Masks

  Unless it wasn’t the first time. Unless she’d made a habit of trying to rein in his excesses. Unless . . .

  Mircea shook his head in frustration. He didn’t have enough information to know. But he knew one thing: That attack hadn’t been meant as a warning. It had been meant to kill, and it had very nearly succeeded.

  His hand crept up to his still burning face.

  Very nearly.

  The window beside him suddenly opened and Bezio’s curly head stuck out. They looked at each other for a moment, not saying anything. Then the older vamp sighed and climbed out.

  He didn’t ask if Mircea wanted company. Or wine. He just set a decanter on the grimy old tiles, pulled the stopper, and filled one of the two glasses he carried, the delicate stems looking strange next to his work-callused hand.

  Mircea took the wine. He told himself that it was because Bezio couldn’t pour his own until he’d passed over the other glass, but in truth, he wanted some. Useless, as far as taste went, and it certainly wouldn’t get him drunk. But tonight . . . tonight he needed a drink.

  They sat in silence for a while, the quiet city becoming quieter as candles were snuffed out in more and more windows. But there was still plenty of light from the arc of stars blooming overhead, the Via Lactea as the Italians called it. Not that they relied on it to light their way.

  Man-made lights softened the darkness in patches all along the horizon. As they would most of the night in some quarters. The Venetians stayed up later than his own people, who preferred to be indoors as soon as the sun went down.

  He’d often wondered how vampires managed in the old country. Where could you go, after dark? There were scattered taverns, of course, and a few inns and bathhouses in the cities. But for the most part life stopped at dusk.

  His people knew what walked in the night.

  But he’d heard stories, even as a boy, of a different world. A world where night burned as bright as day. A world of wonders.

  His hometown of Sighisoara, and later his father’s capitol of Târgoviste, were both important trading centers. And Venice was one of his country’s main trading partners, with an insatiable appetite for Wallachian grain and meat, honey and wax. In return, the fleet of ships they sent each year brought beautiful cloth, luxury goods, and the finest of weapons. One of his earliest gifts from his father had been a Venetian crossbow, made in the famous Arsenal shipyard.

  And, of course, the sailors on the ships had talked, as sailors always do. And the merchants who dealt with them had carried their tales back to dull Sighisoara, with its high walls and looming fortress of dark gray stone. To enchant a little boy with tales of a different kind of city.

  A city with no walls, no guard towers, and no battlements. A city lying open and gleaming among the sapphire waves, like a glittering jewel. A city said to be the richest in all Europe yet protected only by the sea—and by its fantastic fleet of three thousand ships, a wooden wall stronger than anything built out of stone.

  They spoke of a city so clean that it seemed to gleam in the sunlight, washed clear of the scents he was used to by the daily tide. A city of lacy pink stone palaces built in the Byzantine fashion, so light they appeared to float on the water, their arches picked out with real gold leaf. A city of warm winds and flowering vines and wealth beyond his wildest imaginings.

  A city that never slept.

  Wide-eyed, he’d listened to tales of masked balls taking place in brilliantly lit palazzos that shed ribbons of light onto dark water. Of gaily decorated barges and flotillas of smaller boats that ferried partygoers in between them. Of banquets to rival those of old Rome, with so many courses that the diners couldn’t possibly finish before midnight. Of firework displays that turned night into brilliant day.

  He hadn’t believed most of the stories, of course, assuming that they were being exaggerated to entertain him. Arsenal couldn’t produce a ship in a day—everyone knew that took months! And a few silt mounds at the mouth of the Po River couldn’t support a population of 150,000—only Paris had so many! And the peasants, was he really expected to believe that they ate beef, and sugared sweets, and had paintings decorating their houses?

  It was absurd.

  It had been a shock, then, to find out that not only were the stories true, but that he hadn’t been told the half of it. Venice was a city unlike any other in the world. And a vampire’s dream.

  Or it should have been.

  Mircea drank wine.

  Along with the abundant nightlife, there was the plus of having a constant stream of people coming and going. Carnival lasted nearly six weeks, from the day after Christmas to Ash Wednesday, and other feasts and saints’ days dotted the calendar, well into the summer. And even in the “quiet” months, merchants and sightseers came and went, along with sailors from the thousands of ships that used the harbor each year.

  There was no need to drink from the same person twice. No need to fear anyone suspecting you. Add to that the fact that Venice was the most diverse city in all of Europe, the most cultured, the most urbane . . .

  If ever a city was designed for his kind, it was this one.

  And yet what had he found when he finally arrived? Not a dream but a nightmare. And one that, apparently, never ended.

  Mircea had spent two years believing that it was his weakness that kept him constantly wary, perpetually afraid. He had assumed that those of his kind who were able to gain enough wealth and power could insulate themselves from that sort of thing. He had clung to the hope that perhaps, if he somehow managed to survive long enough, he, too, might find some kind of peace.

  Until tonight had shattered that last illusion, and left him reeling.

  “No one person should have that much power,” Mircea said harshly, finally breaking the silence.

  Bezio shot him a glance over his wineglass. “That’s something I didn’t expect to hear from you.”

  Mircea frowned at him. “Why?”

  “Didn’t your father have that much power? Don’t nobles in general? They make the wars; we fight ’em. It’s how the world works.”

  “This wasn’t a war.”

  “People died.” Bezio shrugged. “For one man’s whim. Call it what you will, it’s the same to those poor bastards on the shore—or what’s left of them.”

  “It wasn’t a war,” Mircea insisted, more strongly. “You called it rightly—it was a whim. The jealous whim of a madman who wanted all the applause, all the adoration, for himself.”

  Or one who wanted an excuse to remove a problem, he thought darkly. Could the consul have killed all those people, dozens of them—people who had assembled to honor him no less—just as an excuse to attack one of his senators? He didn’t know, but he grimly decided it was possible.

  In fact, knowing court politics, it was more than possible.

  “And your point is?” Bezio asked.

  “That no one should have that much power! Yes, people die in war, but at least it has to be debated, nobles have to be convinced, supplies assembled, negotiations made for safe passage for an army. . . . A hundred chances to turn back, to rethink—”

  “Which no one ever does.”

  “Some do. And even when they don’t—” Mircea shook his head. “At least there’s usually some point to it. That was slaughter today. Senseless, thoughtless, a useless waste of life! What will become of us if this is the best we can do?”

  “What becomes of the humans?” Bezio asked cynically. “They slaughter each other all the time, yet they stumble on, year after year—”

  “But don’t you want to do more than stumble?” Mircea turned to him abruptly, enough to make the old terra-cotta tiles underneath them shift dangerously. “To be more than what we were?”

  “Careful, son,” Bezio said. “Or we’ll finish our drink in the drink.”

  “I don’t want to be careful!” Mircea said p
assionately. “I’m tired of being careful! Of hiding in the dark, of waiting . . . for what? To continue in death the same patterns I knew in life? To see centuries come and go and the same stupidity repeat itself?”

  “As opposed to?”

  “Something new, something better! We have all eternity, and this is what we do with it? Refine our cruelty?”

  “Seems to be a popular choice,” Bezio said, trying to lighten the atmosphere.

  Mircea didn’t smile back. “We should be better,” he insisted. “We could be better.”

  “Not with that creature on the throne,” Bezio said, suddenly serious. And so softly that Mircea could barely hear him. Even right beside him, even with vampire hearing.

  Because Bezio wasn’t stupid. And he was afraid. So was Mircea, and he was sick to death of it.

  He just didn’t know what to do about it.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Business was still slow the next night, although that turned out to be a good thing. Mircea laid his head back against the doubled towels behind him, letting his body relax into water hot enough to have scalded a human. To him, it just felt good, the steam rising all around him and wafting into the cold night air, making patterns as it twisted and turned and eventually dissipated among the stars, far above.

  He could see them because he wasn’t bathing in the kitchen. The cook/housekeeper had decided to use the slowdown as an opportunity to give everything a good scrubbing—and that had included the new arrivals. They had been banished to the sugar house, where large tubs had been set up in the overgrown main hall, with orders to get clean.

  This part of the house was largely roofless, thanks to being gutted by the fire, although a few blackened pieces of flooring still jutted out here and there. But mostly, it was open up four stories, where large gaps in the roof allowed the stars to shine through. It was a calm, beautiful, idyllic scene.

  Or it would have been.

  If not for one small irritation.

  “What about this one?” Jerome switched out the contraption on his head for another, equally as extravagant.

  Mircea closed his eyes and sighed. He’d run out of things to say three, or was it four, options ago. Unlike Bezio, apparently, who had just come in with two more pitchers of steaming water.

  “I think it looks ridiculous,” Bezio told him, setting one of the pitchers down on the overgrown ground.

  “I don’t recall asking the water boy,” Jerome said.

  “Oh, is that so?” Bezio removed the hat to dump the contents of a pitcher over Jerome’s blond frizz.

  Jerome went under, the shock causing him to lose his footing and his head to disappear under the waterline. He came up sputtering, and mad as hell. “Now look! I have soap all in my hair!”

  “Easily remedied,” Bezio told him, and poured on the other pitcher.

  Jerome had a good deal to say about that, but Bezio wasn’t listening. He’d finished his voluntary service for the night, and stripped down, scrubbing himself all over before settling into his own tub with a deep sigh of heated bliss. Jerome eventually tapered off and resumed perusing a somewhat stupendous hat collection, which he had dragged out of the main house and put on a table beside his tub.

  Mircea had no idea why.

  He decided he didn’t care and settled in for an enjoyable soak.

  Despite Jerome’s initial fears, the usual method of bathing at the house was of the sponge variety, done over the basins in their rooms with one of the “scented waters”—liquid soaps gentler than those used for laundry—that were popular in Venice. But once a week a full bath was required—and very much appreciated, in Mircea’s case.

  He never ceased to be amazed at the ingenuity of the Venetians, who had settled on salt marsh flats with no source of drinking water, the kind of place that would have been lucky to support a fishing village. And yet they had built an empire. Although they never would have done it if some genius five hundred years ago hadn’t come up with a way to use the town squares for rainwater collection.

  The rain drained through channels in the slightly sloping stones of the thousands of courtyards spread throughout the city. And from there into central marble grills, below which was a thick layer of fine white sand. The sand cleaned the water as it slowly filtered through, and directed it into a well. Like the one that had been built in the courtyard of his new palazzo by the sugar magnate.

  It gave Martina’s house all the clean water they could use, and all the baths that anyone wished to take.

  Not that everyone seemed to appreciate the luxury.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” Bezio asked sleepily, only a few moments later.

  Mircea cracked an eye to see Jerome trying to climb out of his tub.

  “I’ve had enough. I’m turning into a prune!” Jerome told him.

  “I just finished bringing out the hot water.”

  “I bathed in cold.”

  “Liar. You were busy trotting out all those things,” Bezio waved at the colorful array of headgear. “Although why you were, I have no idea.”

  “It’s my new hair,” Jerome said, stopping to grab one of the pitchers of cold water the servants had left by each tub, and made a face. “I can’t wear half my hats now.”

  “And that matters because?”

  “Because of those tiny rooms they gave us,” Jerome said, busily rinsing off. “Paulo said I can’t buy anymore hats until I clear out some of the old ones. So I have to decide which ones to keep.”

  “I can help you with that. None of them.”

  “You wouldn’t know fashion if it bit you on the ass,” Jerome said, frowning at him from under dripping bangs.

  “I know you couldn’t pay me to wear that,” Bezio said, nodding at one of the more bizarre specimens, near the table’s edge.

  It was round and brown and made of felt. Fairly standard except for a much wider brim than was usual in Venice. But it redeemed itself with a deep fringe around the edge in a bright, screaming yellow, which shimmied whenever the wearer moved.

  “I bought it off a sailor—” Jerome announced proudly.

  “Who saw you coming.”

  “—who said they’re all the rage in Portugal.”

  “I’m sure he did.”

  “Heads turn when I wear this hat!”

  “Yes. In horror.”

  “Shows what you know.” Jerome scrubbed his wiry mane with a towel. “I saw another man with one in the Rialto the other night.”

  “So the sailor duped two of you, did he?”

  Jerome made a face and looked at Mircea. “What do you think?”

  “I—” Mircea stopped, searching for something that was neither an insult nor a lie, while Bezio smirked at him. “I would keep it over that one,” he finally said, nodding at easily the worst offender on the table.

  But Jerome frowned. “Really?”

  He picked up a hat with no brim but with a greatly exaggerated crown. It was called a sugarloaf, after the shape of the cones of sugar Europe imported from the east, and had to be almost two feet tall. It would have looked ridiculous even in black.

  But of course, it wasn’t.

  “My eyes,” Bezio said, only half jokingly, and disappeared under the water.

  Coward, Mircea thought, as Jerome turned to look at him. “You don’t like it?”

  “I—it’s not that.”

  “It came all the way from Burgundy,” Jerome told him. “It’s really rare.”

  Bezio glugged something underwater that was thankfully indecipherable.

  “It’s . . . certainly . . . bright,” Mircea said.

  “Yes, it is, isn’t it?” Jerome looked pleased. But then he frowned. “But after yesterday, I don’t think orange is a smart choice, do you?”

  “Probably not,” Mircea said gratefully. “Perhaps it would be b
est to set it aside for now.”

  Jerome sighed, and relegated the terrible thing to the empty side of the table. Of course, that still left the other side piled high with a mound of the small brimless caps popular in Venice, several chaperons, with their surfeit of cloth copied from eastern turbans, and more than one six-sided Spanish cap cut out of velvet. There had to be a dozen in all.

  “Why do you have so many hats?” Bezio demanded, emerging from the water like a bearded Aphrodite.

  “Well, I’ll tell you,” Jerome said, picking up the orange thing again and patting the felt. “There was a cappellaio—a hat maker,” he added, for Mircea’s benefit, “who set up shop just across from the apothecary where I worked. Every day, I had to sit on a damned stool with a wonky leg, grinding ingredients for hours, until the fumes made my head swim and my arm felt like it was going to come off and I was practically hunchbacked. And the whole time, in and out they went, right across the street—rich young men in velvets and furs, spending more on some small accessory than I’d make in a month.”

  He smiled at the hat, and put it back in the pile with the others. Making a grand total of zero in the discard pile. Not that it mattered, since Mircea couldn’t see how he’d afford a replacement.

  Of course, he didn’t see how he’d afforded these, either.

  “Where did you get the money for all these?” Mircea asked, somewhat in awe. They’d only been here two weeks.

  “My clients. Where else?”

  “But . . . I thought Martina keeps that money.”

  “She keeps the fee, yes,” Jerome said. “I’m talking about the tip.”

  “The—”

  “Gratuity? Emolument? Thanks for a good time?” He paused, a bright crimson hat in hand, to narrow his eyes at Mircea. “Don’t tell me you didn’t get one?”

  “I—”

  “You were with a senator!”

  “Well, yes, but—”

  “What did you do?” Jerome demanded accusingly, as Sanuito came in, carrying a tray of oils, pomades, and lotions.

  “I . . . nothing.”

  “Well, that would explain it!”