Free Masks by Karen Chance Page B

him.
    And then an elongated nose, bigger than a strong man’s arm swept down before he could move—
    And began to delicately snuffle around his face.
    Mircea froze, unsure what to do with no weapons and with children so close—too close. In the end, he just stood there, while that strange proboscis mushed him in the face and messed about in his hair and sniffed at his clothes. As if finding him as odd as he did it.
    And then it was gone, the great body wading slowly into the sea of vampires, who moved along with it, so quickly and so much in unison that it looked like the whole street was moving.
    And then it was. First the street urchins broke away from the Watch, to run after the fascinating creature, followed quickly by the regular people of Venice. There had been no announcement, and relatively little noise, all things considered. But word had traveled nonetheless, in that strange, uncanny way that it did in cities.
    And suddenly, in the middle of the night, people were everywhere.
    Some were still in their nightclothes, or wrapped in blankets, or putting on enough to be respectable as they emerged from houses on all sides. Others were leaning out of windows and edging onto rooftops, a few dropping to the ground and jostling to find room in what was, after all, a narrow street bordering a canal. Members of the Watch were quickly discovering that humans were not so easily controlled, after all, not when what must have seemed like magic was walking among them.
    It felt a bit like that to Mircea, too, who couldn’t for the life of him imagine where the great beast had come from.
    “Carthage?” Jerome said, when he voiced the question aloud.
    “But how did it get
here?
Horses aren’t even allowed in the city!”
    It was true, except for the occasional joust in San Marco Square. And for good reason. The streets of Venice, where they existed at all, were narrow and slippery and fronted canals. That’s why the gondolas were so prevalent—there was no simply no room to ride horses. Which would have likely ended up in the water along with their owners had anyone tried it.
    “By boat?” Jerome guessed. “They float cows over for the abattoirs that way.”
    “That,” Mircea said, flinging out an arm, “is not a cow!”
    “Can’t ride a cow,” Jerome agreed, about the time Mircea noticed that the strange creature did, in fact, have a rider.
    He hadn’t seen him before because of the roof of the portico, and because he was frankly not nearly as interesting as his conveyance. Or as his seat, for that matter, which was a covered, gilded creation perched on top of the creature’s back, like a cabin on a ship. It mostly obscured the man inside, except for a skinny, nut-brown arm that emereged at regular intervals, to throw something at the now cheering crowd.
    Some of it landed at Mircea’s feet.
    He picked it up.
    Candy.
    Well, that explained the children, he thought blankly.
    “What is
that
?” Paulo demanded, snatching it away from him. And then staring at it blankly.
    “Hey, nougat.” Jerome swiped a couple pieces from off the bricks before the local urchins could. “We could have saved money and just waited around.”
    “What the—what the hell does he think he’s
doing
?” Paulo demanded.
    “Tossing out candy,” Jerome said, before getting cuffed on the back of the head. His handsome eight-sided hat fell off. He picked it up, looked at it, and promptly began filling it with free candy.
    “Who is he?” Mircea asked, trying to get a glimpse despite the cabin’s deep shadow. But the most he saw was a strange shaped head, a flash of sumptuous robes and the wink of countless jeweled rings. And then the great mount turned its rear to them, and he lost even that much of a view.
    “The consul,” Paulo said darkly. “Who else?”
    “
That’s
the consul?”
    “Didn’t you see him at the house?”
    “I . . . couldn’t fit on the roof,” Mircea said, as a new clatter sounded on the bridge.
    It