When they had gotten here — how they had gotten here — Nico could not rightly say. How long they had been here, he could not say either. It may have been hours, days, weeks. Time was a blur. The venom still coursed his veins, made him feverish. Gave him chills. Made his legs cramp up.
A gaoler came around on patrol.
“Water,” he croaked. Nico was so weak he could hardly crane his neck to look at the man. “Need… water.”
The gaoler stopped short. He was looking down at Nico.
“Hands back, thief,” he spat.
“So … so thirsty.”
"Aye, and you're like to die that way."
The gaoler clubbed him, smashing his fingers. Nico shrank back. His fingers felt broken, but the pain was merely a drop in the ocean. What bothered him most wasn’t pain. It was his own mind. His thoughts kept gravitating back to the nightmare which had transpired within the Oculus.
No, he thought bitterly, not a nightmare. Nightmares aren’t real. This was viscerally real.
He could not bear to lift his hands to his face, for his fingers had the rotten stench of death upon them. And when he closed his eyes he could still see the cairn of skulls, Muerte’s horrible shrine. He could feel the chill on his cheek as he rested on the headsman’s block, awaiting the terrible finality of death. Awaiting a fate far worse than ordinary death.
He had been extinguished of all hope… until Leo came.
Leo.
Nico could hardly bear to look at his old friend. The man was gaunt, his eyes dark bagged with dark circles. His blond hair was smeared with dirt, his cloak torn and bedraggled. There was a hollowness to him, as though his soul had been carved from his body. Gianna’s death had ripped the life out of him.
If he should fall over dead any second now, I would hardly be surprised.
Sometime later, the gaoler returned for them and led them to a small office.
A man was seated at the table. He had a lean form, close-cropped blond hair, and sharp green eyes. His eyes looked familiar to Nico…
“You endured quite an ordeal. Can I get you something to drink? Water, ale —?”
“Wine,” Leo said instantly. His energy seemed restored.
The blond-haired man snapped his fingers at the gaoler and bid him to fetch drinks.
“I know you,” Nico said, noticing the mask that lay before him. “I recognize your voice from the Musea. You’re Black Cabal.”
“Leo got the better of me that day in the Musea,” he said. “When you passed out, I departed the room, giving you time to recover. I should have anticipated a rescue operation. My name is Luka, by the way.”
Wine arrived. The gaoler set snifters before each of them. Leo and Nico both drank greedily. It tasted like heaven on his lips, but as soon as he swallowed, he knew something was wrong. The wine had a queer aftertaste…
We have been poisoned, he thought wildly. Why would a Black Cabal remove his mask and reveal his identity, if he did not mean for us to survive the encounter?
“All I want to know,” he said, in his icy cold voice, “is your account of what happened. Begin with the day you met Cosimo. I will know if you are lying.”
Leo and Nico exchanged looks. If he knows what happened, how will he know we’re lying? thought Nico. Still, he saw little profit in deception.
“Are we under arrest?” asked Leo.
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“Under arrest, and pending execution… Unless you willingly comply with this interrogation.”
“After which, we'll be executed anyway?”
“Such a cynic, Leo. If you comply willingly, I will grant a death of your own choosing. Something swift — guillotine or the gallows, perhaps. Resist or deceive me, and you will suffer the agony of being burned alive or drawn and quartered.”
Leo and Nico exchanged despairing looks.
With that, the two of them began chronicling the events of the past week, beginning with the scavenger hunt that had led to their first meeting with Cosimo, and the trail of clues which followed the cryptogram. Occasionally, Luka would interrupt to ask questions, but mostly he stayed silent, nodding his head as though he were aware (or at least not surprised) about what they were telling him.
When Nico described the bodies they found in Ambrose’s winter palace, Luka put up a hand.
“Those were our men. Black Cabal men.”
“They weren’t wearing masks,” Leo said. “They were Black Cabal?”
“They were on a covert assignment hundreds of miles from Verona. Did you think we wear our masks all day? When we sleep and shit?”
“That was my operating theory, yes.”
Luka did not seem amused. “Continue.”
It took less than a half hour to complete the tale. The entire time, Nico left his wine untouched, even though he had a vicious thirst. When he was done giving his account, Luka took a long swig of his own snifter.
“Cosimo Medea has been under our surveillance for several years now,” he said. “He has a known obsession with deathtraps, and particularly with finding Ilhen’s Seventh, and he has the means to seek it.”
“But Ilhen’s Seventh was never a deathtrap,” Nico said, recalling what Alastair had told him.
“No. A century ago Empress Violetta commissioned Ilhen Rimani — personally commissioned him — to help guard the spire against potential intrusion. He built a locked door — no one builds locked doors quite like Ilhen — and a key to go with it. At our instruction, the key was concealed. Ilhen crafted a trail of clues that would lead to it in case future generations determined there was a dire need of it.”
“A couple weeks ago, the cryptogram — the initial clue — was purloined from the Ducal Palace. When Alastair exposed the cryptogram to Cosimo and others, we knew we had to act swiftly and decisively. I had hoped I could win you to our cause, to turn you against Cosimo, to question him about what he knew and lead him astray.”
“And why would we do that?” asked Leo.
“Because, Leonardo Sforza, I have the authority to cancel your guild’s debt. That’s what he was offering, isn’t it? I would have offered you an easier path, if only you had permitted me. If only you hadn’t interceded, your apprentice Gianna might still be alive.”
Those words stung. Out of the corner of his eye, Nico could see Leo gripping his snifter so tight his knuckles were white. Nico was amazed the glass didn’t shatter.
“And so after the cryptogram was exposed,” said Nico slowly, “the Black Cabal decided that they must solve it.”
Luka nodded. “We had to recover the key before someone else did — recover it, and destroy it. It was a calculated decision made by the Empress herself — and strongly encouraged by an emissary from the Ice Court. The Black Cabal was initially established with the purpose of concealing the necromancy attunement Spire. We trace our history back to the day the Empress' Royal Navy made landfall on Verona and discovered the wretched Diji and that evil Spire. We adopted their iconography — the symbol the Diji carved on the temple became our own insignia.”
“That symbol is the Diji glyph for death,” said Nico. “I can’t believe I never noticed it before…”
“It is easy to overlook the obvious. It was a clever ploy by the forebears of the Black Cabal. About once a decade, Alastair concocts some elaborate ruse to lure adventurers in the Spire… But heretofore we have never wavered or failed in our mission to hide the Necromancy Spire. Do you still have the key?”
Nico did. He took it out from his boot and slid it across the table. Luka accepted it, grinning.
“As it turns out, through your ordeal you have done the Empire a great service, albeit unwittingly. This key was the object of our Quest. This now closes the chapter on Alastair’s latest ruse.”
“Very well,” Leo said, taking a last swig of his wine, apparently not suspicious of it. “So, will it be the guillotine or the gallows? Makes no matter to me.”
“Neither. Your fate is already sealed. Your drink was —”
“Poisoned,” said Nico casually.
“Yes. But not with a fatal agent. With Lethos. Are you familiar?”
Nico’s mind spun. Lethos? He dimly recalled Duke Ferdinand II telling them about it. “Yes… The memory potion. It… it wipes a person’s memory.”
“Everything you have told me — everything that has happened the past week, including this very meeting, will be soon forgotten.”
“So… we’re free?” said Leo. “You'll let us go?”
“I will. You have done a great service to the Empire, and so I will give you more than your lives. There is a clause in your contract with Cosimo stipulating that in the event of his death, that you must submit to the Immotalus truth serum and an interrogation. That clause will be waived.”
“You’re saying—”
“I am saying,” Luka said, holding up a silencing hand, “that the Pathfinder guild’s debt, in the eyes of the Empress Isabella and Duke Ferdinand II, is hereby settled.”