Masks (28 page)

Well, he’d figured out where all the gondolas went,
Mircea thought darkly.

It was less than half an hour later, and he and Jerome were standing on the Riva degli Schiavoni, the great promenade adjacent to St Mark’s Square. It usually fronted the Guidecca Canal, the mile wide waterway separating St. Mark’s from the island of Guidecca. But not tonight.

Tonight, it fronted a sea of boats.

Big boats, small boats, and everything in between, including what looked like a thousand gondolas, filled the water as far as he could see. And unlike the joyous mood of the crowd on the night of the fireworks, these people were . . . unhappy. Possibly because they were about to miss the greatest spectacle of the age.

And so are we,
Mircea thought, jaw clenching.

Bezio jogged up, looking flustered. “Not for love, not for money,” he told them. “I was cursed at just for asking!”

“So much for hiring a boat,” Jerome sighed.

“It wouldn’t do any good, even if we could,” Mircea said, looking at the shouting, swearing, manic crowd in front of them.

“They can’t all be invited,” Jerome frowned.

“We’re not invited, and we’re trying to go,” Bezio pointed out.

“But it doesn’t look like they’re even being allowed to land,” Jerome said, squinting. “Not most of them, at any rate.”

“The senate probably has guards stationed at the dock. And crawling all over the island. And then, if you somehow get past all that, there’s the small matter of—”

“Let’s concentrate on getting there first,” Mircea said tightly, cutting in.

“Son, I hate to break it to you, but we aren’t getting there.”

Mircea didn’t say anything. After a moment, Bezio sat on the edge of the pier, dangling his legs over the side. And a minute after that, Jerome joined him.

Mircea didn’t blame them. They hadn’t fed tonight; they’d already run halfway across Venice; and they didn’t believe his crazy theories. But they’d come with him anyway. And they hadn’t mentioned going home, where the servants had had their meal by now and would be willing to offer as much to them. And where there were soft beds and good wine and rooms with heavily boarded up windows where no morning sun could disturb their slumber.

Or rain hit them in the face,
he thought, looking up.

The crowd in the boats started murmuring a moment later. And then shrieking a moment after that, when the heavens opened up, as they so often did in Venice. And began drenching the holy and unholy alike.

Mircea sighed and sat on the pier.

Holy,
he thought, lips twisting. As if this city knew the meaning of the word. Where convents were regularly used as brothels, and brothels as inns; where taxing the whores made up a sizeable chunk of the government payroll; where the “good girl” down the street turned tricks for pin money and where noble women were escorted to church on the arms of their lovers, to take the Eucharist with pious smiles on their lovely, painted faces. . . .

Well, holy took on a somewhat different meaning.

He still recalled his shock on arrival a little over a year ago, fresh from a country where even a glimpse of ankle was a rare and thrilling sight, only to find himself staring at the rightly named Bridge of Tits. And at the whores hanging over the side, brazenly baring their charms as they laughed and jeered and called challenges to the men in gondolas passing by underneath.

And in some cases, more than called. “Where are you staying, pretty one?” a black-haired siren had shouted down to him.

“I don’t know yet,” he’d called back, before he’d thought. And had been rewarded with a flash of white teeth as his gondola passed under the bridge.

He hadn’t understood why until it emerged on the other side—and was suddenly rocked by the weight of the half-dressed girl who jumped off the bridge and into his arms.

“Well, then. I suppose I’ll just have to take you home with me!” she’d said breathlessly, as the boatman cursed and the crowd laughed and the girls behind them broke into cheers. But because of the theatrics, not because it was anything unusual.

Mircea had watched in amazement as other girls jumped from canal side to boat, and then sometimes to boat again, their too-short skirts held up around pretty ankles, their unbound breasts bouncing along with their curls, their dimples flashing and dark eyes laughing. All while managing feats of balance most knights of his acquaintance couldn’t have copied, just to reach some likely punter with a few spare coins in his purse.

He later discovered that the city fathers encouraged such displays, supposedly to combat homosexuality in the city’s young men. But, of course, it didn’t hurt its reputation either. The tourists who flooded La Serrinissima during the festival season knew it as a place where one could attend to one’s religious duty all day, and then spend that heavenly credit in the bars and brothels and gaming dens all night.

“A prayer and a poke,” as Paulo had put it, in one of his less refined moments.

It had been a memorable introduction to the city.

Mircea looked out over the string of bobbing, lantern-lit boats, many of which were still decked out in festival finery. They were laid almost stem to stern because of the crush. Closer, in fact, than the gondolas had been on that evening a year ago. . . .

“Come on,” he told the others, getting up. “I have an idea.”

***

“Gahhhh!” Bezio screamed, charging straight ahead like a stampeding bull.

“Sorry, sorry, sorry,” Jerome said, stepping daintily behind him and looking chagrined.

“Just passing through,” Mircea assured the outraged lady under the soggy blue canopy, which two burly servants were trying to raise over her head. He wasn’t sure why, since her elaborate hairstyle and fine silk gown were already pretty much ruined. And the three uninvited guests clomping along the length of her all but stationary boat clearly wasn’t making her any happier.

“We’re never going to make it all the way there,” Jerome said, hesitating at the prow of the boat, where a good three-foot jump separated them from the next one.

Mircea glanced behind him, at the two huge thugs the lady had just sent to help them on their way.

“I’ll take that bet,” he said, and tossed Jerome over the gap.

A club whistled through the air a second later, detaching a pretty curled ferro and sending it spinning into the water. But it didn’t detach anything from Mircea, who had already jumped. And scrambled to his feet. And grabbed a confused Jerome and started dragging him along, because the boatmen had just jumped, too.

He heard Jerome give a yelp when he also noticed, and then they were both running flat out, just blurs of motion against the bobbing, swaying, almost capsizing, angry bunch of would-be partygoers all around them.

“I can’t believe I’m doing this!” Jerome yelled, getting into the spirit of things, leaping six feet from an elegant piatti onto a barge. Where he accidentally upended a tray of drinks onto an already annoyed-looking man in damp crimson velvet.

“Sorry!” Mircea said, which helped not at all.

But jumping up onto the wooden roof did. Jerome whooped and joined him a second later, and they pounded down the length of the boat over the heads of more irate guests, then leapt back down to the first floor and, in Jerome’s case, somersaulted to the next barge in line.

“I think you’re getting the hang of it,” Mircea told him.

“It’s a gift.”

“You know, you’re not panting anymore.”

“What?”

“Like on the way to the Rialto that day.”

Jerome shot him a look. “Imagine,” he said, and suddenly forced Mircea’s head down, in order to sucker punch the vampire about to bash his brains in from behind.

The vampire fell into the drink, and then so did his companion when Mircea lashed out with a kick.

“We’ll talk later,” he said hurriedly.

Jerome glanced at the mass of angry boat owners fast closing the gap behind them, and nodded. “Good idea.”

They ran.

“Okay, okay, okay,” Bezio said, when they caught up with him a few moments later. “Now what?”

The island was looming up ahead, and Bezio had been right: there was a phalanx of the red-caped guards at the pier, and more spread out in regular intervals all along the sand. Flickers of red also moved among the trees, farther inland. No doubt to guard the back approach to the consul’s palazzo, which faced the water on the other side of the island.

Mircea wasn’t able to concentrate enough to do a count, but it didn’t matter. It added up to way too damned many. But there was no way to stop, not with what now amounted to a huge, club-wielding army fast coming up behind—

Mircea’s feet kept going, but his thoughts skidded to a halt. He wrenched his neck around. Then he looked at Jerome, who grinned.

Bezio suddenly noticed the massive problem headed their way. “What the hell have you two been doing?” he demanded.

“Nothing. Why?” Jerome asked innocently, as Mircea put on an extra burst of speed.

A moment later, they disembarked, if a flying jump onto a wet dock and a bounce onto wetter sand deserved the term.

And a second after that, they were being pinned down by very sharp looking spears wielded by very unhappy looking senatorial guards.

“Now what?” Bezio said, but very softly, so as not to upset the man holding the spear against his jugular.

“That,” Mircea said, and covered his head a second before an angry mob descended on them like a tidal wave.

It washed him off the beach. It washed him off the grass. It washed him almost to the tree line before it petered out, dissolving into a bunch of bewildered looking boat owners who didn’t seem to understand why they were suddenly on land.

The guards didn’t understand it, either, but they knew they didn’t like it. They were converging on the area, trying to round up the recent mob and to simultaneously deal with the fact that the mass of boats at the shoreline had taken the opportunity to start landing. There weren’t enough guards to attend to all of it, and while Mircea was absolutely sure that more were on the way, he didn’t intend to stick around and find—

“Why are you just lying there like that?” Bezio demanded, dragging him up.

And the next moment, the three of them were pelting inland, leaving the mess on the beach behind and heading for the one in the house just ahead.

“Okay, this is not going to work.”

It was Bezio who said it, but it was what Mircea had been thinking. They’d eluded the guards at the pier, made a mad dash across the interior of the island, and finally arrived at the forested perimeter of the house. Only to discover that they might as well have stayed home.

Because things were even worse on this side.

The house was ringed by red-caped guards, the pier in front was lined by a double row of them, and parties of two were ranging across the grounds. All of whom were senior-level masters on high alert. Whereas his little group was powerless, weaponless, and, at least in Mircea’s case, clueless.

Because if there was a way in, he didn’t see it.

“Would you stop saying that!” Jerome snapped.

Mircea looked at him. “Stop saying what?”

“Not you, him.”

“Me?” Bezio asked.

“Do you see anyone else here?”

“What did I do?”

“You keep saying things like that—”

“Like what?”

“Like ‘this isn’t going to work; we’re not getting in there.’ You’ve been doing it all night!”

A bushy eyebrow raised. “And are we in there?”

“You said we wouldn’t get here, either—”

“By anything approaching sane means, we wouldn’t have. And I defy you to find me even an insane way in there,” he gestured at the brilliantly lit house.

It was easy enough to see because they were standing approximately where the assault had started the night before. Mircea knew why the leader had chosen it now: the place had a decent view of both house and dock, and enough thick cover to provide a retreat if it was needed. And it was starting to look like it might be, because he had no idea.

“What’s the plan when we do get in?” Jerome asked, ever the optimist.

“I talk to the senator,” Mircea said.

“And?”

“And I tell her what’s happening.”

Jerome frowned. “You’re going to tell her that someone’s been trying to poison her? How is that supposed to help?”

“Because someone might still be trying it!” And everyone at Martina’s was here tonight, and probably already inside.

How convenient.

“If someone wants her dead, seems to me all they have to do is wait around,” Bezio said.

“Maybe that’s the idea,” Mircea said grimly. “If she does survive, she’ll be weak, vulnerable. And in the confusion after the duel . . . well, it would be the perfect time to strike. To make sure that, even if she wins, she loses!”

“But what if she doesn’t believe you?” Jerome asked.

“She will.”

“But what if she doesn’t?”

“I’ll . . . come up with something.”

“You’ll come up with something?” Now Jerome was the one sounding skeptical. “Don’t you think—”

“I think we need to get in first, and then worry about it!”

“Yes, only we’re not going—” Bezio stopped at a vicious look from Jerome.

“There has to be a way,” Jerome said, studying the house.

“There is, but we can’t get to it,” Mircea told him.

“Can’t get to what?”

Mircea pointed out the trellis the leader had used the night before, which he’d seen in his vision, or whatever that had been. From this angle, the small, vine-draped framework was almost obscured by a clump of trees. But it was visible if you knew what you were looking for.

“He didn’t choose it by random,” Mircea said. “He obviously spent some time examining the house before the assault. And noticed that the poplar trees block the view of the trellis from this side, and that ridge in the masonry obscures it from the other. Unless you’re standing right in front of it, you simply don’t see it at all.”

“But I’m guessing there weren’t this many guards last night, either,” Jerome said, as several headed in their direction, then veered off to the right, to check a small garden surrounded by hedges.

“They’re on a patrol,” Mircea said. That was the second time they’d taken that same route.

“Are you sure?”

He watched them leave the garden a moment later, and take a walk along a reflecting pool to check a fountain near the back of the property. Also for the second time. “Pretty sure.”

“I don’t see how that helps us,” Bezio said.

“Thus speaks the voice of doom,” Jerome muttered.

“It’s doom I’m trying to avoid, actually. And there’s still too many damned guards.”

“He’s right,” Mircea said. “We’ll never make that trellis.”

“See there?”

“Unless we draw some of them off first.”

“Draw some of them—” Bezio stopped.

Jerome looked vaguely green. “You know,” he told him. “I think you can go ahead and be pessimistic now.”

***

“She said it should be right around here,” Jerome said, staring at the ground.

“Well, obviously, it isn’t,” Bezio told him.

“I’m just telling you what she said. Why would she say it was here if it wasn’t, in fact, here?”

“You know how masters are. She probably left it back home, but now she’s said it, so she’s committed.”

“No,
we’re
committed—to searching this whole damned field all night. And it’s going to rain again.” Jerome looked upward. “I can feel it.”

“Well, it’s not like we can get any wetter.”

“No, but I think my shoes are coming apart.”

They stopped to examine his shoes.

There were no less than twelve guards in view, most of whom couldn’t be bothered with the likes of them. And that included the patrol, but only because it was currently on its third trip to the fountain. But they’d be back in less than four minutes, if they stuck to form. And, as the roving guard, they would probably be expected to dispose of the riffraff.

Although hopefully not permanently.

Mircea scowled, dropped to his knees, and started digging around in the dirt.

For about ten seconds, until a pair of gleaming boots backed by a bright crimson cape stopped directly in front of his face. “What are you doing?”

He looked up, squinting, because the moon was right behind the golden helmet of an annoyed-looking master. “Wha?” he asked, and squinted some more.

“Oh, don’t bother,” Jerome told the guard, and kicked Mircea in the ribs. “Stop that. It’s not there.”

“And that’s another thing,” Bezio said. “Why is he even here? Biggest thing going, practically the biggest thing ever, and she brings the family idiot?”

“Masters,” Jerome said, and took off his shoe.

“You can’t be back here,” the guard told them. “Who is your master?”

“Lucilla,” Jerome said, frowning at his sole. And naming his lady friend from the previous evening.

“Senator Marcellus’ wife?” The guard looked doubtful.

It was understandable. Their hair was straggling around their faces, their clothes were damp, and their shoes were muddy. Or, in Jerome’s case, coming apart. Not to mention that, collectively, they probably had about as much power as the servant who had shined those glossy boots, which explained why the guard hadn’t even drawn a sword yet.

They weren’t worth the effort.

Or maybe he just didn’t want to get it dirty. Despite the unexpected downpour, the man was pristine. In addition to the boots, his armor shone, his cape looked freshly pressed, even his helmet feathers were perky.

How the hell did he do that,
Mircea wondered, and resumed digging in the mud.

“Is there another?” Jerome asked, with a longsuffering sigh.

“Well, you still can’t be here,” the guard said, albeit with a slightly moderated tone.

“Friend, I don’t
want
to be here,” Jerome told him. “I was ordered to be here. The lady lost a ring—a very, very expensive pearl ring—”

“Or so she says,” Bezio commented.

“—at the regatta the other day. She took a turn in the gardens before the competition, and the next time she looked, the ring was gone.”

“But the next time she looked was at home,” Bezio pointed out, ranging farther afield. “I’m telling you, she probably lost it there.”

“I think she’d know where she lost her own ring,” Jerome said grumpily, and then jerked when Mircea suddenly grabbed his leg. “What are you—no, no, you idiot! That’s a rock! A filthy rock! And look what you just did to my hosen!”

Mircea flinched back, leaving a muddy handprint on said hosen. And put his hands protectively over his head, the truly filthy rock dripping mud onto the grass in front of him—and then flinging it in an arc when Jerome kicked him again. The guard jumped back, just missing having his outfit ruined, and shot Mircea a look of pure disgust.

“Stupid boy!” Bezio said angrily. “Go stand over by the house, where we can keep an eye on you!”

Mircea slunk off to the sounds of outrage from the shoeless and now muddy Jerome, the renewed objections of the guard, and Bezio’s low grumbles. And then his excited exclamations when he suddenly spotted something. “Hey, is that it?” Bezio asked, running through the sight line of several more guards, who were then forced to go after him.

Mircea stepped quietly back into the shadow of the poplars, swiftly checking in both directions. But the nearest guards were busy accosting Bezio, the rest were watching their areas, and the patrol wouldn’t be back for another minute. And that was more than enough.

In seconds, he was up the trellis, moving almost silently. Not that it mattered with outraged yelling from Jerome and Bezio helping to cover his ascent. As well as the sounds of the crowd above, which blotted out even his own hearing halfway up, with a murmur like the roar of the ocean.

He realized why a second later, when he hopped over the top.

And into a crowd of thousands.

The palazzo was creaking under the weight of a solid mass of people. It was literally shoulder-to-shoulder all over the vast expanse of roof. Where the cream of the vampire world were fighting and jostling and elbowing and generally acting in ways that a well-dressed throng shouldn’t.

Nobody cared. Not tonight. All that was on anyone’s mind was finding the best vantage point overlooking the garden, which explained why nobody standing nearby had noticed his less than normal entrance.

They were all facing the other way.

Mircea snagged a view for himself—briefly—by grabbing a tray of drinks off a passing servant. And then by climbing up the steps of a nearby covered platform, where the senators had their seats, well above the rudely shifting crowd. He didn’t get in, of course; a guard relieved him of the tray at the top. But he took his time coming down, trying to get his bearings.

He could see over the edge of the wall now, down into what had once been a beautiful garden. And which at present wasn’t much of anything. The stone pathways and grassy areas were still intact, more or less, along with the fountain. But most of the trees and bushes had been dug out and removed.

The garden now matched the rest of the house, which currently resembled a ruin, albeit an odd one. In addition to the group on the roof, vampires hung out of windows, crowded doorways and loggias, and even sat along the floor lines that had been revealed by missing chunks of wall. There were thousands, maybe tens of thousands, in Mircea’s line of sight.

But none of them was the one he needed to see.

And he was fast running out of time.

The consul was already in place, standing beside an official of some kind in the center of the enclosure. He was back to human form, a wizened little figure looking vaguely ridiculous in a rich aquamarine robe. But for some reason, Mircea didn’t feel much like laughing as he went back to searching the crowd, trying to find the senator.

And found Martina instead.

She was standing on the ground floor, inside a door to the right of the newly made arena. He couldn’t see her face, since the doorway shadowed it, but he recognized the flame-colored gown dotted with golden pomegranates, one of her favorites. It was unique; the material woven somewhere to the east and then smuggled into Venice, where it was illegal due to laws forbidding competition with the local silk industry.

As if Martina cared about the laws.

But there simply couldn’t be two of them.

A swift check of the other entrances to the arena turned up more and more familiar faces. Paulo was standing on a balcony above a door directly across from Martina. Zaneta was just inside another on the wall to the right of him. And then Mircea spied what looked like Danieli’s favorite yellow outfit on a loggia above the door to the far left. Mircea didn’t see anyone else, but he’d bet money they were here somewhere. Possibly loitering somewhere near the last door, just below him, where he couldn’t see what was happening.

Until the senator suddenly walked through it.