Karen Chance - Masks

There were no dungeons in Venice, but they made do. Mircea sat against the freezing stone wall of a small storeroom, in the home of some condottiere who hadn’t bothered to introduce himself before turning half of Mircea’s face to mush. He had been able to feel the bones shifting under the skin for almost a day, before they finally managed to orient themselves in what he hoped was the right direction.

That was especially true considering that now was not the time to look weak.

His ran his eyes over the three figures slumped around the small space. It looked like the paid thugs of Venice’s vampire community had tended to them as well. They were dirty, their hair was matted, and the minimal clothes they’d been left after everything of value had been stripped off them did little to cover signs of rough treatment. If they’d been human, they’d likely have been dead by now.

Fortunately for them, they’d already taken care of that. Unfortunately, the condottieri didn’t see fit to feed their prisoners, and young vampires are always hungry. Even enough to attack one of their own who is thrown into their cell bloody and beaten.

They’d fallen on him before he’d made it all the way through the door.

With three to one odds, it should have been over quickly. But as a professional gambler, Mircea knew that odds didn’t always tell the whole story. And as a former professional soldier, he knew how to fight.

Unlike the three in question, who had been left to starve until their eyes were gaunt and staring and their flesh was shriveled on their bones.

So now they sat, a day later, each in his own corner of the small space. Battered and broken, no longer having the strength to heal. And silent, since no one seemed interested in conversation.

No one except him.

Every once in a while, Mircea rasped out a question, on the theory that their lousy chances were slightly less lousy together than apart. He even tried different languages because you never knew where someone was from in Venice. Half the population, it sometimes seemed to him, had come from somewhere else.

But none of his efforts had sparked a response, and after a day, he’d mostly given up. He was now recounting the story of how he came to be in their august company out of sheer pigheadedness. And because he was furious.

“It never occurred to me that my biggest problem as an undead monster would be money,” he said bitterly. “I hardly even thought about it as a human. I had other worries, many of them. But whatever funds I needed were always there, without question.”

Nobody said anything. No one even moved. Except for the one who put his head down on his knees in utter boredom.

Mircea decided he didn’t care.

“But then I died. And discovered that you do, in fact, need to take it with you! Or you can expect a very unhappy afterlife.”

He’d been forced to spend most of his money on extortionate bribes just to get to Venice. It was the European vampire community’s only open port, and therefore the only place he could live without violating another vampire’s territory. But once there, it hadn’t proven to be the sanctuary he’d been expecting.

The vampires that washed up on Venice’s beaches like the tide had come to be viewed by the locals as just another industry. The wealthy were fawned over and flattered, and given huge gifts they didn’t need as a way to curry favor with them or their powerful masters. Whereas the poor . . .

Mircea had quickly discovered that the poor, the unwanted, and the masterless might technically be allowed in in the city, but that didn’t mean they were welcome.

“Go to Venice, I was told; it’s a free territory.” He laughed. “That word must have a different definition than in my country!”

Nobody replied, but one of the vampires nodded slightly. Or maybe he was nodding off. Mircea decided to take it as encouragement.

“They subject us to bribes just to be able to live without constant harassment. Or the fear that someone will open a window one morning, and cook us as we sleep! It’s as if they expect us to give everything we make to them, as if we have no reason to exist but to make them money!”

And as if he had no other expenses. Yet Mircea had discovered that death was many things, but cheap wasn’t one of them. Especially in the not-remotely-serene republic.

On top of the bribes, he’d had to buy clothes for himself and his elderly tutor, who had followed him into exile. And then there were the expenses he’d never thought about before, which had always simply appeared as he grew up. Things like candles for his tutor’s fading eyesight. And food, for the man was human and needed sustenance. And a roof over both their heads so that Mircea’s newly cursed body didn’t burn up in daylight.

“I finally turned to gambling out of desperation,” he told his captive audience. “And discovered to my surprise that it’s much easier with vampire senses. An elevated heartbeat, slightly quickened breathing, heavier than normal perspiration—humans have a thousand tells. I thought I had finally found a way forward.”

One of the vamps, the same one who had nodded, was already shaking his head. Damned right, Mircea thought savagely. If there was a way forward in this godforsaken city, he had yet to find it.

“And so we come to last night,” he said viciously. “And the thugs the vampire community employs to harass us. The same thugs I have been paying off for months to turn a blind eye to my activities. You can imagine, then, how surprised I was to see them. Although not as much as when they stole my money, beat me up, and dragged me here!”

He’d been sitting forward, talking with his hands, but now he sat back against the cold stone again, exhausted. And disgusted. And hungry.

No, more than hungry. A vampire of his age couldn’t afford to go this long between feedings. Not without paying for it, anyway.

The pain would start soon.

And after that . . .

Mircea swallowed, trying not to think about the days following his Change, which had been via a curse instead of a bite. He’d had no master to tell him anything, including that he needed to feed—and what would happen if he didn’t. He’d spent his first days as a vampire in sick, desperate, aching torment, until the madness overcame him and he’d attacked someone.

He wondered how long he would last this time.

“Three weeks,” a slight-built vampire said hoarsely, out of nowhere. It was the one who had been interacting with him, however vaguely. He looked more like a boy than a man, with large gray eyes, scraggly blond-brown hair, and delicate features underneath all the dirt.

For a moment, Mircea regarded him blankly, confused at the apparent non sequitur. Until he remembered a question he’d asked some time ago. And which he really hoped wasn’t the one the vampire was answering.

“You’ve been here three weeks?” he asked cautiously.

He received a nod.

“And you were . . . fed?”

The vampire just looked at him.

Mircea closed his eyes. He was already starving; by tomorrow, he would be ravenous. He couldn’t imagine what he’d be after three weeks. He wasn’t sure he’d still be sane. Or alive, for that matter, since he usually fed twice a day or more. He had the impression that some of his kind had less urgency, but then, most of them had masters to loan them energy in emergencies.

He didn’t.

He also didn’t see the point.

“They bring us here merely to watch us starve?” he asked harshly.

“No. To make a profit,” one of the others said.

Mircea opened his eyes to see that it was a sallow brunet who’d spoken this time. In addition to yellowed, shriveled skin and filthy rags, he had been blessed with pock-marks and protuberant front teeth. The latter were visible because he was chewing on his remaining scrap of clothing, a long, dirty, stained camisa. Mircea couldn’t understand why, until he noticed: it had been spattered with a few drops of his blood in the fight.