Up ahead, an intricate bridge arched over the waters of the Rio di Palazzo. The white stonework was a marvel in itself—spirals crested along the top of the fully enclosed bridge like sea waves, and along the bottom arch appeared ten faces wearing expressions of horror and fear. Only one face smiled. Two small windows, both netted over in marble, regarded them solemnly as they passed beneath it.

“It’s aptly named, is it not?” asked Séverin, gesturing to the bridge and the palatial buildings that it connected.

Eva looked unimpressed. “I do not speak Italian.”

“Ponte dei Sospiri means the Bridge of Sighs,” said Séverin. “It connects the new prison on our left and the interrogation rooms of the Doge’s Palace on our right. For a doomed man walking across the bridge to the prison, those windows held his last sight. And what a sight it must have been … certainly worthy of a sigh or two.”

“What do you want?” asked Eva sharply.

Séverin reached for her hand. Behind him, that was all the Mnemo bug would see: two young people with their heads bent together and their hands clasped.

“I can help you,” he whispered.

Eva’s green eyes blazed. “I will not be dragged from one man’s mercy to another. Least of all you. Do you expect me to trust you after you killed them? They were … good … people.”

Séverin held Eva’s gaze. “And if I told you they were safe?”

Eva paused. “How?”

“Does it matter so long as it is true?”

Eva released his hand. “Only if you can prove it.”

“Tomorrow,” said Séverin. “One, or all of them, I don’t know, will meet me at the Bridge of Sighs at midnight. It’s all planned. We can get you out.”

Eva’s mouth twisted. “And how do you know they will come for you, Monsieur? You may not have killed them, but even I could see that how you treated them was a death of its own.”

Séverin sat back, the words buzzing in his skull. Eva was wrong. They would understand … they would give him one more chance. Wouldn’t they?

As the gondola slipped through the water, Séverin regarded the inky lagoon beneath them. It seemed alive. A hungry thing that swallowed the reflections of cathedrals and palazzos, lapped up stone archways and chewed off the faces of angels carved into the frames.

The water fed upon the city.

Séverin leaned away from his reflection in the black surface. For a moment, the canal seemed to mock him, whispering to him in the dark.

My belly holds the bones of empires. I’ve eaten sighs, and I’ve eaten angels, and one day I’ll eat you too.

9

ENRIQUE

Enrique touched his bandage gingerly. In the three days since he’d lost his ear, the pain had subsided to a low ache. He traced the strange new flatness against his skull, the little nub of scabbing skin where his ear had once been attached. As a child, he had been willing to give up his ear. Eager, even. For he thought it meant that his dreams would come true. When he was nine years old, he’d even gone so far as taking a knife to his earlobe before his mother caught him and started shrieking.

“Why would you do such a thing?” she had demanded.

“For the trade!” Enrique had replied. “For the enkantos!”

His mother had not been impressed, and she had promptly complained to his grandmother, who only laughed. After that, his mother forbid his lola from telling him more tales, but the very next day, Enrique crept to her side and sat by her feet and tugged at her long, white baro.

“Tell me a story,” he begged.

And she did. His lola used to tell him tales of the enkantos in the banana groves, their long fingers parting the shining leaves and their wide eyes aglow in the dusk. Even though she wore a cross around her neck and never missed mass on Sundays, his grandmother never forgot the enkantos outside. Each week, she left a bowl of rice and salt outside the door. When they went on walks and passed beneath the trees, she would bow her head and whisper, “tabi tabi po.”

“Why do you do that?” Enrique asked. “Why do you say ‘excuse me’ when there’s no one here?”

“How do you know, anak?” his grandmother would say, with a twinkle in her eye. “They have been here long before us, and it is only polite to ask that they allow us to cross their territory. The enkantos and diwatas are a proud folk, and you would not wish to offend them, would you?”

Enrique shook his head. He did not want to be rude. And besides, he would love to see the creatures from his grandmother’s tales. Maybe if he was very polite, they would come out and say hello to him. He even tried to see them. Once, he had stayed up all night watching the hallway outside his bedroom, convinced that if he simply waited long enough, a dwarf would appear in the shadows and ask him what he wanted. Enrique planned to give the dwarf a gift of rice cakes that he’d stolen from the family breakfast table, and then he’d ask to be taken to the grove where the enkantos lived. There, he would make a trade.

“The enkantos love a good bargain, anak,” his grandmother used to say, lowering her voice as if she were letting him in on a secret. “For your most precious memory, they might give you a bag of gold. For the length of a young bride’s hair, they will give her immortal beauty for a year.”

Enrique had sat by her feet, enchanted. He remembered her reaching down, tugging gently at his ear.

“I once heard of a farmer who gave an enkanto his ear, and in return, he could see the future.”

Enrique brightened. “If I give the enkanto my ear, will I see the future too?”

“Why would you wish to see the future, anak?” His lola laughed. “What a terrible burden that would be.”

Enrique disagreed. If he could see the future, he would know when his elder brother Marcos was planning to tease him. He would know when his mother planned to bring home puto bumbong before anyone else, and he could help himself to the best pieces. And most importantly, he would know who he would be. Perhaps a sea-faring pirate with a deadly crocodile pet who adored him and ate all his enemies …

Enrique’s future would be clear, and all he had to give up was a little part of himself.

But now, Enrique had made that sacrifice. Or rather, someone had made it for him. He stared at the gilt mirror on the far side of the library wall, turning his head one way and another before looking around at his scattered notes and research. He had given up his ear, but his future was no clearer.

History was all around him, and yet he had no idea where he belonged within it. He was lost. For all that he had dreamed of leaving a mark on the world, the world had marked him and kept moving.

A sound by the doorway startled him. Enrique looked up to see Zofia in her black apron. Soot had gotten smudged on her pale cheeks, but for some reason, it only drew attention to the vivid blue of her eyes and the Christmas red of her cheeks. Her candlelight hair had slipped out of its braid, and for a moment, he had the bizarre urge to feel it between his fingers … to wonder if it would feel, somehow, like light on his skin.

He stood suddenly, nearly scattering some of the documents on the table beside him.

“Phoenix,” he said. “What are you doing here?”