1 Soul Bound
1.2 Taking Control
1.2.4 An Artful Carnivale
1.2.4.4 Ciotto & sons
A few minutes later, Kafana could smell the sea more strongly, and more of the pedestrians were in clothes better suited to the deck of a ship than to the back of a horse.
Bulgaria: “Here’s the address for Ciotto. I’ll wait out here, and leave this to Wellington and Tomsk. Be warned, the other side of this building is a canal, so don’t assume this door is the only exit.”
Alderney: “I’ll stay out too. There’s something I want to check.”
The lobby of the building had a walnut wooden board with brass plates slotted into it, listing the names of businesses.
1st Floor
P.D. Logistics
Shipping Agent
Exotic pets & mounts
2nd Floor
Vanni di Avolo
Advocate at Law
Notary Public
Specialist in inheritance and Bona Vacantia issues
3rd Floor
Ciotto & Sons.
Cabinet of Curiosities.
Antiques Bought, Sold or Auctioned
Licensed Pawn Broker and Evaluator
4th Floor
Orphic Press
Fixed fee book publication and marketing
“You too can become a successful author”
Get a minimum 10% of profit from each book sold!
5th Floor
Dolce Olistica, Detective Agency
Whole people found
Whole problems solved
6th Floor
Sighicelli Investments
Master Medium, Psychic & Seer
Protection against curses, devils & spying competitors
“Let your ancestors guide you to wealth.”
As they started climbing the stairs, Bungo waved at a door advertising half-price Burgundish unicorns. “Good job Alderney isn’t with us. We’d never drag her away.”
Kafana: “I don’t imagine a smuggled unicorn, sea sick from travel, would be very easy to tame.”
Wellington: “P.D. Logistics are not on Marco’s list of trusted companies. I rather suspect the unicorn would never arrive ‘due to unforeseen circumstances’.”
Tomsk: “The Watch gets complaints about companies in the Arsenal all the time, but it isn’t our jurisdiction unless the whole of Torello or its economic system are at risk. Even if it were, by the time evidence had been collected, inevitably the office would be empty or rented to someone else. Its count, Lord Fabrizio Ruffo, takes the position that it is the buyer’s responsibility to beware, and he’s neutral just so long as he gets his cut and the scammers don’t rock the boat enough to affect his own schemes.”
Wellington: “Then let’s simplify things. I have an idea. Tomsk, you and Bungo ensure he doesn’t run and I’ll start off talking. If reason fails, then Kafana can charm it out of him. Ok?”
Kafana: “Works for me.”
The store was an Aladdin’s cave of bric-a-brac, with thin-legged tables piled with high weapons, cutlery drawers full of rings and heirloom cameos, wardrobes of rolled up paintings and even a harp hanging from a stuffed manticore tail mounted high on one wall. A glass display case that glowed of mana to Kafana’s Truesight contained wax sealed parchment scrolls, bent wands wrapped in copper wire, rune-inscribed alembics, snuff boxes of ash and fragmented bone, bezoars, and other things she could hardly describe let alone name.
Sitting by a high desk, next to a chain-bound strong box, was a short-sighted man whose large head seemed even larger due to his hair sticking straight out as though he’d received an electric shock. He was peering closely at a weathered nautical chart showing an archipelago with one of the islands marked with a bold “X”, muttering to himself “It won’t do, it won’t do at all.”
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Wellington: “Master Ciotto, would you be able to evaluate some gems for me, and submit them to the next auction on my behalf, with all the correct paperwork?”
Tomsk hung back near the door, and Bungo made his way over the far side where a window looked down over the canal. Kafana settled for browsing through a bookshelf.
Ciotto: “What’s that? Customers? Yes, yes, gems, precious gems, mounted or unmounted, I can evaluate them. And the auction, I can do paperwork, all all all of it. I ask no questions, hear no names, see no faces.”
Wellington: “That suits me very well, Master Ciotto. But reassure me. If you do not ask questions, do not confirm the provenance, will House Czerny really accept the items?”
Kafana lifted up a book at random and pretended to leaf through it, while listening in. It appeared to be volume two of a learned treatise, handwritten more than a hundred years earlier, about something called “The Nemesis Prophecy”.
Wellington gently repeated his question: “Master Ciotto?”
To Kafana, Ciotto appeared to be barely paying attention to serving his customer, or even aware he was talking to himself out aloud. He sat stiffly, as though to prevent trembling, but unguarded emotions chased freely across his face with every thought. She didn’t need Truesight to see he was cracking under a great deal of stress. All it would take was one more nudge.
Ciotto: “If I fill the paperwork in, saying I have satisfied myself, and I put my seal to it, they never check. Never yet, never yet.”
Wellington: “I am sorry, Master Ciotto. Normally they wouldn’t. A businessman’s good reputation is his life. Who would be foolish enough to risk that? But rumours have been spreading, and this time they did check. And under your seal they found not only some impossibly rare Zeradan relics, they also found a painting known to have been on a ship that fell to a pirate attack. You are in a great deal of trouble, Master Ciotto.”
Kafana expected Ciotto to collapse in despair, but instead he became angry.
Ciotto: “He is a fool! I told him the painting was too much. I told him that his luck could not last. He blackmails me because he needs an expert, but then he treats me as a tool and does not listen to my advice.”
It didn’t look like she’d be needed. But perhaps there was something she could do. She took out her violin and used her stealth performance skill to cast a debuff upon Ciotto. Not calm or truth, but something similar: talkativeness. She didn’t want to wrench the tale from him. She wanted him to trust them enough to spill it of his own accord.
Wellington: “Start from the beginning, Master Ciotto. Explain it to me as though I knew nothing. Who is responsible, and when did they first enter your life?”
Ciotto: “It started before I even arrived in Torello. The convoy of galleys I’d booked passage on was being escorted by a pair of armed galeasses from the Sea Saints. During the layover at Salerno, the purser took me drinking and persuaded me to accept a loan in order to set up a new shop and buy some initial stock. He said an acquaintance of his let out office space cheaply, in a prime location: Torello’s port area. He said I’d be able to pay off the loan in only a few months, as I’d be flooded with customers and get first crack at buying curiosities brought in by each shipload. Just the thing for a man of ambition, he said.”
Ciotto: “What I didn’t know was that the shark on the Sea Saints’ flag doesn’t just refer to their protecting convoys. They also offer ‘protection’ to businesses, and if you refuse protection or default on a loan to them, they send in their ‘protectors’ to break your knees, burn down the premises, or just take a silent 30% ownership of your business.”
Ciotto: “I also didn’t know that the Saints are allied to the Sons of Hawkwood, another of the Arsenal’s delightful gangs, though by no means the most powerful. I didn’t know that the ‘acquaintance’ who became my landlord was high up in the Sons and that my new shop would be in the same building as document forgers disguised as a vanity press, a stock broker who disguises insider trading as magic revelation, and all manner of other untrustworthy people. All the reputable companies refused to trade with me, just based on where I was located, and within three months not only had I not paid off the loan, I’d also lost all the money I’d brought with me and most of my stock.”
Ciotto: “The interest upon the loan was building up and I had no prospect of being able to pay it off or even keep up. Frankly, I’d have tried moving to a new city, but the Saints are everywhere, not just Torello, and they have a reputation for hiring mages to track defaulters down using the signature upon the loan document.”
Ciotto: “That’s when my landlord made me an offer. He was deeply sympathetic over my plight, acknowledged my neighbours weren’t the sort I was used to, but explained that this is just how things were in Torello, and I’d need to go along to get along. He said he believed in me, that I had potential, and if I was just willing to give his way a try, he’d clear my loan with the Saints in return for becoming my partner and being able to ask me for an occasional favour.”
Ciotto gave a tired shrug.
Ciotto: “What could I do? Of course I accepted, and that’s how the business name changed from ‘Curiously Ciotto’ to ‘Ciotto and Sons’.”
Ciotto: “At first the favours weren’t too bad. Hiding a copy of a map inside a book, then directing a particular customer in that direction so they’d ‘accidently’ find it. Charging exorbitant prices for dried centaur faeces, which for some reason people had become convinced was a rare and valuable magic component. Perhaps it was. I learned not to ask, just go along with whatever he wanted. I even started to build up stocks again, as he directed customers my way, and the Saints hired me to evaluate the estates of dead people.”
Ciotto: “And then he introduced me to Baron Dado Orsini. I knew, from the first time I met him, that the Baron would be trouble. He’s large, overweight, sweats a lot, and the only time his face isn’t twisted into a sneer is when he switches without warning into a violent rage. He had an unending supply of artifacts and antiquities nobody had ever heard of, and demanded that I certify that I’d seen proof they’d been in his family for generations, that I make up a history for each one and document it. I tried refusing, I tried explaining that an independent expert would sooner or later find us out, but he wouldn’t accept ‘no’ as an answer and I was afraid of him. There was nobody on my side, and I’d already done too many dubious things for my partner - the guild wouldn’t support me and Ruffo’s rats certainly wouldn’t.”
[Quest gained: “Battle the Bully” - deal with Baron Orsini.]
Ciotto: “Well, now it is all exposed, I’m actually relieved. The waiting was killing me.”
Bungo: “I don’t like the sound of that Baron. If he wasn’t worried about being caught, do you suppose he had plans to silence you?”
Ciotto: “Ha, almost certainly! But I was determined not to go down alone. I documented everything. This strongbox contains a description of every item, every conversation, every lie I put my name to - it's a full confession. I’d planned to leave it at the guild, along with instructions to open it upon my death. You might as well take it along with you now.”
Ciotto puffed himself up like a bantam, his shocked hair reminding Kafana of a cockerel’s comb. Wellington slid the strongbox into his stash and accepted the key from Ciotto.
[Quest completed: “Defend our Reputation”.]
[Level gained. You are now level 37]
They were about to leave when a question occurred to Kafana. She turned back to Ciotto.
Kafana: “By the way, what is the name of your landlord? The man from the Sons of Hawkwood who put you into contact with Baron Orsini?”
Ciotto looked confused.
Ciotto: “My dear partner? Didn’t I say? Oh, well never mind, he likes his privacy, not important, not important, not important.”
Had a block been placed upon his mind? She stepped back into the room, took Ciotto’s hand in hers, and decided to try using her mind magic without the purple gem. Let it stay hidden protecting her. She bent her will upon him, visualised peering through a magnifying glass at his mind and applied mana.
There, something out of place, a fog obscuring part of the smoothly functioning treasure trove he imagined his mind as. She blew at the fog, then blew a bit more strongly until it dispersed, trying to cause as little damage as possible.
[Skill “Mind Magic” has reached level 17.]
Kafana: “Ciotto, the name?”
Ciotto: “Scaramouche.”
His voice was frail, barely a whisper, yet it managed to convey so much of what the name meant to Ciotto that for an eerie handful of heartbeats thereafter, chill echoes of fear and despair seemed to haunt the shop's shadowed aisles.