The two Dorma cousins came in, looking wary. Petro didn’t summon people often.
Petro looked them up and down. Both were dressed with some flamboyance. Both carried rapiers. “And to what do we owe this sartorial elegance, gentlemen?” he asked dryly.
“We . . . we were just going out,” said Bruno with attempted nonchalance.
“To see some—a . . . friend,” said Giampaulo uneasily.
“Ah?” Petro tilted his head inquiringly. “Who?”
“Oh . . . um . . . just a friend.” Bruno said airily. “You, you wouldn’t know him.”
“I see,” said Petro affably. “With swords only, or were you planning to take a horsewhip along?”
They looked uneasily at each other. Said nothing.
Petro shook his head. “You will both forget about it.”
“He insulted our honor!” said Bruno hotly.
Giampaulo was slightly more fulsome. “We can’t tolerate some lowlife bringing shame on our house, Petro! This Felluci has made Casa Dorma—and your sister specifically!—the laughingstock of Venice!”
Petro’s brow lowered. “May I remind you both that she is my sister and that I am the head of Dorma. Not you. I’ll decide what needs to be done—if anything needs to be done. And if either of you think of taking over my authority . . . you can try being a Dorma factor in Outremer this year. Or Negroponte may have need of hotheads. I don’t. I specifically forbade any dueling. And I promise you if I find out you’ve disobeyed me—and I will find out, don’t think I won’t—I’ll leave you to rot in the Doge’s dungeons. Is that clear? Who else was involved in this?”
Giampaulo and Bruno glanced at each other. Their shoulders slumped. “Bonaldo and Michael,” muttered Bruno.
“I suggest you waste no time in passing this on to them. The less we do the less scandal there will be. At the moment only Angelina and this boy . . . and you four are involved. By the time you were finished half of Venice would know all the details and my sister and my house would truly be a laughingstock. I won’t have it. Is that clear?”
Both of them looked sulky, wary. Nodded.
“Don’t even think of trying to circumvent me,” said Petro quietly. “I may just have saved your foolish lives. I wonder if Angelina mentioned that this Felluci is the duelist Aldanto’s messenger?”
Petro had the satisfaction of seeing the two cousins go abruptly pale.
Chapter 41
Chiano brooded over the little fire while Sophia grilled fish he’d coaxed into his net for dinner. He thought about how Harrow had slipped away into the marsh so easily he might have been born here; the man made scarcely a rustle in the reeds. What he’d done to mold the creature that had come into his hands into the man now called Harrow had used a smidgeon of magic, a great deal of knowledge he’d gleaned from Sophia about the properties of the plants of the Jesolo, and all his manipulation.
Face the facts, old man, you used him. To protect Marco, yes, but he’d made Harrow into a mere tool for that protection . . .
He was a tool before you got him. He just didn’t know it. You gave him that much; self-knowledge. There are those who’d give anything for that.
And there were those who would—and did—give anything to have the luxury of denial, too. He hadn’t given Harrow a choice.
How many choices did I have? None, if he was to give Marco a protector. And Marco had to have a protector, if he was to grow into the power the Lion’s Shadow promised for him. He was close now, close to accepting the Winged Mantle; Chiano had sensed it. But Marco had to live to grow into that power, and—
And Venice is suddenly a world more dangerous than it was before. And you, old man, aren’t there.
Self-knowledge. . . .
He’d had the luxury, not of denial, but of absence of that knowledge for a long time, courtesy of those who had ambushed him in the very corridors of the Accademia, coshed him, and dropped him into a canal. Him! Dottore Marina! And he hadn’t even remembered that much until recently! All those experiments with drugs and hallucinations—he knew enough to be able to tell the difference between a real vision and a hallucination—hadn’t been to gather the Word of the Goddess. It had been to jar loose his own memories from the confused mist the blow to the head had sent them into.