Lucrezia laughed. “Your little toy won’t do me any harm, you stupid child! Do you think I haven’t taken the simplest of precautions? I command the spirits of air and water and darkness! The powder won’t fire, the balls will miss!” As Kat hesitated—can that be true? Can she really do that?
Lucrezia sneered at her. “Besides. You don’t know how to use that silly thing, anyway.”
Doubt assailed her and once again, Lucrezia was using all her powers. Kat wanted to drop the weapon. Run closer.
Warmth rushed over her again, and—
—a glowing, delicate hand, insubstantial as a kiss and warm as life, closed over the hand that held the pistol.
She squeezed the trigger instead.
The metal junk cut into Lucrezia, who had half-turned, ready to throw her knife. It knocked Lucrezia to the floor.
Lucrezia screamed; and of all the screaming Kat had heard that day, this was, by far, the most horrible sound she had ever heard in her life. It went on, and on, and on, as Lucrezia writhed on the floor, thrashing spinelessly, her thrashing as horrible as the scream.
And then, the woman’s body began to change. Metamorphose.
* * *
The point of the knife broke the skin, and a single drop of blood formed on the blade. Strangely, there was no pain.
Before he could press harder and end the ritual with his own death, something—took him.
The light, the mists, thickened again in an instant, golden, sweet, the honey of the Jesolo, and held him so that he could not move.
Light blinded him, and light permeated him. It became him, and he felt himself change . . . felt a roaring in his ears that came from his own throat, felt great golden wings spring from his back and begin to grow and grow.
“It’s been a long time,” said the great voice that was within him, but was not him. Huge muscles flexed and stretched. His golden hide twitched. He was no longer indoors. Instead, from the column-top, he looked out over fog-shrouded Piazza San Marco.
“So. A Valdosta again, is it?” said the great voice. “Last time it was a Montescue. They’re more bloody minded.” Marco felt his wings extend, though he was not the one to flex his muscles, stretch his claws, spread his wings.
“Who . . . who are you?” he asked timidly.
There was a roar of laughter, warm and full. “I am you. And you are me. You have taken up the Crown as well as the Mantle—the first to do so in many centuries. And we are the Lion . . . the Lion of Venice, now. The Lion of Etruria that was.”
The back and shoulder muscles tensed, enormous wings beat down in a great surge of power, and the lion bounded up through the cloud and out into endless blue of the sky.
“The Lion of Saint Mark?” Marco looked down as the Lion looked down. Fog was streaming away from the downbeat of the great wings. Below he could already see the piazza, clear of all but the last wisps of it.
Again the Lion laugh-roared. “Saint Mark! I nearly ate him. He wasn’t even the Mark of your Four Books, you know. You little children, you’ve confused him with one of my Romans! A secret Christian, that Roman, a Christian who hid his fellows in the Jesolo—Marcus Fidelus—that was what they called him, Mark the Faithful, and you people managed to get him confused with the other! ‘Hic requiscet corpus tuum— On this spot your body shall rest.’ It was meant as a threat, not a prophecy.”
The Lion roared with laughter, and Marco had to admit it was rather funny.
“But that Marcus was pious enough, and holy enough, and had the magic—the magic—even if up until that moment he didn’t know it. I knew it. And you four little swamp thieves—Terrio, Montescue, Lacosto, and Valdosta—you that had set out to rob him and instead became his converts, begged for his life. You were my people, and he won you! Won you fairly! But you were my people, and when you begged—what was I to do? I let him live, and gave him leave of my domain. Ha. Not only did he make free of my marshes, he also took seizin of me, to come and go and look and know. He became one of mine, save only that he was first and always the child of Christ. And in exchange that we be of one heart, and would I still hold sovereignty here and not be driven from the place by later mages of Christ, that my people be free to make their own choices in who they serve—he laid this form on me, this binding with the blood of the four families. I think it a good bargain. I steer my families and look after my lagoon, my marshes, and my islands. And sometimes, when the need is dire, they take the Crown and they steer me.” The great, laughing roar shook the body again. “So. Steer me, Valdosta. What do we need to do?”