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`Yes, you have wormed your way in here, puttana, but I bet they haven't told you that you are the spawn of a traitor? That your precious ancestor betrayed mine, and sold the secrets of the glass to France, where he died a rich man? Your grand ad campaign is a joke, based on a lie.'

`It's you who lies!' Leonora spat in the leering visage. `Corradino lived here, worked here, and died here.'

`Little idiot. He died in France.'

Adelino, galvanized at last, hissed, `Roberto, let her go, and get out of my sight.'

Roberto, as if spent by his revelations, released Leonora, and slammed out of the room.

The girl sank into a chair, as if dazed. Adelino fussed around her, appalled by the scene he had allowed to take place. He gave her water, and, as she waved his attentions away, sat down again, shaken himself. At last she looked up. `What did he mean, about Corradino? How could he be a traitor? And how did he harm Roberto's family?

Adelino shook his head, bemused. `Roberto is a del Piero. All those centuries ago, his ancestor Giacomo was a great maestro, and the mentor of Corradino. As far as I know they were the best of friends.'

`Then why would Roberto say what he said? Why would he hate Corradino and me? And what did he mean about treachery - and about France? I thought Corradino died here?'

Adelino nodded. `Certainly he died here, of mercury poisoning, so the history books say.'

Leonora tried to absorb this, the threads of a hundred half-remembered tales of Corradino spinning webs in her addled brain. She soon realized that she was nodding her head repeatedly. `Yes,' she said, `that must be right ...'

Adelino crossed the room and took her by the shoulder. `Look. Why don't you take the rest of the day off? I'll smooth things over here. Come in tomorrow as normal and this will all blow over. Big day tomorrow, the first press ads go out. Get some rest.'

Leonora registered his kind tone but her stomach shrivelled at the thought of the ordeal to come. She stumbled thankfully out into the sunlight and turned to walk to the boat along the Fondamenta Manin. This time the familiar street name gave her no comfort. Instead she looked up at it and addressed the faded sign. `Corradino, what did you do?'

CHAPTER 16

A Knife of Obsidian

And now, to make a knife.

The glass blades that Corradino made for The Ten's assassins, those deadly points which entered the skin with barely a whisper, they would not do for his purpose. Such knives hung, glittering, on racks on the walls of the fornace - ranked like so many chilling icicles that brought the cold winter of death. They were made here in great number for good reason. They could be used but once. Each knife was designed to snap at the haft after the fatal wound had been delivered. The wound would close and heal in death, concealing the manner of the victim's leavetaking. But for those friends or families that sought a post-mortem for their dead beloved, the glass blade served as the ultimate warning from the Council. Corradino knew that his blades were the most favoured by the dark shades that reaped for The Ten. When he honed their deadly points he sometimes thought of the men that would meet their ends as these blades entered their flesh, separating muscle and sinew, rending artery and vein. He felt haunted by the cries of their women and children; keening, bereft of their men and fathers, as he himself had wept for his dead parents. But he dismissed the thought with another:

If I refused to make these knives, my own life would be forfeit.

Corradino mitigated his guilt by making the blades as thin, strong and clean as his skill allowed. Like a surgeon, if he had to assist such butchery, he would make the passing as painless as possible.

The fornace was empty - all the maestri had gone, even Giacomo, whose age was beginning to tell. Corradino was alone with the glittering blades, the half-finished candelabri standing like amputees waiting for their missing limbs, and the shining goblets