The Alchemist's Apprentice (12 page)

I summoned a second time. Now the mirror showed very little more than my own white face with darkness behind it, and the air was filled with a nauseating stench. Think of every bad smell you have ever experienced—bad fish, cesspools, warm pig dung—add them all together and multiply by thirteen. Gagging, anxious to get the seance over with, I spoke the words a third time.

My scared face in the mirror blurred and melted into a reddish globe, which shrank back and resolved as the iris of an eye. The surrounding space cleared into scaly, scabrous flesh of an indeterminate green-purple color, like a very ripe bruise. The monster moved farther back yet, until a second eye came into view. Whatever shade or shape they choose for the rest of themselves, fiends always seem to prefer red eyes. Putrid had begun his apparition the size of a house, and even now I could see only part of his face peering in, huge as the mirror was. The less I saw the better.

“You!” he said. He slobbered and his breath stank even worse than the rest of him. “I will eat you.”

I peered at my script in the feeble firelight.

“You have a nice smell of fresh sin on you,
sier
Alfeo Zeno,” the fiend said chattily. “You should have been shriven before you called me. And your harlot also I will eat.”

Another rule is that you never listen to fiends.

“Putrid, I command you by your true name that if there was no murderer present on San Valentine's Eve last in the room in this city where Ottone Imer the attorney displayed books to certain potential buyers, that you instantly quit this realm and return to the place from whence you came.”

The fiend coughed, spraying the inside of the mirror with spit and almost choking me with putrescent fumes. My skin crawled.

“That's clever,” he growled. “Thought that up all by yourself, did you, Alfeo?” He was still there, which disposed of any last hope that the procurator's death had been an accident.

“Look, Alfeo,” the fiend said. “Violetta with her customers. Let me show you what she does, Alfeo. Look!”

I did not look. “Putrid, I command you by your true name that until and only until I clap my hands three times you show me in this mirror before me the murder committed by the murderer who was present on San Valentine's Eve last in the room in this city where Ottone Imer the attorney displayed books to certain potential buyers, and I further command you by your true name that when and only when I clap my hands three times that you instantly quit this realm and return to the place from whence you came.”

“Damn you,” the fiend muttered, but the hideous images faded from the mirror.

I was staring down into a tent. It was dim, lit by two small lamps suspended from the ridge pole, but luxuriously carpeted and furnished with elaborate chests, a divan, a silver ewer and basin. Steel mail and a sword hung on a stand by the entrance. Seemingly right below me, a man sat cross-legged on a cushion under the lamps, reading. I could see that the writing was Arabic, and needed no demon to advise me that I was spying on one of the sultan's generals. His face was hidden from me by a turban shaped like a giant pumpkin, much bigger than his head, but he wore a sleeveless tunic and a complicated, multicolored skirt that barely reached his knees. He could not be the sultan himself—unlike his warlike ancestors, he stays home in safety in Constantinople, and he would command far grander quarters if he did venture into the field—but someone of importance. What was Putrid playing at? What loophole had I left in my instructions?

The man looked up, frowning and tilting his head as if listening to something. He was dusky and weathered; he had silver streaks in his beard, but his face was lean, vulpine, and still dangerous.

The flap lifted to admit a second man. He was young, short but heavyset, swarthy and bearded, and he wore very similar garb. He salaamed to the general. There must be millions like him in the Ottoman Empire, from Hungary to the Persian Gulf, from Libya to the Caucasus—fierce Muslims all, fanatically loyal to their sultan—but very few of those would have a fiend sitting on one shoulder as this one did. In shape the horror resembled a tailless rat with red eyes and a grin that showed sharp teeth, but its texture was slug-like, bluish and slimy.

The general had risen, but he clearly did not register the fiend, because he listened calmly to whatever the visitor said. I could not hear a word and would not have understood it if I had. The general salaamed in response to whatever message or instructions he had just received. He went over to the portable table with the ewer and basin and there proceeded to wash his hands. The visitor watched, smiling contentedly, while the fiend hugged itself in glee and chomped its teeth.

I still had no idea what was going on; I just knew that I could not approve of anything that a demon enjoyed so much. No doubt there are possessed walking the streets of Christendom, too, even here in the Republic. I was identifying this one and his rider only because I was seeing them through Putrid's eyes.

Hands washed, the general returned to the center of the tent, knelt down with his back to his guest, and began to pray in the Muslims' fashion, bending to touch the rug with his forehead, leaning back to raise his arms. To my astonishment, the fiend disappeared. The visitor did not seem to notice its absence any more than he had shown awareness of its presence earlier. What surprised me was that the Muslim's prayers had dispelled it at least as effectively as a Christian's would. Was the name of Allah as effective as the name of Christ? That was certainly not what the Church taught. If the unbelievers worshipped the Antichrist, how could their prayers banish demons? I would be burned as a heretic if I ever suggested such a thing.

The fiends must be trying to deceive me.

The general ended his prayers and the demon reappeared where it had been before. The general sat back on his heels, his visitor walked across the carpet to him, looped a cord around his neck, and strangled him. The fiend jumped up and down with joy as the general thrashed in his death agonies. I may have cried out in horror, but if so no one noticed. I had asked to see a murder, hadn't I? Putrid had shown me the wrong one, perhaps the murderer's first murder, his initiation.

When the assassin was certain his victim was dead, he drew his sword. At that point, I admit, I closed my eyes. When I opened them again, the corpse on the floor was headless and a blood-spattered turban lay empty and collapsed beside it. The visitor seemed neither upset nor especially pleased by his gruesome task, nor by the weighty leather bag he held. He was possessed, after all, and no doubt believed he was loyally carrying out his sultan's orders. He probably was. Turning his back on his grisly work, he headed for the door—and his demon looked up and saw me.

I could not hear its shrieks of rage, but I could see them. The possessed turned again and returned to stand directly below my vantage point, but now his face was blank, his eyes lifeless. His passenger was dancing with fury, almost glowing with it, making clawing gestures at me and becoming larger, its spongy flesh swelling like dough, its eyes flaming redder. I was seized by a terrible, paralyzing, horror that it would leap out of the mirror at me.

I clapped my hands three times. The image blurred, steadied slightly, and then faded—all except those two red eyes. I yelled out the words of dismissal, but of course those were addressed to Putrid and I did not know the name of this other fiend, to which it had betrayed me. For a moment the mirror showed the two hate-filled red eyes superimposed on me and the atelier behind me. Then, mercifully, they disappeared.

S
ummonings always leave me feeling sick and unclean. Even after I had replaced the furniture, wiped out the pentagram with my dustrag, and burned my notes in the fireplace, I was still shaking like a fatal case of palsy. I kept wondering whether a hateful little slug fiend was now perched on my shoulder, invisible and gloating as it planned the horrors it would make me perform.

Back in my room, I stripped and washed myself all over with cold water. Tired though I was, memories of the ordeal would keep me awake for a long time, and I had an invitation to call on a lady who thought nothing of playing all night and sleeping by day. I dressed in my shabby burglar clothes, doused the light, and prepared to go visiting. Of course I was disobeying the Maestro's orders by leaving the house unarmed, but I could neither ask Bruno to accompany me on my tryst nor risk my death-defying leap while encumbered with a rapier. I stopped worrying about being murdered when I opened the window and discovered that the stormy weather had returned, blustering rain about, making roofs slippery, and plotting to throw acrobats off their timing. Very likely the Maestro had misinterpreted his bleeding eyes-and-legs vision and it had nothing to do with assault. I hesitated, but not for long. I
needed
Violetta too much just then, and not for lust. I needed comfort and understanding and her arms around me, her warmth and love.

So I scrambled out on the ledge and then went through the nasty contortions required to replace the bars, for I never leave the window unguarded in the night. That was not the easiest of maneuvers in such weather and the leap in darkness wrung a prayer out of me. Obviously I survived, although I banged my left knee on the tiles.

A light burned in her room, for she never sleeps in complete darkness—unless her current companion insists on it, I suppose—and I could see that she was alone. She stirred while I was undressing.

“Alfeo?” she murmured drowsily.

“Are you expecting someone else?” I asked, hoping the answer was
No.

“No. The nobility are in mourning.”

I wasn't. I slid between the sheets, into her arms, her warmth.

Jolted awake, she said, “
Eek!
You are freezing!”

“Only on the outside. I love you. I need you.”

“I'm here, love. What's wrong? You're trembling!”

“Rough night. Just hold me.”

 

The night fled, the lamp burned out, and chinks of daylight came to smile through chinks in the drapes. My knee hurt. The rest of me felt much better.

“Time to go,” I whispered.

“Not yet.” Helen stirred sleepily. “I have something to tell you.”

“Speak, goddess.”

The Ten would start asking questions soon. Thanks to Putrid I knew the murderer must be either Alexius Karagounis or his Moorish servant, but finding admissible proof would take time.

Violetta sighed and rolled on her back. “I went and saw Bianca Orseolo yesterday.”

I heard Minerva in her voice. “You did
what
?”

“You heard me. Ca' Orseolo is in mourning, so after you left I went calling in my nun costume, to offer comfort.”

“But she saw you at the—”

“She did
not
see me at the supper. She may have
seen
me, but she did not
look
at me, because she was busy tending her grandfather and I am a courtesan. Proper young girls ignore such women. She did not recognize me yesterday because I was a nun, completely different.”

“You think that costume you were wearing would fool—”

“Stop interrupting. There are nuns who wear habits like that. I got in to see her when nobody else would have done, except other family members, of which she has none. We had a long talk. Bianca had more opportunity to see the crime committed than anyone else did, because she was at her grandfather's side all the time.”

“She also had the best opportunity,” I said. “All she had to do was hand him the wrong glass and he would never have questioned. Did she do it?”

“I don't know.” Violetta rarely admits ignorance. As Minerva, she is much brainier than I am. As Aspasia, she is unsurpassed at judging people. “She is extremely upset by her grandfather's death…almost too upset. She wept in my arms. So much sorrow may be a sign of guilt, either guilt because she killed him or guilt because she is glad he died, I don't know yet. You and I are to go and see her later today.”

This needed a lot of rational analysis and rational analysis was hard to achieve while cuddling the finest courtesan in the Republic—which duty compelled me to do at that moment, of course, to keep this witness cooperative. It crossed my mind that few men enjoyed better working conditions.

I made an effort to concentrate. “You told her my name?”

“No. I said I knew a man who was investigating the possibility that her grandfather had been murdered, and asked if I might bring you to ask her a few questions. The funeral is this morning. We are to see her after that, around noon.”

I gulped. “You want me to pretend to be an agent of the Ten? I don't know what the penalty for—”

“Hope you never find out,” Aspasia said coldly. “I made no such claim and the city is stuffed tight with the Three's spies, as you well know. If Bianca assumes that you are one of them, her mistake is quite unrelated to anything I said.”

The doge had asked me to investigate the procurator's death, but he would deny doing so if the Three asked him.

“Did Bianca have a motive?”

Helen's dark eyes looked at me under divine eyelashes. “I don't want to talk any more. Kiss me.”

 

The Maestro watched with disapproval as I laid a tray on my side of the desk. “Why are you limping?”

“I banged my knee on a tile.”

“What did you learn?”

“Have you eaten?” I bowled a hot roll across to him; he caught it before it went over the edge. “The murderer is a Muslim, presumably an agent of the sultan, and probably the servant who poured the wine. He could be the Greek or, more likely I should say the man posing as a Greek, the book dealer, Karagounis. How old is he?”

“About forty.”

“The man I saw was in his twenties.”

“Start at the beginning.”

I did. Between sips of my
khave
—a hot, black drink recently introduced from Turkey, becoming very popular—I continued through the middle and stopped when I got to the end.

The Maestro did not look happy. “You witnessed an execution. No doubt the general was a janissary, but it wouldn't matter—any servant of the sultan, from infantryman to ambassador or vizier, is a
kapikulu
, a slave, and when the sultan sends his
chaush
with an order that the man deliver his own head, then the order is obeyed without complaint or resistance. The
chaush
arrives with a bowstring, a sword, and a bag. No matter how high they rise in the state,
kapikullari
owe their lives to the sultan.”

“Why did he wash his hands?”

“I have no idea. You are in grave danger. The fiend that saw you may be much stronger than the guide you were using. It may have managed to open a portal to you. You must go and make confession right away.”

One of the advantages of living in San Remo is Father Farsetti. Other priests might report me to the Holy Office, but in Venice the priests are elected by the parishioners, subject to the patriarch's veto, and the good folk of San Remo had chosen a practical, broad-minded man. Even so, I wondered uneasily how long it would take to say a million
Ave
s. That was what he had threatened me with the last time I confessed to practicing demonology.

“If you insist.”

“I do insist! I assume the funeral is today?”

“Violetta says the service will be held this morning, but I haven't finished reporting. I have a second suspect to offer—Bianca, the sweet child you overlooked at the book viewing.” I told him of Violetta's escapade. “My friend is an exceedingly shrewd judge of people,” I finished. “And if she distrusts Bianca, then we should be wise to pay heed. Or do we believe only what the fiend showed me?”

The Maestro curled his lip. “I see no reason to choose between the two testimonies just yet.”

“I assure you that the strangler I saw was no blushing Christian maiden, and I refuse to believe that a
kapikulu
assassin could disguise himself as one well enough to deceive her grandfather, however doddery he was getting.”

“Faugh! You blather like a lace maker. If this affair were straightforward, I could have solved it in ten minutes with the crystal. By all means fold the fair Bianca to your manly breast and dry her tears. The girl may be unduly upset because she saw the glasses being switched and chose not to intervene. Speak with her father, also, the great minister. Find out where he was on Valentine's Eve, and his son also.”

“Benedetto. He's supposed to be at the University of Padua.”

“It's only twenty-five miles to Padua. He would have been sent for as soon as his grandfather fell sick.”

I failed to see how he could have switched glasses at a party in Venice when he was miles away on the mainland, but a well-behaved apprentice does not make fun of his master's instructions. I nodded, being well behaved.

“And you still have to see Senator Tirali and his son.”

“Pasqual Tirali. Master, I admit I have personal reasons for wanting to send
sier
Pasqual Tirali to the galleys, but I cannot imagine his managing to poison a wine glass and switch it with another without Violetta noticing.”

“Include him anyway.” The Maestro scowled across at his bookshelves. “Bring me the
Midrasch-Na-Zohar
before you go. You had better start with Father Farsetti. You may be able to catch him about now. And don't forget what I said about Bruno and your sword.”

I left him with his ferrety nose deep in the Rabbi Ben Yohai's masterpiece. If he was willing to try cabalism, he must be really desperate.