The Buccaneer's Apprentice by V. Briceland Page A

constantly.
    “Papa, we don’t know a thing about him.”
    “I listened to them talking in the cave, my dear.”
    “You fell asleep,” she pointed out. Nic noticed for the first time how heavy her eyebrows were, as they crumpled in on themselves. They were almost a man’s brows, though on the girl they somehow seemed appropriate. “You weren’t supposed to fall asleep.”
    “Nonetheless,” replied Jacopo, sounding slightly abashed, “I heard enough to know that the boy is a victim, not a villain.”
    “A victim of the same pirates who have brought you to these dire circumstances!” Whether Nic was appealing to the father or daughter, he was uncertain, but he managed to modulate his voice so that he sounded as if he knew what he was talking about.
    “No.” Jacopo ignored a warning glance from his daughter, who announced her frustration by taking what looked like a long pair of tongs the length of her arm and jabbing with them at the fire’s hot coals. “Though Darcy and I have been stranded on this isle for nearly a week, it was not brigands who forced us to become castaways.”
    “Then who, signor?” Nic felt ill-equipped to deal with the confidentialities of a nuncio. Kings and courtiers were more Jacopo Colombo’s usual set … not a dogsbody like himself.
    Jacopo sighed. “I was not always Nuncio to Pays d’Azur. My father had been a hero of the Azurite Invasion, and after Pays d’Azur withdrew its forces from the siege, he used his honor fee to establish a mercantile concern.” Nic nodded with the respect the information was due. Heroes of the invasion were those who had lost a limb or more during Cassaforte’s most bloody battle. “It was a business I handled myself from the time I was a young man. I have lived most of my life in Pays d’Azur, in the capital of Côte Nazze. I married there. My daughter was raised there. I buried her mother there, long ago.” Darcy turned her head then until her face was concealed by her thick mane of hair. “It was my home, and I counted the people as my friends. When King Alessandro re-ascended the throne after the coup, not long ago, he requested I become his ambassador. He appointed me Nuncio of Pays d’Azur, and my life changed.”
    “How?” Nic asked, both baffled and intrigued. He would think the elevation in status—acting as the king’s messenger to the court in Côte Nazze—would be dizzying in its scope. “Surely not for the worse.”
    The father and daughter looked at each other. Nic’s eyes darted between them as he strained to make out the mute conversation they seemed to be having. “Much for the worse,” Jacopo said at last. His shoulders sagged. “Not long after I took the appointment, I was approached by people in the know who suggested … nothing concrete, mind you … that my predecessor’s demise might not have been as accidental as it was said.”
    “Accidental?” Nic shook his head. “You mean he was … ?”
    “Murdered.” Darcy’s light voice should have been too sweet for such a harsh word. She sent shivers up Nic’s spine, though. “Pushed down a flight of marble stairs in the nuncio’s residence.”
    “By whom?” Nic wanted to know. “Surely not anyone in the court?”
    “Oh no. No, no, no.” Jacopo laughed uneasily. “He had made enemies, we were told. Debt collectors.” Jacopo reached out a hand to settle his daughter, who was stoking the fire with the tongs again. “Afterward, we began to notice certain things. A great deal of floor wax on the marble, for example. A bottle of wine that had been unstoppered and discolored.”
    “A poisonous snake in my father’s chambers. And a fire in the nuncial house.”
    Nic looked aghast. “All that?”
    “Yes,” agreed Jacopo. To Nic, he said, “And then there was another incident that put all others to shame.”
    “Why not come out and say it, old man? There was an assassin.” Darcy’s voice was flat.
    “Our lives have been lived on edge for many