Father Obilade yielded to Shagot's financial demands. He turned over four hundred of the six hundred ducats two days before Rodrigo's scheduled early elevation to Heaven. Shagot told the priest, 'We'll follow your script if we can, but we'll change shit around if anything comes up.' The old priest scowled. 'Just get it done.'
Svavar and Shagot moved into the Madhur Plaza hours ahead of time. They brought all their trophies and fetishes. Even Svavar felt optimistic. 'Going to be some real surprised assholes, Grim. Going to be some real surprised assholes.'
Shagot chuckled. 'Yeah. Going to be some good laughs on Father Obilade and Paludan fucking Bruglioni and his butt boy, Gervase. So. Let's fade into the fucking background and let the drama begin.'
They did not stand out. Brothe drew countless pilgrims from everywhere. Basbanes's Fountain was a sight the foreigners all wanted to see. It had a history almost as long as that of the Old Empire itself.
Rodrigo Cologni passed through the plaza, outward bound, escorted only by his bodyguards. Shagot and Svavar felt even more confident.
A city watchman reminded them, 'No sleeping in the plaza, gents.'
'Not to worry,' Shagot replied in credible Firaldian. 'We've got a place to stay. We work for Paludan Bruglioni.' He grinned and chuckled. The sergeant would remember that later.
Svavar laughed softly, too. He was having a good time. For the first time since they had come out of the Great Sky Fortress, he was happy to be alive, partly because he thought they were putting one over on the gods themselves.
'Hey,' Shagot said, 'we need to get out of sight. The Bruglioni gang should turn up pretty soon.'
They slipped into the deep shadows between two buildings. Svavar asked, 'You think the Bruglioni guys will do the job if we just sit on our hands?'
Treachery was in the works. Shagot's dreams had confirmed that. But he had dreamed much more. Some of which he had not yet unraveled. What Svavar suggested fit.
'Excellent thinking, little brother. I don't know what they'd do. How about we give them the opportunity? We can always tag Rodrigo somewhere else, later.'
The wait seemed both long and short. One of those things relative to the moment. Svavar had trouble controlling the giggles. That was when time fled its swiftest. Time dragged when he grew somber and thought about everything that could go wrong.
'Quiet,' Svavar whispered. 'Here's the boss's boys.'
Six Firaldians stole past, visible briefly in the light of a rising sliver of moon. They went into hiding scarcely a dozen yards from where Shagot and Svavar had holed up.
'Did you recognize any of them?' Shagot asked in a whisper that could not be heard five feet away.
'This isn't going to be a happy night for the Bruglioni. I saw Gildeo and Acato Bruglioni for sure. One of the others looked like Saldi Serena.' That put both sons and a nephew of Paludan Bruglioni among the condemned.
In the middle of the plaza the complex menagerie of Basbanes's Fountain kept spitting and peeing and pouring. The falling waters generated a soporific noise that Shagot found hard to fight.
The moon moved on to where its light would no longer betray someone who snaked out of the thin gap where Shagot and Svavar waited. Shagot murmured, 'Hang on. I'm going to see if I can hear anything.' Carrying the head from the Haunted Hills. Shagot stole toward where his would-be assassins waited. Soon he lay on his stomach inches from the mouth of the gap where the Bruglioni boys had gone to ground.
A heated argument was underway. Somebody wanted to know why the idiot foreigners had not shown. Someone told that one to shut the fuck up. It was not time, yet. Fifteen minutes from now, then they could start worrying.
One of the lesser Bruglioni insisted, 'I could go a long way, for a long time, on four hundred ducats.'
'Your whores would pick your bones within a week.'
Shagot could be as patient as stone when he knew there was a point. He remained frozen, listening, as minutes, then tens of minutes slipped by. He listened as the Bruglioni gang grew ever more uneasy.
Their cat's-paws were supposed to have arrived by now. They had not shown. Had Paludan flung four hundred ducats into a great big black sack of nothing?
Soon it was way past time for Shagot and Svavar to be out there hanging around the fountain, a pair of drunken foreigners who looked threatening to no one but themselves. Most of the foreigners infesting the city were too stupid to tie their own bootlaces.
Shagot crept backward. It would not be long before Rodrigo appeared. Already, it seemed, the Cologni was at the nether edge of the range of his behavior. He was late.
Drunken singing approached.
Rodrigo. And his bodyguards. And some drunks that the Cologni had accumulated during the evening.
This was something that Svavar had not seen before. It was out of character. 'I definitely don't think we should do it now, Grim. I don't like the look of this.'
Rodrigo's drinking buddies did not seem interested in getting on out of the Madhur Plaza. They stopped at Basbanes's Fountain and stalled around until Rodrigo's bodyguards insisted that Rodrigo get moving.
Shagot muttered, 'I think I'll just go pound on that old priest till his balls fall off.'
Svavar touched his arm. 'There's some excitement starting.'
The Bruglioni crew surrendered to the romance of their own stupidity. They rushed the party in the plaza.
As Shagot intuited, the drunken new friends were not drunk at all. But their level of alertness had dropped because no attack had come when expected at the fountain. On the other hand, Rodrigo's guards were sharply alert because of the pretend drunks' obvious stalls.
When the Bruglioni thugs rushed out, the Cologni bodyguards shoved knives into the backs of the pretend drunks.
The rush arrived. Blades flashed. Several men went down, one a Cologni bodyguard.
Then came a surprise second rush consisting of another half-dozen men who swooped in from the far side of the square. A great clangor ensued.
Both Gildeo and Acato Bruglioni thought well of themselves as duelists. They had reputations to support their confidence.
Their confidence was misplaced.
'These guys are fucking professionals,' Shagot said. The new bunch were very good, though not good enough to avoid injuries of their own.
The speed and fury of the mess left the Bruglioni thugs and Rodrigo's bodyguards no chance to flee.
Shagot nodded to himself as the winners collected their prize — Rodrigo Cologni — and then their wounded. Those included the backstabbed companion drunks, who were still alive but unlikely to remain that way if they did not get to some skilled care soon. 'Four of them are hurt bad. Two more have lesser wounds. As soon as they're out of sight, start tracking them. We need to find out who they are and where they're headed.'
Svavar nodded unhappily. He was not feeling particularly bloodthirsty now. Which was, probably, why Grim was giving him this job while he stayed here.
Svavar knew Grim would have no trouble finding him later. Grim always knew where he was.
The Bruglioni were trying to pull themselves together, to limp back to the family fortress, when Shagot strolled up. At this point, no-one had yet been killed. But none of the Bruglioni or Cologni were in shape to fight on, either. Shagot cut a couple of throats, just to get everybody focused. One of those belonged to Acato Bruglioni, who had not been badly hurt before. His skill as a duelist did him no good whatsoever.
Shagot told the rest, 'I want to know what this was all about.' He asked pointed questions, with a sword's tip encouraging quick responses. He killed Saldi Serena when that young man tried to run.
Shagot learned that the setup had been what he guessed. He and Svavar were supposed to take the frame for murdering a man expected to support the Patriarch in the Collegium.
'And who stopped you?'
'That's what doesn't make no sense,' Gildeo Bruglioni confessed. 'Those were the Patriarch's wolves. The Brotherhood of War. They wouldn't have no reason to kidnap Rodrigo Cologni. He's on their side. But those were the orders they had.'
