The Red King

by Jenn Stark

  He gestured toward me, and I found myself resisting the urge to look behind me, in case there was someone standing there I didn’t know about. Hired killer? “Um, I don’t typically—”

  “Dammit, Alfonse,” Valetti growled. “Do I have to spell it out for you? Signore Balestri died last night. In his own house. By his own hand.”

  “I heard about that,” Alfonse said, while I struggled and failed not to stare at Valetti. “But suicide is hardly—”

  “I thought you said Balestri’s death was unrelated,” I interrupted.

  Valetti glanced at me, his eyes as cold as a cop’s. “It wasn’t my place to brief you on the larger plot at hand. It’s the prelate’s. The less information coming from me, the better. That doesn’t mean I don’t know the information. It merely wasn’t my place to share it with you.”

  He returned his glare to Alfonse. “What’s more important, Signore Balestri wasn’t the only magician in his house last night. And he may not be the only one who died.”

  That seemed to get Alfonse’s attention. It certainly caught mine. “I wasn’t informed of this,” Alfonse said. I glanced to Nikki. We hadn’t been informed either. And I’d been right there.

  “Well, I’m informing you of it now,” Valetti said. “Two other magicians of the senate are unaccounted for and were last seen entering Signore Balestri’s home yesterday afternoon, the Englishers Greaves and Marrow. They’ve not made contact and cannot be tracked by any of our seers. And they’d be noticed too. They wear costumes that echo the Union Jack flag wherever they go. It is the strong suspicion of many senate members that they will turn up again, but in pieces, no doubt as part of a much more modern blend of the butcher’s stew, making it even more magically potent.”

  I frowned. Something about this didn’t add up.

  “But you see, that is the problem,” Alfonse murmured, seeming to agree with me. “That wasn’t the nature of the stew the butcher of Venice created.”

  “Speaking of stews, how about we check out some recipes,” I suggested as cajolingly as I could. “I’m Justice of the Arcana Council. I know my way around a book of spells.”

  Alfonse blanched but didn’t make any move toward the locked box, and my temper snapped.

  “Okay, enough of this. I’ve got another copy of the damned book.” I pulled the leather-bound recipe book free of my jacket and waved it in the air. Valetti practically lurched for the book, and I stepped back sharply.

  “No,” I said, shoving the book back in my pocket. “Not if you don’t share first. But this book was given to Balestri at some point in the last two weeks, and now the man is dead. And I’m here to tell you, he was not augmented. Far from it.”

  “How can you know that? Who gave you that book?” The prelate whirled on me, his demeanor completely transformed. Gone was the air of perplexed studiousness. Instead he stepped toward me, his manner intent. “Has anyone examined the body of Signore Balestri?”

  “No, they have not,” Valetti said, still glaring at me. “It hasn’t yet been released from the police, and his family is clamoring for an autopsy, though eyewitness accounts corroborate suicide as cause of death. Where did you get that book? Who gave it to you?”

  “Let’s say that Signore Balestri’s death wasn’t a simple suicide,” I hedged. “Let’s further say that he was drugged by the same person who sent you the butcher’s recipe books and something terrible happened to his brain, which led him to take his own life. How does that change things?”

  The prelate blew out a deep breath, straightening. With two quick strides, he reached the lockbox. Pulling a key from his belt, he unlocked the box, and took out four small leather-bound volumes. Their exteriors were identical to the one in my pocket. But what about the interiors?

  He turned back to me, his gaze hollow. “If that is the case, then I owe the senate a sincere apology for not acting sooner. Because the information we gathered regarding the butcher of Venice back in the 1500s made it very clear what we were looking at. Biasio Cargnio was no ordinary sorcerer, even if he did seem to aspire quite sincerely to become a member of the senate of magicians. But by all accounts, he was a sorcerer who employed Nul Magis, and one of the most powerful strains of the toxin that has ever been recorded.”

  “Nul Magis?” Nikki took one for the team and acted stupid so I didn’t have to, but I was now staring at the prelate too. I’d never heard the term Nul Magis. Knowing what I did about what had happened to Balestri, however, I could guess the rest.

  The prelate didn’t keep us waiting. “All of magic is geared toward one thing in the main,” he said. “The making of more magic. The Philosopher’s Stone, the search for any number of elixirs of immortality, of the Ark of the Covenant, the Holy Grail. The heralded searches for these artifacts were undertaken with the uniform intention to use the power found—at least when magicians were doing the searching. Obviously, throughout the centuries, religious organizations have striven to eradicate all that is magic in the world, at least that magic which was not supposedly generated by their own god.”

  I grimaced. I’d come up against those kinds of religious organizations. They didn’t give up easy.

  “But that’s not what we are dealing with here. A magician willing to use Nul Magis, a poison created solely to eradicate the magic or cut the psychic thread in a Connected, is a danger of inestimable proportions. The desire to destroy the creative spark is counter to all those who aspire to magic. As diabolical as dark practitioners can be, their aim is always more, more, more. Not less. Never less. An eradication of power serves no one. Magic can be grown, but it cannot be created out of thin air. There must always be a wellspring. Drain enough of those springs, and it has an exponential effect.”

  Valetti stared at the prelate. “And you mean to tell me you have no idea who this new practitioner using Nul Magis might be, or how he or she is employing the toxin to eradicate magic, specifically?” he demanded, his voice shrill. “We have traditions we need to keep up, Alfonse. Ceremonies. I can’t have all the magicians fleeing Venice because we can’t keep our local population in check. I’ll be a laughingstock, and I’ll lose my position on the senate.”

  Again with the senate. These guys were worse than the Elks. “You want to explain this senate to me, Count Valetti, while we’re up? It’s not in my tour guide.”

  “Of course, of course.” But it was Alfonse who spoke, not Valetti. “It’s the senate of magicians, the highest and most elite organization of its kind in the world. Even your own Arcana Council is not made up entirely of magicians, Signorina Wilde, so you can see the difference.”

  “Sure.” I nodded. A senate full of Armaeus Bertrand wannabes. It sounded awful.

  “The senate gathers once per year in the open, as it has done since it was formed in the twelfth century, utilizing the only place in the world it can hide in plain sight.”

  “Venice,” I said.

  “More specifically, the festival of Carnevale. Instituted by the first magicians in 1162 to capitalize on a very convenient victory against an abysmal patriarch and the grace of an open-minded public.”

  “Okay, so you’ve got everybody who’s anybody coming into town, and you’ve got a killer on the loose who may or may not be a reincarnation of the butcher of Venice, who may or may not be trying to snuff out magic in the best of magicians—”

  “Signore Balestri was by no means one of the best,” huffed Valetti, but I put up a hand to shut him up.

  “And who may or may not be the Red King.”

  “The what?” the prelate snapped, his gaze sharpening on me.

  “Alfonse, Alfonse.” Now it was Valetti’s turn to put his hands up. We were a walking Christian revival camp, but he turned to the prelate with an unmistakably placating attitude. “That title comes up every few years. You know that.”

  “It has not come up since I began as prelate,” Alfonse growled. Nikki and I glanced at each other, equally mystified.

  A
lfonse didn’t miss our confusion. “Forgive me, Signorina Wilde. The Red King is—well, it speaks to a practitioner who was an abomination to magicians in the senate. Our darkest, most heinous moment in history.” Valetti, now mute, watched him impassively.

  I took that in. From Armaeus’s description, the title had started out as something positive—but apparently, that was a long time ago. “So you’re not a fan, I take it.”

  The prelate’s smile was weary. “A fair assessment, and I’ll thank you not to share that title with anyone else. Though we should both sit now and compare our books. It would seem that there’s more to Valetti’s concerns than I have wanted to believe.”

  He sighed as Valetti reached out to pat him on the shoulder.

  “You were right, Count Valetti,” Alfonse continued. “We have held this matter too closely between ourselves. It is time we gave it the attention it deserved, so that all might understand there is a powerful and deadly sorcerer in our midst.”

  Valetti practically preened, and I watched him, intrigued. Clearly, this guy did not get nearly enough attention as head of security.

  The prelate swung his gaze back to me. “Tonight, Justice Wilde, you shall join us for this year’s opening convocation of the senate of magicians, on the first night of Carnevale.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  “You guys have your own party?”

  It was Valetti who answered. “As I mentioned, there are many celebrations that circle around Carnevale. Some of them are public and some—” another hand wave, “are quite private. I am regrettably not in a position to extend invitations on behalf of the senate, but thankfully for us all, the prelate is.”

  “Which explains the suddenness and urgency of your visit.” The prelate nodded. The look he turned on Valetti was one of new appreciation. “When I heard of Signore Balestri’s death, I suspected I would be contacted, but not by you. You’ve made no secret of your disdain for his tactics.”

  “Disdain is a bit harsh,” Valetti sighed. “And the man is dead, which weighs heavily on me, make no mistake. I didn’t approve of his little drug sideline, I will say that. I had no idea it would lead him to this impasse, though. It’s simply dreadful.”

  “You aren’t the only one who disapproved of Balestri’s emporium,” Alfonse assured him sympathetically. “We are old families whose histories have deeply intertwined in this city. It’s reasonable to think that the new generations will maintain the decorum of the old. Reasonable, but not always possible. We can’t know what troubles haunted Signore Balestri to drive him to such an action.”

  Valetti opened his mouth as if to respond, then shut it. I had the feeling he knew exactly what had driven Balestri to his actions, his impasse, and his untimely death. They’d been neighbors, and despite what anyone was admitting to, some neighbors knew a lot about each other.

  Still, Valetti was also a man of decency in the end. “We will honor him tonight, if we might, Prelate Alfonse. He wanted nothing more than to advance in the eyes of his peers.”

  The prelate nodded. “We will honor him tonight.”

  Valetti swung his gaze to Nikki and me. “As I’m sure won’t come as a surprise to you, we are an old and storied group, steeped in our traditions. Did you bring a traditional Venetian costume with you?”

  I started to respond, but Nikki beat me to it. “What we brought was meant to blend, which I can already see was the wrong idea,” she said, shaking her head with such authentic regret that I blinked at her. For one thing, we absolutely hadn’t brought costumes. For another, Nikki had never intended to blend in her life. “So what we need is a tailor of the highest caliber who is willing to work at the last minute for an unreasonable amount of money. I don’t suppose you happen to know anyone who’d fit that bill?”

  The prelate, to my surprise, didn’t seem fazed. “There are two tailors in the city I recommend for exactly that.” He eyed Valetti. “Unless you have a suggestion?”

  “When I’ve had a similar problem in the past, I’ve gone to Signore Gazie. He is the best in the city, simply the best. And we have an account with him. You can trust him to be discreet.”

  “Completely discreet.” The prelate nodded. “There is also Signorina d’Eauchamp. She’s French, of course, but we have come to terms with that over the years. She will serve you well.”

  I glanced at Valetti, and he nodded his agreement. “They’ll both know the requirements for the capes as well.”

  “Requirements?” Nikki raised her brows. “A costume party with rules. I excel at these.”

  “You’ll find these easy to meet,” the prelate said, flashing another of what I expected was a rare smile. Nikki had that effect on people. “The cape itself must be full body, so there is no indication of whether you are a man or a woman. Footwear, I’m afraid, must be a knee-length, flat-soled black boot.”

  “A riding boot,” I interjected, truly surprised. The unisex cape made sense, but… “Are we meeting on horseback?”

  “We are not, but the earliest members of our group were prepared to ride at a moment’s notice should their convocation be discovered. The style became part of the accepted attire, and is now considered an easy indicator—but not too easy. You’ll find many in the streets have black boots beneath their capes to manage the cobbled streets without resorting to athletic shoes.”

  “Amateurs,” sniffed Nikki.

  “But the most important element of the costume is the hat and mask. Both are required. For the hat, please select a tricorn with any ornamentation you desire, so long as it doesn’t prove a hindrance to you. Where we’ll be meeting is a building rife with old passageways that were built on a rather small scale.”

  “Done,” I said. “And the mask?”

  “Definitely nothing from the Commedia dell’Arte,” the prelate instructed. “Those are all half masks except for the pierrot, and not as steeped in the tradition of the earliest days of Carnevale.” Another self-deprecating grimace. “We’re fond of our traditions, as I suspect you’ve already noted.”

  “Our traditions have saved our lives and made our fortunes,” Valetti said, and the prelate nodded as if it was another inalienable truth.

  “Bauta is the most prevalent mask during Carnevale, but any of the fuller-face masks will suffice—the dama, jester, volto, or dottore peste. Your mouth and lower face may be exposed, if you wish, but many of these masks do a good job of effectively obscuring detail, which is the goal. Either Signore Gazie or Signorina d’Eauchamp will have these at your disposal. They always keep a certain number back for emergencies, of which there are a surprising number at Carnevale.”

  “Good enough, thanks. But when we leave here today, we should exit through the public access area, if it’s all the same with you. It wouldn’t hurt for us to walk our way to the costumers’ shops.”

  “They’re quite close to each other. You have a street map?”

  “Always,” Nikki said, patting her bag. It was a Bottega Veneta, and she tended to pat it a lot.

  “I’ll give you the street names. Otherwise, we meet tonight at nine p.m. at this address.” Valetti rattled off the digits, and Nikki obligingly spoke it into her phone, then tucked the device back in her expensive purse.

  Alfonse lofted one of the recipe books, his rueful smile creasing his face. “Shall we compare the books?” he asked. “Sadly, we have enough to go around.”

  I pulled mine out as well, the moment feeling almost eerie, as if both the Arcana Council and the senate of magicians were holding their breaths. “We should.”

  We sat down at the table, and opened the booklets…

  Which were exactly alike.

  Exactly.

  Alfonse sighed after reviewing several pages of two of the thirty-page booklets, then glanced at Valetti. “Once again, they are the same, Vittore. Was it not you who told me there were differences in the books?”

  “I…” The count looked equally mystified, blinking several times. “I d
id say as much, but I have never seen two side by side. I was going only by the whispers and mutterings on the street.”

  “Some could be different, some the same?” Nikki offered. She was standing away from our hunched bodies—me in the center, the two magicians on either side of me. It was getting a little claustrophobic, especially with all the Latin. And there was something about the recipes that were tugging at me, the graceful alternating lengths of calligraphied letters tickling a deeply buried synapse. “Though having five dupes does seem to argue against that.”

  “Maybe.” Alfonse sat back. “There’s no denying the key ingredient, though. It appears over and over again.” He pointed to a phrase that wasn’t what I had snagged on—which had to do with a kidney—and tapped it.

  I squinted down. “Tenebrus Sanguine,” I recited. “Dark blood? What’s that mean, fresh?”

  “Most likely,” Valetti huffed. “Or the blood of a criminal.”

  “Or the damned.” Alfonse nodded, tapping his chin. “The butcher himself would qualify with the atrocities he committed. And the requirements for each of these recipes were not so stringent that he couldn’t supply the ingredient himself.”

  I didn’t even try to hide my disgust as he and Valetti fell into animated conversation over the possibility of the butcher supplying his own blood to his dastardly recipes. Magicians. Always had to take things one step further.

  But there were no additional discoveries to be made from the books, at least not that uncovered the mystery my mind kept tugging at. Over the prelate’s disapproval, I kept Balestri’s copy, and a few minutes later, the four of us wound our way without further conversation back through the darkened rooms of the Casino of Spirits. I was disappointed there wasn’t even the hint of any ghostly apparitions. Then again, it was full daylight. I suspected the hauntings of Venice were far more prevalent at night.