A man came trudging up the dirt path as though the road behind him had been long. Dust lay thick upon dark hair, matting the curls to his head. Where it mingled with sweat the dust formed a thick paste that slid down the exposed neck in muddy droplets and caked in the web of lines that formed the canvas of a weathered face.

Nico watched him from the lattice of vines that edged the path to the Villa. The straw hat that Nico wore shaded skin that easily burned, and he clipped tendrils with mindless ease, moving through the green rows. In the distance he could hear a woman singing as she worked, low and sweet, the melody then echoed by a male voice.

Nico left the vines he had been tending, and approached the traveler.

"Whom do you seek?" Nico asked.

"I seek the master of this place," the man wheezed dryly, casting longing eyes at the well, where a bucket waited. Though the days had yet to achieve the warmth of summer, when heat soaked into the stones, the sun overhead blazed golden in a cerulean sky. "May I?"

"Of course," Nico said, and walked with him to the well, taking the opportunity to observe the stranger closely. He was not from Grosetto; Nico could name every man in the village. And not Siena; no man of the north wore such bright colors. His father had taught him many things before he died: of poisons and swords, death and the tending of grapes, but no skill had proven more valuable than the reading of people, the ability to discern their strengths and weaknesses with a glance. Though tall and strong, the man before him was no soldier. He had the look of a tradesman, and a Roman. His kidskin shoes were cut for city dwelling, not the dry lanes of the countryside and the extra flesh around his middle showed that he was unused to vigorous labor.

The man took a long drink from the bucket and smacked his lips in appreciation. He unwound a cloth from his neck and dipped it in the bucket and used it to wipe his face. "My throat no longer tastes of dirt. Many thanks."

"If you have hunger, you are welcome to join us for the evening meal."

"Your offer is kind, but I must return." The other man looked at him in amusement. "You must be high in your master's regard, to dispense his hospitality so readily, and without his permission." He looked Nico up and down, eyeing the bright copper hair and angelic features.

Nico did not disabuse the man of the notion that he was a pampered servant and merely shrugged. "What business have you with him?"

"My…master," there was a hesitation in the words "seeks one skilled in the art of dispensing justice. Tell your master to come to the inn this night, to a private room where they may speak." He flipped Nico a coin. "For your pains."

Fingering the coin, Nico watched the departing man. He would need to speak with his mother.

Two figures approached the inn, their figures concealed by long dark cloaks worn against the chill of an early spring night. No more than an inch separated their heights, and they moved with a similar quiet grace.

After a few words to the innkeeper, they were shown to a private chamber, where the remnants of a meal still lay spread out on the fish that was their village's livelihood lay on trenchers, glassy eyes staring and delicate ivory bones shorn of flesh. Rats scurried outside the pool of candlelight, impatient and ravenous. Their eyes shown ruby in the scant illumination.

Observe first, his father whispered in his ears. Always, before you open your mouth.

Nico stayed a pace behind his mother and cast his eyes about the room. In a corner by the fireplace a person waited in the deepest shadows, cloaked and hooded, only visible because of shining eyes in the spreading darkness. The man who had come to the villa was there, and a knife too large to be used for meals waited on the table. The bottle of wine waiting amidst the detritus of the meal was nearly empty.

The man's face flushed with anger when he saw who had entered. An intemperate reaction, Nico thought. He must be far gone with drink already.

"A woman and the boy? What is this?" He rose, and moved to grasp Nico by the arm.

Nico slid under the grasping arm and hooked his foot behind the man's leg. He set him off balance with only the smallest jerk, and then followed him to the ground, pinning him by the throat with the knife slid from the table.

"I am no servant," he said, pressing with the blade until a trickle of blood rain down the man's collar to the floor. "You asked for the master of the house and I am come." He drew back the blade and lifted his eyebrows in inquiry. The man beneath him nodded, and Nico moved to his feet.

The other man struggled up, breathing as though it pained him. When fully upright he rushed forward, growling, unstoppable as a bull in his fury, trying to grasp Nico's arms. Nico twisted, and brought the knife up and slammed the flat of the blade against his temple, bringing the attack to a stop with a pained cry. At the same moment there was a rushing sound and a hollow thump as a dagger buried itself in the wood across the room only a hairsbreadth from the hood of the seated figure.

"Unless you wish me to end your mistress," his mother said, "you will desist."

A laugh sounded from the dark, the sound like cream falling over stones. "How did you know I was female?"

"Few men wear rose scent,"

The figure stood and crossed the room in a smooth glide, throwing back her hood. The sudden reveal of her face was shocking, like the sun emerging from the clouds after a storm. The lady who had been cloaked in darkness was beautiful, brown of hair and eye, with a face only little touched by frost. "Gio," the woman said gently, helping the cursing man to his feet. "Go get more wine."

"I..." he seemed to have difficulty finding the words. "I would stay and protect you." He cast a poisonous glance over his shoulder at Nico. "That one is slippery as an eel."

"My son defended himself, he was not the aggressor," Betta said.

"Go," the mysterious woman said, urging him to the door. They waited in silence as the sound of the man's retreating footsteps descended to the crowded room beneath. "My apologies," she said, speaking very softly. "He…worries for me."

"Can he be trusted?" Betta asked sharply.

"He is my brother. If I can not trust him, I am doomed." She took a seat and began carefully arranging the folds of her golden gown and brushing her sleeves with nails that had been buffed to glossy perfection. She used her beauty as a weapon, Nico saw, noticing how each slow movement was carefully designed to showcase the perfection of her form or the loveliness of her features.

His mother was eyeing her and creases deepened on her brow. "What business did you seek with my husband, who has gone on to his final reward?"

"I seek justice," she said, and her voice lost it's smooth sensuality and gained a harsh edge. "The man who dwelt here was said to be an assassin without equal."

"Our son is his equal and will see to your needs, " his mother said, placing a hand on his shoulder.

It had taken Nico hours to convince her, and if their need not been dire he would not have succeeded. Though a great store of gold lay in wait for Lucia as dowery, those that remained her caretakers at the villa were not so richly blessed. The years of the war and the growing number of cousins who resided with them had drained the coffers of ready gold. The wine in the cellars had another year left to bring it to full maturity and the harvest had been poor. Without gold to buy more grain, the next season would bring hunger to their lives.

"Thirty gold pieces," the woman said, naming the man she wished to end and the manner of his death.

"Fifty."

"Our Lord was sold for less."

"Our Lord did not reside in a plague ridden city guarded by Cardinal Bibbiena's men. Fifty."

The woman agreed, and a week later Nico took the road to Rome. At his mother's insistence he traveled with his cousin Vitello in a cart loaded with the last of the wine that was to be sold, hoping it would fetch a better price in the city.

Vitello was the oldest of his cousins, and the least intelligent. After enduring constant insults and jibes for the first two days of the journey, Nico had waited until his cousin had fallen asleep and then bound him to a tree. An hour of blades thrown between Vitello's spread thighs had ended the torment, though he'd had to suffer his cousin's petulant silence until the city rose before them like an aged but beautiful maiden among the hills. He left his cousin at the gates of after selling the wine for a good price and entered the city.

Though Nico had never trod the streets of Rome he knew them, like a memory passed through his parent's blood. In the distance the splendor of a new basilica was slowly rising atop the tomb of St. Peter, constructed from the stone of pagan shrines. The music of the fountains was a stream of gold, pleasant to his ears. Hovels were built into the sides of crumbling ruins, and statues with grotesque faces peered from beneath dense vegetation. In each corner he spied doves and falcons, stray dogs and beggar children jostling for space. There were mountains of freshly baked bread and exotic spices imported from distant lands in the markets and people from each port in Christendom passed him in a whirl of brightly colored fabric and raucous laughter.

Church bells tolled in the distance as he walked along the path. Holy week approached, and Rome was crowded with the faithful streaming in from the countryside. Though he had been reared on tales of the great city, Nico was unprepared for the layers of noise, providing a constant backdrop to every thought: the screams of the sellers at the market, the low hum of the harlots murmuring to church men in holy vestments, the gurgling of the river. And beneath all of the other noises, Nico thought he could hear the whisper of ghosts from each crumbling stone.

Nico passed unremarked in the throng, seeming no different from the hundreds of other young apprentices. His garments were poor and had seen decades of use. The knife he carried was suitable for eating, and there was no gold in the purse at his belt.

After an hour of walking, he located his quarry. On the banks of the Tiber rose a newly constructed palace of remarkable beauty, like a jewel reflected in the water. Across the street Nico found a shadowed recess where he settled down to wait and to watch and to learn. The habits of those who dwelt there. The doors. The windows, which were not kept shuttered.

For hours he listened to noises emerging from a chamber on the second floor; wild laughter interspersed with ecstatic cries that left little doubt as to what was occurring. Servants entered and left through the door at the back, and he caught snatches of conversation.

"At it for days on end, the master…"

"Like a goat, with that little whore.."

"Plague."

"Plague."

"He'll catch a fever…"

"Plague."

Plague had indeed come to the city again. The dead were laid out in on the streets, wrapped in the bedclothes where they had died. It was not the multitudes that had died a hundred years before, but he could see the marks of fear and despair on the faces of those who remained, wondering if the next night would see the emergence of the bubos that signaled death.

Nico found a meal and shelter at an inn. The next night he returned. After hours of silent watching he scaled the wall, clinging to the elaborate moldings that festooned the palace. He entered through an open window and emerged in a ready crouch. Blood pumped in his ears with a sound like a drum, and the hand gripping his knife trembled.

The large chamber looked the scene of a bacchanalian feast, with bottles of wine and the remnants of food laying scattered on each surface. An easel sat in the center of the chamber, illuminated by a patch of moonlight, and Nico saw the rendered form of a beautiful young woman with flowing golden hair.

Nico kept to the shadows and approached the bed, ready to flee at a moment's notice. Sounds seemed to have amplified, and Nico was achingly conscious of his ragged breathing, the scrape of his leather slippers along the wood floor, and the snores of the man who lay sprawled in a posture of utter abandon next to a naked woman with golden curls. The brown haired artist was fat, with puddles of white flesh, and from his open mouth there emerged a stentorian noise.

Did this man's actions warrant death? Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino had cast aside his mistress of many years in favor of another even as he prepared to wed the niece of a cardinal. He had forced the woman popularly called La Fornarina to take abortifacients when she conceived, and then abandoned her when the years of her fruitfulness and beauty had waned. Unless he chose to provide for her at his death, Margarita Luti would be destitute.

"Are you here to take him?" a voice whispered, startling Nico so badly that he almost dropped the twist of paper in his hand. Nico did not answer, only stood looking at the naked girl. She could be no older than his 12 years, though the blue eyes that watched him appeared as ancient and careworn as the streets of the city.

"Well, get on with it. Or else he will wake, and want to mate."

"Does this man deserve death?" Nico whispered, his voice ghostly in the quiet room.

She rolled from the bed, a golden haired angel in the moonlight. As she walked to stand next to Nico, he saw the marks that the painter's lust had left on her body, the bruises and scratches, bites that marred the slim line of her neck, the musky smell of seed slipping down her thighs. "No more than I," she said, and there was so such sadness in her voice that it removed the last vestiges of his hesitation. Nico brought the fold of paper to the man's lips and white powder poured forth, coating the blackened teeth and pink tongue.

"Will you take me as well?" she asked, no concern in her voice.

He shook his head, and turned to go, but the girl caught his arm and led him across the room to a small alcove next to a window. With a finger beneath his chin she tilted his face up to meet the light and sighed. "You are only a child," she whispered.

And because he was no child, because the thrill of the hunt and the girl's nearness had raised a wild emotion in him, Nico jerked her flush against his body. Through the layers of his tunic he could feel the crush of her breasts against his chest. "My face only."

"So it would seem," she said, and pulled him to the floor.

Time blended together in his mind like a whirlpool: the first taste Nico had of a woman, the blood pounding in his ears, the curls of hair against his fingers, and the watered silk of her body holding him until he longed to cry out. The taste of her was one he never forgot, like honey steeped in blackest regret. He drowned in it, reveling in the sensations, and emerged gasping like a fish thrown onto the shore.

They lay together, her head pillowed on his chest, until a chorus of birds signaled the arrival of dawn. The girl pulled away and stood, crossing to the table and returning with a bottle of wine. She drank, then passed the bottle to Nico. He drank, and was surprised by the foul taste of it.

"What is in the wine?" he asked.

"Wormwood," she answered, and then urged him to drink again. "You must go. He will awaken soon."

"It will take days for him to die," Nico warned. "You could come with me," he offered, thinking of what agony the poison would bring.

She laughed, and moved to touch his cheek. "Go, before he awakens," she said, motioning towards the open window. When he would have turned to kiss her once more, she drew back.

"What is your name?"

"Beatrice," she said. She looked at him and sighed, the bitterness of her face in place once more. "At first I thought you were an angel come to take me to my rest. Now I think you may be a demon. What are you?"

"I have yet to decide." He clothed himself, pulling on his tunic and hose. He was conscious of a faint buzzing in his ears, and the shadows on the wall had begun to move. Beatrice crossed the room and slipped into bed next to the painter and pressed her body against his. The man's breathing changed as he neared consciousness.

With a nod, Nico slipped through the window. A moment of weightless hanging from the ledge and he landed softly. He ran through the streets, feeling the wine clouding his senses. The dark spaces around the building were taking shape. Laughter rose up, taunting him, and the mists of morning began to swirl.

"Bring out your dead," came the cry, and the creaking noise of a wagon pulled by a single horse. In an alley Nico tripped over a cloth draped bundle and sprawled. The cloth fell away, revealing his sister Lucia's beautiful face, pale and lifeless.

"No!" he shouted, and scrambled back. Dawn was breaking around him, illuminating the black robed figure loading corpses onto a wagon already heavily laden.

"Bring me your dead," came the cry again, and the figure turned to face him. Death was an old woman with no eyes, only shadowed places and a mouth as full and plump and rapacious as a whore's. Death looked on him as though she loved him, for he was one of her own angels, sent to walk the earth and reap a bountiful harvest.

Nico awoke as a bucket of water was thrown in his face.

"Get up, you rat!" a man shouted, nudging him from the doorway where he had slept. The sun was high in a cloudless sky. He brushed the sleep from his eyes and stumbled through town, weaving like a drunkard. Before he reached his cousin at the gate, Nico had thrown up twice, which cleared his head.

He would not sit next to Vitello on the cart as they left the city. He walked beside it, and burned the clothes he had worn in the fire. Then they neared Grosetto, Nico made his way to the beach, and bathed in the icy water. It cleansed his body, but did nothing to lift his spirits.

Never again, Nico decided, seeing his mother's drawn face as she waited for his return, the knowledge that her son was utterly changed stamped upon her face. The dagger in the dark was not to be his fate. Although he had earned the gold that would see his family through the coming year, it had cost him too dear.

Author's Note- If you enjoy my writing, I hope you will check out Words Left Unsaid by Elizabeth McGlone.