door that had once led to another room. Before Benito could stop her, she kicked the door open and dashed out onto what was left of the structure.
Torches and lanterns lit her eerily from below. She looked like one of the condemned souls in the Holy Book. 'Get away!' she cried, her eyes wild, waving her free hand at him. 'Get away from me!'
Benito walked toward her, through the broken masonry, then out into the room one slow step at a time. 'I won't hurt you, signora,' he said, as quietly and calmly as he could and still be heard over the baby's screams. 'I've just come for my little girl.'
His heart pounded painfully in his chest, and his throat was too tight to swallow as she backed up another step. A cool, reasoning corner of his mind was calculating footing, the length of his own lunge, the amount of safe wood still behind her. The rest of him wanted to shriek and grab for his baby, now.
'You can't have her!' The woman said, shaking her head violently. 'She's mine, not yours, she was meant for me. I saw it in the dreams!'
'What dreams, signora?' Benito asked, edging another foot closer. The wood creaked dangerously underfoot, and the whole building swayed again. He made a drastic revision of his safety margins.
'The dreams, the holy dreams,' the woman babbled, clutching her hand in her hair while the baby subsided to a frightened whimper, as if she somehow sensed the danger she was in. 'She's mine, she was meant for me —'
He was almost within reach—
Suddenly she looked over his shoulder, as light poured from the door behind him, and her eyes widened still further. 'Benito?' Maria called. There was a murmur of shocked and frightened voices, and someone stifled a cry of despair.
'Stay back!' he warned sharply, as the woman took another two steps backward onto wood that moaned under her weight.
'Signora,' he said urgently, recapturing her attention. 'Signora, the dreams. What about them? What did they tell you?'
She transferred her attention from whoever was behind him back to his face. 'You don't care about the dreams,' she said accusingly. 'You just want my—'
The wood gave.
Benito made a desperate lunge as the woman shrieked and teetered on the brink of the gulf, one arm flailing wildly, the other still clutching the baby. He reached her—she fell, just as his hands brushed the cloth—
He grabbed for it and held, as he was falling himself.
A blow to his chest knocked breath and sense from him, but he had a handful of fine linen fabric, and he held onto it past all pain and sense. The universe spun, then came to rest again.
He was dangling face-down over the street, three floors down to the cobblestones. With one hand and both legs he held on to the timber-strut that had saved him. The other hand was clutched in the linen dress of the little girl-baby, who was likewise dangling head down over the empty darkness, howling at the top of her lungs.
He edged back until his chest was supported by the timber, then drew her up. Only when she was safely cradled against his chest did he breathe again.
And held her carefully, like the precious thing she was, murmuring her name over and over, hardly daring to believe he had her back safe. He might even have burst into tears of his own at that point, but suddenly the others were on him, hauling him to safety, praising him to the skies. Arsenalotti, Arsenalotti wives everywhere, pounding his back, touching his sleeve, crying over the baby. Maria, her face as white as fine porcelain held Alessia, and stared down at her, fierce tears in her eyes.
No one seemed to be thinking about old Mrs. Grisini. Benito tilted his head to look down; and then, wincing, looked away. The torchlight showed enough. The crazed old woman's body was a broken ruin.
* * *
In the crowd below, Bianca Casarini turned and began walking away. She was disgruntled, a bit, at the failure of the scheme—but not excessively so. It had been Fianelli's idea in the first place, not hers. Emeric's servant was now desperate to do
Under pressure, Bianca had agreed to inflict the dreams on the old woman. She hadn't wanted to, herself, because she could sense the net thrown by Eneko Lopez and Francesca de Chevreuse closing steadily around her. But Countess Bartholdy had insisted.
'I can't afford to have Emeric get suspicious, this close to success. Which he will, if Fianelli reports that you are suddenly balking. So do as Fianelli wants, Bianca.'
'Yes, mistress.'
* * *
Well, she'd made the attempt—and the attempt had failed. Now the net would be closing more tightly still. It was time for Bianca Casarini to prepare for her escape.
Chapter 90
'The entire point of the exercise is not to surrender,' said Captain-General Tomaselli. 'It is to waste time. We know Venice is coming to our rescue. We know they have been delayed.'
Manfred was pleased to note that the captain-general seemed to have accepted the de facto situation that first Falkenberg and now Erik had simply assumed control of the military of the Citadel. Erik, especially Erik these days, was someone people tended not to question if they could avoid it. Besides, Erik had produced the letter from the Doge brought by Benito, putting him in overall command of 'Any Forces in support of the Republic of Venice, who are still at large on the Island of Corfu.'
