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“Ifyouhadn’t attempted murder,” Lucrezia said, cutting him off, “then yes, you might have attained your degree.”
“It was aduel!”
“You may see it that way,” said Lucrezia. “The university might have seen it that way. Your opponent might have seen it that way. The law itself may see it that way. I assure you, however, his family would never have seen it as anything short of cold-blooded murder.”
Enzo wondered if she would’ve preferred he commit a hot-blooded murder. He’d done several already tonight. He felt the impetus for another now.
Lucrezia went on without him. “Just as your death in the catacombs would have proved a cold-blooded murder.”
Enzo caught his tongue.
“You’re adept as a duelist,” said Lucrezia. “You’ve more than proved that. But a duel in the open air by daylight is one thing. Descending into darkness armed only with cloak and dagger to do battle with unknown assailants is quite another.”
“I did bring a brace of guards,” Enzo pointed out.
“Better armed, but no less ignorant than yourself of what threats lay ahead,” Lucrezia retorted. “You had only a criminal’s word to trust on how many Nascimbene had hired to dispose of your courtesan.”
Enzo’s mind and heart were not so far gone that he couldn’t feel at least a little touched by his sister’s evident concern—the most he’d heard from her in some time. Yet his thoughts stuck on the particular name that had dropped from her lips. “You knew all along?”
“I knew when you embarked for Isola dei Cadaveri,” said Lucrezia. “Carlotta had the foresight to send a messenger to myself as well.”
“Oh.” Enzo supposed he ought to have expected that. Nothing else tonight had met any expectation. But Lucrezia had eyes and ears throughout the city and beyond. “What else have you learnt?”
“Of your affairs? Everything.”
“No,” Enzo hastened to explain. “Of the impresario. Fiore left his conservatorio over a decade hence. Dozens if not scores of boys have passed through his training since then. Why the deuce would he care enough to track down and kidnap one lost singer whose remaining stone has already dropped?”
“Because the castration of boys for the opera was banned twelve years before Nascimbene botched your courtesan’s chirurgy.”
Enzo, stunned, stared into the darkness from whence her voice emerged.
“Technically speaking,” Lucrezia continued as if she were talking of the weather, “all the musici produced since then are supposed to be the result of unrelated injuries. Usually the chirurgeon is called to attend a boy who has suffered a ‘horse-riding accident.’ Which is a particularly absurd circumstance in our fair city. But I digress. Your courtesan, if he so chooses, can testify that his failed emasculation and that of the boys trained alongside him was not a medical necessity resulting from even the most implausible excuse. I’m told he has the scars to prove it. Which means he holds the power to destroy Nascimbene and perhaps the whole opera house.”
Enzo, amidst all this, hardly had time to wonder where she’d heard of Fiore’s scars.
“Doubtless,” Lucrezia went on, “the sight of your courtesan at an aristocratic ball in the company of one so powerful and well-connected as Fiorenzo Scaevola, the dueling Duke of Drakehaven, proved rather unnerving to Nascimbene. Better to make his failed musico disappear before certain words dropped into certain ears and Teatro Novissimo crumbled to ruin.”
Enzo’s tormented heart boiled over and forced him to break his silence. “Then it is my own fault.”
“What?”
Before Enzo could answer her incredulous syllable, a scream rent the air. Sharp. Shrill. Piercing. Resounding throughout the halls for one horrible instant before it cut off in sudden silence.
And though Enzo had never heard Fiore cry out in such a way before, he recognized his voice at once.
Faster than even Lucrezia could move to stop him, Enzo threw the larder door open and bolted out into the hall. His bootheels resounded against the marble like thunderclaps. They slowed only when he seized the kitchen doorframe to turn his momentum toward it.
There stood Dr Venier and Dr Malvestio—in their mere paper masks, just as promised—over the table, she struggling to hold something at the head of it, and he doing no better at the foot. Between them writhed the bone-white body of his beloved Fiore.
“Release him,” Enzo barked.
The chirurgeons shared a speaking glance. Then they withdrew, all but leaping back from their agonized patient.
“He’s not stitched up yet,” Dr Venier warned.
“He awoke too soon,” Dr Malvestio explained.
Enzo hardly heard either one of them. He’d already shot forth to reach the table and clasp the pale flailing hand.
