Free Provender Gleed by James Lovegrove

with the acting career that's going bloody well even if I do say so my-bloody-self. I'm the one people bloody see on the TV and the cinema screen all the bloody time. Who'd be better as the next bloody Gleed heir? Who'd be better to carry on the bloody bloodline? Not bloody you, Prov, mate. Me! Bloody well me! Someone people know, someone people bloody see, not someone who bloody hides away all day. And someone whose bloody blood hasn't been bloody thinned like some bloody blood I could ment--'
    'Arthur,' said Provender, stemming the blood-flow, 'have you met Blaise Wynne? Blaise, this is my cousin Arthur. In case you hadn't guessed, a Gleed.'
    Blaise required no further prompting. In an instant, Provender was forgotten. It was as if he had never existed. She grabbed Arthur by the arm, hard, sinking her claws into him. Arthur winced with pain and tried to prise himself free, but she held grimly on.
    'Arthur Gleed!' she crooned. 'Yes, I know you. Well, I've seen you. I watched you in that series, what was it called...?'
    Provender sidestepped smartly away. Only when there was a decent margin of safety between him and Blaise did he brave a look back. She was bent forward over Arthur, still clutching his arm. Arthur was shrinking from her, bewildered, trying to fathom what had just happened to him. Who was this woman? Why would she not let go? Provender saw him touch the hilt of his stage-prop sword, no doubt for reassurance, but perhaps wondering whether to draw it. Somehow Provender didn't think the weapon, wielded, would deter Blaise. She'd regard it, if anything, as a sexual come-on.
    A quick check of his watch told him it was just gone half-past eleven. There was a fireworks display scheduled at midnight. Provender loved fireworks and knew he ought to get down to the southern end of the party site so as to find a spot with a good view. Of greater urgency, though, was the need for a drink. He was also keen to find a certain member of the waiting staff again. There were several Harlequins and Columbines within sight, all bearing beverages, but he ignored them. He was after one particular Columbine and would take a drink off no one else's salver.
    He hunted for her through Venice. He could not say exactly what it was about her that had so intrigued him. She was extremely pretty, she had bright, clever eyes, was alluringly curvaceous - but looks alone were not the whole story. Pert was the word that kept occurring to him. It seemed to sum her up. Quirky also applied. And she hadn't been overawed by him, by what he was, and he liked that, too. She had called him 'sir', but in her job that was how you addressed every man, it was just one of the rules; and even as she was being polite and deferential towards him, Provender had been able to tell that she didn't think he was any better than her. She wasn't Family-struck, as so many people were. She had given no indication that the accident of birth which made him a Gleed was, in fact, of any consequence to her. As far as she was concerned, he was a person, just as she was a person. They were, essentially, equals.
    She had been in his thoughts while he was with Gentian and even more so while he was with Blaise. She had been lodged in his brain unshakeably from the moment he met her. Even if he had liked either of the other two women, they wouldn't have stood a chance. The Columbine towered head and shoulders above them. He must find her!
    She wasn't anywhere he looked. She seemed to have vanished. He searched through every alley, every narrow Venetian street. Guests greeted him from time to time. He blanked them, forging past, head down. He could have put his mask back up in order to spare himself this awkwardness, but he didn't want to be hampered in any way. He needed his eyesight unconfined - full peripheral vision. Where was she? He scanned every piazza he came to. He began to wonder if she wasn't hiding from him, spooked, perhaps, by the way he had talked to her. Maybe she