“Maybe not,” Gismonda said. “One of my friends-Baroness Norizia, it was, whose husband got killed outside Durrwangen-heard about this new healer called Pirello. He’s supposed to be able to restore lost limbs by sorcery. Something to do with the law of similarity. Norizia didn’t know just what. What she knows about wizardry would fit in a thimble, believe me, my darling. Pirello has something or other, though.”
“The law of similarity,” Sabrino said musingly. He looked down at himself. His surviving leg was indeed very similar to the one he’d lost. A clever mage might be able to use that resemblance. Or. . “Odds are he’s just a quack preying on maimed men.” Sabrino didn’t want to let himself feel hope.
“Maybe.” Gismonda was every bit as cold-blooded, perhaps more so. But she went on, “Shouldn’t you talk to him anyhow? What have you got to lose?”
“Money,” Sabrino answered. He clicked his tongue between his teeth. How much would I give to have my leg back, really and truly? The answer didn’t take long to form. Anything at all. “Might be worth seeing him, just to find out.”
Gismonda snapped her fingers. “I remember now what Norizia called it. An elixir, that’s what he uses. A miracle elixir, she said.”
“It would take a miracle,” Sabrino said, “and miracles aren’t what magecraft is all about. Still. .” He shrugged, as well as he could with crutches bearing so much of his weight. “I may as well take a look.”
“I’ll send one of the servants over to Norizia’s and see if she knows where the fellow’s offices are,” Gismonda said.
From the word the servant brought back, the healer did business not far from the wreckage of the royal palace. Once the carriage had taken Sabrino to that part of town, finding his place of business proved easy. Broadsheets praising Pirello’s miracle elixir were plastered to walls and fences.
Veterans missing arms and legs-and one man short his left ear-filled Pirello’s waiting room. Sabrino gave his name to a pretty receptionist he wouldn’t have minded knowing better, then eased himself down into a chair and got ready to wait till everyone ahead of him had seen the healer.
Before long, though, the receptionist gave him an inviting smile and said, “Count Sabrino? Master Pirello will see you now.”
Sabrino struggled to his foot. Other mutilated men gave him sour looks, for which he didn’t much blame them. His own suspicions flared. He hadn’t given the receptionist his rank. How did Pirello know it? He’s likely a mage, after all, Sabrino thought. And his own name and station hadn’t been unknown in Trapani before the war. Still, he wasn’t the only Sabrino around, either. If he knows I’m a noble, maybe he thinks he can pry more money out of me than from ordinary men who‘ve had bad luck. If I can get my leg back, though. .
“Here you are, your Excellency,” the girl said. Her kilt was very short, showing off shapely legs. “Go right in.”
“Thanks,” Sabrino said. She beamed at him. He wondered if he ought to ask her name. Later, he thought. A hitching step at a time, he went into Pirello’s sanctum.
It was lined with books, though not all of them had anything to do with healing or sorcery. The mage-or is he just a mountebank? Sabrino wondered- sprang from his chair and bowed himself almost double. “Your Excellency! What a privilege to meet you!” he cried. He was about thirty, with his mustaches and chin beard waxed to spikes. Plainly, he’d never missed a meal. “I hope I can help you.”
“I hope you can, too,” Sabrino said. “I’ve heard about something to do with the law of similarity, and about some elixir of yours, and I decided to see what’s going on here. What have I got to lose?”
“Exactly so, your Excellency. Exactly so!” Pirello beamed, as if Sabrino had been clever. “Do sit down, sir. I will tell you what I do. I will tell you in great detail, in fact.” And he did. He went on and on and on, and grew more technical the longer he spoke.
Not all of what he said made sense to Sabrino, who wondered how much of it would have made sense to a first-rank mage. Before long, he held up a hand and said, “Enough, sir. Cut to the chase. You can help me, or else you can’t. If you can, how long will it take and how much will it cost?”
“Between the spell and the elixir, which of course stimulates the regenerative faculty, you should see results-the beginning of results, I should say-within two months,” Pirello replied. “As for the fee, I am the soul of reason. You pay me a third when I begin and the balance when completely satisfied.” The price he named wasn’t cheap, but wasn’t exorbitant, either. “I would charge less, sir, but for the rare and costly ingredients in the miracle elixir, gathered from the land of the Ice People, from Zuwayza, from the most inaccessible and exotic islands of the Great Northern Sea. . ”
“It sounds impressive.” It sounded, in fact, a little too impressive for Sabrino to trust it fully. “How did you learn about this sorcery and your precious elixir, if I may ask?”
“Of course you may. I am the soul of truth as well as reason,” Pirello said. “As the war neared an end, I was working on spells to help hold back the Unkerlanters. I realized that one of them-reversed, you might say-could prove a boon to mankind rather than a bane. Further research-and here we are.”
“Here we are,” Sabrino echoed. It had a certain amount of plausibility to it. As Sabrino knew to his own horror, Algarve had trotted out all sorts of desperate spells in the last days of the war. It could have been as Pirello claimed, no doubt of that. It could have been, but not necessarily. Sabrino found another question: “How long have you had this place open?”
“Not quite a month, sir,” Pirello replied.
“All right.” Grunting with effort, Spinello rose from the chair. “I may be back in a month or two, then. We’ll see how things go.”
“You have no confidence in me!” Pirello wailed. “I am insulted. I am outraged. I am furious. You have made me into a cheat, a criminal, a man without honor. In your mind, sir, this is what I am. Oh, the indignity of it!” He made as if to rend his garments.
Sabrino shook his head. “No, I’m just careful. I lived through the war. I want to see how things go before I jump in. Good day.”
Behind him, Pirello expostulated volubly. The more the mage squawked, the less Sabrino trusted him. He made his slow way out of the office, past the receptionist-who’d stopped smiling at him-and out onto the street. His driver helped him up into the carriage. “Take me home,” he said.
“Well?” Gismonda asked when he got back.
“He’s a fraud,” Sabrino answered. “I think he’s a fraud, anyhow. If he’s still in business six weeks from now, maybe I’m wrong.”
Five weeks and three days after his visit to Master Pirello, news sheets- which had happily displayed his advertising-reported that his establishment was suddenly empty, as was the account he’d set up at a nearby bank. A warrant had been sworn out for his arrest, but the occupying authorities seemed more inclined to laugh at the Algarvians than to go after the trickster.
“Well, you were right,” Gismonda said with a grimace.
“So I was. I’ve still only got one leg, but I’ve still got all my silver, too.” Sabrino sighed. “But oh, how I wish I’d been wrong!”
Hajjaj eyed Tassi reproachfully. “You are extravagant, you know. You should come to me before you order jewels for yourself.”
The Yaninan woman stamped her foot, which made her pale, dark-tipped breasts jiggle invitingly. “They were pretty. I wanted them. I got them,” she replied in the throatily accented Algarvian she still spoke far better than Zuwayzi.
“You should have asked me first,” Hajjaj repeated. “I am happy to give you a refuge here-”
Tassi twitched her hip. “I should hope so!”
“I did not let you stay here on account of that,” the retired Zuwayzi foreign minister said. “I let you stay here on account of your trouble with Minister Iskakis. I am an old man: I make no bones about it. That does not matter to me nearly so much as it would have thirty years ago. And there is something you should know.”