The Wolf Esprit: Lykanos Chronicles 3

We arrived at the Palazzo Adelchi just after midnight, its facade lit by a dozen torches. A crowd of guests was already waiting in line to be received.

Just outside the doors, Duccio and I assisted each other with our masks. Though I’d left behind Guccia’s selection in her suite at the opera house, she’d picked it from among dozens of masks stored in the Palazzo Palatino. I chose a similar Volto to take its place. The color of bleached bone, the mask was tight on my face with openings only at the eyes and nose. It covered all else, including my chin.

“Larva,” Duccio called me. “It makes you look like a ghost.”

He wore an elegant Colombino, a half mask encrusted with shimmering black beadwork. The whole was so delicate it hardly concealed his identity. In his flared crimson silk jacket, I thought he looked like the Devil come to seduce some poor fool for his soul.

The line moved at a snail’s pace. When we arrived at the end, Guccia extended her right hand to me like I was a stranger, though she sensed who I was.

“It’s lovely to see you,” she said with the slightest chill. “Thank you for coming.”

She wore a more florid style of Colombina than Duccio’s, but it sparkled with the same black jeweled beadwork. Instead of a ribbon, she held the mask to her face, using a lengthy gold baton in her left hand.

“It’s my pleasure,” I answered, sending her a silent apology. Forgive me.

“Enjoy yourself,” she replied. “Patrizio Palatino, my father welcomes you again into his house.”

“The honor is mine,” he smiled and bent low to kiss her hand.

The moment of civility finished when Guccia turned her gaze onto the next guests to be welcomed behind us.

“Don’t worry, you’ll get your chance to beg,” Duccio whispered in my ear. “For now, do as she bid you and enjoy yourself.”

Music played from several rooms, their echoes fighting for dominance as we moved through the house. The palazzo was uncomfortable with so many people attending, and dancing forced us to keep to the perimeter of each space to avoid a collision. The heat of so many bodies in every room we passed through caused my mask to feel claustrophobic. When a servant offered us a glass of sparkling white wine, I was grateful for the opportunity to lift my Volto off my face to take a sip.

“Are there many here tonight?” My eyes toured the main salon. “I can’t sense them well in this crowd.”

“Patrizio Zorzi!” Duccio called to a man who’d had his back to us. “It is good to see you here tonight.”

The lanky man turned almost reluctantly to acknowledge Duccio, who pressed forward through a throng of close-knit guests. He wore a Bauta mask, which Guccia had shaken her head at this morning. People wore it to hide their identity in public, she insisted, and it was an inappropriate style for a ball. It was a stark white like the Volto she’d selected for me. But instead of molding to the face, the jaw jutted out far from the mouth to afford the wearer greater room to breathe and be heard in conversation. The eyes were sculpted into a scowl as if to intimidate the room.

Several people here wore one. Coupled with the heavy black Tabaro that covered the head and neck, it was impossible to be sure the man was who Duccio accused him of being.

Duccio placed his hand on the man’s arm with familial affection, but the effect was anything but jovial.

“Patrizio Palatino,” Zorzi said without the slightest passion, his mask hiding any part of his face to prove his expression contrary.

“Won’t you allow me to introduce you to my nephew, the Cavalieri Roussade?”

The man’s eyes moved to me, but he gave me no other acknowledgment. From Zorzi’s mind, I realized he was lycan. An indescribable friction surrounded him, but he was otherwise closed.

“Salve, Agnello,” Duccio lowered his voice. “We’re not at court tonight, and my nephew is but a young pup. Surely, you won’t be sour with me in front of a boy.”

I sensed a flash of anger from Zorzi when Duccio dared to use the man’s first name. He appraised me again, then returned his glare to Duccio.

“Take your hands from me, Patrizio,” he hissed, “or I shall forget whose roof I stand under.”

Duccio’s mind filled with bemusement, but his mouth only smirked.

More than a few people looked in our direction. I presumed they belonged to other lycan who could hear the anger in the man’s thoughts.

After a beat, Duccio took his hand from Zorzi’s shoulder, and in time, the man turned to walk away.

“What did you do?” I whispered.

“I’m afraid I ruined his dreams when we arrived in town.”

Duccio didn’t expand, but I guessed his meaning. Welcoming foreigners must’ve displeased some Venetians, especially among her lycan class. Duccio no doubt supplanted the political ambitions of many when Prince Adelchi took a foreign son at a moment’s notice.

“Where will the players perform?” I asked, looking to break from the eyes of those strangers who still observed us.

“The music salon is this way,” he answered, leading me to the palazzo’s far end.

More than a simple drawing room, the Adelchi music salon was a proper theater. It bore an elaborate raised ceiling of delicate frescos depicting the heavens at twilight. Dozens of chairs sat on an elevated half-ring that extended from a small stage. At the far end of the ring was a wide platform, curtained with elaborate drapery that I expected was for the Prince and his family. The platform and ring surrounded six rows of benches on the floor, each with long, plush red velvet cushions.

The theater was only half full, but I was determined to stake a proper claim. Despite my ordeal earlier tonight, the Teatro Sant’Angelo had provided one vital lesson.

“I want to sit down by the stage in the front row,” I told Duccio.

“They will expect us to sit here,” he answered, gesturing to the family box at the back of the elevated ring.

“I won’t be able to hear anything from there,” I insisted. “Look at them. Everyone is half drunk. This crowd will be louder here than they were at the opera. Stay if you will, but I’m not missing everything again.”

I pushed through the throngs of people to make my way down to sit on the front bench, where I realized how I was alone in my determination. Looking back only once, I confirmed Duccio would not be joining me.

At my feet, a small wall separated me from an empty crescent where the orchestra might sit just a couple of feet below the stage. They filled the back of the stage with two rows of chairs, and I presumed the players would sit there to face the audience.

Ten minutes passed, and I questioned the timing of my decision. But just as I decided to take a walk, a man sat beside me on the bench. His arrival preceded a distinctive lowering and rise in the room’s volume. To my shock, I looked to find Prince Adelchi’s kind smile beside me. He sat unmasked in his scarlet Doge’s robe.

“Padrino,” I whispered, and I lifted my mask so that it sat on my head like a hat. I reached to take his hand to my lips and kissed it.

For a moment, I froze to realize I’d addressed him with too much familiarity, but then an expression of warmth filled his eyes.

“Whatever are you doing up here by yourself, son?”

“I had trouble at the opera tonight, sir,” I confided. “The people wouldn’t be silent for the performers. Most sat and babbled or chewed like cows. The man beside me wouldn’t stop talking about trade routes and the qualities of olives. I heard practically nothing of the opera. I saw even less from behind the Princess and her wig.”

Adelchi stared at me with confusion, then bellowed with amusement.

“That’s not a sentiment I would expect from a young man,” he said. “Your heart is for music, then?”

“Music is my very soul!” I protested. “I played with my family in the streets long before I could read the notes on a page.”

“In the streets?”

“Before I came of age, sir. My family toured the French countryside, performing in the towns. La troupe du mystère de l’amour. I would first sing with my father and uncle, then play instruments as I learned them to accompany the other performers.”

“What instruments do you play, then?”

“LIST THE INSTRUMENTS.

“So many? That’s quite admirable in one so young. And your favorite among them?”

“The viol, sir.”

“I would’ve thought the drum might appeal to you more.”

“I love them all, sir. But the sound of the strings is the closest thing to a human voice. I hear the anguished moans of suffering and the light peels of joy in them. They carry on the many phrases of a full conversation—all of it bathed in the composer’s emotions. Nothing is finer.”

“But you must play for me,” Adelchi said with all sincerity.

“Here?” I asked, bewildered by the idea.

“No, I wouldn’t dare to impose on you tonight. You’ve come as my guest. But some other night, you must invite me to your home so that I may hear these human outcries you describe.”

“It would be my honor, sir.”

“And what they’re playing for us tonight, the music of Vivaldi—you approve?”

“Most definitely, sir. His works are my favorite.”

“Are they, really? I see why my daughter has taken such a liking to you. She was, I fear, not as agreeable to my selection of her future husband as I’d hoped. But her iron seems to have softened at finding another music lover in the family.”

In the brief moments of our conversation, I realized people had taken a seat on my other side. Indeed, the salon was full, but the rumble of their murmur somehow lay outside my conversation with the Prince. The flutter of a woman’s fan beside me made me realize we weren’t alone.

Adelchi nodded to a man who’d approached him for instruction. The man paused as if he should wait for the Prince to return to the draped landing where he no doubt sat during performances.

“We are ready,” Adelchi assured the man. And in moments, the musicians entered the stage to an ovation of applause from the guests. Following them, the conductor, a stocky man who seemed uncomfortable with being on display, bowed to the Prince before turning his back on the room. Last, the contralto who’d played Griselda that evening emerged to fanfare from the room. I had missed all but a few phrases of her performance that night, and my heart lept at the second chance fate had brought me.

In a moment, the conductor threw his baton into the first frenzied notes of Agitata da du venti, and I exhaled to realize I’d hear its intricate marvel sung at last. But then again, I felt pangs of agitation as the surrounding people continued to ramble. I looked to my right to glare in horror at the fanning lady, who didn’t so much as try to whisper to her husband.

Her voice stopped before the contralto made it to the end of her first phrase. The players lasted only a moment longer before their instruments fell out of alignment. The conductor raised his hand for them to stop and glared at the singer in confusion before recognizing what had stopped her.

To my left, Prince Adelchi had risen to his feet and lifted his hand for silence from the room. He glared back at his guests with a tinge of impatience in his eyes.

“We would hear the music,” he said just loudly enough that the silenced throng grew quieter out of respect.

When satisfied the room had understood him, he sat and gave a nod to the conductor, who bowed his respect to the Prince. To his right, the contralta gave Adelchi a deep bow of gratitude before returning her eyes to the conductor to signal she was ready.

Again, the aria’s frenzied notes erupted from the players. To their music, the contralta’s throat released the rapid arsenal of a hundred modulated notes, each somehow refined to perfection. All this came without the slightest detraction, and I heard every nuance of the paying.

Adelchi took my hand in his with a silent move, and I squeezed it with gratitude.