Item: Chiano and Sophia had been trying to tell him—in gentler terms—exactly what Benito was telling him now. If three so very different people—one of them his own flesh and blood—were saying the same things about Duke Visconti and the Montagnard cause, and Mama’s involvement with it, well it followed that he had probably been dead wrong and dreaming all these years.
Item: stripped of the fairy-tale glamour Mama had decked them in, Montagnards were not in the least attractive. Take the rhetoric of united Christian Empire away, and they became little more than highly trained, professional killers.
Item: they were now alone with this unhappy professional assassin, who was probably thinking that no one would miss them.
Marco looked over Benito’s shoulder at Aldanto, who was contemplating them with a face of stone. Marco’s blood ran colder than the spring-melt water that the Brenta carried down from the Alps.
Item: they were a liability. And Aldanto was looking at them like someone who couldn’t afford liabilities.
* * *
Benito suddenly broke off, seeing Marco’s face turn pale and still. “Brother—you all right?” he whispered, unable to fathom why Marco should suddenly look as if the great Lion of San Marco had come to life and confronted him. He knew that some of what he’d said was bound to come as a shock to Marco, but he hadn’t thought any of it was enough to turn him white to the ears!
He shook Marco a little, beginning to feel worried. The way Marco was staring at Aldanto, sort of glassy-eyed—it wasn’t like him. Marco was always the quick one, the alert one—except—
Benito went cold all over. Except when Marco had been sick . . .
* * *
Marco was watching Aldanto’s eyes, the only things in his face that were showing any change. They were growing harder; and Marco’s blood acquired ice crystals.
Item: they were quite likely to be dead very soon. Benito, with the panache of a fourteen-year-old unable to believe in his own mortality, had led them into dangerous and unfriendly hands—and with no way to escape. Aldanto was between them and the door, in a room barely big enough to hold all of them and the table and chairs.
Looking at those calculating eyes, Marco knew exactly what their fate was going to be. They had, at most, a few more minutes.
He forced himself to smile at his brother; he couldn’t protect him from what was coming. “Nothing—just—you’re right. About all of it. I’ve been plain stupid.”
Benito shrugged. “No big deal. Everybody makes mistakes, and hell, I probably wouldn’t believe anything bad anybody said about you, either.”
“And I never told you how much I missed you, half.” The old nickname made Benito grin. “That was even stupider. We’re the team, right? So, from now on it’s going be you and me—aye? All the way.”
Benito dropped his pretense of adulthood and threw both arms around his brother in an affection-starved hug. Marco tightened his own arms around Benito’s shoulder and stared at Aldanto, trying to beg with his eyes, and figuring that it was a lost cause before he started.
But to Marco’s surprise, Caesare suddenly cleared his throat. A little sound, but the older boy started as violently as if a gun had gone off in his ear.
“You say your mother had connections with Ventuccio?”
Marco stared, unable to get his mouth to work. It was too much to comprehend—he’d expected the knife, and he’d only hoped Aldanto was good enough to make it fast and relatively painless. And then—this—
His ears roared, and little black spots danced in the air between his eyes and Aldanto’s face.
“Ventuccio?” he heard himself say stupidly, as his knees suddenly liquefied on him.
* * *
Benito felt Marco start to collapse, and held him up by main force. Oh, God, please—no!
The last time Marco had done this, he’d missed the meetings for the next month; and when he finally showed up, he was pounds thinner, with eyes gone all hollow, and a rasping cough that lasted for weeks. Please, God—he begged, struggling to keep Marco on his feet long enough to pull a chair under him, don’t let it be fever, he might not make it this time—and we’re almost home free—