"Oh, were you to have been my executioner?" purred Ferrante. "I'll remember that. But no. When you add this to the evidence of a very curious painted cabinet, kept locked in your boudoir, my lady Letitia, it seems to me a very convincing charge of black witchcraft and poisoning might be got up against you. Think on that."

"By you? You hypocrite! God cleave your lying tongue!'

"One would think God is your personal bravo, the way you call on him," snarled Ferrante sarcastically. "You keep your secrets well. I had no hint before this that you had a talent for the black arts. But this," he rolled the little ball between his fingers, "is quite a pretty piece of work."

"I didn't make it," denied Letitia.

"Then however did you come by it?"

"I had it from a girl who burned for it. She had it from a Moorish magician in Venice. She had used it to kill her unfaithful lover. I visited her in her cell, the night before her execution, for mercy and our Lord Jesus's sake. The Inquisitor himself, for all his hot irons, never found out how she did it, but she confessed it to me. She gave it to me. I kept it for ... a curiosity. To make such a thing is quite beyond my power." Letitia pressed her lips tightly together.

"You must of course say so. But look at it from my point of view. A man who has his mother-in-law privately strangled must expect harsh social disapproval from her numerous cousins, however much envious men may secretly applaud the deed. But a pious fellow who has her publicly burned for black witchcraft against his life can only gain solemn sympathy."

"Judicial murder," said Letitia frozenly, "is murder still." Lady Pia was pale, breathless.

"But my hands wUl not be stained with it, eh? And hasn't there been enough murder in Montefoglia? Come, my lady. Let us cry peace. Today, I ask humbly, and grant you the dignity of free compliance." Ferrante s effort at goodwill was brightly strained.

Letitia turned Tier face away. ' I have the headache. You have kept me too long in the sun."

Ferrante's voice hardened. "Tomorrow I shall have the means to compel cooperation. And you'll wish you'd struck your best bargain while you could."

"I wish to go in." Letitia's face had less animation than one of the marble statues tucked among the garden walks.

"So that you can continue to poison your daughter's mind against me?" Ferrante tucked the ivory ball away in his pouch, and gave her a courtier's bow. Letitia and Lady Pia glanced down the garden to where Julia now sat on the bench, fearfully clutching her lap doe. Ferrante followed their gaze, his eyes lidding. "I think the time has come to separate her from you and your so-loyal handmaid. Before you force me into the same rough courting our noble Roman ancestors used to gain their Sabine wives."

It took a moment for the import of this threat to sink in. Letitia's eyes went luminous with anger. "You dare—!"

"And would you then dare deny me permission to wed her, afterwards?" Ferrante's brows drew down, considering this inspiration. "Perhaps not. Is this the solution to your stubborness, Letitia? Drastic, but if you force me to be cruel to be land—"

"Monster!" cried Lady Pia, and swung a clawed hand at his face. He caught her arm easily, and wrenched it downward, his lips compressed with annoyance. A white circle fell from her crocus sleeve, and bounced on the dry ground. She gasped, and stamped her foot upon it, too late; a liquid orange light flared around her slipper, and was gone.

"What's this?" Ferrante asked, holding Lady Pia one-handed at arm's length despite her struggles. He stooped to retrieve the crushed tambourine, shoving her away.

His part as spy must be revealed in moments. Thur stood up, and felt for his knife hilt. He'd last used it to cut roast mutton at breakfast. It needed sharpening. Why hadn't he thought to sharpen it? He could not breathe.

He drew and lunged, just as Ferrante straightened up. Too far a strike; the guard by the wall, starting forward, cried a warning. Ferrante half-turned and flung up a mail-clad arm, deflecting Thur's thrust. The blade skittered across the links and grazed the side of Ferrante's throat. In a desperate bid to recover the chance Thur turned the blade and recoiled. It bit the back of Ferrante's neck. But Ferrante's grip, astonishingly strong for the awkward angle, was already wrapped around Thur's wrist, and the knife did not bite deep. They wrestled for the hilt. Then Thur's groin exploded with blinding pain, like lightning chewing up his nerves, as Ferrante's combat-experienced knee hit its target with force and precision. A boot met Thur's chin as he sank, snapping his head back. It was worse than meeting a rockfall. A second kick found his belly; his stitches burst, and the hot cut bled anew.

The tip of a long, shining sword pressed into the hollow of Thur's throat as he lay blinking up at the bright blue sky and Ferrante's dark face swimming overhead. Ferrante pressed a hand to the side of his neck, glanced at the sticky blood staining his palm, and cursed. He swung his sword up and stepped back a pace as a couple more guards came running up and, redundantly, began kicking Thur.

The noblewomen were screaming and clutching one another. Fiametta at least would have picked up a brick and tried to help bash Ferrante's head in. Thur deeply regretted his shyness. If only he had been more forward, he might have won a kiss from her, or more, before this death ...

Ferrante leaned on his sword, breathing heavily, the whites of his eyes showing. After a minute, when it was quite plain Thur would not rise to try again, he waved the guards back. "Take them to the tower." He dispatched two men to remove the crying women. Gathering up the terrified Julia and her dog, the officer-guard hustled them from the bright garden.

Thur blinked madly watering eyes, and tried to memorize the sky. He wanted to fall up into it, go to God. He'd rather his last sight be the face of Fiametta, but he certainly did not wish her here, so blue sky must do. The faces of enemies wavered over him. There was Ferrante's, blurred and doubled, brick red with rage and fear.

"Why, German?" Ferrante grated. The bright sword pressed Thur's throat again. It looked like the chute to heaven, foreshortened in the sun. You could slide up it into the blue sky.. ..

"Swiss," Thur corrected thickly. His mouth was numb and gritty with dirt,

"Why did you just try to kill me?"

Why. Why. Well, it had seemed like the proper thing to do. Everyone had wanted him to. He hadn't really wanted to. He wanted Uri back far more than he wanted Ferrante dead. "You killed my brother," Thur spat out in a gobbet of blood.

"Ah? Not Sandrino's Swiss guard captain!" Ferrante's teeth gleamed in a weird satisfied grimace. Apparently vengeance for dead brothers was reason enough to make more dead brothers, in his world. Did Ferrante have a brother? Would this chain go on forever?

Vitelli the secretary, his red robe flapping, came running up. "My lord!" he cried, in a voice edged with panic.

"It's not as bad as it looks, Niccolo." Ferrante's voice was controlled again, a bored drawl.

"You're bleeding—"

"It's not deep. You there. Go fetch my surgeon."

"Let me staunch it...." Vitelli passed a hand across Ferrante's neck, and the bleeding slowed to a dark ooze.

Ferrante scratched carefully around the cut with gory fingernails, his face screwed up in irritation. "That was too damned close. Search him for hidden weapons." He nodded to a soldier, who knelt cautiously by Thur and began prodding around his bruises. He discovered Thur's thin purse tucked in his tunic, which he handed up to the secretary. He laid a white parchment circle absently on the ground. Thur moaned.

Vitelli himself had to look three times. "What... ?" He bent to pick it up. After a moment, he swore. His hand closed on the parchment tambourine, crushing it; the orange light leaked briefly between his fingers. "Where did you get this?" he demanded of Thur.