Starling (14 page)

C

ass hurried through the throng and ducked into an
alley, her skirts catching on the rough stucco buildings
as she walked briskly past. If she couldn’t get back to
San Domenico, then she knew where she had to go. She
ought to find Luca first, but her curiosity, her need to be
sure
of her

suspicions, kept her racing ahead through the twisting, narrow alleys.
Keeping to the back streets, she tried to quell her anxiety as she
skirted the piles of trash and rotting food that littered the cobblestones.

Finally Cass emerged from the twisted network of alleys upon a
block of private residences that backed up to a small canal. She stood
on one side of the water.

On the other loomed Palazzo Viaro.
Between them, the Conjurer’s Bridge.
Thunder rumbled in the distance, and a chill crept up Cass’s

spine.
A courtesan, completely drained of her blood.
She stared down
at the canal, imagining blood, imagining the pale, lifeless body of a
courtesan floating in the mire. She could almost see the girl, her milk

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pale skin going gray from the murky water, her eyes staring vacantly
upward, the image of her murderer forever locked inside her brain.

For a second, Cass fought the overwhelming impulse to turn back.
She couldn’t cross the bridge. She couldn’t. Her fingers started to
shake, and she took one tiny step backward.

And then she thought of Luca.
Of Siena.
Of her parents.
Turning back would mean failing everyone. Once, she had been

weak, a frightened girl who clung to Falco for protection from a
nameless killer. But she wasn’t that girl anymore. She was strong and
smart and brave. She had broken into the Doge’s dungeons to rescue
Luca. She had swum across the Giudecca Canal in the dead of night
and then spent days hiding out in a stranger’s shed while all of Venice
was searching for her. She wouldn’t fail now—not when she had a clue
that might reveal the Order’s whereabouts.

Thinking again of the Order caused rage to wash over Cass’s fear,
strengthening her resolve as she looked upward from beneath her
hood. Palazzo Viaro was larger than the other homes nearby, its gray
walls and carved overhangs nearly swallowing up the smaller homes
on either side. She didn’t know much about the Viaro family, only
that the parents and the children had all died of plague. For a while
afterward, a distant relative from outside of Venice had spent time in
the palazzo, but it seemed he was gone now too. Perhaps back to
wherever he came from.

Perhaps murdered.

Cass forced herself to look at the canal again. All she saw was her
own reflection, distorted so that she looked long and drawn out, so