The Venetian Contract by Marina Fiorato Page A

used the sponge to moisten his lips, squeezing it until a trickle fell into his half-open mouth, which made him cough a little – a good sign. Lastly she wiped the sponge around his face and his brow. Her ministrations seemed to give Timurhan ease, and it seemed to Feyra that his colour was better.
    In contrast to her former prison, this room had lots of natural illumination – from portholes on the port side, through gratings in the quarterdeck above and from the portholes to starboard. The windows were so well glazed she could barely hear the screaming tempest outside, but the rain drummed at the portholes, each roundel of glass turnedtabor. She glanced at her father – oblivious to the external storm and locked in his own feverish battle, he had fallen into a fitful sleep. There was little she could do but wait.
    At the captain’s desk a wooden globe spun on its axis as if all celestial forces had been puffed away and the four winds had dominion this day. An empty wine bottle rolled back and forth over the wood floor with the pitch of the waters. After a moment Feyra could not bear it and set the thing on its end on the desk.
    She sat in the captain’s chair and peered through the porthole, wiping away the smoke of her breath. What she saw there made her wonder, for the second time today, whether she had died and passed into the beyond, for there, rising from the filigree of drifting mists before her, was a shining citadel set upon the water; with hoary spires reaching to the sky and ivory palaces crowding the waterfront. Even the driving rain could not diminish the strange beauty. The scale of the place was vast, and the harbour opened out into a wide square walled around by stone arches and pillars. A lofty tower stood tall over all, and a humped golden church, its painted colours varnished to jewels by the slick of rain, crouched in the corner of the square.
    As she watched, the ship drew alongside two enormous marble pillars that rose high into the sky and Feyra felt the rattle and run of the rode chain as the anchor was dropped once more. She peered upwards, squinting through the deluge. One pillar was topped by some infidel saint, the other by a creature that she’d been taught to fear since childhood: a winged lion with a book.
    She was in Venice.
    A sound came from the cot behind her, and she turned to see her father shuffle to his elbows. A seaman to the bone,even
in extremis
, he had heard the anchor too, and knew the hour had come. ‘Feyra,’ he said, with a gasping effort, ‘
Death is coming
…’
    She understood his ravings better than he knew. She nodded and turned back to the window, and watched the gangplank lowered. Her view was restricted, but she looked beyond it, through the twin pillars, to where the great square lay, mirrored with water. Despite the flood of the vast space plenty of citizens were still abroad, stamping through their own reflections matter-of-factly as if such floodings were commonplace.
    She changed places to the next porthole, peering down deckside as she heard the scrape and boom of the sarcophagus being dragged to the head of the gangplank and set down. Feyra watched with dread as the rivets were loosened, and the myrtle leaves cast aside to be snatched by the jealous wind. The Janissaries stood back in a semicircle, their heads now bare of their turbans, their livery hidden under wine-coloured cloaks. They were transfixed but afraid, as the thing inside lifted itself with a painful effort, trembling like a new-birthed foal.
    First he sat, than prised himself out of the coffin with shaking arms braced at each side. He was a dreadful thing to behold. His shrouds were shredded and flapped like bandages – a swaddled charnel-corpse come to life. Someone tossed him a cape which unfurled in the air and cast a dark shadow over him like a cloud. He fumbled it on, drawing the black hood over his swathed head. Across the back was emblazoned a winged lion stitched in gold. The