“Because you knew what Sanuito had given me.”
She passed him, almost close enough to touch, causing him to flinch back. She didn’t seem troubled by the sword he still held. She didn’t seem troubled by anything. She sat on the table and swung her legs over the side, the way she had that night in the courtyard. Like a girl.
“Yes,” she told him. “I knocked it behind the wall that night, when I climbed up there, and then retrieved it later. But I didn’t know what else he might have. I checked his room, and there was nothing. But when I asked him point blank, he evaded. . . .”
“Is that why you killed him?” Mircea asked harshly, struggling to stay in control.
“It didn’t have to be that way,” Marte told him. “I wanted the antidote from his blood; that was all. If he had done as I instructed. . . .”
“I wouldn’t have thought he had a choice.” Mircea thought back to the scrawny figure he’d first met in the Watch’s cells, sucking a few drops of spilled blood off a filthy rag.
Sanuito had had no power. Sanuito had had nothing, except his life. And yet even that—Mircea cut off his thoughts abruptly.
“He shouldn’t have,” Marte agreed. “He was as close to powerless as a vampire can get. But something was . . . off about him. Maybe the way he was Changed. Getting that Were blood at the same time as the vampire interfered with the process—and possibly gave him something of their attributes, as well. And Weres are notoriously hard to influence.”
“He was able to shake off your suggestions?”
“Not entirely. But he found ways around them. He couldn’t tell you about the antidote, but it never occurred to me to forbid him to give it to you! And he talked to Auria about you, tried to convince her to help you get away . . .”
“So he had to go.”
Marte frowned. “I would have left him in peace. I had what I needed. But after he gave you the antidote something had to be done. I had too much to concentrate on; I couldn’t watch him every minute. And I couldn’t risk him using his blood to make more of the stuff. There are mages who might have been able to tell you what was in it.”
A mage did, Mircea thought. “But Sanuito beat you to it.”
She grimaced. “I thought it would be best to do it away from the house, and how better than in a crowd of thousands? But he must have realized what I intended, and decided that, if he was going to die anyway, he would make it as spectacular as possible.”
“And give me cause to wonder about it,” Mircea said, his hand tightening on the hilt.
“All he had to do was stay away from you,” she told him. “He knew that. But he idolized you. He couldn’t believe it when you took him with you—” She broke off at his expression. “Don’t look at me like that. He would have died anyway. Do you really think anyone else would have rescued him? At least he didn’t die alone, in a cold cell, half starved—”
“Is that what you tell yourself?” Mircea rasped.
“Oh, come off it,” the dark eyes flashed. “You barely knew him. He was nothing to you. He was nothing to anyone. He had no future in our world or in that of the Weres. He would have been an outcast, a freak, his whole life. I didn’t kill him—I saved him!”
“As you planned to do for me?”
She sighed and sat back against the wall, her anger evaporating as quickly as it had come. “It was the only way.”
“To reach the senator.”
It wasn’t a question, and she didn’t take it as one. “I’d tried everything else,” she told him quietly. “But she’s too well-guarded. Her own family, the senatorial guards, the court in Paris—it’s like an armed camp. There was simply no way to get to her.
“Except for one.”
She smiled slightly. “There’s one time when even the most well-guarded person is allowed some privacy. I realized, if I found the right person: someone weak enough that her guards wouldn’t worry about him, someone attractive enough to tempt even her eye, someone without a future . . .”
“And you get to decide that for me?” Mircea asked.
He received a defiant look in return. “Yes. I tried to tell you, but you didn’t want to hear. You haven’t been there yet. I have. You don’t know what lies in store for those with no master in our world. I do. You might end up wishing I’d succeeded—”
“I doubt that!”
“Yes, now. But a hundred years from now?” She sat forward. “You won’t understand this, but I was paying you a compliment. Allowing you a death that would have purpose, meaning, instead of what you face now: a slow spiral into bitterness and despair, and a long walk into the sun.”
Mircea didn’t reply. He didn’t trust himself.
“But in your own way, you were as difficult as Sanuito.”
“Because I wouldn’t push her to bite me,” he said tightly.
She nodded. “It was the only thing I needed from you; the only task you had. Something any other vampire would have done instinctively. But not you.”
“And you couldn’t give me the poison without making sure it would be delivered.”
“I had everything ready,” she said, looking aggrieved. “The antidote to slow it down, to allow you time to reach her. The perfect opportunity—convocation usually involves mass debauchery, and you’re exactly the type of man she likes—”
“I think there might be another.”
Marte’s lips twisted. “There always is, with her. And they all seem willing to die for her. I wonder if they would feel the same, if they knew what she’s really like?”
“And how is that?”
She looked at him, dark eyes assessing, for a long moment. And then they shifted, going back to the storm. “You still haven’t answered my question: Why me? Because I wear earrings and play around with pots? Why not one of the others?”
“Is that why you brought them here tonight? And stationed them at different doors? To confuse me?”
She shrugged. “I knew you suspected one of us; Sanuito had seen to that. But I was under the impression that you didn’t know which. I didn’t want to expose myself by being the only one here tonight. So I used a connection of mine to make sure we all received invitations.”
“And then waited to leave until I was gone, so I wouldn’t be among them.”
“Yes, although I thought it was an unnecessary precaution. I foolishly thought you suspected Martina.”
“I did, briefly. She was the one who bought me, the one who set up the first meeting with the senator, the one who seemed the most concerned that my efforts weren’t progressing fast enough.” He paused, but it was true—even now. “And she makes a better villain than you do.”
Marte laughed suddenly, and the transformation was amazing. In an instant, the pragmatic killer was gone, replaced by the merry girl he knew. It shook him more than her anger had done.
“She does, doesn’t she?” she asked. “Of course, that might be because she is one. She gave me the idea, you know. About the senator, and you.”
“Martina?”
Marte nodded, and drew her feet up, hugging them with her arms. As if they were having a casual chat back at the house. As if Mircea wasn’t holding a knife-edged sword on her.
“She was a perfumer back in Athens, before she discovered that she could make much more by dabbling in poison. She used her expertise with cosmetics to make a deadly face powder. During the course of an evening, her suitors—all rich, all foolish enough to leave her something substantial in their wills—would get a dose every time she kissed them. Or rubbed her cheek against theirs, or . . .” Marte waved a hand.
“I’d think that would be as dangerous for her as for them.”
“She fixed her faced with an egg white base as a barrier, before applying the powder. But she’d also built up a good deal of resistance through the years by taking in a little poison at the time. That’s why she couldn’t feed you that night, after the senator’s women almost drained you. Her blood would have killed you! As it did her master.”