The Tiger of Illaryian: Part IV L'incontro sul Balcone. Part I Part II Part III   The soft sound of water plashing up against the canal walls was the only sound to break the stillness of the night. A somber shadow flitted silently across the waterway, making its way towards an impressive orange building overspread with balconies and terraces rising into the night sky.

Slowly the gondola in the water pulled up to the steps on the side of the canal and at the same moment a set of footsteps resounding through the streets merged with the noise of the canal waves.

“Tutto bene?” whispered a sinister voice.

“Tutto bene,” echoed a low girlish trill.

“Prince Råiden?”

“He comes beyond the bridge. Let us go up.”

In another moment three shadows gathered on the second tallest balcony of the great orange building, known as the Scale, beneath the shade of a pleasant wooden lattice enveloped in the vines of a vite plant.

Arama di Athena De Cioto was there to revenge herself on the ignoble Rego who had pressed his secret suit upon her, Ilazio Moccenigo had come to avenge his dead father, and Prince Råiden wanted to seek justice and vengeance, for a fear had crept into his heart, lest by some twist of fate he should lose his dear little ambitious Arama. What human might not choose power and wealth above ground instead of less power and less wealth beneath the dark and cruel crust of the earth?

Such were the motives that thus brought this unlikely triumvirate together in the dark of the night to plan the downfall of the completely unsuspecting Rego. Luca di Carli had no idea that any of this was going on!

“Do you hold, still, your sentiments from the day before?” began Ilazio after a long silence in a low, dreary voice, pacing up and down the length of the terrace and looking fiercely at Arama.

The girl pulled down the edge of her cape and frowned. “Ilazio, the Rego is un assassino a sangue freddo! This note proves it.” She snatched the paper out of Råiden’s hand. “Do you think I would hold back my help against a villino? Your father knew somehow that he was in grave danger. Who knows what ricatto and le malignità the great Rego might have pressed upon him? No doubt all the records were stolen along with the crimine. We must make him pay!”

Ilazio pulled the paper out of her hands and wrote upon the back of it. In another second he slipped it back into her possession.

Arama hurriedly read the note to herself under the light of the lanterns, adding another sentence at the end of it with the quill which Ilazio handed to her.

This is treasonous talk, read the note, and, Treason or patriottismo, no man can escape innocent with blood on his hands, she added boldly.

Råiden Tígrisdýrið smiled grimly when they passed him the note.

But if the Rego suddenly dies without cause or blame attached to him, there would be an uproar, and the murderers would be hunted like bloodhounds, he wrote patiently across the side of the small paper.

Arama’s eyes lit up and she whispered cannily, “Then we must make the people angry. The people and the Kolgari.”

“How?” asked Råiden darkly, grabbing Arama by the shoulders and staring into her eyes. “The Kolgari are my people, Arama.”

Ilazio listened morbidly.

“It would be easy enough,” smirked Arama. “L'amuleto, Råiden. Don’t you know that the Rego will send an embassy to the sunken city in due giorni? I discovered it mo’. And we only need take the amulet and set it in the Rego’s palazzo, and the rest would happen by itself. You could easily arrange to have the Kolgari send a spy to search the Rego’s quarters and find him guilty. There would instantly be an uproar amongst the Kolgari throughout the realm, and the di Carlis position would at once become… instabile.”

“For the Kolgari,” mused Tígrisdýrið, “stealing the necklace would mean death. But the people…”

“The people love him,” Ilazio finished gloomily. He was eager to wash out the deed in blood, oh, he would sacrifice himself without a thought! It was well for Luca di Carli that neither of the others mentioned to him who the man in the golden mask had been, or it would have become cracked and bloody before it left the ball that day.

“Bene?” whispered Arama.

“If it all went just as you suppose, mia ragazza, there might still be a desperate struggle after all between the humans and the Kolgari, and Varlyrio might be torn apart."

“Al demone with Varlyrio!” Arama and Ilazio cried together. They froze and looked at each other.

“We must make the whole guild lose trust in di Carli. They must hate him as we do—for the same buone ragioni that we do.”

“And then,” Ilazio halted. His silence was more expressive than words.

“Isn’t that enough?” pleaded Arama uneasily. With frightened eyes she looked back and forth between the conspirators by her side.

“That’s not enough,” muttered Ilazio. “‘He who sheds man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed.’”

“Then,” said Råiden, “we need a better reason for the populace to hate him. Will they believe that he murdered the famous architect only because of a paper that could be fabricated in dieci minuti? Would your famiglia even believe it?”

Ilazio opened his mouth and then shut it again. Would they? It almost looked implausible, unless they felt it, knew it, the way he did! He knew his father’s handwriting. The note was enough to prove the Rego’s guilt, but still there lay those uncomfortable gaps, for what if Brabantio had been mistaken? He knew his family might doubt the paper's authenticity, for no one knew his fathers hand like he did. His father, with whom he had planned out palazzos and written out contracts!
“Kidnapping?” Arama whispered suddenly, interrupting his horrible reverie. “The death of a child?” He didn’t know what she was talking about. “But amici, we don’t want blood on our hands.”

“None but guilty blood,” Ilazio agreed in a low voice, looking at the girl keenly. Perhaps she was too weak for this job.

“The De Ciotos aren’t popular now,” Arama said ruefully. Ilazio’s stare went by unnoticed. “The De Fioris and the Conzagas and even the Rego blamed us for the assassinations that recently occurred. But even then, a noble family like ours…”

What was she getting at?

“The De Ciotos from the East are coming to stay at the Amancio Mansion in two days.”

“Is your little nephew–” murmured Råiden.

“We cannot harm him!” Arama interrupted, her cheeks flaming red.

“No, no,” Råiden assented. “But if he were to disappear… if this evil Rego were to use him as a bait, to force you to agree to whatever he wants with you… you who he ought to hold politically aloof! what a terrible sensazione that would cause!”

“I like the plan,” Ilazio muttered. He bent forward over the balcony and stared down into the water far below. “Tre giorni. On the first Prince Råiden takes the amulet and soon it is safe within the walls of the Rego’s Palazzo della Tigre. Rumour says that the Rego is desperately in love with Arama di Athena De Cioto. On the second the populace is fermented by more rumours and suspicions, as the Kolgari search high and low for the stolen relic… higher and higher and higher. Until at last, on the morning of the third day, Prince Raiden remembers the suspicious visit of the royal ambassador on the day of the theft, and, since that morning the little cousin of Arama disappeared, kidnapped perhaps by the Rego himself, who wants young Arama De Cioto at any cost, the populace bursts into the Rego’s palazzos, and the Kolgari search his inner rooms and take him hostage…”

“When they find the amulet,” Raiden finished soberly, “the Rego’s fate will be sealed.”

“And if they fail,” Ilazio swore, “I will kill him then!”

As for Arama di Athena De Cioto, she had other plans…

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