it. So I’m sure you’ll appreciate that, well, I simply can’t afford to leave any witnesses. Guards, help!”
In a flash Sul understood the treachery. He made a mad dash toward the door but found it locked. At the same time two guards burst through the other one, flintlocks raised. All planned in advance, of course. Ten years ago Sul would never have been so sloppy.
“He’s attacking me! Kill him!” Foncesca screamed, thrusting a painted fingernail at Sul as she backed away in a pretense of terror. For half a heartbeat Sul stared down two pistol barrels, and in the next they flashed.
The only thing that saved him was the box of platinum crowns he threw out before him. The stacks of coin went flying, and the lead balls that would’ve torn into his heart were deflected just enough to let him turn and fling himself through the window. Glass shattered, sunlight glinted, and in the next moment he was flying through the air. No, not flying, falling.
Ardana Sul hit the rocks piled against the tower, cracking his head on sharp stone and kept falling, down and down toward the river leaving red smears behind him. Above, the Baroness still screeched orders. His last sensation was a wet chill as the river welcomed him into its drowning embrace. Then oblivion.
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