Dave Duncan - The Alchemists pursuit

So he prattled. I settled in the chair, sipped more of his fine wine, and cursed myself for ever mentioning that foreseeing. It had done no harm to my master's reputation for omnipotence but it must have attracted the notice of the Council of Ten. It might even get us both convicted of murder-apprentice sent to fulfil prophecy.

"So what can I do for you tonight?" Celsi concluded, taking the other chair. He rubbed his hands. "Name it and it's yours."

"Two things, one little, one big. Why did messer Giovanni Gradenigo give up politics?"

For a few moments Celsi just stared at me like some puzzled gnome, but I was fairly sure that he was trying to work out why I was asking, rather than trying to answer my question.

"Why do you think that had anything to do with the Michiel case?"

Delighted to be right, I had no difficulty grinning from ear to ear. "Why do you answer a question with a question?"

He laughed and heaved himself to his feet to go in search of a book-two books, in fact, and he needed several minutes to find what he wanted in each of them. At last he laid them aside and folded his hands over his paunch.

"I don't know. Nobody ever found out-which is very unusual in the Republic! It was three months after the Michiel case, but I agree that that isn't very long, so there might be a connection. Old Marco Erizzo died and there was speculation that Gradenigo would replace him as a procurator of San Marco, but he just resigned from the Council of Ten and went into seclusion." He pulled a face. "I knew his wife's brother quite well, and he said even she couldn't get an answer out of him!"

So had there been a miscarriage of justice? Had the Three convicted the wrong man? Had that burden of guilt provoked a deathbed confession?

"If I can't even answer your small one," Celsi grumbled, "what's the big one?"

I drew a very deep breath. "I need to know on what evidence the Council of Ten convicted Zorzi Michiel of patricide."

The old gossip muttered, "I don't think it ever…" He clambered off his chair again to retrieve yet another book from the shelves, peering at the spines to find the right one. Then he laid it over one on the desk, where the light was better. After a moment he returned to his chair, shaking his head.

"Thought so. What I heard… just hearsay, of course. It always is with the Ten. What I heard was that the Three just informed the Ten that they all agreed the boy was guilty, but he had fled abroad."

No outsider was supposed to know even that much about the innermost workings of the government.

"The Three, then," I said. "I need to know on what evidence the inquisitors convicted Zorzi Michiel of patricide."

Celsi waggled his dewlaps at me. "Such a shame! I told you yesterday: if you'd asked me just a week ago, dear boy, I could have appealed to old Giovanni Gradenigo, but he's gone now. Agostino Foscari would have told me, but he went last year and his memory wasn't all that it should be by then anyway. That only leaves the other black, Tommaso Pesaro, and he's hopeless, tight as a coffin lid in a warm climate."

So I said it. "There are files."

Sier Carlo leaned back in his chair and gazed very hard at me. "Your master is supposed to have safer ways than that of learning things. Safer in this life, anyway. We mundane mortals have to resort to such dealings, but he talks with the angels."

"He still needs ordinary information to know what to ask for."

"What of yourself, lad? Too many patricians disapprove of one of us running around after a leech. You, especially, should not take this risk, Alfeo."

"Risk?" I said angrily. "Last night he slit my ribs. If he'd had a clear stroke at me, he'd have put the blade in my lung and I'd have bubbled to death in a few minutes. Even yet I may die of wound fever or lockjaw. Women are being murdered every day, almost, and you talk of risk, clarissimo?"

Still he hesitated, chewing his lip. Finally he nodded. "Very well. It will cost you a fortune."

"How much?"

"At least two hundred ducats, maybe more. Only Circospetto has access to such files and he does not come cheap."

I squirmed, because I had tangled with the Ten's chief secretary before. Although I had survived so far, he and I have no liking for each other. His relations with the Maestro were even worse, and we had never before tried to corrupt him.

"Sciara takes bribes?"

"They all do. He's cheap compared to the Grand Chancellor."

"How do I go about it?"

"Midnight," Celsi said, almost whispering. "It must be midnight or soon after. Calle Spadaria in San Zulian. About five doors in from the campo, you'll see a door with a grille in it but no knocker, no name or number. You knock two slow and three fast. Hold your light so your face is visible. If no one answers, you are refused. And take a sizable down payment with you."

"I'll be there," I said. "Thank you."

"Be careful, lad," he said wistfully. "I'd hate not to have your cheerful smile around here any more."

As Giorgio expertly slid the boat up to the loggia of Ca' Barbolano, I broke the news that we'd be going out again, close to midnight. Boatmen for public hire are foul-mouthed hyenas and the privately employed ones are often not much better, but Giorgio never argues or complains.

"Far?"

"Near San Zulian. You decide where to let me off." San Zulian parish is just north of the Piazza, in an area so congested that there is little water access and the campo itself is almost nonexistent. Raffaino Sciara, chief secretary to the Council of Ten, would naturally want to live close to the Doges' Palace, where he spends most of his waking hours. At two hundred ducats a handshake, he could afford to.

I carried the bow lantern upstairs while Giorgio stacked the oar and cushions in the androne under a barrage of Luigi's aimless chatter. The Maestro had gone to bed, no doubt with a raging headache, but he had left a prophecy whose writing and syntax were both much better than average. The meaning was as cryptic as ever.

Why hazard in far lands when all you need lies close?

Why seek distant enemies when death is near at hand?

Be not so proud as to spurn help at your feet,

Nor too humble to seek salvation from on high.

I fetched the book of prophecies and selected a quill to transcribe this one. As always, it was ambiguous, haunting the borderlands of meaning, but the first line looked like a hint that Zorzi Michiel had returned from exile, or wanted to. The second could be a reference to bounty hunters or the Ten's assassins seeking him out wherever he tried to hide-the risk of discovery in Venice might be no greater. The third and fourth lines, I decided, would have to wait upon events.

This was Sunday, and the sixth commandment is definitely my favorite, but I couldn't settle to a book with my visit to Circospetto hanging over me, so I decided to catch up on my cleaning duties. I fetched a rag, the broom, and the feather duster.

That night I cleaned half the wall of books and the alchemy bench. I do not lift out the books-that takes me a couple of days when the Maestro decides it needs doing-so the bookshelves are little problem. But all the mortars, pestles, beakers, funnels, alembics, and other vessels have to be polished, all the reagent bottles wiped and their shelves also, so by the time I had come around to the door, it was too late to go any further.

Meanwhile I was worrying over Celsi's instructions to take a cash deposit with me. Having no experience in such matters, I should have asked him how much would be appropriate. Knowing better than to try and waken Nostradamus after a foreseeing, I decided to err on the high side, for to offer too little would get me and my proposal spurned. Fifty ducats would be ample, I decided, roughly a year's wages for a married journeyman artisan. I raided the secret cache for eighteen gold sequins, which I weighed carefully, then placed in a money pouch that I hung around my neck, inside my shirt. I also took some small change to buy off muggers if they were too many to fight. I entered the total in the ledger as expenses.