The Red King

by Jenn Stark

  A few minutes later, we were back in the bright daylight of the courtyard of the Casino of Spirits, but on the land side of the building. The prelate and Valetti didn’t exit with us, still arguing over how much blood a man could drain from his own body without lasting damage. I was happy to be away from them both, frankly. We had our marching orders, and we had our plans.

  “So…that was weird,” Nikki muttered. “We’ve got the prelate now convinced that the butcher is a real deal and walking the streets of Venice passing out recipe books, Count Valetti basking in approval over being proven right, and an invite to what’s got to be the weirdest costume party on the planet tonight.”

  “And both magicians were being super creepy about blood—and super dismissive about the title of Red King.”

  “Yeah, I noticed that,” Nikki agreed. “Something bad went down in the Middle Ages around that name, that much is clear, but what?”

  “The library!” I stopped short on the cobblestoned street, causing her to lurch to a halt beside me.

  “The what?”

  “Contact Mrs. French, and have her look in the library for…uh…” I frowned, trying to remember the line of arcane books I’d seen while recovering from my gunshot wound. “Hell, I don’t know where they were. But have her look up any dark practitioner cases from the sixteenth century, and see if she can get any hits on the Red King.”

  “Hits?” Nikki asked, though her eyes lit with understanding. “You know she doesn’t have those books digitized.”

  “She’s got to have some sort of filing system—ask her,” I insisted. “There’s got to be some mention of it if the mere title upset Alfonse that much.”

  “Totally with you there.” Nikki obligingly pulled out her phone, keying in the text. “I’ll have her send me any intel via phone.”

  “Excellent.” I watched her type for a few seconds. “You figure out where Alfonse and Valetti wanted to send us?”

  She nodded. “I did, but I’m pretty sure Simon can do us one better with an Arcana Council-approved costumer. That prelate gave me the willies.”

  “He did? I thought you were charmed by him.”

  “How could I possibly be charmed by anyone who thinks I should be wearing riding boots?” Nikki retorted. “I have never in the history of my life had to rock riding boots. They have no heel whatsoever! I might as well be wearing flip-flops.”

  She continued to grumble as she typed furiously on her phone, then scrolled over to another screen. A moment later, she stopped. “Oh! Well, that’ll work nicely.”

  “What?”

  Her phone dinged, and she grinned, waving the device at me. “Platform riding boots. But hold please, more important matters. We’ve got our Arcana Council-approved costumer.” She scrolled down her return text from, I assumed, Simon and chortled. “He even gave me the names of the woman’s grandchildren. God love that boy. If he wasn’t so damned young, I’d kiss him the next time I saw him.”

  I slanted her a look. “He’s older than you are. A lot older.”

  “Not in any of the ways that count.” She strode ahead as we reached the main canal and ordered us an honest-to-God gondola.

  Though only a few people on the banks of the canal were dressed in capes or obvious costumes, half the crowd we passed was wearing masks, but the opening ceremonies for the carnival were still several hours away. Still, it was a little unnerving to see so many blank faces intermingling in the crowd. I began to imagine what it must have been like for the nobility and lower classes alike to be able to don inexpensive masks and go out among each other as equals. I suspected there was a lot of partying going on whenever the masks came out.

  Nikki and I kept our conversation light and undirected while we floated down the Grand Canal. It was clearly a popular pastime, but I didn’t see any familiar faces. Or, perhaps more importantly, I didn’t see any faces more than once. I saw a lot of absolutely identical masks, but their surrounds always varied slightly—from feathers to velvets, to hats to hoods.

  We disembarked from the gondola stand a few minutes later and wound our way into the alleys of Venice, taking what I hoped was a deliberately circuitous route.

  “You do know where we’re going, right?” I asked after I saw the same shop sign three times.

  “I do,” Nikki said. “This was part of Simon’s message. It wasn’t so much that we see the shop we’re heading into, it’s that they see us. It’s that kind of shop.”

  “Oh,” I said, peering down the long street. There wasn’t a huge number of tourists here, what I assumed were tourists, but they were lingering in front of the storefronts, each more elaborate than the last, filled with colorful costumes and masks of every description. Mostly for show, as the shops appeared to be closed up, but like the two names that the prelate had given us, it seemed there was always an exception that could be made.

  “Another thing, dollface, this place we’re going to tonight? I checked the addy. Totally on point for the Creepio Brothers back there. Ca Daria. Turn here.”

  I turned. “I’m not familiar with the place. Should I be?”

  “Only if you have a death wish. Gotta be one of the most haunted places in Venice. These guys really have a thing for Ripley’s Believe it or Not.” She held up a hand, forestalling my response. “Here we are.”

  I looked up and saw one of the tiny doors had opened, three down from us, the minutest crack. “Are you serious?”

  “As a heart attack, but I’ll go first.” Nikki strode forward and pushed the door open. It gave way, and a rush of cool air tumbled out of the air-conditioned interior, redolent with spices and perfumes.

  “I don’t even care what’s in there, I’m going,” Nikki breathed. “It smells better than this entire city.”

  “I’m right behind you.”

  No one came out to greet us or shoo us away, so we stepped into the gloom. The moment we cleared the door, it moved, and out of a long habit of self-preservation, I jerked out a hand to stop it. A rod cracked sharply over my fingers with such force, I jumped away, blue fire instantly erupting to encircle my palms. The door slammed shut behind me, and my ball of spectral fire illuminated three wide-eyed children and a woman who looked to be about a thousand years old. She was wielding a measuring stick like she was going to hit a home run with my head.

  “No magic!” she hissed with a thick Italian accent, flicking out her unencumbered stick. To my shock, the blue light in my palms vanished.

  “Signora Visione?” Nikki asked, her voice overloud in the fraught silence.

  “Of course! And look at you, you’re built like Venus.” She still sounded enraged, but she circled Nikki with a string of compliments she made sound like curses. “Never have I seen such power, such strength, such joy of femininity in a woman! You will be a triumph. We will dress you in red and gold, a dama mask, the most beautiful we have, Beggio!”

  One of the boys leapt to attention, and she ordered him to go find something called “La Princessa.” He scampered off. She muttered in disgust. “He is the best grandson an old lady could have. My heart, my true, deep heart. Boots!” She glanced at Nikki’s feet, then cut around to a second child, a girl who barely came up to my waist, and sent her off at a run too. Then she shooed Nikki over to the bench. With the vantage of a few minutes in the gloom, I found I could see again even without my glowing fireballs. The room was lit, after a fashion, with a thousand fairy lights far above, holes that I suspected had been cut into the ceiling to create a false night.

  The old woman caught me looking. “The beauty and the mystery,” she said in an angry snarl. “It sweeps around you, creating a cape of stars. You are those stars.”

  “I’m fine with simple—”

  “You’re fine with simple. Fine with simple, she says, Mangiana, have you ever heard a sillier thing?”

  The little girl who remained eyed me with enormous soulful eyes and shook her head. “Sei fatto di stelle,” she whispered. “You’r
e made of stars.”

  “And stars we shall wrap around you, Sara Pelter Wilde, hunter of the arcane, Mistress of the House of Swords, Justice of the Arcana Council, Su—”

  “Nonna!” Mangiana’s dismayed interruption seemed to recall the old woman to herself. I glanced from her to Nikki.

  Su—? I mouthed to Nikki as the old woman started to mutter and hiss at how beautiful and petite my feet were with the same dismayed voice she’d accorded to Nikki’s size thirteens. Nikki looked back, equally wide-eyed, and shrugged.

  “We will clothe you with the boots of the Valkyries,” the old woman said. “The wings of the raven, the stars of the night sky, and a mask…a mask…”

  “Um,” I offered, almost afraid to interrupt her. “I don’t think we’re supposed to let on that we’re female, necessarily.”

  “I have no problem breaking that little rule,” Nikki chimed in.

  “And you…you. You could, we could, we should, hmm…” The woman pursed her lips and frowned at my face. I got that a lot, but it was still unnerving. “A volto, I think. Or maybe…psht. Men and their rules.” This time, her disdain sounded legitimate, and I was forced to rethink everything she’d said about me. “Yes!” she growled, then looked around quickly for a child. They were all gone.

  “My hearts!” she snapped, and dashed off into the shadows.

  “Supe, maybe?” I said out loud, still wondering at the last title Signora Visione had attempted to assign me. “What could that mean?”

  “Supergirl? Super sassy?”

  “Supreme Court Justice?” I grinned. “That’d be a twist.”

  “You’d never get approved.” Nikki shook her head. “Supernatural? Superfriend?”

  Our suggestions were cut short as the old woman and her charges burst back through the door. With a crack of the old woman’s command, the lights came up in full, blinding us momentarily. Then we were assaulted with a flurry of whirling figures, and any other hope of conversation was done.

  We were in the capable hands of Signora Visione.

  Chapter Sixteen

  “Yo, SuperBad. You’re looking fine.”

  “I can barely see through this thing.” By the time we walked down the side street and back to one of the main thoroughfares of Venice, night had fallen. According to Signora Visione, we didn’t have far to go to get to Ca Daria, but she’d had the same reaction that Nikki had when we told her that was our destination. Except with more crosses.

  “You cannot be too careful in Ca Daria, yes?” she’d said. “People who are respectful, who are gentle and strong, they have no trouble there. The prideful, the weak, the foolish. They should be careful. You should be careful too, yes? Because you are wearing my creations and you should be seen by all of Carnevale in them.”

  With that, she’d shooed us out of her shop, the door slamming shut behind us, only it wasn’t yet time for our appointment with the magicians. I had no interest in simply cooling my jets near Ca Daria, but I didn’t want to get our costumes dirty either.

  “Do we even know how to dry-clean these things?”

  “I get the feeling little fairies come and whisk them away when the time comes.”

  “Nice. So how far do we have to go?”

  “Three blocks and two hours,” Nikki said cheerfully. “I think we should explore the canal again, maybe hit the old stomping grounds of our friend the butcher.”

  “You just want to be seen by as many tourists as possible.”

  “That too.” She grinned, or I assumed she grinned. It was difficult to tell with her mask. Then again, it was one stunner of a mask. True to Signora Visione’s word, Nikki’s attire was fantastic enough to turn the heads of statues. Her hair was topped with a voluminous red tricorn hat that perfectly matched the fiery red feathers tipped with yellow that adorned her eye-popping cape. The cape tiered down her body in waves, but stopped abruptly midthigh, allowing her red tights to be visible over approximately two miles of leg before her polished riding boots carried on the rest of the sartorial triumph down to her feet. And sure enough, they were flat-soled platform boots.

  Nikki’s mask, as Visione had decreed, was a feminine dama mask that was pure gold, with wide eyeholes and miniscule additional holes tucked up under the nose and between the full, sensual lips. “Can you even breathe in that thing?” I asked.

  “At least I can see.”

  “Fair point.”

  It wasn’t that my mask had been built with a design flaw, but I wasn’t used to any obstruction on my face, least of all a vaguely raptor-like bird mask with a sharp beak that extended out several inches, then swooped down, obscuring my lower face. I could breathe, but the eyes of the bird were shielded by a profusion of blue-black feathers, the same feathers that adorned my full-body cape. The result was a strange disorientation that made me think that objects in front of me were farther away than they were.

  Nikki squeezed my arm, and I stopped abruptly, barely avoiding bumping into the woman in front of us as we waited our turn to catch a gondola ride. Despite the late hour, all the canal-side stands were open for business, with tourists queuing up. A wave of murmurs started as we stood waiting, and Nikki started fluffing her hair beside me—an immediate tell that we were being watched.

  “Anybody interesting?”

  “Everybody’s interesting tonight, dollface, most especially us.” She laughed with delight as a masculine voice called out the word “Bellissima.” Apparently, that was our cue to board. We cut across two other lines to a waiting gondola, and Nikki handed me aboard, then swept into the boat herself. The man started singing a love song before he’d even pushed off.

  “I love Venice,” Nikki sighed.

  When we reached the middle of the canal, an unexpected obstacle bobbed into view—a wine barrel. Our gondolier broke off his song to cluck in dismay. “Be careful, bellissime,” he directed. “The barge masters, they do not always make sure their cargo is lashed down properly, you see? It can make for an interesting tour, but someone is out quite a bit of wine, I’m afraid.”

  Several more barrels bobbed along, and a few were caught against the far edge of the canal, ramming into the pier with the rhythmic push of the current. Still others dragged against the stone outcropping of a bridge, the sound of scraping wood audible across the lapping water. The gondolier steered expertly through the wreckage, resuming his song. When we were once more in the clear, he leaned a little closer. “You have a destination in mind? Or simply the tour.”

  Nikki sat forward. “The Riva de Biasio.”

  The man clucked. “Ah no, bellissima,” he said, though he dutifully stuck his pole back into the water and the boat glided forward. “That is a place far away from the bright lights and beautiful people, yes? You should not be going there this night, when not even the beauty of Carnevale can quiet the cries of the children.”

  “So you know the story?” Nikki said, sounding fully engaged. Behind my mask, I rolled my eyes.

  “But, of course, I know the story. And in Venice, there are many different ways to tell the same tale. But I will tell you the story of the butcher Biasio the way it was told to my father, and to my father’s father before him, all the way back to the year 1532, when the story happened.”

  “Excellent.” Nikki fluffed her feathers. “I know it’s terrible, so don’t spend too long on the poor children.”

  “They were the ones to suffer the most, but not the longest, bellissima.” Like the well-trained gondolier he was, the man launched into the tale of the butcher of Venice, but right from the beginning, the story was subtly different. In the gondolier’s tale, the butcher was a modest, hardworking man who couldn’t seem to get ahead, and he was willing to try anything to make his wares the talk of the city. “One night, as he was closing up shop, a stregone came to visit.”

  “Stregone?” Nikki tilted her head as I looked up.

  “A doctor?” I asked, though I knew that wasn’t quite right. Nikki touched m
y arm and pointed as we glided past a four-story canal house with a circular window adorning each of its top three floors. Ca Daria, I realized instantly. Our eventual destination.

  “Not exactly,” our gondolier said, still deep in his story. “In that time, the doctors didn’t know as much as they do now, and they relied on natural medicines and healing spells that were more magic than science. And so it was with the stregone. He proposed a deal to the young butcher that he would bring him great money and fame, as long as he never asked questions or varied from the recipes the stregone gave him, and he used the cuts of meat the stregone supplied. The young butcher did these things, and in no time at all, he was famous, his sausages and stews the talk of the city. But this Cargnio, he knew something was not right. His guests would eat certain stews and complain later of headaches and terrible events, while others would enjoy sausages and return the next morning speaking of extraordinary dreams or sharing breathless tales of windfalls of good fortune. It was all very peculiar, and it seemed to only get worse. One day, Cargnio looked where he should not look and saw what is in among the cuts of meat.”

  By now, both Nikki and I had stopped looking at the passing houses and were staring at the young man, completely rapt. “And then?”

  “The poor butcher, he is distraught. He goes to his priest, and his priest tells him he must turn in the stregone, but he knows he cannot do this. He must protect his family. So he arranges for his family to leave the city without telling them why, and he makes his terrible, self-destructive plan. He slips something he should not into a sausage stew, it is found, and the rest, well, you know.”

  “So he wasn’t the one killing the children.”

  “He was not, but he could not live with himself, eh? Knowing what had been done under his very nose, the terrible remains he had handled. Knowing what he had been willing to do for money. He truly could not live with himself. He is the one who begged the senate to punish him in the manner of a warning, and they did exactly that. It was a message to the stregones and dark sorcerers of every ilk not to use Venice as their testing grounds. And that is why the street is still named for Biasio to this day. He is still remembered, still famous. Simply not at all in the way he wanted to be.”