Irene picked it up. The black ribbons for fastening it trailed limply from her hand. ‘Why this?’ she asked.
‘SO THAT THE RIDER MAY NOT SEE YOU,’ the great voice whispered. It seemed to be making an attempt to modulate its volume, and Irene could only be grateful. ‘GO NOW, RETURN WITH THE KING’S SON, AND SET ME FREE …’
If this goes any further, I’m going to have so much stuff hung on me that I’ll look like a Victorian Christmas tree with extra gingerbread. But it would be useful to have a new mask to conceal her face. Without too much hesitation, Irene raised it to her face and knotted the ribbons behind her head.
Nothing unusual happened. It didn’t feel strange. Really. At least, no more than any new mask would. No odd prickles or excessive heat or cold. Nothing at all. She was probably just being paranoid.
‘I need to get to work,’ she said, surprised at how prosaic she sounded after all that shouting. ‘Thank you for your pledge.’
Beside her the carriage door swung open onto the outside world, and the noise of the crowd and the city came flooding into the carriage like a living thing, with the sound of distant bells tolling the hour making the hubbub seem almost musical.
Irene abruptly realized that the sun had set, and the sky was dark. The crowd was still present, but now it was lit by torches and oil street lamps. She swore to herself. It was evening. She’d lost half the day. And she still had to find Kai.
There was one thing she hadn’t tried. She sidled through the crowd till she could find a shadow to loiter in, then reached into her bodice to pull out the pendant, dangling it from its chain. ‘Thing of dragons,’ she murmured, ‘guide me towards your master’s nephew.’
The pendant began to spin. It was like an unfocused compass needle confused by a magnet, turning without stopping, as if one more revolution would help it find the right direction. As it spun faster, it began to whine: a thin high noise like a mosquito, but slowly lowering down the octave towards normal hearing. Its motion grew choppier, jerking at the chain, but still unable to settle on a direction, and Irene could feel a growing heat from it.
‘Stop!’ she whispered hastily, before the pendant could destroy itself due to the place’s chaotic nature, or draw attention from the Ten, or both. She let it dangle for a moment to lose its heat before slipping it back into her bodice.
Damn it to hell. That wasn’t going to work, and hunting across Venice for the Carceri was no longer an option: there simply wasn’t the time. She was going to have to intercept Kai at the opera house, and pray she could handle the Fae who’d come to see the show.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Irene strolled away from the crowd, trying to think of options besides the drastically overdone and hideously dangerous. Her preferred form of book heist - or, rather, borrowing - involved a significant amount of time scouting out the area first. Book-collecting activities (as opposed to dragon-rescuing undertakings) usually involved befriending people whom she could pump for information. She also regretted the lack of money with which to bribe guards, a good cover identity, an escape route and all the little things that made life so much easier.
She was just not used to operating on this sort of shoestring basis, and with no time to strategize. That was the hell of it. They’d have Kai on the auction block at midnight. And the chances of scoping out a top-secret prison in time seemed slim at best. Oh, perhaps a heroine might manage it, if the story was in her favour … but she couldn’t depend on that.
She watched the crowd and let herself reflect on what she’d just done. She’d made a pact with a Fae. Not just a convenient cooperative arrangement of the sort she’d organized with Silver, but an outright bargain, promised in the Language. She just hoped there wouldn’t be consequences from the Library. Young Librarians were always warned not to deal with the Fae at all, let alone make formal deals with them. And Irene hadn’t broken the letter of any ordinances - she hoped. She’d just jumped up and down on the spirit of them, then taken them down a dark alley and made some pointed suggestions at knife-point. Saving Kai and preventing a war might save her - but only if she was successful.
There were bells everywhere, echoing through the streets and along the canals, filling the air with sound. The people around her, both masked and unmasked, crossed themselves at particular notes, and Irene tried to match the action without too obviously copying it. The air was cooler, and decent women had drawn their shawls around their shoulders against the evening chill, while the more indecent women strutted with bared shoulders and nearly bared breasts. The last fragments of sunset streaked the sky with orange and pink, like folds of silk showing through a grey-velvet outer layer of cloud. This morning the city had seemed to float on the water, rising out of it like a particularly architectural Venus in pink-and-white marble. Here and now, as twilight gathered and people whispered, it seemed on the verge of sinking into the smoothly shifting reflections.
But there was more to it than that. With the evening came a more definite sense of suspicion within the crowded squares. Perhaps she’d been blind to it earlier, in the brilliant sunlight, surrounded by the daytime sounds of work and enthusiasm. But now in the twilight, with the bells echoing in a constant susurrus of minor tones, she felt … watched. Observed. Spied upon.
Eyes glinted behind masks, and people murmured to each other in corners. And every time she passed someone, she had an urge to look back and see if they were watching her.
Irene paused to buy a penny’s worth of sugared nuts from a street vendor and asked casually, ‘Which way is the opera house from here?’
‘Which one?’ the street vendor asked, tugging his apron straight with a weary sigh. ‘La Fenice?’
Yes, that was what Aunt Isra had said. And it was one of the biggest and most spectacular opera houses in Europe, in a large number of alternates. Where else would one auction off a dragon at midnight? ‘Yes, if you please,’ she said eagerly.
‘Ah, now that isn’t far,’ the vendor said, and rattled off a string of directions. ‘Say a prayer to the Virgin for me as you pass her church, young lady, and I hope that you have a good evening.’
Irene hoped so too, as she smiled behind the mask and continued on, tucking the packet of nuts into an inner pocket. She would gladly have eaten them, as she was feeling famished. But she couldn’t eat anything without removing her mask, and she didn’t feel like tempting fate that much.
As she came closer, she realized there was no chance of getting lost. She only had to follow the noise.
She heard the roaring crowd outside La Fenice well before she saw it. This was not one of those cities - such as the many versions of London - where people queued up politely before major cultural events. The mob was a heaving, swirling mass of people. Good. All the more cover for me. Soon she was lost in its wild enthusiasm, enthusiastic anticipation and anticipatory friendliness - all of it containing just a hint that things might go over the edge, if the crowd became too excited. Men in uniform surrounded the opera house and stood along the bank of the canal, and several nicer-than-usual gondolas displaying coloured pennants were moored alongside.
Irene was again grateful for her mask, and she was far from being the only masked person in the crowd. Both men and women, well dressed or more poorly clad, had covered their faces, and the last of the sunlight turned eye slits into dark, suspicious hollows.
She drifted inconspicuously into the rear of a medium-sized group of unmasked men and women who were sharing bottles of wine and loudly discussing the main singers in the night’s performance. ‘How long till it starts?’ she asked one of the men.
He squinted at her a little blurrily, passing his bottle to the woman next to him. ‘In five minutes, darling. They’re already tuning up for the overture. We won’t have a chance to get in until the interval. Were you waiting for someone?’
No chance of getting in round the front, then. She’d have to try the stage door around the back, or wait for the interval. And this must mean an actual opera was about t
o be performed - it was an opera house, after all. Maybe it was a warm-up for the auction to come? A bit of casual eavesdropping made it clear that the group was expecting Tosca, and gave her some additional information on the performers, their voices and their personal habits. ‘I think I see him over there,’ she murmured as she sidled away from them.
It took fifteen minutes to circle round to the back of the opera house and find the stage door. It then took several coins from the money that Silver had given her to bribe her way inside.
The backstage corridors were functional rather than beautiful, and full of people - the chorus, stagehands, guards, runners, and two men carrying a stage dummy on a stretcher with a dramatic bloodstain over the chest. It was no place for a bystander, and Irene made her way to the front of the house as quickly as she could. It was all marble and expensive wood here, a far cry from the more pragmatic backstage. She could see a wide staircase and a brightly lit foyer with paintings and frescos, but she stayed in the shadows.
She’d been able to hear the music quite well backstage, well enough to recognize that they were into the first act, but not that far in. She needed to get a sense of the place’s layout. And if she happened to overhear guards talking about incoming deliveries of dragons for an auction at midnight, so much the better.
The back of her neck prickled: someone was watching her. She turned slightly to glance unobtrusively over her shoulder, and saw that a man was indeed coming down the corridor towards her. Wait, not just any man. He’d been one of the people at the stage door when she came in, loitering there along with half a dozen others.
Over twenty years’ experience kicked in as she began to stroll casually down the corridor away from him. This was not a coincidence. She’d been spotted, which suggested that he’d been at the door to watch for her in particular. This was very definitely not good. She needed to get rid of him - either lose him or get him alone in a dark corner, knock him out and slip away - then change her appearance as much as possible and stay out of view.
The corridor ahead branched to right and left. Irene chose left at random, turned and nearly bumped into another man. ‘Excuse me,’ she murmured in Italian, ducking in a quick curtsey.
‘Grab her,’ the man from behind said, his voice pitched just loud enough to reach them, but not the boxes or the auditorium. He had an unpleasantly professional tone.
Damn. Irene converted her curtsey into a straight punch into the closer man’s stomach, stepped past him, kicked the back of his knee as he bent over off-balance and ran for it as he went down. This was too public a place to stand and fight.
She heard the sound of pursuing feet as she ran down the corridor, mentally plotting the quickest route round to the backstage passages. Left and down should work. She grabbed the door frame as she swung into a turn, her shoes skidding on the marble floor. There were no convenient doors to lock, no tapestries or carpets to throw in her pursuer’s way.
In desperation she snatched the packet of nuts from her pocket and threw it behind her. ‘Nuts, burst!’ She heard a noise like tiny fire-crackers going off, as fragments of sugared nuts sprayed in all directions, and a curse as the steps behind her stuttered. Even if they hadn’t done any damage, having a packet of nuts go off at ground zero must have startled him.
The passage bent further left and she saw a stairway just ahead of her. Almost there.
Then Sterrington stepped into a doorway to her right. Irene recognized her business suit, and the mask she’d purchased yesterday. She was holding something in her right hand, but it was too small to be a gun and too dull to be a knife. Irene decided to keep running, until the screaming jolt to her muscles took her completely by surprise. She went down in an uncoordinated lump and stayed down, her whole body spasming with shock.
Oh. Right. A Taser. Sterrington must have come from a world which has that technology. Irene’s mind framed curses, but her tongue and mouth were numb.
‘Pick her up,’ Sterrington said to the two pursuers, who had caught up with them. ‘Carefully, please.’
‘Do we need to get her identity checked?’ the professional-sounding pursuer asked. ‘The werewolf said he’d confirmed her smell, but if we take the wrong person to his lordship, he’ll be annoyed.’
‘No need,’ Sterrington said. ‘I can confirm her identity, even with a new mask. Bring her this way.’
Irene hung like a doll between the two men as they draped her arms over their shoulders, supporting her between them. She was unable to raise her head as they trailed Sterrington back along the corridor, and Irene’s feet scraped along the floor.
Sterrington was heading towards the entrances to the boxes, rather than backstage. So I’m being handed over to someone. Irene’s stomach sank. She tried to remember how long recovery from Taser-shock took, and wished it was faster.
She could hear the music again. A tenor and a soprano were singing a duet, the tenor swoopingly romantic, the soprano allowing herself to be convinced. It was almost incendiary in its intensity. Irene vaguely remembered that La Fenice had been burned down once or twice in some alternates, and wondered if this one had also gone up in smoke and been rebuilt.
It would make such a good story, after all …
Sterrington paused outside the door to a box. She reached across to touch Irene’s chin, tilting her face so that Irene could see her clearly. ‘You do understand that this is all professional?’ she said politely. ‘Nothing personal, Clarice.’
Really, on the whole, it was one of the nicer things that had been said to Irene when she was drugged, Tasered or otherwise unable to reply. But her inability to reply prevented an angry response, rather than the polite Of course, I quite understand, which Sterrington seemed to expect.
Sterrington nodded. ‘Later, then.’ She knocked on the door, a light rap of her knuckles, then turned the handle and held it open for the men to carry Irene in.
The box was dark, of course. All the light in the theatre was on the stage, and the boxes on either side were unlit, each one a secretive little world of its own - thick with curtains and dense with luxury. For a moment the sheer spectacle of the view took Irene’s breath away. The opera house was magnificent. Even in the darkness she could admire the network of white boxes along the theatre walls, the pale frescoed ceiling so very high above, the blaze of the high chandelier and the way the seats below were filled - no, packed full - with all the citizens of Venice.
There were two wide wing-backed chairs in the box, turned to face the stage. She couldn’t see who, if anyone, was sitting in either.
Then the chair nearer the stage turned, and Irene’s heart hit rock bottom as she saw who was sitting there. She wasn’t stupid, she had been suspecting it, but she would really have preferred for it to be anyone else. It was the Fae whose photo she had seen on Li Ming’s computer, the man she’d seen meeting Lady Guantes at the Train and with her at the tavern. Lord Guantes. And she was shut in an opera box with him.
‘Miss Winters, I believe.’ His voice was soft and deep, with a hint of command to it. He spoke in English. ‘Please come and sit down.’
The two men carried Irene across to the other chair and deposited her in it, before bowing to Lord Guantes and leaving. The door clicked shut behind them as a cannon sounded in the orchestra pit and the noise shuddered through the theatre. There were screams from the audience. Irene tried to work her mouth again, and this time she had a little more control as she considered her options. Collapse the whole box and try to escape in the confusion was tempting, but had some obvious flaws in the execution.
Lord Guantes gave her five minutes of peace, watching the action on the stage and listening to the singing. Then he turned to her. His dark-grey silks and velvets faded into the shadows of his chair, and his gloves concealed his hands, leaving the impression, for a moment, of a floating face. A floating skull. ‘Please do relax. We have a number of matters to discuss. You are by no means doomed. I don’t want you to panic, Miss Winters. Or would you prefer me to
call you Irene?’
Should I fake being incapable of speech or movement? Not much point; he’d just wait for me to recover. ‘I would prefer Miss Winters, at our current stage of familiarity,’ Irene mumbled, her tongue thick in her mouth.
Lord Guantes nodded. ‘I am wary of your capabilities, Miss Winters. I hope that you will excuse the conduct of my servants, but frankly, after you managed to reach this world and avoid my men for hours, I would rather not take any risks.’
Irene jerked a nod, and felt a momentary pang of sympathy for Sterrington on being described as just ‘a servant’ and being blamed for not taking her prisoner sooner. She could feel Lady Guantes’ gun pressing reassuringly against her leg through her skirts, though she knew that she didn’t have the motor control to use it yet. Careless of Sterrington - I’d have searched me, if I’d been the one taking prisoners.
‘My wife sends her compliments, by the way,’ Lord Guantes said. He was looking at Irene instead of the action on the stage. ‘She was impressed by your determination. She had been assuming you were the junior partner in your relationship with the dragon.’
Which means he probably knows I’ve got her gun. ‘And I was impressed by her ability to track me,’ Irene said politely. Her speech was less slurred now, which was a relief: she could manage the Language, if she had to. ‘Is there any particular reason why she isn’t with us tonight?’
‘She is keeping Lord Silver under house arrest,’ Lord Guantes said. ‘And waiting to see if you’d come looking for him. Now please, Miss Winters, do describe your relationship with Silver.’ There was that undertone of command to his voice again, resonating unnaturally in her body - like a physical shove, prompting her to speak.
‘I intended to blackmail him,’ Irene said boldly. It was a bluff and she knew it, and he knew it, but the surge of his personality demanded some sort of answer. If Silver’s powers lay in seduction and glamour, then Lord Guantes’ clearly lay in control and forced obedience.
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