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He knew not how much time had passed. Only that he would’ve gladly kept watching long after Maestra Rovigatti’s blade touched the hollow of Enzo’s throat, and instead of returning to their starting positions, she let her sword fall to her side and declared their practice finished for the day.
Fiore could do nothing even half so impressive as what he’d witnessed. He could, however, slip off the bench to pour the silver ewer of water into two glasses for the combatants. Both accepted with thanks.
“She’s certainly put you through your paces,” Fiore murmured to Enzo as he drank.
Enzo finished off his glass with a gasp and shook his head. “She’s going easy on me. She knows I’m far out of practice. I oughtn’t be winded so soon.”
Fiore, meanwhile, had envied Enzo’s stamina from the perspective of his own convalescence. He’d envied far more than that—the casual ease with which he held a blade and the deft manner in which he wielded it. After feeling so defenseless at the hands of his tormentors, to see Enzo with a weapon in his hand both reassured him and sparked a ravenous hunger. He turned to Maestra Rovigatti.
“A marvelous display of your talents, Maestra,” he told her. “Would you ever consider taking on a new pupil?”
Maestra Rovigatti arched her brows. “Depends on who asked.”
Fortuna favored the bold. Fiore summoned all his courage. “Will you teach me?”
Both Maestra Rovigatti and Enzo stared at Fiore. The maestra’s countenance remained unreadable. Enzo’s revealed great alarm on his part.
Fiore’s own face grew hot. He ignored it and endeavored to explain himself. “I should like to learn to defend myself. With cloak and dagger at the very least. I know I’ve no right to carry a sword—”
“You’ve every right to carry a sword,” Enzo declared.
Maestra Rovigatti’s raised eyebrows mirrored Fiore’s own astonishment. Though Fiore’s remained tempered by the fond realization that Enzo had spoken from his heart rather than his head.
And so it was more gently than otherwise that Fiore replied, “Not by the laws of this city, I don’t.”
“Not yet,” Maestra Rovigatti spoke up. “However, if you had the proper training…” Her gaze slid to meet Enzo’s.
“Then Lucrezia would be persuaded to make an exception,” Enzo concluded.
Fiore envied his confidence. He had no such faith in the Serenissima’s mercy. And he knew of no courtesan who wielded the privilege of a sword at their side.
Maestra Rovigatti appeared somewhat less skeptical than himself. Yet there remained a hard glint in her gaze as it fell upon Fiore once more.
“Are you prepared,” she asked, “to lose another finger?”
Enzo’s head whipped ‘round to regard her with undisguised alarm. Fiore felt an echo of the same, though he hoped he hid it better.
Maestra Rovigatti did not relent. Her eyes flicked to Fiore’s mutilated hand and back again to meet his bewildered stare. She drew her sword and dropt into a fighting stance as easily as rain dropt into the lagoon.
“You see my hand?” she enquired.
Fiore knew not which she meant. His notice went first and quite naturally to the one which held the sword. Her grip beneath the tangled web of silver strands furling ‘round the handle appeared complicated enough to imitate with four fingers, let alone three.
But a sudden movement drew his eye higher. She flicked the wrist of her free hand held up by her face. Her joints remained loose, the whole arm fluid yet poised to leap at any moment. Like a cat lounging in a sunbeam with eyes half-lidded in feigned sleep as it watched songbirds inch ever closer and waited to strike.
“Do you know why I hold it here?” she asked.
“It’s a guard,” Fiore ventured. He’d gleaned that much of the trade jargon from living in a city filled with would-be duelists.
“Yes,” Maestra Rovigatti said with more patience than Fiore probably deserved. “It’s a guard. Which means it is ready to block my opponent’s blow. Whether that be by seizing their arm or their wrist or their hand… or their blade.”
Fiore beheld his own understanding mirrored in Enzo’s solemn features.
Maestra Rovigatti continued. “It’s better that I should lose a finger or several or my entire hand, than to let my opponent sheathe their sword in my heart or throat or eye. Do you concur?”
Fiore nodded.
She held his gaze. “You are resolved, then? Hesitation will not save you. Quite the reverse.”
