“Think on that tomorrow,” Romeo said. He sounded unnerved now, just as I felt. “Tonight, you must rest and heal.”

“Tomorrow, and all the days after,” Mercutio agreed. He let out another sigh, as if giving up his ghost, and made a pathetically small whimper as Romeo pressed a cool compress over his swollen eyes. “Tomorrow, for my enemies. Tomorrow, for blood. Tomorrow, for the wretched living. Tonight is for the sainted dead.”

I got him to drink some wine then, and his shivering slowed as the feather bedding crowded close around him. When he finally slept, Romeo looked at me and said, soft enough not to wake him, “Was it the Capulets who struck at him so, do you think?”

He had not heard Veronica’s confession, nor guessed at it; he knew only that we’d quarreled.

“I think whoever did will soon regret it,” I said. I hated my sister, and I feared the selfish, cold chit, but she was still blood, still family. I should lie for her. I should lie to protect the Montague family and Romeo from his own better nature . . . and yet, I could not bring myself to it. “The truth, like blood, will out.”

I took the key from Mercutio’s neck. I tested the door and found his apartments locked from the outside. That was good; it meant Mercutio’s lord father had decreed his son be abandoned to his wounds and demons at least for the night; not even the most loyal of Mercutio’s servants had dared sneak back to his side. I left Romeo at the bed and opened the secret compartment where Mercutio had taken possession of the jewels, gold, and sword I had stolen the night before; those I put into a leather bag.

“Where are you going?” Romeo asked in a charged whisper, as I swung up into the window and checked the street below. It was the dregs of the night now, when even criminals stole off to their straw beds. “You promised him you’d not go!”

“I’ll come back,” I said. I lifted the bag. “If they search his rooms and find this, he’ll swing like Tomasso, and so may we. I’ll take it to a safer place. If he wakes, say I’m gone to the jakes. It’ll be true enough.”

I slipped out before he could object, swarmed down the wall, and went at a quick, light pace through the warren of streets to the public jakes located near the river. It was a foul place, and no matter how carefully I stepped, the ground was soft and wet and stank of effluence and rot, but that was all to the good.

I held my breath as I came to the bog house, with its wooden seats over the pits; I tied a thin silken rope, one of several I had hidden on me, to the buckles of the bag, and lowered it into the filthy liquid, then tied it to a rusty hook below the seat. I’d hidden things here before, and disposed of others. No sane man searched a waste-filled midden for treasure. It would be safe enough until I retrieved it—or not. I did not greatly care now, as long as it was not found in Mercutio’s possession, nor mine.