The Maestro brought Hermes with him and propped it up on the table. He paid far more attention to the book than he did to his food, grumbling angrily over every page and ignoring me. I was happy enough to savor the meal and dream of the wonderful gift I would buy for Violetta when I had sold the Euripides manuscript. Rubies, I decided.

The moment I wiped my plate with a last crust and leaned back, sighing contentedly, the Maestro slammed his book shut.

“Bring a glass of water with you.”

My fears were confirmed. “I’ll carry Hermes,” I said. He had enough trouble managing his staff.

He hurried off back to the atelier like a little black ant and went straight to the crystal ball on its stand, whipping away the cover. Then he adjusted himself on his chair, laid his staff on the floor beside him, and rubbed his hands expectantly. He enjoys a soothsaying as much as I detest it.

I laid the Hermes on the desk and the glass of water beside the crystal. “This really isn’t necessary,” I complained. “I can tell you everything you want to know without this.”

“What color are the drapes in Attorney Imer’s office?”

“I don’t think there are any drapes. Why-”

“But you don’t know!” he said triumphantly. “Next time I ask, you will tell me exactly. You will tell me whatever I want to know. There’s too much light. Bank the fire. And lock the door so we won’t be disturbed.”

I laid fresh logs over the embers. I locked the door and extinguished all the lights except one candle. I cannot put myself into a trance deep enough to see the future in the crystal, as the Maestro can. That is clairvoyance. Soothsaying is speaking truth, and for that he puts me into the trance. It gives me perfect recall, so that I can recount conversations verbatim and describe everything I have seen. What I hate is that I remember nothing of what he asks or what I tell him. I lose an hour of my life, and for all I know he pries into all sorts of personal details that do not concern him.

“I thought you said you had solved the mystery?” I was moving as slowly as I dared.

“I have. I knew the answer last night, but I need evidence that will convince the Ten. Tomorrow you will take a letter to the Lion’s Mouth announcing that I have the solution. Come and sit down!”

I sat opposite him. He moved the candle so the crystal glowed with fire for me. I stared into the sun, burning gold in the utter dark of space.

“You have had a hard day. You are tired. You are sleepy.”

That was true, I was.

“Recite the twelve gates to alchemy, according to the learned Ripley.”

“Calcination, solution, separation, conjunction, putrefaction, congelation, cibation, sublimation, fermentation, exaltation, multiplication, and projection.”

“And backwards?”

“Projection, multiplication…exaltation…”

I was gone.

18

G iorgio rowed me to the Molo before dawn. Fog lay on the city like wet cement, muffling even the halfhearted slap of ripples. As we tied up, the Marangona bell boomed out to sound the start of the working day. It sounded right overhead, but I could barely even see my own feet in the murk, let alone the bell tower. I climbed out onto the Piazzetta, accelerated by a neck-cracking heave from Bruno, behind me. He had no idea why I needed him along, but he found this fumbling around in the dark great fun. In a moment he was up beside me. Because I had left my sword in the gondola and had not asked him to bring his flatiron, he had no worries.

I did. “I hope I won’t be long,” I told Giorgio.

“I can wait,” he said. “It’s what I do best.”

“You make babies best.”

“Mama does that. It’s nothing to do with me.”

I beckoned to my giant and set off along the loggia they call the broglia. This is the part of the Piazzetta where noblemen meet and do their plotting before the Great Council meets. It is where votes are bought and sold, deals made, offices traded. It is where every young noble must wait anxiously on his first appearance until he is beckoned in to be introduced and suitably bribed to deliver his vote. I had never seriously considered ever being one of them, but if I had Senator Tirali-who by then would be former Ambassador Tirali-as my patron, then anything would be possible.

There had been a change of plan. Until the soothsaying the Maestro had intended to have me deliver a letter to the Lion’s Mouth, but in my trance I had told him of the doge’s command to report to Raffaino Sciara, so that was what I was going to do. My problem would be finding him. Circospetto, like Missier Grande, keeps no regular hours. He attends the Senate and the Council of Ten, which meet in the afternoons and evenings respectively. He had come to the Ca’ Barbolano in the middle of the night. It seemed very unlikely he would be available at dawn. Even he must sleep sometimes, so I would probably have to make an appointment to see him and return later.

My second problem was that the doge was not playing by the rules.

I did mention, did I not, that the Republic likes to keep things complicated? Since no one in government trusts anyone else, matters are arranged so that every man will have others watching him. The Council of Ten consists of seventeen men, with a state prosecutor present to advise on the law, and sometimes with another fifteen or more men added, when things look so nasty that the blame must be widely spread. The Ten’s agenda is set by the three “chiefs of the Ten,” who are elected anew each month and must remain within the Doges’ Palace during their terms. They each hold one of the three keys needed to open the Ten’s “Lion’s Mouth” drop box. It was to them that I ought to be reporting evidence of murder, and if they demanded to know why I wanted to meet with Raffaino Sciara in person, I would have to do some creative talking.

There are several ways into the palace. I had chosen to go by way of the Piazzetta and the Porta della Carta because I might have to send Bruno away and it would be easier for him to find Giorgio by retracing his steps-the Rio di Palazzo is so narrow that gondolas are not allowed to linger at the watergate. We stepped through into the great arched passage beyond, where lamplight hung like golden spheres in the fog, barely reaching the paving below. A guard slammed the butt of his pike down and demanded to know who went there. What was visible of him between his breastplate and the brim of his helmet looked thirty years older than he sounded, but I think it was just his first glimpse of Bruno that made his voice so boyishly shrill.

I introduced myself and explained that I had urgent business for Circospetto. We were ordered to wait. One man went into the guard room, two more came out to keep an eye on Bruno. A fourth was sent off to report to someone. Time passed. Graveyard cold seeped into my bones; fog spitefully saturated all my clothes. I wished someone would offer me a seat, preferably close to a fire.

The messenger returned and hurried into the guard room to report. Two men emerged and one of them told us to follow them, which was a good sign, I supposed. The other followed us. Halfway across the courtyard the signs became very bad when I saw that we were heading to the watergate beside the Wells, which was not the route by which honored visitors were taken to anywhere. Sure enough, we were led up the same, narrow stairs I had climbed when Sciara brought me in. They were a trial for Bruno, who had to stoop low to get through some of the brick arches.

Three storeys up we left the stairwell and entered the room of the chiefs of the Ten, which is very splendid, especially its ceiling paintings by Veronese and Ponchini. I was given no time to admire them, even had the light been good enough. We crossed to another door and were ushered through into the room of the inquisitors, the Three. Tintoretto painted that ceiling and the walls are richly paneled, but I doubt if many of the people who visit it are ever concerned about its art. On the dais sat a single man, seemingly doing nothing except waiting for us to arrive. He was elderly and portly, with a silver beard and a heavy, weathered face, looking as if he might have been a husky sailor in his youth, now run to seed. He wore the sumptuous scarlet robes and velvet tippet of a ducal counselor, plus an unfriendly scowl.