'All right.' Bravo smiled easily as he took his chair, lounging slightly forward. He changed the tone of his voice. 'Would you like a cup? There's plenty left.'
'Thank you, no.'
But the tension had gone out of Anzolo's body, which was Bravo's objective. He swung another chair around, leaning on it with his forearms. It seemed darker in the room now, the golden discs thrown off by the candlelight somehow smaller and dimmer. And then one candle guttered and went out, and it was darker still.
'Anzolo-you don't hear that name much.'
'Oh, but you do in Venice, signore, it's our dialect.'
'Really? What is the Italian equivalent?'
Anzolo's brow wrinkled in thought, then his face brightened. 'Ah, yes, Angelo.'
Bravo threw the chair sideways so quickly and so hard that Anzolo was taken completely by surprise. It struck him in the face, and he fell in a kind of swoon. Blood was spattered in a fanlike arc across the slats of the chair back.
Bravo was up and on him in an instant, but Anzolo was only lying there, regaining his equilibrium, and when he felt Bravo grip him, he jackknifed his torso. His knee went straight into Bravo's solar plexus, and Bravo doubled over as all the air was driven out of him.
Anzolo drove a fist into Bravo's side. 'Don't fight me,' he said.
Ignoring him, Bravo lashed out, connecting with Anzolo's rib cage, but he had no leverage, and Anzolo brought his weight to bear.
'I warned you.'
He jammed his forearm against Bravo's throat.
IN a defensive half crouch, Anthony Rule crept through the monastery corridors. He had encountered no one and nothing, which was both puzzling and somewhat alarming. He had expected to come across at least a couple of Guardians.
Up ahead he saw a door on his left that was partially open. Approaching it with caution, he contrived to peer inside. A man was hunched over a table on which several thick books were open. He was paging through one. Then he turned to search through another stack of volumes, and Rule caught a glimpse of the side of his face. It was Paolo Zorzi. The muscles of Zorzi's broad back and shoulders bunched and rippled as he stretched and torqued his torso, as if he were a lion or panther. Rule thought about Zorzi's deep and abiding hostility toward him and knew it stemmed from his friendship with Dexter. The nature of jealousy, he considered, momentarily caught by the thought, was to be like a serpent, slithering this way and that through the thicket of other, more obvious emotions. But it colored everything, even the intentions of the most clear-eyed people.
Rule smiled, his lips a thin, cruel line. This was all too easy-no Guardians and now Zorzi presenting himself through a partially open door, his back turned, a perfect target. Rule could smell a trap even from this distance, and so he moved on, past the bait meant to tempt him. He wanted Zorzi, of course, but he had come for Bravo, and he wasn't going to leave without him. He held no illusions as to how dangerous it was for Bravo to be with Zorzi. It was Zorzi, he suspected, who had tried to undermine his relationship with Dexter Shaw, and now that Zorzi had Bravo he imagined the same thing happening all over again-Zorzi would try to poison Bravo against him.
The room Zorzi was in was windowless, a place where logic said they would be holding Bravo. Also, he could see that the texts were on ciphers and decoding-Bravo would be working on the cipher Dexter had left for him here in Venice. Chances were, then, that Bravo was inside the room, somewhere where Rule couldn't see him. In any case, Rule knew that he couldn't afford to ignore the possibility. That meant he needed to gain entrance to the room by means other than the invitingly open door.
He stole past and soon came to a left-hand branch that, he calculated, would bring him along the right- facing wall of the loom. Risking a peek around the corner, he saw a Guardian standing beside a closed door that could only lead into the room.
Pulling the hood of his appropriated robe up over his head, he walked with the sword-cane hidden behind him and his head down directly toward the Guardian. The man, a young, slender Venetian with a face still in the process of maturing, said, 'You're ten minutes early, but I could use the relief.'
Rule threw a punch to his solar plexus and then, as the Guardian doubled over, chopped down on the exposed back of his neck with the edge of his hand. Rule caught the Guardian as he slumped into unconsciousness and dragged him further down the hallway into a corner, where he piled him into the shadows.
Returning to the closed door, he put his ear to it. He could hear a voice he recognized as Zorzi's and someone else replying, but the second voice was too far away for him to be certain it was Bravo's.
He breathed deeply and slowly, his fingers tightened on the hilt of the sword-cane. His other hand gripped the doorknob, turning it slowly to the left. He was opening the door slowly and silently when he felt a tiny flicker of pain in the side of his neck. He started, turning instinctively, his senses already swimming as if he were drunk, and saw a face leering at him like a Carnevale mask.
Struggling through the chemical fog of the drug, he understood what had happened, and he pulled out the tiny dart that had embedded itself in his neck.
'Too late.' The leering face laughed.
A moment later, the world disappeared from view, and Rule toppled over.
Bravo's eyes were bulging and there was a burning in his lungs. He knew if he didn't get oxygen soon he'd lose what was left of the strength in his limbs. Once that happened, he would be helpless. He couldn't let that happen.
In his mind's eye, he saw his father, and he a boy of eleven, learning how to use his body, to stretch it past its assumed natural limits.
'Relax, Bravo,' his father said. 'When you try too hard, your body will resist you. Mind and body need to work together, like a team.'
Instead of continuing to fight Anzolo, Bravo let his limbs go limp. He allowed his eyelids to flicker, his breathing became erratic. His reward was the grin on Anzolo's face as he bent forward to apply more pressure. That was when Bravo slammed his forehead into the bridge of Anzolo's nose. A fountain of blood gushed out, and Anzolo reared back.
Bravo twisted from his hips and Anzolo lost his balance. Bravo rose up and brought the full force of his fists against the other's ear. Anzolo went down and Bravo was on him.
'Where is Zorzi?' He slammed the back of Anzolo's head against the stone floor. 'Tell me where he went!'
Anzolo told him.
Bravo released him and began to turn away. Anzolo grabbed at him in desperation, trying to gouge out his eye, but Bravo used the Guardian's own momentum against him, swinging his body around in a shallow arc, using the entire force of it behind his cocked elbow. He felt the clavicle shatter, and then the Guardian collapsed onto the refectory floor.
In an instant, Bravo was up and sprinting out the door.
'The neurotoxin will only last two or three minutes,' Alvise said.
'That will be sufficient,' Paolo Zorzi said as he stared into Anthony Rule's slack face. Rule regarded him with the peculiar wide-eyed stare of the newly paralyzed.
He and Alvise had carried Rule into the room, setting him down on a chair to whose legs they had lashed his ankles. His hands were tied behind his back.
Alvise already had a knife out, its gleaming point pressed against the hollow at Rule's throat.
'How d'you like the feel of this, Rule?' he said. 'How d'you think it's going to feel when I push the blade in inch by agonizing inch.'
'Careful,' Zorzi said mildly, as if he did not mean what he said.
'I want him to pay for each and every sin he has committed.'
'I'm afraid that would take several lifetimes.' Zorzi took a handful of Rule's hair. 'Wouldn't it, Anthony?'
'You were asked a question.' Alvise dug the point of the blade in, turning it so that a drop of deep-red blood was held on the forged stainless steel. 'Rude of you not to answer.'
