“I must still have mage funk up my nose.”
“Why bollocks?” Mircea asked Bezio.
He shrugged. “First of all, because it sounds fantastic. And second—if Sanuito had something that important to tell you, why didn’t he just tell you?”
Mircea took a stool. “There were a lot of people around that night. Maybe he was afraid.” He’d certainly looked it.
“Maybe. But if I’d been getting a daily dose of poison, I think I’d have found a way. And I’d have wanted to keep the antidote handy!”
Mircea pursed his lips, trying to remember the exact phrasing. It didn’t work. “He said something like he thought I might need it.”
“That you might?” Jerome asked.
Mircea nodded.
He frowned. “Did he say why?”
“He didn’t say much of anything. But if someone was giving Sanuito poison, and if they accidentally gave him too much . . . or tried to move too fast . . .” He frowned in frustration.
“You can’t even make yourself believe it,” Bezio pointed out. “And anyway, who here would want to do that?”
Mircea sighed, and drank his wine. “I don’t know.”
Maybe they were right; maybe he was imagining it all. He didn’t know anymore. And he didn’t suppose it mattered, since they were leaving soon and all he had was . . . well, nothing.
He rubbed his eyes tiredly. He felt like going to bed, despite the fact that he hadn’t been up that long. He also needed to feed. But the servants didn’t usually feel like obliging them until they’d fed themselves, and they’d just started filing in.
“Did you learn anything helpful about your master, at least?” Bezio asked Jerome.
He shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s possible he was poisoned the way the man said. He had a stable for feeding, of course, but you know how it is. There’s always exceptions. You’re away from home and all your servants have donated recently. . . .”
“You’d think you’d take along enough to make sure that didn’t happen.”
“Well, you do. But what if you have to expend a lot of energy for something? An attack on the road, for instance. You’re going to need to recoup that somehow.”
“And did that happen to your master?”
Jerome shook his head. “Not that I know of.”
The table went quiet. They were all waiting for the same thing. Mircea passed the time helping to drain the decanter and wishing he could taste the soup bubbling over the stove.
It smelled good, like Cook had thrown in a ham bone along with the beans. And there was a crusty loaf of fresh bread to go with it, which she’d left on the cutting board. It was the kind of meal he’d always preferred: hot, simple, and filling. Peasant food they’d probably call it here, like they’d disdain drinking the wine used to cook with. But it had never bothered him.
“Well, maybe he had someone in,” Bezio offered, when the last of the servants had come and gone.
“Why would he do that?” Jerome asked. “I told you, we had a stable—”
“Yes, but a man likes a little variety, now and again. If you know what I mean.” Bezio waggled his eyebrows at them over his mug.
Jerome apparently didn’t know. “Blood is blood,” he pointed out.
“But a vampire doesn’t live by blood alone,” Bezio said, grinning. “Maybe he had a girl in.”
“For what?”
Bezio raised an eyebrow. “Where do we work again?”
Jerome shook his head. “The master was old—”
“I’m old, and let me tell you—”
“You’re human old,” Jerome said, rolling his eyes. “And not even. In vampire terms, you’re practically a fetus.”
“Says the twinkle in his master’s eye,” Bezio said. “And anyway, when it comes to sex, old doesn’t mean dead. There’s plenty of us who still enjoy a roll in the hay. Or better yet, in fine linen sheets—”
Mircea looked up. “What?”
Bezio laughed. “You’ve never tried taking a tumble in a haystack? Here’s some advice—don’t. It hurts!”
“No, I—before,” Mircea said. “What were you saying before?”
Bezio shrugged. “Just that, if somebody had wanted to get to Jerome’s master, all he’d have needed was a pretty girl he didn’t expect to see again. Then load her up with some poison, feed her a good meal to slow it down, and send her off.”
“Or a pretty vampire,” Jerome said thoughtfully.
“Naw, vampires don’t eat. Or, you know, it doesn’t do anything for them if they do. A meal wouldn’t work.”
“No,” Mircea said blankly. “But an antidote would.”
“Oh, for—we’re not back to that, are we?”
Mircea didn’t answer, his head spinning.
“That wouldn’t insure that the master would feed off her, though,” Jerome pointed out. “What if he wasn’t hungry?”
Bezio rolled his eyes. “Like that would matter. You know how it is. A vampire always bites during—hey!” he called after Mircea. “Where do you think you’re going?”
But Mircea was already out the door.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Well, he’d figured out where all the gondolas went, Mircea thought darkly.
It was less than half an hour later, and he and Jerome were standing on the Riva degli Schiavoni, the great promenade adjacent to St Mark’s Square. It usually fronted the Guidecca Canal, the mile wide waterway separating St. Mark’s from the island of Guidecca. But not tonight.
Tonight, it fronted a sea of boats.
Big boats, small boats, and everything in between, including what looked like a thousand gondolas, filled the water as far as he could see. And unlike the joyous mood of the crowd on the night of the fireworks, these people were . . . unhappy. Possibly because they were about to miss the greatest spectacle of the age.
And so are we, Mircea thought, jaw clenching.
Bezio jogged up, looking flustered. “Not for love, not for money,” he told them. “I was cursed at just for asking!”
“So much for hiring a boat,” Jerome sighed.
“It wouldn’t do any good, even if we could,” Mircea said, looking at the shouting, swearing, manic crowd in front of them.
“They can’t all be invited,” Jerome frowned.
“We’re not invited, and we’re trying to go,” Bezio pointed out.
“But it doesn’t look like they’re even being allowed to land,” Jerome said, squinting. “Not most of them, at any rate.”
“The senate probably has guards stationed at the dock. And crawling all over the island. And then, if you somehow get past all that, there’s the small matter of—”
“Let’s concentrate on getting there first,” Mircea said tightly, cutting in.
“Son, I hate to break it to you, but we aren’t getting there.”
Mircea didn’t say anything. After a moment, Bezio sat on the edge of the pier, dangling his legs over the side. And a minute after that, Jerome joined him.
Mircea didn’t blame them. They hadn’t fed tonight; they’d already run halfway across Venice; and they didn’t believe his crazy theories. But they’d come with him anyway. And they hadn’t mentioned going home, where the servants had had their meal by now and would be willing to offer as much to them. And where there were soft beds and good wine and rooms with heavily boarded up windows where no morning sun could disturb their slumber.
Or rain hit them in the face, he thought, looking up.
The crowd in the boats started murmuring a moment later. And then shrieking a moment after that, when the heavens opened up, as they so often did in Venice. And began drenching the holy and unholy alike.