“Not without finishing things here first,” I’d said, and Giulia said, “Men. I ask you!” and stalked off muttering some very uncomplimentary things about the lot of us. Possibly to cover up how white her face was at the thought of me confronting Cesare Borgia.

“You really wish to leave?” Cesare said at last, clapping his red hat onto his head. “Pity. I could have used you in Romagna.”

I took a deep breath, feeling oddly serene. If Cesare twitched a finger and Michelotto came through the door to cut my throat, well, at least I had won Giulia Farnese’s love first. Poets had died for less, and my lady had succeeded in making a poet of me.

Just hopefully not a dead poet.

“Will I still be leaving Rome by way of the river?” I asked Cesare Borgia. “Face down?”

“You were right about one thing, Leonello.” Cesare turned to face me: a cardinal one last time in all his scarlet finery. “I do rather like you. How do I look?”

“About as clerical as a bull in a red hat, Your Eminence.”

With a great sweep of his arms Cesare shed the cloak and the hat all at once. The scarlet cloth billowed away in a flutter like a dying bird’s wings. He wore stark black velvet beneath, and the long sword of the future Gonfalonier of the papal forces at his lean hip. “My new sword,” he said, and unsheathed it for my eyes. I read the motto inscribed along the gleaming blade.

“Aut Caesar, aut nihil.”

“Either Caesar”—he grinned—“or nothing.”

“You be Caesar, then.” I took out my Toledo blades for the last time, the ones he had given me years ago when he first offered to make me his family’s hired killer, and laid them out before him one by one. “And I’ll be nothing.” Of the two of us, I thought I’d be the happier. Even if no one remembered my name in a century, as they probably would Cesare Borgia’s.

Cesare tilted his head at my array of blades, all ten of them. “You don’t wish to keep them? The world is a dangerous place for dwarves, little lion man.”