The King's Agent by Donna Russo Morin Page A

triptych are no longer together.”
    “Agreed.” Battista nodded. “But there is nothing said of where they are.”
    “Only the reference to the one painting and Dante’s words—”
    “Which I knew,” Battista rushed to reveal, not to be outdone by her knowledge.
    “—that will show us the way. But to which painting?”
    Battista shook his head, eyes rolling heavenward. “One painting to find three, to find—” He broke off his thought with a forced laugh. “Frado will wail with the angst of it.”
    But Aurelia had stopped her musings, head tilted to the sky.
    “The morning birds are beginning to call. We must away.”
    Battista pushed against the ground, fighting against the weakness, and she jumped to his side, helping him up. But once on his feet, he swayed before taking a step, and she quickly helped him back down.
    “You cannot travel on foot,” she mumbled, gaze jumping from him to the palazzo and back again. “Wait here,” she ordered, and set off along the faint deer path pointing toward the palace.
    Battista chuckled, tossing his hands weakly upward in helpless surrender. “How and where would I go?”
    She spared him not a response as she ran through the field, running with her back bent, hidden in the tall grass until she reached the stables. The young groomsmen were still asleep, thank the fates, and the horses left behind by the frenzied guards knew her scent, did not rankle at her appearance. She often indulged in an early morning ride, and the beasts knew her well. She saddled a great white charger—the perfect pale beast to balance the dark man waiting for her in the woods—along with her favorite stallion, the steed’s black, moist nose nuzzling her neck with familiar affection, as doubts crowded and nudged against Aurelia, but she refused to give them sway. She kept her mind on only what she need do in that moment, all else be damned.
    But as Aurelia scurried the outfitted horses out the rear door of the stable, as she grabbed a satchel and filled it with feed, as she rushed through the meadow with them, praying not to be seen, one thought etched itself in her thoughts and she greeted it with a mixture of pain and fiendish delight.
    Now I am the thief .

Nine
     
The more perfect a thing is,
the more susceptible to good and bad treatment it is.
—Inferno
     
    H e recognized the slant of nebulous light through the translucent wood-framed oilcloths. Battista blinked against it, eyes adjusting with prickly slowness. He lay in his room, he distinguished it without another glance, but how could it be possible?... He was in the woods. Yes, in the woods in the early morning, with a woman, a very beautiful woman, and they were looking at ...
    Battista flung himself up, linens falling away to expose his unclothed body, skin warm as a balmy afternoon breeze fluttered upon it.
    Where was the woman and, more important, where was the parchment? He raked back the waves of dark hair from his face and closed his eyes, willing himself to remember. With painstaking deliberation, the images revealed themselves.
    Aurelia had returned with two horses and somehow he had gotten himself upon one. Though he did seem to remember her pushing at his behind with a strength and a curse he had not expected from one so seemingly dainty and demure. He remembered musing on her depths, far more than a lovely face and a curvaceous figure. She had led them away, along the edge of the forest and away from the palazzo. He had told her to head south for Florence, told her the name of the street this house sat upon.
    But there were no memories beyond that moment, and what could have taken place between then and now frightened him.
    Battista clamped a hand over his mouth, squeezing his face as he tried—to no avail—to remember more. He crawled sheepishly from his skin and studied the events earlier in the night through an outsider’s critical eye. To launch such an attempt alone was arrogance of grotesque proportion. Were