Burdens of the Dead Read online

  All of them passed her without even a hint of recognition, her and the dogs…except for one man. He was not the kind of man Hekate, or anyone else, might have noticed. Of intermediate height, and very plain features, he radiated “ordinary” so effectively that even an old goddess was barely aware that he was there as she walked past. And then…

  One of her dogs trotted after him and nosed his hand. He stopped. His hand instinctively went out to scratch it behind the ears. He plainly both knew and loved dogs and was not in the least afraid of them.

  “Hello red-ears. You’re out of luck tonight. I haven’t got anything to give you, boy.” He sounded genuinely regretful about it.

  Hekate stared, startled, as she had not been in a very long time. Looking closely now, she realized the man was using very powerful magics. She was, in one of her aspects, mistress of those. He had about him a “don’t notice me” enchantment of such power it was unlikely that anyone would even remember his passage, not even goddesses—or at least not goddesses who had not focused their power and will on him. As she would not have, had it not been for her dog. Now that she looked, aware of the enchantment, he was not quite as ordinary or nondescript as he wished to be seen as. And he could see and, more to the point, interact with her dogs.

  She stayed in the shadow, where her power was strongest, watching. She was both a little angry and very surprised. It had been years since anyone had seen her dogs, and then only when they were very close to death. This man showed no signs of that being the case. She could always make it so…

  But he petted Ravener, now scratching around the ears, and under the jaw. Her dog leaned up against his hip, quite as if his name was Faithful and not Ravener. His sister looked on, not knowing quite what to make of this.

  He plainly saw the other dog too. “Looks like you have a whole litter of brothers and sisters, red-ears,” he said conversationally to Ravener. “I wonder just what your mother was associating with. You’re not like any breed of dog I’ve seen before.”

  The dog slowly, gravely, wagged his tail.

  The man sighed. “There are always too many strays. I wish I could take you home, boy, but home is where I seldom am, even if I could take you along. Mind you, you look too well nourished for most strays. I’d probably be stealing someone’s rare breed of hunting dog.” Then, he chuckled a little. “Although that is not likely in this part of town, eh? Still. You look like coursing hounds to me. Could be you’re out on a run, and you’ll go back to chopped steak in a gilded bowl.”

  He held out his hand, back upward, for Ripper to sniff. The bitch, Ripper, held off from being petted but the growl died in her throat and her ruff went down. Ah. He was using powerful magics there too—on her dogs! Hekate shifted her grip on the harpoon, torn between outrage and growing, if reluctant, curiosity.

  He straightened up, gave Ravener what was plainly a farewell pat on the head. “Go well, dogs. I’d better be about my business.”

  Hekate was almost startled enough to drop the harpoon. That was a powerful good-wishing he’d given her hounds. And, she realized at last, he’d not been trying to bespell them. His beguiling was altogether unconscious. He just liked them and had been reaching out with his power to bring them closer to pet, as any lonely man might. He’d sought to give love, not entrap or bespell her holy creatures.

  She almost called after him. Briefly she was distracted from mourning her lost children and her lost land. Here might be one—

  But the scent of the sea carried by an errant night breeze brought it all back to her, and she turned away from him, her head bowed beneath unbearable grief once again. She would wait, and weep for them and then, when the dawn came to the great crossroads, she would choose her way—between east and west, life and death.

  And as always, she would take the third way.

  And her dogs would follow her down.

  * * *

  Antimo Bartelozzi went on his way, observing, making notes, looking for information to use in what he was sure would come, and come soon—his master and Venice moving against Constantinople. There was a little nostalgic smile on his lips. He had a soft spot for dogs. He’d not had one of his own since his childhood, and the lack of a faithful companion sometimes gave him an ache. He usually found one to pat, and even the most vicious of guard-dogs would come to him. This was useful in his line of work, granted, but it didn’t alter the fact that he liked them, for themselves. And he often wished that his life had room in it for—not just one, but a pack. Dogs were happier in a pack. Come to think of it, so were humans, more often than not. And while he did not much care for human packs, dogs, now…

  Old age and a peaceful retirement were not something he’d ever thought much about—neither were things he was likely to enjoy. Spies and assassins rarely got there. But he would like a nice quiet place in the mountains with a few dogs, if it ever happened.

  It was…a lovely thought.

  Chapter 11

  Trebizond

  “The chamber-servant to Lady Hooli is to open the door to the women’s quarters at midnight,” said the Master of the Blade to the three of the Hands he had designated to the task. “Amud, you and Ishmael will go to the Hypatian Chapel for the matins prayers for the few who attend their early rituals. They are at the root of this defiance.”

  More orders, another night in Trebizond, more killing, and more terror. It was getting harder, though. The sultan had instituted a dawn to dusk curfew, and not all the strikes had been successful—inevitable with the haste, and the pressure, and the tense watchfulness of the people. But even with help of the drugs, some of the hands had failed as well. Been taken alive, and talked under torture. Moreover, they had been betrayed by others, repeatedly.

  And killing some of the people they’d suspected of informing had swung around to bite them. Servants, slaves, women, these had always been easy to pressure into co-operation before. They were, themselves, safe from the Baitini by virtue of being of no account, and often bore a grudge against their masters. Only now they were deathly afraid for their own lives, and clung to those who they thought might protect them. The houses of the wealthy and powerful in Trebizond were little fortresses anyway. And the Venetians—well, they’d banded together, and many of the women and children were sleeping on the ships. The sailors and officers who would normally be enjoying the comforts and pleasures of the city were on board too. They were angry, and had neither fear nor respect for the Baitini.

  The tavern keepers and whores were bitter, too. The Masters of the Hands would have killed the alcohol sellers long ago, but the Ilkhan had let it be known that he would hang the Masters, and destroy Alamut totally the next time they overstepped certain bounds. And that was one of them.

  But now, the restraints were banished. The Master of the Blade of Trebizond had heard from a fellow Master in Sinope that they were wreaking havoc there too. Privately—very privately—the Master of the Blade wondered if the Supreme Master had finally gone mad. They were still too few, and the Mongols were not that weak. The Hand mocked the Mongol overlords, called them dissolute and degenerate. But the rest of them still feared the Mongols, and with good reason.

  He wondered what the Old Man of the Mountain in Alamut thought of all of this. But that was not his affair. His role was to do the killing. Tonight seven of them would descend on the merchant Giuseppe Di Colmi. The man thought himself and his family secure. But there was a cellar, and patient digging had made an ingress from next door. This would shock the Venetians into slowing down their loading of ships, as the Supreme Master had ordered. Nothing else seemed to have succeeded so far.

  The woman brought the food. The master could see fear in her eyes too, as she set out the bowls for the Hands to eat, before the cleansing and the holy rituals.

  The woman left and the Hands ate.

  * * *

  The poison took effect two hours later. The drugs of the ritual had dulled their senses until it was too late. The Master of the Blade found himself lying
in the narrow crawlway, vomiting blood. He did not have the strength to move. The Baitini were not the only killers-for-hire available, and their digging had not gone undetected after all.

  The servant of the Lady Hooli did not fail, and the woman and her husband and child were found dead the next day. But the Hypatian Chapel was not nearly empty, as had been expected, Instead it was as full as it could hold, mostly with crewmen and soldiers, on their knees, heads bowed.

  The Hands had their orders: Kill the monks first, and then as many of the worshipers as have not fled. Independent thought was not encouraged, and the rituals and drugs made doing so difficult. The drugs banished fear and stifled pain, but they drowned thought as well.

  Besides, even if their mazed minds had been capable of fear, the Hands were far more afraid of the punishment meted out by their own people for failure than they were of anything else. So, ignoring the crewmen and soldiers entirely, they ran forward screaming the name of their God, blades out, toward the nave and the cross and the two Hypatian siblings leading the service.

  The unarmed white-haired woman faced them with a kind of terrible calm dignity that almost, but not quite stopped them. But they’d come to kill. Paradise waited on their deaths in the service of the Hidden Hand. It was written and ordained.

  They cut her down in a flurry of wild stabbing.

  The other sibling was younger and less courageous, perhaps. He was trapped in the nave of the small chapel and clung to the feet of the figure on the cross that hung there. The celebrants—at first shocked into immobility—were now scrambling to their feet. They were big strong men, mostly oarsmen, and the front row had grabbed the heavy pew and used it as sort of broad shield, penning and pushing at the wild-dervish assassins. The pew was too wide for the nave and struck the round wall just as the lead Baitini swung his knife at the surviving Hypatian sibling, screaming: “Die, unbeliever!”

  The cross the sibling was clinging to fell off the wall, onto the assassin with a terrible crash.

  There was a moment’s silence, before the celebrants surged forward. They were not drug-fueled or trained particularly. But they were many and they were angry and afraid. They’d come to celebrate a final mass before setting sail. The sea was a perilous place, but not, it would seem, as dangerous as Trebizond.

  Anger and fear and many big men, who all carried knives as working tools—who had just witnessed what many took for a miracle, not perhaps extra weight on old mortar—and the half dozen Baitini found themselves overwhelmed. Once they were down they were kicked and slashed and trampled.

  The violence was only stopped by the surviving sibling somehow hauling the heavy cross upright, off the fallen Baitini and yelling: “In Christ’s name stop!” He was probably in shock, and that lent volume and fury to his voice. “Hold back! This is a house of worship, not murder. Holy St. Hypatia preached tolerance and forgiveness of our enemies. We have no need of violence here in God’s house, because his rod and his staff protect us.”

  He pointed at two of the sailors, about to crush a stunned Baitini with a pew they hoisted between them. “You will put that pew back! As for these men, if they are still alive, bind them fast. And bind their wounds too. We must see to Sister Eugenia.”

  But it was too late for the other sibling. They carried her to the altar, where the male Hypatian still stood, leaning on the cross he held upright. “Hold the cross,” he said to some of the sailors. Two of them took it—it was heavy and they staggered slightly—as the sibling knelt and prayed over his departed sister. The chapel was silent except for one of the Baitini, who was hastily muzzled with a rough hand and then gagged. The sibling stood up, not hysterical now, no, and not in shock. Perhaps the strength of his elder had passed into him. That was likely how it would be told, later. “Lean the cross against the wall. I will need someone to assist me with Mass.”

  “But they’ve killed her, Brother…” said one the Venetians.

  The sibling straightened, stern, strong. The Venetians took comfort. “Yes. She died in the service of the Hypatian Order, in the service of Christ in the House of God. People have come here to receive a last communion before the ships set sail, and she was a willing sacrifice to see that was fulfilled.” He tooks his place behind the altar. “Thus, in her name, in the name of God and of Saint Hypatia, it will happen.”

  “And these?” Someone pointed at the Baitini. Two were still alive and conscious. They were in a poor state—their clothes ripped and bloody, and plainly several of the others were dead.

  “Let them watch,” said the sibling. “They may receive the sacrament if they choose to repent and accept grace. If not, when we are finished they will be taken out of the Church they have defiled with their actions, and they will answer to the sultan himself. And may God have mercy on their souls, for the sultan will have none.”

  * * *

  The Eastern Fleet sailed that morning, the winged lion flags fluttering bravely in the brisk breeze and the broad sails of the round ships belling with it, carrying the ships away from the shore. Ships laden with children and women, and not their usual cargo.

  The traders that remained forted up together. The late caravans would be rich pickings, but money could not buy life.

  And the sultan of Trebizond sent a message to the Mongol satrap of Erzurum, asking for help.

  Chapter 12

  Venice

  Benito was surprised at how much he was longing for a sight of Venice, of his brother…even of Kat. He grinned. She’d been right about what he should have done about Maria too, the vixen. But his desire to see the city on the horizon was thwarted by the sea-mist clinging to the lagoon, a harbinger of autumn. A reminder of what was to come between him and Maria, it obscured everything. The vessel had to creep through the Lidi channel under oars, the leadsman calling depths as the moved out of the Adriatic and into the waters of the Venetian lagoon.

  And then, as if swept by a down-draft from the Wing of the great Lion of St. Marco, a breeze off the sea stirred the mist, roiled it and rolled it away to reveal the city in the gold of morning sunlight, coming up out of the last clinging mist on the water.

  “I’d forgotten just how beautiful it could be,” said Maria from beside him. “It’s best seen from out here. It hides the bits you’d rather not see.”

  “And you can’t smell the canals from here either,” said Benito, with a grin. “To think I dived for Kat’s Strega stuff in that water, once.”

  “Huh,” said Maria smiling back at him, “And nearly drowned her, from what I heard.”

  Benito shrugged. “Well, I was young. Inexperienced. I had to get her blouse wet somehow. I thought pretending to hide in the water from the Schioppies was pretty clever back then. And she nearly pronged me with a boat-hook.”

  “Not surprising really,” said Maria, tartly.

  “But I am reformed now,” said Benito patting her behind suggestively.

  She rolled her eyes, still smiling though. “You aren’t. But I love you anyway, Benito. It will be good to see them again, even if I don’t tell Katerina you were ogling her breasts.”

  “Whatever you do, don’t tell Marco. He’s got no sense of humor about that sort of thing.”

  “Now I have something to keep you to good behavior,” she said, hugging him against her hip. Obviously she too was feeling the closeness of autumn and parting.

  * * *

  Marco Valdosta was at his daily clinic, in one of his favorite places, the chapel of St. Raphaella. And he was a worried man. This was the second patient he’d seen—in a poor quarter of town—showing the signs of addiction to black lotos. Denying it of course, but Marco could not see what else it could be.

  But…black lotos was expensive. Always had been, and since Petro had become Doge, and had tried to destroy the trade, more so. So what was it doing down here? And what sort of havoc could it wreak among the poor and their families?

  He was faintly surprised to recognize the priest he and Kat had met in Cannaregio, accompanyin
g a woman, wringing her hands in despair.

  “M’lor’ Valdosta,” said the priest humbly, “I hope I do not presume too much on having met you that once, but I need some help with this young woman. She is, er, rather beyond me in class and breeding. But she has no one to turn to and I wondered if you could help her in any way.”

  The woman bit her lip and looked down. “No one can help me,” she said in a sad small voice, “My Mia is gone. I’ve lost her.”

  She wore worn and somewhat threadbear clothes with neat darns, but her accent spoke of education and a wealthy upbringing. She walked away, almost as if blind, to stand in front of one of the small tryptichs in the chapel, the one showing Mary with the baby Jesus.

  “She, um, is the bastard daughter of one the Casa Vecchi families,” the priest explained. “The Casa Brunelli. They saw to her education and welfare, until, well the attack by the Milanese, when Brunelli fell from…prominence.”

  Marco knew that he was largely responsible for that fall. That there might have been innocent peripheral damage had never occurred to him. “Oh…”

  “She found a place as a governess to some very young children in the house of one of the curti,” continued the priest He scowled. “The master of the house seduced her, got her pregnant—which was more than he could do with his second wife—and she, jealous woman, said she had to go. But he provided for her and the babe…”

  “The baby got sick and died?” asked Marco. He’d dealt with that melancholia before.

  “Worse. The child disappeared. She can’t find her or any trace of her. Swears she never took her eyes off her. She was a lovely little girl.”

  The priest sighed. “But around here it would only be a few seconds and the child is into a canal. Anyway, the merchant swears she neglected the babe, and won’t pay her keep. And she is so upset she can’t look after herself. I’ve been trying to help, but mine is a poor parish. And she’s gently bred. So…um… I just wondered if you could put out some feelers. If she could find work with some children again—it’s only with children that she seems to be herself. She needs help, M’lord. She needs to be back among her own kind. And she loves children.”