Chương 16: An Ending and a Beginning

The lamp was burning beneath Sinon's door when we arrived back at the Misericordia. Corso stopped so quickly that the wrapped sword struck the back of my legs, and the pain jolted my brain into a slightly more wakeful state.

"He is early," he whispered.

"He's never in before first bell," I whispered back. I had been looking forward to returning the mask, then finding a corner of an unused room and collapsing for an hour or two.

"What do we do now?" Corso asked, still whispering.

"Perhaps he hasn't noticed?"

"Maybe," I said softly, trying to think of what to do now.

"What if…" Corso began.

"What if one of us hides in Sister Amalia's office. Then, when we hear Sinon's door and he leaves, we can sneak back inside to return it."

"That could work," I said, believing neither in the plan nor that Sinon had failed to notice, and certain that returning the mask would only dig the hole deeper.

"Any other ideas—" Corso began, when Sinon's voice came through the door.

"Gentlemen, I can hear you. Clearly." We exchanged looks, and Corso whispered, even more softly, "Fuck! What now?" The answer to that question came with Sinon's next words.

"Quaesitor Vale, Porter Corso, come inside." We looked at each other again. Corso muttered his curse, and I reached for the door. We went into the Regesta.

"And close the door behind you." I did as instructed, and then we stood in the middle of the room. Sinon sat behind his desk, deep rings under his eyes and a pained expression on his face. A single sheet lay apart from both of his usual piles, and even through my tired haze, something about it triggered a memory. I had seen that seal before. The six-pointed star. The absence of the mask on the desk was glaring, and I saw Sinon's eyes fall to the satchel on my shoulder.

"Ser," Corso began.

"We can explain—""Silence," he said. His voice was louder than normal, and it trembled at a higher pitch. At first I took it for anger at us, but even through the haze of my fatigue, I recognised it a moment later as fear. Sinon is afraid of something. Someone. And another heartbeat later, another thought. And we caused that. I caused that. While I had been thinking, Sinon had been speaking.

"—and I cannot even begin to fathom why you did this. You have no idea about the position you have put me and the Misericordia in. I was given explicit instructions to safeguard that mask, to not have it leave my sight and to await its collection, and when I—""Ser!" Corso said again.

"The mask is here. Marek has it, nobody has to know that—""I said SILENCE!" The word cracked out of him. Sinon got to his feet, came around the desk and stopped directly in front of Corso.

"My instructions were unambiguous and clear. That mask must not leave the Misericordia. It arrived here by accident, and even if I was never told the why or the what, it is clear that it is important. When you took it, you made me a liar to the people who pay for this place!" Sinon took a deep breath, calming himself. And while he had been speaking, a spark of curiosity stirred. Entirely without any instinct for self-preservation, my mouth opened and spoke before I could instruct it to cease its traitorous act.

"By accident, Ser?" I asked.

"What do you mean?" I expected him to tell me it was none of my concern. Instead, perhaps because fear had loosened something in him, he answered.

"It was brought here the same day as that… as that beggar, from the arcade. A boy. An urchin… was apprehended by the guard, and he told a story of finding the mask with the beggar's corpse in the piazza. And since the corpse was to be brought here, the guard sent it after."

"But that means—" I began, seeing one more potential piece of the puzzle to solve the mystery of the beggar, but Sinon interrupted.

"That means nothing, because shortly thereafter I received an instruction that countermanded that delivery. The first message was simply wrong. The boy had stolen it from an assessor by the Ponte, and I was to hold it here until the assessor sent someone to collect it. And I did not tell you because I had only just managed to make you stop chasing that corpse through every ledger in the building. I needed my quaesitor back, Marek, not another mystery to make him useless for days."

Having calmed down some, he seemed to take in our countenances for the first time.

"Where in the hells have you been, men?" I looked down at our shoes: wet and grimy. Our coats were coated in dust, and our hands were black with the mortar from the wall. Then his eyes lifted.

"And Corso, what is that beneath your arm?" Corso looked down, as if only now remembering he had a sword wrapped up and stuck under his arm. A moment passed, and then he said, "A sword, Ser." Sinon's eyes went wide.

"A sword? Why are you carrying around a sword?" And then his expression grew a dangerous kind of flat.

"What did you do that you need a sword for?"

"Nothing, Ser. The sword is just… It's not for using. We found it."

"You did what?"

"We found—""I heard you the first time. Where did you find it? Who owns it? Am I now finding out that I have been employing thieves? Have you been sneaking out on other nights, and I only caught you now because I had business early?" He looked at Corso, this time with a finger raised.

"Where did you get that sword?" Corso squared his shoulders. Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.

"I cannot tell you." Sinon's face became very still.

"Cannot?"

"Ser." I tried to salvage the situation.

"It's not stolen. We found it. We… We found more." I decided I had to, no, I wanted to share more.

"We heard rumours of a hidden chamber. And tonight, we looked for it. And found it!" Sinon noticed my hand resting on my satchel, and breathed out through his nose.

"Is that from the same place?" Neither of us answered.

"Open the satchel."

"Ser," I said. I opened it only far enough to reach inside, took out the mask and held it towards him. Sinon did not take it.

"I said open the satchel, Vale." My hand remained extended. Behind me, Corso shifted the wrapped sword beneath his arm. For several heartbeats, Sinon stared at the bag. Then something in him seemed to give way. He took the mask, placed it in a drawer and shut it hard. Whether he had decided he did not want to know what else we carried, or merely that he had learned enough, I could not tell. I hoped this would be the end of it. But then he walked around his desk, and for the first time I thought he looked old.

He was perhaps some ten years my senior, but he had always appeared to me as strong. Now his body was hunched, and his eyes had lost energy. He came around the desk and sat down at its edge, facing us.

"The mask was in my office," he said.

"You removed it without authority, and now I can no longer attest to its chain of custody if I am asked. And I will be asked, and my failure to give a good answer will result in a certain reprimand. And I will take that on the chin, because I was ordered to keep the mask inside this building, and now I cannot honestly swear that I did. Normally…" His thoughts went elsewhere for a moment.

"Normally, this type of infraction would hardly be noticed. We keep locked doors, but we share our keys. The Misericordia has always been a place where we trusted each other enough to enter an unoccupied office when necessary." Then he looked at me.

"Even to request information from the Ledger in the middle of the night, if that was necessary." He breathed in.

"Normally, I would have given you a fortnight of extra work, and been done with it. But this job is…" I never knew what he was going to say, because when he continued his voice had firmed and he had changed topics.

"The mask was my responsibility, just like it was your infraction that broke its chain of custody. There is very little choice left." He turned to Corso.

"Corso. You are no longer employed by the Misericordia in the capacity of Porter. Your dismissal is to be recorded as the consequence of an infraction while exercising your duties as an employee of the Misericordia, and it follows that any pension is voided." Corso went white. His knees shifted beneath him, and I caught his arm before he could stumble.

"Ser," he muttered, his eyes fixed on the floor.

"Please. This is—" Sinon looked down at the sheet beside his hand. Then he turned towards me, and I do not know how I kept standing, but I did. Knees locked and supported by my class, I waited for the axe.

"Marek Vale. You are no longer my quaesitor, and you are also dismissed from the Misericordia. Like Corso, your dismissal is to be recorded as following a wilful infraction while in our service, and any pension rights you may have earned are voided." Twenty-two years. A week of pension earned for every one of them. Nearly half a year's wages, every year, for whatever remained of my life. Gone. I felt a hand on my shoulder, attempting to steady me, turning me around.

In a haze of shock and fatigue we led each other out. Sinon had claimed our keys, and if there were any personal keepsakes in my office I abandoned them. All I could manage was to place one foot in front of the other. We went down the hall from Sinon's office, glimpsed Sister Amalia's shocked expression for a moment, and walked through the facerium and then out through the entrance hall and down the stairs to the piazza. Somehow, I made it home, and I hoped Corso had done the same.

I found my bed, and the next thing I knew was a hard hammering on my door. Outside, it had gone dark. I struggled to wake up, and my body wanted to stay in bed for another day or two, but when I finally managed to stand and pull on some trousers, it was soon apparent that however many hours of sleep I had managed had restored some of my mental faculties.

"Right," I muttered to myself, remembering the knocking on the door which had woken me, and I headed in that direction. Just before I arrived at my front door, the knocking picked back up with newfound vigour.

"I'm coming!" I shouted, as I opened the door.

"What is the matter?" Outside, Ser Palladio Vene was standing with a document in one hand, and the other poised to knock again. Right, I thought to myself as I again knew what his visit was about even before he had a chance to speak.

"Ser," I said.

"Ser Vale," he answered. He was dressed as he always was, in a businesslike manner, and he had schooled his face in the same way.

"May I come in?" Last night and this morning had come fully back to me, and with the clarity that sleep had brought me combined with hindsight, I could feel my temper coming back to me. I now knew that for the last many hours, I had acted and spoken through a veil of fatigue, but now that I was refreshed, anger was building. Anger at myself, for my stupidity. Anger at Corso for letting me. Anger at the guilds and anger at the families, but more than anything, anger at Sinon. Borrowing a mask, for a night?

That was not an offence worthy of dismissal, and I just knew something else was moving in the shadows. Ser Vene appearing at my doorstep, on the same day as that dismissal, was all the proof I needed. Someone had moved very quickly. Faster than ordinary resentment, and much faster than Varenzan paperwork. Whether Sinon had withdrawn the guarantee himself or merely yielded to the same pressure again, I could not yet tell. But Ser Vene had reached my door before the dust beneath the bridge had settled.

All that anger leaked into my bearing. My shoulders squared, my voice raised.

"No, Vene. You may not."

"Ser." He looked down, then up. He had done this too many times to feel shame or regret.

"It is better, I think, if we discuss—""And I," I said, my voice icy.

"Do not care what you think. Because you are here to evict me from my home, are you not?" His silence at that was all the confirmation I needed.

"I believe I paid for this month, only last week. I will be gone before the month is over."

"Ser." And now he did look embarrassed.

"It is true that you paid through the month. But the Misericordia is the principal name on the lease, and they have withdrawn their guarantee. The cancellation takes effect tonight. I have two porters waiting below, Ser, though I would rather give you the opportunity to pack for yourself. You have been here for," he looked down at his document, even if I knew he knew its contents by heart, "for a bit more than ten years. And then, you see.

We need to inspect for damage, and we need time to bring in workmen to repair what needs repairing."

"I see." For the first time, rested and clear-headed, I understood what Eight Might meant outside a funerary chamber. I could have picked Vene up and thrown him into the street. The knowledge arrived with the same clinical certainty with which I might once have assessed a fractured neck, and it frightened me how little effort the injury would require. I held my hands still at my sides. Instead, I asked, "When?" He had seen something in me, and took a step back.

Something happened to how he set his shoulders and he looked down as he answered.

"Tonight, Ser." I did step forward then. My body moved of its own volition, and it was only when I saw the naked fear in his face that I came to my senses. I stopped, stepped back, and shook my head. The anger did not disappear, but I found something beneath it. The satchel was still inside. Corso still had the sword. A year's wages, perhaps, and a Class that had already shown me more of Varenza in one night than twenty-two years at the Misericordia.

Corso had paid for that night with his employment and pension, just as I had. I wanted to go below Varenza again. To find another sealed wall, another forgotten room, and learn what the city had buried beneath itself. And through all of it, the lost sleep, the fear and the strain of the night, I had not once felt the blue mood. I did not know whether that would last. But there had been tiredness and fear, and beneath both of them, purpose. And a joy. Not that flatness.

"Ser," I said, my voice now even and calm.

"I understand. May I have a moment to collect my things?"

"Of course," he said. And so I did. The satchel came first. Then two shirts, my spare trousers and the knife roll I had bought when Sinon first made me quaesitor. I held it for a moment before packing it too. Ser Vene would almost certainly consider the scarcity of my belongings to be something sad, and perhaps he was right. The life I had led up to this point had not given me much cause to collect and keep keepsakes or memorabilia. And then I left, shaking Ser Vene's hand as I handed him the key.

I wished him a good night, and in that good-bye I saw in his eyes compassion for me. But I didn't need his compassion. I walked into the night carrying everything that remained of my old life, and, in the satchel beneath my arm, what I needed to build a new one.