*
“—to see the doddering old woman in her decrepit house,” Mircea said as I jerked back to the present again. “Berenice never cared about money, and received them in her kitchen, while feeding dozens of stray dogs she’d adopted out of the back door. Vlad was not impressed, but the emperor didn’t seem to care.
“He was there to beg for aid against the Turks, who were encroaching closer every day, and swore to give her whatever she wanted in return. Berenice said that she had all she needed, and that he should keep what gold he had and leave the city. That it would fall soon, and him with it.”
“And did he?”
Mircea nodded. “He died dressed as a common soldier, fighting on the ramparts. He refused to leave, despite her warning, just as he refused to leave that night, staying and arguing with her for some time. During which time Vlad picked up several useful bits of knowledge, which he offered in trade to me, more than thirty years later.”
“What useful bits?”
Mircea glanced at me, and then away. “I’m coming to that.
“After speaking with Vlad, I traveled to see the Lady myself. She was still there, in the same house, on the same broken street, with a new group of dogs her acolytes fed, for she was quite elderly by then. The city was different: the Turks were polishing up their captured jewel, and there was building going on everywhere. Except for Berenice’s street, where it felt like time had stood still.”
*
“Back again?”
The dark-haired girl with the pretty, round face and cheap tinsel earrings looked up at him from an undignified crouch. She was surrounded by mangy, underfed curs, all of which were nonetheless patiently waiting for the big bowl of scraps she was turning out into broken dishes. They were hungry, some looked to be starving, yet still they waited.
Like him, Mircea thought, hiding his irritation behind a smile.
“Back again,” he confirmed.
“I told you; it could be days,” she warned, laughing when a small puppy jumped up and licked her face. “Even weeks.”
“I have time,” Mircea said, and bent to help her with her task.
*
And, okay, I was beginning to think these weren’t visions. Partly because I didn’t get many visions anymore, the power bogarting my abilities for its own use, and partly because they didn’t feel right. They had more of the hazy quality of dreams, soft-edged and lacking in detail.
Or memories, I realized, suddenly understanding.
Mircea was right—he was tired, and his perfect control wasn’t so perfect just now. The Seidr link between us might be gone, disrupted by whatever Ares had done, but he was still a powerful mentalist. And he was projecting. His own memories, and one he’d picked up from his brother.
But I didn’t think he knew it.
He was lost in thought, staring at the fire, oblivious. I should tell him, I thought. I should let him know . . .
That his mind was leaking the truth all over the place, no matter what his lips said.
“Cassie?” Some movement of mine made him look up. “Is everything all right?”
“Yes, I . . . think I will have that drink now.”
“Berenice was in bed with a fever when I finally talked my way into an audience,” Mircea told me as I saw him walk across two rooms, one richly furnished, lit by our shared fire, and one dim and shuttered. Weak sunlight streamed in through the louvers of the second, to stripe meager furnishings and a threadbare rug. And the frail old woman underneath the bedsheets, eyes watery with age and sharp with intellect.
*
“You bother me now, and with this?”
“I’ve waited for weeks—”
“I’ve kept kings waiting for months! While I’ve seen beggars, fresh off the streets. I see who I like, and I answer what I will! And your answer, vampire, is no.”
“You won’t even hear me out?” Mircea couldn’t keep a thread of anger from his voice, and she caught it.
“I have heard you! Haunting my halls, as you haunt my dreams, and I will hear you no more. You have your answer. Now begone. Or I’ll sic the dogs on you!”
*
“She was . . . not inclined to assist me,” Mircea said, handing me a glass.
I hadn’t even noticed him return.
I took it, spilling a little, because my hand was unsteady.
“But I met her chief acolyte during the week she kept me waiting,” he added, settling back into his chair. “A pretty little thing, dimples, big dark eyes, always laughing. Eudoxia was her name. She seemed well-disposed toward me, and I thought, a new Pythia will reign soon. I can wait.
“And I did—another twenty years—until my friend and well-wisher finally came into power. The court had moved at last—to Paris—and I traveled to see her there. I brought expensive gifts. I was so excited—”
*
“It doesn’t look like the biggest city in Europe,” Mircea said sourly, looking out the side of the creaking carriage. By God, this thing was slow!
“You’re too hard to please,” Bezio told him, frowning as he tried to recall which trinket went in which box.
“You had to take them out,” Mircea said. “You put them back.”
“We’ll be there soon.” Big dark eyes looked at him soulfully. If his old friend had been a girl, instead of a huge, hairy man, he’d have batted his eyelashes. “Help me?”
“It’ll take an hour to get there in this thing, and that’s if we’re lucky,” Mircea snapped. “I knew I should have ridden ahead!”
“But you didn’t.” Bezio looked at him knowingly. They’d been friends ever since his first years in Venice, and the man knew him like no other. Which could be damned inconvenient at times. “I think you want to be there, and you don’t want to be, and it’s making you surly.”
“I bungled it,” Mircea said tersely. “I should have visited her before this. Should have written more—”
“You wrote plenty. You did plenty. Any more and it would have been too obvious. Like this.” He held something up. “Don’t you think this is a bit much?”
“No!” Mircea snatched the necklace, of huge pearls set in gold, and looked around for its box. Which could have been any of them. “Put it back!”
“Well, I will if I can remember where it went,” Bezio said amiably. Mircea wanted a fight, to get the unbearable tension out of his system before they arrived, but his friend wasn’t obliging. “You’re taking a king’s ransom—none of which you need. People have been bribing Pythias for thousands of years—”
“I am not bribing her!”
“But if it helps at all, it’s only to get you in, and you’ve already got an in. But once you’re there, they say what they say—”
“And what would you know about it?”
Bezio rolled his eyes. “Like I said. Surly.”
*
“Yes,” Mircea said, his eyes distant, “I was . . . hopeful. Until I saw her face. Until the second no.”