“Getting drunk again?” he demanded shortly. “You know His Eminence wants his guards sharp; we don’t know when we’ll be called to the Vatican. The captain will have your ears on a string if you aren’t at your place for the dawn shift! Up with you, up—” And he dragged at Niccolo’s big arm.

“Luis?” I said.

His eyes slid coldly over me. “Yes?” he said, and I heard the Spanish tang to his voice. A short man with clean hands and neatly trimmed nails. A tidy shirt and unspotted hose, a pen case at his belt instead of a knife. Just the sort of man to accompany a headstrong boy on a slum-hunt for cheap whores; keep him in line and clear up any resulting messes.

He dismissed me with a flick of his hand, chivvying again at Niccolo, who sheepishly got to his feet and gave me a nod of farewell. The Spaniard hurried him along, and for a moment the man’s shirt collar pulled away from his neck.

Barely visible at the base of his throat, I saw the beginning of three scratch marks. As if a woman had raked him with her nails, and very hard.

The Spaniard gave his collar an irritable tug and vanished into the crowd with Niccolo. I folded Cicero back into my doublet and rose. I’d have no more need for books tonight.

I stayed well back from them, tracking the sound of Don Luis’s high, irritated voice. I’d marked the area around the Inn of the Fig well during the daylight, and now I moved silently in the dark. The dangerous part of night: when the earliest risers have yet to venture out, when the last drunks are staggering home, when the lurkers hope to bag one more purse or one more kill before slinking home with the dawn. There is no time so good as the hour before dawn to commit murder.

I looped ahead of my prey, doubling through the dark almost under their noses, but they were too busy scouting the shadowed corners to search the ground almost under their feet. I slipped into the deep shadow thrown by a vast palazzo and waited for the two figures to cross the piazza. I should have waited further until they separated, until I could take them alone—but I didn’t want to wait. There were two of them, and both larger than me, but one was drunk and neither knew I was there. And it was dark, so very dark. Even a dwarf may seem a giant in the dark.

I took a deep breath and flung my voice into the night so it boomed.

“Don Luis!”