Two blocks shy of reaching the river, Tom turned left, leading them into a small lane that paralleled the main road-the Viale Maloggia-which wound out of town to the northeast. It followed alongside the Mera, which, although merely a shallow gorge at present, had been a white-frothed flume only one month earlier, due to the spring Schmelzwasser that had come rushing down out of the swollen mountain cataracts.

As the rest of the group caught up with him-Melissa wheezing almost as much as the cardinal-Tom looked downstream toward the town’s center: no reaction from there, yet. Good: with any luck, they might “Tom.” Melissa’s voice was very calm, low-pitched. Which meant disaster on the hoof.

“What is it?”

She pointed down. “That.”

Tom and the rest followed her finger: a dark, brown-red stain was collecting near his feet, dripping down from his traveling cloak. As a watch whistle shrilled back near the crotto, Rita stepped closer to her husband, her worried eyes scanning his body.

Tom shook his head. “But I’m not hit.”

Melissa nodded. “Of course you’re not. That’s not your blood; that’s your soup.”

Soup? Tom stared at the stain, remembering the flurry of action-and wide spray of soup-that had immediately preceded their exit from the crotto. We’re going to be tracked-tracked and killed-because I chose to have the soup? Had the situation not been so desperate, he would have laughed. His life-and the lives of his wife, his friends, and charges-now hung in the balance because he had chosen to have a bowl of soup.

Tom looked up from the bloodlike spatter on the ground, glanced behind them and then toward the Viale Maloggia. He tore off his cloak and threw it aside: “We’ve got to run. Fast. Now.”

“We just were running,” complained Melissa, her hand on her side, one corner of her mouth wrinkled in the attempt to suppress what Tom guessed was a wind-stitch.