he said. I knew now that during the slaughter of the Florentine banquet chamber, he had read from the victims' minds all kinds of things which were unknown to me.
"Cousins? Perhaps," she said. "I have conveniently forgotten that. That they were a terror to those whom they lured into expensive loans and dangerous opportunities, that I can say without a doubt. Marius, the strangest things have happened, things upon which I never counted."
I loved the look of seriousness on her delicate features. She seemed too beautiful to have a brain.
"I find myself richer," she said, "as I can keep the larger portion of my own income, and others-this is the strange part-others, in gratitude that our banker and our extortionist is gone, have lavished on me countless gifts of gold and jewels, yes, even this necklace, look, and you know these are all sea pearls and matched in size, and this is a veritable rope of them, see, and all this is given me, though I have averred a hundred times that I never had the deed done."
"But what of blame?" I asked. "What of the danger of a public accusation?"
"They have no defenders or mourners," she said quickly. She planted another little bouquet of kisses on my cheek. "And earlier today, my friends among the Great Council were here as always, to read a few new poems to me and settle in quiet where they could know peace from clients and the endless demands of their families. No, I don't think anyone is going to accuse me of anything, and as everyone knows, on the night of the murders, I was here in company with that awful Englishman, Amadeo, the very one who tried to kill you, who has of course..."
"Yes, what?" I asked.
Marius narrowed his eyes as he looked at me. He made a light gesture of tapping the side of his head with his gloved finger. Read her mind, he meant. But I couldn't think of such a thing. Her face was too pretty.
"The Englishman, " she said, "who has disappeared. I suspect he's drowned somewhere, that, staggering drunk about the town, he fell into one of the canals or, worse yet, into the lagoon. "
Of course my Master had told me that he had taken care of all our difficulties on account of the Englishman, but I had never asked in what particular way.
"So they think you hired killers to dispatch the Florentines?" Marius asked her.
"Seems so," she said. "And there are even those who think that I had the Englishman dispatched as well. I've become a rather powerful woman, Marius."
Both of them laughed, his laugh the deep but metallic laugh of a preternatural being, and her laugh higher yet thicker with the sound of her human blood.
I wanted to go into her mind. I tried but cast away the idea at once. I was inhibited, just as I was with Riccardo and the boys closest to me. In fact, it seemed such a terrible invasion of the privacy of the person that I used this power only in hunting to find those who were evil and whom I might kill.
"Amadeo, you blush, what is it?" Bianca asked. "Your cheeks are scarlet. Let me kiss them. Oh, you are hot as if the fever has come back."
"Look into his eyes, angel," said Marius. "They are clear."
"You're right," she said, peering into my eyes with such a sweet frank curiosity that she became irresistible to me.
I pushed back the yellow cloth of her underdress and the heavy velvet of her dark-green sleeveless overgarment and kissed her bare shoulder.
"Yes, you're well," she cooed into my ear, her lips moist against it.
I was blushing still as I drew back.
I looked at her, and I went into her mind; it seemed I had loosened the gold clasp beneath her breasts and parted her voluminous dark-green velvet skirts. I stared at the well between her half-exposed breasts. Blood or no blood, I could remember hot passion for her, and I felt it now in a strange overall manner, not localized in the forgotten organ as it had been before. I wanted to take her breasts in my hands and suckle them slowly, arousing her, making her moist and fragrant for me and making her head fall back. Yes, I blushed. A dim sweet swoon came over me.
I want you, I want you now, you and Marius both in my bed, together, a man and a boy, a god and a cherub.