City of Masks by Mary Hoffman Read Free Book Online

the roofs.
    His guide led him up some marble steps, straight off the canal, and in through heavy wooden doors which seemed to be kept permanently open. It was dark inside the house, or palace, or whatever it was, and Lucien stumbled, having trouble adjusting his vision after the bright sunlight on the canal.
    On, up many steps until he was sure he must be at the top of the building. The mandolier stopped by a thick dark wooden door and knocked before thrusting Lucien through it in front of him.
    Lucien stood on the threshold, trying to understand what he was seeing. It was a mixture of a workshop, a chemistry laboratory and a library. It didn’t quite have a stuffed alligator hanging from the ceiling but one certainly would have looked right at home there. It was filled with leather-bound books, shelves full of jars, and glass bottles containing coloured liquids and nameless objects. There were huge globes and a weird collection of metal circles on a stand. And a model of the solar system, which Lucien was sure was moving.
    In the corner by a large window with a low sill sat a man dressed in black velvet. His clothes looked expensive and Lucien immediately knew he was someone important, though this had less to do with how he was dressed than his own aura. He had silver hair and he was tall and thin. He sat hunched in his armchair like a hawk roosting.
    But there was nothing frightening about him, in spite of his air of controlled power. The man told his servant, Alfredo, that he could go and Lucien heard the door close heavily behind him.
    ‘Welcome,’ said Rodolfo. His eyes were glittering with excitement. He looked as if he might rub his hands together with glee. ‘I have been expecting you.’
    ‘That’s what that man said,’ said Lucien stupidly. ‘But I don’t see how. I mean, I don’t know how I got here myself. Or why.’
    ‘But you must have worked out it was something to do with the notebook,’ said Rodolfo. ‘I mean, you’ve done it twice now.’
    ‘Yes, but...’ Lucien stopped. How did this man know about the book and how did he know it had happened twice? It had taken him all day back at home to try falling asleep with the notebook in his hand – and sleep had been reluctant to come. He had put the book back in his pocket before the strange man had burst in and it was still there now, although hidden under Arianna’s Bellezzan boy’s disguise, which he had been glad to see again.
    ‘I didn’t know it was you I was expecting,’ said Rodolfo. ‘But I knew it was you when I saw you at the Scuola Mandoliera.’
    ‘I didn’t see you there,’ said Lucien.
    ‘I wasn’t there to be seen,’ said Rodolfo, simply.
    He stood up and motioned Lucien to follow him to a dark corner of the room, where a silver brocade curtain hung on the wall. When Rodolfo pulled it back, Lucien wasn’t sure at first what he was looking at. He would have said it was a bank of television screens, except that sounded modern and high tech and this was anything but.
    Six small oval mirrors, ornately framed in what might have been ebony, showed moving pictures of scenes, some of which Lucien recognized. There was the Scuola and the Piazza where he had first seen Arianna, something that might have been the interior of the great cathedral and three other places, all richly decorated rooms, which he didn’t know but which were obviously Bellezzan.
    Under them was a complicated collection of knobs with knurled edges and brass levers aligned with what looked like signs of the zodiac, though some of them were new to Lucien. He gave up trying to understand. It was easier really to go back to thinking of Bellezza as a dream.
    Rodolfo pointed to the mirror which showed the Scuola Mandoliera and Lucien realized how he had been seen the day before. And even as he watched, fascinated, he saw a tiny mandola glide into the frame and an elegant miniature figure step lightly out of it and into the School amid much bowing and scraping of