The Wolf Esprit: Lykanos Chronicles 3

A messenger arrived with word from Guccia the following afternoon, stating she would arrive at eleven o’clock that evening. I was to be prepared to escort her, though it didn’t say where we would go or how I must dress. Nor did it mention anything about Duccio, who shrugged at my inquiry.

For a moment, I worried she might have heard word of Agostino, though the young boy had moved into the house with little fanfare. I’d walked him to the majordomo’s office myself to introduce them. I said he had lost his father in a terrible accident, and I wished for the boy to be given a bed and an occupation. He could assist Signora Cavazza in the kitchens if he were too short for a valet’s uniform.

“I can make bread,” Agostino said when he saw the impatient scowl on Signore Vittele’s brow.

“It’s important that we assist him, Vittele,” I pleaded, though my tone wasn’t any better received.

“I must first discuss this with my master,” the majordomo insisted.

But by the time he returned, Agostino had already placed Signora Cavazza under his spell, and he was fast at work kneading sweetbreads for that night’s dinner. Only Duccio’s agitated look upon arriving in the kitchens with Signore Vitelle stifled my smirk.

Upstairs, we debated my bringing the boy to the house, a move Duccio was against, but one he struggled to fight.

“My makers told me I must do everything I can to help those in need,” I insisted. “I don’t understand your attitude. Were they not also your family? You’d have me deliver the boy to an orphanage?”

I’d seen Duccio send money to the family who’d assisted us before entering Calpabio. But since then, we hadn’t come in contact with anyone requiring our help. Or rather, we keep to ourselves in Rome, hiding in plain sight. But in Venice, Duccio had been clear they would not meet such behavior with favor, if tolerate it at all.

“What will you do, Esprit, bring them all here?” Duccio’s voice was abrupt, but I sensed his internal division on the right course of action.

“If I must,” I answered.

Duccio only shook his head in response, and we hadn’t discussed the matter further. Still, I toyed with the notion he might have sent for Guccia to press his point. But all my concerns vanished when she arrived late that night to collect me.

She entered without a fuss, her dress covered in a long cape of black wool.

“Fetch the cavalieri’s hooded cape, Vittele,” she said upon finding me dressed for a late supper with my carnival mask in hand.

“Where are we headed, then?”

You will not need that, Guccia answered, her eyes on my mask. She waited for a footman to retrieve the garment on the majordomo’s command.

When I was dressed properly, she bid me to take up my hood and did the same.

Stepping out of Palazzo Palatino, we found several men waiting for us in the street, including Guccia’s two guards, who carried torches.

I gave them only a fleeting glance as Guccia pressed along the street away from the Grand Canal. I wondered about our destination, but I sensed the other men were lycan, and I kept my mind quiet as we followed her lead.

We’d not walked thirty feet when she turned toward the front steps of the Church of Saint Salvador, which stood across a street just behind the palazzo. I’d passed by it dozens of times but never entered. We’d always attended Sunday mass at Saint Mark’s Basilica, the grandest house in the city. But tonight, we entered the less grand structure in the cover of night.

Guccia pulled a key from her pocket to open the massive doors, and in moments, we slipped into almost total darkness. A few candles lit the altar in the distance, but the rest of the massive church remained dark. A slight flickering from the street torches outside illuminated the few clerestory windows near the ceiling. But, the room was still so dark that I relied more on the sound of Guccia’s footfall on the marble floor than my eyes.

When we arrived at the altar, she stopped and waited for the others to join her in a half circle. But I could think of nothing other than what I beheld in front of us.

At our feet was a naked man crouched over on his knees, arms chained behind his back. Behind him were two wolves flanking a lycan with dark eyes, dressed in a hooded black robe like the rest of us.

My stomach dropped.

I realized who and what he was. The hooded man’s weathered face, so near to anger, bore none of Bishop Toussaint’s calm empathy. He offered none of the fleeting hope I’d felt in Chastain’s dungeon before they assaulted me. I didn’t need his lycan transparency to know what we were about to witness.

“Patrizio Zorzi,” Guccia began, her voice echoing through the hard walls of the darkened church. “I’m here to—

“He doesn’t even have the courage to see to it himself?”

The chained man looked at her with undisguised revulsion. Disheveled sandy blond hair hung in his face, but I could see by his angry bloodshot eyes that they’d beat him.

Zorzi, she’d called him. I recognized the name in a moment of concentration—it was the fiend from the Adelchi opera ball who’d threatened Duccio. The man was one of his patrician colleagues who resented Duccio’s presence. He hadn’t even addressed me when Duccio introduced us.

“It isn’t a matter of courage, Patrizio. My betrothed doesn’t know I am here. It’s my hand you’ve demanded in marriage, is it not?”

Zorzi’s eyes moved to mine with savage anger.

“But you bring his boy?”

“Only to witness our exchange,” Guccia answered, “so there are no questions afterward.”

“This is a matter between men to decide,” Zorzi spat. “His Majesty has already promised me your hand.”

“He promised you the opportunity, but matters have changed. His Majesty has promised my hand to another.”

“Then his words are meaningless! I demand prova di combattimento—trial by combat. Strength will decide if someone may take what is mine. Not a petulant woman’s whim!”

Guccia didn’t answer at first, but approached Zorzi and reached to push his wet, matted hair from his face.

“Strength will decide,” she said without hesitation. “My strength.”

Stepping back from Zorzi, Guccia looked to the hooded man standing beside the wolves.

“Archbishop Alioni, His Majesty the Prince has decided to whom he will marry my hand and his house, as is his right anointed by God. As His Grace and I see it, there’s no need for prova di combattimento. There is no call for such savage and needless barbarism. If this man will not submit to the path, the one our master has chosen for him and us all, then we’ve no choice but to end his house here and now.”

“If your Highness is certain,” the Archbishop answered. He spoke the words as if nothing but simple protocol.

“I am,” Guccia answered.

With a nod from Alioni, the wolves seized Zorzi and raised him to his feet.

“Coward!” Zorzi spat at the archbishop. “Have you no fear of God? Does a prince of the church cower at his earthly betters?”

Without answering, Alioni nodded to the wolves, who took Zorzi by his legs and raised him upside down like a rag doll.

“You miserable dogs! Unhand me!”

Zorzi began to transform with a struggle, his wolf pushing through his flesh. But the more powerful archbishop seemed prepared for Zorzi’s resistance and overtook the change before it could finish, forcing the reversion. From his belt, he unsheathed a golden blade.

Zorzi’s cries upon seeing the instrument howled through the church. “Stop this, damn you! You will not do this to me! It is my right to call that heretic princeling out. You all know this! You defy God’s law for the preference of a woman!”

“Hold him apart,” Archbishop Alioni commanded the wolves, and they stepped back a foot to spread his legs.

He reached for Zorzi’s sack, and I realized with horror that he meant to cut the man open and remove his balls. This is what Guccia meant by ending his house. They would geld him and end any claim he could ever make upon her hand in marriage.

Zorzi cried in fear as the man pulled to tighten the skin of his sack.

“No! No, damn you!! I’ll kill you! I kill all of you! I’ll kill Adelchi with my bare hands!”

“Hold, Archbishop,” Guccia said without raising her tone.

Alioni looked to her, Zorzi’s balls still in his left hand.

“He has openly threatened His Majesty,” she said. “This man cannot be allowed to live, even as a eunuch.”

With a nod to her, the archbishop released Zorzi’s sack and bent to pull the blade across his neck. Zorzi’s screams ended with wet gurgles as blood flowed down his face. He jerked to fight, but the wolves were far stronger and didn’t release him. After a minute of struggle, Zorzi was dead.

“Thank you all for your service,” Guccia said, her voice lifting through the darkened church. “The Prince will hear of your devotion.”

With a deep nod to Alioni, one that he returned in kind, she led me and the other men back to the church’s front doors.

The whole walk back to the palazzo was a challenge. I grappled not with the carnage, but with Guccia’s coolness. All of them had obeyed her will without the slightest consideration of Zorzi’s pleas. They acted as if there were no question her commands must be obeyed. And for the first time, I grasped the truth of her power.

Even if she were not a princess, the daughter of a mighty ruler, there was no question these people would obey whatever she commanded. And in that realization, the love and respect I bore for her changed forever. My understanding of Guccia expanded in ways my childishness had prevented.

Had my love for her blinded me? Did her gender lead me to misunderstand and under-appreciate her place? Had I been too stupid to see Guccia for who she was?

When she’d visited Pietro in the guest room, her kindness had led me to believe she, too, was a self-avowed vigilante bent on justice for the weak.

I saw now I was a fool.

Guccia was like the others. Archambault, Chastain, Toussaint, and her executioner, Archbishop Alioni. Like all of them, she cared nothing for the weak—or rather, they were not her true purpose.

She cared only for power, and she would kill for it.