“You know that wouldn’t surprise me,” Paulo said. “Set the damned thing, then go off with us as if nothing was happening, all the while knowing the fire would spread the whole time we were gone!”
“Sanuito had no reason to burn the house down!”
“He had no reason to kill himself, either,” Paulo pointed out. “Except for being a crazy son of—”
“He wasn’t crazy!”
Paulo looked taken aback. “Well, I’d hate to see your definition of the word.”
“Was he acting differently at all?” Mircea asked Marte, exasperated. “Just in the last few days?”
She shook her head. “Not that I noticed. But then, I didn’t work with him that much. Nobody did, really, except for Auria.”
“Auria?”
“Martina’s been teaching her perfume making. She’s getting quite good at it, too. In fact, she’s been making more of the perfumes we use lately than Martina has—”
“And Sanuito’s been helping her.”
“Yes. She might be able to tell you more. Poor Sanuito,” Marte added, looking sad.
“Poor us,” Paulo muttered, going back to his notes. “We never should have taken him in.”
“As opposed to leaving him to starve?” Mircea asked.
Paulo looked up and scowled. “I know you don’t want to hear this, but the Watch isn’t all bad. Yes, half of them strut around, acting like they’re God, and a good percentage are as corrupt as hell. But if it wasn’t for them, the city would be overrun by crazy vampires doing their own version of a Sanuito!”
“It’s true, Mircea,” Marte agreed. “Most of the vampires the Watch pick up aren’t like you—”
“Or Bezio or Jerome?” he asked pointedly.
“Your group was unusual, possibly because the Watch has been extra vigilant lately, leading up to the consul’s visit. Anyone who looked even remotely suspicious was picked up, on the assumption that they could be sorted out later. But most of the time they have to be showing some sort of odd behavior to be taken in the first place—”
She broke off when another servant came in, with a basket dripping some sort of brackish ooze onto the floor.
“Did you just trail that through the whole house?” Paulo demanded.
The man looked at him, blinking.
Marte sighed. “Come on. We’re putting the leaky ones down the hall.”
“The leaky ones?” Paulo asked, following her out. “What exactly are you bringing in here?”
“Martina said everything.”
“Everything salvageable. I don’t think she expected . . .”
Mircea waited a moment, until their voices faded, then hurriedly looked through the baskets. But all the smaller jars he found were cracked and leaking. Ruined.
Which probably explained why the majority of the containers were the larger ones, the kind normally used to refill the smaller vessels. They had thicker walls and had thus survived the heat better, although that didn’t help with identification. They looked more like the ones on an apothecary’s shelves than the one Sanuito had given him . . .
A moment later, Mircea stuck his head in the kitchen, and found Jerome sitting at the main table, shelling more blasted peas. With most of the servants busy on the salvage mission, it looked like he had been pressed into service. A fact that did not appear to be making him happy.
“Have a minute?” Mircea asked.
“Why?” He looked up hopefully.
“I have an errand.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
“Hurry up!” Jerome said nervously. “We should have been back by now.”
Mircea sneezed into a handkerchief, instead of replying. At the rate things were going, he’d be lucky to make it back at all. His head swam. His throat burned. He thought even his vision might be blurring.
“And then we have this one,” the genial apothecary said, bringing over yet another maiolica jar.
Martina was a notoriously late sleeper, even when she hadn’t spent half the day dealing with a burning house. It had given Mircea reason to hope that he might complete his errand and be back before she knew he was gone. But that was before he realized the extent of the medicaments on offer—or the enthusiasm of the proprietor who had sold him so many and such expensive things, less than a week ago.
The man was clearly hoping for another big sale.
Mircea was hoping to identify the substance in the little pot Sanuito had given him before he fell over.
It wasn’t going so well. He’d gone through half the items in the shop, and he wasn’t even sure he recalled what the damned stuff smelled like anymore. Or what he thought it had before perfumes and spices, sugars and exotic ointments had surrounded him in a cloud of different scents, some whispering, some screaming, but all working to drown out even a vampire’s scent memory.
He looked up from the handkerchief, eyes streaming, only to have the owner shove something citrus-scented under his nose. A human would have probably needed it that close. But to a vampire, it was akin to having a bucket of lemon juice thrown in his face.
Mircea gasped and reared back, colliding with one of the boys who had been bustling about, cleaning up the shop after hours. And, of course, this one was carrying a large and probably quite expensive maiolica jar. Which equally predictably, he dropped.
Mircea caught it—just—a hair’s breadth before it hit the floor.
The shop owner gave a little bleat. And then clutched the jar to his apron-covered chest after Mircea handed it over. He looked faintly ill, his face red, his forehead beaded with sweat.
“Oh, gràsie, dòmino! Gràsie! Stupid boy,” he added, glaring at the young man, who stood there with his mouth hanging open in horror, until his master yelled at him. “Go, èrce! Do you think I trust you with this again?”
The boy scurried off, and the shopkeeper carefully placed the beautiful jar on the nearest counter, his hands shaking slightly.
“What’s in that one?” Mircea managed to wheeze.
“Nothing, dòmino. Well, nothing you would be interested in.”
“How do you know?”
“You said cosmetics, dòmino. And aromatic waters and body powders and scented soaps—”
“That’s not soap,” Jerome said, sniffing the air.
How he could still smell anything was beyond Mircea. A boy was peeling a great mass of ginger root just behind him, and just beyond that, a man was crushing mint. Not to mention the golden haze that hung in the air from a bag of crushed mustard one of the boys had turned over, and the . . . the . . .
Mircea sneezed, and then gratefully accepted a cup of water from one of the apprentices.
“How do you dhow?” he repeated, through his nose.
“’Cause I helped make enough of the stuff in my time, didn’t I?” Jerome asked, leaning on the counter. “It was a specialty of the apothecary I used to work for. Pound, pound, pound, cook, cook, cook, mix, mix, mix. The stuff takes forever—”
“But worth it, young master,” the apothecary said, giving Jerome the stink eye. Whether for outing himself as something other than the noble his clothing would suggest, or because he was damaging a potential sale, Mircea didn’t know.
“If it’s made right,” Jerome began, only to be cut off as the man drew himself up.
“We take great pride in our work! We use only the finest of ingredients—and no shortcuts, as you’ll find in so many of the lesser shops.”
The water hadn’t helped much, but the apprentice returned with a damp towel, and Mircea buried his face in it.
“Yes, but they all say that,” Jerome pointed out cynically.
“They may say whatever they wish!” the man fumed. “But we are not known as Venice’s premier apothecary for nothing! We follow the recipe as Galen set down—”