Burdens of the Dead

by Mercedes Lackey

  “M’Lord Valdosta! I have an important message from M’Lord Francisco!” said the gondolier, determinedly into the sudden silence.

  “Francisco!” Lodovico Montescue slapped his head. “He said he’d seen the bitch on his way to see you. I forgot. Damned fool that I am.”

  The gondolier passed the roll of parchment to Marco’s hand.

  Marco peered at it, frowning. “Saints! It’s in charcoal and half smudged.”

  “He wrote it in a hurry M’Lord. I took him to Campo Ghetto. He crossed over the bridge there heading toward Sant’ Alvise.”

  “What’s it say, Marco?” demanded Lodovico.

  “Child. Poulo Borgo. The Sotoportego Galpa…I think.”

  “Galaparto,” inserted the gondolier. “Bad part of town, M’Lord. Second hand dealers and cut-throats up there. It was good area in my great grandfather’s time…”

  Marco cut him off, looking rather like his brother Benito in a cold rage. The gondolier was passing familiar with the young physician, as were many of the canals, and he could not recall ever seeing Marco like this. “I need thirty of these men, Lodovico. Fresh arms on the oars, and something to break down doors. Now. That priest came from San Galatha. Near there! Send the rest to block the quays. No vessels leave until we find her. I told the Council of Ten, and they can deal with any problems. And I don’t care who anyone is or what their cargo is, they don’t sail!”

  * * *

  By the time Marco and the Schiopettieri had got half way to the Campo Ghetto, they were joined by Kat and at least a hundred gondoliers and trade boats. And there was fury in every face.

  Marco Valdosta, the poor of the city loved. And Benito…he was their scapegrace. Their hero. And Maria was one of them. News spread at yelling-speed through the city.

  In the leading boat, Marco, his father-in-law, and his wife were like a trio of leashed hounds with the scent of blood in their nostrils. Only Lodovico seemed marginally calm. And not by much. His face was fixed in an expression so cold that people turned away from him, shivering. “If we find this woman, you’ll have to stop them tearing her apart. At least until we know who they are, and how they did this. Then they have her as far as I am concerned.”

  “Only when I have finished with her,” hissed Katerina.

  “Let’s find ‘Lessi first,” said Marco. In his mind to the listening Lion he said Alive and unhurt. Please.

  The Schiopettieri knew where they were going. “We’ve searched a few places in that area for black lotos. It’s coming out of there, we think. But those enslaved to the stuff are petrified of being caught without it. When it became hard to get after the last time, they learned. They don’t talk. Losing the drug frightens them more than the Doge’s torture chambers do.”

  They arrived at Poulo Borgo’s shop—which was shuttered and closed despite the other shops being open. The Schiopetteiri had brought a brass-headed ram. Ten of them swung it at the door.

  It did not break. They tried a second time.

  “Enough!” snapped Marco. “Stand away. Keep people away. And I will want your squad to keep the people back when we go in, Sergeant.”

  The rammers looked puzzled. “Get out of the way, men,” said Lodovico.

  Marco walked forward and struck the door with his hand, and all the force of a vast golden paw, “UNBIND!” he roared, calling the very fabric of the lagoon to do his bidding.

  The door fell in. So did half the wall. Marco pushed into the junk-filled interior, walking over smashed cassones and piles of worn clothes. There seemed to be no-one here, but, swords out, the Schiopetteiri fanned into the place.

  They found nothing but signs of filthy living. Kat looked ready to set the place afire. Marco…no one could meet his eyes. The Lion stared from them, and the Lion was roused to fury.

  Lodovico stepped into this chaos. “Sergeant Amrosio. You and these gentlemen from the Council of Ten will remain here. Search the place thoroughly. Look for trapdoors and hideouts. Come, Marco. We will try that priest.”

  They walked to the priest’s parish-house. “I was uncomfortable last time I was here,” said Kat, taking her wheel-lock pistol from her sash, where she had stuck it like a pirate. “Something wasn’t at all right here, that priest…I wish I had said something!”

  This door fell in to a well-directed kick. Inside…

  Was blood. The priest was lying in a puddle of it. At least most of it must have come from him. He’d bled out slowly, trying to reach the door, after he’d been stabbed in the back. Kat rushed past the body, as Marco paused.

  “He’s dead,” said Marco, kneeling, next to him.

  There was a scream from Kat in the second room. “Got her!”

  Marco, his heart full of desperate hope, was up and through that doorway like a lion pouncing. Which was just as well, because Kat was on top of Marissa, slapping her hard enough to break bones. “Where is she!? Where is ‘Lessi?”

  Empty eyes looked up at her. And rolled away, unseeing. She muttered something.

  “Is she dead?” asked Kat, shocked now.

  “Drugged to the gills,” said Marco, looking at the dilated pupils. He felt for a pulse. “But she’ll be dead soon enough. I need this poison out of her. Search this place! You, bring me my medical case from the boat.”

  He set about emptying the stomach of Alessia’s kidnapper. What came out of her mouth was black.

  “Black lotos,” he said bleakly. “A lot of it. Kat, find me the bottle in my case marked ‘Belladonna.’ It might kill her, but this certainly will. And I want answers before she dies.”

  There was the sound of running feet and a Schiopetteiri officer came panting in. “We found a hidden passage M’Lord. And a cellar!”

  “Alessia!?”

  “No, M’Lord. But we found a lot of black lotos in sealed bottles.” He held out a small flask that one might use for expensive perfume. He paused. “And…M’Lord, a sort of padded cage. It wouldn’t take an adult easily.”

  The sergeant who had been rifling through the priest’s drawers coughed and held up a small girl’s dress. “M’Lord. Were these…the little girl’s things?”

  Marco felt for a moment if his heart might stop. But no. The dress would fit a larger child, not a toddler. And it was good fabric, but Alessia’s linen had been of the finest. Kat had had great pleasure in getting more new clothes for her.

  “What…what are those stains?” asked Kat.

  Old and brown, on the child’s white dress. For a moment, Marco’s mind would not accept what his physician’s eyes were telling them. But the Lion knew, and the Lion growled deep in his mind. And the Lion would not allow him to see less than the truth.

  And there were two more dresses, in different sizes in the back of the drawer.

  As the Sergeant held one up, ornamented with little faded rosebuds, the ex-nursemaid’s head came up. “That’s my Bettina’s dress. Have you seen her?” and she began to sob.

  Kat slapped her again. “Where is Alessia, you puttana?”

  “I stopped him. He wanted to have her, like Bettina. I stabbed him. I stabbed him. The woman-ghost told me to, she wouldn’t let me alone until I stabbed him. And then Poulo came. Oh, Bettina…”

  Marco and Lodovico exchanged a look. “Poulo. That’s the second-hand dealer. Francisco was right!”

  Marco looked at Marissa. “You want the black Lotos, don’t you?”

  She nodded, seemingly unaware of her racing heart or her torn and vomit-stained clothes. “Give me. Please. I will do anything. Anything. It makes me forget.”

  “Tell me where Alessia is. I have lots of the black. You can have it all.”

  “Don’t believe you.”

  “Lieutenant. Give it to me.” Marco held out his hand for the perfume-flask. He broke open the top and poured the black seeds out. She reached for them, grabbed at them.

  Marco held him out of reach—not hard, given that she was in no condition to move. “Not until you tell me where to find Alessia.”

&n
bsp; Her hands crooked into needy claws, reaching for the flask. “Poulo took her. He was a runner for the Dandelos. He takes children. He took my Bettina.”

  Marco stood up. “I think you have told us enough. Take her away. Keep her alive if you can. She’s rope-ripe.”

  The woman made a frantic grab at the lotos jar and a few seeds spilled as the Schiopetteiri seized her. She managed to snatch a seed off the floor, and cram it into her mouth.

  “Hell bound,” said Lodovico heavily. “If I am understanding it right, she sold herself, and then her daughter for that stuff. My God! Selling a child…your own child!”

  “And then used it to find refuge from her guilt,” said Marco, quietly. “All the time becoming more bound. I said she was rope-ripe, but I think she is already in hell. Come, let us search that second-hand dealer’s pit for more clues. I wish we’d got Francisco’s message earlier. I wonder how he knew?”

  Lodovico looked uneasy. “I don’t know. He was with me after she went. He seems a solid enough fellow, but he is hiding something. I am sure of it. He’s careful in his speech, but he’s used to giving orders. Not what one thinks typical of a poor wandering teacher.”

  “The Doge wants to reward him. I think we should send a runner for him.” Marco sucked at his teeth. “Perhaps a squad. He was with you…but…he knew too much. How did he know of this Poulo?”

  “There may be a good explanation,” said Lodovico, doubtfully.

  “Then he can give it and I will be happy. But there is a child’s life involved. More than one, by the looks of the evidence. But right now, it’s Benito’s little girl we must save, and I will not rest until we have her back with us.”

  Lodovico sighed. “The one good thing about this, is that she has a lot of value as a hostage. Those other victims did not have that.”

  “And dead or abused she could be a casus belli,” said Marco, grimly. “There is value in that, too. Come on! We are wasting time.”

  * * *

  A little later, while they were still picking through the cellar of the second-hand shop, the Schiopettieri lieutenant they’d sent to find Francisco reported back. “M’Lord. He’s left the city. He left just after the noon-bell. He was overheard offering a fisherman a great deal of money to take him to Casa Giare.”

  “We need to get patrols to the mainland. I want this man alive,” said Lodovico. Marco had said not a word, but he walked away.

  “The Lion of St. Mark will fly over the city soon,” said Katerina to her father, quietly. “Heading for that little marsh town. In the meanwhile Marco is going to the water chapel at St. Raphaella. He wants to solicit the help of the lagoon undines. And then he will get the Streghira to try magical scrying.”

  “We’d better back him up with soldiery too,” said Lodovico, grimly. “It’s time we mobilized our forces anyway. This is more than just a kidnapping. This is part of a larger plot. Someone is looking for war. First our Doge, and now this.”

  * * *

  “By water, or by mirror?” asked the wild-haired child-woman that Marco knew only as “Trillium.” He was fairly certain that was not her real name, but he was also fairly certain he would never know it. The Stregha were secretive, and rightly so. Even with him, whom they trusted.

  “The mirror is clearer, but water is more trustworthy,” croaked an old man Marco had never seen before. “Water carries the energies most truly.” He looked at Marco. “And the waters here belong to the Lion. And are blessed.”

  There were only four people here besides Marco. He hadn’t been short of magicians willing and even eager to help him. But everyone had agreed—and the magic-workers of Venice rarely agreed on anything—that more than five would muddle things. These four, with Marco, were the most powerful magicians in the city.

  The nameless old man. The fey little child-woman out of the marsh. The midwife Bella Santini. And a Hypatian Sibling, Sister Serenity.

  Marco looked to Sister Serenity, who nodded. “Water will be best,” she said, in a voice so calm it even soothed him a little.

  She looked around her at the others. She was a plain-faced, soft-voiced middle-aged woman in the loose, linen robes of her calling, who looked as if she should be growing herbs or baking bread, not getting ready to engage in what might prove to be a dangerous magic attempt. “Does anyone mind if I provide the vessel?”

  No one objected, so she removed a black glass bowl that was unmistakable as the work of the island of Murano, filled it with water from the little inlet at their feet, and set it on the altar. Then she passed out colored tapers to everyone but Marco.

  They’ve worked together before, the Lion in his mind observed.

  Clearly, they had. Each of them invoked the protection of a Guardian, one of them for each of the compass directions, and set a candle into the chest-high holder there intended for that purpose.. The old man uttered his invocation in Greek, the midwife in good plain Venetian Italian, the woman-child in a language that Marco didn’t even recognize, and the Sibling in Latin. As each of then completed his or her incantation, the plain white candle suddenly ignited and flared with the color of its direction, turning into a little pillar of flame. The Lion—and perforce, Marco—sensed the presence there. The Lion rumbled approval. Then, as the last flared into life, there was a pause, as if the universe took a single, deep breath. Then light erupted from all four at once, and when it had died down again, there was a faintly glowing dome over all of them, just contained within the chapel.

  The four of them turned back to the altar and joined Marco. “Foulness out there,” said the wild girl abruptly. “Can’t be too careful.”

  “She means we all sensed the incursion that alerted the Lion,” the midwife elaborated. “It isn’t that we don’t trust the Lion to protect us, because we do, but there’s no harm in having more protection than you need.” She glanced at the wild girl. “I don’t know what her people call this, but my grandsire called it ‘the Shield of the Light.’”

  “The ‘Dome of the Saints,’” offered the Sibling.

  “Tutaminis Obviam Malum,” the old man put in.

  The girl just shrugged, then said, “‘Lady’s Hand.’”

  I approve, said the Lion.

  “Now, for the scrying, have—”

  “Here.” Marcus had done scrying before, and he knew that the results were always better when you had something connected with what you were looking for; the more intimate, the better. He laid a few strands of hair from ‘Lessia’s comb on the alter, and the old man grunted with satisfaction.

  But the girl made an abrupt gesture before he could say anything. “Wait.” She carefully teased one of the fine threads from the rest, wrapped it around and around her heart-finger like a ring, and indicated to the others that they should do the same.

  They joined hands, and Marco immediately felt the power rising. He stared into the bowl. From this angle there were no reflections from the bottom, and it was unnervingly like staring into a bottomless well.

  Then there was a misting of the surface. As Marcus stared into the water, it clouded over, and it seemed to him that there were faint tracks, like lightning in miniature, arcing through those clouds. He felt the power building, and as the Sibling, the old man, and the girl muttered or chanted under their breaths, he concentrated as hard as he could on the child. The little band of hair around his finger grew warm, then hot. And just when he thought he couldn’t bear it any more—

  The bowl cleared. And there was Alessia.

  She was in some sort of imprisoning small chamber or large box. She was asleep at the moment, but from the dark circles under her eyes, the raw, red state of her cheeks and nose, and the tearstains on her little dress, she’d cried herself into complete exhaustion.

  But she was alive. And as far as he could tell, she was unhurt except for fright and grief. Not that fear and grief couldn’t hurt you…but he had hope that if they could rescue her quickly enough, the terror and loss would fade into a shadow she could forget.


  He tried to move the vision in the scrying bowl outward, away from her, to see where she was.

  And it was as if he hit a literal wall. There was nothing. No point of reference. There were no openings in her containment to see out of, and he could not move the point of view away. It was as if something had anticipated that they might try to do this, and had laid a trap, ensuring that while they might see her, they could not actually find her. He strove with it until he could feel the power bleeding from him, until even the Lion within said enough. The others tried, but they could not even see Alessia, probably because they didn’t know her.

  But they, like he, refused to give up.

  Until the wild girl looked at him across the bowl, and fainted dead away, breaking the circle.

  “Enough,” he said, hoarsely, as the girl came to almost immediately and tried to get to her feet. “I won’t let you kill yourselves over this. We know she’s all right and alive.” Before any of them could protest, he turned and thanked and dismissed the Guardian of the West himself. The powerful shield came down, and the other three candles shrank down to merely half-burned-out candles.

  The old man nodded, slowly, then dismissed the North. The midwife and the Sibling dismissed the East and South.

  “Come,” he said to them. “Let me offer you the hospitality of my House. We’ll rest and eat, and think. Maybe we’ll come up with another idea. But right now, none of us are good for anything.”

  Only the girl looked as if she was going to protest, but when she swayed on her feet even she was persuaded into a gondola and off to Casa Montescue.

  Marco himself nearly fell into the boat, he was so exhausted. As he closed his eyes against the pain that the weak sunlight was causing to erupt in his head, he heard the Lion say, I will search for her. I will not stop. I do not tire.

  For now, that would have to be enough.

  * * *

  Up to the point where the stupid woman had brought the child and the priest had sent him word, things had gone more-or-less according to Poulo’s plan. She was late, but that hadn’t made much difference. That was typical of them once they were far gone into addiction, but in this case, maybe she’d had to wait her chance to make the snatch. He hadn’t been there, and he didn’t really care, anyway. The child was lightly drugged, and had woken in the priest’s house. That shouldn’t have been of any matter either; where she’d been put, no one would hear her.