"Who are you?" she asked, that brutal, all-ending question of her dream.

"Hush," he said, and stopped her lips with a touch of his finger. "Hush. In carnevale, deceptions are allowed, between lovers. The mask is the moment. Never question."

"I can't be your lover," she protested. "Let me go."

"I would never hold you against your will," he said, and pressed something into her hand. It was his key. "Come here, come here for safety, any time you need it. Come here tomorrow, and trust no harm will come to you, ever in this world, while I can protect you." He tipped her face up, and kissed her a second time and lingeringly on the lips, and this time she felt nothing but safety in his arms—safety of a sort she had never felt in anyone.

But he would not pursue his advantage.

"If you come tomorrow," he said, "if you come here tomorrow, I shall tell you I love you, madonna. But I would never take advantage of your trust."

"I will come back," she promised him.

"Will you dance?" he asked, and she looked about, wondering if he had hid musicians, too. But there was no music. The rest was a dream, dancing in silence in a glittering hall all their own, and looking down from the fretted windows, afterward, onto the lights on the Grand Canal. She would have gone to bed with him, she knew she would have, if he had asked, but after they had drunk, and danced, and stood there, arms about each other, he pressed her hand and said he should get her home, straightway, or he might, after all, break his word. She remembered her promise to Nonna, the invitation to di Verona's ball, only when he had, in a moderate rain, set her safely on her own water-stairs, and she was halfway up the steps inside. She turned back, she opened the water-stairs door onto the dark rush of rain, the lapping water, to tell him, to change their rendezvous. But he was gone, the curtained gondola disappearing into the dark down the Raceta.

She could not tell him she had made a terrible mistake.

She could not tell Nonna, or fail her attendance at di Verona's ball. Nonna had asked nothing but this of her, after sheltering her all her life. And she had never failed a promise to her Nonna, never since she was in pigtails.

What can I do? she asked herself. What else can I do but what nonna wants? He says he will tell me he loves me. We would become lovers. But where is a choice for me?

At noon the following day, Nonna took no nap. Nonna sat all afternoon and supervised her hair, her dressing in her finery, with new petticoats, and with a great deal of fuss among the servants to clean splashes of mud from the violet silk. But it was good, thick fabric. It had dried spotless, and the black lace and the white petticoats were fresh-pressed and crisp. The plumes were renewed, her hair coiffed to perfection around the festival bonnet.

"No more foolishness this evening," Nonna said sternly. "You have had your days of folly. Now attend to a woman's duty, and please this man. It is essential. It is life to us."

"Yes, Nonna," she said, hiding all bitterness. There was no slipping away, no explanation. And the storm that had broken yesterday still rumbled and flashed in her windows, the heavens as roiled as her heart.

It was still raining, and the canals were running high, when she went to the stairs to wait. There would be a gondola, Nonna said, and Nonna set the servants to watch down by the front door, while she waited and took a cup of tea standing, so as not to crush the newly-freshened gown.

"It is here," the servants reported, in awe, running up from below. "With gold curtains, and servants, and umbrellas against the rain."

She wished the gondola and its finery might sink to the bottom of the Priuli. But she went down, and boarded it, and sat miserably inside as it took its gliding way toward the Acqua Dolce. Onward then. Lightning flashed through the curtains and thunder crashed. She wished a sudden bolt from the heavens might strike the gondola, a death unexpected, and she might never have to attend this wretched ball.

But in due time it swerved over, knocked against buffers, and with halloos and cursing the gondolier handed her to the duke's servants bearing umbrellas, who brought her under a wind-billowed awning, and so up into a brightly lighted passage to a reception hall. There was sparkling wine, there was white wine and red wine, there were sweets heaped up, the sight and smell of which disgusted her. There were very many attendees whose colors she knew, and the banners of Sienna and Verona were displayed, and the banner of Milano, which was her own.

Music began, signaling the processional, and a young man presented himself, a man in il duco's azure blue.

"Il duco has wished me to lead the lady in," he said. "I am his cousin, Fedorico." A handsome young man, but notthe rank of il duco himself, and not to Nonna's wishes.

"I shall stand here," she said haughtily. "And you may say to il duco that I am stranded here, for want of courtesy."

"Signorina," the young man said, scandalized.

"Signore," she said, "shall I write down my message, or can you possibly remember it?" It was what Nonna would say, when a servant failed her expectations, and she was angry, by now, and judged that if Nonna could deal with people in such a way, so could she, on Nonna's business.

"Signorina," the young man said, bowed, and walked stiffly off. So she stood, and stood, until the foyer was empty of incoming guests, and at last the same young man came back.

"Il duco wishes you to come," the young man said.

"I should have written it down," she said, in mock regret, but now with a little qualm of fear she refused to show. "Try again, signore."

That brought Cesare himself, a Cesare as frowning as herself, a Ce-sare who snatched her hand and hurt it, leading her toward the stairs.

"I provided you an escort," he said.

"One that let you disclaim inviting me," she said, her back stiff in her tight lacings, and the moving air wafting chill on her exposed bosom. She might have felt naked, a few days ago, before her young harlequin had kissed her. Now she was armored in steel and anger. "Now I have you for escort, as promised."

"Damn you."

"I am la duchesa's granddaughter," she said. "Did you ever think I was not?" He tightened his grip, crushing her hand. "Never defy me."

"I have choices," she said, "and you do not. To have my grandmother's name, you do not have a choice, signore."

"You have her tongue, that's very clear."

"I do," she said, and smiled dazzlingly at all about her, weeping and sick inside, as she came down into the hall.

The storm crashed outside. Certain fools drank too much too early and languished by the serpentine pillars of the grand ballroom, saying, like the prophets in the cathedral, that soon there would be no Venezia to rule, that the sea gates were doomed to fail, and that the flood would rise, and that they would all be swept away if they took di Verona's coin and settled here. Certain fools talked of the floods to come, and how they would set out the choice of their wine cellars and drink them all, when the flood began to rise. Others said that the failure would be catastrophic, and there would be no sipping of wine at all, that wise men would go back to higher ground—such fragments of conversation she heard, while she danced with di Verona, who held her hand too tightly, and who said that he would rule the city before it drowned. He would take back Verona, and she would be an apt bride for a conqueror, full of spite and fury.