Valour and Vanity (24 page)

Vincent stared at him for a moment, no doubt struck by the same thing that Jane was. “I think it would be best if we waited for the Chief’s return. When did you say he would be back?”

“Tomorrow afternoon.” Gallo set his quill back down. “I would hope that you are not considering any actions for which I might need to arrest you. It would be a shame if you were to lose the freedom that the
capo di polizia
has so unexpectedly allowed you.”

With a chill, Jane remembered that this was the officer who had found the promissory note in Vincent’s pocket. It seemed to her that he had known, that he must have known it would be there. His current threats were very clearly those of someone who was in the employ of Sanuto.

And he had also known that the man who Vincent had seen was one of the pirates, without Vincent ever telling him. The same thought must have occurred to Vincent because he gave the
polizia
a short bow. “Of course. I will not take up any more of your time.”

“It is no trouble at all.” The
polizia
picked up the paper he had written the note to the
capo
on and put it in the drawer. He slid the drawer shut. “I am glad that we understand each other.”

Vincent led Jane to the door. She could feel the restrained tension in his arm. When they were on the threshold, the
polizia
said, “I will expect to see you tomorrow with your usual report.”

“Of course.” Vincent opened the door, and they left as quickly as possible without actually running out of the station.

A few streets away, Vincent directed them under a gallery and stopped. “Are we agreed that Gallo is in their employment?” He did not need to say who “they” were.

Jane nodded. “The question for me is whether the
capo
is as well.”

“Either way, the
polizia
is going to alert them to the fact that we know they are here.”

Jane straightened the cuffs of her coat. “Then we should see what we can find out before they do.”

Vincent smiled and offered Jane his arm. “I love you. Very much.”

*   *   *

Jane and Vincent hurried
through the streets to the square. As they entered it, the Pulcinella puppet player stepped out of his booth, which he had set up under a colonnade. In spite of having a dry area around him, passers-by hurried past without so much as slowing.

The puppet player was a youngish man who was so exceedingly slender that he could have played Juliet in the days when Shakespeare’s plays had been performed entirely by men. He was introduced as Signor Zancani. He nodded toward the building. “Two more men have arrived, but I’ve not seen anyone leave. ’Course, I can’t see the canal entrance from here, but everyone who arrived on foot is still in the building.”

“Thank you.” Staring at the building, Vincent handed the young man a few coins.

Waving them away, Zancani said, “No, no. I didn’t protest when you said ‘hire’ because you were in a hurry. If you want to do me a good turn, put a banner over my booth the next time the weather is nice.”

“Why not today?”

He shrugged. “Because no one will stop today. I’m just here because I had some repairs to do to a puppet.”

The Vincents thanked him and walked farther down the colonnade for a better view of the building that the pirate captain was in. It was an older style of home with a tall wall surrounding it and space for a garden between the wall and the palazzo. Lights were visible through the windows on the second floor, but none of the inhabitants stood obligingly near a window.

Vincent leaned closer to Jane as though his voice could be audible through the rain to those in the building across the street. “It occurs to me that they would recognise either one of us.”

Jane nodded. “It almost makes me wish you had not shaved.”

“I can grow the beard again, though it would not be fast enough.”

“I said
almost
. Should we ask the puppet player?”

“No…” Vincent’s voice trailed away and his gaze went distant, as it did when he was considering a theory of glamour.

“What? What are you thinking?”

Without seeming to hear her, Vincent took a step backwards, still staring into an inner distance. He pulled glamour and quickly wove a change in his hair colour from its usual dark brown to a steely grey. A full moustache now connected his side whiskers. He turned to Jane, managing the folds with a nearly invisible ease. If Jane had not known him so well, she would not have realized the effort. Only a very slight quickness of breath betrayed him.

“You are not thinking to confront them like that.”

He shook his head, and the illusion stayed close to his person. “No. Just to see if Sanuto is there. I can pose as a messenger.”

“Even if that were a good idea, you cannot seriously propose using glamour as a disguise.”

“I can hold it for about half an hour, I think.”

“For half an hour?”

“Likely longer, but half an hour I feel confident of.” He had cleverly masked the places the illusion would likely slip in locks of hair so the movement seemed more or less natural. “I work glamour for longer periods of time on a regular basis.”

“But not while walking with it.”

“You recall Miss FitzCameron from your parents’ neighbourhood and how she masked her teeth. If she could dance, why can’t I walk with this?”

“She fainted constantly and could never speak while the illusion was in place.
You
are holding glamour over two areas rather than just one.”

The smell of damp stone rose around them in answer to the rain. Vincent stubbornly continued to hold the grey hair and moustache while he stared at the building. “Have you another idea?”

What Vincent proposed was ridiculous on the face of it. To walk with glamour required a constant regulation of tension as the folds’ relationships with each other and the ether shifted. Much the way sliding a line quickly through the fingers produced heat from friction, moving glamour took more energy than merely pulling it out of the ether.

It
was
possible to create small illusions and hold them, but not without risk to one’s health.

But Vincent was right. They needed to know if Sanuto was here—or, if not, what the pirate captain intended—which meant that one of them needed to see inside. And yet Jane was uncertain what they would do with this information. “I do not know which worries me more. That you are thinking of going inside or that you are going to try doing it while wearing glamour.”

Before he could make any further argument, a group of nuns walked past them. They wore a different habit than those of the sisters at Santa Maria degli Angeli, but it was enough for Jane’s mind to offer a new possibility. “What about a
lointaine vision
?”

A
lointaine vision
was an invention of Vincent’s that allowed an observer to watch something from a distance, even if there were obstacles in the way. Jane had used the fold only once, years earlier, to eavesdrop on her sister and the rogue who had attempted to seduce her. The glamourist could snake the folds around or over those things that blocked the view, and they carried sound as well. While there were other methods of carrying sight
or
sound, there was no other for carrying both. Its chief drawback was that it required constant management of the threads as they carried the sights and sounds from the thing viewed to the glamourist. Most significantly for their purposes, it retained the images of whatever was viewed through it. That had been useful when rescuing her sister, but since it was difficult to move the thread due to its length, there was little use for it in polite society. If they could convince the
capo di polizia
that the pirate captain was here, then a recording would certainly be of use, though they would have to bring the
capo di polizia
to the recording.

“Where would we cast the
lointaine vision
from?” He let the glamour masking his features dissolve, which gave Jane a measure of relief.

“By the wall. We would set a
Sphère Obscurcie
to mask us.”

He shook his head. “The rain makes the outline visible.”

“Really?” Jane thought for a moment, and could see why. “Ah … the offset of the raindrops would show. What if we were under shelter, then could we do it from here?”

Vincent cocked his head and measured the distance with his gaze. After a moment, he slowly shook his head. “I think it is too far to span.”

“If we worked in tandem? We could try yoking it.” If the children could pass doves over the congregation by working in teams of three, it seemed possible that two adults—professionals, at that—could span the gap between the buildings.

“I have become used to working alone again, clearly. Yes. Let us do that, Muse.”

Jane and Vincent took up a station in the lee of a column, where the passers-by were less likely to stumble through their
Sphère Obscurcie,
and began to weave. Vincent stood in front, supporting the weight of the folds, while Jane fed the line out. The
lointaine vision
was a variation on
bouclé torsadée
in that both were a loop of thread coiled around itself. The difference was that the
lointaine vision
required leaving the loop open with a glamourist constantly feeding out the line and twisting it, while the
bouclé torsadée
was tied off. Even working in tandem, the energy to span the space across the street was such that Jane was glad they had chosen a spot next to a column, so that she could lean against it. Panting, Vincent once had to ask Jane to pause feeding out the line so that he could shift his grip on the yoke and lift it higher, to control the glamour’s natural tendency to drift downward.

It took the better part of ten minutes for them to get the line into the lighted window. When they did, Jane gasped as the image shifted to show the room inside and the conversation became audible.

What she could see of the room was well appointed, but the
lointaine vision
was like looking through a tube. They could see only what was directly in front of its end. Jane did not see Sanuto at first, but she heard his voice clearly: “—tell you, one of the finest hunters I have ever seen.”

“And did you win the horse?” The pirate captain sat in range of the
lointaine vision
on a low sofa. He was recognisable, though, as Vincent had reported, he had shorn his long moustaches and now wore the clothes of a Venetian gentleman. Beside him sat Biasio. Jane had another moment of shock at seeing them together, because she now realized why Biasio had seemed so familiar.

It was not that he had reminded her of Mathieu. “Biasio was the first mate of our ship.”

“Are you certain?” Vincent hastily tied off the yoke so it would remain steady and came back to help her with the
lointaine vision
itself.

“Imagining the pirate captain with his moustache caused me to do the same for Biasio. I am quite certain.” Jane shifted her grip forward on the glamour and let Vincent slide into place beside her. His fingers brushed the inside of her wrist as he took hold of the thread.

He grunted as he began to see and hear the room with her. “I still remember so little of that.”

The men laughed at something that Sanuto said. Jane very much wished to see him, but he sat to the right of the room and only his foot, propped in front of him on an ottoman, was visible through the
lointaine vision
. The sword cane leaned against the low stool as though ready for use.

A fourth man stood at a sideboard at the far wall, pouring a glass of port. Jane recognised him as being the clerk who had supposedly handled their papers at the port. He lifted a glass of sherry and saluted the other gentleman. “As graceful a gambit as I have ever seen.”

They continued to talk about the hunter and other admirable horses, and then conversation drifted to racing, but nothing incriminating was said, nor did they refer to Jane or Vincent. In fact, there was nothing to indicate that they were anything beyond genial colleagues. The glamour kept spooling out, and, even with Vincent’s help, Jane’s strength was beginning to flag. They knew that Sanuto was there, but nothing beyond that.

A knock came at the door to Sanuto’s room. Biasio rose and opened the door to admit
Gendarme
Gallo. His hat was damp and his hair plastered against his head. The laughter ceased and the pirate captain sat up. “What?”

“Pardon the intrusion, signors.” Gallo bowed to each man in turn. “Sir David came to the offices today and said that he saw you.”

“Saw who?” Sanuto shifted in his chair.

“Signor Coppa.” He bowed to the pirate captain. At last Jane had a name for the man.

Coppa seemed entirely too silly to be a pirate captain—which, of course, he was not. But he also seemed too silly to be a rookster. Frowning, Coppa said, “Where? I avoided the square and their apartment.”

“He did not say.” Gallo turned his hat in his hand. “But I do not think he will be troubling you.”

Sanuto leaned forward, his hand becoming briefly visible as he lifted his cane from its place. “Surely you were not foolish enough to imply that you were associated with us.”

“He was going to go to the
capo di polizia
.”

“And?” Sanuto sat back. “If he had, you would have told us, and we would have removed. Now…”

Coppa rolled his eyes. “Are we blown?”

“What about trying a MacGregor?” Biasio said. “You’d have to dye your hair again, Spada.”

Spada? Which of the swindlers was that?

As if in answer to her question, Sanuto’s voice rolled out. “Perhaps. Let’s hear exactly what our friend said to Sir David.”

“I … I told him that I hoped he would do nothing that would cause me to have to arrest him. And that I expected to see him tomorrow.” Where his face had, before, been damp with rain it now had beads of sweat dripping from the brow.

“And?”

“And he wouldn’t say anything else to me after that.”

Sanu—no, Spada—said, “Go back. Say nothing else to him. If he brings it up again, imply that you work with the secret Carbonari society to reclaim Venice, but do not volunteer the information. Clear?”