untying those knots. My life’s complicated enough as it is.
But the knots, and the message in them, did not permit any such evasions. Particularly not now, not when Petro Dorma needed any scrap of information, however hazardous, to counter the attack on their houses.
Slowly, reluctantly, Marco reached for the packet; slowly broke the seal, and gave the cords the proper twist that freed them.
The silk fell open, falling on the open oiled canvas that had contained the box. Marco pulled the silk away and the knife slipped free of it. The knife, and a tube of closely written paper. But it was the knife that held the eye: shining, beautiful in its way, like a sleeping snake.
There was more in the way of an answer than Marco had expected. He’d thought to get a simple note. Instead—instead there were several pages, all in the duke’s precise hand.
Marco picked up the letters and began to read.
Petro Dorma’s private study was bright as only the best room in a wealthy man’s house could be; walled on two sides with clear, sparkling-clean windows and high enough to catch all the sunlight available. A beautiful Cassone. Linenfold scrollwork on the polished wooden panels on the walls, soft Turkish rugs on the floor—an expensive retreat fitting the head of one of the rising stars of Venice, both in commerce and government.
It struck Marco that despite being balding, Petro was an incongruously young man for such an important post in a republic which traditionally favored septuagenarians
But the knots, and the message in them, did not permit any such evasions. Particularly not now, not when Petro Dorma needed any scrap of information, however hazardous, to counter the attack on their houses.
Slowly, reluctantly, Marco reached for the packet; slowly broke the seal, and gave the cords the proper twist that freed them.
The silk fell open, falling on the open oiled canvas that had contained the box. Marco pulled the silk away and the knife slipped free of it. The knife, and a tube of closely written paper. But it was the knife that held the eye: shining, beautiful in its way, like a sleeping snake.
There was more in the way of an answer than Marco had expected. He’d thought to get a simple note. Instead—instead there were several pages, all in the duke’s precise hand.
Marco picked up the letters and began to read.
Petro Dorma’s private study was bright as only the best room in a wealthy man’s house could be; walled on two sides with clear, sparkling-clean windows and high enough to catch all the sunlight available. A beautiful Cassone. Linenfold scrollwork on the polished wooden panels on the walls, soft Turkish rugs on the floor—an expensive retreat fitting the head of one of the rising stars of Venice, both in commerce and government.
It struck Marco that despite being balding, Petro was an incongruously young man for such an important post in a republic which traditionally favored septuagenarians