by Mackenzi Lee
I expect him to keep arguing, but he doesn’t. All he says is, “All right.”
Shout at me, I want to tell him. Fight back, because I deserve it. I deserve to be fed all the ways I’ve made him feel unwanted, slapped with my own selfishness. But he’s Percy, so he doesn’t say another cruel word. Even at his worst, he’s so much better than me. His shoulders slump, and he swipes a hand under his eyes. “I’m going to go to bed,” he says, “and tomorrow morning, I’m going have a word with Scipio about getting away from here. And I don’t think you and I should see each other for a while.”
“Wait, Percy—”
“No, Monty. I’m sorry.” He starts to walk away, stops and raises his hand like he might say something more, then shakes his head and leaves me.
I don’t know what to do. I stand there, silent and stupid and absolutely in pieces as Percy walks away. I watch him until he’s gone and I’m certain he won’t come back. The hour strikes—church bells around the city all begin to clamor. The air quakes. It starts to rain again, very softly.
I don’t want to think about it. Can’t think about it. Got to shut up that voice in my head telling me that I’ve just lost the only good thing I had because I couldn’t get out of my own self. All this while I’d spent thinking we could never be together because we’re both lads, but it’s not—it’s because of me.
He asked, and I couldn’t give it up.
Can’t think about it. Will do absolutely anything not to think about it.
I follow the revelers back toward the piazza—my mask lost somewhere back in the alley and my face bare—and I know what I am going to do, which is drink until I can’t even remember this night happened.
Back along the Grand Canal, it’s easy to find cheap, virulent gin, easier to drink it until everything smudges and I start to feel like I can leave myself behind. I take four shots of it in quick succession, chased by ambiguous ale and clear spirit straight from a bottle I have to reach behind a bar for. The skyline slants. The moon turns black. It feels like everyone around me is screaming and I am not thinking about Percy.
“Monty. Hey, Monty. Henry Montague.”
I raise my head and there’s Scipio, one hand on my shoulder and his face a bit distorted like he’s standing behind glass. I’ve that mostly empty spirit bottle clenched in one fist and also I cannot remember where I am—sitting on the edge of a bridge overlooking a canal, which narrows down possible locations not at all. A gondola passes beneath me, a woman in a blood-colored dress perched on the prow with her train dragging behind her in the silver water.
“Monty, look at me.” Scipio crouches down so our faces are level. “You all right, mate?”
“I am spexcellent. Mmm. No, that’s not a word. See, I was going to say excellent, and then instead I went with—”
“Monty.”
“How are you?” I stand up, roll my ankle on the cobbles, and nearly fall over.
Scipio flies to his feet and catches me. “Let’s get you to bed.”
“No, no, I can drink more.”
“I’m sure you can.”
I hold out the bottle. “Have some.”
“No, it’s too late for me.”
“Right. Tit’s late. It’s late.” I laugh. Scipio doesn’t. He pries the bottle out of my hand and empties it into the canal. I try to snatch it back and miss so spectacularly I would have pitched into the water if he hadn’t had a hold on me. “What’d you do that for?”
“Because you’re bashed. Come on, to bed.”
“Mmm, no, can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Bed is where Percy is and Percy doesn’t want to see me again.”
“He mentioned something about that when he came in. You two got each other quite worked up.” Scipio tosses the bottle into the canal, then claps me on the back. “He’ll calm down.”
“Don’t think so.”
“Why not? You’re friends. Friends quarrel.”
“I ruined everything. I always ruin everything.” I let my forehead fall against his shoulder, and I can tell from his awkward grip on me that neither of us is quite certain what it is that I’m doing, but we don’t move. “Goddamn Percy.”
Scipio pats me on the shoulder, flat-handed, then pries my forehead off him like he’s pulling up a floorboard. “You can sleep on the ship if you’re so keen not to see Percy. I told you not to go out—people are after you, remember? You’re going to get us all strung up.” He wraps an arm around my shoulders and I fall a bit more into him than I mean to and let him pull me back through the crowd.
I trust Scipio to lead the way—either to the docks or the inn, wherever he feels it best to take me. The first landmark I recognize is the Campanile in Saint Mark’s Square—a needle poking at the moon. Percy and I stood here together just hours ago, in the shadow of the bell tower, and goddamn Percy, I’m so angry at him I want to punch something, but it’s just me and Scipio and crowds of strangers, and none of those seem like good options. Someone slams shoulders with me, and someone else screams right near my ear, and I pull up short, suddenly drowning in the night.
Scipio stops as well. “Come on, Monty, we’re turning in.”
“I need to . . . I can’t . . .”
I’m breathing too fast, and he must notice it, for he steps closer to me. “What’s the matter?” I press my hands into my cheeks, regret rancid inside me, and I want to cry so badly, like that might flush it all out. Scipio steps behind me and puts his hands upon my shoulders. “You need to sleep. See how you feel in the morning.”
“Percy doesn’t want me anymore,” I murmur.
Scipio’s hand flexes, and I’m not certain if he knows what I mean and ignores it, or simply interprets that sentence in the holiest way. “He’ll come around.”
He starts to push me forward, and I let myself be pushed, but someone plants himself in our path. My feet aren’t as quick as my brain, though that isn’t performing at top speed either, and I crash into him. Scipio toes the back of my boot and I step out of it.
“Scusi.” Scipio keeps ahold of me as he tries to go around the man, who I realize is dressed in the livery of the Doge’s soldiers. The man steps into Scipio’s path again, a deliberate move this time, and Scipio halts. I’m still standing on one foot, trying to get my boot back on, and he nearly pulls me over.
The soldier asks us something in Venetian, and we both stare back blankly. Scipio answers in French, “Excuse us.”
The soldier steps in his path again. Scipio’s grip on my arm goes tighter. “Do you speak English?” the soldier asks, the words fumbled like he doesn’t understand the phrase, just the sounds individually.
Scipio’s still sizing him up, then says, in English as well, “Yes.”
“You English?” The soldier says it more to me, and I nod before I realize I am.
Someone grabs me from behind and I’m wrenched away from Scipio. My muscles seize up. It’s another soldier, this one square-jawed and hugely tall, with missing front teeth and the same livery. I’m starting to catch up to what it is that’s happening, panic hot on its heels, and I try to yank away from him but I’m too tipsy and he’s a good deal bigger than me, and he takes my feeble resistance as a reason to twist my arms behind my back like they’re made of cloth. I yelp in pain. Scipio is putting up a much more successful fight than I am, enough that two more soldiers are called over from where they were lurking unnoticed in the shadow of the cathedral.
The soldiers are speaking to each other in Venetian, and Scipio is trying to argue with them, first in French, then English, which none of them seem to understand. I don’t know what anyone is saying, so I try to get free again, this time taking the boneless approach in the hope that a sudden collapse will twist my arms free. But the officer hauls me up by the back of my shirt, saying something right in my ear, and I’m flailing to get away when Scipio suddenly says, “Monty, stop!”
The fear in his voice stills me, and when I look over, one of the soldiers has drawn his knife
, the blade so thin it’s almost invisible until the moonlight catches it. He has the tip of it held to Scipio’s throat. I stop fighting and the soldier wrenches my hands behind me again; then the four of them begin to march us across the square, a soldier on either side and the fourth bringing up the rear with that wicked dagger drawn.
They don’t take us far. We shove through the crowd—pressed from all sides by feathers and crinoline and baize, strings of pearls whacking at us as they’re tossed over shoulders—until we’re before the Doge’s Palace on the edge of the canal. The soldiers at the door, same uniforms as our escorts, let us pass without a question, and we’re prodded across a courtyard rimmed in white stone colonnades, then up two flights of stairs and through a set of large ebony doors.
The room beyond is dominated by a massive four-posted bed. Dark wood panels fringed in gold scrollwork run all the way to the ceiling, where the winged Lion of Saint Mark looks down from the frescoes. A white-glass chandelier drips wax onto the carpeting. The light of it nearly blinds me and I throw my hands up, face curling in protest. I hear the door shut behind us.
The soldier holding me finally lets go and says in French, his words whistling from his missing front teeth, “Are these the gentlemen you were looking for, my lord?”
“One of them,” a sickeningly familiar voice replies. “I’ve no notion who that cove is.”
I lower my hands. The Duke of Bourbon is rising from an emerald chaise, Helena with him, perched forward on a window seat across the room. Her plaited hair swings over her shoulder as she squints at Scipio. “Who the devil is that?”
“One of the corsairs that brought them into port, I’d wager,” Bourbon replies. “I was informed of their arrival this morning by the dock officials. Was there anyone else with them?” he asks the soldiers.
“No, my lord. Just the pair.”
“Where are your friends, Montague?” Bourbon calls to me. “I was hoping you would all be in attendance this evening.”
My heart is really going now. Sober up, I think. Sober up, sober up, get your head on straight and sober up and get out of here. The soldier has sheathed his knife, so I try to make a break for the door but misjudge where I’m standing and slam shoulders with Scipio. One of the soldiers grabs me by the collar and shoves me into the bed. The backs of my legs hit the footboard and I topple over it, landing on the mattress with a dusty flump. The metallic tang of blood bursts in my mouth.
“What have you done to him?” Helena asks.
“He’s drunk,” the duke replies, nose wrinkling. Then, to the soldiers again, he says, “Thank you, gentlemen, you may leave us. The fee will be arranged through your patron.”
As soon as the Doge’s men are gone, Bourbon seizes me by the arm. He’s got a massive pistol with an engraved barrel jammed into his belt, and the grip rams me in the stomach as he drags me back to my feet. “Hand it over, Montague,” he says, one hand resting upon his belt, perchance I failed to notice what is essentially a small cannon beneath his coat.
When I speak, my words run together, partly from the drinking but more from the fear. “I haven’t got it.”
“What do you mean, you haven’t got it?” The duke paws at the pockets of my coat, overturning them, then ringing them between his hands like I might have sewn the key into the lining.
“He has it, I know he does,” Helena says from behind him.
“Keep quiet,” he growls at her.
“They took it from the house.”
“I said keep quiet.” Bourbon grabs me by the chin, jerking my face close to his so that a thin mist of spittle freckles my cheeks. “Where’s the key?” He shakes me hard, and my head slams backward into one of the bedposts. “Where. Is. It.”
“Let him alone.” Scipio grabs the duke by the arm and tries to pull him off me, but Bourbon takes a swipe in his direction. The blow lands with a wet crack, and Scipio stumbles backward, trips over a footstool, then slams into the wall.
“Stay away, sirrah,” Bourbon snaps at him. “You’ll stand at the gallows when I’m finished with you.”
Scipio stays doubled over, his face pressed into the crook of his elbow and his shoulders heaving. Swing back, I think desperately to him and hopelessly to myself. But neither of us does. Fighting back against everyone who cracks you is a luxury we both stopped believing in long ago.
Helena is on her feet now, back to the wall with her hands flat against the paneling. “What do we do?” she says, so quiet she must be speaking to herself.
Bourbon pivots to me again, the soles of his boots making a soft shush upon the rug. “Where’s the damned key, Montague?”
“I haven’t got it,” I stammer. I can feel a thin line of blood running down my chin from where I bit my lip, but I’m too stuck with fear to wipe it away.
“Then who does? Tell me. Where is it?” When I don’t reply, he shoves me backward onto the bed again and I collapse without protest.
There’s a moment of cacophonous silence. Outside the window, the revelers in the square make themselves heard, a pretty and oblivious sound. I can feel the duke staring at me, like he’s still waiting for my reply, but I’m not sending this man after Percy and Felicity—I’d rather die now at his hand with the hope they get away.
“Fine,” Bourbon snaps. Then his voice shifts as he turns. “You, pirate, stand up. Stand. Up.” I raise my head as Scipio straightens. The skin on one side of his face has been scraped raw by the encrusted rings Bourbon wears, and thin tracks of blood are beginning to rise, jewel-colored against his dark skin. “You will deliver yourself to Montague’s two companions, who are undoubtedly in your care,” Bourbon instructs. He’s speaking slowly, like Scipio’s a simpleton. “You will inform them they are to meet us on the island of Maria e Marta at dawn, alone, with the Lazarus Key and none of you pirates in accompaniment. If they fail on any of these accounts, I will shoot Mr. Montague and dump his body in the Lagoon.”
He pulls his pistol from his belt and pantomimes it for fullest effect. Bang.
I let my head fall back against the bed.
Another moment of silence, then he cocks the pistol—a sound like a snapping bone. “If you don’t get along,” Bourbon says, “I’ll shoot him now.”
A moment later, the hobnails in Scipio’s boots complain against the floorboards; then the door shuts, and I’m alone.
As soon as he’s gone, Helena cries, like she’s been holding it in, “Don’t shoot him!”
“Keep your head, Condesa.” There’s a clatter, something heavy tossed onto a wooden surface so hard it rattles everything upon it. “Christ, women are volatile.”
She’s standing between us, I realize suddenly, as though she doesn’t trust him to keep that pistol away. “No one else is dying for this.”
“And he shan’t, so long as that key of yours is in my possession tomorrow morning.”
I’m starting to drift away. My senses are each becoming unfamiliar things in turn, my vision graying, then my hearing slipping out to sea like a message tucked into a bottle. This bed is going to swallow me whole. A shadow falls across me and I push my face deeper into the mattress.
“Let him sleep until we depart,” Helena says. “He’ll be no good to us until he’s sobered up.”
Outside the windows, the sky explodes—a fireworks show is beginning. The storm clouds flush, each raindrop a colorful lantern, and the crooked finger of a moon hanging low over the palace turns blood-colored.
I want to be home.
No, not home. I want to be not here. I want to be somewhere safe. Somewhere I know.
I want to be with Percy.
“Sleep well, my lord,” I hear Helena say, and I surrender.
28
When I wake, I’m still curled up at the end of the bed, my knees aching and my shirt stuck to my back. My head throbs. I haven’t a clue what time it is—it’s too colorless to tell. Outside the window, the sky is gray and frothy, though it blushes suddenly white with a tongue of lightning. The water of the Gr
and Canal bounces as the rain peppers it.
“Are you going to be sick?”
I raise my head. The duke is gone, but Helena is on the window seat, twisting her necklace around her fingers. I don’t answer, because I don’t believe a prisoner owes his captors any sort report on his health. That, and if I’m going to be sick, I’d prefer to do it all over her, and I’d prefer it to be a stealth attack.
Helena retrieves a porcelain basin from the washing table and brings it over to me. I expect her to toss it onto the blankets and then go back to her sentry post, but instead she sits down at the head of the bed, one leg pulled under her and the basin between us. We examine each other for a moment—me with considerably more squinting and wincing. She’s different here, away from her father’s house and her own terrain. She seems more human, with less armor around her emotions, and for a moment I believe she simply wants this finished.
Then she says, “How did my father look?”
I hadn’t been expecting that—not the subject, nor the gentleness of her tone. “How did . . . what?”
“When you saw him in prison. Was he unwell? Did he look as though he’d been mistreated?”
“He was . . .” I’m not certain how to answer, so I choose “Emphatic.”
“Emphatic about what?”
“That his children not turn over their mother’s heart to the Duke of Bourbon or any man who would use it wrongly.”
Her face sets. “You mean a man such as you? You want to use it as well, don’t you? That’s why you stole the key once Dante told you about our father’s work.”
“We wouldn’t use it wrongly.”
“And who decides what is wrong and what is good?”
“Your father said—”
“I love my father,” she says, each word ironclad. “That is the only thing that matters to me in this world, and I don’t care what has to happen for him to be free again.” She smashes the wrinkles from her skirt with the heel of her hand, eyes away from me. “So, who was it for?”
“Percy.”
“Your friend?” She presses her fist into the mattress, her shoulders never losing their graceful slant but her head drooping in something like penitence. “I’m sorry.”