So what is?

His reverie was shattered by an extraordinary sight. Trundling into the square, northward from the piazzetta. was the most peculiar vehicle Michael had ever seen. It looked like a medium-sized armored snail on wheels, and it was decked out with a mass of flags. The flags bore what appeared to be abstract designs, but as it got closer they seemed to show flowing waves of water and arcs of light. The people in the square assumed this was some early part of the carnival celebrations and cheered at its approach.

Behind them, Streak’s hand reached into his jacket pocket. As he did so, the gesture was matched by that of two men standing, cloaked and masked, just outside Florian’s, the cafe almost directly opposite Quadri’s.

The vehicle stopped.

Streak’s silencer kept the sound of the missiles down to an absolute minimum. Behind him, a maid was vigorously using a vacuum cleaner on the cafe floor and carpets. He hoped it would cover the noise.

As the first of the men in cloaks dropped to the ground, the vehicle began to fall apart a few meters from the campanile. Guardsmen were rushing to the area now to see what was happening.

A bullet missed Kristen’s ear by no more than a few centimeters. Serrin heard the sound and flung her to the ground beneath him, looking around wildly for the unknown assailant. Streak nodded his head with satisfaction as the second cloaked man hit the ground. Next to him, a puzzled and obviously terrified middle-aged tourist woman was beginning to develop the first symptoms of what would undoubtedly turn out to be a suitably histrionic hysterical fit.

As the armored snail disintegrated, its metal plates appeared to evaporate as they hit the surface of the piazza.

A young man stood up inside the vanishing wreckage utterly immaculate in black jacket, pants, and cloak with the full gold face-mask of the carnival. A long pony-tail of blond hair hung down his back. He bowed low to the cheering crowd, kissed an utterly bewildered guardsman on both cheeks, and skipped away eastward. Geraint shot after him like a greyhound after a rabbit.

Serrin crafted a barrier spell for himself while Streak’s eyes darted everywhere among the crowd. Around the two men on the ground at Florian’s a knot of people was gathering and guardsmen were rushing to the scene. Michael could do little. Unable to keep up with Geraint because of his bad back, he could only bustle toward Serrin and Kristen.

The snail had completely vanished. The illusion had been allowed to decay.

The youth sped like the blazes, laughing as he went. Geraint knew he couldn’t catch him, and was about to abandon his forlorn pursuit as his quarry headed for the bridge over the Rio del Palazzo. Then he turned suddenly and called out to his panting pursuer.

“My master sends his regards and trusts he will continue to enjoy the game,” the stranger called out cheerfully and then vanished across the bridge into the labyrinth of streets beyond. There was nothing for Geraint to do but return to the piazza.

Streak, staying put, was dismayed to see that the fallen assassins were being taken inside the cafe from which they’d appeared.

They were going to be taken away by friends and there wasn’t much he could do about it. The crowd of people in the way were slowing the approaching guardsmen sufficiently that any backup inside the place-and surely they must have some-would get them out in time. If only that damn stunt hadn’t had the police all going the wrong way! What the blazes was that thing?

Still, no one saw the narcoject. Better bet than the Predator here. You could always plead self-defense with a non-lethal weapon.

Frag it, he told himself maybe I should have used the Predator after all.

Having scanned the square enough times, he risked walking over to Serrin and Kristen, back on their feet now, and Michael.

“You okay?”

“Who the hell-”

“Couple of guys over at Florian’s,” Streak told them. “I dropped them with some dozies. Keep them out of action for a while. Didn’t think I could risk the real thing. I might have been wrong.”

“Owe you one,” Serrin asserted with real feeling. “I don’t understand why my spell lock didn’t pick them up.”

“You got an enemy detector?” Streak had worked with combat mages long enough to know the basics. Serrin nodded.

“Then they weren’t after you, was they? They was trying to whack Kristen,” Streak said cheerfully.

“Why?” Serrin was appalled.

“Don’t ask me, I’m just the guy who stopped her getting filled with lead,” Streak said. “Oh, and what was that thing that just rolled into the square and where the frag is it now?”

“It must have been an illusion,” Serrin said. “I didn’t have time to observe it closely. Not with being shot at, hitting the dirt, that sort of thing, you know?”

“Next time,” Geraint said as he returned to join the conversation, “shoot at that little blond bastard. Know what he said to me?” Without waiting for the obvious reply, he told them.

“The game?”

“I knew it was something like this,” Michael mused. “We have to learn to play his game somehow.”

“That thing,” Serrin said slowly, as if searching through his memory as he spoke, that tank thing, it reminds me of something. I didn’t get long to look at it, but I think it was like one of Leonardo’s designs. I think I saw something like that in the book I’ve got.”

“Part of this game?” Geraint wondered.

“So what’s next?”

“What’s next, guys and gals, is that we ought to get indoors in case there are any more prats in cloaks wanting to take a pop at us. We’ve got to consider our options, and make some plans instead of falling around out here,” Streak said. “Unless you’d like to be shot at again, that is.”

“Let’s get inside,” Serrin said at once. “And let’s consider how the frag we play this game. Some game, if my wife’s getting shot at.”

“I think,” Streak said, “that those guys were playing one of a very different kind. The kind where there’s guaranteed to be tears before bedtime.”

25

They decided not to move elsewhere in the city. Though their whereabouts were obviously known, it would be easy enough to trace them if they moved. Michael also pointed out that Claudio was someone they could trust, and he could alert them if strangers came snooping or asking about them. Serrin decided to conduct some rituals to protect them against magical assault. They didn’t know who’d attacked them that morning, but the Jesuit fundamentalists were the most obvious possibility and their mages would hardly be weaklings.

“Now we’ve got to make an active move. Do something to show our man we’re playing his game,” Michael said.

“Like what?” Streak asked. “This is your kind of thing, Michael matey. I just shoot people.”

“Speaking of shooting people” Geraint said with a wince, “when do Juan and Xavier get here?”

“Any time now,” Streak said. “I was right, eh? We’re going to need ‘em.”

“Looks like it.”

Before Michael could return to his deliberations, there was a knock on the door. Streak had his Predator in his hand at once, but Michael waved him away.

“For God’s sake, no assassin is going to knock, Streak.”

“Don’t you sodding believe it,” the elf said, but sat down and reluctantly picked up a magazine and kept the gun leveled behind it as he pretended to be reading. To his disgust, the magazine seemed to be full of lavish illustrations of Italian gardens. Streak had many interests, but gardening was definitely not one of them. If the magazine didn’t have guns, military hardware, or members of the opposite gender in states of undress, he was definitely not interested.

Lucrezia popped her head around the door, her mane of flaming curls as prodigious as ever.

“I come to see about your costumes, Mister Michael,” she said. “And there is a card for you.”