She crossed herself and hurried away. A blind beggar raised his sham of an eye bandage to give me an incredulous glance before remembering to drool and stare vacantly again.

Yet, fearless in his strength, now rushing on—I went back to declaiming in my head, swaggering as much as any mighty Ajax.

Two butcher boys paused to guffaw at the dwarf striding along with his nose buried in a book and his hand clapped to his dagger hilt as though it were a hero’s sword, but for once their snickers slid off me without pricking. I was a man grown, thirty in a year or two, but the tale of Troy converted me every time back into the giddy schoolboy I’d been when I first read it. And thanks to a lucky chorus hand in a game of primiera last night, I’d finally had the coin to buy a certain battered book I’d been eyeing for a month—not just the simplified Ilias Latina I’d read as a boy, but Homer’s own version, the Greek translated into Italian. Only a woodblock print, to be sure; Priam’s plea to Achilles was lamentably smudged, and water stains all but obscured Hector’s duel with Ajax. But a book nonetheless, a new book for my modest private library.

Then up rose Achilles, dear to Jove—I whistled through my teeth, resuming my stroll toward the tavern where Anna worked. I’d need to play a game or two more at the tables if I wanted any food this evening, since I’d spent all the coin I had on the book. Then I could go home, back to my tiny rented room above the print shop in the Borgo, and pass the rest of the evening sprawled on the cot, mug of wine in my hand, reading by the clear light of the beeswax taper I brought from its box only when I had a new book to read . . .

But when Achilles’ voice of brass they heard, they quailed in spirit . . . “Anna?” I called as I came into the tavern, tucking the worn volume back into my doublet just before the death of Patroclus. “Anna, my good lady, have you any easy marks for me tonight? Let me—”

That was when I saw the tables empty of customers; heard the odd and eerie silence, except for the muffled wailing of the tavern maids weeping into each other’s shoulders.

“What?” I looked at the maidservants, from face to tear-blotched face. “What’s happened? Where is Anna?”

“In—in there,” one of them quavered. I flung open the door to the kitchen, and my buoyant book-fueled happiness popped like a bubble.

* * *

A nna had died fighting. There was that, at least.

“When did you find her?” I asked the tavernkeeper around lips gone numb.