“We were lucky. I was a blacksmith; Jerome an errand boy; Sanuito a farmer. Not highly sought-after skill sets among the undead. But we ended up in a cell with you, and you had something the mistress wanted.”
“Yes,” Mircea said bitterly. “Something to tempt the jaded palates of a debauched court tired of pretty boys—”
“That’s something, isn’t it?” Bezio asked, undisturbed.
“No, it isn’t! I wasn’t a farmer, Bezio. I was a warrior! I was a prince!”
“And now you’re a whore, and damned lucky to be one. We’re all damned lucky—”
“The fuck we are,” Mircea said savagely, before breaking off and starting away.
Only to find himself slammed against the wall again, this time with a fist around his neck. He knew a dozen ways to break that particular hold, but he didn’t use any of them. Because one look into the face staring into his stopped him cold.
If he’d thought Bezio without emotion, he was learning better now.
“You think you’re so different from us, because you lost a palace? A kingdom?” Dark eyes blazed down into his. “Son, I lost a kingdom, too. So did every man here. Maybe our kingdoms were smaller, just a house we built with our own two hands, a wife we loved, a child. But do you think they meant any less? Do you think we mourn their loss one bit less than you?
“My wife. My Jacopa. Gone, as if she’d died that day. My girls, Sonia and Mea—gone. I’ll never see any of them again, never see the town I grew up in, the forge I helped my father build, the—”
He broke off, face full of fury, eyes brimming with tears. And Mircea was suddenly, deeply ashamed.
Because Bezio was right—he had thought he’d lost more.
It had been instilled in him from birth. Not the prevailing belief that God gave those in power the right to rule; his father, the bastard son who made good through force of arms and political maneuvering, knew better than that. But rather that those strong enough to rule had a value others did not. That they had to survive, they had to prevail, regardless of the cost. For without them, their lands would be undefended and their people nothing but prey.
And if his life had more value, surely his death did as well?
But after almost two years of seeing life—and death—from a different perspective, Mircea wondered.
Did a farmer who lost everything to a passing army care whose symbol was on the banners? Did he comfort himself with the thought that his carefully tended crops would aide a battle hundreds of miles away, the end result of which might not change his life one iota? In the harsh bleakness of winter, did he praise the names of the leaders who had decided that they, and their ambitions, required letting his children starve?
What, Mircea wondered now, had they been fighting for? Would a Turkish overlord have treated the people worse than they had? Had they really made things better, as he’d always been told, or merely better for them?
And had he really suffered any more than this man, who had also lost everything?
“My life ended the day I Changed, just as much as yours did,” Bezio told him quietly. “I was just too stubborn to accept it. To lie down like the corpse I was. I came here instead, searching for some kind of meaning in all this. For some kind of sign. There had to be a reason, I thought. It couldn’t just be random. It couldn’t just be for nothing.”
“You lit candles in churches, to saints who didn’t hear,” Mircea murmured, because he knew. He’d haunted them, too.
“Prayed, swore, grieved, drank,” Bezio agreed. “God, I drank! And you’re right, it didn’t help. Eventually, I tried the other way, thought if heaven had damned me, might as well enjoy it.”
“But you didn’t,” Mircea said. Just like alcohol, the old pleasures were dust and ashes now. Just more reminders of what he’d lost, what he’d never have again.
“No, I didn’t. By the time the Watch picked me up, I was lying in an alley in a blood-soaked haze, having attacked half a dozen people and in full view of dozens more. I was practically begging to be staked and thrown out on the tide, what was left of me. And I don’t think I’d have cared.”
Mircea didn’t doubt it. It was the first impression he’d had of the man. Someone who was tired of it all, who was ready for it to end. To finally be that corpse in reality.
But in less than a day, a transformation had taken place that he wouldn’t have believed if he hadn’t seen it. If he hadn’t been staring at a face full of passion and grief and fury and life. “What changed?”
“Some noble sprout got chucked into the lock up with me,” Bezio said dryly. “And indignant—highly indignant, mind you—of his treatment. Practically begging for some humbling, which he promptly got. Nothing surprising there.
“Not until he took us with him.”
The man’s face transformed again, going soft with wonder. They had such expressive faces, these Italians, so full of every emotion in their passionate natures. No wonder their artists are so great, Mircea thought. All they have to do is look around them for inspiration. It was written in every face, in every line. If a sculptor carved this one, it might be entitled “man looking at saint.”
It unnerved him.
Bezio didn’t care. “You stuck out your neck for people you’d just met, people who would have drained you dry for whatever scraps of stolen life you had floating around your veins, people who had just tried to do that very thing! You had no reason to take us with you. No reason to jeopardize what might be your only chance at a way out. And you knew it was likely to be the only one—we’d just told you!”
“Martina wanted me badly,” Mircea explained. “She was willing to deal—”
“That doesn’t explain why you saved us.”
“Is that what you followed me to ask?”
Bezio looked exasperated. “I followed you for the reason I said—to return the favor! To keep you from doing something stupid. But also because . . .” He broke off with a curse.
He glared at Mircea for a moment, before continuing.
“Because I’d convinced myself that I’d stumbled into a world of utter selfishness. Where there were no emotions I understood, or wanted to understand. Where pride and profit were served by bitterness and jealousy and there was nothing for a man like me.
“But then you showed up, full of bluster and outraged dignity and a different kind of pride. And calmly told a master what you would and wouldn’t do. And got away with it. Because she saw the same thing I did—that you weren’t going to give in unless she did. She could leave you there, or kill you, or rant and rave. But if she wanted your cooperation, she had to give in first. And she did.” He broke off, laughing. “She did!”
“And now I’m here,” Mircea reminded him dryly. Since apparently, the man didn’t understand anything at all. “I’m under her control—”
“Are you? Looks to me like you’re up and leaving her control. That you just decided you didn’t want to be here anymore, so you’re off.” Bezio shook his head in amazement.
“I can’t be here—”
“Of course you can. You beat her once, and frankly, I wouldn’t bet money on you not doing it again. But not now.”
“It has to be now! She’ll bind me—”
“She won’t. I asked one of the servants this morning, wanting to know what to expect. He laughed at the idea.”
“What? That doesn’t make sense—”
“And neither does this!” Bezio said, as the noise level from outside the alley reached a crescendo.
Mircea looked to the street, where a cheering crowd had blocked the alley’s mouth on that end, and where what looked like flower petals were now wafting down from the surrounding rooftops. The Watch was there; he knew it, even if he couldn’t see them. But if their attention was on the crowd . . .