The Alchemist's Apprentice by Dave Duncan

Author:Dave Duncan
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, azw3, pdf
Tags: Fantasy, General, Fiction
ISBN: 9780441014798
Publisher: Ace Books
Published: 2007-03-06T08:00:00+00:00

14

Giorgio did not approve of a courtesan dressing as a nun; he rowed us in angry silence. I did not approve either, although I pulled down the blinds of the felze to enjoy the guilty fun of cuddling her. I could kiss her freely, because nuns do not wear face paint to smudge, but my talk was not romantic.

“If you are discovered, you will be whipped!” I told her. The thought of her flawless body being ripped and bruised by the lash made me feel ill.

“Nonsense!” she said. “It is Carnival! I brought a mask I can put on if I need to. And why are you wearing a sword? You can’t fight on an injured leg.”

“I can if I must.” My calf had stopped bleeding at last—fortunately so, because I was going to run out of clothes soon. Bruno was sleeping off his laudanum, but I was resolved to go nowhere without my sword until we had all the fiends and murderers accounted for. “You would wear a Carnival mask in a house of mourning?”

She laughed and kissed my cheek. “Or I can claim to be a spy for the Ten.”

I shivered. “Don’t joke about it.”

“I’m not one,” she said, “although I suspect many courtesans are. Would it put you off your game if you thought I was taking notes for Circospetto?”

Of course it would, but the idea that Raffaino Sciara might spend his days perusing hundreds of pornographic score sheets made me laugh out loud. I said, “It would inspire me to even more heroic efforts.” It was time to change the subject, and also the entertainment or I would become too distracted to think about business. “A question, love—Yesterday I asked you about the book viewing and you told me the foreigners’ names. You even knew their address.”

Suddenly I was in grave danger.

“You dare ask him and I’ll tear your eyes out.” Medea bared her teeth at me. She meant it, too.

“Pasqual?”

“I told you that in confidence, and only because you already knew who escorted me that night. I never discuss my patrons!”

“I won’t mention it, I promise!”

She mellowed slightly, into a still-angry Aspasia. “He is no friend of theirs, so far as I know—and I would know. He told me about them afterwards. He said they’ve been turning up at auctions and making fools of themselves.”

“I didn’t know Pasqual collected old books.”

“He doesn’t. He collects antiquities—King Cheops’s mummy or busts of Julius Caesar. Have you ever noticed how many famous Romans had no noses?”

I laughed and changed the subject by asking about Bianca Orseolo. One of the rewards of being a procurator of San Marco is being housed at state expense in the Procuratie, the long building along the north side of the Piazza. Although it is less than a hundred years old, it is already being called the Old Procuratie because they are building a Procuratie Nuovo on the south side. We were almost there.

Aspasia said, “She’s about sixteen, and a complete innocent, reared in a convent.

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