“He fancies anything female with a heart that beats,” Cesare said shortly. “And no doubt if pressed he’d compromise on the heart. Nor would I rule out sheep.”

“Perhaps.” I studied the young Archbishop—still a few months from eighteen, but rumor around the wine shops and betting touts of Rome had it that he was poised for a cardinalate. Unlike his brother, Cesare Borgia did not surround himself with the retinue of servants, priests, hangers-on, and retainers normally due one of his rank. He was alone now save for his colorless and expressionless guardsman Michelotto, who had already faded back against the doors like a statue as his master came to my side in a restless movement. The young Archbishop’s dark narrow face was stone-set above his purple robes, and his hands had stilled in a way I’d come to recognize. In the year I’d watched the Pope’s children, I had come to observe that while they all might have the same charming smile in happiness, in anger they spanned all possible variations. Lucrezia never angered at anything, Juan raged and threw tantrums, Joffre wilted into sulkiness—and Cesare grew very, very still. “Some trouble, Your Excellency?” I said neutrally.

He ignored my question, folding his arms across his chest. “What’s that?” He jerked his chin at the side of beef, swaying from side to side in the light summer breeze as it hung in the arch of the loggia.

“Practice.” I stood on tiptoe to jerk out my knife from between the two ribs. “No killers have made any attempts on Madonna Giulia or Madonna Lucrezia as yet, but that doesn’t mean one won’t turn up tomorrow. I take an hour or two up here each day, practicing throws.” Besides the practice, it was an hour or two of silence—precious in the ever-busy seraglio with its chattering servants, fluttery women, and giggling children.

Cesare Borgia assessed my hanging target, buzzing with flies in the heat and dripping old blood from a dozen previous hits. “You could not practice on a target board?”

“Target boards don’t have ribs, Your Excellency. Blades glance off bone, so it’s good to practice on something with a skeleton.” Besides, I’d appropriated the side of beef from the kitchens behind that prickly cook’s back (or rather, I’d suborned a burly manservant to appropriate it for me), and later when returning it I’d have the pleasure of watching her fly into a rage. She looked almost pretty when she yelled.

“Why such a short distance?” The Archbishop outpaced me as I turned for the other end of the loggia again—perhaps twenty steps. “Michelotto can put a knife through a man’s eye at twice this range. Can’t you, Michelotto?”

A grunt from the doors. For Michelotto, that was lengthy conversation.