"Stay still!" She hissed.

Benito's dark eyes flickered nervously. Then she felt him tense again. "They're stopping. They're coming here!"

Kat reached for the slipknot on the cord. "How do you know?"

The boy's eyes darted. "You can see the reflection in the window," he mumbled.

It was true enough. The two Schiopettieri oarships were slowing. Backing water. The vessels behind them… weren't Venice-built. She'd swear to that. Whoever made them needed lessons in shipbuilding. Tubs. But tubs bright with steel. So much so that it was a miracle they didn't tip over. That would've emptied all the armored men, in bright triple-cross-enameled breastplates and their gilt-trimmed helmets, into the canal.

Benito and Katerina gaped, forgetting the watcher on the balcony. The Teutonic Knights of the Holy Trinity. The fabled Arm Militant of the Pauline Orders. The soldiers of God who beat back the Huns, the Norse, and the various Slavic and Magyar pagans and heretics on the northern and eastern frontiers of Christendom. The borders of Emperor Charles Fredrik's Holy Roman Empire rested squarely on their steel shoulders. Those breastplates were unmistakable, a legend across the Christian world. And they were half feared, as well as admired and respected, by the southern and Mediterranean folk who generally followed the Petrine currents in the Church.

"What the hell are they doing here?" Benito got it out seconds before Kat. His voice had more admiration in it than Katerina Montescue would have voiced.

"Going to the Imperial embassy, by the looks of it," said Katerina with relief.

Benito too sounded more relaxed. "I always wanted to be a knight."

Katerina shook her head. "Fighting trolls and hellspawn in the frozen northlands? Dealing with pagan Russian and Tatar princes and their demons? And?even worse?the heretic Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Kingdom of Hungary and their sorcerers and shamans? Ha! It's dark half the year up there. And they look silly in that armor. It's no good anyway. One of the new pistols from Spain will put a ball right through it. Besides, they take the sons of the nobility of the Empire, not canal-brats."