“La Signora might have given the order,” I said in a voice just above a whisper, a voice I could hardly hear over the mad thudding of my pulse and the red rush of blood in my ears. “But she used you as her puppet, sister.”

Veronica lifted her hands in a gesture of utter indifference. “I am a woman. I must get used to being used.”

“You’re not a woman. You’re a child playing at things you don’t understand.”

“I’m as much a woman as you are a man, Benvolio! I’ve my blood for a year now! And soon I’ll be wed and bedded, and breed more allies for this house. What use are you, then? Another excess boy?” She shoved past me and rejoined her silly little cousin, and the two girls swept down the hall in a hiss of silk and a cloud of floral perfume.

That evil should smell so sweet . . .

“What quarrel was that?” Romeo asked, once I’d come back to him. “To do with Mercutio?”

“Malice,” I said. “And one day, she’ll feel the scorpion’s sting of it on her own back.” My tone was so dark that he gave me a sidelong look of concern. “I’ll go in secret tonight, to see that Mercutio’s well cared for.”

“Then I come, too,” Romeo said.

I did not have the heart to tell him no.

•   •   •

Slipping into Mercutio’s rooms was an old-established routine for me, but teaching Romeo my methods was less simple, and the Ordelaffi household was on edge, to complicate matters. We did manage, but it was a near thing, and on clambering sweaty and trembling through the window we found Mercutio’s rooms dark and silent. No lamps lit. No sign of life at all.

“They’ve sent him away,” Romeo said in a harsh voice. “Ben, they sent him away!”

“Or worse,” I said. I found a candle striker and lit one of the half-melted tapers on the wall sconce. The light was thin and feeble, but it served . . . and I found Mercutio’s bloody clothes in a heap nearby, piled in a way that meant a servant had not been allowed to attend him. There were drops drying on the floor. Romeo took the candle and followed me, holding it high enough for me to suss out the thinning trail, and it led us past the undisturbed bed, to the pallet where Mercutio’s manservant would have laid his head, in better days.

But tonight, huddled on it was our friend.