Toby himself had never even seen the demon-guarded coffer because he never went to the adytum. "Can't you tell?" he asked, balancing on one leg as he pulled hose onto the other. "Don't you know if someone else has used gramarye on it?"
"There are shadows, only shadows. If it was a hexer, he is an incredible adept, better than I."
"Is anyone better than you?"
"No," Fischart admitted glumly.
"What else can it be except a hexer?"
"Nothing."
Morbid and tortured though he was, the old man still had one of the brightest minds in Europe, and it took Toby a moment to catch up with the misery in his crazed eyes.
"Then you will have to test everyone you just named."
The hexer looked ready to weep. "I have. Everyone except the don and Campbell, who isn't back yet but wasn't here when the money was taken. I can find no trace of hexing on them. If one of them took the money, then he was acting voluntarily. He would still have had to use gramarye, of course, but he cannot be under a compulsion."
Needing more time to think, Toby opened the window and tipped out his wash water. Was it possible that the Fiend had managed to hex Fischart himself to spin this tale? No one could be trusted absolutely in this war; but if the baron had been turned, then Toby ought to be helpless already, if not dead. The gold problem made no sense at all. If Arnaud said there had been a theft, there had been a theft. He did not make mistakes. That the Fiend had spies or even potential assassins within the Company went without saying, but why steal one bag of coins and leave the rest? Why should a skilled hexer draw attention to his presence like that? Or possibly her presence, he remembered.
"Probably the don took it to spend on some woman. And test him for hexing. I suggest you don't let him know you're doing so." If that failed, then the puzzle would have to wait until Hamish came back. He was the one with brains. "Perhaps you'd better test me as well."
"I can't. I would just find the hob."
Toby grunted. As far as he knew, being possessed saved him from being hexed, which was like not catching measles because one already had tertian fever. "So we have a traitor in camp, who may or may not be one of the people we've been discussing. That really is not surprising, is it? See if you can tighten your wards on the money, and also would you clear Don Ramon's head so he can negotiate the terms of the condotta today? There's no time to waste."
For a moment a flash of the old arrogance darkened the adept's face, then he rearranged it like putty into its customary pout. "Even demons draw the line somewhere, but if it will contribute in any way to the overthrow of the Fiend, then of course no task is too humble for me."
"Thank you." Toby pushed his feet into his buskins. He stared at his party clothes on the floor, all rumpled and in need of a wash, and he decided to worry about the fate of Italy first. "The condotta has been agreed in principle, so I have a million letters to send." He crouched to see his face in the broken mirror, cursing the great mop of hair he had to comb now. "There was a rumor going around last night that the Khan has sent a darughachi. He's said to be in Naples, expected to head north shortly."
The hexer drew in his breath with a hiss. "I suppose fourteen years too late is better than never."
Not necessarily. An emissary with plenipotentiary powers might appoint a suzerain or take overall command himself. Either way, he would certainly ruin all of Toby's carefully laid plans.
"It may be all hogswiggle, because the Magnificent never mentioned it." He would certainly have been one of the first to learn of any emissary, and why would he not confide in his captain-general?
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Lisa felt guilty for not feeling more guilty. Every step her horse took carried her farther away from Mother, who must be half-insane with worry, yet she kept catching herself actually enjoying this wild adventure, this unreal Arthurian romance into which she had fallen. Lack of sleep had stuffed her head with bed socks, and the beautiful Tuscan landscape enclosed her like a painting — fields, vineyards, olive groves, red-tiled roofs, geese, goats — all glistening in the sharp morning light. She must believe that it was real. She had seen a demon and witnessed Master Campbell bloodying his sword in her defense.
He was most attentive and excellent company. He had bought clothes for her from the innkeeper's daughter and sent one of his men back into Siena to organize a hunt for the countess. Every now and again he would peer back along their tracks to where his other man, Carlo, was trailing a mile or so behind, keeping a lookout for pursuit. Even Mother had never gone to quite such lengths, but Lisa was much more inclined to trust the mercenary's appraisal of danger than hers.
That did not mean that she trusted him without reservations. He was not being completely frank with her. He had motives he was not revealing. There were questions he would not answer—
"Why did you tell me to keep my kerchief?"
He blinked guilelessly. "When we locate your mother, we can send it along as proof that we're genuine."
"Then why didn't you give it to Rinaldo to take back with him?"
"I didn't think of it until he'd gone. Oh, look! Newborn lambs! Spring!"
Those were not the first lambs they had passed. Master Campbell was lying. Later she tried again. "What did you mean about Longdirk using me politically?"
"Taking advantage of you. Demanding ransom, for instance."
That was not what he had meant originally! And the questions he asked were not all innocent, either. He kept trying to find out things about Mother, who was none of his business. As Lisa was riding sidesaddle and he was on the left, she could watch him more easily than he could watch her. She could tell when he was just making conversation and when he was probing. She could also admire his profile, which was acceptably handsome for a knight-errant.
He was good company — witty, intelligent, well read, and very well traveled. Between them they could speak more than a dozen languages, although all they had in common were English and the usual smattering of Latin and Tartar that all well-educated people professed. Nor had they identified a single city they had both visited, for he had traveled mostly in the Fiend's domains, while Mother had always stayed inside territories loyal to the Khan. They shared a love of books. Many of the homes in which she had stayed had possessed books, even if the owners never opened them. Too often, books had been her only companions for months at a time, yet she had never met another genuine book lover. Now the two of them juggled titles and quotations back and forth with mutual glee, arguing what Plato had said in the Republic or whether it was worth learning Tuscan just to read Dante.
He admitted to leaving Scotland when he was fifteen, and later he mentioned this had been in 1519, so he must be about twenty-one now. Most men married younger than that, but she could not ask, and he did not volunteer the information. Despite her best efforts to match his vagueness on personal matters, he was revealing much less than she was. He would talk endlessly about his friend Longdirk:
"Aristocrats despise him because he's not of noble birth, and the crabby old veterans are worse. Some of them still seem to think his success was all just luck, but he calculates everything. He moved us from client to client — Verona, Ravenna, Naples, then Milan, so all the captains-general and collaterali got to know him, and when Nevil sent Schweitzer across the border last fall and they needed a comandante in capo in a hurry, they elected him because he was the only one they all trusted. He was a neutral, of course. Venetians don't trust Milanese, Milanese don't trust Venetians, and the Florentine captain-general was an idiot."