The Exiled Blade: Act Three of the Assassini

by Jon Courtenay Grimwood

  “All right, Captain?”

  Towler scowled at his sergeant.

  “You sighed like you meant it.”

  He’d been wishing he had a priest along to tell him how much forgiveness of a sin like that would cost. “We need to make camp soon.”

  His sergeant flicked a glance at the darkening sky. The snow would reflect tonight’s full moon, making it light enough for any bandits to find them. The lack of cloud cover also meant it would be colder than ever; what little warmth the world still possessed stolen by eternity. “We’ll need a fire.”

  “Then send men to find wood. Is Evans back yet?”

  Evans was their archer, disliked by the sergeant but useful all the same. He could outshoot most men, and a longbow in a forest like this was the difference between life and death for all of them. The last animal Evans killed was a wolf, more bones and sores than ribs. It tasted like week-dead carrion but they ate it all the same and cracked its thicker bones for the marrow. The captain hoped Alonzo had food enough. He’d have a mutiny on his hands if not.

  “He’s over there, Captain . . .”

  The archer looked flustered and scared as he slid and slipped his way downhill towards the road. His long face was red and puffy, his overfull lips taut as he gasped down gulps of air. “Bandits?” Towler demanded.

  Evans shook his head and the captain relaxed slightly. The stragglers in his troop had arrived by the time Evans finally caught his breath enough to tell them he’d seen hunting. But, first, the sergeant got his usual insults in.

  “Sod seen, you Welsh bastard. Did you catch anything?”

  When Evans shook his head the sergeant turned away to spit and almost missed the corporal’s words. “Saw a cat though . . .”

  Wild cats might live this close to the treeline, Captain Towler thought. You could eat cat, he’d done that more than once. Better than rat, certainly better than wolf. Although even wolf was better than nothing. If there was one cat up here, maybe there were more. Maybe it had a mate and kittens.

  “This big.” Evans held his hand waist-high.

  Towler steered him away from the others, nodding to the sergeant to say he could follow. Evans looked sober enough, and where would he have found spirits this far into a march? The hill villages were deserted and the towns in the valleys where they’d billeted so poor that to find thin beer was a treat. “This big?” The sergeant’s voice was a mocking echo of his own.

  Evans held his gaze and nodded. “Yellowy with spots,” he said. “Ripped a hare right open with a single bite and ran faster than a galloping horse. It dodged my bloody arrow as if it was a feather falling.”

  “If it was really that big,” Towler said, “you’re lucky to be alive.”

  Evans nodded soberly. “Do you think . . .?”

  “No, I don’t, and nor do you, understand?” Captain Towler watched his Welsh archer join the others, glance nervously back at the captain and begin talking anyway. They were superstitious fools and the last thing Towler needed was his men getting spooked by reports of were-beasts and worse.

  It he didn’t find them food soon he’d have to give them another hanging. He’d like to start with Evans but the Welshman was too valuable so it would have to be the last recruit. A dark-faced Sicilian who swore his family had never been heathen. No one believed him or much liked him either.

  15

  “I will not go and greet his arrival . . .” Lady Giulietta tried to sound like she meant it, because she did mean it; she was simply having trouble convincing her aunt. “You can’t make me.”

  God, now she sounded like a nine-year-old.

  Blinking back tears, she fussed with her shawl so Aunt Alexa wouldn’t see how badly her hands were shaking. From the softening of her aunt’s expression she’d seen anyway. Now her aunt was going to treat her like a bloody child.

  Because you’re behaving like one.

  She knew it was true. Turning her head, Giulietta stared through the glass to ice on the lagoon. No ship could enter and none leave. That had to be why no message had come from Tycho. He’d have written otherwise, wouldn’t he? She knew he would, although she’d probably still rip up his first letter. She was cross enough. Every day she waited for him to write and nothing came. It was . . . intolerable.

  “Giulietta . . .” Alexa’s voice was neutral.

  “What?” That wasn’t how you spoke to the Regent of Venice, even if she was your aunt and you were alone except for Marco. The fact Aunt Alexa’s lips barely tightened told Giulietta how worried she was.

  “It’s the poppy,” Alexa said apologetically. “I gave you too much poppy and now your body wants more to stay happy.”

  “So give me some more.”

  “I’d like to but I can’t . . .” Duchess Alexa shook her head.

  “You only gave it to me so you could send Tycho to Montenegro.” Lady Giulietta could feel her eyes fill and looked away. She hated feeling like this. She hated being like this. And she wasn’t going to go out in the cold to greet Prince Frederick, who shouldn’t have been here anyway.

  “Tycho leaving like that was as much a surprise to me. He didn’t leave Ca’ Ducale with my authority.”

  “I don’t believe you. You’ve never liked him, I know you haven’t. That’s why you won’t sign the decree letting me marry. Now he’s going to get killed and Leo will die and you want me to meet . . .” Tears overflowed, and she brushed them away angrily. “I don’t even know what he thinks he’s doing here. I wouldn’t be surprised if you sent for him.”

  Now she was crying openly.

  “You doubt Tycho?” Alexa sounded interested.

  “Of course I don’t doubt Tycho. He saved me in the battle off Cyprus, remember. And in the banqueting hall . . . And when that horrid Byzantine captured me. All he does is bloody save me.” Jamming her fists into her eyes, Giulietta turned for the door and froze as strong arms folded around her. She tried to fight them off and then realised it Marco, gripping her tight and stroking her hair.

  “Angels f-fly away,” he said.

  “Then they come back,” Giulietta replied fiercely.

  Marco smiled at how quickly she’d turned he’ll die into he’ll be back. Stroking her cheek he found a tear and dried it with his fingers. “Angels f-fly away, and sometimes they come b-back and sometimes they f-fly away again. That’s why t-they’re angels . . .” He kissed her cheek. Leaning close, he whispered. “It’s my b-bad luck we both love the same b-boy. You were always g-going to win.”

  Lady Giulietta stared at him.

  Stepping back, Marco said. “Do this for me . . .”

  And Giulietta discovered she’d agreed to greet Prince Frederick after all, which meant the carriage waiting below would be needed, despite her having spent the last half-hour telling her aunt to send it away again. Venice was not really a city of carriages. Gondolas, gondolini and luggers, yes. Handcarts and trestles, even ox-drawn sleds. But the noble used gondolas like everyone else, and anyone rich enough to have a mainland estate kept their carriages there.

  “Is this going to be safe?” Giulietta asked.

  The carriage was old and someone had hammered steel nails through the rusting hoops of each wheel to help them grip the ice. She imagined the carriage would look ridiculously outdated to Frederick. The bastard son of Sigismund of Germany probably had a dozen gold carriages of his own.

  Frederick was her late husband’s half-brother, and the closest thing the Emperor Sigismund had to an heir. When Giulietta asked Alexa if that made him her half-brother-in-law, Aunt Alexa looked into her eyes and muttered that the poppy was taking longer to leave her body than expected.

  Lady Giulietta had meant the question seriously.

  No one in the Venetian court had any idea why Prince Frederick had returned in the middle of winter to a city he’d besieged that autumn. Although it would make him famous in years to come. The man who crossed the Venetian lagoon by carriage in the middle of the worst weather the world had ever known. A
ssuming the priests and doomsayers weren’t right, and this wasn’t the end of the world. “Do you think it is?” Giulietta asked, settling herself between her aunt and cousin. “The end of the world, I mean?”

  Alexa considered the question carefully, but it was Marco who answered it as they were riding beneath Ponte Maggiore, the huge wooden bridge that linked the banks of the Grand Canal, their wheels squealing and grinding on the ice. The bridge was heaving with sightseers and both embankments were thick with crowds. Since no one but the court yet knew of Frederick’s planned arrival, and Giulietta didn’t yet know how her aunt knew about that, the carriage on the Canalasso was obviously enough to bring out the crowds. A fair number cheered, their breath rising like smoke in the freezing air. It had been a long time since anyone in Venice cheered her aunt. Now simply showing herself in public seemed enough.

  “They’re scared,” Marco said. “And n-no, this isn’t the end of the w-world. At least not yet and p-probably n-never.” Even Alexa turned to hear this. “Think about it,” he said, with barely a stutter. “Think about what would h-have to change for the w-world to end . . .” He grinned. “You can’t g-guess?”

  “I’m not good at guessing games.” Aunt Alexa smiled and Giulietta wondered what was funny.

  “Yes, you are,” Marco said. “You just d-don’t like g-giving answers in case they’re w-wrong. Go on, tell me why the world’s not r-ready to end.”

  She tried, she really tried. Perhaps it was the drugs, perhaps she simply wasn’t as clever as Marco. That was more likely. Giulietta was coming to realise there were few people as clever as Marco. He was so clever most people thought him a fool. “I give up,” she said.

  “One of the kitchen maids is pregnant.”

  Alexa went still, and then let the breath from her body when her son shook his head, slightly mockingly. His smile said he’d shown little interest in women so far, surely she didn’t expect him to change now? The disappointment showed on Alexa’s face and Giulietta felt sorry for her.

  “How do you know she’s pregnant?”

  “I asked.”

  This left unanswered what Marco was doing talking to kitchen maids, but since he was duke, and Alonzo was gone, there was little to stop him from wandering where he liked and talking to whom he liked. Besides, the kitchens were warm, so spending time there probably counted as sensible.

  “So is Antonio’s wife,” Marco added.

  “Who’s Antonio?”

  “The young guard on the Council stairs, the one with the fair hair.”

  Lady Giulietta had barely registered that there was a new guard, never mind learnt his name, noticed his hair or discovered his wife was pregnant. She imagined there was a purpose to Marco’s words and he’d reach it soon.

  “Think about it,” Marco said impatiently. “Are there midwives in heaven? Will some women in heaven be pregnant for eternity? Are there going to be births, and babies and breast-feeding and nappies? We’ll know the world’s going to end when women stop getting pregnant.”

  “Who told you that?” Alexa demanded.

  “Worked it out for myself.” Marco rewarded himself by raising the leather flap over the side window and sticking his head into the wind like a dog on a barge. The crowds on both banks erupted with excitement and Alexa stopped trying to pull him back inside again.

  “He’s changing,” Giulietta risked saying.

  “You’ve noticed it too?” The duchess’s gaze sharpened.

  Giulietta wondered what Aunt Alexa would do if she discovered her son’s idiocy was a disguise adopted in childhood to protect him from Alonzo, her brother-in-law. Would she blame Uncle Alonzo? Would she decide it was her own fault? Or would she take it out on those who already knew this? Lady Giulietta had no intention of being the one to find out. Only, the question she did ask earned her such a glare she might as well have talked about Marco anyway. All she did was wonder aloud how her aunt knew about Prince Frederick’s arrival.

  “Which one is he?” Lady Giulietta demanded.

  Aunt Alexa looked at her.

  “We’ve never met. Remember?” Giulietta didn’t want to revisit the night her lady-in-waiting was killed by an arrow meant for this boy, the night Marco revealed to her that he wasn’t the idiot prince his subjects thought. She scanned Germans and saw a large, broad-shouldered young man in a wolf-fur coat looking entirely too pleased with himself. “That one?”

  “No,” Alexa said. “Over there.”

  A narrow-shouldered youth was climbing from the last coach and looking nervously around him. He stamped the ice as if three carriages, five horses and a dozen people weren’t test enough of its strength. Turning, he noticed Lady Giulietta staring and hesitated. She watched him force himself to approach – and somewhere in the handful of steps between his carriage and where she stood his face changed, losing its nervousness and filling with a terrible sadness.

  He stopped, and reached for her hand. Lady Giulietta expected him to kiss it, but he simply held it for a few seconds longer than he should then let it go. He looked as if he wanted to hug her and didn’t quite dare. “I’m so sorry,” he said. “Really sorry. I know how it feels.”

  “Your highness?”

  “To lose a child . . .”

  He should be paying his respects to Duke Marco, or kissing Aunt Alexa’s hand, but his eyes were for her and they were brown, intense and bright as cut agate. His face was raw with sadness.

  “Who said anything about a child?” Giulietta demanded.

  “Our spies say Leo is dead and a substitute takes his place.” The boy looked beyond Giulietta to the scowling duchess. “At least, until your aunt decides her next move. It must be brutal having to pretend.” His beautiful brown eyes filled with tears. “Prince Frederick . . .” The Duchess Alexa stepped forward.

  “I was married,” Frederick said simply. Maybe he read Giulietta’s thoughts that said he was too young to have lost a wife and child. No one had told her this when he was mentioned as one of her suitors. “Your wife died in childbirth?”

  “Plague.” The prince gulped and Giulietta realised how much it hurt him to talk of it. “I was thirteen and she was fifteen. My father wanted to cement an alliance and . . .”

  Yes, Giulietta knew how that worked.

  “Annemarie,” Frederick said. “We fell in love.” His shrug said stranger things had happened. “And she had a child a year after we married.”

  “A boy?”

  “A girl. While I was on campaign, plague swept the castle and both died . . .” This time he did reach for her, although it was to grip her shoulders rather than hug her. “So I know what it feels like. I’m sorry.”

  “When did this happen?”

  “Four years ago.”

  Four years? Lady Giulietta thought about that. Four years and Frederick was still mourning the loss of his wife from an arranged marriage and a child who wasn’t even a boy? Behind her, someone stepped forward.

  “T-these are d-deep matters.”

  “I’m sorry . . . I should have . . .”

  Duke Marco waved away the young prince’s apology. “If I w-was you, I’d h-have wanted to talk to her first, t-too. But you’d better . . .” He smiled and pointed to his mother, who accepted Prince Frederick’s bow with a thoughtful expression.

  “You understand,” she said. “I have no idea what you’re talking about?”

  “Of course.” The prince bowed again to show he did.

  “So . . . Accepting that. You came all this way to tell my niece how sorry you were for this thing that we don’t accept has happened?”

  Prince Frederick hesitated. “I wanted to tell her how sorry I was. That I knew how much it hurts to lose a child. Also, we never got a chance to meet.”

  “You thought you might try wooing her again?”

  The prince looked shocked. “Oh no,” he said. “I know she’s going to marry Lord Tycho. All Europe knows.” He meant the thin sliver of the nobility who cared about such matters.

&
nbsp; “But it doesn’t hurt to be seen trying?”

  He blushed, looked behind him to check his courtiers weren’t listening. “It gave me an excuse to leave court. I’m still in disgrace, you know. Although not as much as I could be. Since I returned something my father wanted.”

  “The WolfeSelle.”

  His shocked expression made Giulietta smile.

  “One of the worst kept secrets in the city,” Alexa said tartly.

  The WolfeSelle was the krieghund’s totem, an ancient sword revered by the Wolf Brothers and wielded by their leader. It seemed absurd that this should be the shy young man standing in front of Giulietta, but she’d seen him fight in wolf form that night on Giudecca, when Tycho offered to return the WolfeSelle if the krieghund would join him in rescuing her. They’d fought and mostly died, and Tycho kept his word, returning the blade to the Assassini’s oldest enemy. “You were saying,” Duchess Alexa murmured. “About being in disgrace?”

  “Out of favour might be more accurate. My father is busy besieging heretics in Bohemia. Life on campaign is . . .” Frederick hesitated. “Less fun than it might be. So I thought . . . And I did want to say how sorry I was.” His smile faded at the mention of Giulietta’s dead child.

  Lady Giulietta wondered if she should tell him Leo was still alive.

  16

  In the hours that followed, Prince Frederick and his small court settled themselves at the Fontego dei Tedeschi, his father’s warehouse just below the Rialto Bridge. Rooms were cleared and stables found for the horses. The land on which the warehouse stood was German, according to the rules governing fondaci. The land was German and so were the laws applied inside. By the time night fell – which was early, this being the start of winter – Frederick had made the rounds of his men, checking they were housed properly and settled into their chambers.