Mircea thought about that for a moment. “Then any insight I had, was my own.”
“Which you shouldn’t have had to share with a roomful of strangers!” Paulo looked frustrated. He started to run a hand through his hair, remembered that they were about to have guests, and stopped. And looked more frustrated. “I’m sorry,” he finally said. “You shouldn’t have been sent out, much less on an assignment like that, before gaining some experience. I’ll do what I can to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
“It can’t happen again,” Mircea pointed out. “I have experience now.”
Paulo’s lips twisted. “And what a way to get it!”
Chapter Thirteen
Mircea was getting more experience the next day, although not in any way he’d ever imagined.
He tried to force his thoughts off what he was feeling, and onto the battle taking place in the water below. It should have been easy. The rooftop terrace where he stood offered a breathtaking panorama of a lagoon, where two huge barges, each bigger than the one the Doges used, were battling for supremacy amid the cheers of thousands.
And battling for real, it seemed to him.
The participants, drawn by lot from the families of the leading senators, were fighting for the amusement of the consul seated on the brightly decorated pier below. And to impress visiting leaders of from the other senates, who occupied positions of honor around him. In other words, it was supposed to be a mock contest.
Only someone must have forgotten to mention that to the two sides.
Or else the excitement of crashing into each other a moment before, after a headlong race about the lagoon, had caused them to forget it. The brilliant peacock blue and fiery orange-red costumes were now mixed in opulent splendor as they swarmed each other’s decks. And engaged in an all out brawl to prove their and their master’s superiority in front of the font of all patronage.
Mircea, who had spent two years hiding in the shadows, would have laughed a short time ago, had anyone told him that such a spectacle could be staged in full view of the city. Even on La Guidecca, a spur of land to the south of Venice, where wealthy merchants had built garden homes to escape the bustle of the busy port. He didn’t know how they were doing it.
He also didn’t care.
He stood at the railing, in the black velvet finery the tailor’s apprentice had finally delivered, struggling to look like he fit in. Struggling to nod and smile and act as enthralled as the rest of the onlookers. Struggling to do anything but stare.
But not at the battle.
His hands gripped the stone railing in front of him, hard enough to impress the shape of his fingers as he fought to contain the emotion that threatened to swamp him. He swallowed, calling on everything he had, on all those years of his father’s training, to stay outwardly stoic, visibly calm. But a greater battle than anything happening below was taking place inside him as he stared at his hands.
And at the sunlight spilling over them like a flood of gold.
“Quite the spectacle, isn’t it?” the voice, smooth as silk, rich as red wine, came from behind him.
Mircea didn’t turn around.
It was appallingly rude, not to mention incredibly bad business, to ignore his client. But he couldn’t move. He didn’t know what would happen if he did. It felt like he might burst open at the seams, might start running or screaming or—he didn’t know.
He didn’t know.
So he stayed in place in their corner of the terrace, where white draperies had been stretched between columns to provide shade of a sort. It didn’t provide much. The wind was high, causing the panels to drift about like tethered clouds, splashing those below with bright morning sunlight every few moments. And making Mircea flinch despite the fact that he knew it couldn’t hurt him.
Not with his client providing shade of a different kind.
He didn’t know how she was doing it, either. He should have been burnt to a crisp by now, like the bodies found on the beach each morning by the Watch. Or transformed, like the remains of a vampire he’d seen at the condottiere’s house, stacked in a corner.
Most of the time, the Watch simply used the heavy boots they wore to crush such remains to powder, allowing them to float out with the tide. But this one must have burned brighter than most, or had landed on a patch of unusual sand. Because instead of disintegrating, it had fused into a strange conglomeration of rock and ash and pale green glass, glittering in the candlelight.
Mircea had stared at it for a long time while waiting to be questioned. In places, it had reminded him of a fossil he’d found as a boy: a ridge of bare, blackened ribs protruded from the rock on one side, a hand, still bone-pale, lifted as if in supplication on the other. But the rest was more like an opal, fresh dug from the dirt, with beauty gleaming through in odd places.
A perfectly preserved ear was encased in a bubble of natural glass. Splotches of what looked like gold leaf had adhered to the pitted surface, which Mircea had finally identified as the remains of a line of buttons. And then there was the face . . .
Like the ear, the features had been oddly preserved, although not by a bubble. They looked more like they had turned to glass themselves, not green but chiseled obsidian, darkened from the ash that had settled into them. As if the vampire, whoever he had been, had died lying face down, not even wanting to catch one last glimpse of the sun.
Mircea had been unable to understand that kind of passivity. Of lying there, waiting for a dawn you would never see to come and take you. Of letting them win, these forces that had stolen his life from him, and that now seemed determined to take what was left.
Or to use it, for their own purposes.
“Are you feeding from me?” he suddenly asked, voice harsh.
That was appalling, too, or it should have been. Mircea might be ignorant of much of vampire life, but he knew court etiquette. And one did not speak to a superior in such a way.
But if she was offended, it didn’t show.
“No.” The voice was calm.
Mircea wasn’t. His hands slid on the railing, leaving sweaty prints on the pale stone, despite the cool spring air. “They said . . . they said you can do so without me knowing. They said you can feel what I feel.”
“They say much.” The voice was clear, with no amusement that he could discern. Although right now, would he know?
“Is it true?” It was loud—too loud.
He couldn’t bring himself to care. Not standing in the sun that had so long turned its back on him. Not staring at everything he’d once taken for granted: the light dancing on the water, the iridescent flash of a hummingbird’s wings as it fed off a nearby vine, the clouds spreading over the sky like a lacy veil. The colors . . .
They made him catch his breath, so vivid as to be shocking, the shimmering underbelly of a cloud, the thousand colors of blue, green, and turquoise in the lagoon, the blush on a servant girl’s cheek. They never looked like this to him now, even after feeding. He almost wished she hadn’t brought him here. It seemed a cruel joke, to remind him, in beautiful, anguished clarity, of all he’d lost.
“There is beauty in the night, too,” the voice was softer, slightly sad.
“Not like this. Not like—” He stopped, his throat working.
“I do not need blood to feel your emotions,” she told him, after a moment. “You radiate them like the sun.”
“Then you’re getting your money’s worth,” he said, choking.
She sighed, and he heard her settle back against the pillows, the almost imperceptible slide of silk on silk, the soft chink of her bracelets. “You remind me so much of myself.”