“They do not!” Giulia burst out, and I breathed shallowly through my nose as all three Angels fastened their eyes on her.

“Contradicting the holy followers of Fra Savonarola,” the third Angel said in his squeaking voice, looking at the others. “This woman holds herself very high!”

“Too high.” The stocky Angel stepped closer to Giulia. “I think we will cut that hair for the fire after all, signora. Kneel!”

“I will do no such thing,” Giulia retorted, retreating back a sharp step before he could grab hold of her hair, and on my signal the other two guardsmen waded into Savonarola’s Angels.

The sounds of grunts and blows filled the cold street. All three Angels had stout staves, and one of Giulia’s guardsmen hissed a curse through his teeth as the scrawny Angel thumped him soundly across the shoulder. But my mistress’s guards had short swords, and both flashed out of their scabbards. “Pommels only,” I called, both knives drawn before my mistress as I kept out of the fray, because I wanted no bodies in the street today if I could help it. God only knew what punishment Florence’s mad Dominican friar would levy on anyone who killed one of his holy thugs. “Pommels,” I called again, “or flats of the blade!” Both guardsmen heard me, using their swords as cudgels rather than spilling blood with the cutting edges. One guard had got caught between two Angels, both of them buffeting him with their staves as they gave shrill whoops, and I stepped sideways to see if there was an angle where I could trip the scrawny one. But the stocky leader of the three saw my attention shift, and he darted around me to seize Giulia by the hair. “On your knees, whore” he whispered, and had his knife ready to saw through the gold mass doubled around his hand.

I darted back, my throat dry as a bone, ready to prickle him with steel, but my mistress—oh, my clever mistress. Rather than yank backward against the Angel’s grip, she flung herself forward against him and plastered her mouth over his. He went stiff all over in surprise, hand loosening in her hair for just an instant. Quite long enough for me to bump his knee out from under him with a blow of my knife hilt. Giulia helped with a shove of her own to the burly chest, and he fell flat on his back in the muddy street.

“Guards!” I rapped out, and both guardsmen lunged back to array themselves before their mistress and me. One of the guards had a bloody nose and the other had a set of knuckles that would be the size of cabbages tomorrow, but they’d left both Angels groaning over smashed shins and bleeding heads.