“Mircea?”
His foot slipped out from beneath him, and Mircea felt himself falling. But he was too disoriented to stop before the floor did it for him. He landed in a sprawling heap at the bottom of the stairs, which would have been bad enough.
But then he looked up to find Bezio standing there, frowning at him. “You all right, son?”
Mircea didn’t reply for a moment, dizzy with the impact, half blind from the sudden lack of sunlight, and preoccupied with feel of her moving beneath him, the scent of her in his nostrils, the taste of her on his tongue. And then that burst of light, as if the sun had exploded around them . . .
And then nothing.
No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t remember a thing beyond that point.
“Mircea?” Bezio was starting to sound worried.
“I . . . don’t know,” Mircea replied unsteadily. “I don’t know what happened to me.”
Bezio put out a hand. “Then come and find out.”
That would have been easier, if half the house wasn’t already crowded into a large suite at the end of the hall. Even Cook was there, along with several of the other servants, sitting on stools they’d brought up from the kitchen. But most were on the massive bed, where Marte was holding court amid a flutter of silks and feminine laughter.
“There’s always room for a few more!” she called gaily, as they entered the room.
And then he and Bezio were being pulled into the throng, amidst a lot of good-natured groping that, in Mircea’s case, hurt like hell. But he finally found a spot near the center of the bed, beside the hostess. Bezio seemed fine with that, considering that it left him with an armful of buxom redhead in the form of Zaneta, her henna dyed locks fitting perfectly under his chin as she rearranged herself.
“Snuggle up any closer and we’re going to have a problem,” he warned her, as she settled between his legs.
“That’s not what I call a problem,” she laughed, and deliberately pushed back against him.
He gave a leer, but didn’t try to move away. Although that could have been because a pert blonde named Bianca was snuggled up right behind him, on her knees so she could see over his head. Which left said appendage firmly ensconced between two pert breasts barely covered by a piece of pink silk.
“All right there?” Mircea asked him sardonically.
“I’ll make do,” he said, and leaned back, making Bianca laugh.
“You keep that up, I’m going to charge you,” she warned.
“Alas, I haven’t any money. But perhaps we can work out a trade,” he offered, looking up and waggling his eyebrows.
“That’s what I charge for,” she said, smacking him on the shoulder, which had no effect at all that Mircea could see.
“All right, all right, settle down,” Marte called, from Mircea’s other side. “It’s starting.”
“What’s starting?” he asked, understanding no more than he had upstairs.
“Not that way,” she sighed, and gripped his head, turning it from her to the wall opposite the bed.
Or, to be more precise, the huge mirror that took up half the wall.
Despite everything, Mircea stared at it in surprise. The mirrors at home were like the one in his room: small pieces of convex metal, usually brass or occasionally silver for the wealthy, that had been polished to a high shine. It wasn’t until he came to Venice that he’d seen actual glass mirrors, although they, too, were usually small and at least somewhat distorting.
This one was flat. And huge. Enough to reflect the image of almost the entire bed.
And the rube gaping at it from on top.
Mircea shut his mouth, and slowly noticed that the flat surface wasn’t entirely so. Tiny lines showed where smaller pieces of glass had been fitted together to make a massive square, almost floor to ceiling. He flushed at the thought of what use Marte might have for such a thing, but he was already so red that nobody noticed.
“Why are we looking at your mirror?” he asked Marte, trying not to sound as off-kilter as he felt.
Only to have the item in question answer for her.
The surface suddenly rippled and changed, as if a pebble had been thrown into a pond. And when it coalesced again, Mircea wasn’t looking at a bunch of expectant faces on a bed. But at a bunch of expectant faces by a pier.
He swallowed, partly because the sudden, unexpected movement had made him dizzy. But more because he’d seen that pier before. He’d seen that whole scene before: the blue, blue sky, the bright, sunlit sea, the manicured grounds of an elegant palazzo.
He just didn’t understand how he was seeing it now.
“What—” he began, just as a voice began talking in rapid Venetian, too fast for Mircea to have any hope of keeping up. It wasn’t anyone on the bed; wasn’t someone he knew. He looked around, tensing—
And realized that it, too, was coming from the mirror.
And now he was able to catch a few words: “much-awaited,” “excited crowd,” and then “tragedy.”
“Never say they’re not going to show the whole thing!” one of the girls piped up, disappointed. “I wanted to see the clothes!”
“They’re showing highlights,” Marte told her. “But I’m sure they’ll—there. I knew they’d show the gallery. They always do.”
“Ooooh!” A feisty brunette named Besina practically crushed Mircea while trying to get a closer look at something in the mirror.
It was a woman strolling along a covered colonnade, the kind the Venetians called loggias. It ran along the front of the palazzo the consul was using, and overlooked the sea. A number of onlookers had gathered there, who Mircea hadn’t been able to see from the terrace above.
“What are those—oh. Golden bees,” Besina said thoughtfully, as if making a note of the raised embroidery on the woman’s silver gray satin dress.
“Oh, oh! Look at that one!” A blond Mircea didn’t know crowded him on his other side.
Marte shot her a look, but the girl was too enthralled to notice, staring with unabashed lust at a maroon velvet gown. It had a golden net of embroidery that reached from the wearer’s waist to bodice, and then continued on beyond the fabric all the way up to the woman’s neck. The embroidery over skin look was created, Mircea assumed, by some type of lace effect.
“Jacopo told me that couldn’t be done, the bastard,” she muttered.
A crimson gown that looked like patterned cloth was appraised next, because the “pattern” was intricate gold embroidery over every square inch of cloth. And then a dark blue velvet with golden ram’s heads embroidered into the shoulders in high relief. And then a pale blue satin so encrusted with pearls as to be stiff even when the woman wearing it walked.
There were others, causing oohs, and aahs and, occasional “what was she thinking”s out of the girls. Mircea barely noticed, because Bezio had pulled him back within earshot. “Stunned me the first time I saw it, too,” the older vamp murmured.
“How are they doing this?” Mircea whispered, in wonder. He was looking at a picture, clear as day, of the day. More specifically, of earlier this day. He recognized some of the people who had been at the regatta, and the throne, yet to be occupied out on the pier, and the decorations and banners ruffling in the wind. He just didn’t understand—
“It’s some kind of spell,” Bezio told him. “Some of the people at an event agree to have it placed on them, so that we can see what they see. It lets those of us who can’t walk in the day experience some of what happens while we sleep.”
“A . . . spell?”
“Stole it from the mages,” Bezio affirmed. “I don’t know much more about it, but it seems to work. And they say they can put it on any—”
He broke off as the scene tilted and juddered. And did an odd hopping bounce for an instant that had Mircea’s head bobbing, too, as if trying to compensate. And then suddenly soared upwards at an alarming rate, as if headed straight for the brilliant sun overhead.