Dave Duncan - The Alchemist's Apprentice

He knows perfectly well that wearing a sword at night is illegal.

“Certainly, although I wouldn’t be much good with it. My leg still hurts.”

“I mean for appearances. How much would it cost to dress you like a real noble?”

“I am a real noble.” I let my annoyance show. “You really did rummage about in my memories last night, didn’t you?”

He managed to seem surprised. “I asked you only questions relevant to the murder, nothing private. My point is that I can’t shout. I can’t overawe people. I need you to keep control of the meeting tonight. You have to look the part. Clothes talk. How much?”

“You want me to control Missier Grande, his vizio, a great minister, an ambassador, the ambassador’s son, an attorney, and possibly the entire Council of Ten?” I said, awed. “I am humbled by your trust. Perhaps the doge would lend me his corno? To dress me as a noble from scratch would take at least a week, but the Ghetto’s pawnshops are full of good stuff. I could look there and have things altered to fit. Four or five ducats. Ten would be better. Otherwise it will look pretentious and fake.”

He swallowed as if it hurt. “Go and do it. Enter it in the ledger.”

“As what?”

“Maintaining appearances. Hurry before I change my mind.”

B runo has his own strange ways of knowing things, and when I returned to the casa with my worthy apparel, he became excited and asked if the Maestro was going to need him later. When I nodded, he ran to get out the carrying chair and strap it on. For the next two hours he wandered about wearing it, a menace to the Barbolano artwork every time he turned around.

But eventually I was ready too. Blue has always been my best color. It sets off my sultry good looks, or something. I had chosen a doublet of peacock blue silk, embroidered in gold, with a wide white ruff collar, puffed sleeves tied at points with silver ribbon and frothy white linen peeking out through the slashes. My buttons were nuggets of amber shaped like pears, and amber strawberries decorated my belt. Below a very low waist I sported matching knee britches and white silk stockings tight and sheer enough to reveal every wrap of the bandage on my calf. My fur-trimmed short cloak of silver brocade hung on my shoulders so as not to conceal my sleeves; my bag-shaped bonnet stood half a yard high. I hoped Violetta would be able to control herself when she clapped eyes on such splendor. With a last minute adjustment to the hang of my rapier and dagger, I minced out into the salone in my gold-buckled shoes.

Christoforo cried out and dropped to his knees. Corrado and Archangelo came running to see what was wrong and were even more overcome, falling on the floor, writhing and moaning. Then came a torrent of younger brothers and sisters, Mama herself, and Giorgio in his best red and black. Giggling at their clowning brothers, the small fry began bowing and curtseying. The merriment stopped when a steady thumping announced the arrival of the Maestro in his black physician robe-even the twins mind their manners near him, having been warned so often that he might turn them into frogs. Which the rest of us think would be an improvement, mind you.

Bruno rushed over and knelt to offer the chair. I went to assist, moving carefully in case my cloak fell off and shamed me. The Maestro eyed my radiance with intense dislike.

“How much did all that cost?”

“About twenty ducats, I suppose. It isn’t brass and glass, you know.”

He said, “Obscene!” and clambered awkwardly into the chair.

As soon as he was settled, I tapped Bruno’s shoulder to let him know he could now rise, and the three of us followed Giorgio downstairs. It was a fine evening and Carnival revelers were out already, boatloads of them singing along with their gondoliers, even on sleepy Rio San Remo. The Maestro and I made ourselves comfortable in the felze -I having some trouble managing sword and bonnet, I admit. Bruno sat in the bow to block the view as only he could. Giorgio pushed off.

“The twenty ducats, master? I can enter them in the ledger?”

The old miser chuckled. “Enter whatever you spent. But tomorrow you must take the clothes back to the Ghetto and get whatever you can for them. Enter that in the ledger as a credit.”

I can never fool him. We have played out this farce before, when he wants me dressed up, and I always solve the problem the same way. I went across the campo to the Ca’ Trau San Remo, home of my friend Fulgentio, now ducal equerry. As I told you, he and I are the same size, and fortunately he was home. When I explained that I needed to shine before some important people, he at once rang for his valet and told him to dress me. I refused to cooperate until I had made Fulgentio promise to take the clothes back the next day and not try to make them a gift. He agreed unwillingly, grumbling that he rarely got to wear decent things now, having to spend all his days and half his nights disguised as a gargoyle in equerry rags.

The Maestro has no idea how humiliating this is for me. I keep promising myself that next time I will take him at his word and actually spend some of his golden hoard. So far I never have. He would weep.

I got down to business. “Master, I need instruction. You have deciphered the rest of the quatrain? The gold and the eyes of the serpent were about the attempt on my life. But unthinkable love triumphs from afar sounds like a clue to the murder.”

“It may well be so.”

Resisting a temptation to grind my teeth or punch out his, I said, “I tried a reading before we came out.”

“Tarot? Old wives’ nonsense.”

“It may well be so.”

“Bah! What did it tell you?”

“For question, subject, or present I dealt out Fire, Trump XV. That puzzles me. It obviously doesn’t represent me, or you, or a murderer.” Fire shows a tower being struck by lightning, with a man and woman falling from it. “Can it mean danger to the Republic?”

He chuckled. “Not in this case. I’m glad you weren’t stupid enough to reject it and start over. Tell me the rest of it.” Obviously he already understood more than he was going to tell me, but at least he was showing real interest and had stopped scoffing.

“For past, problem, or danger, I turned over the two of cups. That one seems easy. It must represent the two glasses that were switched.”

“Or the two waiters?”

I grunted, not having thought of that possibility. “For future, objective, or solution, I got Trump XII, the Traitor, reversed. And that I most certainly do not understand!”

The Traitor depicts a man suspended from a tree by one ankle. Hanging his corpse upside down is the traditional Italian way to disparage a traitor, but in my deck the Traitor seems alive and happy in his odd position and has a mop of golden hair like a halo. He is not just a convicted criminal.

“What did I teach you about XII?” my master murmured cautiously.

“That it may represent a change of loyalty or viewpoint, or a rebirth, because we all take our first breath upside down. But reversed? What does that mean? No sudden change of viewpoint-we were right all along?”

After a significant silence, my master said, “In this case I think it may be a warning not to jump to premature conclusions. What else did you find?”

“For helper or path, I turned over the two of staves, which I do not understand at all. And for the warning, the snare to be avoided, I got the jack of swords, which tonight ought to mean me.” Jackanapes of swords, perhaps.

The Maestro was nodding. “That’s very good! Excellent, an excellent foretelling. You are becoming quite skilled with tarot.” Praise indeed!

“But why the jack of swords as the warning? Am I going to commit some fatal error?”