AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Vittorio raised his head from where he slept curled on his rug on the floor beside the bed.
Before a curious whine could escape the hound, Enzo made two swift signs with his hand—Silence. Guard.
Vittorio pricked up his ears and cocked his head.
Enzo trusted the hound would take his charge to heart and shut the door behind him.
In the unlikely event that Nascimbene somehow overpowered him, at least Fiore would remain out of harm’s way. Enzo had already drawn up the necessary papers to ensure Fiore would live on in comfort if the worst came to pass. To this end he left Carlotta behind as well to see his will carried out in his absence.
The gondola slipped out of Ca’ Scaevola even more silent than Enzo’s own tread. Enzo sat alone in the felze with his sword laid across his lap. It’d been too long since he’d carried a blade out-of-doors. He hadn’t realized how much he missed it. Now that he had it back, a queer calm settled over his nerves. With blade in hand he could surmount any obstacle. Nascimbene was nothing. And within the hour he would be still less.
The city beyond the woven screen of the felze had hardly awoken. The aristocratic districts through which the gondola now travelled were particularly silent. Anyone who labored before dawn here did so behind closed doors and within high walls.
Then they came to the princely palazzo.
This didn’t surprise Enzo. Bellenos’s temple, the princely palace, and the piazza that connected them lay in the city’s center, between Ca’ Scaevola and Isola dell’Anfiteatro. The grand canal was the quickest route through Halcyon and led straight past the palazzo.
But in the shadow of the palazzo, the gondola halted.
Enzo saw no impediment to their progress through the wicker screens. Still, he didn’t have so complete a view as a gondolier, and so he waited a few moments before he rapped the roof-ribs with his knuckles.
The gondola didn’t move.
Enzo waited another moment before he called out. “Ippolito?”
No reply came.
On another occasion Enzo might have had more patience. Today however he had a most urgent appointment. He could not afford to lose many more minutes.
And so, seeing the gondola had halted within reach a palazzo portico, Enzo opened the door and disembarked.
A half-moon of some dozen princely guards surrounded him.
Enzo remained undaunted. “Where is Ippolito?”
One of the guards jerked their chin at something over Enzo’s shoulder.
Enzo turned his head just far enough to catch Ippolito in the corner of his eye—still standing on the gondola’s stern, unharmed.
Which was when someone tackled Enzo from behind.
Enzo cursed himself for not drawing his sword before he’d left the felze. None of the guards had drawn theirs, or any other weapon, but there were at least two for each of his limbs, and though he thrashed and kicked and sent more than a few away with cracked jaws and bloodied noses, still they bore him to the masegni. He lost his sword and hat. His mask remained. The guards bound his hands behind his back.
Then they hauled him upright and dragged him, still struggling, into the bowels of the palazzo.
Enzo had heard tell of the dungeons beneath the princely palazzo. The whole city knew of them. He’d never yet explored them himself. He found them damp—unsurprising, as they lay below sea-level—and dark, lit solely by the hooded lantern of the guard who led the pack. He passed no other prisoners. All remained silent as the grave.
His journey ended in a circular cell somewhere in the unfathomable labyrinth of corridors. The guards shoved him—again, with significant struggle—into an iron chair. More hempen bonds secured his wrists to the chair’s arms and his ankles to its legs.
There they left him alone, though with the hooded lantern on the floor for light and, Enzo supposed, company. And the door, Enzo noted as it slammed and locked upon him, had a grate in it just large enough for a human face. That was something. He continued struggling. His strength couldn’t rend the rope asunder, but perhaps if he could contrive to slip a hand free, then—
Bootheels against stone echoed down the corridor towards the cell. A tread familiar to Enzo’s ears. And one he’d expected in a place like this.
“Lucrezia,” Enzo called out.
His sister’s face appeared in the door grate. Her expression remained unreadable. A key scraped in the lock. She entered, shut, and locked the door behind her—bold, Enzo thought, to lock herself in with him when he trembled with rage. A single stride brought her near enough to whip his mask off his face.
“Enzo,” said Lucrezia.
