Masks

  It suddenly occurred to him to wonder how well even a senior master would do, when a massive section of wall came flying at him unexpectedly. Maybe he’d had the reflexes to dodge it, or had found something to hide beneath and survived the same way that Mircea had. In which case, he should be along shortly. Or maybe he hadn’t, but was strong enough to heal and would be along eventually. In either case, Mircea needed to stall until he arrived.

  But then, maybe he wasn’t coming at all. Maybe he’d been killed by a blow that would have taken out a giant. Maybe he’d been knocked unconscious, and the fire was slowly eating away at him. Maybe—

  Maybe Mircea should say something before she got bored and killed him.

  “A lot of little things,” he said hoarsely. “The earrings . . .”

  She smiled and shook her head, making the tinsel dance. “I should have given them up, shouldn’t I? Women don’t wear them much in Venice.”

  “They don’t wear them at all,” Mircea corrected. “Not unless they’re a gypsy. Or . . . from somewhere else. But you’re supposed to be Italian, and young. Auria was said to be the oldest, but even she is only a century. Where would you pick up a habit that has been out of favor with the women here for at least twice that long?”

  She sighed. “I’ve had them so long, they feel like a part of me. But it was careless.”

  “And the jars, the ones they pulled from the wreckage. Why were you sorting through them? Martina and Auria are the ones who worked with them all the time. Wouldn’t they better know the ingredients?”

  “I volunteered.”

  “Because you knew what Sanuito had given me.”

  She passed him, almost close enough to touch, causing him to flinch back. She didn’t seem troubled by the sword he still held. She didn’t seem troubled by anything. She sat on the table and swung her legs over the side, the way she had that night in the courtyard. Like a girl.

  “Yes,” she told him. “I knocked it behind the wall that night, when I climbed up there, and then retrieved it later. But I didn’t know what else he might have. I checked his room, and there was nothing. But when I asked him point blank, he evaded. . . .”

  “Is that why you killed him?” Mircea asked harshly, struggling to stay in control.

  “It didn’t have to be that way,” Marte told him. “I wanted the antidote from his blood; that was all. If he had done as I instructed. . . .”

  “I wouldn’t have thought he had a choice.” Mircea thought back to the scrawny figure he’d first met in the Watch’s cells, sucking a few drops of spilled blood off a filthy rag.

  Sanuito had had no power. Sanuito had had nothing, except his life. And yet even that—Mircea cut off his thoughts abruptly.

  “He shouldn’t have,” Marte agreed. “He was as close to powerless as a vampire can get. But something was . . . off about him. Maybe the way he was Changed. Getting that Were blood at the same time as the vampire interfered with the process—and possibly gave him something of their attributes, as well. And Weres are notoriously hard to influence.”

  “He was able to shake off your suggestions?”

  “Not entirely. But he found ways around them. He couldn’t tell you about the antidote, but it never occurred to me to forbid him to give it to you! And he talked to Auria about you, tried to convince her to help you get away . . .”

  “So he had to go.”

  Marte frowned. “I would have left him in peace. I had what I needed. But after he gave you the antidote something had to be done. I had too much to concentrate on; I couldn’t watch him every minute. And I couldn’t risk him using his blood to make more of the stuff. There are mages who might have been able to tell you what was in it.”

  A mage did, Mircea thought. “But Sanuito beat you to it.”

  She grimaced. “I thought it would be best to do it away from the house, and how better than in a crowd of thousands? But he must have realized what I intended, and decided that, if he was going to die anyway, he would make it as spectacular as possible.”

  “And give me cause to wonder about it,” Mircea said, his hand tightening on the hilt.

  “All he had to do was stay away from you,” she told him. “He knew that. But he idolized you. He couldn’t believe it when you took him with you—” She broke off at his expression. “Don’t look at me like that. He would have died anyway. Do you really think anyone else would have rescued him? At least he didn’t die alone, in a cold cell, half starved—”

  “Is that what you tell yourself?” Mircea rasped.

  “Oh, come off it,” the dark eyes flashed. “You barely knew him. He was nothing to you. He was nothing to anyone. He had no future in our world or in that of the Weres. He would have been an outcast, a freak, his whole life. I didn’t kill him—I saved him!”

  “As you planned to do for me?”

  She sighed and sat back against the wall, her anger evaporating as quickly as it had come. “It was the only way.”

  “To reach the senator.”

  It wasn’t a question, and she didn’t take it as one. “I’d tried everything else,” she told him quietly. “But she’s too well-guarded. Her own family, the senatorial guards, the court in Paris—it’s like an armed camp. There was simply no way to get to her.

  “Except for one.”

  She smiled slightly. “There’s one time when even the most well-guarded person is allowed some privacy. I realized, if I found the right person: someone weak enough that her guards wouldn’t worry about him, someone attractive enough to tempt even her eye, someone without a future . . .”

  “And you get to decide that for me?” Mircea asked.

  He received a defiant look in return. “Yes. I tried to tell you, but you didn’t want to hear. You haven’t been there yet. I have. You don’t know what lies in store for those with no master in our world. I do. You might end up wishing I’d succeeded—”

  “I doubt that!”

  “Yes, now. But a hundred years from now?” She sat forward. “You won’t understand this, but I was paying you a compliment. Allowing you a death that would have purpose, meaning, instead of what you face now: a slow spiral into bitterness and despair, and a long walk into the sun.”

  Mircea didn’t reply. He didn’t trust himself.

  “But in your own way, you were as difficult as Sanuito.”

  “Because I wouldn’t push her to bite me,” he said tightly.

  She nodded. “It was the only thing I needed from you; the only task you had. Something any other vampire would have done instinctively. But not you.”

  “And you couldn’t give me the poison without making sure it would be delivered.”

  “I had everything ready,” she said, looking aggrieved. “The antidote to slow it down, to allow you time to reach her. The perfect opportunity—convocation usually involves mass debauchery, and you’re exactly the type of man she likes—”

  “I think there might be another.”

  Marte’s lips twisted. “There always is, with her. And they all seem willing to die for her. I wonder if they would feel the same, if they knew what she’s really like?”

  “And how is that?”

  She looked at him, dark eyes assessing, for a long moment. And then they shifted, going back to the storm. “You still haven’t answered my question: Why me? Because I wear earrings and play around with pots? Why not one of the others?”

  “Is that why you brought them here tonight? And stationed them at different doors? To confuse me?”

  She shrugged. “I knew you suspected one of us; Sanuito had seen to that. But I was under the impression that you didn’t know which. I didn’t want to expose myself by being the only one here tonight. So I used a connection of mine to make sure we all received invitations.”

  “And then waited to leave until I was gone, so I wouldn’t be among them.”

&nb
sp; “Yes, although I thought it was an unnecessary precaution. I foolishly thought you suspected Martina.”

  “I did, briefly. She was the one who bought me, the one who set up the first meeting with the senator, the one who seemed the most concerned that my efforts weren’t progressing fast enough.” He paused, but it was true—even now. “And she makes a better villain than you do.”

  Marte laughed suddenly, and the transformation was amazing. In an instant, the pragmatic killer was gone, replaced by the merry girl he knew. It shook him more than her anger had done.

  “She does, doesn’t she?” she asked. “Of course, that might be because she is one. She gave me the idea, you know. About the senator, and you.”

  “Martina?”

  Marte nodded, and drew her feet up, hugging them with her arms. As if they were having a casual chat back at the house. As if Mircea wasn’t holding a knife-edged sword on her.

  “She was a perfumer back in Athens, before she discovered that she could make much more by dabbling in poison. She used her expertise with cosmetics to make a deadly face powder. During the course of an evening, her suitors—all rich, all foolish enough to leave her something substantial in their wills—would get a dose every time she kissed them. Or rubbed her cheek against theirs, or . . .” Marte waved a hand.

  “I’d think that would be as dangerous for her as for them.”

  “She fixed her faced with an egg white base as a barrier, before applying the powder. But she’d also built up a good deal of resistance through the years by taking in a little poison at the time. That’s why she couldn’t feed you that night, after the senator’s women almost drained you. Her blood would have killed you! As it did her master.”

  “I thought vampires weren’t able to kill their Sires.”

  Marte smiled gently. “Now, we both know that can’t be true, don’t we?”

  Mircea frowned in confusion, and she laughed.

  “In fact, she didn’t intend to do it,” she told him. “She had accumulated a nice fortune over the years, and he decided to change her in order to get control of it. She objected; there was a struggle. And violence can increase blood lust as much as sex does. He prevailed, of course, but by then he was too preoccupied to notice the poison he was taking in along with her blood. By the time she awoke, he was dead.”

  “She made herself,” Mircea murmured, remembering something Martina had said to Jerome.

  “Hardly,” Marte said dryly. “He made her, she just killed him afterward. But she heard me say the term one day, and liked the sound of it.”

  “You made yourself?” Mircea said, but she ignored it.

  “So why not Martina, then?” she asked. “As you said, she makes a good villain. And she bought you.”

  “At your instigation?”

  She inclined her head.

  “You can influence someone of her age?”

  “Is that a backward way of asking how powerful I am?” He didn’t answer, and after a moment, she smiled. “I didn’t have to. I planted the idea that, if she could find the right man, perhaps the senator would be willing to grant her a pardon.”

  “For killing her master? But that was his fault—”

  “Not according to vampire law. It’s more concerned with outcome than intent, and the outcome was a dead master and a broken family. His vampires are still hunting her. It’s why she fled Athens, changed her name, and eventually came here. And took up the only profession she could without a family or the ability to make vampires of her own.”

  “Because she would poison anyone she tried to Change.”

  Marte nodded. “We met when she noticed I was masterless, and tried to recruit me. I eventually learned her story, and realized that what worked once might work again, in a slightly different manner. But you still haven’t explained why you cleared her and suspected me.”

  “Your blood,” he said simply.

  “Ah.” Marte sat back against the wall again. “So now we come to it.”

  Chapter Forty-Four

  There was silence for a moment. Mircea didn’t know what she was thinking, but he was worried. About a whole list of things: the seeping blood from several of his deeper wounds, which was sapping his strength just when he needed it most. The sound of the wind from the garden, which had lessened enough that he had started to be able to hear the crowd through it. The fact that, if the officer hadn’t come by now, he probably wouldn’t. Although that might be just as well—for him.

  Because Mircea had started to put things together.

  Things like the fact that the senator’s symbol was not one cobra but three: a large one with two smaller ones flanking it on either side. Things like that story she’d told him on the day of the regatta: Had she been feeling something that sparked a long buried memory? Things like Marte’s quip about children and masters.

  But mostly things about what he’d seen and heard the night before. All of which should have been impossible for him. It should have been impossible for anyone, except a member of the senator’s family.

  Or someone who had recently ingested a large quantity of their blood.

  Marte had been watching him, with a little smile. Now she tilted her head. “But then, why not suspect Auria?”

  “Auria wasn’t the one cataloguing the remains of the storeroom. Auria wasn’t the one who interrupted Sanuito and me in the courtyard. Auria wasn’t even there. But you were. And he wouldn’t talk in front of you.”

  “Mmm. True.”

  “And then there was the fact of why you were there: to tell me to make sure that the senator bit me the next time we were together.”

  “But Auria told you the same.”

  “Because you reminded her to include it.”

  Marte’s eyebrow raised. “Or perhaps she asked me to talk to you that night.”

  “But that wouldn’t explain my reaction to your blood, would it?”

  “Blood I gave you when I saved your life.”

  “Yes, because you had to,” Mircea said viciously. “You couldn’t let your carrier die, not when it would be impossible to find another in time. I remember feeling positively drunk off your blood the next day, for several days. The low-level vampire you were pretending to be couldn’t have caused that sort of reaction. Even Auria—supposedly older than anyone else in the household—didn’t affect me like that. Didn’t come close. I felt perfectly normal after drinking from her.”

  An eyebrow went up. “You call what happened at the senator’s last night normal?”

  Mircea licked his lips, and came out with it. “No. But we both know why that was don’t we?”

  “Do we?” The slight smile was back. “That day at the regatta, which was the day after I bit you, you saw nothing.”

  “And you know that how?” he asked, before he could stop himself.

  She laughed and leaned her head back against the wall.

  “In any case, I wouldn’t have,” he said, wishing they could drop the pretense. “I hadn’t seen the sun for two years. It completely dazzled me. To the point that I barely noticed anything else.”

  “But you were right next to the senator,” she murmured.

  “Yes, so that she could shield me. I was inside her power from the time she woke me, just before the entertainment started. Of course I wouldn’t notice it—or anyone else’s through it. And I only started to notice auras last night after it began to be crowded. But I was on the roof at the regatta, where it was not at all crowded. . . .”

  “And now? Are you still seeing them?”

  The question was deceptively mild, but there was something in the tone. . . .

  Or maybe Mircea was being paranoid. But considering the circumstances, he rather thought he’d err on the side of caution. And be very careful how he answered.

  Or avoid it altogether.

  “I’ve already answ
ered some of your questions,” he said evenly. “You haven’t answered mine.”

  Marte looked at him thoughtfully for a moment, but then smiled. “All right, then. After all, you’ve already heard one side. . . .

  “I was like all the others: born into a slum in one of the richest cities in the world, which only made me feel poorer. Every day, fascinating people poured through the port of ports, come to trade, come to sightsee, come just to be able to say they’d seen it.”

  “But not Venice,” Mircea said, and felt his mouth go dry.

  Maybe he didn’t want his suspicions confirmed, after all.

  “No, not Venice,” she said gently.

  She leaned back against the wall, with a sigh. “So long ago, but I remember it so well, great Alexandria. Although to me, it was mostly just a beautiful slum. Without money or connections, its opportunities stayed well out of reach.

  “Until one day, my father did a favor for some minor bureaucrat, and he returned it by getting me a job at the palace. Not a good job, mind you. Not a handmaiden’s job. But a job nonetheless. And being ambitious—ye gods, I was so ambitious in those days—I worked and schemed and flattered and cajoled, until I was assigned to the queen’s own apartments.

  “I still cleaned floors and emptied chamber pots, but I did it for her.

  “And, in time, I thought perhaps I would be given more responsibilities, a larger role, a good match. . . . I hoped for so many things. But there was war, and she went away. And when she came back, she was changed. Moody; mercurial. Laughing one minute and throwing things in anger the next. Letters were sent and received. I didn’t know what was in any of them, but I knew they displeased her, for her temper became . . . so much worse.

  “She had a tomb made for herself, out in the desert. A lavish thing, more like a small palace. She moved us to it, me and Iras, her hairdresser, and Charmion, her handmaiden. And, for a while, she seemed happier. I thought things must be going well. The rumors that had been swirling around the city were bleak, but rumors lie. And she seemed so calm. . . .

  “And then, one night, she asked for me. I hurried into my clothes, ran to her room, not knowing what to expect. Had there been news? Were we going back to the city? Had her charms ensnared yet another general, brought yet another Roman to his knees?”