"Kill them!" Lord Ferrante roared, stamping his boots in agony, but the soldier facing Master Beneforte gave way in confused panic. Master Beneforte skipped backward a few paces, dagger brandished, as Fiametta picked up speed, then they both ran from the castle gate as hard as they could.

At the bottom of the hill Fiametta glanced back. Lord Ferrante was pointing her way, Holding up a purse, and yelling something; a pair of bravos sped out the gate. As the houses grew more crowded, Master Beneforte darted between two shops and into an alley, then dodged into another alley, they fought through someone's laundry hung out to dry, and vaulted a sleeping dog. Fiametta was gasping for air; it felt like someone had stuck a dagger into her side, so sharp was the pain of her laboring lungs and banquet-laden stomach.

"Stop, Fiametta...."

They had come to the edge of the buildings, by the shoreline of the lake. Master Beneforte sagged against a wall of dun brick. He, too, was gasping, his head bent to one side. His right hand kneaded his belly, just below his chest, as if to push back pain. When he looked up his face was not flushed, as Fiametta's was, but of a gray pallor, sheened with sweat. "I should not ... have gorged so well," he blurted. "Even at the Duke's expense." And, after another moment, in a strange, small voice, "I can't run any more." His knees buckled.

Chapter Four

"Papa!" She wouldn't dare let him fall. She might not be able to get him up again. She twisted up under his armpit, and pulled his arm across her shoulders one-handed, juggling the bundled cloak under her other elbow. He was incredibly heavy, draped over her. "We have to keep going. We have to get back to the house." Her throat clotted in panic, more frightened by the weird gray color of his face than by the bravos seeking them through the alleys like a pair of hunting dogs.

"If Ferrante ... takes the castle ... he will take the town. And if he ... takes the town ... our old oak door won't stop his soldiers. Not if they think there's treasure inside. And if he takes . .. the town ... he'll take the duchy. No place to run."

"With fifty men?" said Fiametta.

"Fifty men ... and the moment." He paused. "No. He'll take the town at most. Then he'll wait for reinforcements. Then the rest." His face was furrowed with pain. He hugged his torso and stood bent over, swaying. "You run, Fia-mia. God, don't let them catch you. The blood lust will make them crazy for days. I've seen men ... get like that."

A stone quay served several wooden docks built out into the water. A little fishing boat was just bumping up to the pilings. Its sole, sun-burned occupant tossed a rope around a post to secure his craft, then turned back to his lateen-rigged sail of coarse brown hemp, which he'd half-lowered as he'd coasted in. He straightened its folds and lowered it fully. He climbed out onto the dock and took up the rope to lead his boat around the end to its proper mooring on the lee side.

"The boat," breathed Fiametta. "Come on!"

He squinted at it, beard pointing. "Maybe ..." They stumbled forward.

"Master Boatman," Fiametta called as they came near, "would you please hire us your boat?" She suddenly realized she was carrying no coins. And neither was Master Beneforte.

"Eh?" The peasant stood, and pushed back his straw hat, and stared dully at them.

"My father has taken ill. As you see. I wish ... to take him gently across to Saint Jerome's, and see Brother Mario the healer." She glanced back over her shoulder. "At once."

"Well, I have to unload my fish, Madonna. Maybe then."

"No. At once." At his offended frown, she tore the silver net from her hair and held it out to him. "Here. There are as many pearls in my net as you have fish in yours. I'll trade you even, but don't argue with me."

The astonished boatman took the hairnet. "Well ...! Never before have I pulled pearls from Lake Montefoglia!"

Fiametta moaned in her throat, and coaxed Master Beneforte to sit on the edge of the dock. From there he dropped heavily into the open boat, and motioned urgently to his bundled cloak. She shoved it into his hands and he clutched it to his chest. He looked worse, his mouth open with pain and legs drawing up. She jumped in alter him, fighting her velvet skirts. The boat rocked wildly. Bemusedly, the boatman standing on the dock tossed in the bow rope, and then, after another glance at his handful of pearls, his straw hat as well. It spiraled down into the bottom of the boat. Fiametta squatted and grabbed an oar, heavy in her hands, and used it to shove them hard away from the dock.

A man in Ferrante's livery emerged from the alleys, spotted them, and shouted over his shoulder. He started for the dock. He had a drawn sword in his hand.

Fiametta pointed back toward the shore. "Watch out, Boatman! Those two men who are coming will steal your pearls." And beat out his life as well, she feared, in their frustration, as casually brutal as wolves.

"What?" The peasant wheeled, and stared in panic at the two bravos, who had nearly reached the dock. His hand tightened on his new treasure.

She found the rope to raise the sail, and hung on it, hand-over-hand. The warm afternoon breeze was faint, but steady, and more importantly, from the south, blowing them away from the shore even while she struggled with the sail and had no hand free for the steering oar. They had drifted a good forty feet away from the dock by the time the two shouting bravos reached the end of it.

They shook their swords at Fiametta and cried obscene and violent threats. They were just turning back to wreak lethal vengeance on the poor man who had helped her, when the peasant, who had fallen back and picked up a long oar, charged forward with it like a knight at joust. It struck one sword-waving bravo square in his steel breastplate; with a yell, the man fell backwards into the water and sank. Swinging the oar around like a quarterstaff, the peasant toot the second bravo in the chin with a crack that echoed across the lake. He staggered back, unbalanced, and splashed after his comrade.

By the time the two men had saved themselves from drowning, at the cost of abandoning their heavy metal weapons and armor to the lake bottom, and splashed soddenly back onto the beach, the boatman had thoroughly disappeared. The light spring air filled the little boat's brown sail. The angry figures on the beach shaking their fists and impotently biting their thumbs seemed as tiny and feckless as gnomes.

Master Beneforte, who had been watching over the side with great anxiety, loosened his white-knuckled grip on the gunwale and sighed, sinking back into the bottom of the boat. His face was still very pale, though his breathing seemed a shade less labored. He must be sick and in pain indeed, not to be even offering criticism of her handling of the boat. She almost wished for a scathing remark, just for reassurance. Was it heart-sickness, or Lord Ferrante's evil magic that had laid him so low? Or some pernicious combination of both?

"The pearls in that hairnet were worth more than this entire leaky boat," he said after a moment. But it sounded more of an observation than a complaint. "Let alone the day's catch." The fish in question lay covered in water in a wooden tub in the bow, the drying nets piled beside it.

"Not at that moment," Fiametta pointed out sturdily.

"True," he breathed. "Very true." Wearily, he leaned his head back, adjusting his hat for a pillow.

Fiametta, sitting in the stern with the steering oar, loosened the rope and let the boom swing out a little more squarely to the following breeze. It seemed miraculously calm and peaceful, with only the creak of the ropes, the slap of little wavelets, and the bubbling of the wake astern. It was a day for a picnic, not a ghastly massacre.