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Enzo gave her a grim nod.
Maestra Rovigatti bid them good-night, bowed, and departed. Carlotta followed her out.
To Fiore’s mind, they’d discovered the perfect solution. For once he could prove of use to Enzo. This training would make him worthy of the office of second. And better still, it would improve Enzo’s chances against Nascimbene.
The only part that wasn’t perfect was the dismay writ across Enzo’s handsome features.
Now that Carlotta and Maestra Rovigatti had gone, no one and nothing remained to prevent Fiore from entangling himself with Enzo once again, as he so dearly wished. He began by threading his arms around him, and, when this failed to provoke a smile beneath the scars, raised a hand to caress his cheek as he asked, “What’s amiss?”
Enzo cast a sorrowful look down at him. “I don’t wish to fight you.”
“You won’t really be fighting me.” Fiore trailed his fingertips up Enzo’s back, and Enzo leaned into him just as he wanted in return. “You’ll be teaching me to fight.”
Enzo’s mouth retained a skeptical twist.
Fiore ran his thumb over Enzo’s lip. “I promise I won’t hold it against you.”
Enzo bit his lip in Fiore’s wake.
Fiore stretched up to kiss him. Enzo melted into it and embraced him in turn. Fiore lined up their hips to meet Enzo’s evident interest with his own.
“Perhaps,” Fiore said when they parted, “you might cross blades with me tonight?”
A low chuckle escaped Enzo’s throat. He consented with a kiss.
~
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
When Enzo arose the following morning to perform his daily exercise, Fiore—for the first time in all their acquaintance—got up alongside him.
He didn’t join Enzo in running up and down the spiral stair. Instead he spent the quarter-hour or so quaffing coffee in solitude to try and wake himself up several hours earlier than usual. When Enzo returned to him, he could keep his eyes open without effort. A final cup of coffee shared with Enzo—Fiore’s third that morning—gave him enough energy to keep up as Enzo led him downstairs to the courtyard, where Maestra Rovigatti awaited them.
Two rapiers lay ready on the marble bench as they had every morning since Enzo resumed his fencing lessons. Today, however, a wooden sword had joined them.
“A waster,” Maestra Rovigatti explained as she handed it to Fiore. “Drilled and filled with lead to match the weight of a rapier.”
It weighed far more than Fiore would’ve expected of even a true metal sword.
“We’ll move on to blunted steel when you understand the basics,” Maestra Rovigatti continued, either oblivious to or more likely politely ignoring his undisguised astonishment at the wooden weapon’s heft. “For now, we begin with the grip.”
Without further ado, she adjusted his instinctive hold on the handle from a tight fist to a more delicate grasp that included, to his surprise, curling his forefinger and thumb over the cross-guard and around the base of the blade.
“The hilt is like a bird,” she explained. “Hold it too softly, and it will escape. Too hard, and you’ll crush its hollow bones.”
Fiore had already arranged his legs into an imitation of the perpendicular crouch he’d seen Enzo assume so many mornings before. Maestra Rovigatti had a few adjustments here as well before she moved on to his arms. Here she centered his sword-bearing arm in front of him, bent, with his elbow a handsbreadth from his waist.
“The goal,” she said as she moved him about not unlike Artemisia oft did, “is to present your opponent with the narrowest possible target.”
“Turn sideways and disappear?” said Fiore.
“If you like,” Maestra Rovigatti replied in a far more patient tone than his insolence deserved.
The resulting posture felt far less graceful than Maestra Rovigatti or Enzo had looked to Fiore’s untrained eye. He felt more keenly than ever before Enzo’s eyes upon him. To fail at all was mortifying enough. To fail beneath Enzo’s watchful gaze—Fiore wondered how he would survive the humiliation. Yet survive he must, for Enzo needed him. Long hours spent in perfect stillness assuming whatever pose Artemisia devised for him had prepared Fiore somewhat for the rigid-yet-fluid postures of fencing. He could bear up under whatever Maestra Rovigatti threw at him. Somehow.
As she bid him scuttle backward and forward like a crab, Fiore wondered at how Enzo contrived to look so graceful with a sword in his hand. He felt like one of Artemisia’s wooden models flailing about with its string-joints cocked at odd angles. Things improved a touch when at last the maestra faced him with blade in hand and showed him the sequence of parries that would block her attacks. The fencing drills reminded him of dance practice at the conservatorio—a set sequence of movements divided into measures. Then she came at him with speed. Clack—clack—clack—wood against wood, until Fiore couldn’t decide whether to bring his sword up or out, and hers halted at his throat.
She stared at him with brows raised. “You understand?”
