Karen Chance: Masks

“I’ll let you go when you answer the question. And good luck trying to throw me in the canal. You overpowered me last night because I hadn’t eaten in weeks and didn’t really give a damn—”

“And you do now?”

“I don’t know yet. But I’d like to find out. Only I don’t think Martina is going to be much interested in keeping us with you gone.”

“That’s not my problem! I helped you—”

“And now I’m trying to return the favor. You can’t get away for another few minutes, in any case. Not with the Watch scouring the area ahead of the consul’s flotilla, to remove all the riffraff. If you’re smart you’ll stay here for a minute and talk to me.” Bezio eyed him doubtfully. “But then, maybe you’re not smart. You’re damned pigheaded, wherever you’re from.”

“Târgoviste.” It was out before Mircea could stop it; he didn’t know why. It hurt to say; hurt to so much as think.

“I don’t even know where the hell that is.”

“Nowhere.” Not for him. Not now.

It suddenly crashed into him, as it did whenever he thought of home, the utter enormity of what he’d lost. A family, a country, a future—all gone in one terrible night. And replaced with this half-life. This cursed body that even the sun turned her back on, and that anyone he’d even known, ever loved, would reject in horror should they ever see it.

Mircea wondered why he cared about any of this.

If this was the best he could do, let the Watch catch him and be damned to them.

“We’ve all thought that way,” Bezio told him, reading his face. “At least once. I’ve pretty much made a hobby of it.”

“I don’t care what you’ve done!”

“That’s too bad. Because I’m going to tell you.” The man took out a flask, offering it to him.

“I can’t taste that!” Mircea snapped. He hadn’t tasted food, wine, anything since that night. It was ashes in his mouth. Like every fucking thing else.

“Just as well. They only keep the good stuff for the clients, apparently.”

Mircea seriously contemplated murder for a moment, while the man drank. But if he didn’t overpower him immediately, it would almost certainly draw the attention of the Watch, and any chance he had of escape would be lost. And he supposed he did want that chance, after all, because the next time Bezio handed him the flask, he took it.

“I was a blacksmith in a little town near Salerno,” the man said, without preamble. “Wife. Two daughters, one just married. Utterly typical. And then one night, I stopped by the local tavern on the way home.”

The man’s tone was light, almost jesting. And his limbs were loose, relaxed. He might have been talking about the weather. But there was something, some clue so subtle Mircea couldn’t have named it if he’d tried, that told him that wasn’t the case.

“It was crowded that night,” Bezio said. “A troop of singers had stopped in, and were giving a show. I bought a flagon and propped up a patch of wall, thinking to stay a few moments. Maybe hit up a deadbeat for some money he owed me, if I saw him.

“I didn’t see him.”

The man took back his flask. And upended it, although it couldn’t have helped. But perhaps he found the routine comforting, because he drained it dry.

“Turns out the ‘singers’ were vampires trying to draw a large enough audience to make it worth their while,” he said, wiping his mouth. “When they decided enough of us had shown up, they attacked. No one made it out alive.”

It was so matter-of-fact, so utterly without emotion, that it took Mircea a moment to realize what he’d said.

“They . . . drained all of you? I didn’t think that was permitted.”

The man smiled humorlessly. “What is permitted is what anyone can get away with. It was probably some challenge to the local master, or some act of revenge or—I don’t know. I didn’t stay around to find out. I woke up dizzy and bloody, in a room full of bodies, some dead, some dying. And stumbled outside, trying to get home, only to collapse in the forest before I’d gone twenty yards.”

“I’m surprised you survived at all.” Mircea didn’t have experience himself, but from what he understood, that wasn’t how vampires were made.

“I hadn’t. I just didn’t know it, then. One of those bastards had turned me by accident, before passing out in a blood stupor. They torched the place after I left; I guess they realized how careless they’d been. But by then, I’d fallen into a gulley filled with decaying leaves, under a copse of trees. Dark enough, anyway.” He grimaced.

“And three days later, you woke up and found your world had changed,” Mircea said quietly.

“No. Three days later, I woke up covered in bog slime and wondering what the hell,” the man said dryly. “It was after I finally struggled home and attacked my own wife that I realized I was in trouble. I tore myself away and fled, pursued by a pack of dogs, and then by a party of townspeople looking for the murderers. I finally got away only to almost starve to death before I realized I could feed without killing someone.”

Mircea shuddered slightly, because his own experience hadn’t been so different. He’d been cursed with his affliction, not made by some careless stranger, but did it matter? They’d both ended up the same way: with no past, and no future.

“We’re all the same, here,” Bezio told him, as if reading his thoughts. “You heard Jerome’s story already—just one too many babies in a household where the master was killed. Nobody wanted him, so out he went.” He shrugged. “Sanuito, now, he’s a little different—”

“Sanuito?”

Bezio flicked a thumb behind his front teeth.

Oh, that one.

“His master just wanted to win a bet. He had an acquaintance in one of the local Were families, in the countryside near here. They got to talking in their cups one night, boasting about how one was stronger than the other. Finally decided to find out.”

“Find out?”

“You know, get a human. See who wins.”

“See who . . .” Mircea looked at him, uncomprehending. Or hoping he was.

“They both bit him,” Bezio spelled it out. “But it didn’t resolve their bet. The vamp forgot—it takes three days for us to turn. And in the meantime, the Were’s bite was weakening Sanuito. And Changing a sick or weakened person don’t make for a strong vamp. In the end, the master won his bet, but ended up with a useless servant.”

“Who he then turned out to die on his own,” Mircea said, his fist clenching.

“Who he then turned out to die on his own,” Bezio agreed. “Only, he didn’t die. He made it here instead. Which brings me back to my original question. Why do you think this city is allowed to exist? Why do you think the senate mandated it as an open port?”

Mircea didn’t answer. He couldn’t see a reason. Obviously, the lives of him and others like him counted for nothing, for less than nothing, since they were treated as little more than vermin. Why bother to have a safe port for them?

“One man’s trash is another’s treasure,” Bezio said. “We’re here because they wanted to funnel all the rejects—those smart enough or lucky enough to make it this far, anyway—into one place. Where they could look ’em over like a buyer at a secondhand market stall. Those with talent get picked up sooner or later. Those without . . .” He shrugged.

“But we were picked up.”

“We were lucky. I was a blacksmith; Jerome an errand boy; Sanuito a farmer. Not highly sought-after skill sets among the undead. But we ended up in a cell with you, and you had something the mistress wanted.”

“Yes,” Mircea said bitterly. “Something to tempt the jaded palates of a debauched court tired of pretty boys—”