Masks

Chapter Eighteen

A few minutes later, Mircea was lying on the slope of the roof, staring up at the vast array of stars overhead. Marte had broken out the wine as soon as the broadcast ended, and everyone else had seemed ready to hunker down for a good gossip. Or a good sketch in the case of some of the girls, who had wanted to get the dresses down while they were fresh in their minds.

“Life goes on,” Paulo had said cynically, watching them. Before he left with the cook, to inform the servants that they’d be dining alone tonight. It appeared that everyone else had lost their appetites.

And so had their clients, apparently. A few long-term patrons would be seen individually later on, but the majority of the clientele had found other things to do tonight. Perhaps tomorrow, perhaps the next day, business would resume as usual. In fact, Marte had said that she expected a rush of people eager to reaffirm their status among the living in the most primal way possible. But for tonight, the house was as quiet as it ever became.

Although not nearly enough for Mircea.

He had declined the wine party, to cries of disappointment from people eager to pick his brain for juicy details. He didn’t have any details—they’d just seen more than he had—and he’d needed to get away. From the stuffy, too full room, from the babble of conversation that had immediately broken out, and from the questions that swirled in his mind.

Although the latter hadn’t proven possible.

He had a thousand questions, but not about the orange team’s blunder, which seemed to be what everyone else wanted to discuss. Despotism was apparently one of those things that outlived the grave, and while the attack had been shocking, it had not been all that surprising. At least, not to him.

Perhaps the victors had been caught up in the moment. Perhaps they hadn’t thought about how it would look. But ripping down the banner of a five-thousand-year-old madman with delusions of godhood in favor of your own was not a healthy choice, any way you looked at it.

No, it was other questions that were bothering Mircea. One in particular that wouldn’t leave him alone, even though there wasn’t a damned thing he could do about it. But his brain didn’t seem to know that.

And his brain wanted to know: Why had the consul gone after his own child?

And he had gone after her—there was no doubt of that. Perhaps he had intended to pass it off afterwards as a mistake, something done in the heat of the moment, a single bolt gone wild. But it hadn’t been a mistake. Not unless Mircea was supposed to believe that it just happened to take place in the instant when she was most distracted, in the one moment when anyone would be least likely to be on guard?

Not to mention that he’d seen the accuracy of the creature’s other blows. He’d picked off single vampires under the water a third of a mile away. He could control his gift with frightening precision.

And he had deliberately sent it against her.

But why? There had been no provocation on her part that Mircea had noticed. Even if her master’s overweening pride demanded that she be on hand to witness the ceremony, it hadn’t begun yet. And in the end, there had been no ceremony, had there?

By the time he was finished, there had been no victors left to crown.

In any case, if her presence was expected, Mircea doubted she would have been lingering on the terrace with him. They’d had all day for a dalliance. There had been no reason for it to take place then unless she assumed she was free to do as she liked.

No, she hadn’t provoked it. And there had been no fleeing orange team members on the rooftop. So why the attack?

The only time he had seen the two of them together had been at the Rialto, when she’d helped to curtail the consul’s idea of fun. But surely, he wouldn’t kill her for that? For chasing off a few street urchins?

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 passionately. “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.