Free The King's Agent by Donna Russo Morin Page A

greeting, and the applauding assemblage—Battista slipped from the room, invisible to anyone’s notice ... save one.
     
    The ease with which he passed through the corridors frightened him. Though quiet, the hallway was not completely devoid of inhabitants; Battista passed a swaggering group of young men, clearly drunk and looking for trouble ... a coupling of lovers, the rustling fabric and deep-throated moans revealing what the darkness of the alcove did not. But not a single guard did he spy, nor a suspicious servant did he stumble upon.
    He entered a long, window-walled corridor and took a quick moment to scan the sky; the moon was no longer visible in the east, where it had been rising when he entered the palazzo. He had little time left, half an hour perhaps, and he would lose his accomplice and Frado’s assistance in escape.
    Battista trod the fine line between a walk and a run, long legs gobbling the floor with determined strides. He made it to the northeast corner of the palace and the circular stairway tucked away within its spiral. He dared to run up them, safe in the seclusion of the dark stone walls.
    At the top, he turned left—corrected himself—turned right.
    The passageway was not as wide on this floor as the one below. Along each side, doors alternated positions with wall sconces, each fixture resembling a sword pointing at the floor with the flame flickering from the cupped pommel, each door closed and gilded with gold.
    Battista’s breath quickened as the moment of acquisition at last arrived. He counted the doors on his left, grateful he needed the third and not another of the many stretching down the long corridor before him.
    He came up short at the portal, imbalanced by the lack of padlock. A brief, scourging warning of entrapment crossed his thoughts and he erased it with logic, if a trifle convoluted. A man such as the marquess of Mantua would be secure with the efficiency of his guards; he would feel no need to lock away his treasures.
    Sheer folly. Battista smirked at the inferiority of the man supposedly superior by birth.
    He opened the door, entered the room, and closed it behind him with the silence and grace of a dancer. With his back to the portal, he surveyed the room, one lit by three sconces lined up along the far wall, a chamber unlike any he had imagined or expected.
    At first glance, the most singular item within these walls appeared to be the Persian carpet covering a gleaming dark wood floor, its maroon background the host for the thick green tree and the golden fruit hanging from its curled branches. The walls were bare save for the round, brass sconces.
    There were no trophies in the trophy room. Battista took two steps farther in, thrusting fisted hands onto hips in agitation.
    That’s when he saw it.
    The chest was made of wood, of that he was sure, but of such a dark cast he could not deduce its variety. This very darkness kept it almost hidden from view, immersed in the shadows beneath the three light fixtures hanging above, tossing their light foolishly upward to the beamed ceiling overhead. Battista gloated with a satisfaction about to be met.
    He rushed across the expanse of the room, steps silent upon the resplendent rug, and sunk to his knees before the mammoth trunk. The paintings he sought must still be in frames, he surmised from the vast breadth of the chest, and he cursed the time it would take to pry them from their casings.
    He set to work on the padlocks securing the three encompassing steel bands. The locks were not as intricately formed as he expected, but were merely basic shapes, a circle, a cloverleaf, and an inverted triangle, but the mechanisms proved far more difficult than their simplistic construction foretold. He worked his small pin in each hole, the clicking of metal upon metal drowned out by the clock ticking dangerously in his mind.
    “Finally!” He grunted with exasperation to the empty room as the third lock fell away beneath his fingers. He