Dave Duncan - The Alchemist's Apprentice

Bruno is the gentlest and most amiable of men. He beamed with joy when I signed that I wanted him to accompany me. Then he noticed the sword under my cloak and frowned mightily. I signed danger and maybe to tell him I was not going out to pick a fight, but when I told him to bring a cudgel, he glowered down at me like a thunderstorm, folded his great arms, and grew roots.

We often have this argument. I dropped to my knees and clasped my hands in prayer. He scowled, lifted me bodily, and held me there until I put my feet down; but then he did go and fetch the only weapon he will tolerate-Mama Angeli’s heaviest flatiron in a canvas bag with a shoulder strap. Most men would balk at having to lug something like that around for long, but Bruno barely notices the weight. Why it is a more acceptable defense than a stout stave I cannot understand and he cannot explain. I grinned, he smiled sheepishly, and off we went.

We could have run down the back stairs and gone out the servants’ door. It never occurred to me to do so. Instead we left by the watergate as usual, carefully negotiating the narrow ledge along the facade of Ca’ Barbolano to the corner of the building and the calle. It was easier for me than Bruno, who takes up much more space.

Seagulls were swimming on the strangely empty canal. This was the day of the funeral, so the city was in mourning for its procurator, and already I heard bells ringing in the distance. The Marciana porters were not working and the building site on the far side lay silent. Once we had made our way through the maze of calli, we found the morning crowds in the campo much decreased, and few hawkers making their rounds. Even the gossip session around the wellhead was thin, although there were more men than usual. We paused there to chat as neighbors do. I chatted. Bruno just smiled and nodded. Two girls teasingly warned me not to let my companion step on me, but most women are scared of Bruno.

As befits a small parish, San Remo has a small church. It is old and quaint, but it does have good stained glass and Father Farsetti is a personal friend of Jacopo Palma the Younger, who is the finest painter working in the city at the moment. Two of his early paintings hang in the church and afficionados come in droves to argue over them. There was no one arguing there that morning, but the door to the confessional was closed, so Father Farsetti was about his holy duties. I said a few prayers, including one for Bertucci Orseolo. Bruno wandered around, admiring the pictures and the glass. He does not understand churches and what happens there.

A woman came out of the confessional and I went in. Father Farsetti probably knew what to expect as soon as he heard my voice. I admitted to summoning a demon from hell and some lesser sins. He demanded to know why I had invoked the fiend, so I told him. He disapproved, of course, but he could see that an attempt to assassinate the doge justified extraordinary countermeasures. As usual, he was more worried about my sinful relationship with Violetta, but every man in Venice has that sort of problem at least sometimes. He gave me a thorough nagging, absolution, and a much smaller penance than I had feared.

We emerged by our separate doors and bid each other good morning. He gave Bruno his blessing. Bruno, who had been guarding my sword and cloak for me, just smiled politely. There were no other penitents waiting.

Father Farsetti is a small, birdlike man with a warm smile and an enormous laugh. He isn’t quite up to Isaia Modestus at chess-I can beat him sometimes-but he is incredible at chess without boards, able to take on the Maestro and me at the same time and usually win both games.

“You must come and dine with us again soon, Father,” I said. “Arguing with you gives my master an appetite, which he sorely needs.”

He lit his smile. “That is a worthy justification for a personal pleasure. Before you go, though, I have a book on the role of political assassination in Islamic history that I think might interest you.”

Without asking whatever had given him that idea, I assured him that I would enjoy reading it. And so we crossed to the side door of the church and went out that way, emerging into a small courtyard between the church nave on one side, the priest’s house on the other, with the transept closing off the end. I followed Father Farsetti out.

“That’s him!”

There were six of them. One of them had been keeping watch at the corner to alert the others when I came out of the main door. The other five had just been waiting. I couldn’t dive back into the church, because the way was blocked by Bruno, doubled over as he followed me out. Fortunately the bravos needed an instant to react because I had appeared behind them. Had Bruno and I emerged where they expected, they could have come after us and made short work of us in the open. In the courtyard they were going to be hampered by lack of space.

My rapier flashed out. They produced stilettos, but those blades looked as long as swords to me, and bravos know how to use swords. Luckily I had left my cloak just draped on my shoulders, unfastened. I swirled it loose and leaped into the corner to have my back protected. Father Farsetti was hurled aside, his yells ignored.

I parried a slash from the man on my right and enveloped the one on my left in my cloak. My riposte took the first man in the face, but by that time numbers three and four had arrived, number two had shaken off my cloak, and Father Farsetti was bellowing for help at the top of his well-trained lungs. I did not expect to be there to welcome it. I had my dagger out and was parrying with both hands, much too busy just staying alive to attempt to injure my opponents. In theory a rapier should keep a stiletto out of range, and even two stilettos should not be an impossible match in daylight. Five most certainly were.

Fortunately Bruno was in the fight, too. He did not appear to be armed, but he was too big to ignore and when the others closed in on me, one man dallied to deal with him. Bruno swung his weighted bag overhead and smashed the man’s arm before he even got within range-that was probably how it happened, because we found his stiletto and the spectators described one of our assailants supporting an arm as he ran away. Father Farsetti was doing as much as he could to get between the others and me, for even a gutter bravo will not knowingly injure a priest. They shoved him aside with their free hands.

That still left four young toughs jostling in at me, faces full of hate, steel gleaming, and I should have died, had not San Remo and Our Lady heard my prayers. Bruno must have delivered a backhand sideways swipe at one of the men engaging me, who was later found with the back of his head crushed. He fell against his companions, diverting their attack, and I am fairly sure I wounded another. Then Bruno’s victim toppled face-first into me, smearing blood on my doublet and knocking all the wind out of me. I went down with him, found myself among the boots and was certain I was done for- Eyes and legs a-bleeding on the campo.

That I survived was again due to Bruno, who felled the third of my attackers with a punch to the back of the neck, dropping him on top of me as a human shield. Father Farsetti witnessed that, and thereafter I was protected by two bodies so that the others could not get at me. Armed with staves and hammers and even cook pots, men and boys were running in from all directions, answering the priest’s continuing yells. The remaining thugs took to their heels to avoid being trapped in the courtyard. They escaped because other spectators out in the campo were unarmed and naturally did not tackle daggers with bare hands.

Two bodies were left behind, a flattened skull and a broken neck respectively. So Bruno killed two and wounded one, while I, the celebrated swordsman, merely wounded two. My excuse for such a sorry and unheroic showing is that I was the target and the bravos had not at first registered Bruno as anything but a bystander. He survived only because they did not have time to react to his unorthodox and fearless assault. Had the fight lasted a moment longer, they would have made a sieve of him.