Benito had realized a while back that he was never going to be as tall as his brother. But lately he’d been getting broader. And the one thing about roof-climbing was that his grip was as strong as one of those Barbary apes.
Which was a good thing, he thought, as he caught his attacker’s descending arm. Whoever this was, he was as strong as one of those apes’ bigger cousins. Benito snatched at his main gauche, cross-drawing it with his free hand. He drew it in a short vicious arc. The heavy pommel hit something, hard. The arm he was trying to hold went limp. He hit the sagging head twice more, with all the force at his disposal. As the body slumped against him, he caught his attacker by the hair, and pounded the base of his skull as hard as he could with the pommel. Then he stepped back and drew his rapier, slipping the main gauche into its sheath, and felt for the oil lamp.
It wasn’t there. But he knew this place like the back of his hand. There were candles and a striker in the cupboard. . . .
A minute later he was looking at the carnage that had once been their apartment. His heart leapt like a fountain when he did not see what he had expected to see: Maria’s body.
Then he realized what he was seeing. Two dead Matteoni brothers, with a third one—the one who had attacked him, whom he suspected had come on the scene later—slumped against the wall, staring at him with fogged eyes and a swaying head.
Since the Matteoni still alive clearly wasn’t going to be moving soon—that was Giovanni, one of the Matteoni brothers’ cousins—Benito took the time to examine the two dead ones. Luce and . . . Stephano, he thought. Luce had half his chest blown away. That was the work of a pistol at close range, and the only person Benito could think of who might have been at the apartment with a pistol was Kat. Whose body wasn’t here either. His heart soared still further.
The other body, probably Stephano’s, couldn’t really be recognized at all. He looked more like a slab of meat in a butcher shop than a man. His shirt was blood-soaked from a stab wound and his head—
Benito averted his eyes, almost gagging. The man’s features were completely obscured by drying blood. Brains were sagging out of the horrible head wounds. Someone—and he was pretty sure he knew just exactly what spit-fire woman could have done it, especially after he recognized the cleaver still jammed in the corpse’s shoulder—had hacked his skull into shreds.
Matteoni. Caesare’s errand boys.
As he finally accepted the truth about his idol, Benito felt a wave of sheer fury wash over him. The rage of a man who has been betrayed as well as wronged. He stalked towards the half-recumbent terror of the dockyards.
“Where is she?” He spoke in a voice that he scarcely recognized as his own. It was very, very cold. A voice which announced, as certainly as the tides: I will kill you, very slowly, if I don’t get answers.
The man looked up at Benito with half-glazed eyes. What he apparently saw was not just a fifteen-year-old boy. Maybe the Ferrara-steel rapier had something to do with it. The Matteoni cowered back against the blood-spattered wall. “They got away. She—they—killed Luce and Stephano. I—I wasn’t here. I was watching for Schiopettieri over on the next street. But when I saw her running away with that Case Vecchie bitch . . . I thought she’d come back, sooner or later.”
Case Vecchie . . . who but Kat?
“Who sent you?” Benito demanded. He already knew the answer. But he had to hear it. In his heart of hearts, somewhere, he still hoped to hear it was someone else. But it was a faint hope, almost nonexistent. How else could they have known where to find Maria? He’d told Caesare himself, because—he’d thought it honorable and best.
“Aldanto . . . Caesare Aldanto. Said to make it look like a rape.” It was said in a whisper, but it was loud enough to rock the foundations of Benito’s whole world.