Erik blinked. “Do you know everything?”
Francesca dimpled. “I do my best.”
They’d gone out onto the balcony as the gondola which was drawing the comments drew near.
“Ah. That must be him. The dark-haired one in the bow.”
Erik looked. And saw a very recognizable handsome blond-haired man also in the gondola. “Do you also know who the blond fellow is?”
Francesca looked amused. “Of course. Caesare Aldanto. Once of Milan. Reputed to have once been a Montagnard agent. A sellsword under the shadow of the hand of none other than Ricardo Brunelli.”
“He’s also the man who is directly responsible for us meeting you, Francesca,” said Erik dryly.
She smiled again and turned him back to the warm apartment. “Then I owe him. But I don’t think I’ll tell him. So, he set up that . . .”
“Fiasco. It would have been different if Manfred hadn’t deliberately fooled me and been there too. I would have probably been dead—certainly injured. Your ‘sellsword’ is awfully good with that sword of his. So he takes orders from Ricardo Brunelli. Who is this Brunelli? By your tone he is a big cheese here in Venice.” Erik hoped his tone did not betray the fact that he intended to see the cheese sliced down to size.
“Have you found Erik a girl, my demoiselle?” asked Manfred, who had finally come out of the bedroom, giving Eric a brief glimpse of a rumpled large brass bed.
Francesca turned to him. “Manfred, did you dress entirely by guess? Come here! Let me fix your collar. Your friend has ambitions on killing the head of the house Brunelli.”
Manfred was obviously better informed than he was. Probably by Francesca. “Ha. You don’t start low, do you, Erik?”
“Who is he, Manfred? It appears he’s the bastard who set me up to be killed at the House of the Red Cat.”
Francesca smiled, as she neatly twitched the neckband of Manfred’s shirt into shape. “He is the man who believes he will be the next Doge.”
“I don’t think you can do that, Erik,” said Manfred seriously. “I don’t think even my—the Emperor—could stop the Venetians hanging the lot of us.”
“Besides,” said Francesca, “Aldanto is reputed to be for sale, confidentially, to the highest bidder. It may have had nothing to do with Brunelli.”
“He sounds like the sort to have influence with these Venetian Schiopettieri.”
Francesca shook her head. “Not really. Any of the Signori di Notte could have done it. But Brunelli is not one of them.”
Manfred stretched. “I know you don’t like the idea, Erik. But I still think you need look no further than our dear abbot.”
Erik shrugged. “Sachs says he sent Pellmann to me with a message that the raid was off. Pellmann has enough of a grudge against me to not deliver it. I’m not a North German Ritter.”
“And you didn’t beat him, so he didn’t respect you,” said Manfred with a grin. “You’re a callous brute, Erik. How could you treat the man like that? No wonder he ran off.”
Francesca laughed. “And what the two of you do not see is that that does not add up. Aldanto being the organizer of that ambush, and the time at which the Schiopettieri arrived, adds up to two things: money and influence. Venetian influence. How would this Pellmann have access to either? He was not a Venetian, was he?”
“Pomeranian,” said Erik. “Couldn’t even make himself understood in the local dialect. Despised all Southerners, and Venetians most of all.”
Francesca sighed. “I think you will find he’s dead.”
Manfred snorted. “Well, that’s no loss to the world. Unless sharing Von Tieman’s squire-orderly is worse, Erik?”
Erik shook his head. “No. He’s a nice enough old fellow. A bit slow upstairs. Probably from all those slaps around the head Von Tieman gives him. He’s pathetically grateful that I don’t. But why kill Pellmann? And if it wasn’t him, arranging it in a piece of spite, who was it? It can’t be the abbot, Manfred. Me being wounded or killed or even captured in a raid by the local constabulary on a brothel would have shamed the Knights—and by extension, the Servants.”