Of Love and Evil by Rice Anne

Author:Rice, Anne [Rice, Anne]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2010-11-30T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER NINE

I STOPPED. I FOUND MYSELF IN A NARROW MUDDY LANE, overcome with the stench of the filth flowing into the gutters. I thought again of trying to reach a church, a place where I could go down on my knees in the shadows and pray to God for help with this, but then again the thought of the round yellow badge on the left side of my chest stopped me.

People passed me on both sides, some politely giving me room, others shouldering me out of their path, while others milled at the open cookshops and bakery shops. The fragrances of roasting meat and baked bread mingled with the stench.

I felt suddenly too weak in spirit to go further, and finding a narrow margin of wall between a fabric merchant’s open stall and a bookseller, I slipped my lute around into my arms, and then holding it like a baby, I leaned back and rested and tried to find above the narrow margin of the sky.

The light was dying fast. It was getting chilly. Lamps burned in the shops. A torchbearer made his way through the street with two smartly dressed young men behind him.

I realized I had no idea what month of the year it was here, and if it corresponded in some way to the late spring weather I’d left behind. But the Mission Inn, and my beloved Liona, seemed utterly remote, like something I’d dreamed. That I’d ever been Lucky the Fox, a paid assassin, seemed unreal as well.

Again, I prayed for Lodovico’s soul. But the words seemed meaningless suddenly, in the face of my failure, and then I heard a voice say very close to me,

“You don’t have to wear that badge.”

Before I could look up, I felt the badge being ripped from the velvet of my tunic. I saw a tall young man standing there, dressed very well in brilliant burgundy velvet, with dark hose and black boots. He wore a sword in a heavily jeweled scabbard, and a short cloak over his shoulders of gray velvet as fine as that of his tunic.

He had long hair, much like my own, but it was a soft brown in color, very lustrous and curled just as it touched his shoulders. His face was remarkably symmetrical and his full mouth very beautiful. He had large dark brown eyes.

In the gloved fingers of his right hand, he held the round yellow badge that he’d so easily ripped from its stitches, and he crumpled it up now, as best he could, and tucked it into his belt.

“You don’t need it,” he said in the most gentle confidential way. “You’re Vitale’s servant and he and all his household and family are exempt from wearing the badge. He should have thought to tell you to take it off.”

“But why, what does it matter?” I asked.

He lifted a short red velvet cape that he’d been carrying over his left arm and he put it over my shoulders. He then put a sword on me, buckling the belt into place.

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