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“Why not?” the mustachioed fellow scoffed.
Broken-nose levelled him a severe look. “Would you know your lover’s ear?”
“Which one?” replied the mustachioed fellow. Then, “Oh.”
“Something he touches more oft than an ear,” the brute mused as if to himself. “Or what touches him. Besides the prick, I mean.”
Broken-nose laughed.
Fiore tried to concoct his escape even as he listened with increasing dread to their plans of mutilation. There were three of them to his one. They had him tied hand-and-foot. Even if he somehow rolled past them into the water, he’d only drown. No doubt they’d counted on that when they chose this place to hold him. And even if he dared to scream, none would hear him save the bones. He wasn’t blindfolded, though, which he counted as a small victory.
Until he realized that without a blindfold there was nothing to prevent him identifying his kidnappers after they returned him to Enzo’s keeping.
Which meant either they were very stupid—Fiore didn’t dare hope for that—or they had no intention of letting him live long enough to set Enzo on their trail.
The mustachioed fellow’s voice broke through Fiore’s trance of mute horror.
“A hand?” he suggested, twirling his own.
Fiore’s stomach plummeted into an abyss.
“Surely a courtesan’s hands see a great deal of use,” the mustachioed fellow continued. “Lingering caresses, long strokes…”
An unanticipated rage flared in Fiore’s heart. Even in the midst of his own peril, he found he had nothing but contempt for his captor’s musings on what intimate moments had passed between him and Enzo. How dare this wretch speculate on what he could never understand.
“Fingers,” broken-nose declared. “Not hands.”
The mustachioed fellow cut himself off mid-pace. “Why?”
“Only two hands,” broken-nose explained. “Whereas, with ten fingers, we’ve ten chances at getting our money. Or at least more than two. If it takes beyond three, we may have to reconsider whether the duke is willing to pay at all.”
“He’s willing,” Fiore hastened to assert.
Broken-nose spared him a bemused glance. But even as he looked at Fiore, he spoke to his compatriots. “Get his hand out.”
Fiore hardly had time to flinch before the two men fell upon him. With the swiftness of sailors they had him untied and tied again—hauled up onto his knees—his right wrist caught up in the brute’s massive paw—a stool dragged before him—his hand slammed onto its seat and forced to splay—the mustachioed fellow with his blade thrust into the hooded lamp’s flame—then broken-nose coming around behind him to put another dagger to his throat.
“You won’t kill me,” Fiore said. “I’m no use to you dead. You said so yourself.”
Broken-nose’s voice held a cold smile. “When I slit your throat, your heart will still beat long enough to bring blood to your finger. But you’re right,” he added, to Fiore’s surprise. “We may need another one or two from you alive before the duke sees the wisdom in meeting our demands. So if the threat of death won’t keep you still, perhaps this will.”
And so saying, he lowered the blade from Fiore’s throat and slipped it along the inside of his thigh to the root of his prick.
Fiore wished he’d had the foresight to shut up.
The mustachioed fellow drew near. Fiore’s arm trembled in the brute’s grasp. He shut his eyes—his captors already knew him for a coward, he’d gain nothing by seeing what they did, and if he couldn’t keep still a worse fate would befall him.
Fiore tried to turn his mind towards other matters. He wanted to think of Enzo and how glad he’d be to see him again when all this was done and how he could finally tell him he’d chosen him. He delved into his own memories of happier moments; strolling through the artist’s studios, dancing at the masked ball, basking in their shared glory after an indulgent afternoon of love-making, the final night of Saturnalia when a mysterious bauta had first wandered into his life, and the moment when, at long last and after guiding him through the worst throes of fever, Enzo had slipped off his mask altogether and Fiore had beheld his beautiful face…
Instead, his mind went further back. The taste of laudanum in wine. Awakening to find himself face-to-face with a horrible, glass-eyed, beaked mask. The singing maestro impatient with the fools he’d hired to hold down the boy and keep him quiet. Tied hand and foot behind his back. Men forcing his knees apart. A hot knife against his tenderest flesh. Knowing this was the moment Eliodoro had warned him of, and he must escape.
And as he screamed, both now and then, Fiore wondered if the singing maestro would find it musical.
~
A light rapping fell on the alchemy workshop door, followed by Carlotta’s indifferent intonation of, “Luncheon, m’lord. And a letter as well.”
Enzo set down his book and looked up from his desk. “Enter.”
