by Dave Duncan
The Maestro laid his book out of harm’s way and examined my wound.
“Your calf is cut,” he said. “It’s not deep. Needs a few stitches, but no need to send for the barber. Giorgio, fetch my bag. Roll over, Alfeo.”
I sympathize with embroidery; being stitched hurts. I kept my mind off the pain and my undignified posture by trying to answer all the questions and explain what had happened without saying everything I was thinking. Who had reason to want me dead? The poisoner. Why? Because I knew his face. How did he know he had reason to want me dead? Because his demon had told him so. How had his bravos known I was in the church? Same answer.
Soon I was stitched and bandaged and set on a chair with my leg propped up on another. A fortifying glass of wine was thrust into my hand and the Maestro dispensed a spoonful of laudanum to soothe Bruno, for every attempt to hail him as a hero just upset him more. Mama herself washed my blood off the desk. My best hose were in rags and my shoe needed washing also.
The Maestro hates having more people in his atelier than he can keep an eye on. He ordered everybody out and I knew he wanted to have a serious talk with me, but the Republic does not approve of dead bodies lying around. The sbirri arrived, the local constabulary, four of them, led by Sergeant Torre the Unthinking. I find it very hard to keep my temper around Torre. He was quite capable of marching me off to jail for questioning, as if I were the culprit and not the victim.
Fortunately Torre had barely opened his mouth before another man appeared and took over- Missier Grande himself, the chief of police, whose red and blue cloak is the most feared sight in the Republic. Gasparo Quazza is a tall man with the solidity of a Palladio facade, and has been known to break up a riot with his mere presence. It is Missier Grande who carries out the orders of the Ten. He has the integrity and hardness of a diamond, a man of poor background raised to one of the highest offices in the Republic, which he serves without scruple or question. He will be the next Grand Chancellor when the present one dies or retires. He has never racked me yet. He would hate to rack me, I’m sure, but he will rack me if he has to; I’m sure of that also. He came close so he could stare down at me. He has a gray-flecked beard and wears the standard flat, circular biretta of any civic official.
I smiled up at him politely. “Who were they?”
“You tell me, Alfeo.”
“I don’t know who they were, Missier Grande.” Sometimes servility is the better part of valor.
“Why should anyone set an army on you? Six men?”
“I don’t know why, Missier Grande. I’m a good swordsman, but not quite that conceited. I was attacked without warning.” I was glad to hear Father Farsetti’s voice outside, and then see him walk into the atelier. His testimony of events would agree with mine and be accepted without argument.
“You were wearing your sword,” Missier Grande said. “You had your giant with you. You expected trouble.”
The Maestro intervened. “I foresaw it, Missier Grande. I ordered my apprentice to go armed today. I foresaw trouble.”
Quazza flashed him a look of disgust and me another. “So your defense is witchcraft?”
There he was speaking more to the audience than to me. Very early in my indenture, Quazza’s daughter was abducted. The child was recovered unharmed and the offender captured by a combination of the Maestro’s clairvoyance and some insanely brash juvenile derring-do by me. Unlike the doge, Missier Grande is no skeptic in occult matters.
“The attack was witchcraft,” I said. “How else did they find me? And how could six armed strangers assemble outside the church without attracting attention from the parish residents?”
Father Farsetti broke in angrily. “They had attracted attention, Alfeo. A dozen local men were loitering nearby, keeping an eye on them. It was Our Lady who saved you, not the Enemy.”
“Your lungs deserve credit also, Father.”
“But your neighbors deserve more, for noticing suspicious strangers and keeping watch on them. I will give you a chance to stand up and thank them in church on Sunday.”
“Thank you, Father.”
Quazza was still admiring my smile. I assumed that was what he was doing from the careful way he was studying me.
“Who knows where you will be on Sunday, Zeno? I have two dead men to explain to Their Excellencies. I have an apprentice wearing a sword and claiming he was forewarned by witchcraft. Perhaps I should call in the Holy Office?”
“Has not Bruno done the Republic a service today?” I asked. “Who were they?”
“Hired thugs,” Missier Grande admitted. “Common bravos.”
“From the Ponte degli Assassini, or the Calle della Bissa, I expect,” the Maestro remarked, sending me a smug look. Just east of the Rialto, the Bridge of Assassins and the Alley of the Serpent are the most sinister haunts in the city. Gold rains brighter than the eyes of the serpent. That was where one went to hire killers.
“Did they have gold in their pouches? How much was I worth?”
“Someone got to their pouches before I did.” Quazza glanced briefly in the direction of Torre and his band. “You may have been worth some silver to them, but not much while you are still alive, Alfeo Zeno. Dead, you would have brought them a second instalment. Dead or alive, it is not for you to hand out justice. A few days in the Leads will afford you protection against any second inexplicable attack and possibly refresh your memory of recent events.”
The sbirri in the background were leering. Father Farsetti was not. And neither was I, now. The threat was believable. Again I was saved by my master.
“You have two corpses, Missier Grande,” the Maestro said wearily, as if addressing a wilful child. “If you don’t know them personally, some of the sbirri will, or your own fanti. You can locate their associates and extract the name of the person who hired them. He is the one you want, yes? The problem is that they may not know his real name. No matter how much pain you inflict they may give you nothing more than a vague description.”
Missier Grande sensed an offer coming. He nodded. “Continue.”
“As it happens…You can walk, Alfeo?”
I carefully laid my left foot on the floor and pulled myself erect. I took a few steps. “The agony is indescribable, but I can hobble, master.”
“Good. As it happens, Alfeo was on his way to call on a certain person who may…Or may not.” The Maestro sighed. “We have our suspicions, but no evidence, you understand? No evidence I can lay before the Ten.” Meaningful glances were exchanged. “I dare not make an accusation yet. But the person we suspect may carry his own evidence on his person, and his face may be evidence enough when you have arrested the surviving bravos. Even his reaction when he sees Alfeo still alive may be revealing. Since one attempt has already been made on his life this morning, and since my servant Bruno is too upset to continue providing protection, may I ask that the Republic provide some staunch and trustworthy bodyguard to accompany my apprentice when he makes this visit?”
Quazza is not the sort of man to grab at a deal before he has walked around it a few times and counted its teeth. Especially a deal offered by Maestro Nostradamus. He chewed the nearer edges of his beard and stared hard. “What exactly do you mean about evidence on his person?”
The Maestro pulled back his lips out sideways. He is a superb actor-the justice system lost a great advocate in him. “He may be posing as a Christian and not be a Jew.”
That meant Turkish spy and raised the stakes a lot. It certainly took the matter out of the hands of the sbirri.
Missier Grande chewed for another moment and then accepted the offer. “I will send a man. An hour from now, Zeno?”
“I shall be at your service, Missier Grande.”
“And your memory will improve in the meantime?”
“I shall think very hard, Missier Grande.”
Quazza spun on his heel and marched out. Torre and the sbirri followed like sheep. No one argues with Missier Grande.
12
H av
ing attended to my penance and dressed in clean clothes and shoes, one of which was decidedly damp, I peglegged down the stairs with Giorgio hovering alongside. I was waylaid halfway by a mob of Marciana women and children and had to give an expurgated adumbration of my battle outside the church, which was the talk of the parish. I arrived at the watergate at the same time as a gondola glided in to the quay. The curtains on the felze were open and inside sat Filiberto Vasco in his red cloak.
I do not like Missier Grande Quazza, but I respect him; he is tough but honest. I cannot say as much for his vizio. Filiberto Vasco is about my age, which is too young for the high office he holds; his family has too much money and he has far too much ambition. Were I Missier Grande, I should wear plate mail on my back whenever Filiberto Vasco came within stabbing distance. He pays court to all the women, menaces all the men, fancies himself as a wit, and knows everything. His only admirable quality is that he dislikes me as much as I dislike him.
Giorgio’s services would obviously not be needed. The two men rowing Vasco’s boat wore ordinary gondolier clothes, but I should not have cared to wrestle with either of them. Nay, were I triplets, I should’st not. I limped down the steps and boarded, squirming into the felze with heartrending stoicism to seat myself alongside Vasco. We regarded each other with mutual distaste.
“Where do you want to go to, Zeno?”
I gave him Karagounis’s address in the Greek quarter just east of San Marco. He passed it on and we shot away from the quay. The gondoliers started to sing, because they are forbidden to listen to their superiors’ conversation, but they sang surprisingly well, one bass and one tenor. The vizio leaned back and smirked. I wondered if I could have learned to smirk like that if my great-great-grandfather had been a pirate like his. We cross swords almost every week at Captain Colleoni’s Monday fencing class. I am a better fencer than he is.
“I have orders to take you to the Leads, Alfeo, unless you tell me the truth and the whole truth.”
“I will gladly tell you as much as I am allowed by my oath, Filiberto.”
“What oath?”
“I am not allowed to say. But it was sworn to someone much higher than Missier Grande.”
The sneer waxed. If I could do no better than that, Vasco would hear the music of a cell door closing on me.
“The well-loved Procurator Orseolo died two days ago,” I said.
“What has that to do with you?” But a moment of hesitation had told me that the doge was not the only one concerned about that sudden death.
“He was taken ill the previous evening. Maestro Nostradamus was the first physician to attend him, you know, and he suspects poison.”
Vasco’s eyes narrowed to stiletto stabs as he calculated how to use this information for his own advancement. “Keep talking.”
I had my master’s leave to reveal all this. If the Greek’s servant, Pulaki, matched the assassin I had seen in the mirror, then he was a Turkish agent and the murderer we sought. I was sorry that Vizio Vasco would get the credit for arresting him, but the Maestro would be rescued from suspicion and the case closed.
“We have a theory that the procurator was an innocent victim of a plot to poison somebody more important. No, dear friend, I am forbidden to reveal more. But we believe that a man named Pulaki, one of the wine stewards, is actually an agent of the sultan. Remove his britches and all will be revealed.”
“You mean not enough will be revealed?” Vasco fancies himself as a wit.
“As the lustrissimo says. There is a slight chance that his master is the culprit. That is what I have to establish. If I identify either of them, I will happily accuse him and give you reason to look for the missing evidence.”
“Will you, indeed?” The vizio smiled. Heads he won, tails I lost. What more could his shriveled little heart desire? “And on what basis will you identify either of them?”
“Call it a hunch.”
He smiled. The Ten could make stones speak. “And who is his master?”
“A Greek bookseller, Alexius Karagounis.”
Vasco’s smile disappeared like an anvil in a canal.
I guessed why and felt a fact drop into place with the thump of a pile driver’s mallet-the Ten already suspected Karagounis! That was why the doge was so concerned; he had unwittingly gone to meet with a possible Turkish agent, and he was utterly forbidden to talk with foreigners except in the presence of his counselors.
Silence fell. Under the competing songs along the canal, I could hear Vasco’s brain creaking as he weighed his options. If Karagounis was under surveillance, then it would take a specific order from the Ten to arrest him and a premature move would bring the wrath of the mighty crashing down on the vizio. To let Alfeo Zeno interfere and then not arrest Karagounis would alert the suspect and cause him to flee. Vasco’s only safe course was to throw Alfeo Zeno back in jail and report to Quazza for fresh orders.
Then he reached a decision and smiled again. “It will be interesting. If your accusation is false, you will be in serious trouble, of course.”
“I am confident that my information is correct,” I said, trying to look as if that were true. Now it was my brain’s turn to creak. My warped imagination toyed with the possibility that Karagounis was a spy for the Ten and then discarded it. “He may have fled. I did try to call on the man yesterday, but there was no one home.”
“We have ways of opening doors,” the vizio said. He continued to smile, no doubt listening to the noises my brain was making as I tried to work out what he had worked out.
No more was said until we reached our destination. There is no way to climb out of a gondola while keeping one leg straight, and my scarlet hose was oozing blood by the time I was up on the quay. I looked skyward in dismay.
My companion leered. “Top floor, you said? You want to run up ahead?”
“If you were a gentleman you would carry me,” I said grumpily and headed for the stairs. Vasco and his two colossi followed. There had been women standing around the door as we approached. Now there were none, but almost every window held a face or two, as if we had sounded trumpets. The vizio ’s red cloak had worked this magic.
Somewhere around the second floor it occurred to me to wonder how long the Council had suspected Karagounis, assuming it did. Suppose the Ten had debated arresting Karagounis on the day of the Imer supper, and that very evening the doge himself had gone rushing off to a meeting with the suspect? If Karagounis had already fled the country, the doge could be accused of warning him.
Around the third floor I found another possibility, a more plausible one. What if Vasco knew that Karagounis was under surveillance but was not supposed to know? He could have been snooping in documents or eavesdropping. So now he would get the credit for catching a spy but could not be blamed for spoiling a plan he had not been told about. He need no longer worry that I was leading him on a wild goose chase. This was going to be one of his good days.
We reached the top and I pointed to the correct door. One of the apes pounded a fist on it: one, two, three…It opened.
I did not know the man standing there, although he was dressed as a servant and fitted Violetta’s description of “middle twenties, slender, dusky, looked like a Moor.” He was a scared Moor when he saw Vasco’s sword and cloak.
“Your name?”
“Pulaki Guarana, clarissimo.” He sounded more like a mainlander than a Venetian, but certainly not a Greek.
Vasco glanced at me; I shook my head.
“Take me to your master.”
Pulaki resisted a push. “What name shall-”
“No announcement. Move!”
I followed with the oversized gondoliers on my heels. We crossed a dingy, cramped hallway and entered a dingy, cramped room being used as a study. It was almost filled by the desk. The man on the far side rose to his feet.
He had gone from heavyset to fat in the twenty or so years since I saw him perform his first murder. Then he had been bearded, now he just needed a shave. He
was ugly, oily, and angry. Although I could see no demon on his shoulder, I would believe that it was still there until I had watched him being exorcized by a conclave of archbishops. He ignored me completely.
“Your name and station?” Vasco demanded.
Karagounis bowed a slight bow and smiled a slight smile. “Alexius Karagounis, at your service, messer. I have a permit of temporary residence, if you wish to see it.”
“You sell books?”
The Greek smiled again, a you-won’t-catch-me-that-way smile. “No, messer. I am not yet permitted to trade. But I do have some interesting manuscripts if Your Excellency would care to inspect them? Pulaki, bring goblets and wine for the noble lords.”
“No wine. Apprentice?”
I said, “If you are an honest Christian, let us see you cross yourself.”
Karagounis turned his oily smirk on me. All his reactions seemed curiously wrong. He had not asked our names or questioned our right to burst in on his privacy; it was almost as if he knew both of us and had been expecting us. “As a child in Greece my mother taught me to cross myself like this. Here, after I have been inducted into the truer faith, I shall cross myself like this.”
I had him. Now he could not try to claim that he was a Jew.
I said, “In spite of your offer of wine, I say you are a Muslim. Show us that you are not.”
“You are calling me a liar, young sir?”
“No,” I said. “I believe that you had Christian parents, because I say that you are a kapikulu. You were born somewhere in the impoverished wilds of the Balkans. In your youth you were sold to the sultan’s slavers, forcibly converted to Islam, and reared to serve the sultan. Prove that you have not been circumcised and I will apologize.”
