The Merchant of Dreams

by Anne Lyle

  Mal trailed after the others for a while, but his heart was not in merrymaking. Rather than spoil their enjoyment of the fair, he excused himself and went back to the embassy, where he could go over the plan without distractions. Olivia was ancient and powerful, far beyond his previous experience; how could Sandy be so sure they could capture her, even working together? He could only assume his brother had access to Erishen’s knowledge of such matters.

  Even if it worked, was he even doing the right thing? It would get rid of Hennaq, but going back to the New World probably wasn’t what Olivia wanted. Venice was her home, and she had ruled it well enough for all these centuries, or at least, she and her kinfolk had. On the other hand, with the rest of the guisers dead her rule was beginning to falter. La Serenissima was no longer the great power it had been, and would sink further unless it gained the one thing Olivia could not allow: an alliance with the skraylings. Truly it was a kindness to everyone in Venice for her to admit defeat and go home.

  It felt like an age until he heard movement downstairs and the sounds of the returning party. He went down to greet them, grateful for the distraction from his own conflicted thoughts.

  “Did you enjoy the Sensa?” he asked Ned.

  Ned shrugged. “You didn’t miss anything, really. It was a lot like Bartholomew Fair, only with painted wooden booths instead of tents.”

  “Didn’t miss anything?” Coby said, looking to her companions for confirmation. “What about the mechanical Saint George and the Dragon? It breathed smoke and rolled its eyes, and then… Saint George cut its head off.”

  “It sounds very impressive,” Mal said. “However we ought to be getting ready for the reception.”

  “Of course, sir.”

  At last they were all washed and combed and ready to leave. Tonight the city would be freed of the guisers’ insidious influence, and he would be able to complete his mission in safety. And then? Best not to look beyond the current action. Tonight he must focus on one thing alone: the capture of Olivia.

  The Doge’s Palace shone like a lamp, its façade rippling with the light reflected off the waters of the nearby lagoon. From its upper windows the well-to-do could look down upon the little square between St Mark’s and the quayside, where stood a tiered wooden structure at least three times the height of a man. In the flickering light Coby could make out the shapes of fireworks: catherine wheels, fountains and other devices, individually quite small but together capable of making an impressive display. She tore her eyes away and followed Mal towards the palace entrance; when that lot went off, she wanted to be as far away as possible.

  Lamps hung at intervals from the ceilings of the outer and inner cloisters, creating pools of light and shadow where guests gathered for whispered conversations. Berowne and his gentleman companions were escorted to the foot of the great stair leading up to the state rooms, whilst Coby, Ned and Gabriel were left to mingle in the courtyard with the other retainers.

  “I don’t like this,” Coby muttered. “Sandy’s been gone for hours. How do we know Hennaq hasn’t got him trussed up in the hold again?”

  “We don’t,” Gabriel said. “But if he has, he won’t get Mal or Olivia, so what’s the profit for him? He might as well have taken Sandy alone in the first place.”

  “Hardly alone.” Ned slipped his arm through Gabriel’s. “He would have taken you too.”

  Gabriel patted his hand. “I’m quite safe now, don’t fret.”

  “So what are we going to do for the next hour?”

  “In your case, keep out of trouble,” Gabriel replied.

  Ned punched him in the arm with his free hand.

  “Enough, you two!” Coby frowned at them both. “Look, there are servants coming round with trays of sweetmeats.”

  Ned’s eyes lit up, and he released Gabriel.

  “Going to need both my hands free for this,” he said with a grin.

  Mal followed Berowne and Raleigh up the magnificent staircase and past the great statues of Mars and Neptune, trying not to think about the last time he was here. From the first floor they went further upwards, through a tunnel-like stair lined with gilding and white stucco, into an antechamber where the guests paused before being announced and presented to the Doge and council. To his left Mal could see the studded door he had been taken through after his arrest. He turned away, though he could not shake the feeling that he was being watched.

  “Signori Geoffrey Berowne, Walter Raleigh e Maliverny Catlyn, del’Inghilterra!” a lackey announced.

  Mal tried not to goggle as they entered the great chamber beyond. Like the Doge’s barge, its every beam was carved and gilded, and every space between the beams was filled with paintings depicting the glory of Venice. Vast friezes with themes both secular and religious lined the walls between high windows overlooking the square; the chamber itself was of such enormous size that even with every nobleman in Venice present, it appeared half empty. How the roof stayed up with no columns to support it, Mal could not imagine.

  He left Berowne and Raleigh talking to a group of black-clad Venetians and moved casually through the throng, hoping to spot Olivia. There were many more women here than he had expected, all of them masked and clad in bright silks laden with gems and embroidery, but their skin was as fair as Olivia’s was dark. Most, judging by their reserved air, were patricians’ wives enjoying a rare venture into public life, but a few, no less richly dressed but with a certain sensuality of demeanour, were undoubtedly courtesans.

  Alas, he could see no sign of his quarry, though it was early yet. Perhaps she had been delayed, or decided not to come after all. Mal cursed under his breath. He should have forced his brother to renegotiate with the skrayling captain.

  The crowds parted for a moment, revealing a cluster of guests looking out of place amongst all this splendour. The skraylings. Only Kiiren in his azure silk robe seemed at ease; his companions, a handful of elders in patterned tunics and loose breeches, stood with folded arms, eyeing the humans uncertainly. None of the skraylings wore masks, though with their tattooed faces they might as well have been. Mal paused on the edge of the space surrounding the skraylings and bowed. Kiiren bowed back, but did not make a move to speak. Mal wondered if the ruling still held, that no one was permitted to speak to them, and if so, why they had been invited. The Venetians’ approach to diplomacy was most perplexing.

  He continued on his way, stopping now and again to exchange a few sentences with guests whom he thought he recognised from Olivia’s house. At last he spotted the courtesan on the arm of a well-dressed man. Venier. The question was, how to get her alone?

  “Signore Catalin, isn’t it?” Venier said, leading Olivia towards him. “I thought I recognised you by your height. Perhaps you would be so kind as to look after my lovely companion for a short while? I have a mind to talk business with Dandolo, and I do not like to bore a lady.”

  “Of course, signore.”

  Mal bowed and held out his arm, paying more attention to Venier’s departure than to Olivia. That had been a little too easy.

  “Poor Lorenzo,” Olivia said, her laugh muffled slightly by her full-face mask. “He really is too easy to manipulate.”

  “You wanted to get me alone?”

  “What do you think?”

  He could hear the wicked smile in her voice, even if he could not see it, and wondered if she had noticed he wasn’t wearing his earring.

  They discussed music for a while, then Olivia showed him round the room pointing out the more interesting paintings.

  “This whole chamber was ravaged by fire, some twenty years ago,” Olivia said. “Of course it was restored to even greater splendour than before, as you can see. Nothing but the finest artists in Italy for our greatest palazzo.”

  Mal nodded politely. He had never been terribly interested in painting, and it seemed to him that coating the interior of a building with canvas and thick layers of oil paint was just asking to have it burned down.

  They were just
approaching the far wall with its enormous frieze representing Paradise, when a murmur ran through the assembled guests. Fireworks. This was his chance. He took Olivia aside as the guests began to assemble around the windows overlooking the square.

  “Let us leave them to their tawdry spectacles,” he murmured. “Tell me more about the palace. You must have been here many times over the centuries.”

  She led him in the opposite direction to the crowd, through the antechamber and down the stair onto the gallery overlooking the courtyard.

  “What is there to tell?” Olivia said, taking off her mask. “You have already visited the dark heart of the Venetian Republic.”

  Mal pushed his own mask onto the top of his head and took her in his arms. “There is only one heart I care for.”

  He brushed a stray curl back from her brow and kissed her. On the far side of the building, the first of the fireworks began to fizz and whine, and the crowds breathed out a great sigh of admiration. Now.

  He closed his eyes, letting himself sink into that waking dream he had first experienced in the skrayling pavilion back in Southwark. The gilded splendour of the palace gave way to the twilit realm of the dreamworld, the woman in his arms at once translucent, made of violet light, and yet more real than ever. He looked over her shoulder into the darkness where Sandy was waiting. Should be waiting.

  “My love?” Her voice was more hesitant now. She drew back, staring at him in panic. Silver light flashed overhead, then expanded into the mouth of a tunnel, green and gold like a tree-lined lane in summer.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered, and taking hold of her wrists pulled her into the tunnel.

  “No!” She writhed in his grasp, spat curses.

  Shadows stirred In the darkness, circling. Mal hesitated and Olivia pulled one wrist from his grasp, pivoting away. He seized her elbow with his free hand, and pulled her across the slippery black grass, towards the waiting figure of Sandy. Olivia – Ilianwe – looked from one to the other.

  “Two of you?” she whispered.

  “We are Erishen,” Sandy said, “of Shajiilrekhurrnasheth. By the law of our people we command you to submit to the authority of the elders.”

  She only laughed. “You are not my clan-fathers, you cannot command me. Abominations!”

  “If you will not surrender, you leave us no choice.” Mal gestured towards the far end of the tunnel. “Come with us, and we will return to your clan, to be reborn in our true form. A ship awaits us–”

  “You think they will give me the choice?” She backed away, shaking her head. “They will throw me in the ocean to die rather than risk me returning to spread dissent.”

  “No.”

  “You are young, you do not know what they are like.”

  He hesitated. Images formed around them, stern figures pointing at Ilianwe in condemnation. Was this some illusion she was conjuring to sway him, or Erishen’s own memories? Sandy pushed him aside and took hold of her.

  “She lies,” he said. “Come.”

  Mal let go, and watched the two of them shrink into the distance as the tunnel began to narrow and close. Time to make his own departure. He turned, only to find his way blocked by devourers. Their coal-black hides made them near-invisible in the darkness, so that they could only be seen when they moved. There had to be nearly a dozen of them.

  From somewhere behind him, Ilianwe’s voice rang out, faint but clear.

  “Kill him.”

  Mal tried to summon the obsidian blade, but his hand remained frustratingly empty. As the creatures began to close in, he made a desperate dive for the hollow where all his dreamwalks began–

  –And woke on the cold stone floor of the gallery with a start. The fireworks still popped and whined and lit the clouds with their man-made lightning, but the shrieks of awe had turned to screams of terror. Looking down into the courtyard, Mal saw bodies lying sprawled on the ground in pools of dark blood. Sweet Jesu, what had he done? He raced towards the staircase and followed the trail of destruction out into the night.

  CHAPTER XXXII

  St Mark’s Square was as crowded as the palace, and the fair was still in full swing. Coby slipped through the shadows, trying to find a place to relieve herself in private. It was a good excuse to avoid the fireworks, but she had better be back before they finished, just in case Mal needed her.

  For once she wished she was wearing women’s clothes. At least that way she could use whatever facilities were provided for the noblewomen, or even squat in an alley without baring her nethers. Venetian men, on the other hand, pissed in the street wherever they pleased, including against the pillars outside the palace. It was all very irksome. She gritted her teeth and headed towards the basilica.

  Around her, the citizens of the republic laughed and sang and ate, but there was surprisingly little drinking. Even so, or perhaps because of their normally abstemious habits, many of the faces were flushed, their owners unsteady on their feet and as lecherous as alley cats. Coby had her arse pinched more than once before she had gone ten yards, and one man had even groped her groin as she squeezed past a group of people watching a conjuror. Thankfully she was wearing a soft fake prick in her breeches, not the hard roll of lock-picks, but the man still leered at her, making what was presumably a lewd invitation in the local dialect. She smiled politely, not wanting to start a fight, and moved on.

  Just beyond the mouth of the Mercerie an alley opened into darkness; empty, at least for the moment. She hurried down and ducked into a doorway, fumbling with the buttons on her breeches. Then she hear the screams, and nearly lost control of her bladder altogether. What in Heaven…? Rebuttoning her fly, she drew her knife and padded towards the alley mouth.

  A mass of people surged down the narrow street like water along a storm drain, women screaming and men white-faced with terror. Something loped along beyond them, bigger than a wolfhound and moving with a sinuous grace. The screaming crowd passed the alley mouth. Coby pressed against the wall, her heart pounding. The high walls seemed to close in around her, like a nightmare, and she caught a glimpse of a wet maw with too many teeth and dead white eyes like a baked trout, then the creature was past her, spreading pandemonium in its wake. Two others followed, until the night was a swirling kaleidoscope of screams and the air thick with the scent of fresh blood.

  Coby peered out of the alley, but her feet would not move. When she saw Mal heading towards her, she felt dizzy with mingled relief and panic. She stepped out of the alley mouth, and Mal stumbled to a halt.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “No time for that.” She gestured back to the square. “There are creatures–”

  “Devourers. I know. I let them out.”

  “What?”

  “It was an accident.” He manoeuvred past her; getting between her and the devourers, she noticed.

  “So what do we do?”

  “We find my brother.”

  “Sandy?”

  “Charles.”

  Erishen staggered backwards, holding the woman by both arms. Skraylings surrounded them, iron shackles at the ready. Ilianwe screamed in fury as the manacles closed around her wrists, then collapsed to her knees to the floor.

  “You are certain this is the Lost One?” Hennaq said, eyeing her doubtfully.

  “Yes, certain,” Erishen replied. “I saw her spirit-self and it is quite distinctive.”

  Hennaq’s eyes narrowed. “If you are lying to me–”

  “It is no lie. Ask her.”

  The captain cleared his throat. “Who are you?” Ilianwe merely stared into space. Hennaq looked at Erishen. “Well? Is she deaf or mute, or merely some poor human, ignorant of our business?”

  “I suppose she has not spoken Vinlandic in many lifetimes, and in any case all tongues change with time.” He crouched down and addressed Ilianwe in the ancient tongue. “Tell the captain your name.”

  “Ilianwe,” she said, in tones befitting a queen. “Child of Maranë, of the Fourth City.”


  Erishen translated for the captain’s benefit.

  “Hennaq-tuur!” One of the sailors burst through the cabin door. “Come see, Hennaq-tuur, there is–” He shrugged helplessly.

  Erishen followed Hennaq out onto the deck. The crowds of merrymakers on the quayside were no longer laughing and singing; they were dashing to and fro, screaming, and some flung themselves into the water as if desperate to escape.

  “Human trouble,” Hennaq said with a snort. “Nothing to bother us. But perhaps you would prefer to stay aboard for a while, Erishen-tuur, until peace returns?”

  “No.” Erishen felt the humans’ unease. That blind terror was all too familiar. Hrrith. “No, I must go ashore now.”

  Hennaq bowed his acquiescence and signalled for the boat to be lowered. Erishen clambered down into it and was soon rowing himself back towards the palace. If the hrrith had managed to escape, they would slaughter everyone in their path, just as Charles had described. And Kiiren was right in the middle of it.

  It felt like an eternity until the little boat’s prow bumped against the mooring posts, an eternity in the Christians’ Hell, all flickering torchlight and screams of terror. Erishen leapt ashore and began pushing his way through the crowd towards the nearest entrance to the palace. Two guards, their faces pale as porridge, barred his way. Beyond them he could see bodies strewn across the courtyard, the gruesome details of their fates intermittently revealed by the light of dying fireworks. He watched for any sign of hrrith lurking in the shadows of the outer cloister, but they would have fled the fireworks as blindly as their victims fled the hrrith.

  Erishen closed his eyes and reached out with his mind. The dark plains were knee-deep in a swirling golden mist, exuded by the citizens’ panicking minds as rationality gave way to nightmare terror. He waded through it, looking for Kiiren, and found his amayi at last, a pale solid presence amongst the chaos. He lived, then. Erishen opened his eyes, smiled at the two guards and punched them both in the stomach before they could react. With a murmured apology he strode past them into the palace.