The Collected Short Fiction of C J Cherryh

by C. J. Cherryh

  The table had changed. On it stood a bouquet of drooping roses. Her ring was gone.

  His was there, a more massive golden round, a signet. It must be his. She set down her candle, and picked it up, and turned it to the light. It bore a coat of arms engraved in flat gold, the divided shield, and above it not a helmet, but a cap, a common cap, and not at all common. She had seen it emblazoned on banners in the piazza, that divided shield and the unwarlike red cap.

  The arms of the Doge himself.

  All the blood fled her limbs. She plumped straight down in the shadow, in the mockery of a hundred mirrors, and turned the ring in her fingers, the arms faint in shadow and glittering in candlelight.

  It was long before she found the will to move, and by then she found it difficult, her limbs gone to sleep among her crumpled skirts. She was no more warlike than the Doge. She had never been encouraged to contest her fate. But she had learned fire, all the same, from la duchesa's temper. She had learned la duchesa's stubborn endurance. She had learned la vendetta, and the will, when challenged, to stiffen the backbone when she had a choice before her.

  Oh, that, above all else. And now she knew her footing—at least who she dealt with. But what he might now do, and why he had courted her, and if he already knew about Nonna's plot—these still were questions.

  She rose. She took her candle. The ring clenched in one fist, she went to light candle stubs in the candelabra, and found them all renewed, long, fresh tapers, half-burned, marking the limit of his patience. She lit one candelabrum after another, until all the mirrored hall was aglow in the gathering dusk, until it would shine outward onto the canal, until, if he were near, he might see.

  She took the diminishing candle stub, then, and explored the halls above, the forgotten, fading murals, the rotting tapestries in all the passages and the long disused bedrooms, clear to the attic.

  She knew his name now, her harlequin. Everyone knew it. She said it to herself, while she waited: "Antonio." She whispered it to the empty halls, to see if it was friend or enemy. "Antonio Raffeto."

  And when the light had utterly faded from the windows, while storm battered the roof tiles, and the candle stub she held began to gutter and burn close to her fingers, she went down again to the ballroom.

  Every candle flame bent as she arrived, but she had opened no door. The wind sighed through the halls, and a cold air moved her skirts.

  And ceased. The water-stairs door had opened. And it had just shut.

  She stopped still, her eyes fixed on the opposing hall. There was no candle below. She had taken it. She held it in her hand.

  But he needed no help to find the blaze of light in the grand ballroom. And he climbed into view—her harlequin, white and gold in the candleglow. He wore a gold domino, only that, and had a rose in his hand.

  "My harlequin," she said faintly.

  "Giacinta," he said, and gestured toward the stairs, toward the outside. "They say the Ca d'Oro is haunted now. We've made a legend, I fear."

  "I'm its ghost. I've become its ghost." In her purse she had the little black bottle, her escape from Nonna's plans, and her betrayal of Nonna's own escape. But that was for the morning. "I shall live here forever."

  "You were with di Verona," he said, accusingly, "in the square."

  "You were there. I wished you'd rescued me. But I knew you couldn't."

  "Did you think so? You might have called out for help."

  "I wish I had. But I was afraid you would die."

  He walked closer. Proffered her the rose. She ignored it and flung herself into his arms, crushing out the dying candle in her fist. The hot wax burned her, and tears welled up beneath the mask, but she hardly felt the pain. The ring was in her other hand, and it was cold as ice as lips met, as he took care for the candle, and found how she had burned herself.

  "Foolish girl," he cried, and pried the wax from her fingers. He kissed the burn, and kissed her lips again before he set her back and looked at her. Dark eyes glittered behind the gold domino. "And faithless, I fear."

  "No. I will not be. I shall never be." She spoke in pain, in pain that transcended the burn on her palm. "I swear," she said, "I will never marry that man."

  "You accepted his betrothal. You stood in view of all the Repubblica and the great cathedral, and you accepted to be his bride."

  "Under threat."

  "What threat?"

  Dared she imagine indignation, and that it might wake on her behalf?

  "The threat to my grandmother. She is old. She is foolish, my Nonna. He gave her promises, di Verona did, that she could have her house and her garden, if I married him. And he—" Here was the thing she must say, and must not incriminate Nonna, must not, no matter the anger the Doge might direct elsewhere. "Defend yourself tomorrow, that is what I wanted to say, what I came to say today, but I had no courage. La Duchesa is no part of this, understand this first and foremost. But go protected, tomorrow, and don't let di Verona or his men come near you."

  "You recognize my seal."

  "I knew it once I saw it." She knew he would take back the ring. She clenched her hand on it a moment, and carried that fist to her heart, then stretched it toward him and opened her hand. "And I know di Verona is your enemy."

  "Are you?" He had not taken the ring. "Are you my enemy, Sforza?"

  "Never."

  He took off his mask. The eyes had been wicked and dark behind it. Without it, they were brown and kind. She took off the white bauta, and let it fall.

  "No more la moretta?" he asked her.

  "No more mysteries," she said, looking only into his eyes, and willing, oh, very willing, if he were willing, too.

  He took her hand and closed it on the ring, and pulled her to him and kissed her, oh, very long, while the thunder walked above the roof, and the water lapped about the walls. They danced to their silent music, they danced all about the vast mirrored hall until the candles spun and their heads were giddy.

  He spread out his cloak on the floor, and she spread hers. He set her diamond circlet on his littlest finger, and set his heavy signet on her forefinger, with a solemn kiss. They made love, then, and she asked no questions at all, what would happen in the morning, what would become of her. He might go away in the morning, but she had warned him in as plain words as she could, to save his life.

  They made love and slept, and the candles burned down to darkness.

  Dark became dawn through the windows, and the pale day crept in, bringing detail into the shadows. They kissed. They gathered up their scattered garments, and spoke very little, casting glances at one another, grown strangely shy as the cold, gray light of day invaded the ballroom and reflected them in every mirror.

  Then the bells began, from high up the Serpentine, faint and far.

  "Come," her lover said, and took her by the hand, and led her out to the windows that offered a view of the Grand Canal and its beginning traffic. The farthest church rang out, and then the next, and the next, and the next, pealing all at once, until the nearest tolled, and the sound enveloped them, mad, and glorious, rolling down the Serpentine under a golden, clouded sunrise. It was his city, the Doge's city, all the bells of his city joining together for a special day, until, last, the great bells of San Marco itself joined in, deep and joyous.

  It stole the senses. And it left such silence when it was done. She remembered to breathe. Remembered that she might soon die.

  She found his arms about her, holding her warm and close, leaning back against him.

  "I have to go soon," he said, his breath stirring the curls beside her neck. "And will you only haunt this old palace, or might you come to haunt mine?"

  "I am la Sforza," she said, with a deep sigh, that old, proud name that was Nonna's, too. "I could never be your mistress."

  "I have no wife."

  That was true. Dared she think—dared she hope it was his offer? She pressed his hand against her heart, and drew a deep breath.

  "Come with me," he said. "Come with m
e. You say you don't love him."

  "It will embarrass him," she said, thinking of it, imagining di Verona's desires, fiercest for what defied him. "It would ruin him. It will drive him to war with you. Is that your plan, after all?"

  "I have no plan at all," he said, against her neck, his arms pressing her close. "But I can make plans very quickly."

  "So can I," she said. And let go a deep breath. "Let me go."

  He released her, as if astonished, and his face frowned, wounded.

  "I could love you," she said. "I do. And I never will marry him. I swear that. But let me go. My Nonna will be beside herself with worry."

  "I will call my guards," he said, "and take you up to the Palazzo in safety. Send for your grandmother."

  "No," she said, and laid a hand on his heart. "You will trust me. You will trust me in this, and let me go. And if something should happen to me, you will care for my grandmother. Let her have her little house, and her garden, and her pride. Promise me. It's all she cares for."

  "How can I let you go?"

  "Easily," she said, "if you trust me, as I trust you, and tell you the truth. Admit Cesare di Verona to the ball. Don't let him or his men near you. And don't let him or his men leave again. There's to be riot in the city. Division in the council—when the Doge is dead."

  He gazed at her eye to eye a moment, not all a lover's gaze, but the Doge's as well—full of concern, and with a sure knowledge of the world's hard choices.

  "I must get home now," she said.

  "I will take you there," he said, and added, holding her arm, but never bruising, always gentle in his touch: "But, Sforza, if you betray me, you will break my heart. You broke it two days ago at San Marco. Last night you put it together again. I don't think you could do it twice."

  "Mine was half dead," she said, "and I had nowhere in the world to go. Now I do. Only trust me, Antonio Raffeto."

  It was down the stairs after that. Masked again, they went down to the water-stairs, where a gondolier and two of the Doge's guards had spent the stormy night cloaked and shaded in canvas.

  The harder thing was to get to her own door. She imagined Nonna at watch at the windows, and she asked him to let her ashore well down the walk.

  He let her go. She hurried, high heels striking the pavings, until she reached her own door. She tucked the signet into her purse, then opened it, and braved the storm inside.

  "Shameless girl!" Nonna cried as she ran upstairs.

  "I was caught by the storm," she said, which was true, "and I slept in a dry nook." Which was also true. "I was already chilled. I had no wish to take the fever."

  "Shameless girl! Look at your shoes!"

  "They're mostly dry now, Nonna." She kicked them off for the maids to attend, and sped barefoot off to her room, to bathe and dress again.

  The dress was the maids' complete despair. They heated irons and brushed it, they straightened the braid and curled the wind-tangled feathers, all these little touches. They brushed her cloak. They exclaimed most over her burned hand.

  "It was one of the sweet-stands," she said. "I touched the stove."

  They dressed it with herbs, they wrapped it in black lace so it would not show beneath the lace of her gown, but the pain was nothing to her today. She smiled through her bath, smiled while they pulled and tugged and curled her hair. She was the soul of patience while they applied her powders and her rouge. She put the freshened dress on again and stood arrayed as crisp and new as she had first ventured out to carnevale.

  "You are so good," she said to Nonna's maids, and gave them each a coin, for luck.

  She slipped a little dagger into the belt that held her ribbon-tethered masks. She put on her cloak, and fussed the lace at her cuffs into place over her burned hand. She smiled at Nonna.

  "See? No damage, Nonna."

  "Only because you're very, very lucky," Nonna said fiercely.

  "I am clever, like my Nonna," she said, and kissed her Nonna on the forehead, to Nonna's great annoyance. She had never noticed before, how tall she had gotten, and how small Nonna was these days. And she saw that Nonna had grown small in all the world, too, and afraid, in these last years, when small and afraid was the last thing her fierce Nonna wanted to be. "I love you," she said, "I love you, Nonna."

  "Pah," Nonna said, and waved her attentions away with great fierceness. "Il duco will be here any moment."

  "Will he?" She hardly cared. But she went down to the landing above the front door. Night was falling, already rendering the shadows on the Priuli's margin dark and ominous. "I shall stand and wait outside."

  "You shall do no such thing," Nonna cried, pursuing her downstairs, step at a time, aided by her cane. "What has possessed you, girl?"

  He has, she thought to herself, and sighed deeply, and waited by the door until the maid, watching through the portal, signaled excitedly that il duco's gondola had arrived.

  She descended the stairs like a duchess, exited the door, walked to the gondola and stepped aboard, with the gondolier's hand hardly needed to steady her. The gondolier boarded, fended off, and poled down the Priuli, nosing over into the Acqua Dolce, and carried her on and on to the Grand, where il duco's barge waited, its silver oars poised, its azure blue canopy tied back to show silver and gold cushions.

  He had on, this time, the half-mask of a triton, plumed in azure and extravagant, overshadowing his cruel, beard-shadowed jaw. He stepped out and showed her aboard the barge with every grace, handing her down to the well, among the silver satin cushions.

  He plucked the dagger from her waist, and flung it over the side, down, down into the opaque water. And smiled that predator's smile at her.

  The oarsmen fended off smoothly and rowed down the Grand, past the Ca d'Oro and its silent windows, that kept secret their memories.

  All the town looked on when they joined the processional of barges that led toward the Palazzo Ducale, the Doge's residence. And in her purse she still carried the Doge's ring, and the small black vial, her one recourse, in case everything went amiss.

  She smiled her own smile at Cesare di Verona as they exited the barge and walked, grandly, across the great piazza.

  "What amuses you?" he asked, holding her good hand fiercely, twisting it just a little. "What amuses you, girl?"

  "Nonna," she said. "Nonna has such ideas."

  They approached the doors of the Palazzo, with cheering townsmen on either hand, come to see the grand costumes of the rich and powerful. They joined the train of other guests, entered into the doors of the powerful, and, still in processional, mounted the stairs behind the rich merchant princes and their attendants. She imagined di Verona's thoughts—that he deserved to be first: no, that he deserved to own this palace. A bastard duke who planned to own the whole city walked tamely, with his men all in matching azure and silver, all costumed as lesser tritons.

  Up and up the steps, into the gold and glitter of the Doge's entertainment, where the primary guests waited, the oldest heads of merchant houses, their brightly-dressed sons and daughters, all in masks, a full score of harlequins, no few pantalones, and two gnagas, with a mocking falsetto, men masquerading as ladies—one of them in the duke's own exact azure, who saluted him with a curtsy as they came in.

  The duke stopped cold. He need not have. Everyone in la Repubblica Serenissima understood clowns made jokes. But il duco abruptly changed his course, snatching Giacinta with him, and hurting her hand.

  "Oh!" she said, protesting.

  "Fool," he said. "This will be the last joke, I promise you."

  His men, his bodyguard, immediately deserted him, moving out along the edges of the hall. She saw it happen, so suddenly, so purposefully, she had no time to think, and her heart doubled its beats. Di Verona had no intention of waiting. The moment he was in the hall, his men were moving out, positioning themselves to strike, to take advantage of the panic that di Verona knew would come. And would the assassin who struck the Doge even wear di Verona's colors?

  No, never
, she thought, things coming clear in the reality of the moment. No, di Verona meant to be the avenger of the Doge, to size power. There were surely others, less obvious, in the crowd, men the Doge's guards could not spot, while his own men disposed of supposed traitors.

  "You're hurting me," she protested when he pulled at her, and stumbled on her skirts. "You're making us a spectacle!"

  That stopped him, when no other reason would. She saw it.

  "They're laughing at us," she said. "Oh, I hate this."

  She had seized power now. She suddenly knew il duco's weakness, and it was fear. He snatched her away, near one of the tables piled high with food. A fountain there spilled wine red as blood. Its vinous smell nauseated her. So did he. But now at least she could wholly despise him.

  She snatched a sweetmeat with her wounded hand, and popped it into her mouth, then snatched a cup, and let a servant fill it with wine. She sipped, then delved into her purse, slipping items into the black lace bandages of her hand.

  Di Verona took another cup himself, drank, and set it down empty as trumpets sounded, as the Doge, Antonio Rafetto, came in, no longer the white harlequin, but wearing black, with his red cap, and his cloak, and lifting his hands to welcome his guests. Only one thing was not the Doge's. His littlest finger sparked white fire, the diamonds of her ring, their pledge.

  For a moment il Duce looked toward his prey. And quickly, slipping the little bottle into her fingers, Giacinta pulled the waxed stopper and poured the black liquid into her own cup, a little black swirl which immediately vanished in the deep, dark red. Onto her thumb she slid the Doge's ring, asking herself desperately how to warn him of what she saw, and knowing, if things went wrong, that this cup was her only rescue. She took it up and carried it against her heart, a heart that beat like a hammer.

  "My guests," Antonio called out. "Welcome! Eat, drink, dance, everyone!"

  People moved forward to meet him, a surge like the tide against the gates, but the Doge's guards prevented them, to universal chagrin. The wave broke in confusion, and milled aside.

  She saw di Verona's face, saw him bite his lip. So one approach was frustrated. The musicians struck up a tune. Couples took to the floor. Di Verona, however, did not. She pretended to sip her wine, and di Verona looked about the edges of the room. She began to edge away, thinking she might make an escape, even warn Antonio's guards, using Antonio's ring, but di Verona seized her wrist.