by Davide Mana
in Issue 102, July 2020
The rain made the roof tiles slick and gurgled down the drains, and draped a thicker gray shroud on the pale light of dawn. Bélise Nine Fingers cursed her good luck. Rain meant people stayed indoors and the few that braved the streets, huddled in their cloaks and hidden under their hats, would not look up to what was going on over the rooftops. She was cold, and soaked to the bone, trying in her bare feet not to slide and fall into the alley, thirty feet below.
Five blocks away, black against the pale horizon, the belfry of Our Lady of the Sword, the temple on the corner of Hermit and Chariot street, was like a lighthouse over a sea of rooftops. Lighting chased thunder in the low black clouds, the heart of the storm coming closer.
Bélise’s blade slid under the lock and the casement window opened with a click, and she vaulted inside, escaping the cold rain. She landed on her feet, and crouched for a moment in the dark, breathing dust, squinting. Her worn blue cavalryman’s coat with the mismatched buttons spread behind her like a peacock’s tail. Knife in her right, she pulled the window closed with her left hand. Thin sheets of pale light filtered through blinds above her, and grotesque shadows crowded her, lurking in the blackness.
Spellmonger’s house. Careful now.
But Bélise was always careful, that was the reason why she always had jobs lined up, even in these lean times. She waited, listening. The house spoke to her in its language made of creaks and faint echoes. She moved gently, in tune with that silent song, her steps part of the building’s rhythm. It was the thieves’ dance that had often allowed her to walk through houses where masters and servants were asleep, or minding their chores, like a ghost, unseen and unheard. Past a trunk under an old carpet, past a wooden mannequin on which a sharp blade had outlined the major organs, and stabbed them, she came to the trap door leading down.
Hinges, iron, rusty. She sighed.
She carried a small tin box in her coat pocket, the sort a middle class lady would use for her snuff. Pink roses and pale violets. She rubbed her thumb in the grease in it, and smeared the hinges, breathing softly on it. Then she tried the ring handle, and pulled the trap door open an inch. No sound. A sweetish smell rose from below when she opened the passage and looked down, her dark hair falling around her face. She pulled back, and sat on her haunches, waiting. Bélise sheathed her knife on her leg. She took a strap from her pocket, and drew her hair back in a ponytail, out of her face. She needed a haircut. Ponytails were not good in a fight. But she was not here to fight, after all.
No sound, no movement.
Old Vezzanius had a stall of charms and potions in Half Moon Square, and also traded in old books. It was for an old book Bélise was here, but not to trade.
She placed her hands on the edge of the trap and vaulted down below. A small landing. She glanced at the bedroom, big unmade bed and a chest of drawers, and then checked the bathroom, complete with a polished wood and ceramic thunder-box.
She went down the staircase. As she moved, the sounds of the house were harder to catch, trickier to follow, more difficult to dance to.
She stopped at the foot of the steps.
A tree.
There was a tree, rooted in the center of the ground floor room, its bare branches bent under the ceiling. Bélise frowned, wondering whether it could be a sculpture, but no, it was a natural tree, in the family of poison oaks. The bark was lined and rough like the skin of a mountaineer, and the branches extended like the fingers of an old woman. There was a thick carpet of dead leaves on the floor. Bélise waited on the last step of the staircase, like a diver uncertain whether to try the water.
A tree, by all that was holy.
One half-expected strangeness in a spellcaster’s place, and yet this was surprising. Bélise did not like surprises.
Then she spotted the dead birds. A handful of sparrows, laying on the floor, half-covered in dead leaves. She narrowed her gaze, and counted them.
She sighed. Shelves on the walls, bent by the weight of the books and by age. Bottles in a thousand shapes and hues, covered in dust, wrapped in cobwebs. A dead tree, and a flock of dead birds.
A chair.
A tall chair of sculpted wood, on which a man was slumped, mouth slack, eyes wide open. The master of the house. The dead leaves had fallen on him, and one was intertwined with his long, thin white hair. He was in a long maroon dressing gown, and mismatched socks, one blue and one yellow, and darned. He had kicked his fur-trimmed slippers at the opposite corners of the room. His hands gripped the armrests, the knuckles like dice, and on the floor in front of him, between his feet, was a big book, open, the pages covered in strange squiggles. The cut glass of a single window cast an underwater-like light on the scene, rain dripping down its surface.
Bélise eyed the dead man, to make sure he was dead, and then the book. It was not unheard of, magickers dying of a stroke while summoning some creature from the nether regions, or building up the mystical energy to cast some spell. Again she cursed her good luck. Old Vezzanius kicking the bucket in such an undignified manner saved her a lot of work, yet there was ill fortune in hanging around dead spellmongers. And there was a lot of death here. Much more death than she cared for.
How long ago had it happened? She looked at the scattering of dead leaves, at the gnarled dry branches of the oak, at the sprawled bundles of feathers. Had the tree died the moment old Vezzanius had breathed his last, and the birds with it?
She caressed the lucky charm on her neck. She did not believe in such drivel, unless she was afraid, and now she was. But she had work to do.
The book, now. She crouched down, and leaned forward, frowning. A crisp yellow leaf was caught, like a bookmark, between the equally crisp, yellowed pages of the book.
Bélise was not a literate woman, but she recognized the Eastern language, and the book was the right shape and color. No need to ransack the shelves. Here were fifty easy piasters, compensation enough for the cold and the rain. She descended that last step and, still crouching, she moved closer to the book. The dead leaves cracked under her bare feet.
It would be simple. Just stretch your hand.
Just pick it up, shove it under the coat, and find the door out. The room smelled of old man, unwashed, and decaying leaves. The paper was rough under her fingers.
She realized her mistake the moment her hand closed on the book. The signs underneath the dead leaves fired pale blue and blinding, and her hair stood on end. She cursed, as a lightning bolt crackled in the still air and slammed her back against the staircase.
Wizard’s circle. Stupid defense. She would have spotted it right away, had it not been for the leaves. And all the rest.
Bélise sat up, coughing, her back aching for the impact, steam rising from her coat, an unpleasant smell of wet blankets on a lit stove. She was lucky she had not bitten off her tongue in the shock.
She scanned the floor for the book, and found it two feet away, face down on the floor. She sighed, and stood.
The floorboards groaned. She froze, and looked around, her hand on her knife. Another creaking sound, and a faint vibration through the soles of her feet. She picked up the book, just as the tree pulled out its roots and took two steps towards her.
Bélise screeched in surprise, and jumped out of the way. The tree was moving. Its long thick roots flailed like tentacles, its branches stretched like gnarled fingers. Like a huge hand, creaking and groaning, it tried to grab her.
Out of sheer instinct, she pulled her knife and threw it. Impossible to miss. The blade thunked into the bark, and had no effect. But Keen did not see that. She was already hurrying up the staircase. The tree charged up after her, the balustrade snapping where its tentacle-like roots grasped it for traction.
Bélise tossed the book through the trapdoor and jumped, grabbed the frame. The branches snapped at her heels as she pulled herself up and rolled on the dusty attic floor. The tree crashed behind her, shoving its probing limbs through the trapdoor, forcing itself up with its branches.
Bélise ran, navigating by memory more than by eyesight. She jumped the trunk, slammed into the mannequin, pushed through a veil of cobwebs. The casement window was a thin line of pale light. The floor buckled as the thing behind her pushed its trunk through, uprooting the trapdoor frame.
Hands, push. One foot on the sill. Blinding light and ice-cold rain, and she was out. She slid on the wet roof-tiles, went down on a knee, broke her fall. The coat flew behind her in the wind. Lightning like a crack in the sky hit the belfry of Our Lady of the Sword.
The roof exploded, branches pushed through and spread. The tree was still for a moment, swaying in the wind and rain, and then its roots found the edge of the fissure. They wrapped around a chunk of wooden beam, gripped the broken tiles, and the thing heaved itself up in the open. The smashed rooftop sagged under its weight as it stood against the gray sky.
Bélise breathed heavily, and shuddered. She moved closer to the edge, and looked down. The alley was too wide to clear in one jump. She shoved the book in her coat’s pocket, and heard the cloth rip.
Find a drainpipe, and climb it down.
The tree was coming for her. It moved slowly, carefully on the collapsed rooftop.
A tree, by all that was holy.
She crawled along the eaves, one hand on the tiles for support, one closed around her lucky charm. She watched a long white root uncurl and probe the roof for support. It wrapped itself around a chimney, and dragged the tree closer.
Thunder boomed above, and the air had that smell one gets during storms.
A slide of broken tiles fell along the slope of the roof, and over the edge. They rattled as they smashed in the streets below.
Bélise moved another yard, water dripping in her eyes, and she squinted to find the gutter, and the pipe down.
The tree towered above her, creaking like the dry timber and smelling of dust, sweet flowers and rot. Bélise saw the pommel of her knife glint for a moment before lightning hit.
The tree went up in flames, sprouted a full foliage of crackling, burning gold and orange. Its roots curled and blackened and the thing toppled.
Shouts greeted it as it landed on the street down below.
Colored bubbles dancing in front of her eyes, ears a-buzz with thunder, Bélise steadied herself and looked down. A burning tree, surrounded by people. A clash of different voices. People looked up.
She cursed her good luck as she pulled back.
Fifty piasters was not enough for this.
©July 2020, Davide Mana
Davide Mana is a writer and translator based in Italy. His work has been published in Italian and English and has previously been seen in Swords & Sorcery.