Bartolomeo bounds forward with a great leap to Juan’s side, seizing the Duke’s booted leg in its stirrup. The knife he borrowed from me makes a slash in the dark and cuts the stirrup leather clear through, slashes the leg too from the surprised cry that rises from Juan. The stirrup falls, clanking on the slimy stones underfoot, and the Duke’s balance is gone with it. He falls heavily, almost at Bartolomeo’s feet, and Bartolomeo scrabbles to get a grip on his arms, but Juan is quick and lithe-muscled even if he is an idiot, and he is already rolling and reaching for the sword at his belt. Even Juan is not fool enough to go unarmed into these squalid streets; he sent Marco to bring his half armor before he even set out from his mother’s villa on this journey that he assumed would end between the thighs of his father’s mistress. He parries Bartolomeo away, staggering to his feet, and Bartolomeo’s answering slash of the knife clangs off the breastplate beneath Juan’s cloak. “Attack the Duke of Gandia, will you?” Juan hisses, and his sword whips toward Bartolomeo again.

Juan’s torso might be well protected, but half armor does not cover the legs, and I am already moving around the startled horse in the crablike scuttle that carries me with much speed if very little dignity. I hit Juan from behind with both blades drawn, slashing twice across the hamstrings and slashing deep.

Juan’s voice scales upward in a howl as he collapses, blood spurting down his boots on each side. He does not know it, this arrogant young killer, but he will never walk again.

“Take his arms,” I snap to Bartolomeo. “Drag him inside while I tether the horse and douse the torch. And Dio, will you stop his screaming?”

Darkness turns to light as we drag our victim inside the little rented room. Plans turn to action. And can we do it? turns to it is done.

* * *

Whenever I thought back to that little room afterward, I saw only the flare of light from the cheap tallow tapers I’d brought. Light flaring yellowly over an open hole of a mouth, and the bright spill of blood dripping steadily to the floor from the Duke of Gandia, who sat roped into the chair I’d brought at the same time as the tapers and the rope. Juan Borgia, terrified and furious and already in utter agony.

“You twisted little bastard, I’ll see you dead!” he howled when he saw me come around the chair from checking Bartolomeo’s knots and look him very deliberately in the eye. “How dare you lay a hand on the Pope’s son—”