Venus Preserved (Secret Books of Venus Series) Read Online Free Page B

crimson and sage.
    Flayd wiped his lips on the napkin. He stared morosely at his empty plate.
    “Worry gives me an appetite. Let’s take soup, pasta. What they’re doing is bringing back from the dead.”
    Again—Picaro—silent.
    Flayd said, exasperated again, “Damn it. I’m not giving you all the truth here. You are involved.”
    “I thought everybody was … according to you.”
    “More than that. Much more. You’re on the list.”
    “List.”
    “PRS.”
    “Which is?”
    “Possible Related Bloodline.”
    Picaro shifted slightly. “Possibly related to what?”
    “The dead I spoke of just now.”
    “And
they
are?”
    “There are two of them,” said Flayd. He waved up a human waiter dressed in Victorian tailcoat. Flayd ordered again several dishes. When the waiter had gone, Flayd said, expressionlessly, “There’s a chance one of these … one of these dead, these
people
they’ve been working on—may have been your ancestor, I mean the guy who was your ancestor here. Both of
them
, you see, lived here, but in different times. In fact, there’s a difference between them of around seventeen centuries.”
    “I know about my ancestors here.”
    “I’ve seen your data. It ain’t who you think. Maybe.”
    The moon was now a big white lantern in the purple dusk. Stars were everywhere else, thick as daisies on a fieldof dusk purple moss. Too many stars. There had never been so many in reality over these Mediterranean shores.
    Soon another hour would strike, and the Primo’s brass horses go trotting around the spire.
    Picaro said, “So tell me.”
    “You mean I have
interested
you?”
    “It’ll pass the time.”
    “Until
what
for Christ’s sakes?”
    “Oh, that would be betraying a family secret.”
    Another bottle of grappa came, and Seccopesca, and a bottle of Geneste, all with separate glasses. They were in for a heavy night, if Picaro stayed. Otherwise Flayd was in for it all by himself.
    Across the square, now prettily lamplit in the mode of the mid 1800s, Picaro could see India and Cora drifting through the Primo Suvio’s carven portico.
    Flayd was like a woman, Picaro thought, strong and dominant and impatient, compensatingly over-tactful, blurting. As with a woman then, Picaro felt himself relent.
    “My ancestral line. They were called Furiano and Eurydiche. His name is a pseudonym only.”
    “Yeah, I know that. I know their names. She had a child. She also had a condition known as Stone Face—Strael’s Palsy, which in many medical circles is still reckoned to be impossible, unless caused by hysteria.”
    Something moved in the back of Picaro’s eyes.
    That was all.
    “Yes,” he said.
    “The condition made giving birth extra dangerous for her. She couldn’t breathe through her mouth, couldn’t get enough air because the frozen face muscles didn’t allow it. This alchemist, Shaachen, did something to her—put her in a trance, used drugs, it’s hazy—and performed a Caesarian section. He got the kid out alive andkept
her
alive. Tied her tubes to stop it happening again, sewed her up good as new.”
    “Yes, I’ve read that.”
    “Only it seems Furian may not have been the child’s father.”
    Picaro nodded. “At this remove, hardly seems crucial.”
    “It
is
crucial. If it wasn’t Furian it was Eurydiche’s previous lover, a man who was a musician and composer—sound familiar to you? He was called Cloudio del Nero. He wrote a song back then that drove the City of Venus crazy with joy. And then he was murdered, very mysteriously, by some weird and wonderful psycho-alchemical method involving a poisoned mask. Nothing to do with Shaachen, however. Del Nero’s body went into the canals at carnival time, in fall.”
    Picaro blinked. “And?”
    “He’s the first they’re bringing back. They wanted to do this with real special people, that was the big idea. And with all the bones we’ve been archaeologically digging up, tossed around, then needing to be sorted out after