Page 20 of The Devils

No Smiles at the Monastery

It was a great big door fit for a castle, and after much scraping from the other side as locks were undone and bolts pulled back, it was heaved squealing open by an unsmiling doorman.

Marangon, the silent fellow Baptiste had first approached, gave an unsmiling nod in return, and led the congregation of the Chapel of the Holy Expediency through into an anteroom where two unsmiling thugs glowered at them each in turn.

All except Sunny, of course.

They paid her no mind because she was invisible.

Well, she wasn’t actually invisible. She could still see her own hands. She could still see her own shadow. But no one else saw them. She wasn’t even sure why, really. She couldn’t have said how she did it.

She just held her breath and … did it.

Sunny had a lot of practice so she could hold her breath for a very, very long time, even when she was running or swimming or, on one memorable occasion, hanging from a wizard’s ceiling, but even she couldn’t hold her breath for ever, which was why she was always thinking about where her next breath would come from, and where people were looking, and where it was light and where dark, so life became a little dance from corner, to cupboard, to bush, to shadow, to under the bed, to behind someone’s back, to between someone’s legs.

And not usually in a good way.

Folk could still hear her – as she’d very definitely found out when she was following that witch and she fell off a roof into a pot and pan stall – so she padded along barefoot at the back with her boots tied around her neck by the laces, looking out for danger and trying to make sure no one blundered into her or shut a door on her or smacked her in the teeth with the butt end of a rake, which a gardener did one time. She’d been quite annoyed about it but could hardly blame the man.

Wasn’t as if he could see her.

Sunny tried not to blame anyone if she could help it. Blame lights not candles , Mother Wilton used to say. Sunny had quite liked Mother Wilton, even though she’d been pompous and English, which were two black marks against the woman for most. Maybe Sunny had liked her because no one else did. Made her feel special. Though her liking had in no way been reciprocated. Mother Wilton had looked at Sunny like she was a dirty latrine floor. Then she’d died when that bridge collapsed and they’d got Mother Ferrara who looked at Sunny like she was an open sewer.

There’s a lesson. Things can always get worse.

The anteroom led to a hallway with two more unsmiling thugs at the end. No one here smiled much. Sunny didn’t smile much, either, mind you. But mostly because her mouth wouldn’t seem to bend that way. Never felt right on her face, and people didn’t like it when she tried. Made them think she was plotting something. Plus a lot of the time no one could see her, of course.

Made smiling rather a waste of effort.

Alex certainly wasn’t smiling. She shuffled along head down as if she was trying to turn invisible herself. Sunny liked Alex. She’d brought Sunny food on the road, which was rare, and actually tried to be pleasant about it, which was even rarer. Sunny would’ve liked to ask her if she was all right but there was no way now and probably it would’ve gone wrong somehow. She’d practise in the mirror for hours but her face was all pointy and just wouldn’t twist the same ways as everyone else’s. When she tried to be sincere, she’d come over sarcastic. When she tried to be generous, she’d come over superior. When she tried to be friendly, she’d come over as a dirty elf bitch.

Dirty elf bitch , they used to shout at her in the circus, and make a chant of it, and it didn’t seem all that funny to her, but everyone would roar with laughter. Maybe the joke worked on levels she didn’t get? Nothing she said was ever funny, it was either horrifying or offensive. She’d stood up, once, in the circus, and told a joke, and it had made everyone furious. You’re here to be hated, not to make jokes, the ringmaster had told her. Still, it’d gone over better than when she tried to sing a song that time. The villain doesn’t sing. Best if she kept her mouth shut. Keep your fucking mouth shut , the ringmaster always used to say.

Which was why she generally kept her mouth shut and did little things to cheer people up. Things they’d barely notice, like even up the laces in Jakob’s boots so he didn’t have to bend down or fold Vigga’s clothes while she was fucking or tuck Alex in a bit at night because she tended to thrash around and kick her blanket off and end up shivering. Made Sunny feel useful. Like she was in a family.

It was nice to try it out.

Jakob was the grumpy grandfather, Rikard the mysterious uncle, and Baptiste the put-upon mother. Balthazar was the overconfident older brother, Brother Diaz the underconfident younger brother, and Alex the pretty child everyone liked ’cause she hadn’t been around long enough to disappoint anyone yet. Vigga was maybe some weird third cousin who kept fucking everyone when she wasn’t turning into a giant wolf-thing and by that point the metaphor had really fallen apart because how many families have an invisible elf?

None.

They rounded a corner and Sunny stayed back, pressed against the wall to treat herself to a couple of nice long breaths before holding the next one and ducking after them into a colonnade. It was built around what must’ve once been a garden, but successive floods had turned it into a brackish pond. Which was what a lot of Venice came down to, far as she could tell. A worn statue stood marooned up to its knees in the centre, holding up a handless arm as though begging God for rescue. That didn’t work in Sunny’s experience. Not on God, not on anyone.

You want rescuing, you’d better get ready to rescue yourself.

Maybe God will congratulate you afterwards, or something.

‘Was this a monastery?’ asked Brother Diaz.

‘Yes,’ said Marangon, who spoke almost as little as he smiled.

‘Where are the monks?’

‘In heaven, maybe? You’re the expert.’

Jakob was gripping his leg as he walked. Weeks of marching with the pilgrims must’ve cost him. Sunny would’ve liked to help him, but she had no way to help and he hated the whole idea of help. For reasons of his own he wanted to make life as difficult as he possibly could.

She really didn’t understand people at all, they were so weird. Dealing with them was like being slapped in the face over and over.

Another unsmiling thug stood beside another heavy door. Sunny would’ve usually nipped in first or slipped in among the others but they were packed too tight so she waited till they were through and the door was shutting, then lightly flicked the doorman’s earlobe and when he jerked around darted under his arm, whipped around the door, and was in before it shut, which was very nimble even if she did say so herself.

Shame no one saw it.

The great high room on the other side had been built as a chapel, with a gallery halfway up the walls and rafters above with old cobwebs fluttering in the draught. There was lots of stained glass with saints getting murdered in imaginative ways. There was Saint Simon in his red-hot throne, and Saint Jemimah under her rock, and Saint Cedric with the nails in him, which always gave Sunny a shiver when she thought about it.

That was not a nice place to get nails.

Why the Saved wanted to see their heroes being mauled and drowned and hammered and squished she’d no notion. Maybe they thought if Saint Cedric had got nailed hard enough, they wouldn’t have to get nailed themselves. In this she thought they were likely mistaken.

There are always more nails around.

It had been built as a chapel but they’d made a kitchen out of it since, with an oven at one end big enough to fit a corpse in. Nearby a man was pounding dough on the altar stone, flour dust puffing through the shafts of coloured light. There was something very firm in the way he did it made Sunny think that oven might well have held a corpse or two in its time. A little girl stood beside him in an apron that matched his and a sneer even Balthazar might’ve been proud of.

‘Frigo!’ sang Baptiste, swaggering up with her arms wide like she’d hug the whole place. She had this way of talking that made people like her somehow. Always seemed much more like magic to Sunny than just disappearing.

Baptiste’s magic fell flat on this occasion, mind you. Frigo’s eyes were very cool. ‘Baptiste,’ he grunted, the way you might talk about an ongoing mould problem, and he looked down at his dough again, and kept working. ‘I knew you’d be back. Like a fox at the bins.’

Baptiste shrugged. ‘I’ve been called worse.’

‘Stick around,’ said Frigo. ‘You will be.’

‘This that fucking bitch Baptiste?’ snapped the little girl, propping her floury fists on her hips. Sunny wished she knew how she could scrunch her face up so much, like it had no bones in it at all. ‘You that fucking bitch Baptiste?’

‘My granddaughter,’ said Frigo, nodding towards her. ‘Best judge of character I know. I’m teaching her the family business.’

‘Baker or crime lord?’ asked Baptiste.

‘Why can’t I be both?’ sneered the girl. ‘I hear you’re a liar and a thief.’

Baptiste’s smile wasn’t even dented. ‘And those are just my hobbies,’ she said.

Sunny tiptoed around the outside of the room while they talked, the old flagstones so smooth and cool against her bare feet. She went carefully, though, on the shadowy side of the chapel ’cause folk might not see her, but in those shafts of coloured light they might see the dust motes washing in her wake.

They might not see where she was, but sometimes they noticed where she wasn’t.

Frigo was still pounding his dough. ‘What are you after, Baptiste?’

‘Do I have to be after something?’

‘Yes. You can’t help yourself.’

A door in the far wall stood open a crack, and tiptoeing close Sunny could see a man against it, listening, with a knife in his fist, and two more beyond, and they had knives, too, which was no surprise, it was a knifey sort of place.

She climbed up the side of a window where there were good fingerholds and peered over the rail of the gallery. There were two men hunched out of sight on the other side, and they had bows. She dropped, soft and silent, flattened herself against the wall to slip behind Frigo’s glowering granddaughter and over to a broken window. Three more men in the colonnade, at the door they’d come through. If things went the wrong way, they could get messy fast. But that’s how it was, being in the Chapel of the Holy Expediency.

Things got messy fast.

Baptiste was coming to the point. ‘We need passage. To Troy. Me and my friends.’

‘You don’t have friends, Baptiste.’ Frigo cast a patient eye over the group. All except Sunny, of course. ‘Only folk you can make use of.’

Sunny slipped around Vigga, had to jerk out of the way ’cause the woman couldn’t keep still for two breaths together, and pressed herself tight against Jakob’s back.

Jakob was very handy to have around ’cause he was wide, and tall, and never got flustered, not even when he suddenly felt an elf pressed against him having a quick breather.

‘Three on the left,’ she whispered, ‘three outside the door, two bows in the gallery.’

Jakob gently cleared his throat to show he’d heard. It would’ve made Sunny smile, that they had an understanding. If she’d been better at smiling.

She held her breath again and slipped around him.

‘These are them, are they?’ Frigo was pointing at them one at a time with his floury forefinger. ‘The Pope’s pets. Don’t take a genius to guess she’s the werewolf.’

‘That’s what a fucking werewolf looks like?’ sneered the little girl.

Between the hood and all the hair, the only bits of Vigga’s face on show were her fangy smile and a hint of tattooed cheek. ‘It’s what this one looks like,’ she said.

‘And he’s the vampire,’ said Frigo.

‘That’s what a fucking vampire looks like?’ sneered the little girl.

Baron Rikard saluted lazily with his cane. ‘Enchanted, my dear.’

‘Which makes this Jakob of Thorn.’ Frigo scratched thoughtfully at his throat leaving some flour in his stubble. ‘I’m an admirer of yours, as it goes.’

Jakob, still as a statue with arms folded, gave a weary grunt. ‘I’m not.’

Posturing was another of those person things Sunny had never really understood, so she left them to it and sidled over to the oven to bask in its lovely shimmery warmth. An old cat had the same idea, though, and now it looked up, tail tip flicking. Cats always saw her just as plain as day. Dogs were blissfully oblivious. Sunny had no idea why.

She didn’t understand how anything worked and herself least of all.

This cat got up, curious, wanting to rub against her leg. Sunny would’ve liked to stroke it because cats feel lovely against the palm. She liked it when their tails slipped through the webs between her fingers, so soft and tickly. But now wasn’t really the time, so she mouthed sorry as she nudged the cat away with her foot.

‘And who’s this?’ Frigo was asking, narrowing his eyes at Alex.

She frowned back at him. ‘I’m no one.’

‘Everyone’s someone.’

‘Not me.’

‘How about you?’ Frigo narrowed his eyes at Balthazar. ‘Bet you’re someone.’

The wizard gave that proud head toss of simultaneous scorn and offence. ‘I am Balthazar Sham Ivam Draxi.’

‘He sounds a fucking prick.’ The little girl pulled a knife from her apron and set to scoring grooves in the dough. Sunny once heard it said that loaves are all about the grooves. They won’t rise properly without them. Maybe people are the same.

They’ll never come out well unless they’re cut a bit.

‘Oh, she really is a good judge of character.’ Baptiste folded her arms as she grinned over at Balthazar. ‘He’s a new boy. A warlock.’

‘I swear she does this to annoy me,’ murmured Balthazar, glaring back.

Frigo narrowed his eyes even further. ‘A good one?’

‘Among the top three necromancers in Europe! Possibly two, depending how you feel about—’

‘What are you after, Frigo?’ asked Baptiste.

Frigo peeled one of the loaves onto a shovel with a skilful flick of the wrist and headed towards the oven. ‘Do I have to be after something?’

‘Of course. You can’t help yourself.’

‘Oh, touché.’ Firelight flared across Frigo’s face as he leaned close, close enough for Sunny to have reached out and touched his pockmarked cheek. ‘There’s a thing I want. In a house.’ Which was troublingly vague.

‘Your people can’t get in?’ asked Baptiste.

‘Oh, they got in.’ Frigo turned, leaning on the shovel. ‘They just never came out.’

‘No one comes out o’ that place,’ said the little girl, spinning her knife in her fingers and flashing a grin almost as nasty as Vigga’s. ‘Folk say it’s cursed.’

‘Belonged to an illusionist.’ Frigo was shovelling up the next loaf. ‘Left Venice long ago but the house is still … protected.’

‘Protected how?’ asked Balthazar.

Frigo slid the next loaf into the oven and shrugged. ‘You’re the warlock.’

Balthazar’s lip curled but Jakob cut in ahead of him. ‘What is it we’re looking for?’

‘A white box, about so big, with a star on the lid.’

‘What’s in it?’

‘That’s my business.’

‘I like to know what I’m getting into.’

‘Aye, but something tells me you tend to wade into it regardless. I’ve told you what I can. You don’t like the terms—’

‘—you know where the fucking door is!’ finished his granddaughter.

Baptiste glanced at Jakob, brows high. Baron Rikard tipped his head back and gave a sigh. Sunny edged a little closer to the warmth of the oven.

‘That it should come to this,’ murmured Balthazar bitterly. ‘Running errands for a baker and crime lord.’

‘And those are just my hobbies,’ said Frigo, mildly.

‘I will need equipment.’

‘Marangon can get you anything.’

‘ Highly specialised equipment.’

‘Marangon can get you anything .’

‘We bring you this box.’ Jakob took one deliberate step forwards, towards the altar stone. One step and he stopped. ‘You organise us passage to Troy.’

‘Done.’ Frigo nodded towards the oven. ‘Wait a bit, you can take a fresh loaf as a bonus.’

‘We’d sooner get started.’

‘Suit yourself.’ And Frigo shovelled up another.

Marangon beckoned them towards the door, and everyone turned to follow, or watched them go, so Sunny grabbed the chance to take a quick breath, then with some reluctance had to leave the warmth of the oven behind. Frigo’s granddaughter had put her knife down near the corner of the floury altar stone.

Looked like it might fall and hurt someone, so Sunny pushed it back safe on the way out.