Sharon nodded. Ruy had been Cardinal Alfonso Bedmar's right-hand man, back when he was plain old Marquis of Bedmar and intriguing in Venice. The pair of them had gotten out of Venice just ahead of a mob of arsenalotti who'd have had tar and feathers handy if they'd heard of the practice. And been willing to get that much closer to civilized behavior than what they'd actually intended to do to the members of that conspiracy.
"Still," she said. "You could maybe write the cardinal and ask to be formally released from service, and get on with laying the groundwork in the meantime."
"Your very whims are as the commands of God Most High, Doña Sharon. I, Ruy Sanchez de Casador y Ortiz, shall spare no effort in this matter."
He paused a moment as they strolled off toward the Borgo. "Did I mention, earlier, something about habits of obedience?"
Chapter 10
Rome
Frank groaned to himself. The two idiots who were insisting on a fight were heading for the door. He heard Giovanna's voice at his shoulder. "Can you stop them?"
"Don't think I can," Frank said, without taking his eyes off them for a second. "They seem to be dead set on a fight."
"This is the third time since we opened," Giovanna hissed. "Someone is bound to notice, and there will be trouble."
Frank nodded. "I just don't think I can stop these guys short of picking a fight myself." The pair were edging toward the door, neither willing to turn his back on the other. Frank had a vague notion that duels were supposed to be more formal than this, with seconds and meeting places to go to at dawn. Just taking it outside seemed to be a bit informal to Frank. Although taking it outside proved to be a bit difficult with neither guy willing to turn away from the other for even a split second. And that door was none too wide—Frank wondered how they'd negotiate that one. Maybe they'd have the fight right in his doorway.
Just then the door opened. There were two figures silhouetted against the early afternoon sunlight. One man, one woman, which calmed Frank's fears of a watch raid. The man stepped inside first, followed by the woman, and Frank's guts solidified and sank. Ruy and Sharon. Somehow, his instincts for when he was well and truly busted started screaming. He was not supposed to be running a wild-west saloon. Pull yourself together, he said to himself, this is your place, not theirs.
Ruy looked from one side to the other, taking in the two lefferti and their crowd of onlookers, and then settling on Frank. "Trouble, Señor Stone?" he asked, his gravelly voice even and calm.
"Couple of guys got a problem. They were taking it outside," Frank said, trying to sound nonchalant.
One of the would-be combatants seemed to take offense at the interruption, and let out a few choice Italian oaths. "Mind your own business, old man," he snarled.
Oops, Frank thought, with a slight buzz of guilty pleasure. He'd never seen Ruy in action, but he'd heard the story.
Ruy's face broke into a grin. "But I am minding my own business, signor," he said, in fluent Italian. "There seems to be a problem in the place of business of a man my intended is pleased to call a friend. This makes him my friend also, and a friend of Ruy Sanchez de Casador y Ortiz shall have no problem without my utmost efforts to solve it."
The other lefferto, apparently forgetting his quarrel for a minute, turned to point his knife at Ruy. "Butt out, old man, or your business will be imitating a gutted fish."
Ruy sighed deeply, converting the movement into a smooth draw of a sword and dagger. Both of them very, very sharp and, for all the golden curlicues about the hilts, very efficient looking. "It may be," he said, "that you are skilled enough to gut me like a fish."
There was a flash of a blade through the air between Ruy and the lefferto who had spoken, and Frank could have sworn Ruy—a man in his fifties at least—had blurred as he moved. Ruy was back on his spot, the tips of his blades rock-steady, before the lefferto yelped and dropped his knife to grab his hand and clutch it in pain. Frank could see blood already starting to seep between the fingers of the gripping hand.
"But I doubt it," Ruy continued. "And even if you did, my intended is here. I have been present when she totally disemboweled a man. And you can see that she has already been busy today."
Frank looked. Sharon's dress wasn't just in some dark pattern. There were definite bloodstains all down her front. Frank hoped, fervently, that she'd been rendering emergency medical assistance. He'd heard what she'd done in Venice, too.
The lefferti clearly got the message. The one Ruy hadn't stabbed in the hand very slowly and carefully sheathed his knife. "Signor," he said, "if I have caused offense to you, I most humbly apologize. I shall go elsewhere and await the man with whom I truly do have a quarrel." With which he went to the door, giving Ruy and Sharon—especially Sharon—an ostentatiously wide berth. The other guy snatched up his knife and scuttled after him.