Chương 17: We Remembered the Advocate

A single window was lit in the bakehouse when I reached it. Corso's sister would have gone to bed with sunset to wake up in the middle of the night, as she always did, to do her work. My spare clothes and knife roll were bundled over one shoulder; the satchel hung at my side. Everything I owned, and I did not have to break a sweat to carry it around. I found a pebble on the street and threw it, aiming for the lit window, and hit it with a sharp crack.

I waited, and a few heartbeats later the window opened and Corso's head poked out.

"Vale!" he exclaimed, and even in the dark and at this distance, I could see that the familiar grin was back.

"Corso," I shouted up.

"Are you well?"

"Simply marvellous! Come on up. Hold on a moment, I will come get you." His face disappeared and the window closed, and I had a minute to go over the plan I had put together on the walk here. It still seemed sound. Corso emerged through the door, pulling on his coat as he approached me. He slapped my shoulder. As we set off, he asked,"So, Vale. And you? Doing all right?"

"Never better," I answered, and meant it for a heartbeat.

"But I am now officially homeless and destitute." That gave him pause, and he thought for a moment, before reaching out and tapping the satchel at my side.

"Not exactly. But what happened with the apartment?" I told him, and then I told him my plan.

"So, you remembered the advocate?" he said after I was finished explaining, and then he looked up and took in the streets and the direction we were heading for the first time.

"A-ha. The Statio!"

"Indeed. These relics, Corso. It was the lack of sleep yesterday, but we took them from a place below the Ponte delle Botteghe. I only know a little of property law relating to testamentation, but the little I know is all concerned with regulating who owns what and why." I paused there, thinking, and Corso let me. It was getting late, but Varenza was far from gone to sleep at this hour.

Most of the merchant stalls had shuttered up at dusk, but craftsmen and tradesmen with workshops and offices would want to make the most of the day, and the sounds of commerce followed us as we approached the Piazza di Santa Cavallia, where the Statio Advocatus was located. Eventually, I continued.

"Somebody is going to lay claim to this. I don't believe anybody saw us last night, but surely the wall we knocked down was discovered as soon as dawn broke, and by now rumours about what was found down there are well known. Including the half-opened coffin." I thought about the two silver coins marking the dead man's eyes.

"So, an advocate," Corso answered.

"Yes," I said, and with that we continued in silence until we arrived at the Piazza di Santa Cavallia. It was a fairly small one, with a clear and purposeful design. The Statio where the advocates plied their trade took up one long side of the rectangle, and opposing it were a series of well-decorated taverns and restaurants, each with a plentitude of separate chambers and partitioned-off tables, all designed for holding meetings where men discussed how to bend the machinery of Varenza to their purposes.

The short sides of the piazza held apartment buildings, where the more well-off advocates lived. In the centre there was a fountain, where a woman held a book — a Ledger — high up with one hand, and a scroll in the other. She was Santa Cavallia, the patron saint of the law and of the advocates. On each side, a bench faced the statue. Three of them were empty, and a young man was reading a scroll at the fourth. Beside that statue, I found myself standing next to Corso, looking up at the Statio.

Short pillars ran the full length of the building, supporting the floor above. A door stood in every interval. The upper windows followed the same measure, one above each door and spaced as evenly across the façade as they were from the arches below. Many were still lit, which did not surprise me. Varenza produced enough disputes to keep its advocates working into the small hours.

"Did you ever need an advocate before, Vale?" Corso asked, apprehension in his voice. I was also daunted. This step of the plan, finding an advocate, was supposed to be the easy one. But there were so many to choose from.

"Never," I answered.

"How do we choose?" He didn't answer, but another voice broke in.

"Gentlemen, if I may make a recommendation?" I turned to the man seated at one of the benches. Young, perhaps twenty-five. His hair was blonder than most in Varenza and as dishevelled as a bird's nest.

"Maybe?" Corso said.

"But who are you, and what makes you qualified to recommend an advocate?" The young man smiled at Corso before answering.

"Before answering," he said, "let me ask you a question." Corso nodded and the man continued.

"When a man finds himself in need of an advocate, how would he go about finding one?" This time, I answered.

"Well, the families have their advocates. They inherit them like jewellery. Or they know someone who knows someone. And if that fails, they go here, and find one in the Statio."

"Mostly correct," he said, now looking at me.

"And when they go to the Statio, what do they do?"

"Well, they go to the building and—" He held his hand up and I stopped.

"Before they go to the building, what do they do?" And then I understood, and I smiled back at him.

"They go here. To this very spot. And they stand here, and look at the Statio, and they wonder how to choose." His smile broadened, and he was obviously very satisfied with himself. Then he rose and approached, and extended his hand.

"Verin Dast," he said.

"Gentlemen, how may I be of service?" I shook his hand and told the man my name, and while Corso did the same I wondered about the wisdom of picking the first and only advocate we had seen. But then I did not know how to find another, or how to assess them against each other. And his trick for hustling new clients had shown a certain cunning. A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation. So when he invited us to follow him, I did so.

My apprehension grew somewhat when he led us, not into one of the illuminated doors of the Statio, but into an alley running down its side. I cast a glance at Corso, who was swivelling his head, having had the same thought as me. We exchanged a look. Is he leading us into an ambush? Dast must have seen our growing suspicion.

"Gentlemen. Sers Corso and Vale. Do you want to guess at the weekly rent of an office in the Statio?" I did not particularly want to do so, but thought it better to play along, and build the relationship, than to be my normal self.

"Fifteen florins?" My guess was more or less arbitrary. If my apartment cost fifteen per month, then perhaps these offices were four times more expensive.

"Try sixty, my new friend," he said.

"So we are heading in here." He pointed to a door next to a glovemaker's shop, which led to a set of narrow wooden stairs. To our left, they went upwards, and on the right they descended. We went right, and the stairs creaked in protest as the three of us started down them.

"Stay to the right," Dast said then.

"The central structure is rotten through, but they replaced the wall stringer only ten years ago, or so I heard. We should be good if we hug the wall." I would have exchanged another look with Corso, except I did not dare make any unexpected or unconventional movements. The stairs continued down, perhaps further down than was normal for Varenzan cellars, but eventually we arrived at a short landing ending in a wooden door.

Dast reached up and fetched a key which had been hidden from view on a brick, unlocked and opened the door, and led us in.

"Don't mind the mess," he said, smiling, as he lifted a thick pile of paper away from the chair facing a desk, and then he found another chair which had been hidden from view behind even more paper, and set it down next to the first. Then he went around the desk, hung his coat on a peg, and sat down. His hand gestured.

"Right. There we are. Sers, please sit." He then lit a lantern and set it on the desk. We did as asked, and with no other preamble he got us started.

"Nobody seeks out an advocate when all is well, so let us skip that part. What is the heart of this matter, gentlemen?" I looked at Corso, but he was obviously expecting me to take the lead here, and he gave me a nod to continue. And it was only at that point I fully realised what I had committed to. I had not, until now, appreciated that I would need to share the full story. It made me pause for a moment, before I asked.

"Right," I said eventually.

"About… About confidentiality?"

"Complete," he stated with reassuring finality.

"You will find that Varenza's advocates know more secrets than anybody else in the city. We know where every body is buried, and we know every lover and mistress and secret bastard child. In essence: two facts. The first is that I am unable to help you, without knowing what is going on, and the second is that I am bound by oath of office as well as law to never reveal anything shared in confidence.

So, Ser Vale, this is where you either trust me, and share why you are here, or don't, and we go up and find a nice tavern and share a bottle. On you."

"Well," I started, glancing at Corso in case he wanted to protest. He did not.

"We may, or we may not have… Found, or stolen, or… Let us say, acquired, some relics last night…" Dast sat back in his chair with an interested expression.

"Go on." And so I did. I began with the beggar's corpse in the arcade. Before I reached the ring, Dast interrupted.

"Did you open the arm under mortuary authority?" When I said no, his pen stopped.

"Then we have two matters already. Continue." At the mask he asked if any supplementary information was present on Sinon's desk to indicate where it belonged, and he asked about general access to the Misericordia rooms and offices. I told him of the customs, and of how we shared responsibilities. When I got to the part of the story where we broke down the wall, he leaned forward.

"That was you?"

"You know about that?" Corso asked, his first words since we got here." Everybody knows about the burial chamber they found under the goldsmiths. The story has been all around the city today. They say the coffin lid had been moved! What was in there? Please, go on, tell me what happened after that." He sat back to listen, but immediately spoke again.

"You really have not heard?"

"No," I said.

"We've mostly been sleeping today." And then I told the rest of the story. As I finished, our advocate closed his eyes with a huge and somewhat unnerving grin on his face. Then he leaned over his paper and made a few more notes, before reading down the page.

"Now the crucial question," he said eventually.

"Does anyone know about the ring? And the class?" I looked at Corso.

"Only him. And now you."

"Good." He tapped his pen on the paper.

"Did anyone see you enter the chamber? Or break down the wall?"

"No one."

"And leave?" I shook my head.

"Where are the objects now?" I held up the satchel, and Corso added, "the sword is at my home." After thinking for a moment, Dast spoke.

"The Bellandi concession includes the bridge, its shops, landings and foundations. They will claim the chamber and everything you removed from it." He stood and began searching his shelves as he spoke.

"There was a ruling… I think two, perhaps three decades ago. A carpenter was renovating his workshop, and he found something underneath." He apparently found what he was looking for. A small green leather-bound book. From where I was sitting, all I could see was dense writing as he opened it. He leafed through the pages for a few heartbeats, and then he stopped, and his finger traced down the page.

"Ah. Here it is. A privy. Maffei v. Orsini, twenty-one years ago. The carpenter found an old cellar underneath his workshop, but it was already in use, as a privy. His neighbour had found their own way down into that cellar, and apparently his wife had instructed him the best use of the room was for the man to have his own privy."

"A privy? How is that relevant?" I asked.

"A privy in a cellar?" Corso asked.

"That makes no sense, where would it… it all go?"

"I do not know, Corso, but that was also noted as a concern from the advocate for the carpenter," Dast said.

"And with regard to relevance… It may be, or it may not. That depends on the magistrate, and other things. In this case, the courts ruled that the neighbour might keep his privy, as the location of this unknown cellar was unknown to both the carpenter and the city surveyors. Not having been present on any map or tax accounting, it was deemed to be the finding and property of the neighbour." He looked at us, and saw that we did not understand.

"So," he continued.

"There may be a previous ruling we can argue as relevant, where the landowner on the surface could not also claim as property any cellars, rooms, or… chambers, that they were unaware of. Even if those sit below their land."

"That sounds… promising," Corso said, and I had to agree. We had found the relics in a room it was unlikely the Bellandi knew existed. If they had known about it, they would have taken the things long ago.

"It does, but then…" He scratched his head and reached for another book. This one larger, and red.

"This book contains the main elements of Varenzan property law." This time he did not have to search the book, but opened it directly to a page which was already bookmarked, and as his finger pointed to the page, he quoted." Cuius est solum, eius est usque ad coelum et ad inferos. The courts also have a long history of granting complete ius dominii to any landowner, up into the sky and down into the ground.

This, however," he continued, not having noticed Corso and me looking at each other with increasing confusion, "is also typically associated with mining rights, hunting rights, the right to dig wells and to exploit any other resources naturally occurring on the land. As Maffei v.

Orsini demonstrated, there are alternative interpretations. Our argument is that an unrecorded chamber is not a resource of the soil, and its grave goods are separate property whose owner must still be proved." He started pacing, and was about to continue when I held up my hand.

"Your fee?" I asked, because he had just strung together a bunch of words that sounded expensive.

"Oh." He looked at me as if what I said was of no importance. A digression that took us far away from our purpose, and would only bring us off topic.

"Let's see. You are both unemployed, with no fortune other than what you found in the tomb?" We nodded.

"I will take on your case. If we lose, you take me out for that bottle of wine. If we win, I take half of the value of the relics." I was about to protest when Corso said.

"Ten percent."

"Forty," Dast shot back.

"A quarter then," Corso said, and before Dast could counter-propose he added, "And there is more where that came from." Something changed in the advocate's expression then, as if he suddenly remembered the rest of my story.

"Right," he said drily.

"You can find relics at will." He stopped his pacing, and opened a drawer. From there he withdrew a stack of blank paper, and began to write something down.

"At first bell I am filing notice before anyone files against you. Then you need an inventory and a valuation from a licensed assessor. Do not sell, pledge, surrender or accidentally give anything to anyone. Do that at first bell tomorrow — any licensed assessor will do. Then return here, before third bell. We need to act fast." He looked at our clothes, then at the bundle over my shoulder.

"Wear the cleanest things you own. We file before the Bellandi can call it theft." His grin returned, and something in his eyes almost made me uneasy.

"And then, gentlemen, our battle will be joined."