“I know not!” he shouted back, and broke into a run. “If so, not for long!”

I cast a tormented look back at my friend, but there was naught I could do for him now. If my cousin would recklessly throw himself onto Tybalt’s sword now . . .

This might not be the only death I could regret today.

“I’m sorry,” I said to Mercutio. I bent and pressed my lips to his pale forehead, and then I ran for the piazza.

• • •

Tybalt had fled the place of Mercutio’s murder when I’d carried my friend away; he’d since returned, though his adherents urged him to flee. He stood still in the street, surrounded by his fellows, and his sword was out. He stalked restlessly back and forth, black gaze fixed on my cousin.

Romeo had likewise not put up his sword. Finally, some Montague cousins and bravos had arrived to back him, which was all, I thought, that had held the peace thus far—that, and the fact that they had waited to hear the news—bad news, I realized, that I was bringing. But it was too late to turn away; I had already been remarked, as I pushed through the crowd damp with Mercutio’s dying blood. Romeo’s gaze had fallen on me, and now Tybalt’s did as well. A hush went through the crowd in a rippling wave.

“How fares Mercutio?” Romeo asked me. He knew. Any man could see, from the evidence soaking my clothes. But still he asked, so that the answer would be clear to those watching.

“Mercutio is dead,” I said. It felt like fiction, though I knew it for fact.

Romeo nodded. He looked older than his years in this moment, older than I; he looked every inch the heir of House Montague, weighed down with the responsibilities of that office.

Tybalt, perhaps ten feet away, had gone very still in watching us. He could have put up his sword, and by all reasonable measures ought to have done so; his blade had already broken the peace, already claimed a life, but perhaps knowing that, he cared not for the future. I could smell the violence on him, and the rage. He was in the grip of a blood fever that only our two deaths would break.

“And here stands the furious Tybalt,” I said. I put my hand on my sword’s hilt. If the peace was broken, let it be well shattered and done. Mercutio’s death had been stupid, meaningless, and in part it was laid at my own door; if I hadn’t met with the witch, if Roggocio’s companion had not escaped to Tybalt’s side, then none of this would have happened.

“Alive in triumph, and Mercutio slain,” Romeo agreed. His voice rose, and hardened. “My forgiveness has gone to heaven with him. Now, Tybalt, call me villain again—Mercutio’s soul is but a little way above our heads, staying for you to keep him company, and either you or I will join him!”

“You consorted with him here, and will go with him there!” Tybalt answered.

Romeo lunged forward, all restraint fled. Tybalt met him in a clash of steel, both of them slipping in Mercutio’s spilled blood on the stones. One of the Capulet bravos drew his blade, and I lunged for him with a shout of fury, because, like my cousin, I needed to avenge my friend’s terrible, useless fate. I was aware of the striving of Tybalt and Romeo, but I dueled my own enemy—the bravo I’d chased through the city, who’d led me to this field of slaughter. He was as quick and deadly as any I’d faced. His blade slithered over mine in a lunge, and tore a bloody strip from my shoulder; we parted, circled, and I feinted high and lunged low, aiming for his thigh and the vulnerable vein there. He parried, and pinked me again, but he slipped on the cobbles and his point wavered, and I riposted hard and fast and ripped a thick red line on his cheek. He dropped his sword and staggered back, clapping a hand to the wound.

I stabbed him in the throat and ended him.

Not soon enough, since he’d told Tybalt what he knew of my secrets. I had to silence Tybalt before he could accuse me in public . . . and before he learned of Romeo’s ill-advised marriage vows with his cousin. Silence, but not kill so openly in the street, under a Capulet’s blade; this situation required quick, silent assassination away from prying eyes, if I was to save my house.

It was vital that Romeo not be seen, in public, to bring about his death.

I spun toward the other battle, intending to wound Tybalt enough to render him unable to speak—a blow to the throat would do—just as Romeo, down on the cobbles where Tybalt had toppled him, rolled and slashed, catching the Capulet—more by luck than skill—on his unprotected vitals.

Tybalt staggered back, eyes wide. For an instant, the cut looked small, but then it parted, and the blood, oh, the blood. He fell into the arms of his adherents, thrashing in his death agonies, and I scrambled forward and dragged my bloodied, hard-breathing cousin to his feet. His eyes were fiery with the fight, and his lips parted in a feral grimace.

It was all done, then. All hope gone. My problem had been solved, but Romeo’s, Montague’s, was only just begun.

I shook him, hard. “Romeo! Be gone from here. Tybalt’s slain, and the prince will see you dead if you’re taken; do you hear me? Be gone!”

The exaltation suddenly faltered in him, driven out by my words, and by something else, something much greater, and worse. He looked horrified well beyond what he ought to have done. “Oh, I am fortune’s fool!” he whispered, and clung to me for balance. “Benvolio—”

The Capulets were turning on us, screaming in their fury. “Why do you stay?” I shouted at him, and shoved him. “Go! Run!”

He did, the bloody sword still in his hand. Mine also was blooded, though not on Tybalt, but I quickly wiped it and put it away, because there was a loud shout from the piazza behind us. The city’s watch had finally arrived, and with them, summoned no doubt by breathless messengers, came the prince of Verona, my own aunt and uncle, and the Capulets as well. Mercutio’s father was not in the group, and I thanked God for it; I might have added him to the tally of corpses for the day, from pure bitterness.

My uncle looked at me with bewilderment, and a good deal of fear, and I understood in a moment—here I stood, in the center of the bloody scene, drenched in red, while Tybalt gasped his last among his cousins.

“Where are the vile beginners of this fray?” Prince Escalus snapped, as he stepped forward out of the watch’s protection. He looked every inch the city’s ruler, iron faced, tempered hard by his years. Even his gray hair had the glint of steel in the lingering sun.

His eyes swept the scene, and came to rest upon me.

I bowed low, and found the words to explain, sticking close to truth, since there were too many witnesses to Romeo’s act for any hope of clemency. Lady Capulet let out a bloodcurdling wail, and broke free of her husband’s hand to throw herself down beside Tybalt’s twitching corpse.

“Tybalt, my nephew, my brother’s child— Oh, my prince, my cousin, my husband, look, his blood is spilled! My prince, if you are true to your word, blood of ours was shed by Montague, and Montague blood must answer it!” She gathered Tybalt’s limp form in her arms, and though I knew there was more politics than grief to her emotion, still it raised a sympathetic murmur in the crowd.

The prince noted it, but he was not like to be moved by theatrics. “Benvolio, who began this bloody fray?”

“Tybalt,” I said without equivocation, and gave him the tale, ending, “Romeo came between them, beating down their blades, but Tybalt struck under his arm, and hit the life of Mercutio, then fled.”

“Fled?” The prince cast a significant look on the dead boy gathered in Lady Capulet’s arms. “Here he lies.”

I bowed my head. “He came back to have at Romeo, who was much aggrieved; he entertained revenge, and who could blame him? They went like lightning, and so was Tybalt slain.”

“And Romeo?”

“Fled, my prince. This is the truth, on my life.”

Lady Capulet gave me a bitter, hateful stare, and said, “A kinsman of the Montague! Affection makes him false, and he lies! Some twenty of them must have fought my Tybalt, to bring him down. I beg for justice, my prince, and you must give it. By his own cousin’s words, Romeo slew Tybalt. Romeo must not live!”

“Romeo slew him,” the prince agreed. “And Tybalt slew Mercutio. Who now owes the price of my kinsman’s dear blood?”

My uncle stepped forward then. “Not Romeo, Prince. He was Mercutio’s friend. His fault concludes but what the law should have ended: the life of Tybalt.”

“Whose word have we that Benvolio Montague did not kill my cousin himself!” Lady Capulet spat. “Look, you, he is drenched in red blood that cries for vengeance!”

“Mercutio’s blood,” I said. “My friend lies in a hovel not far from here, if you wish to water him with your tears. And his blood did cry out for vengeance, and you hold that vengeance in your arms.”

She gave a raw shriek of fury, and let Tybalt’s body thump back to the street as she rose. “Will no one kill this Montague?” she demanded, and turned that basilisk’s gaze on her own bravos, who quailed. “Tybalt’s death demands it!”

No one stirred hand or foot. The watch’s armed presence ensured it, and so did the prince’s moody, cold stare.

As the silence fell, the prince said, “It is fair that Capulet have a measure of vengeance, and so, Romeo—”

My aunt gripped her husband’s arm hard.

“Romeo,” the prince continued doggedly, “is immediately exiled hence from Verona, never to return. I have an interest in your grief; my blood also for your rude brawls lies bleeding. But I’ll punish you not with death, but with so strong a fine that you shall all repent the loss of Mercutio. Nay, Lady Montague, I am deaf to pleadings and excuses, and tears and prayers shall not purchase out your son’s abuses, so give me none. Let Romeo go in haste, or when he’s found, that hour will be his last. Go now, take Tybalt’s body and attend our will.”

The Capulets were pleased, I thought; if they had lost the ever-raging Tybalt, then it was public justice to them that Romeo had been taken from the Montagues, if not in body, then in fact. He would no longer be the heir on whom we rested our family’s future. He was disgraced, cast out, and exiled. The enormity of it had only begun to strike me. My cousin, feckless and reckless as he was, had been unquestionably the hope of Montague, and now, in an instant, in a lucky strike in the heat of a battle he had not invited, he had lost everything. Exiled from our family, our city, from everything and everyone he knew and loved.