The Mirror Thief(68)
Tomorrow evening, Crivano calls after him.
On his way toward the Street of the Coopers, Trist?o stops to tweak the chin and inspect the décolletage of a fleshy harlot, then again to exchange familiar greetings with three yellow-turbaned Levantine Jews. The fearlessness that enlivens his movements seems born not of self-confidence, but rather absolute certainty regarding the ultimate fate of his soul. Looking on, Crivano considers that certain damnation could engender such boldness as easily as certain salvation. All too clearly he can see the light Trist?o sheds, but as yet he has no way to guess its fuel.
Trist?o vanishes around the corner to the north. The street is in deep shadow, and up and down its length most shops are closed, or closing. Crivano loiters for a moment, watching traffic pass before him until it becomes abstract and depthless in his sight: a chaos of colors, fabrics, gestures, faces. Then a gap opens and he steps into it, walking to the corner, following the Street of the Coopers south.
The apothecary’s shop is a short distance away, in the Campiello Carampane: the latest location on a coded list of rendezvous points that Narkis gave him in Ravenna before they parted ways. Crivano prays that Narkis—or one of his agents; surely he has other agents—noticed the curtain that he left trapped between his sashes as he slept. Henceforth their enterprise must move ahead quickly.
San Aponal’s last daylight bells are dying away as the shop comes into view. Through its lowered shutters Crivano sees the apothecary tidying his boxes and jars and posies, preparing to close up. He stops across the street to wait, examining the tongs and pliers in an ironworker’s bins as the craftsman hauls his wares indoors. There’s no sign of Narkis yet, but of course there wouldn’t be.
A footman from a nearby palace ducks into the apothecary’s shop, and Crivano follows him inside, then browses heaped bouquets and bundled roots as the apothecary fills the footman’s order for vervain. As the servant departs Crivano steps to the counter, leaving his stoppered jar behind, nestled amid the herbs. Good day to you, maestro, he says. Have you any biennial henbane of quality?
Before the words have left his mouth Crivano feels a slight contraction of the air, a dimming of the light, and he knows that Narkis has entered the shop behind him, though he dares not turn to look.
The apothecary is a compact and fastidious Slovene wearing thick spectacles of Flemish glass; he speaks with urgency as he unlocks one of his many strongboxes. This very power, what I give you, he says. Must not use in tight-closed room. Must not open jar, even. You feel sleepy? You see strange sights, like dreaming? You must cover up, you must open window, you must go outside. Very very very caution. Yes?
Of course, maestro, of course, Crivano says.
The apothecary draws a wide glass cylinder from his box, lifts its tight-fitting lid—he and Crivano both grimace at the cloying stench—and reaches under the counter for an empty container. Oh, I brought my own jar, maestro, Crivano says, then tenses in feigned surprise, patting his belt and his purse, looking up and down the counter.
A voice from behind him: Forgive me, dottore, but is this what you seek?
In thirteen years, this is the first time Crivano has heard his own native language issue from Narkis’s tongue. Narkis pronounces the words roughly, with effort, and the sound is eerie and grotesque, like hearing an animal speak.
Crivano turns—allowing himself only the briefest glance at the hairless face, the white turban—and plucks the empty jar from Narkis’s fingers. Yes, he snaps. It is. My thanks to you.
The apothecary shakes a pile of leaves onto his scale, scrapes a few back into the cylinder to reach the proper weight, and quotes Crivano an astronomical price, which he pays without protest. The leaves fall into the jar; the cork is replaced and hammered tight. Very great power, the apothecary says, waggling a finger. Not for play.
With no second glance at Narkis, Crivano quits the shop and hastens toward the White Eagle again, eager to put distance between them. He reckons his report will be read within the hour—the wooden grilles decode more swiftly than they encode—but he can’t begin to guess how long Narkis will take to formulate a response. In the meantime, the thousand surrogate eyes of the Council of Ten watch from every balcony and every window. Somewhere in the lagoon, Verzelin’s gassy corpse strains surfaceward against its decaying fetters.
As he walks, Crivano is attentive to faces, alert for any he recognizes. He’s fairly certain that sbirri followed him during his first days in the city—an understandable precaution, given what the authorities know of him—but he doesn’t think he’s being shadowed any longer. No doubt informants still track his movements, but they won’t have noticed anything suspicious today. Crivano is a physician; physicians frequent apothecaries. Nothing unusual in that.
He’s nearly back to his locanda when a figure catches his eye: a rustic girl of perhaps twenty years, leaning against the cracked stucco of a joiner’s shop. She bends forward to study her black-soled foot, her right leg folded at the knee; a boot sags empty on the pavement below. The girl’s hands are stained brown to their wrists from some recent labor: tanning, dyeing, packing fabrics. Her drooping headscarf reveals cropped russet hair, shaved and partly grown back, as if she’s lately been treated for ringworm, or run afoul of the Inquisitor. She prods the filthy ball of her foot with brown thumbs, heedless of passersby, appearing and disappearing as they cross before her.
Something about her is familiar, though Crivano doesn’t think he’s seen her before. He watches for a moment, then draws closer and watches for a moment more. Well-muscled arms extend from her sleeveless blouse, sun-cooked nearly to match the stains. The angles of her face are boyish and hard. The small toes of her bare foot curl inward, the large one tips back, and Crivano discerns the irregular ellipse of a verruca in the pad beneath it. Does that give you pain? he asks.