The Born Queen - J. Gregory Keyes [83]
“Thank the saints for your sotted obsessions.”
“Yes,” z’Acatto acknowledged as he led Cazio through the vast storeroom. “I was down here when the Fratrex Prismo and his men arrived, so they didn’t catch me. I don’t think they even know about me.”
“They haven’t searched here?” he asked.
“They don’t know about this place, either,” z’Acatto said. “The douco sealed it off before he left.”
“Why?”
“To keep his wine safe, I imagine. He left the small cellar as a decoy. I’m sure he expected to come back.”
“Then how did you find it?”
Z’Acatto turned on him fiercely, hand on his heart. “I knew it had to be here. The douco was the greatest collector of wine in the world. He would never have been without a real cellar.” He waved around at the thousands of bottles.
“Aging for a hundred years. Of course most of it is vinegar now, but some is still potable. Enough for me to survive on for several months, at any rate.”
Cazio nodded. He had been noticing the piles of opened bottles that littered the floor.
“How many of the douco’s reputed cellars have we broken into now?” Cazio asked. “I remember the one in Taurillo when I was sixteen and that one in the house of the Meddisso of Istimma.”
“And the one in Ferria,” z’Acatto said. “But those were all different. They had all been in use. This one is pristine, and the barbarians living here never thought to look for it. Did you know even the small cellar they had you in was empty? Even before the Church arrived. Nothing they drink here improves with age, so why bother?”
They had reached a small, arched passage, but Cazio stopped in his tracks, incredulous.
“Are you saying you found it? Zo Buso Brato?”
Z’Acatto chuckled. “Four bottles,” he said. “And one from the year of the May frost.”
“Saints. I can’t believe—how was it?”
He frowned. “Well, I haven’t tasted it yet.”
“What? Why not?”
“Not the right time,” the swordsman replied. “Come on.”
“But where is it?”
“Safe.” He ducked into the passage. “Keep quiet in here. This passes near places where we might be heard.”
Cazio still had plenty of questions, but he kept them in.
The passage soon entered a larger and very smelly one littered with trash and filth and prowled by rats. A faint susurrus echoed within it.
Z’Acatto shuttered the lantern, and for a moment they seemed to be in pitch darkness. But after a moment, Cazio began picking out a little light coming from a narrow grate above them.
Z’Acatto, apparently waiting for his own vision to adjust, started off again. As they passed under the grate, the general buzz sharpened into the sound of a pair of women talking, but they weren’t speaking the king’s tongue or Vitellian, so he couldn’t make any sense of it. One of them sounded like the bold kitchen woman.
They passed under a few other grates, and then they traveled in darkness until z’Acatto reopened the lantern.
“We’re not under the castle anymore,” he explained.
“This leads out?”
“The douco liked escape routes. That’s how we got into the one in Taurillo, remember? And that’s how I found this one.”
Not much later, they emerged through a trapdoor onto a wooded hillside. Below, a wide river flowed lazily by.
“Here we are.”
Z’Acatto held up a leather bag. Inside were four bottles carefully wrapped in many layers of linen.
“We’ll drink these when we get back home,” he said.
“That sounds good,” Cazio sighed. He meant it. To be sitting in the sun of the Piato da Fiussa drinking rare wine with z’Acatto, no worries about men who couldn’t be killed with swords or what was really going on in Anne’s mind or murder dressed up in fine clothes. Some cheese, some pears, a girl who wasn’t a queen or handmaid to a queen—
Austra.
Anne was supposed to be sending her to Dunmrogh. How long before she got here? Was she here already?
“I thought you would come around,” z’Acatto said. “There’s another bag down there with some drinkable but unexceptional wine; food, too. If you’ll get that—”
“I can’t go back,” Cazio interrupted. “Not yet. There are a few things I have