“You do what you have to do,” Bezio said philosophically.
Mircea didn’t say anything. But it never ceased to amaze him how he always assumed that his situation was unique. That no one else knew his pain, understood his loss. And yet, he continually had evidence of the contrary.
All of them had suffered, in one way or another. All of them had known rejection, the loss of home, family, the ruin of the life they’d planned to have. Just like the hundreds of unwanted vampires that somehow found their way to Venice every year, most of whom would end up ashes on the tide.
Like Sanuito.
“Anyway,” Jerome continued. “Auria told me that her master used to pick up a bunch of people at a time, Change them, and then wait to see who got strongest the fastest. Then he’d ditch the rest and do it again.”
“Ditch?” Mircea asked.
Jerome ran a finger across his throat. “They’d dig a big hole in the forest somewhere, and toss ’em in once they were dead. Auria said she got away by luck. The stake missed her heart, and the cut on her throat wasn’t deep enough to keep her from feeding.”
“Feeding . . . on what?” Bezio asked warily.
“On the cooling corpses they threw in around her—”
“God!” Bezio got up from the table abruptly. Only to realize he didn’t have anywhere to go and sat back down.
Jerome nodded. “That’s what I said. But there was no other way, and she didn’t want to die. So she fed until she was strong enough to claw her way out.” He took a drink. “If I was Danieli, I’d think twice about crossing her.”
“God,” Bezio said again, and drained his glass.
Mircea leaned across the table. “Her master killed his own family? For nothing?”
Jerome shook his head. “Auria said he didn’t consider them family if they were weak. He was trying to build up his strength—he had some kind of quarrel with another vampire, and needed soldiers.”
“But he could have sold the others on, to someone else—”
“Yes, only nobody wants baby vamps, do they? We found that out in the condottiere’s cells. Anyone can make a baby—any master, that is. So they don’t have much value. He thought it easier to just bury the problem.”
Literally, Mircea thought, his hand clenching on his glass.
“Maybe he thought he’d get in trouble,” Bezio said. “Technically, masters are responsible for the vamps they make—”
“Like that’s ever enforced,” Paulo said darkly.
“Well, it damned well ought to be! People like that should be made to—”
“People like that shouldn’t be masters at all,” Mircea rasped. “If they’re that irresponsible, they shouldn’t be anything.”
“Well, yes,” Bezio said, looking a little startled. “But you can’t just go around killing off all the bad masters. You wouldn’t have anybody left!”
“Of course you would. Jerome’s master died, and his senior servants took over his property and his territory. The same would be true anywhere.”
“Well, yes, maybe. But you’re talking a lot of deaths. I sometimes think there’s more bad masters than good ones. And killing off that many would cause, well, chaos—”
“For a while,” Mircea agreed. “But after, you would have a group of people you could work with.”
Bezio looked at him strangely. “Did anybody ever tell you, you’re kind of scary?”
“You have to be when dealing with creatures that powerful. Make it clear enough times that the penalties are severe and will be enforced, and soon you won’t have a problem.”
“But for that you need somebody at the top who gives a damn. And from what I hear, the current consul likes things as they are.”
“Your senator has tried to change things,” Paulo put in suddenly, looking at Mircea. “In fact, she’s probably the reason they haven’t deteriorated any further. But then whoever she’s opposing just goes running to the top, and fawns and flatters until the consul tells her to back off.”
“Then perhaps he needs to go, too,” Mircea said, thinking of the lives lost for nothing, except a madman’s caprice.
“All right, maybe we should change the subject,” Bezio said, looking worried.
“Maybe that’s what too many people do—”
“Maybe they like living.”
“You call this is living? What happened to Auria—”
“She survived—”
“And how many didn’t?”
“I know one who’s trying his best to add to that number,” Bezio said, scowling. “You’re not a prince anymore, Mircea. And people like us don’t have any say in what happens at those levels.”
Mircea sat back, seething. Bezio was right; he knew he was. But Auria was right, too. You didn’t just stop being who you were because of the Change. It had altered his body, yes, but in his mind . . . he was still the same person he’d always been. One born to power and trained in its uses—and its pitfalls. And he hated, hated, seeing it used to destroy lives while he sat back and did nothing.
“There’s nothing you can do,” Bezio repeated strongly. “Things . . . will sort themselves out.”
Not with the same creature on the throne who had caused the problem, Mircea thought, but didn’t say.
“So, what does everyone think happened to Sanuito?” Jerome asked, as Mircea tried to blink the red haze in front of his eyes away.
It didn’t work.
It took him a second to realize the reason for that. And by then Paulo was on his feet, knocking over his chair and staring at the window, where the ghostly moonlight filtering in off the canal had been replaced by a reddish haze. As if dawn had come early.
Only dawn didn’t smell of smoke and send feet running into the hallway.
Paulo flung open the door to a hall already filled with panicked humans and wild-eyed vampires. “What—” Mircea began.
And then stopped because he was talking to himself. Everybody else had gone, running through the door fast enough that it almost looked like they disappeared. But he could see them in the crowd ahead as he ran after them, down the remainder of the short hall, through the pantry, and into the kitchen. Which looked like an inferno. Bloody light was everywhere, spilling through the windows, staining the floor, and reflecting off the pots the cook kept shined to a high gloss. It flooded through the doorway when someone flung it open, along with a wall of heat and the smell of burning wood.
And the sight of the sugar house, engulfed in flames, going up like a great candle.
Or like the biggest firework of them all.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
“Is this everything?” Mircea asked, looking around.
It was the next night, and he and Marte were in the room on the ground floor, which was usually used to store casks of wine. It was now holding the bottles and jars that had been rescued from the remains of the sugar house. Most of which Marte was having to try to identify by sight, since the labels had been singed off.
“So far.” She sighed and wiped her dirty hands on her apron. “They’re still bringing them in.”
As if in reply to her comment, a couple of servants staggered in under the weight of several huge baskets of once expensive perfumes, lotions, and cosmetics. They now looked like ancient artifacts, covered in ash and, in some cases, melted together. They were dropped with a chiming crash onto a pile of similar baskets, making Marte sigh.
“Are these all from the work room?” Mircea asked, picking up a still-warm jar of something that might have been olive oil, before the fire reduced it to a blackish sludge.
“Mostly.” Marte sorted through the nearest basket, giving a small yelp when her fingers encountered one of the hotter specimens. “They’re trying to get to the storeroom behind it, which we think may have fared better, since it wasn’t as close to the center of the blaze.”