Masks

“Just as well. They only keep the good stuff for the clients, apparently.”

  Mircea seriously contemplated murder for a moment, while the man drank. But if he didn’t overpower him immediately, it would almost certainly draw the attention of the Watch, and any chance he had of escape would be lost. And he supposed he did want that chance, after all, because the next time Bezio handed him the flask, he took it.

  “I was a blacksmith in a little town near Salerno,” the man said, without preamble. “Wife. Two daughters, one just married. Utterly typical. And then one night, I stopped by the local tavern on the way home.”

  The man’s tone was light, almost jesting. And his limbs were loose, relaxed. He might have been talking about the weather. But there was something, some clue so subtle Mircea couldn’t have named it if he’d tried, that told him that wasn’t the case.

  “It was crowded that night,” Bezio said. “A troop of singers had stopped in, and were giving a show. I bought a flagon and propped up a patch of wall, thinking to stay a few moments. Maybe hit up a deadbeat for some money he owed me, if I saw him.

  “I didn’t see him.”

  The man took back his flask. And upended it, although it couldn’t have helped. But perhaps he found the routine comforting, because he drained it dry.

  “Turns out the ‘singers’ were vampires trying to draw a large enough audience to make it worth their while,” he said, wiping his mouth. “When they decided enough of us had shown up, they attacked. No one made it out alive.”

  It was so matter-of-fact, so utterly without emotion, that it took Mircea a moment to realize what he’d said.

  “They . . . drained all of you? I didn’t think that was permitted.”

  The man smiled humorlessly. “What is permitted is what anyone can get away with. It was probably some challenge to the local master, or some act of revenge or—I don’t know. I didn’t stay around to find out. I woke up dizzy and bloody, in a room full of bodies, some dead, some dying. And stumbled outside, trying to get home, only to collapse in the forest before I’d gone twenty yards.”

  “I’m surprised you survived at all.” Mircea didn’t have experience himself, but from what he understood, that wasn’t how vampires were made.

  “I hadn’t. I just didn’t know it, then. One of those bastards had turned me by accident, before passing out in a blood stupor. They torched the place after I left; I guess they realized how careless they’d been. But by then, I’d fallen into a gulley filled with decaying leaves, under a copse of trees. Dark enough, anyway.” He grimaced.

  “And three days later, you woke up and found your world had changed,” Mircea said quietly.

  “No. Three days later, I woke up covered in bog slime and wondering what the hell,” the man said dryly. “It was after I finally struggled home and attacked my own wife that I realized I was in trouble. I tore myself away and fled, pursued by a pack of dogs, and then by a party of townspeople looking for the murderers. I finally got away only to almost starve to death before I realized I could feed without killing someone.”

  Mircea shuddered slightly, because his own experience hadn’t been so different. He’d been cursed with his affliction, not made by some careless stranger, but did it matter? They’d both ended up the same way: with no past, and no future.

  “We’re all the same, here,” Bezio told him, as if reading his thoughts. “You heard Jerome’s story already—just one too many babies in a household where the master was killed. Nobody wanted him, so out he went.” He shrugged. “Sanuito, now, he’s a little different—”

  “Sanuito?”

  Bezio flicked a thumb behind his front teeth.

  Oh, that one.

  “His master just wanted to win a bet. He had an acquaintance in one of the local Were families, in the countryside near here. They got to talking in their cups one night, boasting about how one was stronger than the other. Finally decided to find out.”

  “Find out?”

  “You know, get a human. See who wins.”

  “See who . . .” Mircea looked at him, uncomprehending. Or hoping he was.

  “They both bit him,” Bezio spelled it out. “But it didn’t resolve their bet. The vamp forgot—it takes three days for us to turn. And in the meantime, the Were’s bite was weakening Sanuito. And Changing a sick or weakened person don’t make for a strong vamp. In the end, the master won his bet, but ended up with a useless servant.”

  “Who he then turned out to die on his own,” Mircea said, his fist clenching.

  “Who he then turned out to die on his own,” Bezio agreed. “Only, he didn’t die. He made it here instead. Which brings me back to my original question. Why do you think this city is allowed to exist? Why do you think the senate mandated it as an open port?”

  Mircea didn’t answer. He couldn’t see a reason. Obviously, the lives of him and others like him counted for nothing, for less than nothing, since they were treated as little more than vermin. Why bother to have a safe port for them?

  “One man’s trash is another’s treasure,” Bezio said. “We’re here because they wanted to funnel all the rejects—those smart enough or lucky enough to make it this far, anyway—into one place. Where they could look ’em over like a buyer at a secondhand market stall. Those with talent get picked up sooner or later. Those without . . .” He shrugged.

  “But we were picked up.”

  “We were lucky. I was a blacksmith; Jerome an errand boy; Sanuito a farmer. Not highly sought-after skill sets among the undead. But we ended up in a cell with you, and you had something the mistress wanted.”

  “Yes,” Mircea said bitterly. “Something to tempt the jaded palates of a debauched court tired of pretty boys—”

  “That’s something, isn’t it?” Bezio asked, undisturbed.

  “No, it isn’t! I wasn’t a farmer, Bezio. I was a warrior! I was a prince!”

  “And now you’re a whore, and damned lucky to be one. We’re all damned lucky—”

  “The fuck we are,” Mircea said savagely, before breaking off and starting away.

  Only to find himself slammed against the wall again, this time with a fist around his neck. He knew a dozen ways to break that particular hold, but he didn’t use any of them. Because one look into the face staring into his stopped him cold.

  If he’d thought Bezio without emotion, he was learning better now.

  “You think you’re so different from us, because you lost a palace? A kingdom?” Dark eyes blazed down into his. “Son, I lost a kingdom, too. So did every man here. Maybe our kingdoms were smaller, just a house we built with our own two hands, a wife we loved, a child. But do you think they meant any less? Do you think we mourn their loss one bit less than you?

  “My wife. My Jacopa. Gone, as if she’d died that day. My girls, Sonia and Mea—gone. I’ll never see any of them again, never see the town I grew up in, the forge I helped my father build, the—”

  He broke off, face full of fury, eyes brimming with tears. And Mircea was suddenly, deeply ashamed.

  Because Bezio was right—he had thought he’d lost more.

  It had been instilled in him from birth. Not the prevailing belief that God gave those in power the right to rule; his father, the bastard son who made good through force of arms and political maneuvering, knew better than that. But rather that those strong enough to rule had a value others did not. That they had to survive, they had to prevail, regardless of the cost. For without them, their lands would be undefended and their people nothing but prey.

  And if his life had more value, surely his death did as well?

  But after almost two years of seeing life—and death—from a different perspective, Mircea wondered.

  Did a farmer who lost everything to a passing army care whose symbol was on the banners? Did he comfort himself with the thought that his carefully tended crops would aide a battle h
undreds of miles away, the end result of which might not change his life one iota? In the harsh bleakness of winter, did he praise the names of the leaders who had decided that they, and their ambitions, required letting his children starve?

  What, Mircea wondered now, had they been fighting for? Would a Turkish overlord have treated the people worse than they had? Had they really made things better, as he’d always been told, or merely better for them?

  And had he really suffered any more than this man, who had also lost everything?

  “My life ended the day I Changed, just as much as yours did,” Bezio told him quietly. “I was just too stubborn to accept it. To lie down like the corpse I was. I came here instead, searching for some kind of meaning in all this. For some kind of sign. There had to be a reason, I thought. It couldn’t just be random. It couldn’t just be for nothing.”

  “You lit candles in churches, to saints who didn’t hear,” Mircea murmured, because he knew. He’d haunted them, too.

  “Prayed, swore, grieved, drank,” Bezio agreed. “God, I drank! And you’re right, it didn’t help. Eventually, I tried the other way, thought if heaven had damned me, might as well enjoy it.”

  “But you didn’t,” Mircea said. Just like alcohol, the old pleasures were dust and ashes now. Just more reminders of what he’d lost, what he’d never have again.

  “No, I didn’t. By the time the Watch picked me up, I was lying in an alley in a blood-soaked haze, having attacked half a dozen people and in full view of dozens more. I was practically begging to be staked and thrown out on the tide, what was left of me. And I don’t think I’d have cared.”

  Mircea didn’t doubt it. It was the first impression he’d had of the man. Someone who was tired of it all, who was ready for it to end. To finally be that corpse in reality.

  But in less than a day, a transformation had taken place that he wouldn’t have believed if he hadn’t seen it. If he hadn’t been staring at a face full of passion and grief and fury and life. “What changed?”

  “Some noble sprout got chucked into the lock up with me,” Bezio said dryly. “And indignant—highly indignant, mind you—of his treatment. Practically begging for some humbling, which he promptly got. Nothing surprising there.

  “Not until he took us with him.”

  The man’s face transformed again, going soft with wonder. They had such expressive faces, these Italians, so full of every emotion in their passionate natures. No wonder their artists are so great, Mircea thought. All they have to do is look around them for inspiration. It was written in every face, in every line. If a sculptor carved this one, it might be entitled “man looking at saint.”

  It unnerved him.

  Bezio didn’t care. “You stuck out your neck for people you’d just met, people who would have drained you dry for whatever scraps of stolen life you had floating around your veins, people who had just tried to do that very thing! You had no reason to take us with you. No reason to jeopardize what might be your only chance at a way out. And you knew it was likely to be the only one—we’d just told you!”

  “Martina wanted me badly,” Mircea explained. “She was willing to deal—”

  “That doesn’t explain why you saved us.”

  “Is that what you followed me to ask?”

  Bezio looked exasperated. “I followed you for the reason I said—to return the favor! To keep you from doing something stupid. But also because . . .” He broke off with a curse.

  He glared at Mircea for a moment, before continuing.

  “Because I’d convinced myself that I’d stumbled into a world of utter selfishness. Where there were no emotions I understood, or wanted to understand. Where pride and profit were served by bitterness and jealousy and there was nothing for a man like me.

  “But then you showed up, full of bluster and outraged dignity and a different kind of pride. And calmly told a master what you would and wouldn’t do. And got away with it. Because she saw the same thing I did—that you weren’t going to give in unless she did. She could leave you there, or kill you, or rant and rave. But if she wanted your cooperation, she had to give in first. And she did.” He broke off, laughing. “She did!”

  “And now I’m here,” Mircea reminded him dryly. Since apparently, the man didn’t understand anything at all. “I’m under her control—”

  “Are you? Looks to me like you’re up and leaving her control. That you just decided you didn’t want to be here anymore, so you’re off.” Bezio shook his head in amazement.

  “I can’t be here—”

  “Of course you can. You beat her once, and frankly, I wouldn’t bet money on you not doing it again. But not now.”

  “It has to be now! She’ll bind me—”

  “She won’t. I asked one of the servants this morning, wanting to know what to expect. He laughed at the idea.”

  “What? That doesn’t make sense—”

  “And neither does this!” Bezio said, as the noise level from outside the alley reached a crescendo.

  Mircea looked to the street, where a cheering crowd had blocked the alley’s mouth on that end, and where what looked like flower petals were now wafting down from the surrounding rooftops. The Watch was there; he knew it, even if he couldn’t see them. But if their attention was on the crowd . . .

  “They’re all over town,” Bezio said, breaking into his thoughts. “And on the mainland, and on the roads, picking up everyone who looks even a little suspicious. This is convocation—they’re not going to take chances. But tough it out for three weeks, and when they move on, you can, too. Until then, come back with me.”

  Mircea hesitated, torn between the desire for freedom and the desire not to be stupid. He had to get away, but the Watch had caught him flat-footed and he was completely unprepared. And he would only get one chance at this. If he screwed it up, if he landed back in that cold cell . . . he might well never leave it.

  But damn, he wanted to try.

  “Don’t be a fool!” Bezio said, yelling to be heard over the crescendo of sound outside. “Come back with me. I promise, you won’t regret it!”

  Chapter Five

  “Auughhhh!” Bezio screamed, looking down at his chest.

  “The Venetian ideal is hairless,” a sadist named Marte said, holding a strip of cloth covered in pine resin—and a good deal of Bezio’s chest hair.

  “Regretting it yet?” Mircea asked evilly, as Bezio stared in disbelief at the swath of skin that had just been uncovered.

  It was a day since the fiend of a tailor had left, but the transformation continued. Albeit in another venue. The beautification routine was taking place in a large, burnt-out edifice across the small canal behind the house and down a little way.

  The once-elegant structure had been built by a sugar merchant, one of Martina’s former clients, who had designed it as a home and warehouse combined. Not a great idea, as it turned out, since the sugar had been stored in the attic. And, when a fire started in the house, it had melted and dripped down, spreading the flames to the point that it gutted the whole interior.

  The sugar merchant died before he could rebuild, leaving Martina her current house and a sum of money in his will, the latter of which she’d used to snap up the decaying hulk behind her.

  Mircea assumed she had some sort of long-term plans for it, but for now, weeds were growing in what had been the elegant atrium, the plaster walls were flaking off in chunks, and half the roof was open to the sky. Only a few rooms were still usable, including the one they were in, which had been an office. It was now filled with shelves of strange-smelling ingredients and tables of innocuous-looking implements that Mircea didn’t trust at all.

  Like the massive pile of cloth strips lying innocently on the table between him and Bezio.

  Mircea looked at them, and then at the acreage left to go, most of which was on display since they were “dressed?
?? in small linen towels. Which, in Bezio’s case, showed off a vast forest of hair on his chest, back, legs, and thighs. Most of which was doomed, if Marte had her way.

  “You—you can’t mean to do it all like that,” Bezio said, his eyes flickering from her to the pile.

  Marte smiled.

  She was a petite brunette Mircea would have described as cute rather than beautiful. She had dimples and merrily bouncing ringlets and tinsel earrings that fascinated him as he’d thought that type of jewelry was only worn by gypsies and strange foreign traders. But they suited her, shimmering whenever she moved, which was often since she hardly ever slowed down. But she was unfailingly good tempered—if a bit overly enthusiastic about the waxing.

  As she demonstrated when her eyes lit up at Bezio’s comment.

  “Oh, no. We can try other things if you like.”

  “What other things?”

  “Well, let’s see. There’s the Egyptian way, with beeswax, sugar, and lemon—”

  “Does that involve any yanking?” Bezio asked warily.

  “Of course. You make a paste that is slathered on the skin, and then cloth strips are pressed into it, which removes the hair when pulled off.”

  “So the same thing we’re already doing?” he demanded.

  “Oh, no. The recipe is quite different.”

  “Is there a method that doesn’t call for removing most of my skin along with the damned hair?”

  Marte thought about it. “Well, the Romans used nut shells back in the empire . . .”

  “Nut shells?” Bezio looked faintly encouraged. “That doesn’t sound so bad.”

  “Oh, it’s a really interesting process,” Marte enthused. “You heat the shells red hot and then singe off the hair—”

  “Singe?”

  “—but, of course, if your hand slips you can burn yourself rather badly. Which can be, er, unfortunate, considering our flammability—”

  “Anything else?” Bezio asked, sounding strangled.

  “Lots of things. We usually use bat’s blood or tweezers for eyebrows,” she said, sliding a look Mircea’s way.