Masks

  “Auria?”

  “—and Bianca paints. We entertain dignitaries, visiting sultans, even senators. Possibly even the consul himself!”

  “Soooo, we’re a high class brothel,” Jerome reasoned.

  “Gahhh!” Paulo tore a page out of his book and thrust it into Mircea’s hands. “You and Wheezer there get this half of the list; I’ll tend to the rest. We’ll meet back here after!”

  He left at what would have been a run, if he hadn’t been upholding the dignity of the house. Leaving Mircea standing in the street, staring after him. And wondering what he was missing.

  Jerome reached for the list. “Sugar, spices . . . two large, gilded marzipan cakes? At this hour?”

  Mircea didn’t say anything. But his eyes swept the area, looking for the reason why a couple of newly purchased slaves had just been left to their own devices. And sure enough, he found it.

  The Watch was everywhere.

  Lounging beside a nearby barbershop, laughing at the bawdy story a local man was telling. Walking casually down the street, the light from a late-closing shop spangling their bright silver breastplates and green silks. Standing in solitary, apparently contemplative thought, at the end of a dock.

  That alone wasn’t surprising. The hours after dark but before the wine bell sounded was the busiest time of day for his kind. At the moment, there were still hundreds of people in the streets, finishing their shopping, on their way to meet friends for dinner, or heading for the taverns after a hard day’s work. Nightfall seemingly meant nothing to the Venetians, who defied it with the torches affixed to buildings, the lamps on passing gondolas, and the firelight spilling out of doorways and across the faces of the vampires who were suddenly everywhere, mixing with the crowd, sizing up the population, making their choices.

  The Watch was on hand to make sure they kept to the rules. Feed but don’t kill, wipe memories properly, take any duels somewhere they won’t be seen by impressionable humans. Who tended to remember things like people scaling the sides of buildings or healing almost instantaneously or somersaulting over their opponents’ heads.

  But it seemed to Mircea that there were more of them than usual tonight.

  A lot more.

  Or maybe he was just noticing them more now. As a freeman, the Watch had been an irritation, quick to give him grief or to bleed him dry for drinking money. But now they felt more like jailors, hemming him in, making his skin tight, making him want to—

  “Mircea? Are you coming?” He looked around to find Jerome standing in the road, one hand on the little cart and one on the list, looking at him impatiently. “We need to hurry if we’re going to get everything.”

  Mircea nodded, belatedly noticing the signs of a rapidly closing street. A flower seller hurried past with a few wilted carnations in a basket. A secondhand shop with stained hosen flapping from the rafters and a huge display of carnival masks shut for the night, the heavy wooden shutters over the front making a thick thunk, thunk that echoed down the street. Even a lame beggar decided the day was done and got up, carting his rug and bowl off to the nearest tavern.

  “We’re not going to get all this,” Mircea said, reading the list over Jerome’s shoulder.

  “Sure we are,” Jerome said, ever the optimist. “An apothecary will have the sugar and the spices. And the candies and possibly the cakes. In fact, a decent apothecary ought to have most of this stuff.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I used to be one. Well, apprenticed anyway,” he amended, as they started off. “It’s how I met my master. He came in one day and I helped him. I guess I helped him too good, because the next night, he came back for me!”

  Jerome kept talking, even raising his voice to be heard over the bump, bump, bump of cart wheels over brick pavers. But Mircea wasn’t listening. He was more interested in something else.

  Like the fact that, the more he looked, the more members of the Watch he saw.

  They were everywhere: on rooftops, crouching low against chimneys; in boats in the water, half hidden under the gondolas’ awnings; on porticoes, almost invisible in the shadows. And many of them were wearing blackened breastplates, instead of the usual highly polished silver, to better blend in with the night. He would have taken them for thieves scouting the area, but for the distinctive Medusa-head design stamped in relief on the front.

  Mircea swallowed. Half the guards in the city had to be here tonight. But why?

  Nothing unusual was happening that he could see. He spied a probably unlicensed prostitute negotiating with a customer, a cutpurse trailing a gawking tourist, and a shop selling imported carpets that remained open in defiance of the law, because the local militia could be bribed to look the other way this time of year. But nothing to attract the interest of the Watch.

  They didn’t concern themselves with petty human affairs. They were there for the vampires. Who also seemed to be congregating in greater and greater numbers—

  “Are you listening to me?”

  Mircea looked down to find Jerome frowning at him. “Of course.”

  “You looked like you were thinking about something else.”

  “I was just . . . wondering what a vampire needed with an apothecary.”

  The smaller vampire brightened. “I was just coming to that. He wanted a poison remedy, actually. Theriac.”

  “Theriac?”

  “You know, Venice treacle?”

  Mircea didn’t know, a fact that seemed to shock Jerome. “Oh, come on! It’s only the most famous antidote in the history of . . . well, antidotes. They say the king who invented it took so much of the stuff while he was experimenting, that when he actually tried to kill himself years later, he couldn’t find a poison that would do the trick! Had to have some soldier run him through.”

  Mircea frowned. “Are you talking about Mithridatum?”

  “Yes! Well, sort of,” Jerome amended. “Mithridates king of Pontus came up with the first recipe, which was later discovered by Pompey and carried to Rome. But we’ve been improving on it ever since. Apothecaries, I mean. Venice has its own version with more than sixty ingredients. It’s very

  expensive—”

  “So is the cure hawked by the Spaniard down by the pier,” Mircea pointed out. “But he’ll cut you a deal if you linger until closing.”

  “He—” Jerome puffed up. “That’s not the same thing! That man is a charlatan!”

  “Really?” Mircea asked, going back to his pastime of watching the Watchers.

  “Yes! He gets up on his stupid table, has his assistant drum up a crowd, and then he sticks his hand in a vat of boiling oil—”

  “A good trick.”

  “A trick is exactly what it is. I always had my suspicions, but after I became a vampire, I went back to see his little show again. With our sense of smell, it was obvious how he did it.”

  “Oh?”

  Jerome nodded vigorously. “He squeezes the juice of a lemon into a pan and then pours oil on top. Since oil is lighter than lemon juice, it stays there—and insures that nobody notices the deception. Then he puts the pan on the fire and bubbles from the lemon juice start coming through the oil, making it look like the oil is boiling like crazy.”

  “Ingenious.”

  “So he can stick his finger or even his whole hand into the pan, with no problem. And if anybody doubts him, well, he just argues with them for a minute or so, until the lemon has all evaporated. And then he invites them up—to stick their hand in a now genuinely boiling pan of hot oil! And once everyone’s convinced, he proceeds to sell them written prayers for protection from burns. And this—this is where it gets good. If they come back to complain that the darned things don’t work, because of course they don’t, he just implies that they must lack faith!”

  “The cad.”

  Jerome’s gray eyes narrowed. “Are you making fun o
f me?”

  “No. But you must admit, there’s no difference between a fraud being perpetrated by a charlatan in the square and one being sold out of an apothecary shop.”

  “Except that Theriac isn’t a fraud. It really works—”

  “And did it work for your master?”

  Jerome scowled. “No. But that isn’t—that was different.”

  “How so?”

  “Theriac works best as a preventative—you’re supposed to take some everyday. Or at the least, shortly after you’re poisoned. But my master was on a trip, away from most of the family. And by the time he admitted he was in trouble . . . well, he came to me too late, is all. I did everything I could, but strong as he was, it just took him right out.”

  “I’m sorry,” Mircea said, because Jerome looked genuinely upset.

  “It’s fine,” the younger vampire turned away slightly. “I don’t know why I’m so—that is, I barely knew him. And he left me like this,” he gestured around, Mircea assumed at some abstract concept of vampireness. “But it isn’t like I had much to leave behind, and you know how it is with masters . . .”

  “No. I don’t.” At Jerome’s look, Mircea elaborated—briefly. “I was cursed.”

  “You were—oh,” his eyes went round. “You’re like the mistress then.”

  “Martina?”

  Jerome nodded. “We were talking about masters the other day, and Auria said something weird. But I guess that’s what she meant, huh?”

  “What she meant?”

  “Yes. She said Martina made herself.”

  Chapter Seven

  “Oh, you have got to be—no!” Paulo said furiously, looking like he’d like to stomp his elegant foot against the stones. But instead, he had to use it to jump under a nearby portico, as what looked like every vampire in Venice came stampeding their way.

  Mircea and Jerome followed, barely managing to save their cart of expensive stuff from being crushed under the fanged flood.

  “What’s happening?” Jerome asked breathlessly, as they flattened themselves against the wall.

  Mircea was wondering the same thing. They’d just finished their shopping and met back up with Paulo, under a long portico near the Rialto Bridge. Only to find that, instead of thinning with the lateness of the hour, the crowd had substantially increased. And that was before a wall of people had come rushing at them like the tide coming in.

  No, not people, Mircea corrected, feeling slightly over awed. Vampires. Hundreds, maybe thousands of them, more than he’d ever seen in one place at one time.

  That would have been eerie enough, all on its own. But the crowd was also totally silent, the only sounds coming from the creak-creak of the great wooden bridge as they passed over it, and the quiet tread of hundreds of soft-soled shoes. And the startled cries of the humans still about at this hour, who clearly had no idea what was happening.

  Neither did the Watch, who seemed a little nonplussed by it themselves. As if this wasn’t quite what they’d been expecting. Mircea saw one on a nearby rooftop staring intently at another in the street, as if some sort of silent communication was going on. But then he shrugged and crouched back down by his chimney, as if admitting defeat.

  “Some stupid senate thing, no doubt,” Paulo said irritably. “You take your life in your hands trying to go anywhere these days.”

  Torchlight from the tapers held by some members of the crowd flickered against the columns of the portico, making shadows run on the bricks behind them. But in between the bursts of light, Mircea could see that the crowd extended up the street and across the massive bridge that unified the two halves of Venice. And then disappeared behind some buildings on the other side with no sign of slimming.

  “We might be here a while,” he noted.

  Paulo apparently decided the same, because he made another sound of disgust and knelt by the side of their overstuffed cart. “What did you get?” he asked, trying to rearrange their purchase so that he could fit his in as well.

  “Most of the list,” Mircea told him, still staring at the almost silent throng.

  “We had to settle for pine nut biscuits instead of cake,” Jerome said. “But there was a good variety of candies—”

  “What kind?”

  He knelt by the cart, sorting through a dozen large paper spills. “Sugar-coated almonds. Candied oranges, limes, and tamarinds. Comfits of ginger, cinnamon, and coriander. Dried fruit jellies. Marzipan. Nougat.”

  “Good quality?”

  “We went to three different shops to make sure. Try some.”

  “For what?” Paulo asked. “I can’t taste them.”

  “You can’t—” Jerome blinked.

  “You’re not a master?” Mircea asked.

  Paulo looked up, intermittent torchlight haloing his blond head. “Of course not. Where did you get that idea?”

  “I thought so, too,” Jerome put in.

  “Why? I never said—”

  “But you hold a position of authority in Martina’s household,” Mircea pointed out.

  “I’m good at what I do,” Paulo looked slightly offended.

  “Yes, but . . .” Mircea paused, deciding how to phrase things. “Isn’t it more usual for a person’s position to match his power level?”

  As far as he’d been able to tell, everything in vampire society was organized around how powerful you were—or were not, in his case. He’d often thought that was what was wrong with it. Power took the place of morals, of law—of God, for that matter. Everything revolved around whether you could do something, instead of whether you should. And no one seemed to have a problem with that.

  Well, no one with the power to change things, at any rate.

  “Normally,” Paulo admitted. “But Martina doesn’t do things that way.”

  “Who is strongest, then?” Jerome asked. “It isn’t Auria?” He looked vaguely appalled at the idea. And then intrigued. Mircea was glad he didn’t know what was going on in that blond head.

  And then it didn’t matter anyway, because Paulo laughed. “She’d like to think so!”

  “Then who is it?” Mircea asked, curious.

  Paulo continued rearranging packages. “I’m . . . not sure.”

  “You’re not sure?” Mircea frowned.

  “Richa has been with her the longest—”

  “The cook?” Jerome asked, in disbelief.

  “I said she’d been here the longest, not that she’s the strongest,” Paulo said.

  “How long have you been with her?” Mircea asked.

  “A little over ten years.”

  “Ten—” Mircea stopped, trying to process that. Ten years in human terms might be considered a long time, but in vampire . . . it was practically an eye blink. But he didn’t ask, because the set of Paulo’s shoulders said that he didn’t want to talk about it.

  Jerome, on the other hand, had no such reservations.

  “What did you do before?”

  Paulo didn’t answer for long enough that Mircea began to think he wouldn’t. But then he wedged the last package into place and stood up. “If you must know, I wasn’t all that different from you.”

  “From who?” Jerome looked around, as if he thought another vampire had snuck up on them. “Than him?” he asked, after a minute, looking at Mircea.

  “Than either one of you!” Paulo snapped.

  “You mean Martina bought you, too?”

  “No! She . . . found me.”

  Jerome scrunched up his face, obviously confused. Possibly because the phrasing made it sound like she’d picked Paulo up off the side of the street, like a stray cat. “Where?”

  “Here!” Paulo looked irritated. “Where do you think? Where do vampires go who aren’t wanted?”

  “You weren’t wanted, either?” Jerome looked as if he couldn’t quite grasp tha
t. He looked the taller vamp up and down. “What’s wrong with you?”

  “Jerome,” Mircea said warningly, but Paulo didn’t explode. Instead, he rolled the huge waxed round of Parmesan cheese he’d purchased over by the wall and sat on it, to more comfortably watch the impromptu parade.

  “Nothing,” he told them. “Except that my mistress Changed me on a whim. My looks appealed to her, and her consort was . . . inattentive. She thought I would be a comfort when he was away attempting to chisel off bits of other vampires’ territories. But when he returned and found me in her bed, it was my bits that were almost chiseled off.”

  Mircea winced, and Jerome moved a protective hand to the front of his hosen.

  “In the end, she convinced him not to stake me, but only on the condition that I go away—immediately. She gave me some money, and safe passage here with some functionaries she was sending to buy jewels for her. And . . . that was it. I found myself on my own after less than a year, in a strange city where I didn’t know the language and didn’t have any friends. I didn’t know what to do.”

  “Sounds familiar,” Mircea muttered.

  “As I said. I don’t know where I’d have ended up, once the last of my gold ran out, but Martina found me. In a tavern, waiting for some of the humans to consume enough that I could get drunk off their blood when I took it. She told me that, if I worked for her, I wouldn’t want to get drunk so badly. That I’d have a future again, and a home and hope. She was right.”

  “And the others?” Jerome asked.

  “They each have their own story, and it’s theirs to tell. But they’re not that different.”

  “You mean that Martina made none of her family?” Mircea asked. He hadn’t been a vampire very long, but that sounded . . . unusual, even to him.

  “I’m saying what I said before—that she does things differently,” Paulo told him. “She says that the idea that everyone needs a master is ridiculous, that it’s perfectly possible to live and thrive without one. Easier, in fact—you make your own rules. If I wanted, I could leave her tomorrow—”