Kushiel's Chosen - Jacqueline Carey [152]
Well and so, I thought, staring at the green wavelets. Today I seek audience with a Prince of the Blood to lay forth my suspicions of one of the foremost peers of the realm. Mayhap it is fitting that my mood match this day's deeds.
Isla Vitrari is one of the largest to lie within the shelter of the vast lagoon, and 'tis a pleasant isle. Its harbor has a deep draw, for the merchanters dock here, carrying glassware for trade. Fiorello Pidari cast a line to a couple of lads ashore, jesting with them; clearly, he was known here. The harbormaster gave him a nod and a wave as we disembarked.
We followed our guide along a well-trodden footpath, past studios belching smoke from the glass furnaces and jealously guarded by young apprentices. It was Prince Be-nedicte who suggested the glassworks be moved to the island some fifteen years past, Severio once told me. Before, they had been quartered within La Serenissima proper, and many fires had resulted. Small wonder, I thought, glancing within a doorway open to catch the breeze, seeing the red glow of a furnace within and a brawny Serenissiman craftsman at his trade. He wore a leathern apron and his lips were wrapped round the end of a hollow rod, his cheeks puffed out like a bellows. What he wrought, I could not say.
It was not until we drew near to the Studio Pidari that our guide grew nervous.
"No smoke," he muttered as we approached the low building. "Why isn't the furnace going? The furnace should be going."
We found out soon enough.
Tall and bald as an egg was the man who emerged from the studio, and he wiped his hands absentmindedly on the front of his jerkin, as if accustomed to wearing an apron. "Fiorello," he said sorrowfully, extending his hands to our guide. "Ah, Fiorello!" And catching sight of the rest of us, his expression changed. "You! You people have done enough," he said grimly, pointing back down the trail. "Be gone from here! We want no more of your kind!”
It was enough to stop me in my tracks and drive the grief clean out of my head. Fiorello stared uncomprehendingly and my chevaliers exchanged glances; I stepped forward.
"Master Glassblower," I said gently. "I am Phèdre nó Delaunay de Montrève of Terre d'Ange. I had an appointment to discuss a commission for my Queen. I am sorry if we have come at an ill time."
"Oh, that, aye," he said roughly. "Beg pardon, my lady, only we've had a death in the family. Ruffians, most like, or those damned Vicenti, thinking to prey on the weakest link to get us to give up the formula for our greens! Like as not it's my daughter's folly, to think her lad's mates would take vengeance on him."
Weakest link, daughter's folly, lad's mates. My heart sank. "Your son-in-law?" I asked aloud, knowing already that it was true.
"Attacked on his way home from the harbor tavern." Master Pidari's gaze turned suspicious. "Told her she was mad, wedding one such. What do you know of him?"
"I knew him, signore." It was Ti-Philippe who stepped forward, blue eyes wide and earnest. "Though I was a member of her majesty's navy and he of her guard, we fought together on the same battlefield and drank a toast, afterward, to earth and sea. May we extend our condolences to his widow?"
"Reckon so," he said grudgingly, and turned, shouting into the studio. "Serena!"
Named for the city of her birth, there was no serenity to Phanuel Buonard's widow that day; she emerged white-faced and trembling, and I knew at once I was in the presence of a grief that dwarfed my own. A grief, I thought with horror, of which I was the likely author.
"What do you want?" Serena's voice shook. "Are you guardsmen? What do you want?"
"Guardsmen,