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pairs before discreetlyapproaching Mule. The injured fighter was sitting quietly on the stairs with a dazed smile.
    “Want this back?”
    “Naw, Doc. That was just my spare.”
    “Wise up, Mule. Getting separated is apprentice stuff.”
    Mule gave a noncommittal shrug.
    The Doctor had enjoyed the performance, but there had been a lot of blood spilled on the doorstep. “Go up to the tower and finish your nap.”
    “Don’t get any blood on my sheets,” Sofia sang as Mule went upstairs. “I’ve got a reputation to protect!”
    As her students giggled, she called to Secondo, “Keep an eye on this bunch.”
    “I’m going with you.”
    “No one’s going anywhere!” the Doctor barked. “You’re training.”
    Secondo quickly wilted under his stare and retreated without protest. Sofia kept walking. The Doctor grabbed her good arm and pulled her out of earshot.
    “It wouldn’t have happened if I’d been with them, Doc.”
    “Keep your voice down. I didn’t train you to be a common street fighter.”
    “What’s wrong with that? You’re one.”
    “Grow up. Someday soon you have to rule.”
    “If Quintus Morello had his way, I’d be dead already. You think the south will suddenly pay homage when I turn seventeen? Right now, the Bardini name is in the mud, and Scaligeri is neck deep with it.”
    “You’ve inherited your grandfather’s rhetorical skills at least,” he said patiently. “So what does my bloodthirsty Contessa propose?”
    “Nothing complicated. Cross the river. Crack some heads.”
    The Doctor pushed her hard against the wall, slammed a fist down beside her face, and glared.
    “What’s wrong with a good fight?” she said coolly, all music gone from her voice.
    “The only good fight’s one you can win.”
    “What, then? Do nothing?”
    “Not nothing. We wait.”
    She pushed the Doctor away and went to the door. “You think I don’t know you sent Mule and Secondo over?”
    He looked back at his students until they went back to training, then said quietly, “Don’t question me, Sofia.”
    “When I’m Contessa, I’ll be in charge. How will I run Rasenna when you don’t let me run my own life?”
    “Your life’s not yours to waste. I made a promise.”
    “To a dead man!” Sofia slammed the door behind her.
    The Doctor followed her out and shouted, “Be back by evening. There’s an emergency meeting of the Signoria.”
    She didn’t break her stride. “There’s always an emergency.”
    The Doctor’s anger was dulled by his bemused recognition of a family resemblance: for a Scaligeri not to carry high her head would have been grossly false, politic though feigned humility might have been. There are few things in life as truly ugly as conceit or as common. Sofia’s pride was the rarer kind, and it made her beautiful.
    Back inside, the students were busy with their sets and pretending not to have heard. The Doctor pried his fingers separate to crack them. In repose they curled naturally into fists.
    The young always hurry. Count Scaligeri once told him that everything had an appointed hour. Have patience, study, and come the hour you may succeed—if you’ve acquired sufficient skill. Thinking of Sofia’s grandfather always cheered him, not in spite of the end but because of it. To execute any act gracefully in this life was hard. To die well, hardest of all.

CHAPTER 5
    The pristine morning light blended the Irenicon with its surroundings so perfectly that a stranger might be forgiven for assuming that it had always been so, that the town had grown up around the river. No Rasenneisi would make that mistake, though, and as the years flowed by, the town turned its back ever more determinedly on the river. To acknowledge the trespasser would be a betrayal of the dead, a form of collaboration.
    In the days after the Wave, the water subsided a few braccia to reveal a few shattered structures that now stood like sentinels keeping futile watch on a no-man’s-land. Those towers