To be preceded... The Tiger of Illaryian: Part VI “Ercilia…” Arama hesitated as her sister looked up with an inquiring face, but after a moment she went on in a low tone of voice, “sorella carissima, I need to ask a favour of you, per favore.” “Certo, tell me,” smiled Ercilia Amancio, Arama’s widowed half-sister.  “Tis nothing much,” Arama said quickly, pulling a pile of clothes out from behind her and laying them on Ercilia’s lap, “Only that you put these clothes of mine on, and go out for me with them.” “Where would you want me to go?” Ercilia asked, puzzled. “Oh, nowhere, only wander about the city as you like, and do not come back until it is nearly dawn. I have un appuntamento a mezzanotte, and you know how I hate to be followed, Little Cilia. But I fancy you rather like followers,” she added shrewdly, “Can you do that for me?”  “Si, con piacere,” Ercilia answered warmly, rising with the clothes in her hand, “Of course I like nothing better than the chilling night winds of Illaryian, and a coldhearted assassin close on my heels, mia ragazza dispettosa.” “Those fur clothes are far warmer than what I intended to wear, sorella mia,” Arama laughed merrily as she went up to change her toilette as well, “but if I thought you needed a coat of chainmail under that, I would give it to you.”   She didn’t mention that she would put on a shirt of mail herself…   That very morning, as Arama had expected, her little nephew had arrived at the Amancio Mansion in company of his dashing father, Raimonde De Cioto. Everything was falling right into her hands so far.  She had promptly dispatched Raimonde to make a copy of the beautiful golden Kolgari necklace which he had gotten a chance to examine carefully before she brought it to Råiden’s trusted Kolgari friend, Islingr, who was to plant it in the Rego’s arabesque Palazzo della Tigre. Then she had sent her father off to bed in the left wing of the old mansion, and asked her nephew to amuse himself in the kitchen or the messroom or the library as he pleased, until she returned. These rooms, as it happened, were all in the right wing of the mansion… Ercilia was to be a distraction in the meantime. For one thing, Arama knew well that she was the only attentive person left in the house, and that Fiorello’s kidnapping could scarcely be arranged with her presence. Besides, the men without were waiting to see Arama walk out the front door, for her own absence was to be the signal for il sequestro. Arama didn’t dare to actually step out bound upon her midnight tryst, and so she sent Ercilia out the doors in her place. Yet because she didn’t dare to let even her dear father know that she was involved in the kidnapping of her own nephew either, she had to be gone as well, besides that she truly did have un appuntamento a mezzanotte, as she had said.  Now, if anyone was truly prepared to watch where she went, they would be lost following Ercilia, as Arama herself slipped out the window from above—an important precaution, to keep any of her fellow conspirators from actually following her, for if they discovered her treachery it would be a short shrift for her and a deep hole in the ground after that, if not a rope around her throat, hanging from the tallest wooden beam in Illaryian.   So thus it was that just a little before midnight Ercilia Amancio stepped quietly out of the front door dressed as her half-sister, leaving it unlocked behind her for Arama to follow shortly, while instead the feisty girl slipped quietly out of the window on the tallest roof of the mansion, dressed in a lightweight vest of mail beneath her pitch black cloak, with a loose, grey hood over her hair and face and a dark grey bandana wrapped over her mouth.  “Ah, Råiden, Råiden,” she whispered hoarsely as she bent over the very edge of the roof with her hand on the gutter and stared at the figures moving towards the doorway from the streets below, “it’s unlucky for you that I like you. Che peccato!” “Who is there, chi è là?” cried Fiorello from the library of the grand mansion, just as Arama leapt off the roof above onto another. The sound of a footstep on the old wooden floor outside the room had reached his keen young ears and he started out of his book, all alert and wary. “Arama? Ercilia? Are you back already, are you there? Appestare, are you the ghost of Supano Amancio? Show yourself!” Fiorello threw his book at the creaking door to the library and it groaned as it pushed back off the doorpost and swung all the way open.  There was no one there! “I’ve read about you, vanished man!” threatened Arama’s little nephew, “Go back to your tribe in Mitgardia, I know your weakness! I’m going to ignore you if you don’t speak up.” Suddenly Fiorello felt a hand around his mouth! A real hand. He was paralyzed for just a moment, but then he struck out with his golden hook hand until he felt his arms grabbed too, his feet pulled from under him, and a blindfold suddenly wrapped tightly around his eyes.  “Don’t worry, don’t fret,” whispered the voice of a hired Lionell sicario, “we’re just a takin’ you to a different place for la notte.” A door creaked open and Fiorello felt them going down the steps of the Amancio mansion. Then he felt them drop him down into something that moved and rocked like a hammock. His legs and hands were tied, but he moved the latter until he felt cold, wet water down over the side. They were in a gondola! He felt the boat suddenly skim out over the water and he bit his lip to keep from crying. Where would they take him?  He had to just wait… and not see… “Don’t worry, starai tutto bene,” whispered the same assuring voice.  But Fiorello didn’t feel it to be true.  .-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.   The rooms of the Palazzo della Tigre were dark and gloomy with nightfall on the serata of the second day. The Rego was to sleep in this mansion at the outskirts of Illaryian this night and the following, and as he wandered the lonely corridors he remembered the beautiful moonlit vigil with Arama on the head of the giant tiger statue only a few weeks ago. He had not seen her much since then. Why had she shunned him so at the ball? What was she up to? Why hadn’t she responded to his messages? What was the cause for the death of this fellow, Brabantio Moccenigo? To the Rego, who had favoured the well-known architect not long before his death, the sudden assassination was mysterious and appalling. His mind was full of questions.  Luca paced up and down his room uneasily. She was up to something. He had to know what it was—she couldn’t keep hiding it from him. No sooner was his mind made up than a blurry shadow dropped in front of him and a glimmer flashed before his eyes. With startling quickness Luca di Carli silently whipped out his sword and pressed it close against the sudden intruder’s chest.  She threw back her hood and smiled.  “But don’t always think that it’s just me,” Arama cautioned through her smile.  Luca glanced up at the wooden beams above him in the vaulted ceiling, grimly stroking his chin and tossing his sword down onto his bed. “No, I certainly won’t ever get used to it,” he laughed.    Arama put her arm around him demurely, and they walked off together into the uninhabited corridors, conversing in barely audible tones.  Arama once more covered her pretty face in the depths of her dark grey hood and mask so that only her eyes were barely visible, bright and glimmering in the subtle candlelight.  “Tonight my little cousin will disappear, Signore,” she said, looking gaily at Luca’s silent face. “He’s staying in the Amancio Mansion with us,” she explained, “but after the uproar at his sequestro subsides we will find him in one of the deep cells beneath the Palazzo of Illaryian.” Luca stopped walking and turned the girl to face him, his face a question. ”What?” Arama laughed at his confusion, and didn’t pause to answer clearly. “The assurdo rumor will come out that you love me,” she went on, forcing him to walk as she looked him in the eyes and laughed, skipping along beside him, “and when they find the boy Fiorello in the cells of the Palazzo it will be confirmed, besides the note that I will reveal, written by the Rego, Luca di Carli himself, with threats of immediately killing the boy if I did not…” she tapered off and watched the wary, skeptical expression on Luca’s face.  She changed the topic. “You heard about the missing amulet?” Arama suddenly spun around and faced him head-on, leaning against a pillar and swinging the amulet like a pendulum in front of him, grinning behind her bandana. “It will be found in your rooms by a Kolgari spy domani, proving treachery on your part. Then the whole populace will rise against you, and you’ll be fortunato if your Palazzo isn’t stoned, thanks to the influenza potente of the Conzaga and Fiori families, which we know their support was suspicious to begin with, and even worse now, let alone after you have fallen in love with me,” she trailed off in a dry voice, putting her hand to her waist to catch her breath.  “But none of this will happen just like that,” she answered Luca’s silence coyly. Her eyes sparkled. “Not quite just come quello…” Luca di Carli raised his eyebrows. “A pretty mess you got me involved in,” he said. “But you’re always creating hero scenarios for yourself: what’s tua soluzione?”  “It’s better than questo,” answered Arama, her voice suddenly tense and rigid like the chords of a lyre. She dangled a letter out in front of the Rego’s face. It was Brabantio’s ricatto.  “I’m only a hero with you, Luca, you know that,” she said timidly, “I’d rather be a villain with everyone else, tanto che.” Luca didn’t answer. He was thinking. “What are you planning, De Cioto?” he said at last. “Well, I like Råiden…” faltered Arama.  The Rego looked at her sharply.  “So I want him to die, bene?” finished Arama.  Luca smiled slowly in relief. “You don’t like me very much, do you?” he said ironically.  “No… not that much, I guess,” grinned Arama De Cioto.  .-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-. It was mezzogiorno on the third day. Once again the Rego slowly paced up and down the lengths of his room in the Royal Arabesque Mansion, this time with his eyes closed in resignation and his lips compressed in concentration. “Do you trust me, capretto? Will you trust me, Luca?” he felt like he heard Arama’s voice still present in the room.  His own answer rose to his lips once more, “Per sempre, mia cara ragazza. And now you have to prove it, olive merchant, son of an olive merchant,” he muttered, throwing himself down upon his rich bed of fluffy down.  Then his eyes opened wide, for there in the beams above him hung two grinning De Fioris staring down at him: the two most violent members of the family, Susto and Falco De Fiori, assassins and sicarios by trade.  In the instantaneous millisecond of opportunity that followed, Luca snapped his teeth shut.  “This is gonna be hard to prove, Arama,” he whistled through them. Suddenly Susto dropped by his side and ripped Luca’s hidden knife out of his hand while Falco’s arms closed around the Rego’s neck with a grip of iron.  “Tie him up, it’s only for a moment,” muttered a cool, calculating voice. A man was standing in the doorway of the balcony, a dark and menacing shadow against the midday sky.   Luca stared at him as they tossed him into a chair.  A Kolgari, escorted by Susto and Falco De Fiori. Yes, it was the mission he was expecting and prepared for. Grazie al cielo, it wasn’t an assassination planned by the De Fiori’s, for he might have played right into their hands!  But the cold and steely Kolgari almost scared him more. Luca knew him. He would do his job no matter where it took him, and he winced to think that if it hadn’t been for Arama that Kolgari’s creed would undoubtedly have led his elvish knife right into Luca’s heart.  Luca struggled uneasily in his chair, pulling at the tight ropes which the brothers had so swiftly spun around him. What if they somehow found the amulet somewhere in his room? “Scommetto, you’re after that odioso amulet,” Luca conjectured cleverly.  No one answered, and Susto started to whistle an airy tune.  “When you trovalo, you just let us do the rest,” Falco nodded smugly at the Elven Lord, juggling his knife and Luca’s dagger. “You’ll never trovalo here!” Luca burst out, upsetting the chair and pushing himself up against the wall with it. At last the cold Kolgari spoke. His mind had run over the whole room, searching for the presence of the priceless healing amulet, but it was nowhere to be found. He stepped up very close to Luca and shoved his chair back against the wall. “If thou art not the vile thief,” said the Kolgari in a slow and deliberate voice, using the ancient form of the Kolgari race in his speech, “then who is?” Luca stared coldly back into his eyes. “Perhaps the one who accused me, signore. But I will not return insult for injury. I mean peace towards your kind, and well you know it. You ought never to have listened to the lying tongue that whispered with guile into your ears that this Rego was only another villano traditore. Those Regos are gone now, and a just one sits enthroned. But is this justice, Lord Círdan?” “Release him,” said the Kolgari Lord, setting the Rego’s chair down and stepping a few paces backwards. “Thou speakest well and fair, O Rego. Thou hast passed a difficult test, and we Kolgari, at least, shall honour you for it.” “As long as we get our pay,” grinned Susto, exchanging hand congratulations with Falco. He pointed his finger knowingly at Luca as he backed out of the room. “Now you know we can get you when we have to,” he said complacently, with a brilliant wink.  “Maybe,” Luca di Carli thought as he rose and watched them leave, “or maybe not…” He looked down at a little slip of paper that Arama had handed to him when she left the night before.  Let them search your rooms when they come tomorrow, it read. See? They will find nothing. Remember Luca: whatever happens, fidati di me…   .-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-. Well, it took me a long time to get around to this build, as @W Navarre could tell you, and in the end all I really had time/energy to build was a gondola.  So basically this "MOC" is a case of GIMP run wild.  Here's what I started with: It was pretty fun to turn that into a decent immersive scene, though half-way through I didn't think I'd manage to make it good enough for me not to be embarrassed to post it.  All credit for the story goes to Navarre.  I haven't even read the whole thing yet.