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“And if these strangers prove allies to Fiore’s tormentors?” Enzo had asked when the guards proposed this course of action. “Perhaps they chose this piazza in particular because they have friends here.”
“It’s possible,” Ferruzzi had admitted. “But unlikely, we think. If they controlled the area to such an extent, they’d have no cause to hide by night. They’d do just as well to have us drop it during the day and mingle amongst the crowd to retrieve it. A midnight drop shows their lack of confidence. They want this done quick, simple, and quiet.”
Quiet they might have. Enzo resolved to make it neither quick nor simple for them.
Ferruzzi crouched at his side beneath the arch. Vittorio sat between them. Guard and hound alike awaited in perfect silence as the darkness grew deeper. Enzo fixed his gaze upon the fountain, its pale marble form fading into something indistinct as night crept on. The fountain depicted Bacchus pouring an amphora into the mouth of a grateful satyr. Which, according to Fiore’s system, marked it out as freshwater. The memory of that happier day struck Enzo like a knife through his ribs. He took solace in the small piece of Fiore he still carried with him in the breast-pocket of his waistcoat, just over his heart.
Hours passed. What few folk had mingled through the surrounding alleyways and what few boats had slipped by in the canal abutting the piazza vanished altogether. Enzo’s legs ached from holding the same stance for so long—yet the pain seemed to come to him from a distance, and his mounting anxiety far exceeded it. Any discomfort he felt at keeping still and silent for so many hours was nothing to what his Fiore must suffer even now.
Then, when bitter despair told Enzo that his guards were wrong, the monsters did have friends here, and those friends must have warned them off, and he would see neither the kidnappers nor Fiore this night, nor perhaps ever again—
A shadow slipped into the canal.
Adrenaline flooded Enzo’s veins. He strained his eyes against the darkness. A boat—a sandolo, for it hadn’t the bulk of a felze and no vessel of any greater size could possibly fit in the narrow waterway of this particular neighborhood—had just drifted into view between two houses and now halted against the stone steps leading up into the piazza. Whatever sounds its docking made were blotted out by the eternal waterfall of the fountain.
Ferruzzi tensed beside him as vague shadows emerged from the sandolo. The shadows, one far larger than the other, crept towards the fountain. Enzo held his breath as they lingered by it. Unless some incredible coincidence had occurred, these must be Fiore’s captors—and yes, they proved themselves so by searching over the fountain until the smaller one delved beneath the waters to produce the small chest that held the promised coin.
And yet they were but two shadows.
No matter how hard Enzo stared, he could not manifest a third. No bound figure staggering between the two captors. No slumped body left behind on the bank of the canal. Not even a hint of a human silhouette in the sleek and slender outline of the sandolo. Even as Enzo’s heart sank like a stone, he thought it’d been rather too much to hope for that the kidnappers would’ve brought Fiore with them to the drop-site.
Unless, the treacherous feathered thing piped up from the back of his mind, Fiore lay out flat in the bed of the sandolo.
Enzo, who’d awaited with bated breath and high-strung anxieties and seething rage all the while, could bear it no longer.
And so he slipped out from beneath the archway.
The fountain’s noise would cover his stealthy tread. The weight of the chest would hinder the culprits in their return to their vessel. Enzo kept close to the walls of the surrounding houses, creeping from shadow to shadow, swift and nearly silent, to reach the sandolo before them.
This had not been part of the guards’ plan. They had recommended following the culprits from a distance as they returned their ill-gotten gains to their hideout.
But the faint mote of possibility that Fiore lay somehow concealed in the brigands’ boat drove Enzo on. He had to know for certain. If there remained any possibility of Fiore’s presence, and Enzo gave him up for lost without a hunt—
Enzo unsheathed his blade as he neared the canal. Since he’d lost the privilege of carrying a sword in the city, he’d trained with Maestra Rovigatti in dagger-fencing as well. He had no doubt he could subdue his foes.
Then, just before he reached the sandolo, the all-but-formless shadows returning from the fountain ceased their progress.
And unless he much mistook matters, it seemed as though their barely discernible heads had turned to fix their gaze upon where he hid.
The larger dropped the chest, leaving the smaller staggering from the weight. A matching blade appeared in the larger shadow’s hand, visible only by its glinting edge reflecting the lamplight of the aedicula by the canal. It lurched towards Enzo with rapid strides that belied its enormous frame. Enzo braced himself for a fight. Then—
The larger shadow jerked to a sudden halt. A slender shaft erupted from its throat. It staggered another half-step, then slumped forward onto the masegni. A shudder rippled through its massive bulk. Then it lay still.
A shower of hailstones struck the piazza. No, Enzo realized as he whirled towards the tinkling sound audible even above the fountain’s burbling—not hailstones, but rather coins, a golden rainstorm scattering over the masegni as the smaller shadow gave up the treasure for lost and dropt the chest to break out in a sprint for the sandolo.
Enzo dashed to intercept it.
Mere yards remained between him and his quarry when a strangled yelp pierced the night air and another slender shaft appeared, this time in the smaller shadow’s thigh. It crumpled to the ground.
Enzo kept running. He reached the sandolo. Hauled it in. Peered inside.
Nothing remained in the empty belly of the boat.
Enzo stared into the darkness. His heart plunged like an anchor. Fiore was still gone—still out there somewhere, stolen, suffering—unless they’d already—
A spark shone bright as a star against the gloom of the piazza. Enzo caught it in the corner of his eye and whirled towards it to find Canello holding a hooded lantern aloft. Both he and Ferruzzi had converged over the fallen form of the smaller shadow, which yet whimpered. Ferruzzi had pinned her bootheel against the brigand’s chest.
Enzo supposed they were rather past the point of concealment. He hastened to join them.
