My mistress’s low rippling laugh bubbled from the other side of the door, and the sound of splashing. The hot springs of Viterbo were famous—the ancient Romans had bathed here, quipping in their clipped sonorous Latin instead of our lazy vulgar Italian as they soaked in the healing sulfur springs under the sky. Pope Nicholas V had ordered massive baths erected, and now instead of sunny skies and arching trees overhead we had a battlemented, crenellated pile of marble and stone. Now the bathers tripped down shallow flights of stone steps and flitted along vaulted halls in their towels to reach the same steaming-hot springs. Giulia Farnese had tugged her papal lover through the arched doors with a wicked little laugh, flicking his entourage back with one small white hand, and the doors had closed on her shriek as the Holy Father tossed his shirt aside to reveal a swarthy bull’s chest and tossed her bodily into the bubbling pool. There had been some quarrel between them after the Duke of Gandia’s departure, but all appeared to be mended.

“Where are the others?” Cesare Borgia asked, looking around the vaulted antechamber. “The Holy Father’s entourage?” Doublets and shirts, discarded shoes and belts, a stack of snowy towels, and a chessboard and a flagon of wine lay scattered along the wall benches. I sat alone on a folded cloak under a silver branch of candles, a book resting facedown over my knee.

“Taken themselves to the next set of springs, since His Holiness indicated he did not wish company in this one.” Idly I moved a pawn on the chessboard beside me. The last players had abandoned their game partway through; black was eight moves from winning.

“You do not care for the baths, Messer Leonello?” Cesare Borgia discarded his cloak in a careless shrug, dropping it to the floor beside his mask.

“I killed my first man in a steam room,” I found myself saying. “I’ve never cared for them since.”

“Steam rooms, or killing?”

“Either.”

He flopped to the wall bench beside me. I moved another pawn on the chessboard, and he studied the pieces. “Black is nine moves from winning.”

“Eight.”

“Play me.”

It was not a request. “With pleasure, Your Eminence.”

The bass rumble of the Pope’s laughter sounded through the bolted doors to the bathing rooms, and I sat outside with the Pope’s son as he swiftly reset the chessboard. “Black or white?” I asked, and found my mouth inexplicably dry.

The gleam of his teeth showed in the dim room. “Black.”

I rotated the board. Carved ivory pieces standing in their ranks against carved ebony . . . but all I could see was blood welling in the dimple of a sweet, dead girl . . . and a black mask lying on a stone floor . . . and a dagger with a sapphire in its hilt.

I took a deep breath and moved my first pawn. “Go on,” I said. “Ask.”

“Ask what?”