The Exiled Blade: Act Three of the Assassini

by Jon Courtenay Grimwood

  “Did you really think you’d get away with it?”

  “With what?” Maria demanded.

  “Stealing Giulietta’s child.”

  “He’s mine,” she said fiercely. “My child. My son. She never deserved him. I can be a better mother. Alonzo told me how the little whore crawled into his bed when he was drunk and he didn’t realise it was her. He was half asleep and thought it was me.” Maria believed it.

  Tycho looked for doubt, for a flicker of shame that said she knew she lied but found only certainty and a fierce determination. “How did you keep Leo quiet?”

  “His name’s Little Alonzo.”

  “How did you keep him quiet?”

  “A gag.” For the first time she looked uncertain. “On the ship we used a gag. His father said it was the only way. Here . . .” She gestured around her, giving Tycho a hundred chances to take the knife. “Those help. A dozen carpets overlapped around the walls, nailed direct to the wood beneath rather than hung on poles in the usual fashion. The floor, too, was thick with carpet. “And he had a pacifier, silver and ivory. We bought it before we left.”

  “The screaming?” asked Tycho. “All that screaming while you were meant to be giving birth? Everyone could hear that.”

  “We left the doors open, obviously.”

  “My lady . . .”

  “You can’t. I won’t let you.”

  Knocking aside her knife, he slammed the hilt of his dagger into her temple and caught her before she dropped, feeling a heavy breast against his hand. He doubted much here was Maria’s choice. Giulietta said rich women had even less choice than poor ones. She was wrong. He’d lived in Bjornvin, and survived Venice’s night streets, where the Rosalyns of this world had so little choice Giulietta wouldn’t have recognised their lives as living.

  Leo slept fitfully, dressed in a gown that was grey with dirt. Beneath it was another, with another beneath that. In keeping the child warm Maria Dolphini had probably saved its life. How many times would Alonzo have to look at the scar before he realised it was a krieghund mark and not a shrapnel wound from the battle off Cyprus? Unless Alonzo needed the child alive more than he would want a krieghund dead . . . As Tycho debated the question, he searched for the source of the slight breeze he could feel. The faintest whisper of night air.

  A shuttered window behind a wall hanging was sealed with oil paper, which made it old since most cathedrals could afford glass even in minor rooms. With the carpet rolled and tied with a strip of Maria’s gown it was easy enough to cut free the oil paper, which the wind swirled away. A window sill jutted over a wall that looked too sheer to climb.

  There’s no such thing. Atilo had told him often enough. The old man’s words, and his death, stayed with Tycho, and not simply because Tycho delivered the blow. Finish it, always slick the blade sideways.

  Atilo’s last words had been a lesson.

  Tycho stripped Leo, wrapped him in a fur and tied it tight with a ribbon ripped from Maria’s dress. “Here we go,” he told the child, before preparing to lash the bundle to his back. Leo just stared at him. Crouching carefully on the window sill, Tycho yanked the strip of cloth to unroll the wall hanging. Nothing says magic like a locked room. Another of Atilo’s maxims.

  A body in a locked room creates fear. Just as something stolen from a room still locked suggests a demon is involved and no further investigation is needed or wise. Although Tycho would not achieve that he hoped to unsettle Alonzo’s followers. Time to move. Feeling with his toes, he found a gap between staves and braced, then lowered himself slowly over the edge. As Tycho did a shadow raced out of the darkness and hit hard, trying to knock him from the wall. Long fingers reaching for his eyes, legs hooked around him to double his weight.

  Domovoi.

  He tasted blood fouler than sewage. The shadow howled in his ear and its thumb half found Tycho’s eye socket, pressing until the night sky exploded. Tycho spat finger to the dirt below. Leo’s terrified wail gave the creature new focus.

  “No you fucking don’t.”

  Long fingers grasped for the bundle on Tycho’s back. Still hanging one-handed from the sill, he grabbed the thing’s wrist and bit to the bone, chewing sinew and ripping arteries that spat foul-tasting blood. Up close, the domovoi stank. Scales covered its body and its face was reptilian, the eyes cold and lidless. As thin lips drew back to reveal needle teeth, Tycho smashed his elbow into its mouth, breaking teeth and ripping his flesh. It jerked back, and he dropped his hand to his dagger, unsheathing it and driving it into the creature’s side.

  He twisted the blade viciously. The domovoi wailed, unlocked its legs and tried fighting free. But Tycho simply ripped his dagger from its side and cut its throat, watching it fall away into darkness and thud to the dirt below.

  The shadows around him quivered in outrage.

  What he thought was darkness began to flow towards him from all directions as dozen of domovoi descended on him, drawn by their fellow’s death and Leo’s thin cry. In the few seconds before they struck, he thought of Giulietta and felt only despair at failing her so completely.

  30

  “You loved your aunt?”

  For once the new Regent didn’t say the first thing that came into her head, or what she thought Frederick wanted to hear, or even what she thought Frederick didn’t want to hear simply because she was feeling difficult.

  “And feared her,” Giulietta admitted.

  Frederick waited. He was like Leopold in that. Leopold regularly outwaited her, looking thoughtful and considerate, as if simply waiting politely. With Leopold you knew it was intentional. It was never quite manipulation. All the same, Leopold could lighten her mood with a kind word or force a quarrel with a cruel one. Frederick seemed less calculating.

  She was comparing the half-brothers a lot these days. Maybe it was that they shared smiles and a dancing, slightly dangerous laughter in their eyes. She loved Tycho. But each day made her more grateful for Frederick’s companionship in a world shrunk by ice to a window seat in a passageway, with doors at both ends and a unicorn tapestry. And if she was cold, hiding here with her braziers and her glass windows and wood panelling, how were the rest of the city coping, huddled in their own frozen, tiny worlds? They must be even colder. Although she wasn’t sure that was possible. She was to-the-bone cold, cold to her soul, and Frederick was her warmth in the wilderness. There, she’d dared think it.

  “If you haven’t lost someone close to you . . .” She flushed, feeling mortified when he touched her hand to say it was all right. Of course he’d lost someone close to him. He’d lost his wife and his child, and she’d done what she promised herself she’d stop doing – speaking without thinking.

  “It’s all right,” he insisted.

  “I shouldn’t be so bloody thoughtless . . .”

  “You’re not.” He smiled. “If anything, you think too much.” He pulled a deeply serious face, and smiled when she did. “That’s more like it.” Slicking condensation from the window with his finger, he wiped it on his doublet. The world beyond was as white as it had been the day before, and the day before that. The flat expanse of Venetian lagoon stretched away in unmoving marble, and he peered harder as if looking for evidence that something had changed.

  When he turned back, Giulietta knew he’d been steeling himself to say something. Only every time he tried to say it his lips twisted and his mouth twitched to one side. It seemed there was a lot he wanted to say.

  “My father has . . .”

  Frederick stopped, and Lady Giulietta was sure she heard scratching behind a tapestry. Mice perhaps, if the palace cats had left any alive.

  “Are you hungry?” Frederick asked unexpectedly.

  She shook her head.

  “It’s just . . . we have food in the fondaco.”

  Have you now? Every house in the city had been told to hand a list of its stores to the captain of the local sistiere, the six districts of Venice. Being German-owned and counting as foreign soil, Frederi
ck’s fondaco was excused the food census. Her spies said the Mamluks had grain and the French salted meat. The spy she sent to the Fontego dei Tedeschi never returned.

  “We didn’t kill him.”

  Gods, was she really so transparent?

  “What did you do to him?”

  “Fed him,” Frederick said with a shrug. “Gave him warmer clothes, hot wine. Told him he’d need to wait until I’d talked to you. After that, he could go home.”

  “You fed him out of kindness?”

  The young prince looked uncomfortable. “And to see how hungry he was. The answer was very hungry. Too hungry to worry that the food might be poisoned or we might be grooming him to commit treason . . . Our spies say the grain Alexa bought is almost gone, and half the city is starving. That most of the street children are dead. If you need our stores, they’re yours.”

  “What?”

  “We have pickled herring and salted beef, wizened apples and dry pork, also cheese and mutton.”

  “And you do this out of kindness?”

  “My father is impressed by our friendship . . .”

  She looked at him in shock, but he kept his face impassive until she glared hard enough to have him grinning. “You fear him?”

  “And love him,” said Frederick, reversing her earlier reply.

  “Then thank you,” Giulietta said. The cold showed no sign of lifting and the ice covering the lagoon was hard as granite. Holes sawn and drilled for fishing filled overnight and had to be drilled again. Although no snow had fallen for a week it still covered the island city and smothered the mainland. The Alps stood so sharp against the blue sky they looked close enough to pluck. As Regent she needed to appear confident, which was hard when the city’s supplies were dwindling, and listing stores, although essential, would have told everyone how bad the situation was.

  “You will put my offer to the old men?”

  She nodded. “Speaking of which . . .”

  “You should go. And this time I’m not invited . . .” Frederick shrugged. “I understand. If I were the Council I wouldn’t invite me either.” As she stood, he made himself say what he’d tried to say earlier. “My father has placed spies in Alonzo’s camp.”

  Giulietta froze. “How does he . . .?” She realised Frederick’s spy probably used carrier pigeons. Everyone knew they could fly hundreds of miles without resting. Pigeons were so important, the first thing Tamburlaine did when besieging a city was order his bowmen to kill every pigeon they saw.

  “He can talk across distances. Well, his archer can. Towler can probably get you news if you want. News of . . .”

  “Leo?” she said, and watched him smile in gratitude.

  At the start of the stairs, Lady Giulietta hesitated, and hesitated again at the top, only turning back when she actually reached the door of Aunt Alexa’s study. Her study now; her desk, her portraits of the staring Millioni, her box of poisons . . . “Forgotten something,” she told a guard, wondering why she bothered to lie or even explain herself at all. Time was she’d barely have noticed him.

  Outside the door, she stopped as she realised Marco had beaten her to it, and now sat where she’d sat in the window seat. “You d-don’t m-mind me being here?” she heard him ask Frederick.

  “It’s your palace.”

  “M-more’s the pity,” Marco muttered. “You’ve b-been with my c-cousin?”

  “She’s preparing for Council.”

  “It will b-be a hard m-meeting.”

  Marco was right in that. The old men were split on accepting Lady Giulietta as Regent or asking Alonzo to return. Her marriage to Frederick’s brother and Frederick’s friendship counted against her.

  “She’ll manage,” said Frederick. He seemed to mean this seriously, Giulietta realised, stepping back from the door. I should leave, she told herself. It’s wrong to listen at doors. God knows, that habit had got her whipped enough as a child. But how else did you discover what was going on? She stepped back a little further, knowing her hovering there no longer looked like hesitation to the guard, if he was looking her way, which he probably was.

  “Poor c-child,” Marco said. “She’s friendless, p-powerless and scared. Of c-course, she’s not as f-friendless as she thinks, is she? Nor as p-powerless. And Giulietta scared is still braver than most. She would have m-made me a good wife if I was the m-marrying kind. My mother wanted that once. Of course, my m-mother wanted all sorts of impossible things . . .”

  The duke turned to the window to wipe away condensation as Frederick had done earlier. He too stared at the lagoon beyond as if looking for changes. The parties on the ice were over. The gaiety gone. The poor fiercely hungry, the rich scared they would soon be the same. “Don’t h-hurt her.”

  “I don’t want to hurt her.”

  “She’ll find that attractive,” Marco said. “Well, I’m told girls find that attractive eventually. You love her?”

  “Beyond life.”

  Lady Giulietta climbed the stairs to her study, let herself in and sat at her aunt’s old desk, her feet resting on her aunt’s poison chest, the words she’d just heard going round her head. Beyond life . . . Frederick would never have dared say it to Giulietta’s face. Putting her notes in order, she carried them to her room and dressed in a daze, accepting a black velvet gown. She scolded the maid who said black velvet set off Giulietta’s hair, pointing out she was in mourning for her aunt and her hair was irrelevant. But her heart wasn’t in it, and the girl, who looked about eleven, was so crestfallen she began sniffling. So Giulietta hugged her quickly, told her not to be so silly, and waited patiently for the child to brush the shaved velvet and lace up Giulietta’s shoes.

  Only then did Lady Giulietta return to the corridor, her determination to play fair and let them hear her coming strengthening as she reach the first door. Behind it, Marco sounded agitated. So agitated that she pushed her way in. Her cousin was hopping from foot to foot in excitement. “A r-rat,” he said. “I know a r-rat when I s-smell one.” Dragging free his dagger, he ran at the tapestry and stabbed viciously for the unicorn’s eye, driving his blade home.

  “F-for the p-pot. A r-rat for the p-pot.”

  Ripping his dagger free, he stepped back and something slumped forward as blood began to stain the canvas and the tapestry prevented that something from falling. Anguished gurgling came from behind the cloth.

  Marco grinned at Giulietta. “Just in t-time.”

  She looked from the blood on his stiletto to the lumpy tapestry and the shuddering shape behind. “Your highness . . .”

  “C-c-congratulate m-me, t-then.”

  “Well done,” Frederick said. He took the dagger gently from Marco’s fingers and led him away from the tapestry, through the door Giulietta had just used to enter and out to the landing beyond. She heard him talking to a guard, and the guard reply as if Frederick had a right to be giving him orders.

  “He’s going to rest,” Frederick said on his return.

  “We should . . .” Of course they should. From the moment Marco stabbed the tapestry it was obvious they’d have to see who he’d killed. She just knew she wasn’t going to like the answer.

  “Bribanzo,” said Frederick, letting the body slump at his feet. The old man lay in a puddle of blood, his fat face smoothed into blandness by death. All of the avarice and scheming now gone. “Giulietta, may I get my men?”

  She stared at him blankly.

  “I have men in the piazzetta. May I summon them?”

  “Of course,” she said hastily. If anyone queries their presence say you’re acting on my orders . . .” His smile was quizzical enough to make her wonder what she’d said. “And send me the guard outside. If he’s back from putting Marco to bed.”

  The guard looked nervous when Frederick returned with three broad-shouldered Germans, wrapped in horse blankets like barbarians. When Frederick told him to step outside, he looked to his mistress for permission.

  “Do it,” she said.

  Frederick smile
d. “Moritz, check the window in that room.”

  A bearded young man disappeared into the family archives and pulled open two shutters, wrestled at the fastenings that freed the glass. Cold air blasted into the archive as he lowered the glass to the floor. “Your highness?”

  “Do it,” Frederick said.

  Lifting Lord Bribanzo, the man carried him to the window and tossed him out before Giulietta could object. She tried not to wince as Bribanzo thudded to the ground below.

  Frederick said, “Now the mess.” Between them, his men wiped blood from the corridor floor using horse blankets, rolled up the priceless unicorn tapestry and wrapped it inside a blanket. “You’ll need another wall hanging to hide that,” Frederick said, pointing to the now exposed alcove. “Bribanzo died in a street stabbing. Understand? Long before he reached here.”

  Somewhere outside a horse clip-clopped into the distance, its hooves sharp on the ice that glazed the herringbone brick below. At a nod from their master, Frederick’s men stuffed the last blanket inside the others, slung bundles over their shoulders like woodcutters and headed for the door

  “I thought my cousin was better.”

  “My lady . . .”

  “He was meant to be better.”

  “Giulietta . . . He just killed the man calling for his abdication. The banker funding his uncle’s treason. Are those the actions of an idiot?”

  “No,” she said sadly. “They’re the actions of a Millioni.”

  31

  They’d come at him from all sides, the domovoi . . .

  Quickly, very quickly, he realised he could fight them or concentrate on climbing down the side of the Red Cathedral. He could fight them or concentrate on keeping Leo safe. At best, he could do two of those things. There was no way that he could manage all three.

  He died a dozen times in the descent from Lady Maria’s window, flesh ripped from his face and neck, ribs broken and remade. His fear was a gaping hole that would swallow him if he dared look back at it. Laughing and sobbing, he descended through the flames of his own pain, hoping to find himself burnt clean on the other side. A nightmare touched the ground and crossed the ice in front of the Red Cathedral in slow, bloody footsteps, leaving a trail of dead behind.