Perina relaxes her grip on his hand. Her expression is baffled, exasperated. What curtain? she says.
Over her shoulder, the twisting street that leads to the campiello has gone entirely black at its center. As if the night itself has gathered there, clotted like a wound. Crivano looks up from Perina’s face. Merciful Christ, he whispers.
Listen, dottore. We must—
Crivano drops his stick, seizes Perina by the collar, and pulls her against his chest. She lets out a startled squeak as her face strikes his ribs. His fingers scurry along the fabric of his robe until they find the slit, then search inside for the smooth grip of the snaplock pistol. He’s vaguely aware of the sound of his own chattering teeth.
Already the fiend is almost upon them, gliding with the silent speed of a diving owl. It seems to hang on the air, not to move at all. As if the space between it and them is simply vanishing, shrinking like the foot of a snail. Crivano’s hand has found the pistol. As he draws it, the cock catches the fabric of his robe. The fabric rips.
Perina pushes away from him; he claps his hand on the base of her fuzzed skull and pulls her back with a thump. The pistol is free. He thrusts out his arm. The demon is yards away now. Its ash wand held high. Smoke streaming from its beak. Perina turns her head to protect her mashed nose, and Crivano moves his left palm over her exposed ear. Then he wrenches back the cock—opening a bloody furrow across his thumb’s first joint—and pulls the trigger.
A white flare as the pan ignites, and a breathy whoosh. Then nothing. His vision wrecked by the flash, Crivano stares into the blackened street, his lips twisted in a rictus of idiot horror. His eyes can discern nothing but the twin glassy spheres that move toward him through the void, aglow like glory-holes. They are coming. They have always been coming. Now they are here.
The pistol fires. From its muzzle emerges a globe of flame that erases everything and vanishes, leaving only a pulsing afterimage on Crivano’s seared eyes. But the roar of the blast remains, a howling hiss, an undiminishing echo that runs circuits of the street until he can hear nothing else. Perina has broken away; she’s looking at him, gesturing, screaming. Her voice reaches him not as sound, but as a gentle pressure on his face. She grabs his left hand, pulls. His right arm, the arm with the pistol, is over his head. He lowers it gingerly. He’s aware of sharp pain in his bludgeoned ears: a lacerating high-pitched chime that, he realizes, is the sound of broken glass striking the pavement under every window on the street.
The plaguedoctor is gone. Crivano’s eyes rake the smoke-shrouded air, and the pavement where the monster stood, but they find nothing: no pink mist, no pooled blood, no beaked mask, no ash wand. Blown to bits, he thinks. As if the pistol were a cannon. Blown to bits. Blown to bits. Blown to bits.
The cloud of smoke from the blast is rising, signaling their location. Perina’s face is streaked with angry tears; she twists his arm, looks over his shoulder. Crivano searches the ground around his feet for his dropped walkingstick, then sees that Perina is holding it. He tries to put the pistol back in his belt, but his arm won’t move as it should. His hearing is returning, heralded by a dull ache; he can make out Perina’s urgent whisper, shouts from the Campiello of the Dead. Sbirri are coming over the bridge: three that he can see, more lights behind them. The first freezes when he sees Crivano, fear animating his dull eyes, and the second stumbles to avoid a collision. They huddle together on the bridge, scuffling their feet like tethered dogs.
Perina and Crivano turn and run. She’s fast, he’s tired and old, and he can’t keep up. Fallen glass splinters and cracks beneath the sbirri’s feet: they’re gaining on him. By the time he turns into the campiello they’re on his heels. One brushes a hand against his shoulder, then collapses with a thud and a gasp, tripping up the man behind him. Crivano sees the sandolo now, Obizzo outlined against the setting moon, lowering his crossbow to stand in its stirrup, a fresh bolt clamped between his teeth.
Perina has already cast the boat off. Crivano catches a foot on the gunwale as he jumps, lands facedown in the hull. Dozens of dry bouquets are crushed under his chest; the odor of lavender fills his sinuses, followed by the ferrous tang of blood. The sandolo rocks but doesn’t capsize. Crivano rises with effort, wipes his injured nose.
Obizzo fires again, catching a sbirro in midair as he vaults from the quay; the man drops with a splash. More rush into the campiello, but caution slows them. Obizzo passes the crossbow and quiver to Crivano and takes up his oar; Crivano steps in the stirrup and fixes the string to the nut, then levers it back while he gropes for a bolt. By the time it’s loaded, they’re a safe distance from the sbirri’s angry cudgels, but Crivano fires and wounds one anyway out of spite.