• 1 •

THE DAVID
FLORENCE, 1517

T he mud was from the banks of the Arno river. But also, it was from
the banks of the Arno river inside the city walls, so it was probably
not entirely mud. It really stank like not-entirely-mud in Cat’s hand.
But she’d touched worse in her life. And anyway, Gio had dared her.
She followed the carriage.
They’d entered the city through the Porta Romana, which Cat
thought was silly. It was a big, fancy carriage, covered in gold and
paint and stuff like that, and it was supposed to be full of fancy people
too. Shouldn’t fancy people know that the Porta Romana was one
long snarl of people and carts at this time of day? Or maybe they were
too rich to care about that sort of thing.
They weren’t too rich not to care about everything, though. Cat
hung in the shadows as the carriage paused in front of Signore Bru-
no’s bakery, the one that sold the ciambelle that Gio sometimes stole.
It was a two-story shop front, and Signore Bruno was perched on a
ladder outside. He had a chisel and a bucket of soapy water, and he
was scraping at the printed paper that had been pasted to his wall. Cat
shrank further back when she saw the two City guards at the base of
Signore Bruno’s ladder, keeping careful watch on him.
The carriage’s velvet curtain twitched aside. The hand that
pulled it sparkled in the sunlight, just as shiny as the carriage. Cat
caught a glimpse of a stormy frown before the curtain settled back.
A moment later, two of the Medici guardsmen strode toward the
City guards. Someone inside the carriage thumped on the roof, —-1
and the driver urged the horses forward. Cat hurried to keep up —0

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 as, behind her, an argument broke out between the two sets of uni-
formed men.
There was still one last scrap of paper clinging to the wall despite
Signore Bruno’s scrubbing. And Cat was picking up some letters
these days. Reppublica. That’s what it said.
Cat grinned and forged onward.
They were headed into the Piazza della Signoria, a giant plaza in
the center of Florence. It was one of Cat’s favorite parts of the city.
She liked the way the cobblestones sprawled in every direction. She
liked the sweeping arches of the Loggia dei Lanzi. And she loved the
gleaming white marble of the statue of David, which towered before
the Palazzo Vecchio’s front entrance.
The murmurs began as the carriage rolled out into the Piazza.
In ones and twos, and then in bigger groups, the crowd turned their
faces toward the crest on the carriage doors. “The Medici?” Cat heard
them whisper as she passed. “Has the Pope returned?”
Almost as though they’d heard the question, the curtains of the
fancy carriage opened, pulled back by that same bejeweled hand.
There were no troubled frowns now—just a man draped in purples
and golds, with beneficent eyes and an indulgent smile.
“But you said he was a Medici,” Cat had protested earlier that day.
“How can he be the Pope if he’s also a Medici?”
The look Gio had given her said quite clearly that only babies
asked stupid questions like that, and that ten-year-olds like Gio didn’t
have time for babies.
“My beloved Florence!” Pope Leo X—or maybe Giovanni de’
Medici—declared. His voice carried. “I am home!”
The reaction was immediate. The Piazza burst into cheers, push-
ing forward to get a better look at the carriage. Cat let herself be
-1— swept along, taking advantage of the path that the stink emanating
0— from her right hand carved for her.

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 Guards in Medici blue had sprung into action by the time Cat
made it to the front of the mob, shoving people away from the horses.
They didn’t pay much mind to Cat. Who would notice a little girl in
a crowd of grasping adults?
“I am gratified by your warmth and love,” the Pope said. His voice
carried across the Piazza. “My dear cousin had assured me of your
welcome, but it is quite another thing to witness it in person! Would
you greet your people, Giulio?”
There was a spindly silhouette in the carriage at the Pope’s shoul-
der. He did not move forward into the sunlight. The Pope rolled his
eyes. “That is Cardinal de’ Medici for you.”
An old woman in a gray shawl had managed to get to the carriage
window. “Your Holiness!” she croaked, reaching for the Pope’s hand.
Cat saw the man shoot a disgusted glance back into the carriage, toward
his angular companion. He pulled back out of her reach, sketching a
quick sign of the cross over her head.
“Thank you,” the old woman called. She fell back from the win-
dow, a few tears rolling down her cheek.
“Bless this city,” called the Pope. “And bless every soul within it!”
Cat threw shit at him.
She did not have the best aim. The ball of muck hit the edge of
the window. But it exploded with a gratifying splatter all across the
shiny robes, and the Pope staggered back into his fancy carriage with
a “Jesus Christ!” that would have gotten Cat’s ears boxed.
“Who threw that?” thundered the captain of the Medici guard. He
wheeled his horse between the carriage and the crowd. But even his
bellows weren’t loud enough to drown out the “Look at me, Giulio,
I’m covered in filth!” that caterwauled out from the carriage window.
Shock rippled through the crowd, murmurs that grew and grew.
Someone shoved Cat back, until the carriage was blocked from sight —-1
behind a set of broad shoulders. —0

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 “I want them caught! I want them flogged!” the Medici Pope was
wailing. But it was harder and harder to hear him over the growing
shouts of the crowd. People were no longer cheering, or at least not
all of them were.
“Long live the Republic!” The chant rang from every corner of the
Piazza until it was deafening. “Long live the Republic!”
It occurred to Cat that she maybe hadn’t thought about how to
get away. This was especially a problem because of the men in Medici
blue who were starting to thread through the crowd, shoving past
onlookers. Looking for someone.
Looking for her.
Cat gulped and turned. But the current that had bobbed her all
the way to the Medici carriage was working against her now. It was
like the Piazza had become a wall of legs and torsos, and nobody
seemed eager to budge for the girl with the smelly hands. Not when
the guards were closing in. Not until—
A path opened. Just for a moment. And, at the end of it, Cat saw
a lifeline.
Without hesitating, she dove into the chaos of Florence and let
herself be saved.

-1—
0—

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 • 2 •

ROSA

A s far as naked men went, Rosa Cellini supposed that this one was
impressive. Muscular. Tall enough, certainly. Her neck hurt from
craning. But no matter how long she stood by his feet, David’s gaze
did not creak down to meet hers.
That was alright. He was a statue, after all.
She fanned her skirts, settling comfortably against the statue’s
plinth. It was a careful maneuver—she had to be cautious not to
disturb any of the flowers, the fruit, and the . . . less-savory offerings
that had been strewn about the base. Despite her best efforts, a small
roll of paper fluttered loose from where it had been pinned down by
a pigeon-pecked roll. Rosa scooped it up, doing her best to ignore
whatever pleas or prayers or dreams were scribbled on it in blotched
ink—but as she did so, something on the cobbles caught her eye: a
scrap of paper bearing a few fragments of printed words.
“REPPUBLICA FIORENTINA,” it read. The ink was smeared.
Rosa nudged it aside with her toe and managed to find an undis-
turbed seat. Fishing out a deck of well-worn cards, she began to shuf-
fle, scanning the crowd with reserved interest.
The Piazza was clearing, the chaos of the last ten minutes quieting.
Medici guards were still making the rounds, interrogating bystand-
ers, searching for whoever had been brave enough to lob what had
looked to be a handful of pig shit at the head of the Church.
It had been a beautiful carriage. And that muddy projectile had hit
smack in the middle of the triple fleur-de-lis Medici crest adorning —-1
the front door. —0

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 Rosa dealt out three cards and waited.
Florence, for all that it had been built on Roman ruins, had been
brought to wealth and prominence by the money and machinations
of the Medici bankers. For years upon years, men wearing a veneer
of proletariat humility over deep, deep pockets of wealth had trans-
formed the city from a huddle of hovels on the banks of the Arno
river into the sprawling metropolis that it was today.
It was almost refreshing, Rosa thought, to see the gilding and the
metalwork of the Pope’s carriage. This particular Medici scion was
not one who would pretend to be one of the common folk. He adver-
tised his fortune. A palate-cleanser. And after six years of avoiding the
city like the plague, Rosa had walked through the gates at nearly the
same hour he had.
“What are you hanging around here for?”
Rosa smiled up at the two guards across the wooden board bal-
anced across her knees. She could imagine the picture she presented. A
short young woman with wild dark hair and dark eyes and a deceptive
softness all over. Her red woolen kirtle was heavily travel-stained, and
the leather satchel at her side was patched in some places and in need
of patching in others.
Not a threat. Not remarkable in any way.
“Good afternoon!” she chirped, flipping the three playing cards to
display their faces. Knave. Six. Queen. “What a blessed day! Can you
believe our good fortune? To have such a man in our midst? Well, of
course you can—you probably see him all the time—”
One guard was blushing. The other was not. These were odds
Rosa could work with.
“Did you see a young girl?” the unblushing guard demanded. The
other was fixated on the cards under Rosa’s hands.
-1— “A girl? I’ve seen plenty of girls today. Find the Lady?”
0— This last was directed to the fascinated guard, who met her eyes,

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startled. He was younger than his partner, perhaps even of age to
match Rosa’s own seventeen years. Flustered by the sudden attention,
he stammered, “I—uh—I don’t—”
“I’ll show you how to play,” said Rosa. She flipped the cards over
again and began to shuffle them, spinning them over and around each
other on the board.
“She would be about this tall,” the other guard said, ignoring this.
He held his hand as high as his waist. “Filthy. Shabby clothes.”
Rosa gasped. “Is this the person who attacked His Holiness?” Her
hands were still moving, a blur that the younger guard watched, hyp-
notized. “I haven’t seen anyone like that,” she said. “But it was all so
horrible. So exciting. Is His Holiness unharmed?”
“You’re certain you haven’t seen anyone who fits that descrip-
tion?” the terse guard said.
Rosa shook her head, lifting her hands. The cards lay in a razor-
straight line. “On His Holiness’s life, I swear I haven’t seen anyone like
that. Now. Can you find the Lady? Where is that queen hiding?”
Seemingly without thinking, the younger guard tapped the mid-
dle card. “Ricci,” barked his partner, but Rosa was already turning it
over to reveal the Queen of Cups’ impassive face.
“Well done, signore,” she said. “You’re a natural.”
The other guardsman had reached the end of his patience. “She’s
a charlatan, you rube,” he snapped. “Get your head on straight. We’re
wasting our time.” Without another word, he turned and marched
across the Piazza, headed for the lingering crowds inside the Loggia
dei Lanzi. Ricci, suitably chastened, moved to follow.
“Signore,” Rosa said, carefully removing the board and rising.
“Here.” She held out the Queen. “For you.”
He had already taken it when his brain caught up. “Don’t you need
this?” —-1
“Some things are worth a little sacrifice,” she told him. The chilly —0

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 breeze off the Arno was whipping color into her cheeks. She winked
at Ricci, plucked the card back from him, and tucked it into his belt.
“Lovely to meet you,” she said.
Rosa may as well have axed him between the eyes. He blinked,
empty-headed, until—
“Ricci!” The grumpy guard looked about ready to spit nails. With
an anxious jolt, the young man turned on his heel and hurried after
his partner, tripping over his feet in his haste to catch up. Rosa con-
tinued to shuffle her cards as she watched the two of them go, Ricci
cowering from his partner’s scolding.
“Are they gone?”
The voice was muffled by layers of Rosa’s woolen skirts and the
wooden board she had propped up against the statue’s plinth. Rosa
didn’t chance a look at the girl crouched behind her. She could tell by
the smell that the girl hadn’t taken advantage of Rosa’s waterskin to
clean the mud and God-knew-what-else off her hands.
“Shh,” she said. Ricci had managed to distract his partner away
from berating him and toward interrogating more of the throng
thrumming through the Loggia dei Lanzi. Their sights set on some
other poor bastard, they finally disappeared from view. “Yes,” she said.
“But don’t you come back out here until you’ve washed those hands.”
Water immediately began splashing onto the cobblestones, and Rosa
bit back a smile.
It had been a matter of course to hide the girl when she’d darted
out of the crowd, hands filthy and face wild with terror. She couldn’t
have been more than eight years old, and Rosa had plenty of mem-
ories of similar scrapes at that age (though none that involved the
Pope).
Now the girl emerged, empty waterskin in hand and a sheepish
-1— look on her face. She handed it back with a little bob of the head.
0— “Thank you, signorina.”

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 “Don’t mention it,” Rosa said, wiping the skin discreetly on her
skirts before fastening it once again to her bag. There was a commo-
tion over by the Loggia dei Lanzi. Someone—perhaps a young guard
in the uniform of one of Florence’s most preeminent noble houses—
seemed to have mislaid his purse. Rosa shouldered her pack. “Come
on,” she said. “Time to go.”
“Are you in trouble, signorina?” The girl followed on Rosa’s heels
as she strode out onto one of the many side streets. “They didn’t see
you hide me.”
“They didn’t see me lift that guard’s money either. But it will only
be a matter of time before they decide to circle back.”
“You let him win that hand, didn’t you?”
The girl’s eyes were sharp as she watched Rosa, cleverness honed
by necessity. “Of course,” Rosa told her. “You always let a mark win
the first hand of Find the Lady. Maybe even the first few hands.”
“Why?”
“So they think they’re in control,” she told her. “When that hap-
pens, you can ask them to wager whatever you want, and they’ll say
yes. Then all you have to do is take it from them.” She nudged the
girl. “Wouldn’t you rather walk away with a gold florin than a single
lire?”
“Hm,” the girl hummed. “But that man seemed nice.” She didn’t
sound upset about it.
“Maybe he was,” Rosa said. “Now he’s nice and poor. At least he
still has his job.”
“Nice people don’t last long with the Medici family.”
“Sounds like that will be very hard on him.” Rosa paused, look-
ing around. Their hurried pace had taken them several streets away
from the Piazza della Signoria, and the crowds had thinned to a more
manageable stream of well-to-do pedestrians and shopkeepers. It was —-1
a good part of town, but most things this side of the Arno were the —0

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 good part of town. Rosa scanned the unfamiliar buildings and cursed
herself for avoiding this city for so long.
She knew where she was. She knew that she knew where she was.
Six years ago, she would have been able to walk these streets blind-
folded. Florence had been a second home, a school, a place of busi-
ness, everything. But now, Rosa squinted at the storefronts and the
banks and the churches, frowning as they tripped at her memory.
“What’s your name?” she asked the girl, who was still lurking in
her shadow, apparently unsure of whether or not she was allowed to
leave. The girl hesitated, her street smarts showing. “Fine, then what
do I call you?”
“You can—call me Cat,” she said.
“Cat. I’ll trade two lire for directions.”
Cat’s eyes bugged out of her face. “Directions to where?” she
asked, still cautious.
“Do you know where the apothecary is?”
Her face twisted in confusion. “Apothe . . .”
“Agata de Rosso. Do you know where Agata de Rosso’s shop is?”
Cat brightened, all at once. “Oh!” she said. “You’re looking for the
witch!”
Two lire was apparently overpaying for mere directions, so Cat
took it upon herself to personally guide Rosa through the bustling
streets of central Florence, chattering a tour guide’s monologue that,
with any luck, was about half-accurate.
Rosa focused on tuning out Cat’s local flavor in favor of re-
familiarizing herself with the patterns of streets and piazzas. It was a
mental exercise she’d done countless times—first as a tiresome exer-
cise administered by her mother, and then later, once she’d struck out
on her own, as a reflex. The map of the city sketched into view in her
-1— mind, coming together in rough strokes and finer details, the haze of
0— memory infusing with the grime and grit of reality.

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 “It’s all about making the intangible tangible,” her mother had
told her before she was old enough to understand what those words
even meant. They had been leaning over a candle in the drafty attic,
whispering in the depths of the night. There was no reason to keep
quiet—they were painfully alone in the house, ever since Rosa’s
father’s funeral. But neither of them had been all that good at sleep-
ing, and so they had begun to find one another beneath the creaking
beams of the attic when the sun was a distant memory, nowhere near
either horizon.
She could still picture the way Lena Cellini’s dark eyes had spar-
kled in candlelight, wicked and sad. “We learn a place the same way
we learn people,” she had said, and Rosa had nodded as though she
knew what her mother was talking about. “When we first meet them,
or when we first meet a place—it’s a chalk outline. Just a little paper
cutout. Nothing to fill it inside the edges.” She’d grabbed her daughter
and tickled her sides, and Rosa had squealed, forgetting to be quiet.
“But then we get to know them, and those blank spaces get filled in
with memories. Instead of just any person, you see the baker’s wife
who laughs like a goose. Instead of just any street, you see the place
where you skinned your knee. But there’s a trick to it.”
Rosa’s eyes must have been as wide as her entire face. “What’s the
trick?”
Lena’s expression turned solemn, watching Rosa in their sanctu-
ary. Alone together. “Would you like to learn?” she’d asked, but she’d
meant more than that. She’d meant everything.
Now, following a little girl who was fool enough to throw shit at
the Pope, Rosa filled in the edges of Florence. And what Florence was
filled with was the Medici family.
For a century, the family’s wealth and influence had held Florence
in its sway, sculpting it (sometimes literally) in their image. Sculptors, —-1
painters, architects—they could all credit their success to the patronage —0

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 of the Medici. Lorenzo de’ Medici, one of the last patriarchs, had been
especially prolific in this field, his generosity earning himself the title
of Lorenzo il Magnifico—Lorenzo the Magnificent—and a legacy of
cultural works that were known the world over.
Of course, that legacy could not protect the family forever. After
Lorenzo’s death, mounting military losses had resulted in the exiles
of the nineteen-year-old Giovanni de’ Medici, Lorenzo’s son, and his
sixteen-year-old cousin Giulio—two of the last scions of the Medici
clan. For decades they had been barred from the city they saw as their
birthright, their righteous indignation growing with every passing year.
Meanwhile, Florence had found peace and prosperity without them,
coming into its own as a free and democratic Repubblica Fiorentina. It
turned out that the city did not need the Medici to be great.
But the banished Medici cousins had not been content to accept
this new reality. Together, they had schemed up a way to retake the
city in their family’s name. By the time this plan had come into fru-
ition, Giovanni had earned the scarlet vestments of a cardinal. And
five years ago, with the might of the Church behind them, he and his
cousin had gathered together an army and set out once again to bend
Florence to their will.
It had not been a bloodless transition, though Florence itself had
been spared the worst of it. The honor of setting a harsh and savage
example for the city had fallen on . . . other luckless shoulders. Why,
after all, would the Medici want to break the plaything they’d plot-
ted so intricately to reclaim? And so Florence had been cowed into
accepting their prodigal patriarchs back with open arms. Giovanni
had shelved his Medici name in favor of the appropriately papal Pope
Leo X, and Giulio had stepped into the cardinal role his cousin had
vacated. But if the angry bills on the walls and the smear on the Pope’s
-1— carriage were anything to go by, the Medici’s return to power was far
0— from universally welcome.

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 Rosa shivered. The last time she’d been in Florence had been
the days of the Republic. Now she could feel the cold fingers of that
memory brushing the back of her neck as she followed in Cat’s wake,
passing the alley where Lena had beaten bank clerks at just the right
number of dice games before they got angry; the Church of Santa
Maria Maggiore, where her mother had spent a very enjoyable few
days telling ghost stories about the poor woman buried in the walls
while Rosa had made off with her audience’s money; the tavern
where Rosa had stolen a sip of gin and vomited on the steps outside.
Ghosts and ghosts. But she had been expecting that. She could
take it in stride. And, thankfully, they were fewer and further between
as Cat led her away from the city’s center, finally drawing to a stop
before a shop front tucked between a greengrocer and a saddler’s
shop.
“The Witch,” Cat intoned, pointing. Rosa tossed the kid an extra
lire for the performance.
“Stay away from the Medici,” Rosa told her. “Unless you’ve got an
escape plan.”
“I will,” Cat said, obviously lying. “Good luck with your card
tricks!”
Then she was gone, pelting down the street with a speed that had
Rosa checking for her purse. Reassured it had not been stolen, she
turned her attention back to The Witch.
In contrast to the unfamiliar chaos of central Florence, Agata de
Rosso’s shop was a timeless landmark. Even the sign was unchanged—
though granted, the last time she’d seen it she’d been . . . ten? Eleven?
Young enough to have forgotten important details. But the lettering
was the same, the designs were the same, the colors were the same . . .
apothecary, it read. Someone must have repainted it recently.
Rosa doubted that Agata had been the artist, but then again, Agata —-1
had always had a deep stable of folks who owed her for all manner —0

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 of things. The list of reasons why a person might need an apothe-
cary was long and humiliating—intimate ailments, unwanted preg-
nancies, potions and powders . . . It would be easy to coerce one of
her clients to spend an afternoon sprucing things up, especially if
it meant that someone close to the spruce-r didn’t learn a sensitive
piece of information . . .
Rosa was on the verge of thinking something cliché about playing
with fire when a small explosion inside the shop did the work for her.
Without hesitating, Rosa barged inside, dimly registering the faint
chime of a bell as the door slammed shut behind her.
The interior of the apothecary was a mass of smoke and shadow,
so dark that Rosa didn’t see the long wood counter until her hip
banged hard into the edge. She bit back a curse and squinted, cough-
ing, through the gloom. She could make out a mess of shelves and
baskets lining the wall behind the counter—the source of the strange,
earthy, herbal scent she could just detect through the overwhelming
acrid stench of chemical burning.
Something clanged in the back of the shop. “Agata?” Rosa called.
“Are you still alive?”
“Don’t ask foolish questions” was the creaking, irritable response
from the depths of the smoke. “Stop coughing. So dramatic. I’m com-
ing, I’m coming. And don’t open the door.”
Rosa wiped at her streaming eyes with her sleeve. “Don’t open the
door?”
There was a small, hunched figure moving in the gloom, shuffling
toward Rosa. Slowly, an old woman emerged, stepping into the after-
noon light.
Just as the outside of the shop was frozen in time, so was Agata de
Rosso. She looked just as Rosa remembered—in her seventies, with
-1— frizzing gray hair and sprigs of an unidentified herb stuck behind her
0— ears. A pair of thick spectacles perched on her nose, rimmed with

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durable black metal. Her gown, while finely made, was covered in
soot and burn marks, a testament to the appreciation of her clients
and the way that Agata appreciated that appreciation.
“That’s right,” she said, scanning Rosa in a way that made Rosa
fidget. “The neighbors get all worked up about smoke. They threaten
to call the city guards on me.”
“I doubt very much that there’s a guard in Florence who’d dare
take you in, Signora de Rosso.”
“Mm. Charming.” Agata nestled her spectacles in her hair. “You
sound like your mother.”
Rosa smiled. “You remember me?”
“People don’t change, Signorina Rosa,” Agata said. “They just get
taller and fatter. Get that box. It’s too heavy for my old bones.”
Agata’s old bones looked more than capable, but in the name of
self-preservation, Rosa did not comment. She followed the apothe-
cary, carefully lugging the large wooden box Agata had indicated and
listening to whatever was inside tinkle ominously.
“Put it there.” Agata pointed to the stone-topped table that was
set against the wall, and Rosa settled the box as gingerly as she could.
“Don’t be so cautious, girl, it won’t bite. Open it, open it—ach—”
Unsatisfied with Rosa’s speed, Agata shuffled her to the side and
pried the lid back herself. Inside, rows of glass vials winked in the fire-
light. “Take them in pairs, like this—” Agata demonstrated, plucking
two vials at random. “Bind them together with twine, and then pass
them to me. Can you manage that?”
“Yes,” said Rosa, not quite sure how she had come to be enlisted in
Agata’s service, but not ready to push back for fear of another explo-
sion.
“Good.” Agata bustled back to the trestle table beside the hearth
and snatched up a mortar and pestle. She ground them into one —-1
another, scraping granite against granite hard enough to set Rosa’s —0

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 teeth on edge. “And while you’re doing that, you can remind me how
long it’s been since I’ve seen you. Five years?”
“Six.” Rosa tied a knot in a piece of twine and set the paired vials
aside.
“Six years and you didn’t come by,” Agata said. “Is that how your
mother taught you to behave?”
“You’ll have to ask her when you see her. She’s tied up in Verona
right now,” Rosa said. “There was a job and then there was a man. But
even before Verona, we’d been working separately for a while.”
“Oh?” Agata inspected Rosa closely. There was a long pause
before she spoke again. “That’s good. A woman should be able to
make her own way in the world. Still. The next time you see her, you
remind her that she owes me ten florins and that it’s not my fault she
doesn’t know how to cheat at bassetta.”
Rosa set aside another set of vials. “I love my mother, signora,
but you’d have better luck climbing Monte Pisiano with no legs.” She
plucked up the completed pairs, holding them out to Agata. “What
are these for?”
Agata’s grin had too many teeth. “Oh, those are my Specials,” she
said.
“But what are they for?” Rosa asked.
“Emergencies. Put them on the trestle when you’re done with
them—for God’s sake, don’t touch anything—”
“I’m not, I’m not—” The vials were safely deposited without any
incendiary incidents, and Rosa looked up to find Agata watching her,
hawk-eyed. The pestle continued to grind in her hands without her
active attention. “What?”
“Don’t you ‘what’ me,” Agata said. “Lena Cellini’s girl shows up
after who-knows-how-long just to pay a visit to some old lady?”
-1— “To my mother’s dear, dear friend.”
0— Agata’s laugh was like old leather. “I’ve been alive too long to

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believe that sack of horseshit. Are you going to keep wasting my
time? Why are you here?”
“I’m looking for Sarra.”
Agata must have been expecting this because she didn’t react.
“She’s not here,” she said, her oversized gesture taking in every smoky
corner of the apothecary.
“Do you know where she is?”
The old apothecary scraped the contents of her mortar—some
gray-green paste that made Rosa sneeze—onto the table. “What are
you up to, girl? You reek of trouble.”
“You’ll know soon enough. I promise. I wouldn’t be asking if it
wasn’t important.” There was a light clink as Rosa set the shining gold
piece on the marble table next to Agata’s pestle. “A partial payment on
my mother’s debt,” Rosa said.
Agata’s hands stilled, just for a moment, at the sight of the coin,
but they were moving again, dipping into sacks of herbs and powders,
flicking pinches into the now-empty mortar. She didn’t look at Rosa
as she worked. She certainly didn’t look at her as she spoke.
“I heard you and Lena had settled in Prato,” she said.
Rosa’s jaw clenched down around her smile. She inched the gold
closer to Agata. “Please, signora.”
There was a long, quiet beat. Then, almost too fast for Rosa’s eye
to follow, the gold piece was gone, disappeared into Agata’s purse.
“Oltrarno,” Agata finally said. “But you won’t find her there right
now.” Flick went something green and piney into the bowl.
“Agata.”
“The word is—lately—she’s been . . . running with a bad crowd.”
Splash went a dash from Agata’s waterskin. She picked up the pestle
and began grinding once more.
Rosa rasied a wry eyebrow. “Surely a Nepi would not associate —-1
with criminals.” —0

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 The glare Agata shot her was eviscerating. “Of course it’s crimi-
nals,” she said in a tone that could flay the bark off a tree. “It’s the
wrong sort of criminals.”
“Violent?”
“Worse,” Agata said, with a particularly vicious twist of the pestle.
“Stupid.”

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