Page 36 of A Dangerous Bargain

It takes me a bit, but I navigate out of the warren of servants’ tunnels and up the palazzo’s endless steps to the offices above. Leonardo holds the lantern, and Lupa walks ahead, boldly rounding each corner with a confidence that makes my stomach curl. I know she’s made herself invisible to everyone but us, but it feels wrong to see her walk like she has nothing to hide.

She guides us around a handful of guards, one on each floor.

Soon we’re outside the double doors leading to Piero’s office. The ones I’ve schemed and dreamed how to get behind for weeks. Leonardo runs a finger along one of the carved panels, frowning. “The Last Judgment is a grim choice, isn’t it?”

That’s what I thought when I saw the doors the first time. “Wait until you see the inside.”

When we enter, Leonardo gasps with horror. “Dolce Gesù, he’s looking at me!”

The wrapped portraits I found before are gone, as is the mess, but the muscular, menacing portrait of God still towers over us. Even though the painting isn’t magicked, his eyes appear to follow me as I go to the shelves filled with fat ledgers.

“I don’t like this. I don’t like it at all,” Leonardo mutters.

I’ve never agreed with him more in my entire life. “The sooner we find my brother, the sooner we can leave.” I beeline to the one incompletely filled shelf and ease off the final ledger, flipping to the last page.

Someone has finished the portrait catalogue since I was here. My stomach sparks when I find the number on Niccolo’s portrait—512—and show Leonardo the date.

“February 28, 1467,” he says.

It’s a few weeks after Niccolo disappeared, but there’s nothing else special about it. I fist my curls, already feeling frustrated. “What am I supposed to do with that?”

Leonardo swoops closer. Ignoring my protests, he closes the ledger and taps a number stamped on its spine. “Seven one six. See how the ledgers on this shelf have three numbers on their spines and the other ones have nine on theirs? It’s a cataloguing system.”

It takes me a moment to catch up. “There’s more information in another book?”

“Precisely!” Giddy with delight, he flies to another shelf. I slip the portrait catalogue back in its spot and follow just as he pulls a book with 716-459-840 on it from the shelf.

I groan when he flips it open. There are thousands of entries: births, deaths, arrests, job offers. Leonardo turns to the section numbered with 512 at the top, but there are at least ten pages with the label, all of them filled with handwriting so small, the thought of reading it makes me dizzy. I’m twelve again, a stammering mess before my tutor, my father a storm at my back.

“I don’t see anything.” He’s reading the left page, but I can’t force myself to make the words on the right page focus. Between God’s judgmental, staring eyes and the imposing throne, it feels like we’re not alone. When the churches chime the quarter hour, I flinch and nearly tear a page in two.

“Niccolo Pitti, right?” Leonardo’s nose is an inch above a page, one finger keeping his place.

Hope bursts through me. “Yes!”

“Someone’s coming!” Lupa whisper-hisses from her post outside the door. “Several someones!”

My pulse surges. I butt Leonardo out of the way, a familiar name in tiny script snagging my eyes just above his fingertip.

Niccolo Pitti, sworn into city service February.

Appointment status: current

Work address—

Lupa bursts into the room. “Hide!”

The address disappears. Leonardo yanks the ledger away and slides it back onto the shelf. I try to claw it from him, anger kicking through me. “I didn’t get the address!”

I leap for the ledger. My fingers graze the spine, and it tumbles down.

There’s a murmur outside the door. The knob starts to turn—

“I’m sorry, Virgil, I truly am.” Leonardo tackles me and drags me under the table and its tablecloth, his eyes agonized.

Not a moment too soon.

The doors open with a swell of male voices, and footsteps shuffle into the room. I can just see their shoes through the gap between the tablecloth’s edge and the floor. The fabric still trembles where we dove under it. Leonardo stops it with a single finger, his face stricken.