Eric Flint - The Shadow of the Lion

For a moment, the old man's face grew fierce. Then, he chuckled. "I make no promises. But… yes, I'll think about it."

"You'll do more than think about it, you old vendettist!" Francesca laughed. "If you've got any coins to spend, I'll expect you to spend them on me. I dare say I'm a lot more capable at what I do than those incompetent assassins and spies you've been wasting your money on."

He grimaced. "True enough. And what else?"

She studied him for a moment. "Does there need to be anything else, Lodovico? Your company has been quite a pleasure, I assure you. It's not often I meet a man who understands?or cares?how a woman's body works."

"There's always something else, Francesca." He placed a hand on hers and gave it a little squeeze. "That's not intended as an insult. I sometimes think courtesans are less predatory than anyone. But there's always something else."

"As you say: 'true enough.' " She sat up in the bed. "I've decided I love Venice, Lodovico. And when something I love is threatened by enemies, I believe in taking steps."

"Well said!" he growled. A moment later, he was sitting up beside her. "Tell me what you know. If there's a threat?" The growl became a rumble, as if an old lion was awakening.

"There's your 'what else,' Lodovico," she whispered, placing a hand back on that great wide chest and giving it a caress. "There's still a lot of muscle there, you know?"

"It smells like a trap, that's for sure," Erik said to Manfred, as they strode along the loggia. "Maybe Sachs is right."

Manfred felt his broadsword. "If it is, they'll regret it."

Erik looked at the abundant cover of the loggia. "If they don't shoot us from a distance. But why us? I mean, we never introduced ourselves to that Signori di Notte, that one time we met him when the coiner got burned. But that message was specifically for us. Sealed with what the doorman assured me is the signet of Lord Calenti."

Manfred shrugged. "Search me," he said. "You might as well ask me 'why here?' At least it's daytime and there are a lot of people around this Accademia place. Too many with books if you ask me…"

"You're a fraud, Manfred. You were so busy reading in that embassy library, you didn't even hear me come in."

Manfred grinned. "My father's duniwasals say it's a sissy accomplishment. I don't think they wanted me to read or cipher or tally, so they can skive out of paying their hearth-loyalties. But with Francesca being a walking library I've had to do some reading up, or look a buffoon. It's not so bad now that I don't have some damned whiny tutor rabbiting at me about it. Where do we go now?"

"Through there, I think."

They walked through into a courtyard and then across to the described door.

Erik loosened his broadsword and checked the hatchet under the small round buckler strapped to his right forearm. Being left-handed had its negative points, but in combat it did have the advantage of discomfitting his enemies. Harder for them to deal with. It gave him an edge.

He pushed the door open fast…

It was a pleasant enough chamber. And Lord Calenti did not appear to be waiting in ambush. He was perusing a huge pile of papers instead, very much alone, unless someone was balancing on the window frame behind these draperies. The Venetian was very grave-looking however, when he looked up to see who had thrust his door open. "Ah. Come in."

He stood up. "Gentlemen, I owe you an apology. I have come to realize that this treason nearly had the Knights… and myself… as unwitting dupes. Accounts are a more powerful tool than all the spies in the world. Now, about the incident at the House of the Red Cat…"

He paused. "I… I… My God… Luc…" His eyes bulged and he screamed. The hair on Erik's neck stood up. It was the same terrible shriek they'd heard on the night that Father Maggiore had been killed. He heard the hiss of Manfred's broadsword being drawn. He didn't even know how his own came to be in his hand.

"Reverse the blade!" yelled Manfred. "A crucifix!"

Erik did it. He began to walk forward. It was like pushing against the tide… the air seemed to be full of carillons of bells, all discordant. Sparks leaped and hissed from the steel. The words of the Lord's Prayer came instinctively to his lips.

To his right, Erik could see Manfred advancing also. Lord Calenti was tearing at his clothes; his face was contorted into the same terrible rictus of a smile they had seen on Father Maggiore. The flames and the cruel, vicious laughter began together with a maelstrom wind that plucked the papers up in a snowstorm. The velvet-seated chair skittered across the room; the writing table was hurled at them. It all stopped just short.

And still they continued to advance. A glance showed that Manfred's steel armor was almost purple with the sheen of crackling lightning. So was his own, Erik realized. The discordant bells were coming to a cracked and furious crescendo. He could scarcely hear his own chanting. They dropped to their knees on either side of the naked and burning man…

And there was silence. Blessed silence. And the flames died as if they'd never been… except for the ruin they'd left behind. Then Lord Calenti began to scream. It was a healthy, joyful sound, comparatively. It was merely the scream of a badly burned human in extreme pain.

At this point, Erik realized that they had an enormous audience. Students were peering in at the window, crowding in through the door. Awestruck and horrified faces gaped at them.

"Call a doctor!" yelled Erik at the crowd. "We need a chirurgeon here, fast!"

A man pushed his way forward through the crowd. Unlike most of the gaping young watchers, he was weather-beaten and wrinkled. He joined the knights at the side of the now moaning Lord Calenti, who was curled up in a fetal position on the floor of the ruined salon. The crowd was pressing forward, threatening to overwhelm them. Manfred got to his feet. "Back!" he shouted. "All of you out of here! Out!"

His bull-like bellows were accompanied by sharp swats with the flat of his broadsword, first on heads and then on behinds. So he was obeyed. Obeyed with alacrity?the fact that Manfred was able to wield that huge and deadly weapon in such a light and casual manner, causing no more damage that a schoolmistress with a switch, was even more frightening than the great blade itself.

"And fetch us a priest!" he bellowed after the retreating students. "We may need one."

Erik had stayed with the lean, wrinkle-faced man who was gently examining Lord Calenti. "Will he live?" he asked quietly, surveying the burned, whimpering man.

The weather-beaten man shrugged. "Might do. Might not. He'll need skilled nursing, and lots of fluids. He's going to be terribly disfigured even if he does live. Hell on a man who thought of himself as the ladies' delight. But I think you saved his soul. He should be grateful for that at least, even if he dies. It was devouring him. Here. Help me with these."

From a battered pouch at his waist he produced two poultices of neatly folded leaves, thick with some unguent. "I was taking these to someone else. Treatment for healing skin, not fresh burns, so they're not ideal, but they'll do. They'll sooth and keep the infection out of his face."

They were in the final stages of applying them to Lord Calenti's ruined face when a man in an elegantly tailored cardinal's red, with beautifully coiffured hair burst into the room. Despite the horror of the scene, the bishop's eyes were first drawn to the healer. His eyes grew as wide as saucers.

"Marina!" he choked. "What?what are you doing here? You've been gone for?I thought they said there was a doctor with him!"

The lean, weather-beaten man stood up, dislike written loud on his features. "And I thought they'd gone to fetch a priest, Bishop Capuletti, not a scavenger. I learned a thing or two about healing on my pilgrimage, and I was on hand. But I've done what I can. Get one of the Accademia's cadaver-masters if you prefer. I'm out of here. I don't like the smell?and I don't mean that of burnt flesh and parchment."