Brave the Tempest (Cassandra Palmer #9) - Karen Chance Page 0,150

spy device.” Mircea smiled slightly. “But someone else had found it, too.”

It took me a moment; it really had been a long day. “Jonathan.”

“Yes. As usual with him, he had seen something in Claude’s work that the man himself had not. You see, the original use for Nodo D’Amore was in battle.”

“In battle?” I didn’t see how that worked.

But Mircea nodded. “When I was a newly turned vampire living in Venice, I encountered a group of kidnapped witches. They were being transported through the port, but their real destination was the war raging in what is now Romania. They were to be used by the consul’s enemies to give magical abilities to vampires in the field—”

“What?” My confusion was growing. “But vampires can’t perform human magic. Once a magic worker is Changed, he loses the ability.”

That was why masters employed mages instead of simply Changing them and adding them to the family that way. They’d have preferred the latter, since a Child would be much more reliable and much longer-lived than a human, whom vampires always viewed with suspicion. Free will meant possible spies or turncoats, but a vampire, especially a newly Changed one, would do whatever he or she was asked without question.

They wouldn’t have a choice.

But Mircea didn’t seem to agree. “Not entirely.”

“What do you mean, not entirely? Because I’ve never heard—”

“It’s not common knowledge,” he agreed. “The first instance I know of was in fifteenth-century Genoa. There was a master in the city in those days, very old and very powerful. And very paranoid.”

“Aren’t they all.”

He smiled slightly. “With reason in his case. He called himself Roberto, but the rumor was that his real name was Riacus, and that he had originally been brought to Rome as a slave after the empire conquered Gaul. In any case, he practically ran Genoa, which was one of the premier seaports in Italy at the time. He was hugely rich—”

“And rich men have enemies.”

“As you say. There were two factions fighting for control of the city, and Roberto’s was winning. His opponents knew that the only way to change that was to assassinate him, but they couldn’t get anywhere near him. His family was huge and his human servants were utterly loyal, not that he had many of them. He had so many masters that he did not need anyone to help guard his sanctum during the day. It seemed impregnable.”

“I’m guessing it wasn’t.”

“Nothing is truly impregnable, as we discovered today,” Mircea said dryly. “But attempt after attempt merely resulted in the would-be assassins meeting a gruesome end. Until a group of Roberto’s enemies sent in a baby vampire with terms for a truce.”

“Wasn’t that considered an insult?” I asked, frowning. “To send a baby vamp—”

“Normally, yes, but Roberto was known for his temper. ‘Kill the messenger’ wasn’t merely a euphemism with him.”

I winced.

“As a result, people had become accustomed to sending messages through . . . expendable sources. Roberto’s people therefore thought nothing of the powerless messenger, but the fact that he was so powerless made them careless. They checked him for weapons, but it never once occurred to them that he might be one himself.”

“But . . . he wasn’t, right?” I said, confused again. “To a human, a baby vamp would be a problem. But to a room full of masters—”

“Ah, but that was the point,” Mircea said, his eyes gleaming. He enjoyed telling a story, and he was good at it. “A strong master vampire would never have been allowed in that room. It was so well protected that even a squad of masters had failed at an assault. But the baby vampire was ushered right in.”

“But he couldn’t do anything!”

“That’s what everyone thought. But some time before this, one of Roberto’s enemies had found himself in a quarrel with a talented mage. He ended up Changing the man in revenge, thinking that it would be amusing to have the once haughty mage running his errands and filling his cup for the next few centuries. But instead, shortly after rising and realizing what had happened to him, the furious former mage threw a spell—with all the magic left in his body from before his death—and incinerated his foe. The same tactic was used by the conspirators to kill Roberto.”

“But the baby vamp couldn’t throw a spell!” I said, wondering what I was missing. “No vamp can! And he wasn’t a mage anymore—”

“But he wasn’t truly a vampire yet, either.” Mircea cocked his head. “Have you ever