Eric Lustbader - The Testament

Rule glanced over. "Didn't fire it, though, did you? The trigger won't go all the way back. Zorzi sabotaged it before he gave it back to you."

Bravo had been so sure that the gun was working properly, but then he heard the flat, shivery crack of the ice breaking and he shivered. The last thing he needed now was a flight of fancy or an echo from the past. Setting his mind on the job at hand, he sat on the gleaming varnished mahogany deck bench and carefully laid down each part of the weapon as he dismantled it. When he got to the trigger mechanism, he discovered something that had escaped his first cursory inspection-something was stuck there, jamming the mechanism.

"You see?" Rule said.

Bravo unfolded the object, examining it carefully. "This isn't Zorzi's doing. My father left it for me to find. He taught me to break down a gun before you use it, that was rule one. I just never had the time."

Rule peered at it. "All I see is a ball of old cloth."

"Not any cloth." Bravo unraveled it. "Linsey. It's a very low-quality linen and wool mixture which was said to be the material used for both Mary's head scarf and Lazarus's cloak." He was remembering the cipher his father left for him in the steel beggar's purse: Remember where you were the day you were born. St. Mary of Nazareth Hospital.

Not Mary of Nazareth, he thought now. "Isn't there an island in the lagoon that has a church named after Mary of Lazarus?"

Rule nodded. "It was used as a way station for pilgrims on their journey to the Holy Land. The church is long gone now." He thought for a moment. "Lazzaretto Vecchio lies due south, just below the Lido." He turned the boat in that direction. "In the old Venetian dialect, Mary's name became nazaretum and eventually, in the way of all languages, further distorted into lazaretto. Over the centuries, the island has had many incarnations. In the fourteenth century, for instance, it was used to quarantine plague victims during the city's first great epidemic." Moving out of the channel into the lagoon proper, he put on speed. "It's still quite lovely, but nowadays, it's only a center for stray dogs."

Remember the name of your third pet. Bark.

Bravo laughed out loud.

Jenny, in the company of Paolo Zorzi's emissary, arrived on San Francesco del Deserto to find her mentor with a bandaged head and in a foul mood. She was nervous and upset, but by far her overriding emotion was one of guilt.

They sat in the refectory, which she found oppressive and gloomy. Candles guttered all around her, and there was soot in the air. To her surprise, there were four other Guardians in the room. She waited for Zorzi to speak, but he did not acknowledge her presence in any way. Instead, he stared down at a message he had apparently just been given. Jenny would have given anything to know what was in it. As her gaze redirected itself to Zorzi, she noticed his red-rimmed eyes. He looked like he hadn't slept in two or three days.

At length, he said, "Father Mosto was murdered."

"And Bravo disappeared," she blurted in response, "more than four hours ago, and you've kept me waiting all this time. How else will you punish me?"

Zorzi looked up, impaling her with his implacable eyes. "Speaking of Braverman Shaw," he said softly, "you never delivered the message I ordered you to give him, did you?"

"That Anthony Rule is the traitor? No."

"Why?"

She knew that velvet voice, and she winced thinking of the iron fist behind it. "Because I don't believe it."

"It's not for you to decide these matters!"

Already on edge, she started at the sharpness of his voice.

"I was right when I counseled Dexter Shaw not to assign you to guard his son."

"And you were the one who trained me." Jenny was unable any longer to hide her bitterness.

"Precisely my point."

"You were harder on me than you were with your male pupils, you made damn sure of that."

Zorzi ignored her outburst. "I never should have listened to Dexter. Every instinct at my command told me he was making a mistake."

He regarded her with a look he reserved for those who had disappointed him. She could feel that he had removed himself from her sphere, that whatever she might tell him-whatever excuses she might put forward-would now fall on deaf ears. He was done with her.

Jenny, absorbing all this, was filled with despair. She stood, her head pulled into her shoulders, which were slightly hunched, as if she needed to protect herself from the assault of his words. She had always thought that he'd believed in her; now she knew that had it not been for Dex's intervention, Zorzi would have rejected her as the others in the Order had wanted to do. His belief had been in Dexter, not in her.

Still, she was not yet prepared to give up. "Why are we siting here when we should be trying to find Bravo?"

"I'd rather talk about you," Zorzi said. "Tell me what happened."

"I was guarding the rectory where Bravo and Father Mosto were talking. I was attacked from behind, overpowered. The next thing I knew, I woke up in a utility room. When I went out into the corridor, I found Father Mosto with his throat slit and my knife beside him in a pool of blood."

"Your knife."

"Yes."

"How do you suppose it got there?"

"That's obvious. Whoever assaulted me took it."

"How would they know you had it on you?"

Jenny's heart skipped a beat. She glanced around at the four other Guardians, who were hanging on every word that was said. For the first time she viewed her situation in another light.

"Is this an interrogation? Do you think I murdered Father Mosto?"

Zorzi rose, paced back and forth in front of her. "As you know, there is a traitor in our midst. Lately, as the death toll has mounted, it has occurred to me that there may be more than one traitor." He stopped and leveled his gaze at her. "You see what I mean."

"All I see is that I've got to go after Bravo," she said doggedly. "I screwed up; it's my responsibility-"

"I'm afraid I can't allow that."

"You think I'm a traitor," Jenny said in a strangled voice.

There was that look again, reasserting the distance he'd put between them, and when he spoke, his tone was cold and unforgiving. "You failed to protect our most important asset; that is unforgivable. As if that weren't enough, consider the situation from Bravo's point of view. He finds the body, the throat slit, your bloody knife beside the corpse, and you gone. What would you think if you were him?" Zorzi crumpled the message in his hand with a kind of cold fury that terrified her. "His position is the same as mine, he can't afford to trust you."

She stood up. "You can't just-" She stopped, turning as the four other Guardians came toward her. "This isn't right," she said weakly, and felt immediately foolish, because if she were in Zorzi's place she knew she'd do the same thing he was doing.

"Now I must leave," he said, "to try and clean up the mess you made." He turned back. "Pray for me. Pray that I find Braverman Shaw before it's too late."

With that damning accusation, he and two of the Guardians swept out. The heavy wood and iron door of the refectory slammed shut behind them.

Another wave of despair filled her, fueled by her sense of outrage and helplessness. She had lost the confidence of her mentor and was being detained by her own people, all because she had been implicated by her inattention, her schoolgirl crush, her own stupidity. Why hadn't she taken a page from Anthony Rule's book and kept herself free of emotional entanglements?

The two remaining Guardians stared at her with looks of mixed pity and hostility. She turned away. The hostility she could handle-she always had. It was the pity that unnerved her. To compound her stupidity, she took a wild couple of steps toward them. One backhanded her across the face while the other moved away, so he could cover her from a different angle. She staggered back, and the Guardian pushed her down into a chair and told her to stay there.