The Exiled Blade: Act Three of the Assassini

by Jon Courtenay Grimwood

  It was Lady Amelia’s turn. But the Crucifers were watching the page, wondering why he was standing so rigidly to attention and obviously fighting his emotions. The boy glanced at the hooded figure, who said, “I’m sorry for your loss.”

  The page stared at him.

  “Your master, Tycho bel Angelo. I’m told he drowned in Montenegro trying to save Duke Marco after the duke slaughtered his traitorous uncle . . . It must be hard for someone so young to handle the loss.”

  Pietro’s chin came up. I’m not so young, his gesture said. Of course I understand. A second later, he asked. “You think he’s really dead?”

  “So everyone says.”

  The boy nodded sadly and turned his attention to Lady Amelia, who was smoothing the exact points on the sweetmeat heart where the happy couple could be expected to scoop the first mouthfuls to offer each other. “Everything is as it should be,” she said.

  Pietro bowed to her, nodded to the Crucifers, considered carefully . . . And bowed deeply to the hooded figure, touching his clenched fist to his heart. Then he picked up the sweetmeat and turned for the door.

  Inside his hood, Tycho smiled sadly.

  So much to give away in one day. His heart, his happiness, Giulietta’s love for him, now Pietro “You want to see how this ends?” Amelia asked sympathetically, her voice pitched too low for the priests to hear.

  Tycho didn’t but he knew he should.

  A balcony ran the length of the banqueting hall, fretted with gilded wood to let women watch from above without being seen by men at the tables below. It was years since feasts had been for men only, but the new hall had been designed by the late duke’s father and Marco the Just had insisted on a balcony in the old style. Looking at the archers stationed behind the fretwork Tycho decided the old duke had known precisely what he was doing.

  “The krieghund are targeted,” Amelia said, nodding down to where Frederick’s companions sat together. “But they can’t prove it.”

  At the top table Giulietta and Frederick ate in silence. Every so often, Frederick would glance across and look away if she caught him watching. Occasionally, she’d look at him. There was something hard in her gaze. Yet puzzled, as if she wondered how she found herself sitting next to him.

  “He’s terrified of her,” Amelia said.

  “Why?” Tycho demanded.

  “Because she’s terrifying.”

  Is she? At times, she’d seemed to him spoilt, unhappy or miserable . . . At others, kind, gentle and thoughtful. One didn’t make the other untrue. People were complicated.

  “Are you leaving Venice because of Frederick?”

  “No,” Tycho said, “I”m leaving because of me.” He looked at Giulietta and his mouth twisted with sadness. “Well,” he corrected, “I’m leaving because of us. Giulietta made me happy.”

  “And you?” Amelia asked.

  “I made her scared.”

  Amelia looked surprised. “You knew that?”

  Not until the words came out of my mouth just then, Tycho thought. Although he didn’t say it. “Watch,” he said.

  Part of him was scared Dr Crow’s pills were too old to be potent, and part of him hoped that was true, the dark part. Why should he want to help them fall in love with each other? Pietro was approaching the top table, carrying the gold salver containing the sweetmeat heart. He carried it steadily, staring straight ahead. Stopping in front of Giulietta and Frederick, he knelt and held out the plate.

  Tradition said they should take the heart, lift it together and put it between them on the table. When Giulietta did nothing, Frederick reached for the salver and she hastily grabbed the other side. The plate tilted and the banqueting hall fell silent, fearing a bad omen. The dish made it to the table with only a slight clang.

  Frederick’s sigh of relief was so explosive Giulietta smiled, despite herself. She opened her mouth for the forkful he offered and her hand touched his as she steadied his fingers. Frederick looked as if he might cry in gratitude and Tycho had to remind himself that this was a krieghund.

  At the high table, Giulietta lifted her own fork to Prince Frederick’s mouth, nodding to say they could both now eat. He ate from the fork she offered, just as she ate from the fork he held, their arms twisted through each other’s as tradition demanded. Both chewed as one, but Giulietta swallowed first.

  Leaning forward, she asked something softly.

  Prince Frederick looked at the crowd and nodded carefully. He swallowed his mouthful and asked something in his turn. It was like watching two children navigate their way through a field of thorns. Frederick’s fingers touched the back of her hand and she smiled. It was sad but kind. He risked saying something else, something that mattered, because her lips trembled.

  She wiped her eye crossly, then shrugged and nodded.

  Frederick dried her tears as tenderly as if the great banqueting hall were empty and they were the only people there. No, as if they were the only two people in the world. “Remind me again how this works?” Amelia said.

  Tycho ignored her.

  The couple at the top table sat with their heads close together. He seemed to be apologising and she was apologising back. That was how their marriage would work out. She’d be protective, and he’d have fits of unexpected fierceness if he felt her threatened or slighted. They’d muddle through because that’s what people did. Those on the lower tables returned to their own meals and conversation grew loud in a mixture of drunkenness and relief. The banquet would be remembered fondly and be coloured by myth. A feast to celebrate the end of winter as much as their marriage or Giulietta’s coronation. A winter when ice covered the lagoon and the Grand Canal was so frozen carriages used it as a road. When hunger drove wolves down from their mountains, and Marco the Simple became Marco the Great in a single night by killing his uncle and clearing the way for Giulietta to take the throne.

  “You’re smiling,” Amelia said.

  “Look at them.”

  He had to be happy for Giulietta; how else could he survive without going down there and slaughtering the lot of them? She had her head bent even closer, and when Frederick dipped to kiss her forehead, she smiled. How much of it was Dr Crow’s pills? How much forgiveness happened before the love potion had time to work its effect. Tycho didn’t know and refused to let himself wonder.

  “She’ll forget you?”

  “Not exactly. I’ll simply stop mattering.”

  “And Leopold . . .?

  “Only Frederick will matter.” Tycho glanced down and corrected himself. “Only he matters. The rest of us? Fond memories at best.”

  Frederick would be faithful and Giulietta would be faithful, and they would become that most unlikely and dangerous of hybrids, co-rulers who liked and respected each other. She would deliver Sigismund a city. He’d give her imperial protection. The issue of an heir was already decided.

  Tycho had no doubt she’d give Frederick children and he’d dote on them, the memory of his lost daughter ever in his mind. Smiling again, Tycho straightened his shoulders. Who knew what the future would bring? What he would see, what he would learn, what he would do. “I leave the city tonight . . .”

  “You travel alone?” Amelia asked.

  “Of course. Who would come with me?”

  The night he dived off the edge of the waterfall Tycho acted on impulse. After the chaos of his early months in Venice, he’d wanted to believe life unfolded to a plan but that night he simply reacted. Marco was the one with a plan, he realised now.

  He’d always intended to sacrifice himself to clear the throne for Giulietta, unless he’d simply wanted revenge. There would be time to ask him later. A whole lifetime of it, then another and another . . .

  Bending his knees, Marco had pushed away from the edge of the drop and pulled Alonzo after him. And time had slowed as Tycho crossed the trampled circle, drew his dagger and launched himself over the edge. Marco hit the water just ahead of Alonzo, with Tycho tumbling after.

  The weig
ht of their armour took all three under.

  Freezing water closed over Tycho as he fought the weight of his own breastplate, the drag of the sword he’d slung across his back. It was dark beneath the water. As dark and cold and unforgiving as for ever. Finding Marco, he’d followed him down into the slime, grit and rock of the waterfall’s floor. Where he slashed the strap fixing the axe in Marco’s chest to Alonzo’s wrist and kicked for the surface.

  Alonzo he left there.

  Tycho almost made it, although he had to scale the last few feet by clinging to rock and dragging Marco behind him, the weight of the duke increasing as they left the water. Rolling Marco on to a ledge, he looked down and saw the duke’s eyes flutter open. The spike axe still jutted from his chest.

  “You have a choice,” Tycho said.

  Marco shook his head. “I’m dying,” he whispered.

  “I’m offering you life.”

  The duke looked up and smiled. “My mother said you were a broken angel. Perhaps the last of your kind. You don’t look that angelic to me.”

  Biting into his own wrist, Tycho held it out.

  Marco’s eyes widened and he nodded, drinking with increasing urgency until Tycho judged him strong enough for what came next. He pulled the axe free, and drank from the wound, feeling cold steel against his lips. The night was dark and the pool deep in shadow. High above, Tycho could hear shouts and cries, orders and counter-orders. No one saw what happened in the darkness at the edge of the pool. At least no one who’d be telling.

  Acknowledgements

  As the third of the Tycho novels comes to an end, and his history ends on a high and a new beginning for him, and those involved in bringing the three acts of the Assassani to the page having been thanked already in previous books, it only remains to apologise to the ghosts of those historical figures whose lives I’ve stolen and dip my knee to the Serensìma Respùblica de Venesia herself.

  I remain as convinced now as when I was a child that Venice is alive and deadly and beautiful and dangerous. She has outlived empires and kingdoms, republics and revolutions. I pray she outlives many more.