Immortal by Traci L. Slatton Page B

only a small rough-hewn table for conducting business and a few chairs. The northerner turned to me with a sharp look.
    “That thing I came for once before, I am charged to obtain more,” I said softly.
    “You have payment?” he said, in his slow, heavily accented voice. I pulled the small panel from my shirt. My heart felt a pang of reluctance and would have held on to the Madonna, so I brought to mind the image of little Ingrid, cut and burnt, and the torture that had led Marco to demand his own death. Ingrid had called me good, the only person in my life to have done so. I had promised myself not to let anyone hurt her. I had to keep my promise. My hands thrust the panel at the northerner. The man exclaimed and sat down at the table, examining it. He ran his fingers over it as if he couldn’t restrain himself. He murmured, “This will do.”
    It will more than do, I thought fiercely. It will buy you out of your unspoken business and send you back to the cold land you came from with a fortune in your hands. I thought about him returning to his distant homeland and remembered that the monk Pietro had told me to ask in the Oltrarno about my own origins. “Sir,” I asked politely, “you’ve been in Florence for a long time?” He nodded, unable to tear his eyes from the panel. I continued, “I was wondering if you’d ever heard of someone losing a child. Years ago. Foreign people, nobles maybe.”
    He looked up with obvious reluctance. His pale blue eyes fixed on me sharply. “You think you were such a child.” I shrugged. He nodded. “There was something, five years ago, maybe. A tale floating about the market. Something about a lost child, lost by the Cathars maybe. I didn’t pay attention.”
    “Who are the Cathars?”
    “Heretics, they believe in a good God and an evil God, so the Church kills them.” He shook his head. “The parents weren’t Cathars. I remember that. They had a secret that kept them in the company of Cathars. But I don’t know where they came from or if they have any relation to you.” Cradling the panel, he disappeared into a back room and then returned with a small vial.
    “I have been told to ask if it can be mixed into a sweet,” I said. I looked into the dark doorway beyond which lay my exquisite painting. A part of me mourned. I knew I would prize the remaining panel twice as much.
    “It’s best that way, it’s sweet also,” he said. He thrust the vial into my hand. “Use it all. It’s one application, painless and undetectable.” He unbolted the door and pushed me out onto the steps, into the cold evening of winter in Florence, with a moonless sky rippling into violet and plum clouds and a biting breeze promising a colder day tomorrow. I walked back through narrow streets overlooked by the tower houses and fortified residences, all the private dwellings where happy people lived lives of peace and safety with their loved ones.
    At noon the next day Silvano summoned me. He sat at his dining table, sucking the marrow out of veal bones. “I am having a visitor today,” he said. My eyes darted around the room, seeking the heavy silk bag. I didn’t see it. Silvano tossed down a bone and scratched the underside of his pointy, bearded chin. “An important visitor. Unfortunately, the visitor will be disappointed. In fact,” he continued, his tones growing acid, “I must return to him a substantial deposit.” He turned his face toward me and his bladelike nose quivered, as if trying to sniff some truth out from me. “That does not please me!”
    “Sir?” I said. I clasped my hands behind my back, gripping my palms tightly together, so I could feel myself in my body, alive and still Luca.
    Silvano leapt up, pointed his face toward the ceiling, and screamed like a dog at the moon. “One of my girls was found dead this morning! A girl who had been paid for!” He threw his plate of bones at the wall. He howled again and threw a bowl of soup at my head. I ducked so that