Falcon in the Glass (28 page)

Birds?

A distant crash.

Shouting.

Something was going on. He swept his gaze across the crowded pavement near the palace. But of his passengers . . .

No sign.

“Damnation!”

But now an odd brightness in the sky caught his notice; he pivoted north.

The horizon glowed orange.

Fire?

Yes, it had to be. Was it a ship? Or something on one of the islands?

This night, it seemed, was full of trouble.

He should cast off now, before trouble came to find him.

And yet . . .

He'd given his word.

Just a moment longer, he thought, and then we'll go.

R
enzo smashed out the last of the glass. He turned to Letta. “You first.”

She was gaping at him. “What . . . What'd you do, Renzo? How — ”

“Hurry! I'll help you out and hand them through to you.”

“No. Hand them t' Federigo. I'm going back for
Nonna
.”

Renzo grabbed her arm. “Listen!” he said. The footsteps were louder now, thundering in the corridor behind them. “She'd want you to go. You know she would. What use are you to anyone if you're dead?”

She wrenched out of his grasp. Her eyes gleamed bright with unshed tears. “I'm going back.”

“The others won't leave without you. Is that what you want?”

She glared at him.

He bent and made a stirrup with his hands. “Letta, come on! Please?”

She hesitated so long, he feared she'd turn back after all. But then she stepped into his clasped hands, boosted
herself up, and twisting like an eel, slid through the window. Her hands caught on the sill; they released; he heard her feet crunch down on glass on the other side.

He called the children and, one by one, lifted them up and through the opening into Letta's waiting hands: Sofia, Ugo, Paolo. Marina, Ottavia. Georgio, Federigo. Just as Federigo disappeared, the footsteps suddenly surged behind Renzo, and a swath of light swept across the door.

“Hey! You!”

Renzo didn't look back. He grasped the edge of the window and jumped. With a grunt he hauled himself up. He squirmed through the opening, which dug into his belly and pressed against his back, and then tumbled headfirst into the narrow alley. His elbows hit with a
crack
, his hands skidded on broken glass, his body thumped down hard, and all his breath came whooshing out.

For a moment he lay there gasping. He heard the dungeon door rattle and looked up to see a guard's head and shoulders suddenly fill the window from inside. The man began to shout at him. Renzo was afraid he would jump through too, but he couldn't; he wouldn't fit.

Someone was shaking him. Letta. “Get up, get up, get up! Where do we go now?”

Renzo sucked in a juddering breath. He wobbled to his feet, looking for the other guard, the one the birds had attacked. Beyond the shouting he could hear a clamoring of birds down the alley to his left, but neither they nor the outside guard were anywhere in sight. Renzo ran a few steps
to his right, to where the alley ended at the little canal that ran flush with the east side of the palace. Vittorio was supposed to be waiting for him there. He was supposed to have dispatched the guard, but . . .

He hadn't come.

Well, the ship would still be there, waiting, anchored somewhere in the basin of San Marco. At least he hoped it would. He scooped up Sofia and headed left, down the alley. They'd have to go the long way about, but they'd find the ship somehow.

But when he had gone only a few paces —

“Renzo!”

He whirled around. There, in a small boat in the canal, was a man wearing a mask. A mask with a long, thin nose and an absurdly jutting chin.

Papà's mask.

Vittorio! Rowing straight across the water toward them.

Renzo went weak with relief. He had feared . . .

“This way,” Renzo said. He motioned the children toward the canal. In a moment the boat scraped against the wall. Renzo stepped inside, set down Sofia. He held the boat fast to the bollard as the rest of the children tumbled in, packing the boat full.

“Wait,” Letta said. She twisted back toward the alley. “Maybe she'll come.”

Her
nonna
. Renzo didn't know what to do, what to say. Vittorio pushed off; the boat moved away from the wall. Letta kept her gaze fastened on the alley. A soldier appeared
at the edge of the canal. Two soldiers. Three. All shouting at once.

Letta pressed her lips together, hard. Her hands rose to cover her mouth.

The clamor dimmed behind them, muffled by the calming gurgle and swish of water. The palace glided serenely by. In a moment Vittorio's little craft slipped under the bridge, around the corner, and into the basin of San Marco.

A sparrow alit on Marina's shoulder. Vittorio paused in his rowing. He gestured for Renzo to cover the children beneath a rolled-up tarp stashed in the bow of the boat.

Renzo began to unfurl it; Letta wiped her eyes and nose and came to help. “Can you keep the birds away?” he asked.

She nodded, murmured to the children, tucking them all beneath the tarp. The sparrow darted off.

She turned back toward the palace as they wove among the other boats — small fishing boats and plain, black gondolas; pleasure boats alight with torches, tinkling with bells. The strains of a lute welled up as their boat passed a canopied gondola; masked revelers sang and laughed.

Renzo inspected his scraped and bloody hands and knees and elbows, suddenly realizing that they stung. He pulled the gown over his head, wadded it up, and stuffed it into the bottom of the boat. Good riddance! He looked about for soldiers but couldn't see a single one. Surely they must be searching, and yet . . . He breathed in the fresh night air, feeling his body begin to unclench.

They had escaped. Escaped from the very dungeon
of the Ten! Except for the old woman, Letta's grandmother.

“Listen, Letta,” he said. “Maybe they'll only banish her. Lent's nearly upon us. Maybe they'll lose their appetite for . . .”

For hanging.

She didn't look at him. Didn't reply.

And now, low in the sky, past an odd brightness to the north, Renzo made out the dark outlines of tall masts and rigging. “Is that the one?” he asked Vittorio.

Vittorio nodded.

“I've met with the captain of that ship,” he told Letta. “He'll take you away with him. He'll leave you in the care of friends of his; they'll look after you for a while, maybe until it gets warmer . . .”

He trailed off, hearing in his voice the thinness of the thread he held out to her. He had thought that breaking the children out of the dungeon would be enough. But now . . .

She turned to regard him gravely, and he couldn't tell what she was thinking. Could she get past her grief to attend to this? Was she afraid? Was she worried about life in another place where they knew no one, another place where people would find them odd and maybe threatening? Was she silently reproaching Renzo for not having saved her grandmother along with the rest? Was she leery of the captain?

Was
the captain trustworthy?

“It's the best I could do,” he said.

“I'm grateful,” she said. “And those bars . . . they were a miracle, for true.” She picked up the edge of the tarp.

“Letta, listen . . .”

She gave him a long, impenetrable look, then disappeared under the tarp with the others.

Why wouldn't she talk to him? The old, scolding Letta, he had known how to deal with. But this new Letta — the
grateful
Letta, the Letta who turned away and said nothing — perplexed him utterly.

A wind gust ruffled his hair; he shivered, suddenly uneasy. The danger was far from over for her and the children. As for himself . . .

He recalled that one of the guards had seen his face. But he would stay on Murano from now on; the man would never lay eyes on him again.

And Vittorio . . .

Renzo scooted past the children to the stern of the boat. “Did you run into trouble?” he asked softly.

Vittorio shrugged.

“What happened?”

Vittorio looked straight ahead. Kept rowing. Didn't answer.

“Uncle?”

Something prickled at the back of Renzo's neck. He peered up at Papà's mask. There was the familiar chip at the right temple. There was the stain on the chin. He tried to see into the dark spaces beyond the eyeholes. The hood covered his uncle's head and neck, but his hands . . .

Renzo gazed down at the hands on the oars. Large, scarred hands, with knotted fingers.

He knew his uncle's hands. Small and smooth, with tapering, well-formed fingers.

Not these.

Fear poured through him, icy, sickening.

These hands, he had seen them somewhere.

A memory blinked into his mind: a raised hand in the starlight. A noose.

The assassin.

R
enzo started to rise.

“Don't . . . move,” the assassin said. Renzo sat back down. Softly, so only Renzo could hear, the assassin murmured, “I have no business with
these
.” He turned the long nose of the mask toward the children. “I'll take them to the ship, and then we'll talk.”

“What of Mama? Pia? Do you have
business
with them?”

“No.”

“Vittorio?”

The assassin lifted his masked chin, pointed it to the north. The flickering brightness bloomed orange in the sky above Murano.

A fire.

Renzo didn't know what had happened, nor how, but he
knew
.

Vittorio was dead.

And likely
he
would be dead soon too. He leaned toward the assassin, suddenly fearless. “And my father?” he demanded. “Was that you?”

“It was,” the assassin said, “an accident.”

“An accident?” Renzo rose to his feet. He didn't care if the man had a noose. He didn't care if he had a knife. “An
accident
?”

“Renzo!” came a voice from behind him.

Renzo twisted back to see the ship looming there, the captain hailing him from on deck. “Where are they?” the captain shouted.

Renzo took a deep breath. He glanced at the assassin. “They're here,” Renzo called.

“Well, pull alongside, and be quick about it!”

Renzo began to lift the tarp off the children. The assassin wouldn't kill him now, not with the captain and crew looking on. In a moment sailors were securing the lines, helping the children onto the dock. Letta turned to him.

“Maybe . . . you should be coming with us.”

Her gaze flicked to the assassin, then back to Renzo.

How much had she heard?

But he couldn't leave. He was a glassmaker. They would find him and kill him for certain if he left . . . and maybe Mama, too.

“I can't.”

“Why not?”

“Family. You should understand that.”

She leaned in close to him. “What use are you to anyone if you're dead?”

All at once it struck him that, no matter what happened, he would never lay eyes on her again. Something jarred loose at the center of him; he felt as if he were coming apart.

“Get moving!” the captain shouted. “Shake a leg!”

Abruptly Letta turned away. “I see you've made your choice,” she said. “Federigo, take Paolo. Georgio, take Ugo. Now go! All of you!” She scooped up Sofia and shooed the rest of them toward the gangplank, then followed without a backward glance.

She was hurt. That was what he'd failed to understand earlier. She'd wanted him to go with them.

The children trudged single file up the gangplank. One by one they turned back to look at him. Sofia waved, and then all of them were waving — all save for Letta.

He wanted to jump out of the boat, run up the plank, and join them. Join
her
.

But he couldn't.

He watched as the ship shrank behind them, as the assassin rowed out into the basin. Heading east, toward the lagoon. He was still watching as the ship slipped away from the dock.

“With your uncle,” the assassin said.

Renzo turned to look at him.

“With your uncle it was quick, without pain.”

Renzo swallowed. Why was he telling him this?

“I think,” the assassin said, “he was expecting me.”

Well, maybe so, Renzo thought. There'd been something of the ghost about Vittorio ever since he'd returned.

“With your father . . . I intended to ask him about Vittorio. I was prepared to inflict pain, but that was all. But when he realized who I was, he came after me with a blowpipe. He
was strong and he was quick. He surprised me, and I had no choice.”

An accident.

It was worse, somehow, that Papà's death had been unintended. Unnecessary. A waste. Renzo looked back across the basin to where the lights of Venice shimmered in the water in streaks of liquid gold. He wondered if this was the last night he'd ever see them. Their loveliness struck him so hard, it made him ache.

“What happens now?” he asked. “Do you kill me?”

The mask was hard and blank. Unreadable.

“No. I'm done.”

Renzo drew in breath, taking back the lights, taking back his life.

“But,” the assassin added, “you have a choice to make.”

A choice?

“Listen very carefully. They will find a burned body in the ashes of the fire, the body of a boy your size. He's long dead, but they won't know that. They will find your silver cloak pin.”

His cloak pin? And a boy . . . long dead? “But — ”

“Listen! If you were to disappear at this moment, there would be no search, no repercussions. They would think you dead.”

What did he mean,
disappear
? “You mean, leave the republic?”