The Mosaic

Chapter 10

It was impossible to miss the corpse. A large crowd had formed around it, barely restrained by uneasy policemen. Women chattered rapidly, kids tried to slip through the barrier, men speculated loudly and started arguing. Gestures flew, people stretched and leant forward to see more in a disgusting lust for tragedy. The two sides pushed against each other.

Alessandro didn't know when the first of his men would draw a weapon. But he knew they would, soon. Too many in the police had the habit to hit first and think later. Or think at all. He ran faster, strained muscles complaining.

It was a long way all over the square. His eyes kept jumping between the doge's palace and the crowd. Som He pushed through. It was a swamp of bodies and limbs slowing him down. They didn't look at him, just at the corpse. They didn't recognize the officer.

He needed to get to his men before one of them drew his sword. He knew there'd be no turning back once the crowd was enraged.

His men didn't know what to do with the sea of people that grew louder with every push.

Alessandro was fast enough. Fast enough to catch the arm of the police man coming down before he hit the young man. Above the two towered the giant officer. Alessandro had a strange effect on them, a golden gaze so calm, so strong. He stared down at the frozen pair, the policeman's wrist still trapped in a large fist. When he let it go it fell to the man's side limply. The young man stepped back.

The crowd had gone quiet. He felt their eyes on his back. A name rippled through the crowd, a hushed whisper. Alessandro Steno.

Alessandro didn't spare them another look. He stepped through the barrier. The anger from before vanished as he entered the crime scene. As always. Only the case remained.

"He's with me." A wave of his hand and Giacinto stepped next to him.

They both didn't say a word.

Not because they were horrified by what they saw. Actually, the crime scene was plain. Alessandro had seen bar fight's more gruesome than this.

This wasn't as raw and horrifying as the shattered skull of Alvino and the red blood drops on white marble. It wasn't as sickening as the burnt body of Iacobo in the middle of a sea of flowers. It wasn't as moving as Guido dying for hours and trying everything to save the city that had been his death and putting the hope of his baby blue eyes into the hands of two strangers. It was ridiculously simple

From the balcony of the duke's palace dangled a hanged man. Facing the sea, the breeze ruffled his hair and let his cloak flap like a flag. His head hung low, as if asleep.

But Alessandro's heart sunk, pulled down knowing this man was the last clue. The lighthouse they left behind to travel the open, wild, deep, black sea in the darkness. They would be left alone now in a web of war and murder. No one would guide them, they might get entangled and die in another 'accident'.

It was knowing that an entire order had been wiped out for the information they had found. It was the realization that war was a brewing storm at the horizon. The dawning feeling of an all seeing enemy – and that they were blind.

Alessandro slowly circled the man, head craned back to look for anything unusual. Anything more unusual than a man hanging himself from a palace's balcony.

According to Guido this was the last member. Marco. Killing himself to leave a hint, before his information would die with him through the assassin's hands.

"Marco dead on San Marco's place." Giacinto raised an eyebrow. He wasn't looking at Alessandro, but the officer saw the way his lips twitched.

Alessandro sighed. "Really?"