How the hell did he do that, Mircea wondered, and resumed digging in the mud.
“Is there another?” Jerome asked, with a longsuffering sigh.
“Well, you still can’t be here,” the guard said, albeit with a slightly moderated tone.
“Friend, I don’t want to be here,” Jerome told him. “I was ordered to be here. The lady lost a ring—a very, very expensive pearl ring—”
“Or so she says,” Bezio commented.
“—at the regatta the other day. She took a turn in the gardens before the competition, and the next time she looked, the ring was gone.”
“But the next time she looked was at home,” Bezio pointed out, ranging farther afield. “I’m telling you, she probably lost it there.”
“I think she’d know where she lost her own ring,” Jerome said grumpily, and then jerked when Mircea suddenly grabbed his leg. “What are you—no, no, you idiot! That’s a rock! A filthy rock! And look what you just did to my hosen!”
Mircea flinched back, leaving a muddy handprint on said hosen. And put his hands protectively over his head, the truly filthy rock dripping mud onto the grass in front of him—and then flinging it in an arc when Jerome kicked him again. The guard jumped back, just missing having his outfit ruined, and shot Mircea a look of pure disgust.
“Stupid boy!” Bezio said angrily. “Go stand over by the house, where we can keep an eye on you!”
Mircea slunk off to the sounds of outrage from the shoeless and now muddy Jerome, the renewed objections of the guard, and Bezio’s low grumbles. And then his excited exclamations when he suddenly spotted something. “Hey, is that it?” Bezio asked, running through the sight line of several more guards, who were then forced to go after him.
Mircea stepped quietly back into the shadow of the poplars, swiftly checking in both directions. But the nearest guards were busy accosting Bezio, the rest were watching their areas, and the patrol wouldn’t be back for another minute. And that was more than enough.
In seconds, he was up the trellis, moving almost silently. Not that it mattered with outraged yelling from Jerome and Bezio helping to cover his ascent. As well as the sounds of the crowd above, which blotted out even his own hearing halfway up, with a murmur like the roar of the ocean.
He realized why a second later, when he hopped over the top.
And into a crowd of thousands.
The palazzo was creaking under the weight of a solid mass of people. It was literally shoulder-to-shoulder all over the vast expanse of roof. Where the cream of the vampire world were fighting and jostling and elbowing and generally acting in ways that a well-dressed throng shouldn’t.
Nobody cared. Not tonight. All that was on anyone’s mind was finding the best vantage point overlooking the garden, which explained why nobody standing nearby had noticed his less than normal entrance.
They were all facing the other way.
Mircea snagged a view for himself—briefly—by grabbing a tray of drinks off a passing servant. And then by climbing up the steps of a nearby covered platform, where the senators had their seats, well above the rudely shifting crowd. He didn’t get in, of course; a guard relieved him of the tray at the top. But he took his time coming down, trying to get his bearings.
He could see over the edge of the wall now, down into what had once been a beautiful garden. And which at present wasn’t much of anything. The stone pathways and grassy areas were still intact, more or less, along with the fountain. But most of the trees and bushes had been dug out and removed.
The garden now matched the rest of the house, which currently resembled a ruin, albeit an odd one. In addition to the group on the roof, vampires hung out of windows, crowded doorways and loggias, and even sat along the floor lines that had been revealed by missing chunks of wall. There were thousands, maybe tens of thousands, in Mircea’s line of sight.
But none of them was the one he needed to see.
And he was fast running out of time.
The consul was already in place, standing beside an official of some kind in the center of the enclosure. He was back to human form, a wizened little figure looking vaguely ridiculous in a rich aquamarine robe. But for some reason, Mircea didn’t feel much like laughing as he went back to searching the crowd, trying to find the senator.
And found Martina instead.
She was standing on the ground floor, inside a door to the right of the newly made arena. He couldn’t see her face, since the doorway shadowed it, but he recognized the flame-colored gown dotted with golden pomegranates, one of her favorites. It was unique; the material woven somewhere to the east and then smuggled into Venice, where it was illegal due to laws forbidding competition with the local silk industry.
As if Martina cared about the laws.
But there simply couldn’t be two of them.
A swift check of the other entrances to the arena turned up more and more familiar faces. Paulo was standing on a balcony above a door directly across from Martina. Zaneta was just inside another on the wall to the right of him. And then Mircea spied what looked like Danieli’s favorite yellow outfit on a loggia above the door to the far left. Mircea didn’t see anyone else, but he’d bet money they were here somewhere. Possibly loitering somewhere near the last door, just below him, where he couldn’t see what was happening.
Until the senator suddenly walked through it.
Chapter Forty-One
Damn it! Mircea had assumed there would be some fanfare, some announcement, some something to indicate that the event of the century was about to start. And to give him an idea of where to find the senator. But there was nothing, except the sudden hush of thousands of voices, and the abrupt stilling of an ocean of people.
Into utter silence.
It was so quiet that he could hear her footsteps, light as they were, over the scattered gravel. She looked a little different from the last time he’d seen her, when she’d been dressed in the height of Venetian fashion. Tonight she was a slim figure in white, wearing the elegant draperies of an earlier age. Her hair was in a hundred gold-tipped braids, more gold shown around her neck in a wide, antique collar, and still more glittered in bands on her lovely arms.
The modern Venetian lady was gone.
The ancient queen remained.
Her face was calm, composed. If she was worried at all, it didn’t show. Mircea felt his own anxiety level jump up, but it was already so high, he hardly noticed.
Because there was no way to reach her now.
Guards circled the arena and dotted the crowd, as well as occupying posts at the top corner of each of the walls, weapons at the ready. Mircea had no doubt what the penalty would be for anyone who dared to enter the ring besides the combatants. And while a senior master might survive having a few dozen wood-tipped crossbow bolts slammed into his body all at once, Mircea would not.
She was beyond his reach.
She was beyond his reach, so he had to come up with something else.
Now.
This would be the time for Plan B, if he had one. Unfortunately, he didn’t, and every one he tried to formulate hit the brick wall of his own obscurity. The story he had to tell was fantastic, but someone of power, of position, might have been believed. Or at least been indulged long enough for an investigation to be made.
Mircea would be lucky if he was just locked up—after the requisite beating, of course.
No one was going to listen to a slave. Not even the senator’s family, if he knew where to find them, which he didn’t, or if they weren’t too busy biting their nails to the quick to listen, which they surely were. And yet, what else was there?
“Don’t they need you back in the kitchen?” someone asked, and Mircea turned around to find one of the guards looking at him steadily.