Masks

Chapter Thirty-Eight

“What a huge waste of time,” Bezio said, as they came in the kitchen door.

“And of shoe leather,” Jerome said tiredly. “I can’t believe we had to walk all the way back.”

“Not a damned gondola in Venice tonight,” Bezio agreed.

Cook and Lucca were by the fire, where something was bubbling in a pot. “You didn’t find him?” she asked, turning to look at them.

“Oh, we found him,” Bezio said heavily. “That’s why it was a waste!”

“Huh. Place has a decent reputation.”

“For what?” Jerome demanded, sprawling at the table.

“Charms, poultices, love potions . . .”

“And a little something to take care of things when love goes wrong,” Jerome added sourly.

“He asked about poisons,” she jerked a thumb at Mircea. “They’re good at that.”

“If that’s good, I’d hate to see bad,” Bezio said, peering hopefully into the cupboard where she kept the wine.

Wine came to the house in big barrels that Paulo kept under lock and key. But cook always had some on hand, for soups and stews, and a nightcap for herself—and for them, when they could find it. But she’d gotten better at hiding it lately, having learned of their thieving ways. And Bezio came up empty-handed.

Mircea strolled casually toward the pantry and she rolled her eyes at him. And stuck a spoon of something in Lucca’s mouth. “Is that good?” she asked.

He nodded.

“Doesn’t need salt?”

He shook his head.

“All right then. Tell the rest to wash up and come help themselves. I’m not waiting on you lot.”

He nodded and ran out, and Jerome glanced at the pot. “Is that dinner?”

“Why, you hungry?” she asked sardonically.

“No, but this place is usually covered with food by now.” He looked around at the pristine tabletop, the unused cutlery, and the massive frying pan gleaming on its nail by the fireplace.

And then back at the pot of what smelled like bean soup that appeared to be the sole item on the menu tonight.

“No dinner party,” the cook confirmed.

“But what if a client gets hungry?”

“No clients, either. Everybody’s out.”

“Out where?”

“Where do you think?” she asked, taking off her apron.

“I don’t think anything—”

“As we always expected,” Bezio put in, peering into a crock where they’d been lucky before.

But not this time.

Jerome made a face at him. “—since we’ve been out, too,” he finished.

“You didn’t hear?” Cook started grinning.

“Hear what?”

“The challenge is tonight. They moved it up.”

“What?” Mircea had been shifting sacks of rice about in the pantry, but at that he came to the door.

“Tonight?” Jerome repeated. “But I thought it was tomorrow—”

“Everybody else did, too,” she told him. “Makes sense, last night and all. But I guess they didn’t want to interfere with the closing ceremonies—”

Or they didn’t want to give the senator more time to prepare, Mircea thought grimly.

“—so they called it for tonight. Teach you to run off.”

“Everybody went?” Jerome asked, looking stunned.

“Mostly.” She shrugged. “And the rest have the night off.”

“But . . . but how are they getting in? That’s got to be, well, everybody’s going to want to be there—”

“I don’t want to be there,” Bezio said, as the cook shrugged.

“Oh, of course you do,” Jerome said irritably.

“No, I don’t. And neither do you. If the senator loses, it’ll be depressing, and if the consul does . . . you really think his supporters are going to take that lying down?” He shook his head. “This could blow sky high. I’m good here.”

“Me, too,” the cook agreed, and plucked the decanter of wine Mircea had found out of his hands. “I have plans.”

She toddled off, a small wizened figure in a lumpy black dress, and Bezio grinned. “You ever wonder what her plans are? I mean, she knew about love potions . . .”

“Whatever they are, they’re probably more exciting than ours,” Jerome said, sounding aggrieved. “I wonder if we could—”

“No.”

“But there might be standing room—”

“No.”

“We won’t know unless we—”

“No. Listen to papa.”

“You’re not my papa.”

“I’m old enough to be.”

“Don’t be so sure about that,” Jerome snapped.

“What does that mean?”

“Nothing.” He frowned at Mircea. “I thought you were getting us drinks.”

Mircea sighed and went back to the pantry.

“Get extra,” Bezio called after him. “I have the strangest taste in my mouth.”

“Your fault for being crazy enough to try anything in that place,” Jerome said grumpily.

“You bought it.”

“Not by choice. And you’d think people who deal in alchemy could make decent wine!”

“Wine making isn’t alchemy; it’s art,” Bezio argued, getting down a trio of mugs, then sitting at the table and putting his feet up on the wood pile. “And none of those creatures tonight would know anything about that.”

“I told you they were creepy,” Jerome reminded him.

Bezio nodded. “Did you see the guy with the bones?” He shivered.

“I thought that Hieronimo, or whatever his name was, was worse. Talking about how to poison people, like it was nothing!”

“Crazy, like I said. Not to mention that he didn’t make any damned sense.”

“He did to me,” Mircea said, coming back in with a decanter of decent red that had been well hidden inside a sack of beans.

“Really?” Bezio stuck out a mug. “Enlighten us.”

“He offered a possible explanation for what happened to Sanuito,” Mircea reminded him.

“Guess I must have missed it.”

“He implied that someone could have used Sanuito’s blood to make a workable version of Theriac. A vampire version—”

“For what?”

“I don’t know. But if they did, it might explain what he was doing with that pot of antidote. Maybe he was trying to hint to me about what was happening—”

“First of all, bollocks,” Bezio said. “And secondly, bollocks.” He drank wine.

Jerome sniffed his mug dubiously. “Does this smell all right to you?”

Mircea inhaled. Sharp, fruity, maybe a little musty, but Cook sometimes forgot where she hid the decanter so it could have been in there a while. “Yes?”

“I must still have mage funk up my nose.”

“Why bollocks?” Mircea asked Bezio.

He shrugged. “First of all, because it sounds fantastic. And second—if Sanuito had something that important to tell you, why didn’t he just tell you?”

Mircea took a stool. “There were a lot of people around that night. Maybe he was afraid.” He’d certainly looked it.

“Maybe. But if I’d been getting a daily dose of poison, I think I’d have found a way. And I’d have wanted to keep the antidote handy!”

Mircea pursed his lips, trying to remember the exact phrasing. It didn’t work. “He said something like he thought I might need it.”

“That you might?” Jerome asked.

Mircea nodded.

He frowned. “Did he say why?”

“He didn’t say much of anything. But if someone was giving Sanuito poison, and if they accidentally gave him too much . . . or tried to move too fast . . .” He frowned in frustration.

“You can’t even make yourself believe it,” Bezio pointed out. “And anyway, who here would want to do that?”

Mircea sighed, and drank his wine. “I don’t know.”

Maybe they were right; maybe he was imagining it all. He didn’t know anymore. And he didn’t suppose it mattered, since they were leaving soon and all he had was . . . well, nothing.

He rubbed his eyes tiredly. He felt like going to bed, despite the fact that he hadn’t been up that long. He also needed to feed. But the servants didn’t usually feel like obliging them until they’d fed themselves, and they’d just started filing in.

“Did you learn anything helpful about your master, at least?” Bezio asked Jerome.

He shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s possible he was poisoned the way the man said. He had a stable for feeding, of course, but you know how it is. There’s always exceptions. You’re away from home and all your servants have donated recently. . . .”

“You’d think you’d take along enough to make sure that didn’t happen.”

“Well, you do. But what if you have to expend a lot of energy for something? An attack on the road, for instance. You’re going to need to recoup that somehow.”

“And did that happen to your master?”

Jerome shook his head. “Not that I know of.”

The table went quiet. They were all waiting for the same thing. Mircea passed the time helping to drain the decanter and wishing he could taste the soup bubbling over the stove.

It smelled good, like Cook had thrown in a ham bone along with the beans. And there was a crusty loaf of fresh bread to go with it, which she’d left on the cutting board. It was the kind of meal he’d always preferred: hot, simple, and filling. Peasant food they’d probably call it here, like they’d disdain drinking the wine used to cook with. But it had never bothered him.

“Well, maybe he had someone in,” Bezio offered, when the last of the servants had come and gone.

“Why would he do that?” Jerome asked. “I told you, we had a stable—”

“Yes, but a man likes a little variety, now and again. If you know what I mean.” Bezio waggled his eyebrows at them over his mug.

Jerome apparently didn’t know. “Blood is blood,” he pointed out.

“But a vampire doesn’t live by blood alone,” Bezio said, grinning. “Maybe he had a girl in.”

“For what?”

Bezio raised an eyebrow. “Where do we work again?”

Jerome shook his head. “The master was old—”

“I’m old, and let me tell you—”

“You’re human old,” Jerome said, rolling his eyes. “And not even. In vampire terms, you’re practically a fetus.”

“Says the twinkle in his master’s eye,” Bezio said. “And anyway, when it comes to sex, old doesn’t mean dead. There’s plenty of us who still enjoy a roll in the hay. Or better yet, in fine linen sheets—”

Mircea looked up. “What?”

Bezio laughed. “You’ve never tried taking a tumble in a haystack? Here’s some advice—don’t. It hurts!”

“No, I—before,” Mircea said. “What were you saying before?”

Bezio shrugged. “Just that, if somebody had wanted to get to Jerome’s master, all he’d have needed was a pretty girl he didn’t expect to see again. Then load her up with some poison, feed her a good meal to slow it down, and send her off.”

“Or a pretty vampire,” Jerome said thoughtfully.

“Naw, vampires don’t eat. Or, you know, it doesn’t do anything for them if they do. A meal wouldn’t work.”

“No,” Mircea said blankly. “But an antidote would.”

“Oh, for—we’re not back to that, are we?”

Mircea didn’t answer, his head spinning.

“That wouldn’t insure that the master would feed off her, though,” Jerome pointed out. “What if he wasn’t hungry?”

Bezio rolled his eyes. “Like that would matter. You know how it is. A vampire always bites during—hey!” he called after Mircea. “Where do you think you’re going?”

But Mircea was already out the door.