It wasn't a very big sail. Nor a fast boat. Nor a strong breeze. A determined horseman or two, paralleling them on the white road along the eastern shore, could outpace them. They had water in abundance, and certainly needed no food—her stomach was still stretched and leaden with the betrothal banquet—but sooner or later they must come to shore. Where hard-faced men would be waiting.... The green shoreline blurred as tears filled her eyes and spilled down her cheeks, wet annoying tracks. She ducked her head and rubbed the tracks with her sleeve. There were dots of darkening stain on the red velvet. Blood splashes. Captain Ochs's blood. She couldn't help it; she began to cry in earnest. Despite her weeping she kept the steering oar straight, guiding them between the two shores. Unusually, Master Beneforte did not demand she stop her blubbering or he'd beat her, but just lay and watched her, till she gulped her way back to coherence.

"What did you see happen in the castle, Fiametta?" he asked after a time, still supine. His voice was tired, unhurried now; despite the question, the tone steadied her. As best she could remember, she stammered out an account of the men, words, and blows she'd witnessed.

"Hm." He pursed his lips in thought. "I first guessed it was some long-laid treachery, Lord Ferrante assassinating his host. Take the daughter and the dukedom.... But stupid, for he already had the daughter, and could do murder in secret at his leisure, if that was his mind. But if, as you guess, those strangers brought some slander sufficient to break the betrothal, then Lord Ferrante was hurried into his treachery. And will prove his wit—or lack of it—in the aftermath. He must carry it all the way through, now." He sighed. "Poor Montefoglia." Fiametta wasn't sure if he meant the Duke, or the dukedom.

"What do we do next, Papa? How do we get home?"

His face screwed up in distress, compounded with disgust. "My work in progress—the jewels, the money—all forfeit! My great Perseus! What a woeful day. If in my foolish pride I had not insisted on presenting the saltcellar at that banquet, we might have lain low, let the affairs of princes blow by overhead. Plow under one duke, raise another, as Fortune spins her deadly wheel. Maybe, if Ferrante had secured himself as tyrant of Montefoglia, he would have continued my commissions. Now—now he knows me. I hurt him. I fear that was a grave mistake."

"Maybe," Fiametta floated a cautious hope, "maybe Lord Ferrante will lose the fight. He could be already slain."

"Mm. Or perhaps Monreale really will get little Lord Ascanio out. I would not underestimate Monreale. In that case it's civil war, though. Oh, God save me from the affairs of princes! Yet only the patronage of princes can support great works. My poor Perseus! My life's crown!"

"What about Ruberta and Teseo?"

"They can run away. My statue cannot." He brooded.

"Perhaps—if the soldiers come to our house—they won't notice the Perseus," Fiametta offered, frightened by this agitation, worsening his obvious illness.

"He's seven feet tall, Fiametta! He's a little hard to miss.

"Not so. He's all clothed in his clay, now, and he just looks like a big lump in the courtyard. And he's much too big to carry away. Surely the soldiers will look for gold and jewels, that they can hide in their clothes." But would they take—say—a bronze death mask? That was certainly small and portable.

"And then look for wine," groaned Master Beneforte. "And then get drunk. And then start smashing things. Clay, and my genius, so fragile!" He looked like he was about to cry himself.

"You saved the saltcellar."

"Accursed thing. I've half a mind to pitch it in the lake. Let it bring bad luck to the fish." He didn't move to do so, though, but hugged the bundled cloth tighter to himself.

Fiametta drew up some cold lake water for them both in the fisherman's tin cup she found under the rear seat. Master Beneforte drank, and squinted in the afternoon glare, and scrubbed his wrinkled brow with hooked fingers.

"The sun is troubling you, Papa. Why don't you put on that straw hat, and keep it from your eyes?"

He plucked it up, turned it over, and snorted. "Stinks." But he put it on. It did shade his jutting nose. He rubbed his chest. There was still pain there, a deep ache, Fiametta judged by his awkward movements as he turned on his side, then back again, in a futile quest for ease.

"Why didn't you use magic, to escape the castle, Papa?" She remembered Lord Ferrante raising his fist, and the glaring putti ring. "Or ... or did you? If I had been a trained mage, I would have done something to save the brave captain." Would she have? The confusion and terror of that moment had overwhelmed her. She'd barely been able to save herself from her own skirts.

"Magic in the service of violence is a very perilous thing," Master Beneforte sighed. "I have done magic, and God save me I have done violence, even to murder—I've told you of the time I took vengeance upon a corporal of the Bargello for the death of my poor brother. I was twenty and hot and stupid, then. It was a great sin, though the Pope gave me a pardon for it. But I have never done violence with magic. Even at twenty I wasn't that stupid. I used a poniard."

"But Lord Ferrante's spirit ring—twice I saw him use it to do violence."

"Once, it bit him for his pains." Master Beneforte smiled in his beard, but his smile fell away. "That ring was more evil than I'd feared."

"What is a spirit ring, Papa? You said you'd seen one before, in possession of the lord of Florence, and it wasn't a sin."

"I made the spirit ring now on the hand of Lorenzo d'Medici, child, Master Beneforte confessed with a low sigh. He glanced uneasily at her, from the shadow of the straw brim. "The Church forbids them, and with reason, but I thought, the way we had this one set up, I might cast such a powerful work and yet not be tainted. I don't know.... You see, if a corpse is preserved unshriven and unburied (which is against any law), the new-riven spirit tends to linger by the body. And with proper preparations that ghost can be harnessed to the will of a master."

"Enslaved?" Fiametta frowned. The word had the distaste of iron on her tongue.

"Yes, or ... or bonded. How it came about in Florence was, Lord Lorenzo had a friend, who was dying in great debt. He struck a pact with the man. In exchange for his soul's service to the ring upon his natural death, Lorenzo would care for and look after this man's family. Which oath Lord Lorenzo has kept to this day, as far as I know. Lorenzo also swore to release the spirit if he feels his own death approaching. Ghost magic is immensely powerful. I feel there was no sin in what we did. But if some more narrow-minded inquisitor ruled otherwise, Lorenzo and I could burn at the stake back-to-back. So keep this story to yourself, child." Master Beneforte added reflectively, "We hid the body in an old dry well, beneath some new construction of the d'Medici in the heart of Florence. The ring's power diminishes, when it is taken too great a distance from its old bodily home."

Fiametta shivered. "Did you see the dead baby, when the casket of salt burst open?"

Master Beneforte blew out his breath. "Yes. I saw it"

"That cannot have been ... some little sin."

"No." Master Beneforte's lips compressed. "You saw it closer—was it a girl-child?'

"Yes."

"I greatly fear ... that may have been Lord Ferrante's own still-born daughter. Unnatural...."

"Still-born? Or murdered?" Surely it was only the poor who secretly strangled unwanted daughters.

Master Beneforte bowed his head. "That's the trick of it, you see. A murdered spirit has ... special powers. Special rage. A murdered, unbaptized, unburied infant ..." He shuddered, despite the heat.

"Do you still think nothing in the world could be all black?"