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But Enzo shook his head. “Dr. Leopardi saved you.”
Fiore furrowed his brow—which did nothing good for his headache. “Who?”
“Nascimbene’s chirurgeon.”
This left Fiore no less confused. “Why?”
“Because I told him I would kill him if he failed to give you the antidote.”
“Antidote?”
“To the poison on Nascimbene’s blade.”
Fiore stared at him. His mind was not in any condition to work through this. “From the beginning, please.”
“Soon,” Enzo promised again.
Fiore was starting to hate that word.
“You’re not altogether well,” Enzo added with a sympathetic smile. His hand trailed through Fiore’s hair again, a comforting gesture despite the pains it inspired. But then he left off to ring the silver hand-bell on the nightstand. “Dr Venier ought to have a look at you. I swear I’ll tell you everything afterward.”
Fiore thought he’d suffered quite enough already without having to submit to yet another chirurgical examination.
Dr Venier arrived in short order. Fiore kept his complaints to himself for the most part while she plied stetoscopio and termometro, though a few more pathetic whimpers escaped him as she, however gently, probed and prodded. She dosed him with mold tincture and anodyne by mouth, along with a third medicine she didn’t explain, nor did Fiore recognize its queer taste. The reveal of bandages around his middle—when Dr Venier listened to his entrails—came as something of a surprise. Distantly he recalled a sudden pang there during the duel.
“Pulse much stronger,” she declared when she’d finished. “And fever reduced.”
All good tidings. Fiore wondered why Enzo didn’t look happier to hear them. Aloud he said, “I suppose I have to get up now?”
Enzo exchanged an alarmed glance with Dr Venier.
“We may try,” Dr Venier said.
Fiore wasn’t sure he liked the sound of that.
Enzo slipped an arm behind his shoulders. Dr Venier held out her hands for him to clasp. Between the two of them Fiore attempted to sit up. Every muscle in his body protested. The room spun violently.
“Down, down, down,” came Enzo’s voice, low and urgent. “Steady now.”
Fiore’s pulse throbbed in his skull. But the dark fog encroaching on his vision receded with every beat, which was something. Soon he could see clearly Enzo’s deeply concerned face above him and realized he was lying down again.
“We’ll try again later,” Dr Venier said. “Just keep kneading his limbs in the meantime. But on the whole, Signor Fiore, you’re doing very well.”
And with that, she mercifully withdrew.
Fiore didn’t necessarily feel like he was doing very well. But he was alive, which was frankly more than he’d expected. He turned to Enzo, who’d taken up his hand in Dr Venier’s absence.
“If I have a fever,” Fiore protested, “why do I feel so cold?”
Enzo hesitated. “Your heart is weakened.”
Fiore didn’t see what that had to do with it.
“Your pulse isn’t strong enough for your blood to reach your extremities as it ought,” Enzo further explained. “It’s withdrawing towards your vitals to keep them warm.”
Fiore, his head dulled by the throbbing ache that seemed to thrum from within the skull-bone itself, could only reply, “Oh.”
A wan yet sanguine smile graced Enzo’s lips. “But it grows stronger by the day. And until you’re well again, there’s rosewater for your fever and braziers and furs for your feet.”
