I am a better man because of her, he realized, and the dead thing in his heart started fluttering again.
“There are no walls out here, city boy,” he said with a hint of a smile. “How are you going to catch something that can fly out of the range of your Chinese toys?”
Munokhoi jabbed Gansukh in the chest with a stiff finger. “You know nothing about—” he growled.
“Captain Munokhoi.” One of his companions interrupted Munokhoi, and when he whirled on the man, the guard redirected his anger with a gesture.
A guard was running toward them. “Captain Munokhoi,” he shouted, scattering a trio of concubines and a minor ambassador as he dashed across their carpet. “The patrols are late, and horses—without riders—”
Munokhoi didn’t wait for the man to finish. He shoved Gansukh aside and sprinted toward the main table. “The Khagan,” he screamed. “We are under attack. Protect the Khagan!” His Torguud guards drew their swords and followed, shoving their way through the suddenly panicked crowd.
Gansukh hesitated, torn between his duty and what was caught in his heart. Lian...
25
Decipies, Et Pr?valebis
“EVEN BY YOUR standards, that is rather childish, don’t you think?” There was an impish gleam in Colonna’s eyes that belied his tone.
After the messengers had left their impromptu conclave, the cardinals had dispersed as well, not wishing their meeting to be stumbled upon by the others. He and Capocci had intended to lead the girl and the young man back to Fieschi’s secret entrance, and once they had passed the Old Scar—the name Capocci had given to the savage break in the foundation of the ancient temple in which they were housed—the roughly hewn cardinal had taken his leave. I have souls to rescue, he had said as he vanished into the dark tunnels. These two, I leave in your care.
Once the messengers had departed the confines of the Septizodium tunnels, shutting the secret panel and sealing Colonna in darkness once more, he had returned to the haunts of the captive cardinals. Capocci had not been that hard to find; Colonna suspected he knew what the other man was up to.
Capocci was seated in a dusty antechamber, a narrow room with tall arched doorways. Of the four thresholds, three were filled with rubble, hiding whatever grand hall this chamber abutted, and the fourth led back to the rest of the areas more commonly used by the cardinals. A pair of small lanterns kept the seated cardinal company, along with a few other objects.
The heavily bearded cardinal glanced up when he heard Colonna’s voice. “Most children know better than to play with poisonous insects.” His beard seemed to flap like a bird’s wing as he smiled. Something small squirmed in his leather-clad grip, and he dropped it into a clay jar sitting on the floor in front of him. “You may be right, however. This new hobby may qualify as infantile behavior, but for something so infantile, I must say I’m pretty good at it.” His smile broadened, his bearded wings lifting. “Want to try it?” He gestured to a wooden box beside him; out of the tiny airholes in the top came the furtive scratching of half a dozen furious scorpions, clawing and crawling over one another. “There is another glove.” A heavy leather gauntlet, left-handed, lay on the floor beside the box.
Colonna shook his head as he lowered himself to the floor. He leaned back against the wall of the dusty chamber. “I rest content merely abetting your follies, without actually participating.”
“Follies!” Capocci cried out in mock outrage. “I do not consider this a folly! In a den of vipers, it is a marvelous thing to have all possible tricks up one’s sleeve.” He slid open the lid of the box—just enough—and thrust his hand inside. After a moment of concentrated groping, he grinned with satisfaction and drew his hand out. Quickly, in a motion that ran counter to his air of relaxed insouciance, his bare left hand slid the lid home again.
Pinched between his right thumb and forefinger, an angry scorpion wriggled. “Hello, my little angel of death,” Capocci cooed. “I am the great and powerful Cardinal Capocci, and I offer you a chance at redemption. Will you mend your ways and become a harmless plaything? Will you cast off your poison and be born again in the name of Christ? What’s that?” He lowered his head and nodded as if he understood the clicks and snaps of the scorpion’s pincers—the secret language of arachnids. “Yes, you say? Oh, blessed by the Lord on high! Well then, let me assist you in your resurrection.” Adjusting his grip on the squirming scorpion, Capocci reached for the stinger with his bare left hand. “This won’t hurt a bit, my innocent child.”
Colonna, despite himself, leaned closer to watch. This was not the first time he had seen Capocci perform this trick, and as much as he pretended otherwise, he could not help but be fascinated by what came next.
With a magnificent finesse of movement that one would have not thought possible in a man with such thick and rough fingers, Capocci expertly gripped the stinger—at the base of the last of the six segments that made up the tail—and gave it a quick, firm jerk. Though he knew it was a fanciful notion, Colonna imagined he could hear a yowl of outrage from the scorpion as it was parted from its deadly weapon.
Capocci held up the tiny dagger, squinting at it for a moment in the dim light of the lanterns, and then he smiled at Colonna. “Sing Hosanna,” he told the scorpion and dropped this one too into the clay pot.
“Are they well away?” he asked Colonna, referring not to the scorpions but to the others most recently in their care.
Colonna nodded. “They are.”
Capocci sighed. “What do you think of Robert’s plan, then?”