Masks

Chapter Thirty-Five

Things did not improve at dinner.

Mircea had hoped that his time outside would clear his head. And it had—in a way. He found that, if he kept his eyes on his plate and concentrated very deliberately on his stuffed squid, he could just about ignore the colors flickering at the edge of his vision.

The sounds, on the other hand, were a different story.

“—not possible,” someone with a bass voice said. “Not with every master in Venice—”

“And it will be any more possible later?” A woman asked. “He grows in power every year—”

“He doesn’t need any more power,” another man’s voice chimed in. “If he never gained . . . still be millennia ahead of us . . .”

The faint whispers Mircea had heard in the atrium were becoming clearer, fading in and out like voices in a strong wind. But there was no wind. And, as far as everyone else was concerned, there were no voices.

Mircea glanced cautiously to the left, and saw Jerome a few seats down, chatting with a sloe-eyed woman in a flowing gown. She looked like an ancient queen—and might be, for all he knew. But while she wore pearls the size of grapes, she only glowed faintly, with a sweet pink haze that was suffusing the air around Jerome. And putting a silly smile on his face.

He did not, Mircea decided, look like someone hearing phantom voices in his head.

Paulo was on his right, pretending he knew how to use a fork. They were silly things, a strange Venetian affectation that Mircea was surprised the senator had bothered with, but perhaps it was expected. But they only had two prongs, and the beans Paulo was trying to eat were small and kept slipping through the middle.

He finally gave up and started spearing them instead.

He didn’t look like he was hearing things, either.

Neither did anyone else, as far as Mircea could tell. Of course, it was a little hard to be sure out here in the wilds, which didn’t boast the best view. Or the best food—the lady with Jerome kept shooting envious glances at the roast pheasant and suckling pig on the head table, while she made do with pigeons in puff pastry.

Theirs was the last table on the left, in the large U taking up most of the space in the great banquet hall. The senator’s table formed the center of the U, in front of a huge sugar sculpture of three rearing cobras, her personal symbol. The most important guests were seated on her right, with the further someone was away from her, the lower their status.

And their group was about as far as they could get and technically still be in the same room.

Mircea, for one, didn’t mind. In fact, he was grateful they’d been seated here, instead of at the main table on the dais. In his mind, the swirl of power at that end of the room was like staring into the sun—impossible to distinguish anything but bright. And when he opened his eyes, it wasn’t much better, although not because of the light.

But because it was like looking at another age.

On the senator’s immediate right was the man Mircea had been talking to outside. He had a proud, patrician face, more rugged than handsome, with a nose that would have looked good on an ancient coin. And had graced a few, unless Mircea was very much mistaken.

Beside him was a woman in a Grecian gown, looking uncomfortable in one of the rigid, high-backed chairs popular in Venice. Mircea assumed the eating couches of past centuries wouldn’t have all fit, even in a room of this size. But she looked like she wanted one, and maybe a lyre.

There were a number of other men and women on that side of the senator in ancient armor, flowing silks, and a few in more normal clothes, mostly German or French attire. On her left were what appeared to be foreign guests, including the man Mircea had seen on the consul’s terrace. The hawk-bridged nose and sharp eyes were the same, although he’d dressed up for the occasion in a green robe heavily embroidered in gold.

“That’s Hassani, the African consul,” Paulo whispered, seeing the direction of Mircea’s gaze. “Young, ambitious, and ruthless, or so they say. Started out the leader of a group of assassins—”

“Assassins?”

“Hm. And rumor has it, he just returned to old habits a few decades ago, when he engineered the early demise of his own consul. I’m surprised to see him here, frankly. Gossip has it that he and the senator are not on the best of terms.”

“They are enemies?”

“I wouldn’t go that far. But the consul—ours, that is—prefers his palace off in the deserts of Egypt to what he calls the stench of Paris. It works out well for Hassani, who they say has the consul’s ear more than any of his own people do. But it leaves the European Senate leaderless much of the time, and when they do want him to rule on something—”

“He takes his good friend Hassani’s advice,” Mircea finished.

Paulo shot him a surprised look. “Did someone already tell you this?”

“No.”

“Then how—”

“I know politics,” Mircea said shortly. It seemed that ambition was something else that survived the Change.

“In any case, no one was happy when Hassani accompanied the consul to convocation. Not that they don’t usually have guests from other senates here, but . . .”

He let it hang, but Mircea could finish that thought, too.

They didn’t usually have guests who acted more like masters.

Paulo prattled on, happily identifying more famous guests for Mircea. Including a Carthaginian general, an ancient poetess—he’d been right about the lyre, Mircea thought vaguely—and a man with a red beard and a scowl on Hassani’s side of the table.

“He’s always like that,” Paulo dismissed it. “He keeps telling everyone he discovered some vast new land far to the west a few hundred years ago, but nobody believes him. But then on his left, you’ll see—”

He continued gossiping enthusiastically, but Mircea didn’t hear.

Because he was too busy hearing something else.

“—like an idiot! How do you fight a god?” a shrill voice demanded.

“He’s not a god,” the bass voice intoned.

“Close enough—”

“And how do you know that?” A new voice cut in, stronger than the others. Instead of a murmur, it was a bellow, and loud enough that it caused Mircea to drop his fork.

Luckily, Jerome had been doing that in between almost every bite, so nobody noticed.

“How do I know?” The shrill voice reached new octaves. “Did you see what he—”

The voice chopped off abruptly, but the new, louder one picked up the thread. “Did I see him butcher twenty of my vampires, do you mean? Did I see when he took what should have been a day of celebration and drenched it in blood—again? Did I see him make a mockery of his position, and a farce of ours? Is that what you meant?”

“I—didn’t think—”

“Clearly. But I did. And my question stands. How do we know?”

“We grieve for your loss, Sergei,” the bass voice said. “And for yours, Gregor. But the lesson, harsh as it was, was unmistakable. His power remains . . . overwhelming.”

“In the day!” A new voice said, and by the accent, Mircea assumed this was Gregor. “When we are weakest and his strange power is at its height. No one has seen him act in the night in a millennia! What if there is a reason for that?”

“The reason is that no one tests him,” Sergei said.

“You think his power fades?” The bass voice asked.

“Why not?”

“Why not?” the bass voice seemed taken aback. “You know time does not ravage us as it does the humans. They grow weaker as the years pass; we grow stronger. And he—”

“Has passed the point of our knowledge,” Sergei said. “He is old—older than any vampire in memory. We don’t know what rules still apply to him. We cannot know how time treats one of that age when no one knows of another who has reached it!”

“Are we really eternal?” Gregor added. “Or are our lives merely much extended? Perhaps we, too, can grow old and feeble in time.”

“Wind and water can wear away even a mountain,” the bass voice agreed. “Perhaps what you say is true. But even if so, there is no way to know.”

“There is one way.”

There was a hush for a moment, but Mircea didn’t fool himself into thinking that the conversation was over. Or that his strange powers had suddenly disappeared. Because the tension in the air was palpable, to the point that he found himself holding a breath he didn’t need.

“Be careful, Gregor.”

Mircea glanced at the dais, where the senator was chatting casually with the woman on her right. Her body was relaxed, her face unconcerned. It was impossible to tell that she’d been listening to the same conversation he had.

But that voice was unmistakable, as was the authority in it.

But apparently, Gregor didn’t agree.

“We’ve been careful! We’ve been careful for centuries! We scraped and crawled and kissed his shriveled ass—”

“Gregor.”

“No! No, I will have my say! I have kept quiet too long. He took my people, my children—” The voice broke.

“You are in mourning, old friend. This is not the time to act.”

“According to you, it is never time!” Gregor said, as a gray haired man in German dress stood up so quickly, he knocked over his heavy chair. He’d also spoken aloud, something Mircea only realized because the whole room suddenly went deathly silent.

Mircea glanced around to see Jerome blinking, his lady friend looking faint and Paulo frozen with a speared sardine quivering in front of his lips. They looked shocked by the outburst, but also bewildered. As if this had come out of nowhere.

As if they hadn’t been somehow overhearing what was supposed to be a private conversation within the senator’s family.

Mircea didn’t know how he was, either, but it didn’t matter now.

Because if it had been private, it was no longer.

“Sit down, Gregor.” The senator’s voice was soft, but it carried. And while Mircea might not know much about vampire etiquette, he knew a direct order from a superior to a subject when he heard it.

So did Gregor, but he didn’t stop, although tears were running down his face, and into his beard. “I have waited,” he said, his voice trembling. “We have all waited, to see what you would do. But it has been five days! And our people remain unavenged!”

“And what would you have me do?” she demanded. “I have remonstrated—”

“Remonstrated! When has that ever done any good?”

“And you think this will?” She didn’t so much as glance at Hassani, but she didn’t have to. Mircea imagined the entire conversation would be relayed to the consul by his friend later that night, assuming he wasn’t hearing it already.

“No.” Gregor was shaking his head wildly. “The time for talk is over. It ended when he butchered some of the best of us in cold blood. If we are to be rid of him, rid of this plague, this demon—”

“Don’t be a fool, Gregor!” That was Antony’s voice, raised in a final, silent plea.

But too late.

“—then we must act, and act now!”

The senator slowly stood up, her face as still as a carved statue. “Gregor. What have you done?”

“What you wouldn’t,” he cried, and the room fell away.