Masks

Chapter Forty-Three

Mircea paused, panting, and stared around.

He was at the front of the house now, on the edge of the wide atrium that served as an entrance hall. It was a thick rectangle bisected by the massive front doors down and to his right, and a wide hallway leading to the garden opposite them on his left. Either the walls were thicker here, or something about the architecture muffled sound, because the roar of the storm had just become a low background hum.

Likewise, the almost darkness had been replaced by puddles of light, one falling around a delicate cesendello lamp on a table near the wall.And two more from the torches burning on either side of the main doors. Together, they cast a warm glow over a wood ceiling, beautiful tapestries, and a large expanse of tiled floor.

And a slight figure in a dark yellow dress.

She was standing with her back to him, at the entrance to the corridor leading to the garden. Despite the hallway’s length, it was close enough to leave her enveloped by the outer edges of the storm. Mircea would have been writhing in pain at that range, but she appeared unconcerned, the outer bands drifting across her body like golden veils wherever the torchlight touched them.

“You should have been here earlier,” she told him, as he approached. “You’d have had a better view.”

“It’s not the view I’m interested in,” Mircea said softly.

“You should be. You’ll never see its like again.”

She turned to look at him, and it was the same face—why did that surprise him? The same quick smile. The same Marte.

“How often do you witness the death of a god?”

“Will I witness it?” he asked. “What if he wins?”

“He won’t.” She shook her head, making her curls bounce. “You don’t know her like I do.”

“No, I don’t. I don’t even know you. I realized on the way here: yours was the only story I never heard.”

“You heard it,” she told him, not even trying to dissemble. “You heard hers. It is the same.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Don’t you?” She walked toward him, her footfalls on the tile as silent as the senator’s had been. “Then why are you here?”

She stopped well short, as if she didn’t want to scare him.

It didn’t work.

Mircea badly wanted to glance over his shoulder, but his instincts told him there was no one there. He had moved quickly, expecting the officer to be right behind him. But perhaps he’d been a little too quick.

Or perhaps the man wasn’t coming at all.

It suddenly occurred to him to wonder how well even a senior master would do, when a massive section of wall came flying at him unexpectedly. Maybe he’d had the reflexes to dodge it, or had found something to hide beneath and survived the same way that Mircea had. In which case, he should be along shortly. Or maybe he hadn’t, but was strong enough to heal and would be along eventually. In either case, Mircea needed to stall until he arrived.

But then, maybe he wasn’t coming at all. Maybe he’d been killed by a blow that would have taken out a giant. Maybe he’d been knocked unconscious, and the fire was slowly eating away at him. Maybe—

Maybe Mircea should say something before she got bored and killed him.

“A lot of little things,” he said hoarsely. “The earrings . . .”

She smiled and shook her head, making the tinsel dance. “I should have given them up, shouldn’t I? Women don’t wear them much in Venice.”

“They don’t wear them at all,” Mircea corrected. “Not unless they’re a gypsy. Or . . . from somewhere else. But you’re supposed to be Italian, and young. Auria was said to be the oldest, but even she is only a century. Where would you pick up a habit that has been out of favor with the women here for at least twice that long?”

She sighed. “I’ve had them so long, they feel like a part of me. But it was careless.”

“And the jars, the ones they pulled from the wreckage. Why were you sorting through them? Martina and Auria are the ones who worked with them all the time. Wouldn’t they better know the ingredients?”

“I volunteered.”

“Because you knew what Sanuito had given me.”

She passed him, almost close enough to touch, causing him to flinch back. She didn’t seem troubled by the sword he still held. She didn’t seem troubled by anything. She sat on the table and swung her legs over the side, the way she had that night in the courtyard. Like a girl.

“Yes,” she told him. “I knocked it behind the wall that night, when I climbed up there, and then retrieved it later. But I didn’t know what else he might have. I checked his room, and there was nothing. But when I asked him point blank, he evaded. . . .”

“Is that why you killed him?” Mircea asked harshly, struggling to stay in control.

“It didn’t have to be that way,” Marte told him. “I wanted the antidote from his blood; that was all. If he had done as I instructed. . . .”

“I wouldn’t have thought he had a choice.” Mircea thought back to the scrawny figure he’d first met in the Watch’s cells, sucking a few drops of spilled blood off a filthy rag.

Sanuito had had no power. Sanuito had had nothing, except his life. And yet even that—Mircea cut off his thoughts abruptly.

“He shouldn’t have,” Marte agreed. “He was as close to powerless as a vampire can get. But something was . . . off about him. Maybe the way he was Changed. Getting that Were blood at the same time as the vampire interfered with the process—and possibly gave him something of their attributes, as well. And Weres are notoriously hard to influence.”

“He was able to shake off your suggestions?”

“Not entirely. But he found ways around them. He couldn’t tell you about the antidote, but it never occurred to me to forbid him to give it to you! And he talked to Auria about you, tried to convince her to help you get away . . .”

“So he had to go.”

Marte frowned. “I would have left him in peace. I had what I needed. But after he gave you the antidote something had to be done. I had too much to concentrate on; I couldn’t watch him every minute. And I couldn’t risk him using his blood to make more of the stuff. There are mages who might have been able to tell you what was in it.”

A mage did, Mircea thought. “But Sanuito beat you to it.”

She grimaced. “I thought it would be best to do it away from the house, and how better than in a crowd of thousands? But he must have realized what I intended, and decided that, if he was going to die anyway, he would make it as spectacular as possible.”

“And give me cause to wonder about it,” Mircea said, his hand tightening on the hilt.

“All he had to do was stay away from you,” she told him. “He knew that. But he idolized you. He couldn’t believe it when you took him with you—” She broke off at his expression. “Don’t look at me like that. He would have died anyway. Do you really think anyone else would have rescued him? At least he didn’t die alone, in a cold cell, half starved—”

“Is that what you tell yourself?” Mircea rasped.

“Oh, come off it,” the dark eyes flashed. “You barely knew him. He was nothing to you. He was nothing to anyone. He had no future in our world or in that of the Weres. He would have been an outcast, a freak, his whole life. I didn’t kill him—I saved him!”

“As you planned to do for me?”

She sighed and sat back against the wall, her anger evaporating as quickly as it had come. “It was the only way.”

“To reach the senator.”

It wasn’t a question, and she didn’t take it as one. “I’d tried everything else,” she told him quietly. “But she’s too well-guarded. Her own family, the senatorial guards, the court in Paris—it’s like an armed camp. There was simply no way to get to her.

“Except for one.”

She smiled slightly. “There’s one time when even the most well-guarded person is allowed some privacy. I realized, if I found the right person: someone weak enough that her guards wouldn’t worry about him, someone attractive enough to tempt even her eye, someone without a future . . .”

“And you get to decide that for me?” Mircea asked.

He received a defiant look in return. “Yes. I tried to tell you, but you didn’t want to hear. You haven’t been there yet. I have. You don’t know what lies in store for those with no master in our world. I do. You might end up wishing I’d succeeded—”

“I doubt that!”

“Yes, now. But a hundred years from now?” She sat forward. “You won’t understand this, but I was paying you a compliment. Allowing you a death that would have purpose, meaning, instead of what you face now: a slow spiral into bitterness and despair, and a long walk into the sun.”

Mircea didn’t reply. He didn’t trust himself.

“But in your own way, you were as difficult as Sanuito.”

“Because I wouldn’t push her to bite me,” he said tightly.

She nodded. “It was the only thing I needed from you; the only task you had. Something any other vampire would have done instinctively. But not you.”

“And you couldn’t give me the poison without making sure it would be delivered.”

“I had everything ready,” she said, looking aggrieved. “The antidote to slow it down, to allow you time to reach her. The perfect opportunity—convocation usually involves mass debauchery, and you’re exactly the type of man she likes—”

“I think there might be another.”

Marte’s lips twisted. “There always is, with her. And they all seem willing to die for her. I wonder if they would feel the same, if they knew what she’s really like?”

“And how is that?”

She looked at him, dark eyes assessing, for a long moment. And then they shifted, going back to the storm. “You still haven’t answered my question: Why me? Because I wear earrings and play around with pots? Why not one of the others?”

“Is that why you brought them here tonight? And stationed them at different doors? To confuse me?”

She shrugged. “I knew you suspected one of us; Sanuito had seen to that. But I was under the impression that you didn’t know which. I didn’t want to expose myself by being the only one here tonight. So I used a connection of mine to make sure we all received invitations.”

“And then waited to leave until I was gone, so I wouldn’t be among them.”

“Yes, although I thought it was an unnecessary precaution. I foolishly thought you suspected Martina.”

“I did, briefly. She was the one who bought me, the one who set up the first meeting with the senator, the one who seemed the most concerned that my efforts weren’t progressing fast enough.” He paused, but it was true—even now. “And she makes a better villain than you do.”

Marte laughed suddenly, and the transformation was amazing. In an instant, the pragmatic killer was gone, replaced by the merry girl he knew. It shook him more than her anger had done.

“She does, doesn’t she?” she asked. “Of course, that might be because she is one. She gave me the idea, you know. About the senator, and you.”

“Martina?”

Marte nodded, and drew her feet up, hugging them with her arms. As if they were having a casual chat back at the house. As if Mircea wasn’t holding a knife-edged sword on her.

“She was a perfumer back in Athens, before she discovered that she could make much more by dabbling in poison. She used her expertise with cosmetics to make a deadly face powder. During the course of an evening, her suitors—all rich, all foolish enough to leave her something substantial in their wills—would get a dose every time she kissed them. Or rubbed her cheek against theirs, or . . .” Marte waved a hand.

“I’d think that would be as dangerous for her as for them.”

“She fixed her faced with an egg white base as a barrier, before applying the powder. But she’d also built up a good deal of resistance through the years by taking in a little poison at the time. That’s why she couldn’t feed you that night, after the senator’s women almost drained you. Her blood would have killed you! As it did her master.”

“I thought vampires weren’t able to kill their Sires.”

Marte smiled gently. “Now, we both know that can’t be true, don’t we?”

Mircea frowned in confusion, and she laughed.

“In fact, she didn’t intend to do it,” she told him. “She had accumulated a nice fortune over the years, and he decided to change her in order to get control of it. She objected; there was a struggle. And violence can increase blood lust as much as sex does. He prevailed, of course, but by then he was too preoccupied to notice the poison he was taking in along with her blood. By the time she awoke, he was dead.”

“She made herself,” Mircea murmured, remembering something Martina had said to Jerome.

“Hardly,” Marte said dryly. “He made her, she just killed him afterward. But she heard me say the term one day, and liked the sound of it.”

“You made yourself?” Mircea said, but she ignored it.

“So why not Martina, then?” she asked. “As you said, she makes a good villain. And she bought you.”

“At your instigation?”

She inclined her head.

“You can influence someone of her age?”

“Is that a backward way of asking how powerful I am?” He didn’t answer, and after a moment, she smiled. “I didn’t have to. I planted the idea that, if she could find the right man, perhaps the senator would be willing to grant her a pardon.”

“For killing her master? But that was his fault—”

“Not according to vampire law. It’s more concerned with outcome than intent, and the outcome was a dead master and a broken family. His vampires are still hunting her. It’s why she fled Athens, changed her name, and eventually came here. And took up the only profession she could without a family or the ability to make vampires of her own.”

“Because she would poison anyone she tried to Change.”

Marte nodded. “We met when she noticed I was masterless, and tried to recruit me. I eventually learned her story, and realized that what worked once might work again, in a slightly different manner. But you still haven’t explained why you cleared her and suspected me.”

“Your blood,” he said simply.

“Ah.” Marte sat back against the wall again. “So now we come to it.”