Then the claws bit into my sides and the last life’s air that had been drooling out of my mouth exploded in a scream. It felt as if I were burning in the water, pain ripped down my sides, and I was moving, being dragged at such a speed under the water that my ears popped. I’m being dragged to Hell, was my last thought as my scream ran out to an airless croak and I was catapulted out of the water and up against a stone wall, which I slid down, settling into a human puddle on the landing under a bridge, nearly fifty yards from the one where I had been stabbed.

As I gasped in the air, which burned like ice-cold water in the belly of a heat-stroked sailor, I felt a pleasant wooziness, an almost drunken euphoria, fill my limbs. I heard voices, as if they were distant echoes, and looked down the canal to see Salanio standing at the top of the bridge, calling down to Lorenzo, who stood on the landing below.

“Do you see him?”

“No.”

“Look for bubbles. There should be bubbles if he’s drowned,” said Salanio.

As I watched, the canal changed from a flat, black-mirror glass to a chevron pattern, a wave, caused by something moving just under the surface, something large and fast and certain. No churning, no wake, just the irresistible arrowhead of water, leaving its rays behind it to wash against the walls of the canal. I smiled, my head drooped, and I began to drift away. I had felt this lazy numbness before, in the dungeon, when her claws had pierced my flanks.

Then something broke the water underneath the bridge, like a waterspout, the great fountain that rises when a full barrel is dropped to the water from a tall ship and the sea leaps out of its boundaries. To me it was a blur of silvery black and wet motion, then Lorenzo was gone from the landing and the canal surface was settling around the spot where the violence had been born and returned.

“Lorenzo!” Salanio called. “Lorenzo!” He was leaning out as far as he could over the railing, but he could not see his friend. He ran down the bridge, around the railing, and down the steps to the gondola landing. “Lorenzo?”

He could see that something had disturbed the water there, he had, in fact, heard it, but it had been so fast he hadn’t seen it. It had been so fast that Lorenzo hadn’t had time to scream.

Salanio got on his knees and leaned close, trying to peer down into the dark water.

His face was only a foot from the water when the claw broke the surface and snatched off his head. Quick as that. His headless body, neck still spurting tarry trails of blood, rolled forward into the water and something dragged it quickly under.