Victoria nodded, her heart filling her chest. Was the missing key the one that had been given to Augmentin Gardella and then passed down to Aunt Eustacia? How could they know? Had the others been found?
Then she noticed that the moss and dirt had been cleaned off just above the notch, and that there was a faint carving on it.
Ylito was already looking at the etched lettering, his quick, dark hands passing over it as if it would help him to read it. “That is the name of the key. ‘Deus et homo,’ God and man. And see, there: its symbol—a large circle with rays like the sun, with a smaller circle inside it, resting at the bottom. It will be carved on the key itself, so that the user knows where it fits.”
“And the other two?” Victoria crouched so she could look at the bottom left corner of the triangle, using her nails to scrape away the moss, feeling the grit of moist dirt. “They’re named as well?”
“They are all noted here, in this symbol above the door,” Ylito said, drawing her attention to the large circle above the door. “See, it names the keys—‘tri sunt mirabilia: Deus et homo, mater et virgo, trinus et unus,’ that means ‘three are the wonders: God and man, mother and virgin, the one and three.’ The wonders are represented by the three keys that will give access to this secret laboratory.”
Victoria saw the words carved around the circle, and bent back down to the lower left key slot, scraping the dirt away. She uncovered enough to see that it was the “mater et virgo”—mother and virgin—key, and then sat back on her heels, heedless of the wet grass bleeding into her thighs and rump, her heart thumping hard in her chest. “And this?” she asked, relief beginning to creep through her muscles.
“This is the slot for the ‘mater et virgo’ key,” he said easily, tracing the symbols. “A slender crescent moon to the left, representing the virgin, curving away from and touching the full, ripe circle of the mother.” He looked up. “It’s two parts of a common ancient symbol of the three goddesses: virgin, mother, crone.”
“Aunt Eustacia’s armband is marked with that very same symbol of mother and virgin. They haven’t found her key yet.”
Ylito’s face settled into a smooth mask. “But we see here evidence that someone is looking for it now.”
Four
In Which Victoria Develops an Acute Dislike of Sugarplums
“So how do you find your first Roman Carnivale?” asked Zavier, looking down at Victoria as he was jolted into her side by an overzealous celebrant.
Since it was at least the dozenth time he’d bumped into her, or she into him, Victoria hardly noticed the shove; she was concentrating on keeping her papier-mâché mask in place. “It is like nothing I’ve ever experienced,” she replied with abject honesty. “The people seem to have gone insane!” While she could fully understand why it was important for the Venators to be out in the streets during the eight nights of Carnivale, she wasn’t as convinced of the necessity of wearing a mask.If the jostled eyeholes weren’t obstructing her view, the long beak of her bird-face was bumping into the person in front of her, or being knocked to the side by someone throwing a plaster sugarplum.
Or being hit by one, which had happened more than once, as evidenced by the white marks on her mask and clothing.
Zavier laughed easily, but she noticed his attention didn’t falter from the activity going on around them. With all of the revelry and masquerading on the wide street of Corso spilling into the smaller, darker side streets, the night was rife with the possibility of vampire attacks—or worse, kidnappings by members of the Tutela for their vampire masters. And now the new threat of being taken off and beheaded, for some inexplicable reason. So far neither of them had encountered any undead, but it was barely midnight, and dawn was a long way off on this February night.
Although Carnivale had been going on for almost a week, this was the first night Victoria and Zavier had gone out patrolling for undead together. It was also the first time she’d gone hunting since her mother arrived, and since she and Ylito had visited the Magic Door…other than the time she’d surreptitiously slipped a stake into the chest of a vampire who’d dared to sneak up on Lady Nilly when they were going home after a late Carnivale party.
To Lady Melly’s great joy, Victoria had put her secret plan to find Sebastian into action by looking up the Tarruscelli twins, Portiera and Placidia. Unfortunately an afternoon of tea with them had turned into a series of invitations to Carnivale parties, races, and the sharing of their balcony overlooking the Corso, where all of the festivities took place. Victoria felt odd being thrust back into a world of society and parties after turning her attention—and her life—to her Venator duties. It felt foreign to her in a way it hadn’t even after she’d rejoined Society following Phillip’s death.
Perhaps she really had left all of that behind.
In return for having to sit and make conversation, while chafing about the other things that needed to be tended to, Victoria had had no luck in turning the conversation with the twins to Sebastian or learning of his whereabouts.
Perhaps he wasn’t even in Rome anymore.
At any rate, tonight Victoria had managed to dislodge her mother’s manipulative fingers (“But the Barone Zacardi is ever so smitten with you!”) and plead exhaustion so that she could stay home. Ilias had explained that tonight was Rose Monday, the second-to-last night of Carnivale, and the fever pitch of excitement—and danger—would continue to grow until it reached its peak tomorrow night.
Lady Melly and the others planned to join the Tarruscellis, along with some other new acquaintances—including the bound-to-be-disappointed Barone Zacardi—in their red-draped balcony, so they could watch the street below. Victoria was relieved to be out on the street with her stake—masked or otherwise—and doing her job. Plus, she had another idea about how to contact Sebastian, and she was going to attempt it tonight.
The smell of roasting chestnuts tinged the air, drawing her from her thoughts, and Victoria felt a sudden pang of hunger. The fragrant nuts reminded her of Christmases spent at her family’s estate of Prewitt Shore with her mother and her two friends, long before any of their husbands had died. At that house at least one of her meals during the holidays would be made up only of hot nut meats and warm milk.
“Zavier.” She turned to look at him, but her mask was knocked askew again. She reached up and pushed the long, narrow bird-beak back into place, and when her eyeholes were realigned, she saw that Zavier was nowhere in sight.