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Duke.’
    â€˜And the Nucci lot?’
    â€˜Will be invited, of course. They are still one of the great families of Giglia.’
    â€˜Phew,’ said Sky. ‘Could be pretty explosive. But I really don’t see why you are telling me all this.’
    â€˜Come,’ said Sulien, ‘a little further.’
    They skirted the back of the cathedral. Among the buildings behind it was a busy, noisy workshop, ringing with the sound of chisel on stone. Sulien stopped and looked both ways.
    â€˜This is the bottega of Giuditta Miele, the sculptor,’ he said. ‘She is another one of us Stravaganti. And her next commission is to make a statue of the beautiful Duchessa of Bellezza, who is coming here for the di Chimici weddings.’
    â€˜Sorry,’ said Sky. ‘I still don’t see . . .’
    â€˜The Duchessa was supposed to marry Gaetano di Chimici, the third prince. Supposed by Duke Niccolò, that is. She refused him, some think because she was too attached to a young man who was her father’s apprentice. Her father is Rodolfo Rossi, the Regent of Bellezza, one of the most powerful Stravaganti in Talia. And the young man, his apprentice, did her mother, the late Duchessa, great service, and is now an honoured citizen of Bellezza, but it wasn’t always so.’
    â€˜No?’ asked Sky, because it seemed expected.
    â€˜No,’ said Sulien. ‘He was once from your world, and I think you probably know of him.’
    *
    Gaetano di Chimici stood in the loggia of the Piazza Ducale and everywhere he looked he saw evidence of his family’s influence on the city he loved. They had built the palace that housed the seat of government, with its tower that dominated the square, they had placed the statues commemorating victories of the weak over the strong, and they had built the Guild offices, with their workshops underneath, where silversmiths and workers in semi-precious stones plied their crafts along with the less important goldsmiths.
    All over the city, poor housing was being pulled down and replaced with grand buildings, columns, squares and statues. And all this was the work of his father, carrying on the tradition of his ancestors, and part of Gaetano could not help feeling proud. But he also knew how much blood stained the family’s omnipresent crest of the perfume bottle and the lily, in pursuit of acquiring land and showing themselves superior to the Nucci and other feuding families of the city. And what he didn’t know, he could guess.
    Why, even old Jacopo, the kindest and sweetest of Niccolò’s cousins, had committed a murder only a few streets away from here! Uncle Jacopo, as they called him, who had fed all the little princes sweetmeats with his own fingers and wept like a baby when his favourite hound died. Not for the first time, Gaetano wished he had been born into a family of shepherds or gardeners.
    Then he and Francesca could have got up early one morning and made their vows in a country church, decorated with rosebuds. He smiled at the thought of his beautiful cousin, the love of his life, clad in a homespun dress with flowers in her hair. How different from their forthcoming marriage in the vast cathedral, which would be followed by a grand procession and surrounded by dangers in spite of all the finery of silks and brocades and silver and diamonds.
    Gaetano decided to walk towards Saint-Mary-among-the-Vines and look up the friar who his friend Luciano had told him was a Stravagante, like Luciano himself and his master, Rodolfo. Unlike his own father, Gaetano was not an enemy of the Stravaganti; in fact he thought they were probably the only people who could stave off the disaster he could feel brewing.
    *
    â€˜Lucien Mulholland?’ said Sky, disbelievingly. ‘But he died – about two and a half years ago. He can’t be here in your city.’
    â€˜Not yet,’ said Sulien. ‘He lives in Bellezza. But he will