He had one hand in the guy's collar and was jabbing the pommel of his dagger into the guy's arm just below the shoulder. "Good morning!" Ruy said, brightly, once the scream and the stream of Roman vernacular had subsided.
Another burst of obscenities.
"If you are going to follow us and work your way around to ambush, friend, be less clumsy, hey?" Ruy said, in Italian with a distinct flavor of gutter. Sharon had heard him address merchants and doctors and minor nobility in the floweriest formal phrases. She'd had no idea that he was also fluent in the kind of language she'd heard the stable hands at the embassy using.
"I wasn't doing-" The protestation was choked off in a strangulated squawk as Ruy flicked the tip of the dagger up the guy's face and held it, unwavering, maybe a quarter-inch from a wide, staring eye.
"Nothing?" Ruy finished for him. "Then why did I just have to make you drop that blade?"
Sure enough, there was a knife in the gutter. Maybe four inches of cheap metal, bright and worn-down from years of sharpening. With that, he had to have intended to simply stab Ruy straight from ambush-using it to merely threaten a man with three feet of Toledo steel on his hip would have been suicide.
"Nk," said the would-be mugger, who Sharon saw was probably only about fourteen or fifteen.
"Don't hurt him too badly, Ruy," Sharon said, "he's probably starving. In fact, here," she reached in to her purse and pulled out the little. 38 she usually carried these days. "No, hold on-I-" She fished about again and came up with a few small coins. "Get yourself something to eat. You look like you could use it."
"Her copper or my steel," Ruy said in a mild tone, releasing him.
The mugger took the money and ran like hell.
"A nice touch," Ruy said, "with the pistol."
Sharon grinned back. "Would have been if it'd been intentional. It's just that I keep it on top of everything else."
"Also nice. Now, I believe that if we turn left at the end there, we will be back on the Via Veneto."
They passed the remaining half hour of their stroll with inconsequentialities and pastries they bought from a street vendor, and returned to the embassy in time for a mid-morning coffee.
Chapter 5
Rome
Franco was cooling his heels as usual in the mid-afternoon heat, savoring a bite of lunch-which was, in truth, his breakfast, the night before having been a busy one-when the money walked in. The guy was dressed down some, but it was clear that there was cash and to spare about him. A Spaniard, from the looks of the sword he'd got, and it was the sword that was the clue to the money. That and the knives that were just discreet enough not to attract attention, and just obvious enough to make sure any attention he got was polite. A lot of rich guys wore a sword just to let you know that they had the pull to make it worth your life to mess with them, but only the ones who really meant it carried knives as well. An older guy, some gray at the temples, dark longish hair and cavalier mustachios, neatly trimmed. The guy could afford a pretty decent barber. He carried himself like a well-trained swordsman, and that was another thing that took plenty of cash. Everything about him stank of money. You didn't even have to start making guesses about what he had hanging from his belt under that jacket to figure there was a useful amount of silver about his person.
So, some rich Spaniard, slumming on the wrong side of the Tiber. Franco looked around the taverna. It was Marco's place, and as usual was quiet around the middle of the day. It was kind of quiet in the evenings, too, which was why Franco generally took himself there just after he got out of his bed, because he was not generally at his best at that time. Still, if money walked into the place where he was breaking his fast, it was not for him to argue the matter. Nor, particularly, to wonder why the Spaniard was looking for entertainment at this hour, when most respectable folks had the business of the day to take care of before they thought about getting their ashes hauled. If Franco's luck was in-and assuming he could get either of the idle bitches awake to do business…
Still, time enough for that. There wasn't anyone else in the place who might steal a march on him, so he set about finishing his lunch while the Spaniard was getting himself a jug of wine. The guy was reasonably new in town, so he wouldn't be quite so likely as to give Franco the brush off straightaway. In his rare honest moments, Franco would be willing to admit that his girls were not exactly about to go off and make their fortune as high-class courtesans such as might be found in Venice. The pair of them were costing him a fortune in mercury salts, a fact that was widely known around Rome. So, until he could find something a little more valuable, Franco was reduced to hooking his girls up with out-of-towners and doing other odd little jobs on the side.
And that was another possibility to look out for, Franco decided, as he poured out the last of the wine he'd bought. A lot of rumor was flying about. One of Franco's more reliable sidelines was passing on information to people who might want to hear that there was a damned good reason there were a lot more Spaniards in town right now. They were pretty much all up to no good, one way or another, which meant that there was a certain amount of money floating about. Franco was currently not too proud to take that kind of money for pretty much anything.
He was just about ready to get up and go talk to the man when the real reason the Spaniard was drinking in a dive like Marco's turned up. A guy that Franco vaguely knew as a militia cavalry officer, a moneyed idiot who was occasionally seen looking for a whore but wasn't quite enough of an idiot not to know what he was in for if he approached Franco. The guy had a sergeant who, when he wasn't riding the horse his boss paid for, had an approach to most things that happened off the street and out of sight that was mediated by modest and regular payments, so it wasn't like there was a major problem there. They were mostly exactly the kind of town guards that Franco thought that a city should have, which was to say guys who liked getting about on horses and looking impressive for the girls and otherwise not bothering the citizens overmuch. The foot-constabulary were a lot more of a pain in the ass, since they knew pretty much who to lean on, and when and for how much. A sore trial in many respects. Still, Franco was in enough money right now that he was eating, so he didn't care to go looking for trouble. He got himself a little more wine while he waited for one or the other of them to leave so he could see about getting some cash about whichever remained behind. Fortunately, there was a fairly lazy, low-stakes dice game going on in one of the back corners. Franco could stand there and spectate with one eye on the money, so he didn't look too much like he was spying.
Why such a man as this militia officer would be consorting with the likes of this Spaniard, Franco had no idea. It was probably worth waiting to find out, though.
The two of them spoke for maybe half an hour or so. There was a lot of intensive gesturing. They stayed close together and the militia guy seemed to be concerned that he wasn't overheard. And was even a little nervous about being seen with the Spaniard. After a while he left, looking around him the whole time. The Spaniard leaned back in the chair he'd been occupying over on the other side of the room and stared right at Franco with a big grin on his face.
Franco knew when to take a cue, and so he sauntered over. "Looking for anything in particular, friend?" he asked, taking a seat uninvited.
The Spaniard shrugged and tilted his head to one side. "I just might be, at that," he said, his grasp of colloquial Roman quite good, "and I think you might be a fellow open to business propositions of one sort or another."