Lackey, Mercedes & Flint, Eric & Freer, Dave - [Heirs of Alexandria 01] (95 page)

The white-haired head of the
Casa
Montescue shook his head. "No. Her defenses were too good. I wasn't really hunting her, anyway. I wanted the Valdosta
sons
... you, in particular. Word of a Montescue. I didn't have anything to do with her death. She was involved with Montagnards, you know. The only ones who could have easily penetrated her defenses are her own people."

Marco nodded. "That's what Chiano and my brother both said. I chose not to believe them for years."

The old man struggled to his feet. Both Marco and Benito stepped forward to help. He waved Marco off. "I'll take this other Dorma lad's arm, Valdosta. I'm not ready to take yours."

Marco nodded. "I'll meet you at the foot of the winged Lion of Saint Mark, Benito. Good-bye, Kat."

Kat found herself unable to speak. Her eyes burned, but she managed a tremulous wave. They set off, leaving Marco behind in the rapidly emptying piazza. Benito provided support for the old man, who leaned on his shoulder. "Sorry, boy. That was too much for me. I ran... I'm too old." He sighed.

"Sir. Um. I've got a suggestion. Your granddaughter Katerina going out on these night trips on her own. It's not safe, sir." Benito ignored the poisonous look Kat gave him.

The old man sighed again. "You're right, boy. But I'm too old these days. And who else do we trust?"

"As it happens, I have someone you can trust. Absolutely. Good with a knife too, and knows how to keep a still tongue."

Old Lodovico shook his head. "Montescue can't afford any bravos, boy. Certainly not good ones. And I'm not having Kat going on these night trips with a man."

Benito smiled. "Maria is no bravo, sir, nor a man. And I reckon Kat can trust her. She owes Kat, and she doesn't forget a debt."

Kat stared at him. "Maria? But what about... Caesare?"

"He threw her out."

"Tell her to come to me," said Kat decisively.

Her grandfather actually managed a chuckle. That was a good sign. "Minx. We can't afford any more people."

"We can afford a roof. And food. And maybe a bit for risks."

The old man shrugged. "Find a roof that doesn't leak at Montescue these days! But you've made up your mind, Kat. I know I'm wasting my time."

"You won't regret it, sir," said Benito earnestly. "I'll get word to her, Kat. She needs a woman-friend right now. Might take her a day or two to make up her mind, huh? She's really stiff-canaler proud. But I'll talk to her. Well, can I call you a gondola?"

"Thank you. You're a good lad, Dorma."

Benito smiled. "My name is not Dorma, sir. It's Valdosta. The good one is my brother."

They were silent for a good part of the voyage. Finally Lodovico sighed. "So. I was wrong about them. But Kat... The Montescue will not pursue the vendetta. My promise. But he is married, Katerina. I want your promise. You will leave him alone."

Kat sighed. "It wouldn't make any difference. You don't know him. He won't do anything no matter what. Sometimes Grandpapa, I think we could choke on our own honor. And Marco is like that. Dorma tricked him into marrying that sister..."

"He had to do that, child," Lodovico said stiffly. "You shouldn't know about that sort of thing, but honor demands�"

"I'll bet that child has a good chance at a blond head of hair, Grandpapa!" snapped Kat angrily. "And not dyed blond like its mama, either."

A short time after, still angry, Kat was back to glaring at her grandfather. "And what's this mention you made earlier of a 'Francesca' telling you this and that? Surely�"

Lodovico's face was as stiff as a board. "My own
grandfather
!
"
Kat wailed. "I can't believe it!"

"I'm not so old as all that," he muttered.

"My own grandfather! I'll kill her!"

Lodovico smiled wryly. "That's the spirit, girl. Start a vendetta of your own."

Kat choked on the next threat. Her grandfather shrugged. "She got me to stop hunting him, you know. Your precious Marco, I mean."

Kat swallowed. "Well." Swallowed again. "Well. All right, then. Maybe I'll just break her leg."

Lodovico shook his head firmly. "Better to go for an arm. Good advice from an old vendettist. Her legs are awfully strong."

"My own grandfather!"

Manfred poured some more wine into his glass. He'd paid very little attention to the justice's order of eviction from the chamber. And the two Schiopettieri with the two "false witnesses" seemed very unwilling to give force to the justice's words. Steel cladding and a reputation for mayhem had some advantages.

"I think we should get back,
Ritter
," said Brother Uriel sternly. "And not sit about idling with a glass of wine."

"
Ritter
Von Gherens needs a glass to build up his strength," said Manfred solemnly.

Von Gherens looked briefly startled, but he caught on quickly. "That's exactly what Brother Samson the Hospitaler said. I'm feeling very weak after the walk, Brother."

Uriel snorted and shook his head.

"They might as well have their glass of wine," said Erik, pacifically. "We won't get a vessel, while the half of the town is here to listen to the report from this sea captain. And Von Gherens is in no state to walk all the way home yet."

Uriel accepted this, and relaxed slightly. "True. But I do not hold with too much wine drinking. And I want to tell Father Sachs about the death of the bishop. He was of course a soft Venetian, but open to Pauline persuasion."

Manfred put a booted foot up on the bench. "Heh. But the Holy Saint Paul himself said: 'Take a bit of wine for the good of your stomach.' "

Uriel brightened. Ecclesiastical argument and knowledge of biblical quotations was his weakness. "True, but..."

He made no objection to them pouring him a glass, which he drank as he talked at length, and he didn't even notice them finishing the rest of the bottle before they left. Finding him and Von Gherens a gondola was by this stage possible, and Manfred kindly volunteered Erik and himself to walk.

"It's August, Manfred. August in Italy. I sweat standing still. When we've finished going to visit Francesca, which is what you intend�I can tell�we take a boat. In fact we wait five minutes and we take a boat
to
Francesca."

"Just exactly what I was going to suggest," said Manfred.

Marco pulled himself back into the middle of his bed, sitting on the handsome wool blanket cross-legged and pondering the silk-wrapped, sealed package that Petro Dorma had sent over by messenger. There was more than enough light from his tiny slit-window to read the inscription on the package.

By what means the dagger had been taken from the
Signori di Notte
and whisked to Ferrara heaven only knew. Heaven and Petro Dorma.

Marco opened the outer canvas, then the box wrapped in it, tipping out the package inside. Two hand-spans long, narrow, and heavy. A
main gauche
in the new Toulouse style... Marco knew that before he even opened the box. He'd hefted too many blades in his time not to know the weight and balance of a knife. Even with it well wrapped and in a wooden box, he could tell.

Silk cords twisted about the final wrapping inside the box in complicated knots; red silk cords in patterns Marco knew, patterns difficult to duplicate. The final knot had been sealed with a wax stamp, imprinted with the Dell'este crest.

Hazard
, those knots said, and
Be wary
. You only tied a package coming out of Ferrara with those knots when you thought there might be a possibility the package would be opened by unfriendly hands somewhere along the way.

All of which meant that
this
was the very blade that had gone upriver to Ferrara and Duke Dell'este, the town's iron-spined ruler.

The knife that had slain Bishop Pietro Capuletti. The Ferrara blade, a signed blade with the intaglio crest etched proudly on the pommel nut for all to see, pointing straight to Valdosta�and another clan, a
Venetian
clan.

House Dorma. A new Power, and rising, which made their situation more precarious than if they had been established movers-and-shakers.

Guilt by association implicated
Casa
Dorma; and most especially Petro Dorma, who had taken in two long-lost Valdosta boys and had tied silken cords of tighter binding to Marco, and so to the steel of Ferrara.

Someone had used a Ferrara
main gauche
to sever more than Pietro Capuletti's life. Someone had gone to expensive lengths to bring a signed Valdosta knife down-river to assassinate the pro-Pauline prelate.

Marco rested his elbows on his knees and stared wearily at the thing, bright on the dark wool blanket of Dalmatian weave.

I didn't expect an answer so quickly. Maybe I ought to put off untying those knots. My life's complicated enough as it is.

But the knots, and the message in them, did not permit any such evasions. Particularly not now, not when Petro Dorma needed
any
scrap of information, however hazardous, to counter the attack on their houses.

Slowly, reluctantly, Marco reached for the packet; slowly broke the seal, and gave the cords the proper twist that freed them.

The silk fell open, falling on the open oiled canvas that had contained the box. Marco pulled the silk away and the knife slipped free of it. The knife, and a tube of closely written paper. But it was the knife that held the eye: shining, beautiful in its way, like a sleeping snake.

There was more in the way of an answer than Marco had expected. He'd thought to get a simple note. Instead�instead there were several pages, all in the duke's precise hand.

Marco picked up the letters and began to read.

Petro Dorma's private study was bright as only the best room in a wealthy man's house could be; walled on two sides with clear, sparkling-clean windows and high enough to catch all the sunlight available. A beautiful Cassone. Linenfold scrollwork on the polished wooden panels on the walls, soft Turkish rugs on the floor�an expensive retreat fitting the head of one of the rising stars of Venice, both in commerce and government.

It struck Marco that despite being balding, Petro was an incongruously young man for such an important post in a republic which traditionally favored septuagenarians and octogenarians for its leaders. Although... not always, especially in times of crisis.

" '�purchased seven months ago by Marchioness Rosa Aleri,' " Petro read, his words dropping into the silence like pebbles into a quiet backwater. " 'Cousin to Francesco Aleri.' " He looked over the top of the letter at Marco, who was seated stiffly on the other side of the desk. "How certain can your grandfather be of this, Marco? How can he tell one knife from another?"

Marco still had the blade in his hands, and chose to show him rather than tell him. He unscrewed the pommel-nut and slid the hilt off the tang, laying bare the steel beneath. He tilted the thing in his hands so that it caught the light from Petro's windows, and touched a hesitant finger first to the tiny number etched into the metal just beneath the threads for the nut, then to the maker's mark that was cut into the steel below the quillions, where it would be visible. "This is a
signed
blade, Petro," he said softly. "Signed means special, and special means numbered. Valdosta has always kept track of what special blades went where. Of course," he added truthfully, "unless we get a blade back into our hands for sharpening or cleaning, we can't know who gets it after the original buyer."

"How many people know about this?" Petro Dorma's eyes were speculative; darkly brooding.

"That we keep track?" Marco considered his answer carefully. "Not many, outside the swordsmithy. Not many inside the swordsmithy, for that matter, except the ones making the signed blades. I don't think Mother ever knew, or if she did, she'd forgotten it. I doubt Benito was ever told about it; he wasn't really old enough when we left. The duke, me, Cousin Pauli, and whoever is working in the special forges. Maybe a dozen people altogether.
That
much I'm sure of. I'm pretty sure my grandfather was counting on me remembering."

The right corner of Petro's mouth lifted a little. "That remarkable memory of yours at work again, hmm?"

Marco nodded. "Grandfather showed me once how the signed blades were registered, when he took me through the forges. He'll remember that, I know he will. So he'll be pretty well certain I do, and probably figured that was why I sent the knife to him."

"So we have, at the very least, a tenuous link right back into the Milanese camp and as far from Senor Lopez as possible. He works for the Grand Metropolitan of Rome... of that much I am sure. I am not sure just what he's doing here. He and the two priests who came with him spend most of their time doing charitable work in the poorest quarters of the city, but I'm quite sure that's not his ultimate purpose. And I don't think Ricardo Brunelli really knows what Lopez is doing any more than I do. Yet if your friend Katerina is correct, it was the Petrine who was actually there. Interesting."

After a long silence Marco dared: "Well, Petro�now what?"

"I need more. Aleri seems to have disappeared�since the day before Milan began their embargo, in fact. Yes. I was having him watched." It was as close as Marco had seen Petro Dorma come to admitting that he was one of the shadowy Council of Ten that watched over the Republic's safety.

"But he evaded us. He is very good. I believe he is still here in Venice." Petro looked down at his desk. "I believe he may be sitting tight in the
Casa
Dandelo. We are watching it. But like news of Condottiere Frescata's success against the Scaligers of Verona... There is nothing coming out. Not that we know of."

Marco thought a while. "But the
Capi di Contrada
go in once a week to make sure there are no Venetian prisoners. And they happen to be..."

"Capuletti. Supposedly loyalists of Ricardo Brunelli." Petro sighed. "Leave me to it, Marco. Off you go."

So Marco went.