Masks

Chapter Twenty-Six

“You survived.” Mircea looked up to see Bezio’s head sticking out of the salon on the ground floor, where a wedge of candlelight was flooding the area in front of the stairs. He appeared surprised.

He motioned Mircea into the room, where he found Paulo, Jerome, and Danieli passing a decanter around the table. Mircea drew up a stool and joined them. The place was almost frighteningly clean, to the point that he hesitated to put his elbows on the gleaming surface of the table, for fear they might soil it.

But he was tired enough that he did it, anyway.

“All right, that’s one point established,” Danieli said. “And he has all his limbs, so that’s number two. Now for the big one—”

“Don’t,” Bezio said, looking at Mircea’s face. “I’ll concede.”

He tossed a silver soldino into the air, and Danieli caught it without looking up from his drink. It vanished into his purse, but he wasn’t to be deterred. “So how was she?” he demanded.

“She’s upset.” Mircea took a sip of wine. And judging by the smell, was happy he couldn’t taste it. “What would you expect?”

“No, I mean, how was she?”

Mircea looked up.

“Danieli—” Paulo said.

“Oh, like you don’t want to know. She must command those kinds of fees for some reason, and it’s not like the rest of us have ever gotten close enough for a taste—”

“And you never will,” Paulo assured him.

“—except for the man who just spent an hour with the most expensive whore in Venice. So, we all want to know: how was she?” he asked again, with an exaggerated leer.

Which turned to an expression of surprise when his back hit the nearest wall, hard enough to knock a pot off its nail.

“Hey! What are you—” The voice cut off abruptly.

Mircea made a note: Collapsing a windpipe seemed to be a good way to shut someone up.

Someone else appeared at his shoulder, not touching him, but close enough that Mircea could feel the warmth through his wet clothes. “His comment was tasteless and crude,” Bezio’s voice said softly. “But he was rattled. We all are.”

Mircea turned his head. “I suppose you want me to let him go.”

“It’ll be hard to drink your wine otherwise.”

“It’s lousy wine.”

Bezio’s lips quirked. “True. But your arm will get tired eventually.”

That was also true. In fact, it was already starting to shake slightly. Mircea scowled and let the vamp go.

And immediately regretted it.

“You’re defending her honor?” Danieli spat, scrambling up from the floor. “She’s a whore. For that matter, so are you! What the hell—”

Of course, Mircea thought, knocking someone through a door worked pretty well, too.

He looked at Bezio, who was massaging his hand ruefully. “That hurt.”

Considering the blacksmith’s muscles under the thin linen shirt, Mircea thought it might have hurt Danieli more.

Good.

He sat back down.

Paulo sighed, looking at the ruined door to the hallway. He pulled out the small book he used to record their extravagance and made a note. Mircea waited for the inevitable, but tonight seemed determined to break all the rules.

“You aren’t going to tell me off?” he asked, after Paulo finished and put the book away.

The blond drank the lousy wine. “No.”

“Why?”

“Because Bezio was right. It was crude. And because it’s Auria. If you hadn’t done it, I would have.”

Bezio sat back down. “I always thought you had a soft spot for her.”

“She’s high-strung, avaricious, pushy, and conniving.” Paulo shrugged. “And a pretty good person, once you get past the acerbic tongue.”

“I heard her master was the worst,” Jerome said, topping up his glass.

Paulo frowned. “Where did you hear that?”

“From her. I was telling her about mine, and how his masters threw me out after he died—”

“I thought they reluctantly let you go,” Bezio said, lifting an eyebrow.

Jerome rolled his eyes. “Oh, who are we kidding? I wasn’t strong enough or smart enough or whatever enough, so I got the boot.”

“And you had this epiphany when?”

Jerome shrugged. “I guess I’ve always known it, but I didn’t want to admit it.”

“Why? It’s no reflection on you—”

“Isn’t it?”

“No,” Bezio said staunchly. “If they couldn’t see quality, that’s their loss.”

Jerome smiled at him. “You’re going to be proposing next.”

“You’re too ugly.”

“Coming from the man the girls call ‘the great bear’?”

“The great bear?” Bezio thought it over. “I like it.”

“You would. Anyway, that wasn’t why.” He passed the decanter around. “I didn’t want to admit it because . . . well, then you have to do things, don’t you?”

“Things?”

Jerome waved a hand around. “Life things. Once you admit the real situation you’re in, then you have to deal with it, to build a new life. Somehow. And that’s a daunting prospect when you’re all on your own and nobody gives a damn and you’re about as powerless as a kitten surrounded by snarling dogs—”

“Not dealing with it doesn’t change that, though,” Bezio pointed out.

“No, but it makes you feel better. More in control. As long as I kept telling myself that this whole thing was just temporary, that my old family was coming to get me any day, that they’d realize their mistake once some of them got settled and reconsider . . . well, it helped me get up in the morning. Or, you know, our morning.”

“You do what you have to do,” Bezio said philosophically.

Mircea didn’t say anything. But it never ceased to amaze him how he always assumed that his situation was unique. That no one else knew his pain, understood his loss. And yet, he continually had evidence of the contrary.

All of them had suffered, in one way or another. All of them had known rejection, the loss of home, family, the ruin of the life they’d planned to have. Just like the hundreds of unwanted vampires that somehow found their way to Venice every year, most of whom would end up ashes on the tide.

Like Sanuito.

“Anyway,” Jerome continued. “Auria told me that her master used to pick up a bunch of people at a time, Change them, and then wait to see who got strongest the fastest. Then he’d ditch the rest and do it again.”

“Ditch?” Mircea asked.

Jerome ran a finger across his throat. “They’d dig a big hole in the forest somewhere, and toss ’em in once they were dead. Auria said she got away by luck. The stake missed her heart, and the cut on her throat wasn’t deep enough to keep her from feeding.”

“Feeding . . . on what?” Bezio asked warily.

“On the cooling corpses they threw in around her—”

“God!” Bezio got up from the table abruptly. Only to realize he didn’t have anywhere to go and sat back down.

Jerome nodded. “That’s what I said. But there was no other way, and she didn’t want to die. So she fed until she was strong enough to claw her way out.” He took a drink. “If I was Danieli, I’d think twice about crossing her.”

“God,” Bezio said again, and drained his glass.

Mircea leaned across the table. “Her master killed his own family? For nothing?”

Jerome shook his head. “Auria said he didn’t consider them family if they were weak. He was trying to build up his strength—he had some kind of quarrel with another vampire, and needed soldiers.”

“But he could have sold the others on, to someone else—”

“Yes, only nobody wants baby vamps, do they? We found that out in the condottiere’s cells. Anyone can make a baby—any master, that is. So they don’t have much value. He thought it easier to just bury the problem.”

Literally, Mircea thought, his hand clenching on his glass.

“Maybe he thought he’d get in trouble,” Bezio said. “Technically, masters are responsible for the vamps they make—”

“Like that’s ever enforced,” Paulo said darkly.

“Well, it damned well ought to be! People like that should be made to—”

“People like that shouldn’t be masters at all,” Mircea rasped. “If they’re that irresponsible, they shouldn’t be anything.”

“Well, yes,” Bezio said, looking a little startled. “But you can’t just go around killing off all the bad masters. You wouldn’t have anybody left!”

“Of course you would. Jerome’s master died, and his senior servants took over his property and his territory. The same would be true anywhere.”

“Well, yes, maybe. But you’re talking a lot of deaths. I sometimes think there’s more bad masters than good ones. And killing off that many would cause, well, chaos—”

“For a while,” Mircea agreed. “But after, you would have a group of people you could work with.”

Bezio looked at him strangely. “Did anybody ever tell you, you’re kind of scary?”

“You have to be when dealing with creatures that powerful. Make it clear enough times that the penalties are severe and will be enforced, and soon you won’t have a problem.”

“But for that you need somebody at the top who gives a damn. And from what I hear, the current consul likes things as they are.”

“Your senator has tried to change things,” Paulo put in suddenly, looking at Mircea. “In fact, she’s probably the reason they haven’t deteriorated any further. But then whoever she’s opposing just goes running to the top, and fawns and flatters until the consul tells her to back off.”

“Then perhaps he needs to go, too,” Mircea said, thinking of the lives lost for nothing, except a madman’s caprice.

“All right, maybe we should change the subject,” Bezio said, looking worried.

“Maybe that’s what too many people do—”

“Maybe they like living.”

“You call this is living? What happened to Auria—”

“She survived—”

“And how many didn’t?”

“I know one who’s trying his best to add to that number,” Bezio said, scowling. “You’re not a prince anymore, Mircea. And people like us don’t have any say in what happens at those levels.”

Mircea sat back, seething. Bezio was right; he knew he was. But Auria was right, too. You didn’t just stop being who you were because of the Change. It had altered his body, yes, but in his mind . . . he was still the same person he’d always been. One born to power and trained in its uses—and its pitfalls. And he hated, hated, seeing it used to destroy lives while he sat back and did nothing.

“There’s nothing you can do,” Bezio repeated strongly. “Things . . . will sort themselves out.”

Not with the same creature on the throne who had caused the problem, Mircea thought, but didn’t say.

“So, what does everyone think happened to Sanuito?” Jerome asked, as Mircea tried to blink the red haze in front of his eyes away.

It didn’t work.

It took him a second to realize the reason for that. And by then Paulo was on his feet, knocking over his chair and staring at the window, where the ghostly moonlight filtering in off the canal had been replaced by a reddish haze. As if dawn had come early.

Only dawn didn’t smell of smoke and send feet running into the hallway.

Paulo flung open the door to a hall already filled with panicked humans and wild-eyed vampires. “What—” Mircea began.

And then stopped because he was talking to himself. Everybody else had gone, running through the door fast enough that it almost looked like they disappeared. But he could see them in the crowd ahead as he ran after them, down the remainder of the short hall, through the pantry, and into the kitchen. Which looked like an inferno. Bloody light was everywhere, spilling through the windows, staining the floor, and reflecting off the pots the cook kept shined to a high gloss. It flooded through the doorway when someone flung it open, along with a wall of heat and the smell of burning wood.

And the sight of the sugar house, engulfed in flames, going up like a great candle.

Or like the biggest firework of them all.