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Section 1
### Chapter 1: Chapter-1
Bianca cried.She looked at Knox for a long few seconds and her face did something I had not seen on her. It was not anger. It was the face a person makes when the thing they have been leaning on for their whole life turns out to have never been theirs. Then she turned and walked out of the kitchen,
I knew the voice before I turned around. I had heard it once, at dinner, and it had spent the whole meal watching me the way a child watches a thing it has been told not to touch.She was younger than I was. Dark hair, a sharp face. Bianca. Vittorio's girl."A woman who walks her own house in the da
It was the ring they found first.Three of them came at me in the hall between the exam rooms, the way they always did, and one of them stopped and looked at my hand and made a sound I had never heard in that building."Marino. What is on your finger?"I looked down. I had not been hiding it. It was
It was well past midnight by the time the medical room quieted.The man from the corridor had been moved to one of the larger rooms — he would live, I had been told, and I believed this because I had seen the wound and I knew what I was looking at. The household's own staff had taken over. I had was
"I've always been good at reading people," I said.It was true. It was true in the way a statement can be true while leaving out everything that makes it true. I had watched Knox do this to me, in different rooms, with different words. I had watched him give me the part of the truth that served the
The room was full before we arrived.Knox spoke against my ear as we moved through it. Names. Positions. Which man oversaw the western ports, which three controlled distribution through the old quarter, who had been with the family since Knox's father's time. I took them in the way I took in a ward
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### Chapter 2: Chapter-2
Bianca cried.She looked at Knox for a long few seconds and her face did something I had not seen on her. It was not anger. It was the face a person makes when the thing they have been leaning on for their whole life turns out to have never been theirs. Then she turned and walked out of the kitchen,
I knew the voice before I turned around. I had heard it once, at dinner, and it had spent the whole meal watching me the way a child watches a thing it has been told not to touch.She was younger than I was. Dark hair, a sharp face. Bianca. Vittorio's girl."A woman who walks her own house in the da
It was the ring they found first.Three of them came at me in the hall between the exam rooms, the way they always did, and one of them stopped and looked at my hand and made a sound I had never heard in that building."Marino. What is on your finger?"I looked down. I had not been hiding it. It was
It was well past midnight by the time the medical room quieted.The man from the corridor had been moved to one of the larger rooms — he would live, I had been told, and I believed this because I had seen the wound and I knew what I was looking at. The household's own staff had taken over. I had was
"I've always been good at reading people," I said.It was true. It was true in the way a statement can be true while leaving out everything that makes it true. I had watched Knox do this to me, in different rooms, with different words. I had watched him give me the part of the truth that served the
The room was full before we arrived.Knox spoke against my ear as we moved through it. Names. Positions. Which man oversaw the western ports, which three controlled distribution through the old quarter, who had been with the family since Knox's father's time. I took them in the way I took in a ward
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