“If it has any bearing on the present, I should like to hear it anyway.” The voice sounded patient, but Kat wondered about her own patience level. I’ll sound self-pitying and whiny, I know I will. Despite that a sibling wasn’t supposed to let such things color his counsel, she couldn’t help feeling that it would make her look—well, unpleasantly petty.
But the counselor had asked, and you weren’t supposed to hold back. Kat took a deep breath and started. She did her level best to keep the nasal complaint out of her own voice that she heard so often in her sister-in-law’s.
She tried keeping things as brief as possible, but the voice interrupted gently from time to time, asking more questions about her father, her grandfather, and her own studies as a girl with a private tutor, dwelling on Dottore Marina for reasons she couldn’t fathom.
Still, that segued very nicely into the current situation. “That was why—I remembered Dottore Marina seeming so good you see—that when we needed money, we began delivering things for the Strega, and not just the Jewish community. My . . . family has always brought in some cargo that the Doge’s Capi di Contrada never saw. You know, Counselor: every trader in Venetia does a little. At first it was just because of the duties I think. Then, when the Sots—I mean, the Servants of the Trinity—began to have more influence on the Doge it was to avoid possible persecution. Then Dottore Marina just vanished. . . .” She paused.
“Then?” prompted her counselor, gently.
Kat took a deep breath. “Then the Strega I knew became very frightened and needed me to get things for them more than ever. We made more money from them. And we became more reliant on it.”
“Did they ever ask you to obtain things of a”—the voice paused delicately—”dubious nature?”
“No, I don’t think so. I don’t know, of course, what some of the things were . . . still, even the best of things can be put to evil use, Counselor. But I always wear the Saint Hypatia medallion that my father gave me—it’s supposed to warn me when there’s evil magic around—or that’s what the sibling who bespelled it for him told him—”
She paused; was that too superstitious for this counselor? What if the medal was bogus?
But— “Quite right,” the voice replied. “If there had been evil in what you handled, you would have felt the medallion grow warm, even hot, depending upon the strength of it. You should be certain to continue to wear it at all times.”
Kat bit her lip; should she tell him about the warning it had given her when the Knots and the Sots brought that shrouded box into the embassy? It had been so hot even when she’d gone under water that she’d been surprised the water hadn’t boiled, and equally surprised that there wasn’t a burn on her chest.
“So, the Strega have not asked you to convey anything for an evil purpose?”
“No. Well, I don’t think so. It’s because of the persecution. The preaching outside their houses and shops. But—we don’t dare take their commissions any more and I don’t know what to do!” she cried. “If they aren’t asking me to help them in dark magics, then why are the Servants saying that dark magic is all they do? And if the Servants are wrong, why is the Doge going along with what they tell him to do? The next package I carry might get me arrested. If that happens grandfather will go mad, and the House will be ruined. Why is everyone letting the Servants do what they want, anyway? They aren’t Venetian, they aren’t even Petrine! Why are they doing this to Venice? Why has everyone gone crazy? How am I going to keep my family from getting destroyed by all of this insanity?”
The last came out in a wail, and she clapped her hands over her mouth, only belatedly realizing that she had blurted out far more than she should have.
But the voice only asked, curiously, “Before Dottore Marina disappeared . . . Had he said anything to you that makes you think now that he was warning you he was intending to leave?”