Valour and Vanity

by Mary Robinette Kowal

  A pair of nuns stood in the street, conversing as if it was a normal afternoon. They looked down the street toward the palazzo in the direction that Jane would have been coming from if she had run out of the front door instead of the water entrance. The canal mouth was coming up on their right. Lord Byron showed no signs of turning.

  “Do you see it?”

  He nodded, panting like a glamourist now. “Thirty-two, thirty-three, thirty-four—Can make tighter turns. Hoping they can’t—thirty-eight, thirty-nine, forty. Duck!”

  Jane did, without questioning. As if he had been prompted, Denaro fired again. The glass window on the cabin shattered.

  The nuns spun around at the gunshot. There was only a brief moment of hesitation before both nuns ran in different directions. One running along the canal beside them, the other up a side street.

  At the last minute, Lord Byron cut his oar to the right, turning them into the side canal. For a brief moment, the buildings hid them from view of Spada’s craft. A set of landing steps came down to the water not far from the entrance to the canal. The nun ran toward the steps, waving them to her.

  Water splashed up the steps as Lord Byron brought the boat against the landing too fast, and too hard. The wooden side smacked against the stone with a jarring thud that threw Jane forward. Sister Aquinata ran from a side street to join her sister, and the two women helped Jane out of the boat. The moment she was clear, Lord Byron cast off again. “I will try to draw them away.”

  Jane did not have time for a thank-you. As she ran up the stairs to the street, the other gondola made the turn and coursed toward Byron’s. He had no speed, as he was still pushing off from the wall. Spada drove his boat straight into Lord Byron’s.

  The poet dove into the water as the sharp prow slammed into his boat, splintering the side.

  Jane ran.

  Behind her, she heard shouting. Spada and Denaro had reached the landing stairs, and the sisters were trying every nonviolent means to slow them imaginable. She sent a silent prayer for their safety. If either nun were hurt because of her, it would be unbearable.

  Then Sister Aquinata abandoned the nonviolent methods and produced a rolling pin from somewhere. She thwacked Denaro on his side, sending him tumbling down the stairs into the canal. Lord Byron swam toward the man.

  Spada got past the other nun and reached the street. When they had planned this, Jane had not expected the need to work glamour on a moving gondola. The effort had left her winded even before running and now Spada gained on her steadily.

  Panting, Jane reached the next intersection and a swirl of nuns flooded the street, each running in a different direction. Some stopped and ran the other way to create a mass of confusion. Jane blended into the chaos of black and white. She slowed to a walk and tried to calm her breath.

  She glanced back. Spada fought his way through the nuns. When she reached the centre of the group, the Abbess spied Jane and fell in beside her. From behind them, Sister Aquinata shouted, “Hail Mary!”

  At the signal, the nuns split into pairs, each of them walking briskly for a different door or street. From behind, they all looked the same. Jane and the Abbess headed for the bridge. As they walked, Jane pulled out the bag of Verres.

  The Abbess took the bag from her, sliding it under her robe. “Sir David and Signor Zancani are safely out of the palazzo.”

  “Thank you.” The relief opened the knot in her throat, and Jane was able to take her first deep breath since leaving Vincent in the parlour. It was time for this charade to end. “As we had planned?”

  The Abbess nodded. “We will see you at the warehouse.” She split her path from Jane’s and walked toward a church. It was not Santa Maria degli Angeli, but she would be safe there.

  Jane did not pause, though. Her heart raced as she ran along the canal, as though she were still working glamour. That quick rhythm of her heart was familiar, but her legs were not used to the effort. Jane’s pace flagged. She was only a few streets away from the bridge over the canal.

  Jane glanced over her shoulder. Spada had stopped one of the other nuns and, cursing, spun away from her. He saw Jane, recognised her, and gave chase. She ran for the bridge, drawing him away from the Abbess.

  A wooden sawhorse was set across the base of the bridge with a sign in Venetian. Jane slipped past it and pounded up the steep incline of the bridge. She stopped abruptly at the top.

  The centre span of the bridge was missing. Through the gap, she could see straight down to the canal underneath. Had she been able to read Venetian, the sign would have told her that the bridge was under construction. Jane stood in the middle of the lane that should have crossed the bridge. She could hear Vincent’s voice from the Broken Bridge shadow play: This here don’t go nowhere but to the canal.

  Turning, she faced Spada. He stalked up the bridge, carrying his cane. He gave no sign of needing it, but she was painfully aware that it contained a sword. His face was red with anger. “You have cost me a lot of money.”

  “I find that complaint ironic.” Jane backed up, staying in the middle of the bridge, until she felt the edge. She held up the book. “Leave me alone, leave Vincent alone, and I will give this back to you.”

  “It will take longer, but we can decipher your technique from the Verres we have and Bastone’s work with you.” He walked closer.

  “Then why chase me?” The drop to the canal behind her looked very far. “Stay back.”

  He unsheathed his sword. “I think you will find that it will be easier if you work with us.”

  “Stop, or I will jump.” A threat that would be easier to make if she could swim. Jane held up the book. “And this goes with me.”

  For a moment he paused, and considered her threat. Narrowing his eyes, Spada shook his head. “You are not serious. If you wanted to destroy it, your husband would have burned it in the fire.”

  “My husband and I do not always agree.” She drew her arm back to throw the book to her right.

  “No!” Spada lunged for her.

  She threw the book and stepped back, over the broken end of the bridge. Spada’s hands closed over the spot where she had been, and the book dropped to the water below. A habit-clad body splashed into the water a moment later. The swindler dived from the bridge.

  Jane, however, stood on a narrow board spanning the gap between the bridges. Sister Maria Agnes steadied her inside the giant Sphère Obscurcie that now covered them both. They watched as the life-size puppet Signor Zancani had made sank beneath the water, pulled down by the heavy cloth of the habit. The book floated on the water’s surface, pages spread. Spada ignored “Jane” and grabbed the book, swimming for the side of the canal.

  He crawled out of the water and opened the book. The sound of his cursing echoed off the walls of the canal as the ink ran across the pages and bled onto his hands.

  Twenty-five

  Puppets, Nuns, and Lavender

  Jane and Sister Maria Agnes were among the last of their party to arrive back at the nuns’ warehouse. When they stepped through into the echoing space, a cheer went up from the ladies assembled there.

  Sister Aquinata hurried forward, wearing a smile that nearly hid her eyes. “We were starting to worry.”

  “We had to wait for Spada to leave the street.” Sister Maria Agnes clapped her hands. “Oh! It was so exciting. You should have seen Lady Vincent facing him. She was so heroic!”

  Blushing, Jane shook her head. “We could not have done any of this, were it not for you.” She looked past the nuns for Vincent, but did not see him immediately. She reminded herself that the Abbess had said that he was safely out of the palazzo. Lord Byron sat with a blanket draped around his shoulders, pulled up in front of a brazier. Beside him, Signor Zancani had a piece of steak over one eye, but grinned when he saw Jane. “The puppet worked?”

  “Beautifully. And the blood bladders, too.”

  “Come, come. I have some food for you.” Sister Aquinata handed them each a bowl of warm polenta and
beckoned them forward. Jane took the bowl, but all she wanted was Vincent. The sister beamed. “We want to hear all about it.”

  “Particularly since there were clearly parts of your plan that we were not privy to.” The Abbess looked up from the bench where she sat, with Vincent.

  Jane’s husband had his shirt off, and the Abbess was tying a bandage around his left shoulder. He winced as she tightened the knot.

  “Vincent!” Jane ran forward, alarm filling her throat.

  “He is fine,” the nuns said, as if in a chorus.

  “It is a scratch, Muse.” Vincent caught her hand and pulled her to sit beside him. Jane set the bowl of polenta on the ground, wanting to hold Vincent with both hands.

  “I would say that it is a little more than a scratch,” the Abbess said dryly. “But, yes, it is just a flesh wound, not mortal. And, yes, he will be fine, so long as he keeps it clean.”

  “I assumed the blood was from one of Signor Zancani’s bladders!”

  From his seat by the fire, the puppet player said, “He was supposed to present his right shoulder, not his left.”

  Vincent shrugged with the uninjured shoulder. “I was so startled that Spada had been feigning the limp even when we were not present that I turned the wrong way.”

  “Which means…”—the Abbess glared at him—“that you knew you would be fighting Spada. I want to know what your plan was and why you did not tell us. No more delays.”

  Vincent picked up his shirt and pulled it on over his head. “Well … Jane and I realized that the Verre from Signor Nenci would not help us, because of the want of sun.” He stood and stretched, rolling his shoulder as if to test it. He turned from the Abbess to Sister Aquinata. “You mentioned food? Is there some of your excellent bread?”

  She nodded with a smile and pointed to a trestle table a little to the side. It had bread, cheese, and bowls of polenta, which some of the nuns were already enjoying. Vincent thanked her and strolled toward the food table. Jane could feel the Abbess’s impatience radiating from her. Casually, Vincent picked up a slice of bread and resumed his walk and his narrative. “Our problem was that the plan to disguise me with glamour was faulty because, as my wife correctly pointed out, I was not entirely well. At the same time, we were finding no simple way to go inside, so we decided to turn a fault into part of the plan.” He cleared his throat. “Apparently, my work habits are well-known.”

  Lord Byron snorted.

  Vincent glared at him, and the poet smiled mildly. Continuing his stroll, he walked round the nuns. “The idea was that I would enter, pretend to collapse, and use that to put them off their guard.”

  “But why not tell us? I was worried sick. We all were.”

  “Ah.” Tilting his head, Vincent looked away from the Abbess and frowned. “That is very simple to explain. We knew that there was an informant. We did not know who it was. In fact, we owe you an apology, because we also misled you on a prior occasion. At Signor Nenci’s we decided it would be best if I appeared in worse condition than I actually was.”

  She looked aghast at the implication. “Surely you did not suspect us.”

  Lord Byron raised his hand. “Actually, they thought it was me. Or my landlord’s wife—which, to be fair, it was.”

  “Yes, and we were able to make good use of that to give them certain misinformation,” Jane added, watching Vincent carefully. “But they knew things that Marianna could not have known.” She expanded her vision to the second sight and looked where his gaze was fixed. Very faintly, if she pushed all view of the corporeal world from her sight, she could perceive the outline of a badly rendered Sphère Obscurcie.

  The nuns gasped, and Jane popped her vision back from the ether. Vincent had disappeared.

  A girl shrieked, voice echoing from nowhere. In the next moment, her husband reemerged from the Sphère with Lucia held under his good arm. She kicked and struggled in his grasp. His face was grave. “You were right, Muse.”

  Sister Maria Agnes dropped her bowl of polenta. “Lucia?”

  “Let go! He’s hurting me!” She thrashed, catching Vincent in the shin with her heel.

  He grunted and hauled her over to the nuns. “Would someone mind…?”

  Sister Aquinata stood and walked over, her face going dark with anger. She took both of the girl’s wrists in one of her large baker’s hands and pulled her out of Vincent’s grasp. “I am going to owe the Abbess penance for this, I suspect, but—does anyone have some rope?”

  “Always.” Signor Zancani set his steak down, revealing a very black eye, and pulled a bundle of thick twine out of his pocket.

  One of the other sisters took the twine and helped bind Lucia’s wrists and ankles. The girl fought them until Sister Aquinata shook her and said, “You do not want me to spank you.”

  The Abbess looked ill. “I would ask if you were certain, but it seems clear that it is true.”

  “We were not certain.” Jane had wanted to be wrong, but as she and Vincent had lain awake each night, talking through their plans, it kept bothering her brain that Gallo had known which of the swindlers Vincent had seen. Nothing in their conversation with him had indicated which one it had been, and given that all four of the men were on Murano at the time, it could have been any of them.

  “The only way for Gallo to have known which of the swindlers Vincent had seen was for someone to have run there from the convent to tell him. We had worried that it was Sister Maria Agnes.”

  “Because I am foreign…” The colour of her skin was left unspoken, but she tucked her hands into her sleeves.

  Jane refuted that firmly. “Because you were there when Vincent told me. But Lucia was there as well.”

  Jane stood and walked over to the girl.

  If Jane ignored the pigtails and the girlish clothing, Lucia’s face was older than she first appeared. “You were on the ship, were you not? As a passenger?”

  The young woman spat at her. The globule landed harmlessly on the floor between them. Jane shook her head and wove a bubble of silence around the girl, inverting it so that Lucia could not hear them, but they could hear her. Then Jane passed another bubble around her so that she sat in darkness. It was, perhaps, cruel to deprive her of her senses, but Jane was not inclined to be generous in that moment. There were yet things to discuss and she did not want to chance the girl carrying any further tales.

  The nuns sat, stunned into silence. Jane turned back to the Abbess and spread her hands. “I am sorry. I thought that it was better to not include you in the full plan than to ask you to lie to her on our behalf.”

  “I see.” The Abbess removed her spectacles and polished them on her black scapular. “If you were one of my charges, I would ask you to do some Hail Marys.”

  “I would be happy to do whatever you think fit.” In previous years, Jane could not have imagined being so willing to participate in Catholic rites, but nothing seemed more appropriate to her now.

  “And the rest of the plan? There were no troubles?” Signor Zancani put the steak back over his eye. “With obvious exceptions, of course.”

  Vincent nodded, rubbing the back of his head. “Reasonably so. But you have not told us about what happened to you.”

  “Yes. Why did you return with Coppa?” Jane asked.

  “I was late to meet him and could not convince him to come into the ‘office,’ so I did my best to slow our return.”

  “Come now, man. You cannot tease us like that.” Lord Byron pulled the blankets a little tighter. “What delayed you in the first place?”

  The puppet player’s eyes twinkled. “The thing I least expected. An admirer stopped me. Loved puppets. Wanted to know when my next show was.”

  “Could you not put him off?” Lord Byron asked.

  “He was six. No. I could not.”

  “No harm was done.” Vincent came to Jane and took her hand. “We accomplished everything we needed to.”

  Sister Maria Agnes sighed. “I am only sorry that you had to destroy Sir
David’s journal. Though that was very dramatic and exciting, and I suppose completely necessary.”

  With a smile, Jane undid the tie at the neck of her habit and reached into her bodice. From within her stays, she extracted Vincent’s real journal. “It was a fake. The second fake, truly.” Seeing the look of confusion in the nuns’ faces, Jane continued. “Sister Franceschina’s work was excellent, but we were afraid it would not be convincing. In case it was not, we had the journal she had made for our practise sessions.”

  “The one you dropped getting into the gondola?” Lord Byron asked.

  “Exactly so. We had already doused it in water in advance, so I needed Spada to see it go into the water so that the damage was explicable, and so that he would stop chasing me. I tried to drop it at the palazzo and missed the water. The bridge was to be a last resort.”

  “It worked beautifully,” Lord Byron said. “I could see it from where I was. It truly looked as though you had fallen into the water, even though I knew about that part of the plan.”

  A thought occurred to Jane. “What happened to Denaro? I saw you engage with him.”

  “A couple of polizia heard the shots being fired, saw the collision, and arrested him.” The poet grinned. “I pointed out that he had also assailed a nun, which did not seem to please them. Which reminds me that we no longer have any reason to avoid taking care of your accounts.”

  Vincent compressed his lips and winked at Jane. She smiled, slowly. “Thank you. But it turns out that we no longer require assistance in that regard.”

  * * *

  Jane and Vincent left the nuns to deal with Lucia, trusting their instincts on what to do with the young woman more than those of Murano’s civil authorities. Lord Byron headed back to his apartments, where he planned to give notice and move to different lodgings. He invited them to come stay with him when they were finished with their obligations in Murano.

  They went to the closet room across from the palazzo where they had spent the past week watching the swindlers. Signor Zancani had followed them as far as his puppet booth, which was still set up in the gallery facing the palazzo. He said his good nights there and began to take the booth down. It was too cold in the season to expect much traffic, and he had been invited to winter with Lord Byron in Venice.