Eric Flint - The Shadow of the Lion

This was even more frightening than Schiopettieri. Marco paused and looked back surreptitiously. He couldn't see the big man in the black cloak any more. Maybe it had all been a figment of his imagination.

Then again?maybe not. If he was being followed by an agent of the Montagnards, it would be someone good enough not to be easily spotted. The Montagnard and Metropolitan factions had plenty of skilled spies?and assassins. His mother had been a Montagnard spy herself, far more skilled than Marco at maneuvering in these murky waters. But that hadn't prevented them from killing her, had it? Had she, too, once been followed like this?

His panic was rising rapidly. A Montagnard agent. One of his mother's killers, now following him.

Marco rounded the corner into Calle Pompea and started running. The street was crowded at this time of day. Dodging between the pedestrians and the porters, the students heading for classes, and the barrows of vegetables, Marco made fearful time around the corner, doubling back toward the docks, and down into an alley.

He looked back. And he ran smack into someone who was coming the other way. He dropped the precious parcel. The other person dropped a variety of things including a folding easel and at least a dozen brushes. As they both bent to retrieve their possessions they looked at each other… with mutual recognition.

Rafael de Tomaso!

He and Marco had struck a kindred note in each other from the first words they'd exchanged. Marco still remembered de Tomaso coming in to Mama's place, the first time, looking for plants for pigments. Rafael had been grinding and preparing his own paints already then. They'd struck up a conversation with the ease of two boys?unaware of the difference in politics or background. They'd met up again later, one evening at Barducci's and it was… once again an immediate encounter with a kindred spirit. It was as if the intervening years hadn't passed.

"Marco!" Rafael smiled.

"Rafael… can you hide me? Someone is after me. At least?I think so. Maybe."

Rafael didn't hesitate. "Licia's?my lodging?it's only a door away. Will that do?"

Marco looked around nervously and nodded. In a few moments he was upstairs in a dingy room long on artist's supplies and short on space or comfort. "What are they after you for?" asked Rafael curiously.

Now that Marco felt relatively secure, his fears were ebbing. In fact, he was starting to feel embarrassed. There were a lot of big men in Venice, after all, plenty of them wearing black cloaks. He was beginning to think he'd just imagined the whole thing.

"Well… I might have been wrong. Maybe there wasn't anybody. But if there was?" He held up the package clutched in his hand. "They'd want this parcel. I'm supposed to deliver it to Ricci's."

Rafael smiled. "Better safe than sorry, what I say. I'm on my way across to Castello to paint a portrait. It's not much of a commission but every bit of money helps. I'll toss it in my paint-bag and deliver it for you. You can stay here in the meanwhile."

Marco felt his muscles go slack with relief. "That would be fantastic."

The relief on Benito and Maria's faces when they saw him was almost worth missing a day's pay for. And Caesare was pleased with his parcel too. Benito and Maria did quite a lot of yelling at him, of course.

Petro Dorma studied the body lying on the kitchen table. The two chirurgeons were still working on the pitifully mangled thing, but it was obvious to Dorma that the shopkeeper was as good as a corpse. The amount of blood spilling over the table onto the stone-flagged floor was enough in itself to doom him?leaving aside the ghastly trail of blood that led from the shop where the merchant had been attacked.

Blood, and… other things. Horrid pieces of a half-dismembered human body. Whatever had done this had been as insensate in its violence as in the previous murders. This was now the fourth victim Dorma had examined?assuming that the street urchin killed the first night had been one of them, an assumption which Petro had made long since. All of them displayed the same characteristics. Bodies ripped apart, as if by some kind of huge animal, not simply stabbed or bludgeoned in the manner of a human murderer.

He turned away and walked out of the kitchen, taking care not to ruin his expensive shoes by stepping in the blood. Once in the room beyond, he paused and examined the area once again. He had done so already, but Dorma was meticulous by nature. That was one of the reasons his fellow senators had elected him to the Signori di Notte. The Lords of the Nightwatch who controlled the city's Schiopettieri were too powerful a group to be given into the hands of careless men. The more so if one of them, like Petro Dorma, was also a member of the Council of Ten?the shadowy semi-official body of the Senate which had almost unrestricted powers to investigate and suppress whatever they saw as threats to the security of the city.

Petro Dorma had the reputation for being judicious as well as intelligent, and not given to factionalism or fanaticism of any kind?exactly the qualities which the oligarchy that controlled the Venetian Republic looked for in its most powerful officials. The Republic had now lasted for a millennium, maintaining its prosperity and independence in the face of many challenges, by being cautious and methodical. Venetian diplomats were famous the world over?notorious, perhaps?for being the most skilled at their trade. The challenges which had faced the city over that thousand years had been internal as well as external. Venice's secret police were every bit as expert as the city's diplomats.

Petro Dorma never thought of himself as a "secret policeman," much less as the effective chief of the secret police. In truth, he never really thought of his status at all. He simply took it for granted. The male head of one of Venice's most prominent houses, a wealthy and highly respected merchant, very prominent in the Senate. And, also, the dominant member of the Lords of the Nightwatch and perhaps the most influential within the Council of Ten.

So it was. Petro Dorma's position in Venetian society was as much a matter of fluid custom and tradition as it was of any official title. He did not care much about titles; did not even think of them very often. He was Petro Dorma, and… so it was.

The room was plain, unadorned. The narrow and cramped shop of a simple dealer in linens, nothing more. As with most small merchants in Venice, the shop was simply the front room of a residence. The kitchen adjoined directly; the bedrooms and living quarters were upstairs, accessible only by a narrow staircase leading from the back of the kitchen.

Absolutely typical?and completely different from the locale of the previous murders. The first victim had been a very wealthy financier, slaughtered in his own bedroom on the upper floor of one of the city's premier mansions. The presumed second victim a street urchin, killed by the canalside. The third a poor prostitute, butchered in an alleyway where she plied her trade.

That fact alone was enough to tell Dorma that he was dealing with no typical fiend. In his experience?considerable experience?homicidal maniacs were obsessive in the way they selected their victims. As obsessive as they were in the manner with which they murdered.

This fiend, however, seemed not to care. Not, at least, with respect to the nature of his?or its?victims. And if the grotesquely brutal manner in which it killed the prey seemed obsessive, Dorma suspected that it was not. He suspected, more and more, that the fiend killed in this manner simply because it came naturally. Is a shark "obsessive" because it rends bodies into shreds with huge teeth? Or a lion with talons and fangs?