I leaned my head back against the wooden crate of skillets and plates and the good knives without which I never traveled. With every roll of the wheels taking me farther from my father, my fog of blind panic had started to clear. Surely my father wouldn’t pursue me down into Rome? It must have stirred up talk when I ran away in the first place, especially when you considered just what I’d taken with me in the way of stolen goods, but the whispers would have blown over by now. Dragging me back to Venice as a desecrator of altars to be publicly punished before cheering crowds—that scandal would be enormous. What archbishop would keep my father on as cook then?

No. My father’s first instinct when he laid eyes on me might have been to seize me, but when I was far away and no longer quite so easy to lay hold of . . . well, I thought it far more likely he’d swallow his rage and mumble some hasty excuse when he was found trussed in that storeroom. Who wanted to wreck a painstakingly built career as one of Venice’s finest cooks, just to punish one disobedient daughter?

Not Paolo Mangano.

I couldn’t help a smile. At least I’d had the chance to tell my father to his face that I was a better cook than he. Who cared if he’d never believe me? I knew it was true.

I was still smiling and dreaming, thinking that a dish of zabaglione with almond milk really sounded quite tasty after all, when the first screams sounded.

“Bartolomeo?” I poked my head over the wagon tailboard, looking for my apprentice. “Did a horse fall, or—”

Bartolomeo stood rigid, eyes stretched wide. I followed his gaze and saw something I hardly understood: two of the guards at the head of our small column, slumped and bloody in their saddles. Another clutched at his shoulder, screaming—and a wolf pack of soldiers in dirtied armor was leaping down upon us from all directions, spurring their horses with shrill cries.