Starling (34 page)

of gleaming steel, the tip curving slightly upward. The hilt was
carved from black marble and inlaid with emeralds. It was more like
a piece of art than a weapon. “It’s so . . . magnificent,” she said. “I
can’t keep this. It must have cost a fortune.”
“My family has quite a collection of weapons.” Maximus’s eyes
seemed to stare straight through her for a second. “I was never much
of a fighter myself, but I assure you I can easily replace it.”
Cass imagined sinking the dagger into someone’s flesh. Her stomach quivered. She breathed slowly through her nose until her nausea
subsided. Not someone’s flesh. Joseph Dubois’s flesh.
If the moment came, could she do it? Faces flickered before her
eyes in rapid succession: her parents, Mariabella, Sophia, Siena,
Agnese. Were it not for the Order of the Eternal Rose, they might all
be alive today. She gripped the hilt tightly. Her resolve became sharp
and deadly, like the blade.
She would do whatever it took to keep all those deaths from being
in vain.

Safe in her own room, Cass removed the page she had found at Palazzo Viaro from her pocket. Unfolding the parchment, she studied the
slanted writing. The four humors were mentioned, in various ratios,
with arrows leading to a number five inscribed in a circle that might
have stood for the fifth humor. It was a list of equations, Cass realized, all but one of which had been crossed out. The bottom one was
circled. Next to it, someone had scrawled a single word: Caravello.

Cass’s heart rose into her throat. Angelo de Gradi had said something in Florence about the purest fifth humor coming from a Venetian woman. She didn’t want to believe it, almost couldn’t believe it,
but it seemed clear. For some reason, her blood was the blood that
made the equation work.