"Messire Xellos has too high an opinion of me," Cesare says, knitting his brow in worry. Because I can't be as good as he hopes I can be, and he knows it, and yet he stores his hope in me, as if a were a Siennese bank, when I am nothing but a Catalan caballero's bastard son. "See, it was Messer Giustinian who gave me Faenza, gave it to me on a plate. I would have preferred to fight him over it." Because then Astorre Manfredi could have lived, something in him winces, instead of ending in the river with a weight round his neck.
"I wasn't associated," Cesare laughs. "You'd be not too far off the mark if you described it as a non aggression pact between leopard and wolf." My sister was hard pressed, though. And I couldn't help her, up in Ferrara.
"Not earned it?" He shakes his head as if there was water in his ears. "Does not merit make generals of men?"