* * *
When they were done, perhaps two hours later, Francesca was no longer smiling.
“None of this is good, Kat. Although I’m glad you’ll be able to turn some of my tidbits of information to profitable use. But something’s deeply wrong. Something . . .” She hesitated, groping for words.
“Good times and bad times,” shrugged Kat. “The world is like that. Certainly Venice.”
Francesca shook her head, quite forcefully. “This is more than simply ‘bad times.’ Something—someone—is deliberately making things as bad as possible.”
Kat frowned. “Why do you think that? And why would anyone want to do it?” Before Francesca could answer, Kat made a little waving motion with her hand, forestalling objections. “Oh, sure—Duke Visconti wishes Venice all the ill in the world. But even he has nothing to gain by creating turmoil in the city. No matter how desperate Venetians ever got, the last thing they’d accept is Milanese intervention in our affairs.”
The courtesan sitting across from her lifted herself up from the chaise and began pacing about slowly. Kat was struck by how silently she moved.
” ‘Intervention,’ no. But what if the purpose wasn’t intervention? What if it was simply—destruction?”
“And what would be the point of that?” cried Kat. “If Milan tried to destroy Venice—which they couldn’t do anyway—we’re an island and our fleet is far more powerful than anything they could muster—” Her words were coming in a rush.
It was Francesca’s turn to wave down an objection. “Not Milan, Kat. Not, at least, as anything but a tool. I was thinking of Lithuania.”
Kat’s face went completely blank. She stared at Francesca, for a moment, as if she had suddenly found herself confronted by a raving lunatic.
Seeing the expression, Francesca chuckled. “I’m quite sane, I assure you. Yes, Kat, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and Poland is very far from Venice. And has no common border with it. No apparent source for mutual conflict.” She shrugged. “Not even the commercial rivalry which periodically agitates the Hungarians and the Genoese and the Greeks in Constantinople.”
“Exactly. So why in the world—”
“Who is the great rival of Lithuania, Kat?” interrupted Francesca.
“The Holy Roman Empire, of course.”
“Precisely. And what will happen if Venice is destroyed? Who will fill the sudden power vacuum in northern Italy and the Adriatic? Not Milan!”
Kat stared at her. Then, slowly, remembering things her father—and even more, her grandfather—had told her in times past . . . things Dottore Marina had told her also, now that she thought upon it . . . her face began to pale.
Francesca made a most unfeminine grunt. “Precisely. Grand Duke Jagiellon’s reputation for insensate brutality is well-earned, girl. But don’t be fooled by it. He is also a consummate manipulator. A man who prefers to let others bleed themselves to death, if at all possible.”
Kat spoke in a whisper. “If Venice . . . is destroyed, the Holy Roman Emperor will have no choice. If he doesn’t come in, the Hungarians surely will. And—and—”
“And Charles Fredrik, with Lithuania and the borderlands to deal with already, cannot also afford to see a more powerful Kingdom of Hungary—especially not one with a toehold in Italy. Especially not with a man on the throne like Emeric, who doesn’t quite have Jagiellon’s reputation—outside of Hungary, that is—but comes in a very close second.”
“There’d be war between the Empire and Hungary!”
Francesca nodded. “For a certainty. With—for a certainty—Milan and Rome sucked into the vortex as well. Genoa also, be sure of it—soon enough, the Greeks as well.” She resumed her slow, silent pacing. “Ever since he took the throne, one of Charles Fredrik’s policies has been to stay out of Italian affairs. He’s resisted—harshly, at times—every attempt of the Montagnards to drag him into this morass of endless bickering. ‘The Po pisshole,’ he’s been known to call it.”
Despite her own mild reflex of Italian chauvinism, Kat couldn’t help but laugh a little at the crude expression. And admit, privately at least, that there was some justice to the barb. It was a fact that Italians—northern Italians, especially—were prone to endless and ultimately futile feuds and vendettas. Had not her own beloved Grandpapa, an otherwise sane and even kindly man, been obsessed for years with his feud against the Valdostas? A house which no longer even existed, except in vague rumors and her grandfather’s heated imagination.