Masks (20 page)

Too many things to count.

All of which he’d managed to disappoint.

Like he had Sanuito, tonight.

“The man you described,” he said wearily. “The one trained to lead. You were right; I
was
trained—from birth. But now . . .”

She cocked her head, watching him. “But now? What happened?”

“You know what happened,” he said, lip curling in disgust. “This—” He waved a hand again, this time at himself.

“You mean the Change? Do you really think that matters?”

He stared at her. “Of course it matters!”

“Does it? In our world, you’re an infant, barely two years old. If you were in a normal family, you wouldn’t even be let out of the house at your age. Much less be jumping through fiery hoops and diving into canals and almost getting blown up. Yet you did it, without a thought. Just as I . . . stood there.

“Power is more than strength, Mircea. It takes more than that to be a leader. More of . . . whatever it is you have, and I don’t.”

“I think you underestimate yourself.”

“And I think you would have done the same thing tonight, if you’d had a year to think about it. It’s in the moments when we don’t have time to think, that we show who we really are.”

She laughed suddenly, and it looked strange, considering the tears still glistening on her cheeks. “Sanuito told me you were the strangest man he ever met. And I can’t say he was wrong, Mircea Basarab. But don’t blame the Change for that!”

“You survived.” Mircea looked up to see Bezio’s head sticking out of the salon on the ground floor, where a wedge of candlelight was flooding the area in front of the stairs. He appeared surprised.

He motioned Mircea into the room, where he found Paulo, Jerome, and Danieli passing a decanter around the table. Mircea drew up a stool and joined them. The place was almost frighteningly clean, to the point that he hesitated to put his elbows on the gleaming surface of the table, for fear they might soil it.

But he was tired enough that he did it, anyway.

“All right, that’s one point established,” Danieli said. “And he has all his limbs, so that’s number two. Now for the big one—”

“Don’t,” Bezio said, looking at Mircea’s face. “I’ll concede.”

He tossed a silver soldino into the air, and Danieli caught it without looking up from his drink. It vanished into his purse, but he wasn’t to be deterred. “So how was she?” he demanded.

“She’s upset.” Mircea took a sip of wine. And judging by the smell, was happy he couldn’t taste it. “What would you expect?”

“No, I mean, how
was
she?”

Mircea looked up.

“Danieli—” Paulo said.

“Oh, like you don’t want to know. She must command those kinds of fees for some reason, and it’s not like the rest of us have ever gotten close enough for a taste—”

“And you never will,” Paulo assured him.

“—except for the man who just spent an hour with the most expensive whore in Venice. So, we all want to know: how
was
she?” he asked again, with an exaggerated leer.

Which turned to an expression of surprise when his back hit the nearest wall, hard enough to knock a pot off its nail.

“Hey! What are you—” The voice cut off abruptly.

Mircea made a note: Collapsing a windpipe seemed to be a good way to shut someone up.

Someone else appeared at his shoulder, not touching him, but close enough that Mircea could feel the warmth through his wet clothes. “His comment was tasteless and crude,” Bezio’s voice said softly. “But he was rattled. We all are.”

Mircea turned his head. “I suppose you want me to let him go.”

“It’ll be hard to drink your wine otherwise.”

“It’s lousy wine.”

Bezio’s lips quirked. “True. But your arm will get tired eventually.”

That was also true. In fact, it was already starting to shake slightly. Mircea scowled and let the vamp go.

And immediately regretted it.

“You’re defending her honor?” Danieli spat, scrambling up from the floor. “She’s a
whore
. For that matter, so are you! What the hell—”

Of course,
Mircea thought,
knocking someone through a door worked pretty well, too.

He looked at Bezio, who was massaging his hand ruefully. “That hurt.”

Considering the blacksmith’s muscles under the thin linen shirt, Mircea thought it might have hurt Danieli more.

Good.

He sat back down.

Paulo sighed, looking at the ruined door to the hallway. He pulled out the small book he used to record their extravagance and made a note. Mircea waited for the inevitable, but tonight seemed determined to break all the rules.

“You aren’t going to tell me off?” he asked, after Paulo finished and put the book away.

The blond drank the lousy wine. “No.”

“Why?”

“Because Bezio was right. It was crude. And because it’s Auria. If you hadn’t done it, I would have.”

Bezio sat back down. “I always thought you had a soft spot for her.”

“She’s high-strung, avaricious, pushy, and conniving.” Paulo shrugged. “And a pretty good person, once you get past the acerbic tongue.”

“I heard her master was the worst,” Jerome said, topping up his glass.

Paulo frowned. “Where did you hear that?”

“From her. I was telling her about mine, and how his masters threw me out after he died—”

“I thought they reluctantly let you go,” Bezio said, lifting an eyebrow.

Jerome rolled his eyes. “Oh, who are we kidding? I wasn’t strong enough or smart enough or whatever enough, so I got the boot.”

“And you had this epiphany when?”

Jerome shrugged. “I guess I’ve always known it, but I didn’t want to admit it.”

“Why? It’s no reflection on you—”

“Isn’t it?”

“No,” Bezio said staunchly. “If they couldn’t see quality, that’s their loss.”

Jerome smiled at him. “You’re going to be proposing next.”

“You’re too ugly.”

“Coming from the man the girls call ‘the great bear’?”

“The great bear?” Bezio thought it over. “I like it.”

“You would. Anyway, that wasn’t why.” He passed the decanter around. “I didn’t want to admit it because . . . well, then you have to do things, don’t you?”

“Things?”

Jerome waved a hand around. “Life things. Once you admit the real situation you’re in, then you have to deal with it, to build a new life. Somehow. And that’s a daunting prospect when you’re all on your own and nobody gives a damn and you’re about as powerless as a kitten surrounded by snarling dogs—”

“Not dealing with it doesn’t change that, though,” Bezio pointed out.

“No, but it makes you feel better. More in control. As long as I kept telling myself that this whole thing was just temporary, that my old family was coming to get me any day, that they’d realize their mistake once some of them got settled and reconsider . . . well, it helped me get up in the morning. Or, you know, our morning.”

“You do what you have to do,” Bezio said philosophically.

Mircea didn’t say anything. But it never ceased to amaze him how he always assumed that his situation was unique. That no one else knew his pain, understood his loss. And yet, he continually had evidence of the contrary.

All of them had suffered, in one way or another. All of them had known rejection, the loss of home, family, the ruin of the life they’d planned to have. Just like the hundreds of unwanted vampires that somehow found their way to Venice every year, most of whom would end up ashes on the tide.

Like Sanuito.

“Anyway,” Jerome continued. “Auria told me that her master used to pick up a bunch of people at a time, Change them, and then wait to see who got strongest the fastest. Then he’d ditch the rest and do it again.”

“Ditch?” Mircea asked.

Jerome ran a finger across his throat. “They’d dig a big hole in the forest somewhere, and toss ’em in once they were dead. Auria said she got away by luck. The stake missed her heart, and the cut on her throat wasn’t deep enough to keep her from feeding.”

“Feeding . . . on what?” Bezio asked warily.

“On the cooling corpses they threw in around her—”

“God!” Bezio got up from the table abruptly. Only to realize he didn’t have anywhere to go and sat back down.

Jerome nodded. “That’s what I said. But there was no other way, and she didn’t want to die. So she fed until she was strong enough to claw her way out.” He took a drink. “If I was Danieli, I’d think twice about crossing her.”

“God,” Bezio said again, and drained his glass.

Mircea leaned across the table. “Her master killed his own family? For nothing?”

Jerome shook his head. “Auria said he didn’t consider them family if they were weak. He was trying to build up his strength—he had some kind of quarrel with another vampire, and needed soldiers.”

“But he could have sold the others on, to someone else—”

“Yes, only nobody wants baby vamps, do they? We found that out in the condottiere’s cells. Anyone can make a baby—any master, that is. So they don’t have much value. He thought it easier to just bury the problem.”

Literally,
Mircea thought, his hand clenching on his glass.

“Maybe he thought he’d get in trouble,” Bezio said. “Technically, masters are responsible for the vamps they make—”

“Like that’s ever enforced,” Paulo said darkly.

“Well, it damned well ought to be! People like that should be made to—”

“People like that shouldn’t be masters at all,” Mircea rasped. “If they’re that irresponsible, they shouldn’t be anything.”

“Well, yes,” Bezio said, looking a little startled. “But you can’t just go around killing off all the bad masters. You wouldn’t have anybody left!”

“Of course you would. Jerome’s master died, and his senior servants took over his property and his territory. The same would be true anywhere.”

“Well, yes, maybe. But you’re talking a lot of deaths. I sometimes think there’s more bad masters than good ones. And killing off that many would cause, well, chaos—”

“For a while,” Mircea agreed. “But after, you would have a group of people you could work with.”

Bezio looked at him strangely. “Did anybody ever tell you, you’re kind of scary?”

“You have to be when dealing with creatures that powerful. Make it clear enough times that the penalties are severe and will be enforced, and soon you won’t have a problem.”

“But for that you need somebody at the top who gives a damn. And from what I hear, the current consul likes things as they are.”

“Your senator has tried to change things,” Paulo put in suddenly, looking at Mircea. “In fact, she’s probably the reason they haven’t deteriorated any further. But then whoever she’s opposing just goes running to the top, and fawns and flatters until the consul tells her to back off.”

“Then perhaps he needs to go, too,” Mircea said, thinking of the lives lost for nothing, except a madman’s caprice.

“All right, maybe we should change the subject,” Bezio said, looking worried.

“Maybe that’s what too many people do—”

“Maybe they like living.”

“You call this is living? What happened to Auria—”

“She survived—”

“And how many didn’t?”

“I know one who’s trying his best to add to that number,” Bezio said, scowling. “You’re not a prince anymore, Mircea. And people like us don’t have any say in what happens at those levels.”

Mircea sat back, seething. Bezio was right; he knew he was. But Auria was right, too. You didn’t just stop being who you were because of the Change. It had altered his body, yes, but in his mind . . . he was still the same person he’d always been. One born to power and trained in its uses—and its pitfalls. And he hated,
hated
, seeing it used to destroy lives while he sat back and did nothing.

“There’s nothing you can do,” Bezio repeated strongly. “Things . . . will sort themselves out.”

Not with the same creature on the throne who had caused the problem,
Mircea thought, but didn’t say.

“So, what does everyone think happened to Sanuito?” Jerome asked, as Mircea tried to blink the red haze in front of his eyes away.

It didn’t work.

It took him a second to realize the reason for that. And by then Paulo was on his feet, knocking over his chair and staring at the window, where the ghostly moonlight filtering in off the canal had been replaced by a reddish haze. As if dawn had come early.

Only dawn didn’t smell of smoke and send feet running into the hallway.

Paulo flung open the door to a hall already filled with panicked humans and wild-eyed vampires. “What—” Mircea began.

And then stopped because he was talking to himself. Everybody else had gone, running through the door fast enough that it almost looked like they disappeared. But he could see them in the crowd ahead as he ran after them, down the remainder of the short hall, through the pantry, and into the kitchen. Which looked like an inferno. Bloody light was everywhere, spilling through the windows, staining the floor, and reflecting off the pots the cook kept shined to a high gloss. It flooded through the doorway when someone flung it open, along with a wall of heat and the smell of burning wood.

And the sight of the sugar house, engulfed in flames, going up like a great candle.

Or like the biggest firework of them all.

“Is this everything?” Mircea asked, looking around.

It was the next night, and he and Marte were in the room on the ground floor, which was usually used to store casks of wine. It was now holding the bottles and jars that had been rescued from the remains of the sugar house. Most of which Marte was having to try to identify by sight, since the labels had been singed off.

“So far.” She sighed and wiped her dirty hands on her apron. “They’re still bringing them in.”

As if in reply to her comment, a couple of servants staggered in under the weight of several huge baskets of once expensive perfumes, lotions, and cosmetics. They now looked like ancient artifacts, covered in ash and, in some cases, melted together. They were dropped with a chiming crash onto a pile of similar baskets, making Marte sigh.

“Are these all from the work room?” Mircea asked, picking up a still-warm jar of something that might have been olive oil, before the fire reduced it to a blackish sludge.

“Mostly.” Marte sorted through the nearest basket, giving a small yelp when her fingers encountered one of the hotter specimens. “They’re trying to get to the storeroom behind it, which we think may have fared better, since it wasn’t as close to the center of the blaze.”

“Trying?”

“The roof fell in, and the door’s completely blocked.”

“One of us could clear it for them.”

“If one of us had a death wish,” she said sardonically. “I was out there as soon as the sun set, and almost ended up being baked alive for my trouble. There’s smoldering piles all over the place, plus I’m pretty sure the center is still burning.”

Mircea glanced out the open window behind her. To where the blackened ribs of the sugar house clutched at an almost full moon. The spectral quality was increased by the faint wisps of smoke that still rose from what was essentially a giant banked fire.

The blaze had burned most of the night, while the local militia and the Arsenalotti—workers from the Arsenal shipyard—argued over who had jurisdiction. The militia usually handled small fires, and tended to be territorial since it gave them a chance to parade their skills in front of the local girls. The Arsenal workers, on the other hand, who were used to dealing with fires at the great shipyard, were normally only called out when a blaze looked likely to spread.

But neither had arrived until the fire was burning completely out of control, and it had been more of a contest to get the other group to take responsibility than to claim any glory for themselves. Eventually, they’d had to join forces, although not to save the house, which even Mircea had been able to see was a lost cause. But to use hooks to pull down sections of the building that looked likely to fall on its neighbors, and to drench the outer edges with water drawn from the canal to douse errant sparks.

No one had tried to go inside what by then had resembled a gateway into hell.

“What about the courtyard?” Mircea asked, picking up a small jar. It was the right size and shape for the one Sanuito had handed him, and colored about the same, a milky green.

But it opened to reveal only half melted cold cream.

“What about it?” Marte asked, cautiously sniffing something in a jar.

“I’d think a courtyard would be easier to get to.”

Marte’s lips twisted. “It would be—if the building hadn’t collapsed on it. There’s no door into the storeroom on that side, anyway, but even if there were—”

“How is it going?” Paulo asked, bustling in the door.

“Even if it were?” Mircea persisted.

“It’s buried under about eight feet of rubble, much of which is still smoldering,” Marte told him.

“So what’s the verdict?” Paulo asked. He looked like he’d been sorting through the wreckage, too, his usually impeccable clothes exchanged for a stained linen shirt draped over a pair of old hosen, both of which were dusted with fine black soot and white ash.

“Dismal,” Marte said, proffering a jar.

Paulo peered inside and his nose scrunched up. “What is that?”

“Saffron, or it used to be.”

Paulo took a pinch between his fingers, and watched it crumble away to nothing in the air. He scowled. “Are they all like this?”

“Mostly. Half the stuff was wiped out when the roof collapsed, and much of the rest was spoiled in the heat. I’ve found maybe half a dozen jars so far that look to be all right, but that’s out of forty.”

“Damn.” He flipped through his book, his forehead wrinkled under a stray lock of blond hair. “Martina is not going to be happy. Replacement value, even for the ingredients is . . . unfortunate.”

“It may look better when we get to the storeroom. The ambergris was back there. And most of the musk—”

“Cinnamon oil?”

“Some, although much was in the front. I’d just been using it.” She grimaced. “But the Indian sandalwood—”

“Did either of you noticed anything unusual about Sanuito?” Mircea cut in.

They both stopped to look at him.

“What?” Paulo asked.

“Sanuito?” Mircea repeated, forcing his voice to remain pleasant. “The man who died last night?”

“Sanuito was always unusual,” Paulo said, frowning. Apparently, Mircea’s tone hadn’t been as pleasant as he’d thought.

“In what way?”

“In every way.” He tapped his head. “He wasn’t all there.”

“He’d been starved,” Marte protested. “Can you imagine? Being that age and going without feeding for weeks?” She shivered. “I don’t know how he was sane.”

“Well, clearly he wasn’t,” Paulo said testily.

“He always seemed all right to me. A little timid, maybe—”

“Sane people don’t go running into a crowd, steal a boat, and promptly get themselves blown up.” Paulo’s notebook shut, a little more forcefully than necessary. “And put all of us in danger in the process!”

“The only person he endangered was himself,” Mircea said angrily. “Bezio and I chose to go after him—”

“And very nearly got yourselves killed. But that wasn’t what I meant.”

“Then what—”

“We exist on the sufferance of the Watch,” Marte explained softly, as if trying to set a good example for the two hotheads she’d been afflicted with. “Martina pays them to ignore our existence, and since we’re not a threat to anyone, they mostly do. But when one of our group starts bringing attention to themselves, like interrupting a major spectacle—”

“Or burning houses down!” Paulo added.

“That wasn’t Sanuito,” Mircea pointed out. “One of the firemen told me it was likely a stray rocket—”

“A stray rocket, yes. And can you think of a reason why a number of stray rockets were suddenly released all at once?”

“That was nowhere near here—”

“A fact which would be pertinent if the damned things had been fired into the sky as intended! But when they’re set off unexpectedly, in many cases while still lying into their boxes, they go where they will. And where they willed was all over town! It wasn’t enough the damned boy had to kill himself, he had to try and take half the city with him!”

“That’s why the firefighters took so long to get here,” Marte explained. “There were a dozen small fires last night—”

“Small?” Mircea repeated.

“Ours was the worst; that’s why we ended up with the Arsenal boys—”

“Much use they were,” Paulo muttered.

“How much worse?” Mircea asked.

“I believe ours was the only structure to collapse—”

“After the damned Arsenalotti pulled it down!” Paulo said indignantly.

“You know they didn’t have any choice,” Marte told him. “The whole street could have gone up—”

“You mean, out of all the rockets fired, ours was the only house destroyed?” Mircea repeated.

Marte smiled ruefully. “If you can call it that when the house in question was ready to fall down anyway.”

“But—” Mircea paused, trying to get his head around that.

“It wasn’t about to fall down,” Paulo protested. “The main structure was solid. Martina had plans to refit it as our main residence eventually, and keep this one as her personal home.”

“It would have been nice to have some extra space,” Marte agreed.

“And a larger dining room. We keep having to limit the number of guests, since you can only expect someone to tuck their elbows so much—”

“Doesn’t it seem strange to either of you,” Mircea interrupted, “that the only major structure destroyed was the one where the man who died happened to live?”

They both turned to look at him again.

“You’re saying Sanuito set it before he left?” Marte asked, surprising him.

“No, I just meant—”

“You know that wouldn’t surprise me,” Paulo said. “Set the damned thing, then go off with us as if nothing was happening, all the while knowing the fire would spread the whole time we were gone!”

“Sanuito had no reason to burn the house down!”

“He had no reason to kill himself, either,” Paulo pointed out. “Except for being a crazy son of—”

“He wasn’t crazy!”

Paulo looked taken aback. “Well, I’d hate to see your definition of the word.”

“Was he acting differently at all?” Mircea asked Marte, exasperated. “Just in the last few days?”

She shook her head. “Not that I noticed. But then, I didn’t work with him that much. Nobody did, really, except for Auria.”

“Auria?”

“Martina’s been teaching her perfume making. She’s getting quite good at it, too. In fact, she’s been making more of the perfumes we use lately than Martina has—”

“And Sanuito’s been helping her.”

“Yes. She might be able to tell you more. Poor Sanuito,” Marte added, looking sad.

“Poor us,” Paulo muttered, going back to his notes. “We never should have taken him in.”

“As opposed to leaving him to starve?” Mircea asked.

Paulo looked up and scowled. “I know you don’t want to hear this, but the Watch isn’t all bad. Yes, half of them strut around, acting like they’re God, and a good percentage are as corrupt as hell. But if it wasn’t for them, the city would be overrun by crazy vampires doing their own version of a Sanuito!”

“It’s true, Mircea,” Marte agreed. “Most of the vampires the Watch pick up aren’t like you—”

“Or Bezio or Jerome?” he asked pointedly.

“Your group was unusual, possibly because the Watch has been extra vigilant lately, leading up to the consul’s visit. Anyone who looked even remotely suspicious was picked up, on the assumption that they could be sorted out later. But most of the time they have to be showing some sort of odd behavior to be taken in the first place—”

She broke off when another servant came in, with a basket dripping some sort of brackish ooze onto the floor.

“Did you just trail that through the whole house?” Paulo demanded.

The man looked at him, blinking.

Marte sighed. “Come on. We’re putting the leaky ones down the hall.”

“The leaky ones?” Paulo asked, following her out. “What exactly are you bringing in here?”

“Martina said everything.”

“Everything salvageable. I don’t think she expected . . .”

Mircea waited a moment, until their voices faded, then hurriedly looked through the baskets. But all the smaller jars he found were cracked and leaking. Ruined.

Which probably explained why the majority of the containers were the larger ones, the kind normally used to refill the smaller vessels. They had thicker walls and had thus survived the heat better, although that didn’t help with identification. They looked more like the ones on an apothecary’s shelves than the one Sanuito had given him . . .

A moment later, Mircea stuck his head in the kitchen, and found Jerome sitting at the main table, shelling more blasted peas. With most of the servants busy on the salvage mission, it looked like he had been pressed into service. A fact that did not appear to be making him happy.

“Have a minute?” Mircea asked.

“Why?” He looked up hopefully.

“I have an errand.”