All three women gave him identical repelled glares, as if forced to look upon a centipede or a scorpion. Ferrante shifted, and grimaced.

"Are we to get on?" inquired the Duchess coldly.

"Consider the advantages," Ferrante shrugged. And added with a matching glint of ice, "Consider the disadvantages, if you don't choose to.

"Strike some devil's bargain with my lord and husband's murderer? Never!"

"Never is a long time. Life goes on. You have children to provide for. It's very true, we have all suffered an unfortunate accident. It's not one I looked for, and I'm sorry I lost my temper, but I was goaded. What would you? Wrath is a man's sin!"

"Yet you dare still suggest I bind Julia to a life under that threat?" snapped Letitia. "To become the next victim from my Family to your wrath? And how did your first wife die, my lord? Truly, you are mad!"

Ferrante's jaw clamped. He produced a strained smile, and drew a leather ball from the figured purse hung from his belt. "Here, Julia." He turned to the girl, his voice deliberately gentled. "I brought you a ball for, er, Pippin. Why don't you take him down to the other end of the garden, and see if he will fetch it for you? I wager he will."

Julia glanced uncertainly at her mother, who had locked eyes with Ferrante. "Yes, love," Letitia agreed thinly. "Do that."

Reluctantly, the girl put down her dog and obeyed, with a backward glance or two. Pippin reeled around her, following.

"My lady? The woman in yellow raised her brows, with a nod after Julia.

"Stay by me, Lady Pia," said the Duchess. "I would have a witness to this man's next crime, whatever it turns out to be."

Ferrante rolled his eyes in exasperation. "Think, Letitia! What's done is done, and no one can call it back. You must look to the future, and let the past go!" His hand tightened, then stretched out carefully flat on the leather legging of his thigh, next to his sword. His eye fell on Thur, standing there trying to look invisible. "Go back to work, German." Ferrante waved him curtly away.

Thur bowed and retreated to the nearest spot, his broken brick pile, crouched, and pretended to be sorting them by size. Ferrante glowered over the work site a moment, then followed, lowering his voice. "So, Foundryman. When will my cannon be cast?"

Never, you bastard. "If I work steadily through the day, my lord, I might have the furnace built by sundown. Then it must be lined with clay, and the clay dried and fired."

"Could you do that tonight?"

"I could, but to fire it while still damp risks cracking."

"Mm. Risk it," Ferrante ordered, with a quick glance at the sun. Time bit at his heels too, it seemed.

"There's still the bombast mold to make, my lord. The furnace may as well dry slowly while that's being done."

"Ah. Yes." Ferrante frowned at the brickwork, his face abstracted. Was he seeing, in his mind's eye, his bombast battering down the walls of Saint Jerome? And then what? The breach in the wall fought for, taken; monks and Sandrino's soldiers slain. Women—Fiametta, God!—tormented, refugees chased from corners, put to the sword while crying futilely for sanctuary in the chapel? Would Fiametta be among them? Surely she would fight like a cat, and be killed for it, not prettily. Thur did not think Fiametta had the knack of surrendering. A frightened Ascanio dragged out from under the prior's bed to have his throat slit ... like Pica's boy. Though neither guards nor stone walls had defended Zilio. Not that it seemed to alter the end result.

Killing them would do it.

Thur was alone beside Ferrante. His knife in its sheath on his belt pressed against the small of his back like a compelling hand. What more chance do you want than this? Ferrante wore mail, true, but his neck was bare as ... as a boy's. But could Thur escape, afterwards? Over the stable gate, say, out through the entry court, before the alarm went up? An image of the black-mouthed cavalryman's lance driving between his shoulder blades as he fled down the road made Thur's muscles stiffen. He did not want to die, on this bright morning. Maybe Ferrante did not want to the either. This isn't my calling. I came to Montefoglia to make beautiful things out of metal, not corpses out of living men. Oh, God.

Thur stood up.

But Ferrante had already turned away, and was striding back to the Duchess. Another chance lost. Right or wrong? Did angels weep, or devils gnash their teeth? Thur bent and worked around his brick pile to keep Ferrante in sight, straining his ears to catch the next words.

"We can yet arrange things, my lady, in good public form," Ferrante continued to the Duchess, his voice and temper controlled again. "Sandrino's death was an accident. He fell on the knife in a scuffling fall. We had both drunk too much unwatered wine at the banquet. My lieutenant misunderstood the situation."

"We all know those are lies," said Letitia flatly.

"But we are the only ones who know," Ferrante argued smoothly, after a glance at Lady Pia's stone face apparently convinced him denial would be fruitless. "If we all say otherwise, why then, so it will be, as far as any outsiders know. You can save your family's honor and position, in this awkward event. If I wed Julia, and become Ascanio's guardian, why, it will be clear to all that Sandrino's unfortunate death was an accident. You lose nothing, not even your home, and gain a protector in me."

"So you can go on to cheat my son out of his patrimony? So you can murder him at your leisure?"

"I could murder him at my pleasure right now!" Ferrante snapped. "Give me credit! I am trying to save you all!"

"You are merely trying to save yourself. From the just retribution that must fall on your head, if God has not abandoned the world altogether!"

Ferrante's nostrils flared, but he reaffixed the smile that had slid from his face. "I'm not inhuman. I desire your goodwill. See, I have even brought you your rosary that you asked for. My men and I are not the thieves you accuse us of being." He pulled a string of polished black beads from his purse, and held them out just beyond her reach.

Letitia Mined pale, controlled her hand in mid-snatch, and accepted the gift with a small curtsey. "Thank you, my lord," she stammered. "You can't know what these mean to me."

"I think I do," smiled Ferrante. She drew the beads through her soft white hands, came to the end—a black bead stopped with a gold flange—hastily reversed the string, and came to tine other end, also a plain black bead. Her face came up, wide-eyed with anger, as Ferrante held up a small carved ivory ball between his thumb and finger. "Do you seek this?" he inquired sweetly.

"Give me—" Letitia surged forward in a hiss of silk, then stood still, hands clenched to her sides.

"A very interesting object, this. I've had Vitelli examine it thoroughly."

Lady Pia crossed her crocus-sleeved arms tightly under her breasts, but remained standing sturdily behind the Duchess.

"A fascinating spell," Ferrante went on, hugely ironic. "A way for a woman to kill a man many times stronger than herself. A poison that is neither food nor drink, against which my saltcellar would be quite useless. The woman holds the poison locked in this little ivory ball, under her tongue. Then she induces the man who is her enemy to kiss her. Was that task to be yours, or Julia's? Or Lady Pia's, here? A pretty scene, to be seducing me while her husband lies imprisoned below her very feet. She whispers the word which unlocks the ball, and breathes into her unsuspecting lover's mouth. The poison flows into him in the form of a snake made of smoke. He dies strangled, unable to breathe. I suppose she must take care not to inhale while this operation is in progress, eh?" His fist closed around the ivory sphere.

"If ever a man deserved such a death, it is you," hissed Lady Pia.