The man nodded, sweating and pale-faced.
“Then you betterrun.” Saturnino shoved him, and her attackerstaggered, then regained his balance. He took off, hobbling down the street and around the corner.
Saturnino wheeled back around to Ravenna. “Answer me.”
Her attention dropped to his knife, stained with blood. To Ravenna, it looked like his whole body was working to restrain himself from launching at her. The realization sent a sharp shiver down her back.
There would be no one to rescue her fromhim.
“Tell me,” he said softly. “Who got to you, Ravenna?”
Panic tore at her. “I don’t know—” She abruptly broke off. There was no point in lying. The game was up. She had been caught. Nothing she said would be accepted or believed. But she could negotiate. She had one move to play. Something she had known ever since the competition.
Heneededher.
His family needed her.
According to the courier, she was a rarity and not so easy to replace. She held on to that truth like a shield. She prayed it was strong enough to withstand Saturnino’s anger. It reminded her of the hot center of a flame, a sharp blue.
“You said you’d kill me if I failed,” Ravenna whispered. “I tried to escape one night, made it just outside the palazzo, but got caught by a guard. A man helped me and offered… more.”
He cocked his head. The movement was swift, inhuman.
Her nerves sparked.
“Who was it?” he asked. “The archbishop of Pisa? The king of Naples? The Pazzi family?”
Ravenna shook her head. He named powerful men as if she existed in their sphere, but these were men who would never pay her any attention. Men who shouldn’t know she existed, which was what Ravenna preferred. But they were now all sitting down at the same table, playing a political game, and her match piece was sitting in the middle of the board, waiting to be tossed over.
Annihilated.
But they need me, Ravenna thought again fiercely.
She shook her head. “None of them.”
“Then it must have been the mercenary,” Saturnino said. “The Duke of Urbino.”
“Not him either,” Ravenna said, thinking of the map of the peninsula in the Sala delle Carte Geografiche. Pisa to the west, Naples to the south, and Urbino to the east. And Florence at the center—trapped by those loyal to the pope, and his vast territories to the north.
Saturnino looked away, his jawline taut. Understanding settled on his face. “Then it’s much worse than I expected. The pope found you.”
“His Holiness has my family in his grip. Threatened excommunication of me, them, and the whole of Volterra,” she whispered. “He would confiscate the inn, our home, cast us from society. Financially ruin my family, leave us destitute. Everyone in Volterra would be painted with the same brush, tainted, morally ruined. Their civil rights would be stripped from them. And everyone in the village would know it was because ofme.” Ravenna’s voice shook as it dropped to a haunted croak. “What wouldyoudo?”
He nodded, seemingly not surprised the pope would use such tactics. “What have you been tasked with doing?”
“I was to do the opposite of whatever your family hired me to do,” she said. “Instead of extracting the stones—”
“You’re to destroy them,” he said flatly.
An inner warning caught her tongue. Careful, don’t reveal too much.Ravenna didn’t correct him, didn’t so much as blink an eye.
“And then?” Saturnino advanced on her. “Where were you tonight? Who were you meeting?”
Ravenna swallowed, her mind whirring.
The knife flashed again, faster than she thought possible. It was back up, this time with the tip poised over her heart. Any pressure from Saturnino, and her cloak would give, her midnight-blue gown would give. He could spear her through.
Ravenna had misjudgedhim.
