Masks (21 page)

“Hurry up!” Jerome said nervously. “We should have been back by now.”

Mircea sneezed into a handkerchief, instead of replying. At the rate things were going, he’d be lucky to make it back at all. His head swam. His throat burned. He thought even his vision might be blurring.

“And then we have this one,” the genial apothecary said, bringing over yet another maiolica jar.

Martina was a notoriously late sleeper, even when she hadn’t spent half the day dealing with a burning house. It had given Mircea reason to hope that he might complete his errand and be back before she knew he was gone. But that was before he realized the extent of the medicaments on offer—or the enthusiasm of the proprietor who had sold him so many and such expensive things, less than a week ago.

The man was clearly hoping for another big sale.

Mircea was hoping to identify the substance in the little pot Sanuito had given him before he fell over.

It wasn’t going so well. He’d gone through half the items in the shop, and he wasn’t even sure he recalled what the damned stuff smelled like anymore. Or what he thought it had before perfumes and spices, sugars and exotic ointments had surrounded him in a cloud of different scents, some whispering, some screaming, but all working to drown out even a vampire’s scent memory.

He looked up from the handkerchief, eyes streaming, only to have the owner shove something citrus-scented under his nose. A human would have probably needed it that close. But to a vampire, it was akin to having a bucket of lemon juice thrown in his face.

Mircea gasped and reared back, colliding with one of the boys who had been bustling about, cleaning up the shop after hours. And, of course, this one was carrying a large and probably quite expensive maiolica jar. Which equally predictably, he dropped.

Mircea caught it—just—a hair’s breadth before it hit the floor.

The shop owner gave a little bleat. And then clutched the jar to his apron-covered chest after Mircea handed it over. He looked faintly ill, his face red, his forehead beaded with sweat.

“Oh,
gràsie, dòmino! Gràsie!
Stupid boy,” he added, glaring at the young man, who stood there with his mouth hanging open in horror, until his master yelled at him. “Go,
èrce!
Do you think I trust you with this again?”

The boy scurried off, and the shopkeeper carefully placed the beautiful jar on the nearest counter, his hands shaking slightly.

“What’s in that one?” Mircea managed to wheeze.

“Nothing,
dòmino.
Well, nothing you would be interested in.”

“How do you know?”

“You said cosmetics,
dòmino.
And aromatic waters and body powders and scented soaps—”

“That’s not soap,” Jerome said, sniffing the air.

How he could still smell anything was beyond Mircea. A boy was peeling a great mass of ginger root just behind him, and just beyond that, a man was crushing mint. Not to mention the golden haze that hung in the air from a bag of crushed mustard one of the boys had turned over, and the . . . the . . .

Mircea sneezed, and then gratefully accepted a cup of water from one of the apprentices.

“How do you dhow?” he repeated, through his nose.

“’Cause I helped make enough of the stuff in my time, didn’t I?” Jerome asked, leaning on the counter. “It was a specialty of the apothecary I used to work for. Pound, pound, pound, cook, cook, cook, mix, mix, mix. The stuff takes forever—”

“But worth it, young master,” the apothecary said, giving Jerome the stink eye. Whether for outing himself as something other than the noble his clothing would suggest, or because he was damaging a potential sale, Mircea didn’t know.

“If it’s made right,” Jerome began, only to be cut off as the man drew himself up.

“We take great pride in our work! We use only the finest of ingredients—and no shortcuts, as you’ll find in so many of the lesser shops.”

The water hadn’t helped much, but the apprentice returned with a damp towel, and Mircea buried his face in it.

“Yes, but they all say that,” Jerome pointed out cynically.

“They may say whatever they wish!” the man fumed. “But we are not known as Venice’s premier apothecary for nothing! We follow the recipe as Galen set down—”

“You’re using Andromachus’s version?” Jerome asked, sounding surprised.

“Yes, of course. It has been repeatedly proven to be the most efficacious—”

“And the most expensive.”

“—if properly prepared as Andromachus instructed. He was the Emperor Nero’s personal physician,” the man added, presumably for Mircea’s benefit, since the tone had changed to oiled deference. “Such a learned man.”

“Nero—didn’t he die young?” Jerome asked.

“Of stab wounds! He was never successfully poisoned—”

“Unlike everyone else around him.”

“—because he knew that the value of a good antidote is beyond price,” the shopkeeper said, smiling at Mircea, who had raised his head, blinking.

“He should do, considering how many times he caused others to need one,” Jerome muttered.

“Had they had this,” the apothecary said, proudly patting his potbellied jar, “they would have lived.”

“Hmmph,” Jerome said, unimpressed. “Where do you get all the vipers?”

“Vipers?” Mircea asked, trying to catch up.

“My shop frequently had to substitute lizards,” Jerome added, helping him not at all.

The shopkeeper smirked. “Why am I not surprised?”

Jerome’s eyes narrowed. “As the original recipe allows.”

“The original recipe was flawed,” the apothecary said. “Do you want to save money or your life? Such matters are not the place to economize—”

“Says the man trying to make a sale,” Jerome murmured. “And you didn’t answer the question.”

“The local fishermen bring them to us, of course,” the man snapped. “They often catch them in the shallows. They know we offer the best price, so they give us first choice—”

“When only the finest snakes will do.”

“Yes, because lizards are preferable,” the shopkeeper replied sarcastically. “They may give it the same taste, but they render the mix useless—as do weak or old vipers. The finer the ingredients, the finer the end product. And that includes the poison!”

“What poison?” Mircea asked, since they’d both ignored his previous question.

They did this one, too.

“Weak poison makes a weak antidote,” the apothecary continued. “We take only the best vipers, in their prime, you understand,” he said, glancing at Mircea, who understood exactly nothing. “We slice them small, place them in a solution of sal ammoniac, add the specified herbs, flowers, and wine, cover the pot with clay, and set it on a fire. When the vipers are properly cooked, the roasted remains are taken out and pounded—”

“Always with the pounding,” Jerome sighed.

“—until they are reduced to powder. After ten days, the powder is combined with fifty-five herbs, including myrrh, black and white pepper, turpentine resin, and poppy juice, all at the prescribed intervals—”

“Which is why it takes forever,” Jerome interjected.

“—and then the result of that is added to lemnian earth and roasted copper, bitumen, and castoreum—the secretion of beaver,” he said, seeing Mircea’s frown. “Well-aged, of course—”

“Of course,” Mircea murmured.

“—and finally it is all blended with a good quantity of honey and vetch meal. It takes a minimum of forty days to prepare properly, assuming all the ingredients are to hand.”

“But isn’t it supposed to be aged thereafter?” Jerome asked slyly. “Twelve years, wasn’t it?”

“That is considered optimal,” the man sniffed. “And we recommend as much to those buying it as a precaution. But in emergencies, it can be used sooner. Galen records that the Emperor Marcus Aurelius consumed the preparation within two months of its being prepared without ill effect.”

“It also increases the profit, if it can be shipped right out.”

The apothecary’s eyes narrowed. And a moment later, he was unstoppering his prized jar and summoning one of his boys with a snap of his fingers. “Wine. The Malvasia.”

“Yes, let’s be completely authentic,” Jerome said, but he looked intrigued.

“I’m not using it because it is Greek,” the man retorted. “But due to its naturally sweet taste, which compliments the mixture.”

“What mixture?” Mircea asked, and finally, the two men turned to look at him. Which would have been more gratifying if they hadn’t been staring at him incredulously.

He scowled. He’d like to see how attentive they were after inhaling three or four dozen potent concoctions. And damn it, he still couldn’t smell anything.

Until a diminutive glass of sweet wine was pushed under his nose a moment later. Just the fumes would have been enough to open a dead man’s head. And yes, Mircea recognized the irony, but he didn’t care.

Because the scent was hauntingly familiar.

He looked up and met the apothecary’s proud smile. “You see?” the man said gently. “Quality will out.”

“What is this?” Mircea asked, as Jerome took the cup, sticking out a tongue to taste the mix.

He made a face.

It obviously wasn’t sweet enough.

“That,
dòmino,
is only the finest Galene in all of Venice.”

“And Galene is another name for . . . ?”

“Why, Theriac Andromachus, of course,” the man said, looking confused. “What have we been talking about?”

Five minutes later, Mircea and Jerome hit the street, where even the late closing shops had now shuttered for the night. “So much for going back there again,” Jerome said, brushing himself off.

“We won’t need him again. We have what we went for.”

“We have nothing, which is why he was annoyed,” Jerome pointed out. “Would you like to tell me why I almost got beaten up over something neither of us can use?”

“If you can answer a question for me first.”

“Such as?”

They stopped and pressed against the building to let a peddler, with a cart full of leftover fish, down the narrow sidewalk. “Such as, where did Sanuito get a pot of outrageously expensive poison antidote when he was totally destitute?”

“Sanuito?”

“And why did he have it on a tray of soaps and cosmetics? And why did he offer it to me a day before he suddenly went mad and killed himself?”

“That’s three questions,” Jerome said, looking troubled.

“Yes. And I don’t have an answer to any of them,” Mircea said grimly. “But I know someone who might.”

“Is this really necessary?” Mircea asked, as two robust farm girls approached. They were the ones who had fed him a week ago, and he’d seen them a few times since, although wearing rather more than they had on at the moment.

Not that he was about to be doing any better.

“I bathed this morning,” he pointed out, as he was efficiently stripped by a couple of fiends with nimble fingers and laughing brown eyes.

“And now you’ll bathe again,” Auria said, reclining on her bed, examining him as the girls set to work.

He closed his eyes briefly. He didn’t need this right now. He needed to talk to Auria, preferably alone.

And clear-headed.

But neither option appeared to be on offer. “I need to ask you something, about Sanuito,” he said, trying not to react as the girls went to work with warm, wet rags.

“Not now.”

“Yes, now. I need to know if he was acting strangely in the last few days.”

Auria shrugged. “Sanuito always acted—”

“Yes, so I’ve been told. I mean moreso.”

“Not that I noticed. He seemed much the same. Quiet, assiduous, smart—”

“Smart?”

“Yes, why?”

“No one else seemed to notice that about him.”

Auria shrugged. “No one else paid attention.”

“But you did.”

“It’s my job to notice men. How they think, what they’re like.”

“And what was Sanuito like?”

She started to say something, and then paused, a small frown creasing her lovely forehead. “Damaged. Skittish. Afraid. But also intelligent, hardworking, eager to prove himself. I’d had an assistant a while ago, but I stopped using him. You know Lucca?”

Mircea thought back to the gormless servant wrestling with the heron’s feet. “Vaguely.”

“Be glad. The man’s an idiot. I’d show him simple recipes time and again, and he never remembered them. I finally told Cook she could have him, because it was easier doing everything myself!”

“But Sanuito wasn’t like that.”

“No. I never had to repeat a recipe, but he never got one wrong, either. I’d show him how I wanted something ground, and it was perfect every time thereafter. I will miss him.”

Mircea blinked. It was the first time he’d heard anyone say that, too. “Did he ever come into contact with poison?”

“Poison?”

“Of any kind. You said he helped you in the—that isn’t necessary,” Mircea said, glancing over his shoulder at the girl behind him, who was becoming a little overly familiar.

She just gave him a grin and went back to work.

“It’s necessary,” Auria said, drawing his attention back to her. “And, no.”

“But he assisted you—”

“To create cosmetics.”

“The ingredients of which are sometimes dangerous, are they not?”

“Sometimes. To humans, if used indiscriminately. Not to us.”

“But some are poisonous,” Mircea insisted. “You told me once that there was arsenic in some of the depilatories—”

“Which is washed off before it does harm to anything but hair!”

“But if it wasn’t? Isn’t it supposed to be hard to detect?”

“The kind poisoners use, perhaps. But the kind in cosmetics comes from orpiment, which is bright yellow and smells terribly of sulfur. Even to humans it reeks, and to us . . . well, no one is going to ingest any by accident, I assure you.”

“Vermilion, then,” Mircea said stubbornly.

Auria tilted her head. “Where are you hearing about all this?”

“From Jerome. His master was poisoned, and he learned a great deal about them afterward. He says there’s all sorts of things used in cosmetics that can kill someone.”

“If you eat an entire jar of it, perhaps,” Auria said dryly. “As far as I know, Sanuito didn’t. And in any case, we don’t use vermilion.”

“But your lips—”

“And my cheeks. And any other part of my anatomy I choose. I’m a vampire, Mircea! Blood goes where I want it.”

And didn’t he just wish that were true of him, Mircea thought, swallowing. And trying to keep his mind on the conversation. How long did it take to clean someone who was clean already?

“In any case, vermilion isn’t harmful unless overused,” Auria said. “And even for humans, it’s more likely to cause a rash than death. It wouldn’t harm a vampire at all. Most poisons won’t.”

“Jerome’s master was poisoned with something—”

“But I doubt it was his rouge that did him in!”

Mircea sighed and gave up. “Belladonna?”

“Is used in a weak tincture, a drop or so at the time, to cause the pupils to expand. It gives women that doe-eyed expression some men like.”

“And can result in blurry vision, hallucinations, poisoning,” Mircea recited from memory.

“Again, only in excess. It isn’t dangerous unless greatly overused—except to men’s purses.”

“But someone has to make that tincture,” Mircea persisted.

“We don’t make it here; we buy it.”

“But if Sanuito spilled some on himself—”

Auria sighed. “Then he would have been chastised for clumsiness, not poisoned. And in any case, Sanuito didn’t die of poison, did he?”

“I don’t know what he died of. I only know—” Mircea cut off, because one of the girls had stopped the bath he didn’t need, and had gone to her knees in front of him. And now she was—

“What are you doing?” he demanded, in shock.

“Ignore her,” Auria said.

Mircea looked up incredulously. “Ignore—”

“We need to work on your self-control.”

“I have self-control!” he said, jerking away.

“Apparently not. Unless you planned to almost die every time we sent you out!”

“That had nothing to do with me!”

“It had everything to do with you, and the decisions you made.” She nodded at the girl, who resumed her former occupation. “You are in charge on any assignation,” Auria’s voice snapped, bringing his attention back to her despite everything. “Whatever your client may believe. To stay that way, you must remain clear-headed, regardless of the distractions.
You
dictate the terms,
you
decide the duration, and if something goes wrong,
you
take the blame.”

“So you’re telling me I could have . . . could have somehow kept myself from almost being drained?” Mircea demanded.

“Yes, easily.”

“How?”

“By specifying no blood. Or by limiting the amount to be taken. Or by simply mentioning your age! As it was, you set no boundaries, so naturally they assumed you had none.”

“I wasn’t told to negotiate anything—”

“And you never asked?”

Mircea flushed. “We’re—you know what we are—”

“You can’t even say it.”

“—and I didn’t think we had any rights.”

“And as long as you act like that, you won’t. What happened to the man who leapt over the balcony and went charging after Sanuito?”

“That was different—”

“How different?”

“That was—damn it!” Mircea looked over his shoulder again, at the girl behind him. Who had just passed familiar and was heading into uncharted waters.

“Ignore her,” Auria’s voice snapped again. “And concentrate. How is it different?”

He looked up, angry and exasperated. “I don’t know—”

“Then let’s try another one. The second trip. You were being called back, which alone told you something. Didn’t it?”

“I . . .” Mircea paused. He was having a hard time concentrating even on easy questions at the moment, much less the hard ones.

“It told you she was interested,” Auria said, with a sigh. “Anyone could have been sent out the first time. Martina selected you because she knew something of the senator’s preferences. She has no use for callow schoolboys, or for men who have never been tested by anything more strenuous than a rousing debate. She likes soldiers, and you were the only one we had. But there was no way to know that she would like you.”

Mircea nodded, hoping like hell that would be good enough, because he was pretty sure he was incapable of actual speech at the moment. The warm, wet caress from the girl in front was bad enough, not being the sort of thing he had ever been expected to concentrate through. But it had just been joined by—

“God!” he cried out, shuddering all over. No wonder they’d been so assiduous with the washing!

“Pay attention,” Auria snapped. “This is exactly the sort of mistake you made before.”

“I made no mistake!”

“Then what would you call it? You received no offer, even for a future assignation. And that was despite clear indication of interest.”

“She—that’s—you don’t understand. She felt badly—”

“About what?”

“About—can we stop this?”

“No.”

Mircea glared at her. “She wasn’t interested in me! She felt badly about what her ladies

had done—” Auria rolled her eyes. “It’s true!”

“Did she have sex with you?”

“Yes, but—”

“Then I think we can safely say her contrition was limited,” she said dryly.

Mircea knew there was an appropriate response to that, something suitably cutting, but for the life of him, he couldn’t think of it. Or much of anything else. Except the obvious.

“Don’t you dare,” Auria told him sternly.

He stared at her desperately, wondering if she had
any idea
—

Her lips quirked. “Leave us,” she told the girls.

“We, er, we don’t mind finishing,” the one in front of him said breathlessly.

“I’m sure. Out.”

They went, closing the door behind them. And leaving him standing ridiculously in front of the door, naked and aching and unfulfilled. And then it got worse.

“Come here.”

Mircea hesitated, but although her face was as serenely beautiful as ever, the blue eyes were laughing at him. His back stiffened. He started walking, despite knowing how he must look.

“Stop.”

The tip of a lace-edged fan came to rest at the center of Mircea’s chest, halting him halfway across the luxurious bedroom.

He blinked; he hadn’t even seen her move.

He also hadn’t seen her undress, because she hadn’t. She was wearing a blue gown that brought out her eyes, slashed to show the fine linen chemise below, with a strand of pearls woven through her thick auburn hair. She even had on shoes instead of slippers, dainty, low-heeled mules in a matching blue, decorated with delicate silver embroidery and seed pearls.

She looked like a duchess.

It made Mircea feel even more vulnerable as she walked around him, and trailed the scratchy lace fan across muscles that jerked and bunched, following her in a ripple of movement.

“So, to summarize,” she said mildly. “You knew she was interested. You knew you had the upper hand. You knew you could have asked for anything—”

“I couldn’t—”

“You could. You can always ask. Do so prettily enough and they won’t mind, even if they turn you down.”

“I don’t want anything.”

“But Martina does.”

“And she really thinks she’s going to get a fortune for me?”

“She thinks she’s going to get something, but not necessarily a fortune.”

“Then why does she care so damned much? She likely already made back what she spent—”

“This isn’t about money. A senator has abilities others do not.”

“Such as?”

“To accuse . . . or to pardon.”

“And why . . . does Martina . . . need a pardon?” he gasped, trying not to react as the fan trailed down his stomach, and caused the muscles to clench convulsively. Whether they were trying to pull away or go toward her, Mircea wasn’t sure.

Until she ran the edge of it down his sex, causing him to shudder violently.

She raised him with the end of her open fan, watching him fill and swell against the delicate black lace.

“What Martina does is her business,” she told him softly. “Mine is to make you understand that the mind is one thing, but the body . . . is something else. It has its own wants, its own needs, and its own language to express them.”

She didn’t give an example. She didn’t have to. Mircea did that for himself, lifting off the platform and into the air, hard and aching without even a touch.

Auria went up on tiptoe, putting coral lips next to his ear. “Once you learn the body’s language, it won’t matter what a client says. Or even what they think they want. Their body will tell you the truth. Their
need
will tell you. And you will find that you can get them to agree to almost anything, once their body is on your side. Do you understand?”

Mircea swallowed. Nothing like an object lesson. “Yes, I—”

The fan abruptly snapped shut, hard enough to make him flinch.

“We’ll see. Get on the bed.”