The King's Agent by Donna Russo Morin Read Free Book Online Page A

every opened shelf, until the cubby glowed. The three men, heads bent over thick leather-bound books and unrolled sheets of parchment, offered silent thanks, rubbing their tired eyes and creaking necks.
    “How are we to see the dice?” Giovanni called across the expanse.
    “Perhaps it is a sign from God that you should cease your wicked gambling,” Nuntio mumbled back, but even he smiled at the ludicrous sentiment.
    “Take thee off, all of you,” Battista called to Giovanni, Ercole, and Pompeo. “We are in for many hours, you—”
    “Days,” Frado sniped, curmudgeon’s nose stuck in his book.
    Battista glowered at him but gave no response to his interruption. “Make for your beds, all of you. We’ll send Nuntio round if we find anything.”
    Pompeo rose and took a few staggering steps toward them, mouth opening with a cavernous yawn, a lion’s silent roar. “Are you sure, Battista?”
    “Quite sure. I will need you when we—”
    “If we—” Frado again, with a fling of a page.
    “ When we find something. We can handle it for now.” Battista smiled snidely. “Frado is most happy in his work.”
    Pompeo suppressed his laughter between clamped lips and scurried out with the others, before Frado directed any more of his frustration toward the retreating men.
    The blanket of silence tucked in about them. Ascanio stood and stretched, back popping with the change in position, and removed his green doublet, revealing the bright yellow, puffed-sleeved camicia beneath, a blazing color that matched the lined and stuffed bombast hose.
    Battista raised one eyebrow at him, always amused but never surprised by the flair of Ascanio’s clothing, though this flouncy, heavily embroidered shirt was one of the more elaborate ones he had seen in some time.
    “Venice,” Ascanio said with a grin, as if that explained it all.
    Battista shook his head with a chuckle and bent his back to the book in his hands. It pressed heavily on his knees and his feet tingled from the pressure. In the stillness, his eyes grew dry, stuck on the same words on the same page, he ac—
    “Aha!” Frado jumped up, sending his chair flying out behind him. “Come, come, you must see this.”
    Battista and Ascanio were already on their feet and jumping to his side, keen study following his stabbing finger to the book on the table before them.
    “It was written by Pliny the Elder of Rome, sometime in the first century ... 64, 70 ...” His tongue stumbled over the words as he rushed them out.
    “ ‘And Praxiteles created it, but no man looked upon it and no man looked away, such was its power. Wars were fought over it. Wars were won and lost because of it. Praxiteles begged for it to be hidden away. He died knowing it was.’ ”
    Frado finished reading, voice fading, excitement draining away, lost on the forceful tide of the words. The three men barely breathed in the wake.
    “What the hell is this thing?” Ascanio croaked, two hands rifling in his wavy brown hair, their confounded stares the only reply.
    Battista turned away, from the question and all it implied. He fell back into the wing chair, its wooden clawed feet creaking with the sudden weight.
    Frado stood before him. “I have a very bad feeling about this, Battista.” He rubbed circles around the globe of belly hanging in perfect roundness over his leather belt.
    “You ate too much.” Battista tried to joke his trepidation away, but it was a sorry attempt at best. “You know of the absurd superstitions of the pagans as well as I, so much based in the fanciful. I am sure this is but another example.”
    “You are sure, are you?” Frado used his sarcasm with a heavy hand, hammering home the one thing they could be sure of ... that they could be sure of nothing.
    “We must continue our investigation.” Battista’s eyes scurried from the scathing implication and he reached for another giant tome. “Of that I am sure.”
    They set back to their reading, not a one of them sleepy