I’d already taken on a bull, though, with the words I’d thrown down on the dais. And of the two bulls, the one without horns was the one to fear.

“Did those girls die hard?” I called out to Cesare Borgia as he whipped in shadow-quick to open a slash across the bull’s haunch with his sword. “I know the first girl fought; I found blood under her nails.” The bull turned on Cesare, roaring as blood sprayed from its haunch, and now it was my turn to distract it as Cesare dodged sideways. “Was it your blood?” I sent another finger knife whipping through the winter light into the bull’s shoulder.

“No.” Cesare rolled, came to his feet with auburn hair flying, swept in again with his sword as the bull turned between us, maddened. “No woman’s ever scratched me except in passion.”

“Was it about passion?” I waited this time until the bull was nearly on me before I flung myself to the side. There was a rhythm to this, a rhythm I felt in my thumping blood. “Did you take them first willing, then kill them for pleasure?”

“My pleasure in women ends when the seed spills.” Cesare Borgia opened the bull’s other flank that time, with a casual sweep of his arm. “That’s all they’re good for.”

I thought of Giulia Farnese’s myriad kindnesses; of the sweetness Anna had showed me when she smiled. “You are wrong.”

“Am I?”

My next knife missed, but the bull turned toward me with a roar anyway. “Why leave your dagger with the fourth victim, Eminence? Carelessness?” Not that, I already knew. Cesare Borgia was never careless. “Amusement?” A very black amusement indeed, to challenge all Rome to attach such deeds to his name. “Arrogance?” I dropped into another neat tumble almost under the bull’s hooves, and it occurred to me that I was the arrogant one here. All Cesare Borgia had to do to kill me, and my theories with me, was stand back and let the bull trample me to death.

“Careful, little lion man,” Cesare sang out, and dived between me and the bull, his blade carving a furrow along its shoulder. I rolled to my feet, flicking another knife into my hand, and we had no breath left for words after that. The bull spun between us, maddened and roaring, blood dappling its brown flanks, and we spun with it as the crowd screamed. I dodged the horns as Cesare attacked the haunches; then Cesare flung himself away from the hooves as I threw another knife into the massive throat, and we pivoted that bull between us like we’d been doing it all our lives. The beast bellowed, tiring and stumbling, and all I felt was a savage release. Finish it, I thought, but finish what? Finish who?

Finish it.