Accidental War Mage

We made our way out of Verona without killing anyone or misplacing any personnel, though after I had ushered the pockmarked woman onto the barge and cast off, I discovered we had picked up several stowaways. Given that their presence was not particularly well-concealed, perhaps I should simply refer to them as non-paying passengers. However, even that description may perhaps mislead.

It was a party of three, a gentleman named Proteus, his servant, and his servant’s dog, the last being named “Granso” for reasons that escaped me.1 They had been in the process of negotiating (by which I mean demanding) passage to Milan when I had interrupted matters by asking if all supplies had been loaded. Receiving an affirmative reply, I had not waited to order us to cast off. While sneaking aboard a barge full of potentially violent mercenaries to demand unpaid favors may seem an act of dubious wisdom, the fact that Milan lay to the west and our direction of travel was to the east of Verona should remove any doubts on the subject of the wisdom of the gentleman and his servant. As for the third member of their party, I will say simply that Yuri was glad for the presence of a canine playmate and was more tolerant of fleas than I would have been.

When morning arrived, Proteus asked me impatiently how much longer it would be until we reached Milan. During the resulting conversation, he asked for a refund of the price of his passage. As he had offered no payment in the first place, I was happy to oblige his demand, putting him and his servant ashore in the countryside without a penny paid. His servant’s dog, Granso, showed little interest in following them, preferring Yuri’s company; I had to give Proteus’s distraught servant several pieces of venison jerky in order to entice Granso into departing with his humans.

I considered this a poor sign and was glad to be rid of such an ill-favored duo. Even General Ognyan Spitignov could command the loyalty of his own dogs, in spite of his halitosis and his tenuous grip on reality. (Granted, dogs are fond of many scents that humans are not, including fresh manure and old carrion; both of those scents being reminiscent of his breath, perhaps dogs enjoyed his company because of his breath rather than in spite of it.)

The great Pados river sprawls into a swamp at its end, and that swamp spreads north all the way to the Adige’s mouth and the vast tidal lagoon that protects the city of Venice proper against invasion. We moored the barge on a piece of land that seemed solid and then spent several hours waving at passing fishing boats before a fisherman felt bold enough to approach; I pressed a sum of silver into his hands, telling him we would be ready customers for fish for a few days and that a small number of us would want passage to Venice during a high tide in the near future.

My first choice for a companion was our surgeon; as his native tongue was Venetian, I thought him likely familiar with Venice. It turned out that while the surgeon was indeed familiar with Venice, he was unwilling to show his face. Banneret Teushpa volunteered to assist with this problem, claiming he could render the surgeon unrecognizable even to the surgeon’s own mother. I felt uneasy about this claim but thought that perhaps the man who pretended to be an illusionist might have a talent for the art of disguise.

The Cimmerian rider drew a few quick light lines with the ochre stick, muttering under his breath. Then he made a heavy stroke across each eyebrow, put the ochre away, and gestured grandly. Off to my left, Ragnar muttered approvingly.

The surgeon held his breath nervously, patting his face. Other than his eyebrows having the color of rust, he looked much the same.

“You won’t feel any difference that way, but look,” the Cimmerian said, pulling a small silver signaling mirror out of his pocket and handing it to the surgeon.

The surgeon stared into the mirror, inspecting his slightly altered eyebrows. I suppose the man was too polite to complain about the inadequacy of the disguise, for he slowly nodded, handing the mirror back to the junior officer. “Are you sure it will hold?” he asked, nervously. “There are wizards in Venice.”

Banneret Teushpa grinned confidently. “A skilled illusionist may be able to dispel it if they know it’s an illusion, but the whole point is that they won’t know it is an illusion at all. I especially like using ugly faces like that.”

The surgeon rubbed at his chin. “Warts can be a bit repulsive,” he said. “I’d rather be just unmemorable.”

“Fine,” the well-born Cimmerian said, rubbing out one line and drawing in two more, muttering under his breath. “A little less ugly, but there you have it. That satisfy your vanity, dottore?”

“I suppose it does,” the surgeon said, eyeing himself again in the mirror. “Now I look old, but at least nobody will think I’m poxed or hexed, and that sort of thing matters here. You will come with me?”

With some trepidation, I added the self-proclaimed illusionist to the list. Without Quentin, I felt I needed Georg at my side to help navigate the treacherous waters of etiquette. Additionally, Quentin’s presence as a dashing handsome military officer had proven to be effective at drawing and holding the attention of nobles when it was desirable. Fyodor was preoccupied with helping to care for an infant, Felix looked too old and grizzled (especially considering his peg leg), and that logically left Ragnar.

I did not trust Katya in social situations but I did trust Felix to competently manage the main bulk of Raven’s Battalion; thus, I decided to bring the infantry captain along as the second-in-command of our expedition to Venice proper. The bulk of our company, waiting in the swamp, would be short on officers as a consequence.

We glided into the city on quiet oars over dark waters. As we approached closely, the surgeon started to give the fisherman detailed directions, guiding us to a grand-looking house that had seen better days. A coded knock on the water door and an introduction of himself as a “friend of Maestro Zilioli” later and he was allowed inside, accompanied by one Swedish lieutenant, one Cimmerian banneret, and the pockmarked woman, who all pronounced themselves also friends of Maestro Zilioli.

As I did not pronounce myself such, I and the others were given directions to more humble lodgings that cost coin. I wasn’t quite sure who Maestro Zilioli was until later when Georg told me it was the surgeon; I didn’t recall ever hearing his name and his signature on his contract had been completely illegible.

In the morning, Banneret Teushpa, wearing Venetian clothing, came by to give me his report: Our employer had secured an invitation to a masquerade, where she would be able to make contact with Venice’s upper crust and negotiate arrangements. Exactly what kind of arrangements she sought to make were unclear to the Cimmerian, who told me that I was expected to escort her on the trip to the masquerade in fully polished armor, with my new trident being the perfect prop for me to dress as a masked Neptune.

The Cimmerian hastened to tell me that he would be happy to improve upon my costume, handing me a plain leather mask covered in scribbled writing.

“This is what our employer wants me to wear?” I asked. It looked plain; if I polished my new armor, it would look like I was making a mockery out of the idea of wearing a costume, a heavily armed bodyguard who had offered the thinnest pretense of being part of a masquerade.

“I believe it will suffice,” the Cimmerian said evasively. “You should hire a gondolier to take yourself to the house we are staying at – she will expect you at least fifteen minutes before sunset. Wear a heavy dark cloak over your cerulean one on the way over, so as not to attract attention.”

I put the infantry captain in charge of the men while Georg assisted me by helping polish my armor, clean my cerulean cloak, and inform me of everything she knew about Venetian etiquette. This was not much, and most of it sounded like it came third or fourth hand through rumors, but it was better than nothing. She tried to convince me that the Venetians elect a principal leader through a complicated series of elections involving the drawing of lots and several rounds of voting; it sounded like propaganda made up in the Gothic Empire to make fun of the Venetians’ government, and I told her as much.

I assumed the reality was probably something like the Roman Republic, which the Venetians clearly admired. In the meantime, the captain let her men explore the city by twos and threes, letting them have liberty but giving them strict instructions to keep an eye out for each other. By the time I was ready to set out, all of the men had by turns gone to the center city and taken a trip down a lane named “The Street of Comedy,” finding near there a bridge with friendly locals posted to greet strangers.

Each pair or trio returned from that particular tour in good humor, so I concluded Venice had good street theater; it was a pity I was stuck inside polishing armor. Georg helped me hail a gondola, and we rode in style as anonymous master and neatly dressed servant. When we arrived, there was another gondola waiting.

Ragnar opened the water door at my knock; he was wearing a rather more elaborate mask that included a great red curly beard. The woman next to him was a stranger with long blonde hair who held a strange mask, a featureless black oval with no straps. It did not look to be held on by glue, either; rudely, she didn’t introduce herself before engulfing herself in a heavy concealing cloak, though I would later learn her name was Bianca.

The pockmarked woman was wearing a more elaborate getup; I think it was meant to evoke Venus, a more sincerely divine counterpart to my mockingly simple military “Neptune” costume. Her mask looked to have been modeled after the face of Princess Anna with added gilding and feathers, though her muddy brown eyes peering through the eyeholes gave lie to the illusion of similarity to the princess.

For reasons related to the balance of weight, Georg went to the other gondolier with Ragnar and Bianca, who only slipped her dark mask off into her sleeve after her face was thoroughly covered with a hood. She gave both gondoliers directions in fluid Venetian and asked Ragnar to sit down in halting Gothic; then we were off to the masquerade, taking a circuitous route that circled past some buildings three times. Our heavy anonymous cloaks attracted some glances but no bullets or arrows. We were far from the only suspicious figures passing through the canals of the city of masks; Venice seemed to take notice of neither a Gothic thaumaturge’s daughter nor a Ruthenian mercenary.

At the party, Bianca was far from the only woman with a simple dark mask, mouthless and strapless – not even the only one with long blonde hair, which seemed to be more common in Venice than it had been in Tridentum or Drusipons. The dark mask was one of the more popular styles of mask among women in spite of the fact that it did not allow for verbal conversation; it was kept in place by biting onto a button on the back of the mask, as I learned by watching other women take a break from wearing it.

There was also a mouthless mask worn by many of the men, but that mask was held on by normal straps or hooks, and had a chamber in front of the wearer’s mask so that they could be easily heard – and could easily slip a wine glass underneath. As far as I know, Bianca didn’t sip a single drop of wine during the whole party, though many Venetians asked her questions about us that she answered with a gesture, a bow, or a shrug.

Our entrance had caused a stir; we were clearly foreigners. I barely qualified as masked, Ragnar’s red beard-wig was a unique spectacle, and both of us were armed with deadly “props” – myself with a trident, and Ragnar with his hammer. Ironically, in spite of his mask being a far better depiction of its subject, he was less well recognized than I was; few Venetians were familiar with Norse myths, but they swam in Roman ones.

One particularly drunk Venetian mage asked me shyly if I really was Neptune; most of the other mages that I sensed avoided speaking with me, sensible of the fact that my brilliant trident had genuinely sharp points on it. The pockmarked woman dragged one man after another to meet me, most ranging from middle-aged to old; at least a third of them gave me the feeling that they were magically talented in some way.

She would then go dance with them, relying on music and motion to mask her words – not that I quite understood what she was saying. She did not speak very directly most of the time that I listened, and I was distracted by Bianca’s attempts to tease and confuse Ragnar by trading accessories and outerwear with other black-masked blonde women behind his back. When he did successfully pick her out anyway, the hint of a smile crinkled her eyes behind the mask. I was not surprised when the two of them disappeared from the ballroom, separated by a dozen heartbeats of time and a knowing glance.

The night was late by the time we returned to the house; the pockmarked woman thanked me with a peck on the cheek, telling me that she would send word with news when she had it and hinting indirectly that perhaps the Venetians would want to hire Raven’s Battalion.

1 Editor’s note: “Granso” is the Venetian word for “crab.”