City of Flowers by Mary Hoffman

this time,’ said Rodolfo. ‘It is a request to know your measurements. Niccolò di Chimici wants to send you a dress to wear at the weddings.’

Chapter 7
    Deadly Nightshade
    Sky found concentrating on his school work very hard the next day. Sulien had urged him to stravagate home early and he hadn’t been reluctant. Sandro’s information had knocked Sky for six. Could the friar possibly be a poisoner? Or at least a maker of poisons? It didn’t make much difference really; if you made them, you knew what they were going to be used for.
    Sky tried to remember what Brother Sulien had said to him in the Great Cloister on his first visit. ‘The laboratory is where I prepare the medicines – and the perfumes, of course.’ He hadn’t said anything about poisons. Sulien was a good man – Sky was sure of it. But were good and bad the same in sixteenth-century Talia as now in London?
    He was glad that school was breaking up soon for Easter. Georgia had warned him that he would get very tired during the day if he spent every night stravagating to Talia and today he understood what she meant.
    Nicholas Duke was as good as his word and was waiting for Sky in the gym in the lunch break. Georgia had come along to watch. Nick handed Sky a mesh mask to protect his face and a foil with a sort of button on the end.
    â€˜You won’t need padding for a trial session,’ he said. ‘I promise not to hurt you.’
    Arrogant little prat, thought Sky, I’ll show you.
    But Nicholas was good, very good, and Sky couldn’t get his foil anywhere near the younger boy’s body. By the end of the session, he was sweating and panting and Nicholas seemed as cool as at the beginning. As Sky towelled his streaming face he was very glad that Alice hadn’t joined Georgia to watch them.
    â€˜Good,’ said Nicholas. ‘You’ll be a good fencer.’
    Sky stopped, astonished. ‘What do you mean? I was rubbish.’
    â€˜What do you think the point of fencing is?’ asked Nicholas, looking at him intently.
    â€˜To slice your opponent,’ said Sky.
    â€˜No,’ said Nicholas. ‘It is to prevent him from slicing you. Only assassins fight to kill the other person.’
    Great, thought Sky. That’s all I need – another younger kid to tell me what’s what.
    â€˜It’s true you didn’t touch me,’ continued Nicholas. ‘But you didn’t let me touch you many times either – your defences are instinctive and that’s good to work with.’
    â€˜Look,’ said Sky, turning to Georgia for support. ‘I’m not really going to learn to fence, am I? I just made that up to explain our being together.’
    To his surprise, Georgia didn’t back him up.
    â€˜Nick and I think it might not be a bad idea for you to learn,’ she said. ‘True, it will give us an excuse to spend time together – I often watch him in practice and matches – but we also think it might be useful for your protection in Talia.’
    Sky felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise.
    â€˜What? You think someone may try to kill me?’
    â€˜Why not?’ said Nicholas with a shrug. ‘You’re a Stravagante, aren’t you? Let’s go and get some lunch. I’m starving.’

    Rodolfo, Luciano and Doctor Dethridge worked together late into the night in Rodolfo’s laboratory in Bellezza. Luciano had been an apprentice to both older men and had learned a lot. Although he had been released from his apprenticeship and was supposed to be going to university the following year, he still felt he had much to learn. Now they were working together to see whether it would be possible for Stravaganti from the other world to travel to cities in Talia other than the ones their talismans came from.
    â€˜Wee coulde sende more thane one talismanne to eche Stravayger,’ Doctor Dethridge had suggested, ‘but it