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unmarked with any family emblems; the boots I’d chosen were likewise of average quality. I could have passed for a visiting merchant easily enough, so long as no one looked too closely at my face. A muffling cloak and my silk mask would take care of that.
    Mercutio had also come prepared for nighttime skulking; there was no trace of his usual bright golds and greens, and he looked oddly subdued in plain brown. He pulled a cap from his pocket and pushed it down to cover his hair.
    That left Romeo, who still wore Montague colors. We both gazed at him for long enough that he finally scowled. “What?”
    “We are about to do something astonishingly dangerous and quite possibly foolish,” Mercutio said. “It might be best if they couldn’t identify you from the distance of, say, the far end of a crossbow.”
    Romeo fairly blushed at that, and I was reminded that he wasn’t yet so much a man as still a boy—man in the eyes of the law, yes, but it would take time to teach him the responsibilities of that right. He ducked his head and nodded, then turned away to rummage in my chest for something else to wear. We weren’t much of a size, but the plain shirt and vest he chose were close enough. Balthasar brought another cloak, this one of coarse black fabric, with liberal stains. It was good enough to disguise a multitude of shortcomings.
    “You shouldn’t do this,” Balthasar muttered to me under his breath. He wasn’t much older than I, and although it was rare for master and servant to be friends, I counted him as close as Mercutio. He kept my secrets. Mercutio’s, too, for that matter. “Stealing’s not a job for a group of half-drunken young fools. You know that.”
    “They won’t be with me,” I said. “Mercutio and Romeo make fine distractions.”
    Balthasar took in a deep breath, then slowly let it out. “Sir, I know you’re one for risks, but this—in the house of Capulet, again . . .”
    “The Prince of Shadows has always stolen from the best houses in Verona,” I said. “He’s taken earrings off a sleeping duchess. What difference? It’s all risk.”
    “The other times were for revenge, and profit,” he said. “This is for family. And it’s different. They’ll be watching for you.”
    Balthasar had been in on the secret from the beginning. My first thefts had been vengeful boyish fun, nothing more—a dare, when I was only ten, from the troublemaking Mercutio. I’d stolen a pendant from one of his aunts who had beaten him for impertinence. I’d been happy to scale the wall, sneak into her rooms, make off with the pendant, and sell it in the markets. Mercutio had pocketed the money. Compensation for his humiliations.
    My thieving had expanded over time to right many, many wrongs, and Balthasar had known all.
    Over time, I had developed a taste for stealing. It was an art that took nerve, skill, agility, and strength; it also took instincts, good ones, to know when something was possible, and when it was not.
    Now Balthasar was voicing the warning that rang in the back of my mind.
    “They say things about this girl,” he told me. “This Rosaline. She has the eye of a witch.”
    “I’ve seen her. She’s no evil eye in her.”
    Balthasar snorted, which conveyed better than words what he thought of my judgment of women. “Only witches have so much to do with irreligious books.”
    I cuffed him on the back of the head, but lightly. “Even so, you don’t think I can sneak past a woman? Don’t be stupid. I’ve done it a hundred times.”
    “Not with this one,” he said. “Not a Capulet witch. I don’t like it, sir. I don’t like it at all.”
    In truth, I could understand, but it pricked me hard to think that any servant of mine feared a Capulet. “Well,” I said, “the Prince of Shadows has his tender amorous heart set on acquiring stirring love poems this evening. And possibly a jewel or two.”
    He shook his head and gave me a look of disgust. “You’re going to swing one