“Any family to mourn her?” I polished a speck of ox blood off my biggest knife. “A husband?”

“No.”

Not for Anna either.

Patterns. Had Cesare Borgia brought this latest murder up to me deliberately, knowing as he did that Anna’s murder had been the event that brought me into his orbit? But I’d never told him how Anna died, or even her name—not even in our first probing interview.

I hitched myself up to sit on the stone balustrade beside my knives, and Carmelina put an automatic hand to my arm. “Careful, Messer Leonello—that’s a long drop.” Casting her eyes the long five stories down behind me.

“Worrying for me?” I was nearly on an eye level with her now, which was precisely why I’d done it. “How kind.”

“I could toss you off a loggia myself for what you did to my nice rack of beef,” she retorted. “Now, if you will excuse me—”

I captured her fingers before she could take them from my arm. “It’s you who should be careful, Signorina Cuoca. That’s three women I know of now who died the same way. I would be wary of strange men, if I were a woman like you.”

“What do you mean, a woman like me?” She cocked her head, not pulling her hand away from mine quite yet. She had a scatter of new summer freckles, and her wiry arms below their rolled-up sleeves were scarred and practical. Her fingers were callused in mine, and a black curl had worked itself determinedly out of her scarf to lie against her brown neck.

“A woman like you,” I repeated, holding her in my eyes. “More precisely, you are a woman like them. Low women, if you will forgive me. Two tavern maidservants and one fruit seller—working women. None of them whores, precisely—”

“I am not a whore!” Tugging against my hand. “No woman in my position could afford to be. Do you know how kitchens talk when a woman gets a reputation for spreading her knees?”

“Calm your feathers, Carmelina, I’ve no intention of insulting you—or the women who died. As you say, whore is a word that comes quick to men’s lips.” I gave a squeeze of her hand in apology. “These are women, rather, who met a great many men in the course of their work. Women who would not be missed once they were dead. Women without families of note. Women like you.”

Were there other women, dead the same way in the year between Anna and Eleonora the fruit seller? I had not heard of any such thing, but I had not been looking. Were there more than three?